Chapter Thirteen: One Story, Two Audiences
She paced the hallway, cell phone pressed to her ear as she listened to the sound of the phone ringing. "Damn it, Annabeth, be home. Be home," she muttered into the phone. She'd tried twice now, snapping the phone shut furiously without leaving a message each time she got the answering machine. What time was it in Seattle, anyway? Three hours earlier—what was that? 8:30 in the morning. Where the fuck could Annabeth be at 8:30 in the morning, she fumed as the phone kept ringing. There was a period while the recorder reset where the phone would just ring off the hook, as it was doing right now, and Tracy would just listen to it ringing, as she doing right now, getting angrier and angrier. She finally shut the phone, severing the connection, tossing her head back in outrage.
It was so typical. So damned typical. Simon, Annabeth. The minute the truth came out, who were they? Where were they?
She should have known better. She should have known better than to trust them, should have known better than to think she could have friends she could count on. Daddy was right. Daddy was always right.
She opened her cell phone again, pushing the redial for Annabeth's home number. The machine picked up on the first ring, and Tracy didn't hang up this time. She waited impatiently for Annabeth's message to end in a single, long tone, and spoke. "Where the hell are you at 8:30 in the morning? What the hell kind of sponsor are you? Why don't you join the 21st century and get a damned cell phone like the rest of us?" She snapped the phone shut and shoved it into her purse.
Looking around her, she found a bulletin board with a directory of departments. The hospital had changed a lot in twenty years, and she didn't know her way around any more. She scanned the directory, not knowing what she was looking for until her eyes stopped on the words "physical therapy." She made a quick note of the location and, realizing it was just down the hall, turned to go there.
A quick peek in the door confirmed her suspicions. The room, in addition to an examination area, contained a treadmill, exercise bicycle, and rowing machine. Tracy nodded in relief, reaching in the doorway to turn on the light before removing her light over-jacket and draping it over her arm, so that she was just wearing her sleeveless tank. Just as she was about to enter, though, a hand on her bare forearm stopped her. She pivoted to see a young brunette woman in scrubs right behind her. The girl was very pretty, with pale skin and large eyes, but her expression was firm.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," she said gently. "This room is for physical therapy patients only."
Tracy drew in a long breath, somehow finding the strength to control her immediate response. "There's nobody in there," she said through gritted teeth.
"I understand that, ma'am, but—"
"I just need to use the treadmill for a couple of minutes," Tracy interrupted. "I won't touch anything else."
"I'm sorry, but—"
"No, you aren't sorry, but that's beside the point." Tracy lifted her right hand, staving off the young woman's protests. "Look, Miss—"
"Webber. Nurse Elizabeth Webber."
"Look, Nurse Elizabeth Webber. I know you're just doing your job. I understand that. But what I need you to understand is this. If I don't get on the phone with my sponsor, or on that treadmill for about 20 minutes, what I'm going to do is get on a bar stool across the street and drink myself into a coma." She paused to catch her breath, noting but not affected by the young woman's startled reaction. Before Nurse Webber could speak, Tracy continued. "I realize you have liability issues. I will sign whatever waiver you need me to sign. Believe me, I have less than no interest than ever suing this hospital. I have no interest in having anything whatsoever to do with this hospital. What I do have an interest in is that treadmill in there, which is the answer to this nagging little problem I have right now, which is how do I resist my current, overwhelming desire to destroy six years of sobriety in one afternoon?" She stopped for now, suddenly out of wind, suddenly out of energy. It occurred to her to ask herself why she cared. She only phoned in her AA membership anyway, remember? She was sober for practical reasons, not moral ones—another DUI, another near-scandal involving her would be lethal to Freedom Energies' public relations.
But it wasn't Tracy Walker fighting for sobriety right now. It was Tracy Quartermaine. And everybody in Port Charles who knew Tracy Quartermaine knew she drank like a fish. Knew she was and had always been a heavy drinker, probably an alcoholic.
Tracy Walker admitted once every week to a room full of people that she was an alcoholic, even if a hidden part of her didn't believe it. Tracy Quartermaine believed it with all of her heart, but didn't give the slightest damn about it at the moment.
"Listen, Ms…."
"Walker," Tracy said.
The nurse's expression had softened, her eyes gentle for the first time. "Let me take a look at the schedule and see what I can do." She stepped into the physical therapy room, followed by Tracy, and headed over to where a clipboard hung from a nail on the wall. Flipping it open, she began to nod. "Well, the bulk of the appointments are scheduled for early morning and mid-afternoon." She looked up and smiled. "You've timed it perfectly. I can give you a half an hour, if you want it."
"Duh…" Tracy said, then caught herself. "Sorry….thank you," she amended.
"No problem. I understand how these things are," she said, not lifting her eyes from the paper she was writing on. "What was your full name?"
