Past Tense, Spilling Over

His mom's letter hit Nathan harder than he'd expected. Karen had, after a quick hug, left him alone the rest of the afternoon, and he'd finally cried himself to sleep, dreaming about the times at Lake Mead or the amusement park. But he'd woken up in the middle of the night, petrified because he couldn't remember which trip to the lake it had been when she'd dropped the camera in the water and he'd foolishly dived in after it. He could feel the edges blurring. He was starting to forget. Terrified, he sat at his desk to write down everything he could remember. That was how Lucas found him the next morning, bleary and wild-eyed and typing away furiously at his laptop. "Hey, you want to go... What's wrong?"

"I'm forgetting her Lucas. I'm starting to forget things. I can't let that happen. I've gotta write it all down before she's gone completely. Gotta get it all down on paper so she can't leave me, gotta make sure she doesn't go, not again..."

Lucas ran downstairs like the hounds of hell were behind him. "Mom! Mom, you gotta come, it's Nathan. I think he's having some kind of breakdown. He says he has to write everything about his mom down so she can't leave him again. It looks like he's been up half the night typing."

Karen jumped up from her coffee. "Call Elizabeth Holly. Her emergency pager's by the phone. Then call Ruth Plumber - she's in my address book. When Elizabeth calls back, tell her what you just told me. Then, and only then do you call your father. In fact, wait 10 minutes before you call him. This is not something he's equipped to deal with." Lucas nodded grimly and reached for the phone.

Karen ran upstairs and found Nathan just as bad as Lucas had described. "Nathan, sweetie, how long have you been up?"

He turned to her. "Mom, is that you? I'm writing you down Mom, I'm making sure you don't go. I've just got to get you all in here and then you won't have to leave, okay Mom?"

Karen had no idea what to do. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for what appeared to be a complete break with reality. But he didn't seem to be hurting himself, so she stood in the doorway and watched him type until she felt Lucas come up behind her and pull her away. "Elizabeth said she's going to come over and should be here in half an hour. Mrs. Plumber is on her way too, I caught her just as she was walking out the door for church, but it's going to take her a lot longer."

"Have you called your father yet?"

"No. I'm kind of wondering if we even should."

Karen privately agreed, but knew that wasn't an option. "He's his son, we can't keep this from him. But let's wait until about 10 minutes before Elizabeth gets here. I don't want him here alone with Nathan for too long."

It ended up not being an issue since Dan had gone out for a run and didn't get the message until well after Elizabeth had gotten there, by which time she had managed to get Nathan back to reality. Mrs. Plumber had beat him by 10 minutes and was upstairs with Nathan, tucking him into bed. Lucas had elected to stay with him as well, but Elizabeth and Karen were sitting in the kitchen talking. "What the heck is going on? I get this message from Lucas on my cellphone that Nathan's had some kind of fit about Deb - is he okay?"

"He's good now, Dan," Karen reassured him. "Ruth and Lucas are upstairs with him now."

Dan started toward the stairs. "I'm going to go check on him. This makes no sense, she's been gone like six months, he should be over it by now."

"Mr. Scott, please sit down," Elizabeth said in a tone that made it clear she wasn't asking. "Before you go upstairs, there are a few things we need to clear up. First, it hasn't been like six months, it's been exactly six months. This Tuesday is the date of his mother's murder." Dan stopped like he'd been struck with a thunderbolt. She was right and he'd completely forgotten. It
was six months ago almost to the day that he'd flipped on the TV for that fateful newscast. He sat. "Second, your son's grief is exactly on schedule. Up until now he's been dealing with so many other changes and adjustments, he hasn't allow himself to grieve. Now he can, and you need to allow him this, or you'll be setting him up for extremely serious problems down the line. Third, and this is where I need you to really pay attention to me. I need to impress on you the seriousness of the situation. Nathan was on the edge of what I can only describe as a full disassociative break with manic elements. He thought Karen was his mother, and was insisting that the only way he could keep her from leaving him again was to write down every aspect of their life together so he wouldn't forget. If I hadn't been able to bring him back to reality, I would have had no choice but to admit him for observation. That means at least a mandatory 72- hour stay in a psychiatric facility. Is that what you want?" Dan shook his head dumbly. "The one thing this episode makes perfectly clear to me is that you have not given him a chance to talk with you about his mother. Out of everyone around him, you're the only person who actually knew her. You're the only one who can understand when he talks about her. Why have you never given him that chance?"

Dan met her gaze. "I wanted him to move on. I thought if he spent too much time talking about her he'd never be able to let go."