"Tracy Walker."
The young woman scrawled the name on the paper, and then looked up, placing the clipboard back on the wall. "I've got you scheduled for thirty minutes on the treadmill, Tracy. Do you know how to use the machine?"
Tracy nodded gratefully.
"Okay then, if you can just make sure the machine is shut off when you're done and the lights are out…."
"And the door closed behind me, yeah," Tracy murmured as she headed to the treadmill. "I…I really appreciate this, Nurse."
"I understand." The young woman paused at the door. "Um, when's your next AA meeting?" she asked.
Tracy turned, sighing. "Thursday. Back in Seattle," she clarified.
The nurse raised an eyebrow. "And are you going to be in Seattle on Thursday?"
That got a short, bitter laugh. "I don't know who I'm going to be on Thursday, much less where."
If Elizabeth had any response to that remark, it didn't show on her face or in her voice. She just nodded, graciously. "Here's what I can do for you. I know the hospital hosts AA meetings weekly. I can see when the next local group is meeting—they are open to visitors, and well…" She breathed in deeply before continuing. "You look like you might need it before Thursday.
Tracy shook her head. "You don't have to do that. I can control it—just a few hard minutes on that treadmill, and I'm good to go." She was lying, of course. Tracy didn't know how all the exercise in the world was going to keep her sober through this ordeal. She was kicking herself for even coming, kicking herself for thinking it might be different this time, that he might be different this time.
The nurse nodded, but said, "Well, I'll bring the list of meetings anyway. Just in case you change your mind." And without waiting for a response, the young woman was gone, leaving Tracy alone for the first time in almost 24 hours.
Tracy lay her purse and over-jacket on the table by the examining area and got on the treadmill, leaning over to check out the settings. Her glasses were in her purse, so she had to squint with the unfamiliar settings of this machine. Still, it only took a moment to get familiarized and have the machine working fine.
She set it for a hard walk, no warm-up, and started moving. She felt her legs burning—she'd missed her workout yesterday because of the party, and then there was the cramped cross-country redeye to New York, not to mention the stress of seeing her family again. Part of her wanted to slow down, knowing she could cramp up or even injure herself at this pace, but she squashed that part of herself down. She wanted the discomfort, the physical pain, to mask all the roiling emotions that were pushing at her now.
Every time her father's face appeared in her mind, or her son's, or her mother's, or…or….
She pushed harder. Work it out in the legs, Tracy, in the abdomen. Work it out in the body, clear it out of your head, sweat it out of your mind. Keep focused. Just walk, push harder, keep it up.
Push yourself, Tracy.
Don't slow down. Don't give up.
Don't look back to see them biting at your heels.
If you stop, you die.
She felt the tears on her face, felt the burning humiliation of them. Tracy hated tears, on herself and on other people. They were a sign of weakness, a sign that the person who shed those tears had no clue how to control themselves. She suspected on some level that her attitude was quite dysfunctional, but that didn't change the hidden disgust she felt during AA meetings, watching people bare their souls, tears streaming down fat, or wrinkled, or hollowed faces as petty grievances were aired before perfect strangers who didn't even know their last names.
Tracy sometimes made things up at the meetings. Tracy sometimes just lied outright, weaving incredible stories of verbal abuse and abandonment, of cruel fathers and impotent mothers, never caring about the violation of trust she was committing with these people.
Anything was better than their tears, even her own fictitious tales about the horrors of her childhood.
The sweat was beginning to come. The pain was beginning to come. It forced her to focus, forced her out of her mind, into her muscles. She wondered how strong her heart was….how ironic would it be if she gave herself a heart attack, here at General Hospital? She would have laughed, but laughter required more energy than she was willing to spare, so she just pushed harder.
She didn't hear the door open, didn't even notice the young woman enter until she was standing right in front of her, scaring the hell out of her. "Brooke Lynn!" she gasped, not slowing her pace.
Her granddaughter stood before her, arms folded across her chest, just staring—no, glaring at her. "This room is for PT patients," she said curtly.
Tracy nodded toward the schedule on the wall, breathing too hard to talk.
Brooke walked over to the clipboard, picked it up and flipped through to the current page. "Tracy Walker?" She rolled her eyes. "How appropriate."
"Jeese," Tracy muttered, slowing her pace to catch her breath. "Look, kid, I'm in the middle of something here. Why don't you give me twenty minutes to clear my head, and then, I promise you, you can have your pound of flesh with the rest of them." She didn't wait for a response, just started pumping at the treadmill again.
"I have a name. It's Brooke." Brooke stared at her a moment longer, then said, "I saw you in the hall. Where is your cell phone?"
"In my purse, why?" Tracy looked up to see the girl march over to her purse, take out the phone and shut it off.
"You can't use these things in the hospital, okay? You could interfere with the machinery," she said before putting it back in Tracy's purse.
"Wow! Why didn't I think of that when I was in Daddy's room?" Tracy knew the kid had done nothing to deserve her ire, but she had tried asking, and the girl just wouldn't go away. "Then there would be witnesses to my evil, and I'd get into Hell all that faster." She rolled her eyes, but continued her brisk pace on the treadmill.
Brooke shook her head, her lips parted slightly in disgust. "You think I care what my asshole family thinks of you?" When Tracy didn't respond, the girl continued. "I could care less what they think. I'm here under protest, under Dad's house arrest, and frankly I don't care if they all have heart attacks and die." She hesitated, her angry façade faltering for just a moment before she got on the exercise bike and began slowly pedaling. "Why didn't you tell me who you were in the coffee house this morning?" she asked in a softer voice, not meeting Tracy's eyes. "Why did you let me make a fool of myself? You knew who I was. I told you I was Ned's daughter. Hell, I even asked if you knew my grandmother." She pedaled faster, her voice growing harder with the exertion. "Not like I didn't give you a lot openings to jump in there."
Tracy sighed, adjusting the pace on the treadmill to a slow walk. Since the girl obviously wasn't going away until she got answers, it seemed wise to just give them to her. "Look, you didn't make a fool of yourself. You were polite and charming and…" She leaned over, resting her head on her arms as she leaned against the console, still walking slowly as she did. After a moment, she straightened. "I'm sorry," she said plainly. "Two seconds before I met you, I didn't know I had a grand-daughter. It knocked the wind out of me, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what Ned had told you about me, didn't know what horror stories they told about the Evil Witch Tracy at Halloween. For all I knew, you could have thought I was a cross between Cruella da Ville and Lizzie Borden." She shook her head, tired of walking, but not able to stop just yet. "I'm sorry."
"When I was nine or ten, I came and stayed with Dad for a while. I was fighting with Mom, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. I asked Great-Grandma Lila about you." Brooke smiled slightly. "She said I had a lot of your best qualities, and that I reminded her of you." The young woman waited for a reaction from her grandmother; when Tracy didn't give her one, she continued. "I've heard the rumors, you know? It's hard not to in this pit of vipers. But I never believed them. Grandma Lila loved you, and she wouldn't if you'd really done what they said you did." Again, no reaction from Tracy, who was still walking at her slow pace, her body taut and defensive. Brooke pressed on. "What…did you do?"
Tracy sighed, her heart sinking. A subtle hint, she might have ignored. A broad, generic question could have been side-stepped. But how could she look at her own grandkid and….? "Oh, god, Brooke. That was a million years ago."
"Judging by the reaction you got from the family, it was ten seconds ago," Brooke corrected. "Come on--I've heard the rumors. Don't you want somebody in the family to hear your side of the story, after all these years?"
"Oh, kid. Trust me when I tell you that nobody wants to hear my side of the story."
"I do."
Perhaps it was the simplicity of her words, or the fact that nobody demanded her truth in years. Perhaps it was her honesty, or her attitude, or the fact that in right light she reminded Tracy a little of her younger self. Whatever it was, to her surprise, Tracy found herself speaking. "I had been feuding with Alan. The usual things--money, power, jockeying for position. Daddy got tired of it, blamed me for all of it, and decided to test my loyalty." She grinned darkly. "Obviously, I failed."
"Obviously." Brooke grinned back, her accent evident even in those three short syllables. "So. Did you really try to off the old man?"
"Not in so many words, no," Tracy responded carefully. "It's hard to find the black and white of it, you know? He faked a heart attack. He was in no actual danger. So technically, my actions weren't wrong at all." She bit her lower lip, lowering her eyes as she slowed the treadmill down to a crawl, then just turned the damned thing off. "But I didn't know that. I thought my father was having a heart attack. I thought…I can't remember what I thought at the time, really. So many years have passed, and I can't sort out the real memories from memories of the nightmares I've had about that night. I've relived it a million times, but it's a little different each time, you know?"
The girl nodded, no longer pedaling, just watching Tracy's face, studying her expression.
"I brought him his medicine like he asked, but I stopped short of actually giving it to him. I put it on the table, right on top of the new will he'd shown me earlier that night--the one cutting me out completely, disinheriting me and banishing me from the family." She stopped, her voice cracking. It had been over two decades since she'd spoken about this aloud, and the words felt like razors in her throat. It took a moment to catch her breath, but Brooke didn't hurry her.
Tracy didn't hear the door behind her open, but Brooke did. Brooke saw her father enter, but made no move to alert her grandmother to his presence. Instead, she stepped up her questioning. "Grandmother, did you try to kill Edward?"