Elizabeth threw up her hands. "Have you not heard a word I've said in all those therapy sessions? The only way he can let go is to talk about her. Did you know that boys who lose their mothers in their early teens are significantly more likely to develop addiction issues later on? Did you know they are more likely to have unhealthy relationships and even abuse their partners? If we don't catch this now, you could end up with a violent alcoholic on your hands."

Dan looked down again. "I thought I knew what was best for my son."

Karen reached across the table and took Dan's hand. "Danny, you only barely know him. How could you know what was best for him? For instance, did you know he has a raging crush on Haley?"

Dan was startled. "Haley? But she's such a mouse. He can do better than that."

"See? That's my point. He doesn't want some flamboyant cheerleader type like Peyton or Brooke. He wants Haley, and you didn't know," Karen responded.

Dan took his hand back, mouth set in a thin line. "I'd like to go upstairs now."

Elizabeth waved her hand. "Fine, but we will be taking up this subject again, Mr. Scott."

While this was happening downstairs, Lucas and Nathan were upstairs, preparing to 'fess up. It had started when Nathan, while crawling out of the shower and into bed, and cracked a weak joke to Lucas about this messing up the plan. Mrs. Plumber had picked up on it immediately and her eyes narrowed. "And what plan might that be?"

Nathan and Lucas both froze. Nathan knew her well enough to know that they were busted, but he had no idea how to tell her the truth. "Uh...."

Her eyes narrowed still more. "You might as well tell me young man, because I'm not leaving until you do. And don't bother trying to lie to me."

Nathan looked at Lucas, who looked at Nathan and shrugged. "She's your guardian ad litem, dude. We might as well tell her the truth." So they'd told her all about the walk in the woods, and how they'd realized their problem wasn't each other but Dan, and how they were using Sun Tzu to try and come up with a plan for something they could do that would make him back into a human being instead of a cartoon. "We're not having much luck so far, though. The best we've come up with is we agreed to stop fighting for that stupid shooting guard spot. We went to Whitey and he rearranged the lineup so neither one of us has it."

Mrs. Plumber stared at them for a moment and then burst out laughing. "Every time I think kids can't surprise me anymore something new comes down the pike. You seriously were looking in The Art of War for something to show you how to change your father?"

Nathan was a little annoyed. It was a good plan. "What's so funny?"

"Don't you see," she said, still giggling. "You don't need a plan. You're already doing it. Everyone always goes on and on about parents shaping children, but children shape parents just as much. You don't need some plan or grand campaign, you just need to live your lives the way you want to. If you insist on using Sun Tzu, then go back to the line in the earth Judge Krueger was talking about. You've already started. Dan's insanely competitive so you rejected the competitive dynamic he was trying to force you into and compromised on the spot. You drew a line. That makes him stop and think. Maybe it's not necessary to be that competitive. Personally I think it'll take a few more repetitions of the lesson, but you've put the thought in his head at least. Just being brothers, learning to share and compromise and live together as brothers should, that's your plan, right there."

Lucas didn't have as much experience with Mrs. Plumber as Nathan did, so he just stared at her, mouth open. Nathan buried his head under his pillow and groaned. "Luke, we are the biggest idiots ever to grace the face of this planet. Of course! Here we are trying to come up with a big thing and when what we needed was a bunch of little things."

Lucas dragged his dazed stare away from Mrs. Plumber. "What do you mean?"

"Karen said something to me yesterday about Dan not understanding change and evolution. When we stopped fighting, we were evolving; creating change in our lives. We were going the unexpected way. He sees past, present, and future as separate and discrete from each other, like rooms with doors that connect but you have to close one to open the next. Abrupt radical change, not slow natural progression. We have to show him that it's continuous, like a hallway. And the best way to show him..."

"...is to do it."

"Exactly."

"See? I knew you'd figure it out," said a very satisfied Mrs. Plumber.

Nathan spent most of the rest of the day in bed. Elizabeth had left after scheduling a few extra sessions for the next week. Mrs. Plumber had gone to talk to Karen and return home while Dan was up with Nathan and Lucas, both of whom were perplexed at why their normally bombastic father seemed so subdued. Later in the afternoon, Haley, Peyton, and Jake stopped by. They brought Jenny with them, who was in an exceptionally good mood and went a long way toward lightening the mood in Nathan's room with her baby laughter and babbling. And if Nathan noticed, while bouncing "Vegas Jenny" on his knee, that his laptop left with Haley for a few minutes, or that when she came back she slid a disk into a desk drawer and the file with all his ramblings on it was gone from the hard drive, he didn't say. He did notice, however, when she leaned over and gave him a light soft kiss on the forehead just before leaving. He took her hand and gave it a tiny squeeze, which she returned. Despite the way his day had started, Nathan went to bed that night happier than he could remember being in a long time. His last thought before going to sleep was "I should have a nervous breakdown more often..."