"No. No, because--God, this is going to sound insane--" Tracy fought for control of her voice, of her body which threatened to sag from a combination of emotion and exhaustion. "Baby, I didn't think he could die. I know it's nuts, but Daddy was…oh, my god, Daddy was so strong. He was so intimidating. It never really hit me that he could die. It never occurred to me that I could hurt him--because--because I was nothing. I was just Tracy, the bad seed, the one nobody took seriously, the one who couldn't make a marriage work." She laughed, a harsh ugly sound. "The only thing I knew was that, no matter what happened, I couldn't let him see me crawl. Daddy didn't like people who were weak. Daddy didn't like people who crawled, and he was trying to make me crawl. He was trying to make me buckle, and I wouldn't do it." Her lips spread across her teeth slightly. "I made him crawl. I beat him at his own game. It's what he taught me to do, what he wanted me to do."
"Wow," Brooke said. "Okay."
"Yeah. The current word for that sort of father-daughter relationship is dysfunctional," Tracy admitted. "When he finally came to--oh, and he laughed at me--there was no winning. If I said I was calling an ambulance, then I admitted I didn't know he was faking. If I said I thought he was faking, why call an ambulance?" She was shrugging. "There was no coming back from it."
"Is that why you disappeared?" Brooke was watching her father's reactions as much as her grandmother's, realizing that she had a perfect opportunity to ask for her father what he'd never ask for himself. "Is that why you never came back, because there was no coming back from what happened between you and Great-Grandfather?"
"When Daddy disowned me," Tracy continued. "Mother intervened on my behalf. She got Daddy to give me two million, but he put a stipulation on it. I could only spend it on my husband's political career. Now my husband didn't want to be married to me any more than I wanted to be married to him. We split the money and divorced as soon as we hit Albany. I hopped a transatlantic flight out of LaGuardia, started drinking in the terminal bar, and by the time I sobered up, six weeks had passed and I was in bed with an Italian guy whose name I couldn't remember." She sighed at the memory. "All I knew is I wanted my family back, but I couldn't crawl. I couldn't come back, because the only way back was on my knees, and I wasn't going to do that. Daddy would never forgive me, would hate me even more if I crawled than if I came back with guns blazing." She shrugged. "I figured the only way I'd ever get back into the family was to make a success of myself. So I decided to take what was left of my money and go into business. My Italian friend had one of those old-fashioned globes, you know? So I spun it, telling myself that wherever it stopped I'd make my fortune." There was a hesitation, then Tracy laughed. "It landed in Patagonia, South America. I said the hell with that, ran my finger up to North America and landed in Seattle. I've been there ever since."
"Trying to make enough money to come back?"
"Trying to make enough money to forget," Tracy said softly. "Somewhere along the line, I got it into my head I could never come back, no matter how much I turned my life around. It made sense, really. Nobody here would ever see me differently. I changed my name, I changed my life. I started from scratch, and once I had made sure Ned was financially secure, tried to forget about this entire life I used to live."
Brooke was watching her father's face during this entire exchange. He looked maybe ten years old, hurt and lost and abandoned. He looked like he wanted to cry. She took a deep breath and asked the question she knew he wanted an answer to, the one thing that had shaped his entire life, the thing that affected every relationship he had--especially his relationship with Brooke herself. "Grandmother, why did you abandon Dad? You said you had a million dollars and a plan. Why didn't you just take him with you? You knew what Great-Grandfather was like. How could you leave your son with someone like that?"
"Oh, wow. Oh…." Tracy breathed out hard, as if frank line of questioning had knocked the wind out of her. "Baby, I have asked myself those questions a million times, in a million different ways. And the truth is…" She shook her head. "I screwed up. I made a mistake. I thought he would be better off with the family, that he might have a chance to do right where I failed. I was young, and terrified, and stupid beyond all belief. I thought money was more important than anything I could give him. I had Mother's assurance that she would protect him, and my mother was a better mom than I could have dreamed of being." She sighed, lowering her eyes, unable to meet her grand-daughter's gaze. "I threw away the best thing, the only good thing I ever did in my life, because I was too afraid of the responsibility, too afraid of the burden of being a full-time mother to him." She closed her eyes, the tears coming down her face. "By the time I realized the mistake I'd made, it was too late. The damage had been done. I'd lost my son, and I knew I'd never have him back. Maybe I never had him at all--I was never a good mother, Brooke. That accusation was true. I was the worst mother that ever lived."
"That's not true." Ned's voice from behind her visibly shook Tracy.
"Dear god! How long has he been listening?" she said angrily to her grand-daughter.
"Long enough. Brooke, can I have some time alone with my mother?"
Brooke nodded, and left before Tracy could stop her. She turned to her son, suddenly terrified to utter a word.
Ned just looked at her, a sad, awkward expression on his face. "I guess we need to talk, huh?"
Coming in Chapter Fourteen: The Care and Feeding of a Quartermaine