Mother and Child Reunion
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER
Gotham City,
July, 1997
God, she looks so much older than I remember. How is that possible? She's not even sixty, yet...it's only been three or four years since I saw her.
Dinah Lance leaned forward in the uncomfortable hospital chair and studied her mother's sleeping face. The older woman had been out of surgery for several hours now, drifting in and out of consciousness for some time, but her daughter's presence had yet to really register.
Ironically, the last time she'd seen her mother, three years earlier, Dinah herself had been the one in the hospital bed. She'd been recovering from an emergency hysterectomy performed in part as a preventative measure to keep her from developing the same uterine cancer that had killed her grandmother and was even now ravaging her mother. No, don't think that way! she scolded herself. They got it all. You heard what the doctor said: her outlook is good, and there's every reason to think she'll be fine.
"Dinah?" her mother's voice said weakly, breaking into her gloomy thoughts.
"Yes, Mom, I'm here," she reassured her, moving quickly to her bedside and clasping her hand. "How are you feeling?"
Diana Lance gave her only daughter a feeble smile. "Like I've been hit by a truck," she answered. Then, after thinking about it a moment, she amended, "No, I've actually been hit by a truck. That was more generalized. This is more like somebody walking on your belly wearing golf cleats."
Dinah laughed. "I remember."
"Oh, yes," her mother said, "that's right. Medical emergencies seem to be the only time we ever see each other. Thank you for coming," she added, pleased.
In a hurt voice Dinah asked, "Did you really think I wouldn't?"
"I wasn't sure. Things between us haven't always been what they should be."
As if Dinah needed to be told! "We'll have to work on that," she told her mother quietly, giving her hand a squeeze. "No more fighting."
"Right. No more fighting," Diana vowed. "We owe it to your father. You know how much he always hated it when we didn't get along."
"You remember the time he threatened to divorce you and give me up for adoption if we didn't stop screaming at each other constantly?"
The older woman smiled reminiscently. "I remember. Smart-aleck Larry. He was a good man."
"The best," agreed her daughter, over the lump in her throat. Dinah and her father had always had a close, natural relationship; they'd understood each other very well. If her mother had been the one to make that sort of idle threat about divorce and adoption Dinah would have been terrified. As it was, she remembered that both she and her mother had burst into laughter, ending their battle just the way Larry Lance had intended.
They talked about him for some time, stopping occasionally if Diana seemed to be tiring. Larry had died when his daughter was fifteen, and the relationship between mother and daughter, difficult at the best of times, had never really recovered. He wasn't strictly the only thing the two women had in common -- in fact he'd always said that the reason they didn't get along in the first place was because they were far too much alike, a charge both vehemently denied -- but he was the only thing they agreed about. And now, trying hard to get along, a safe subject was a matter of necessity.
"How have you been, Dinah?" the older woman asked at length. "Everything all right in Seattle? Your business?"
"Everything's great, I'm just busy most of the time. Sherwood Florist is doing really well -- we're getting to have quite a regular customer base."
"That's good. I'm glad to hear it. I guess you inherited a knack for the family business."
"All the family businesses," her daughter answered meaningfully.
Diana gazed at her silently. "Yes. Well. Forgive me for mentioning it, but I'm still relieved that you gave up the other 'family business'," she said, giving her hand a squeeze.
Outside the door, an Asian-American man in orderly's clothing came to attention suddenly. He risked a look inside, but to his disappointment the conversation seemed to have stopped dead. So...did that mean the daughter had been a crimefighter, but wasn't anymore? That fact might just interest his boss.
Dinah, disproportionately infuriated by the remark, didn't trust herself to speak right away. The last thing she wanted was yet another screaming match with her mother, especially under the circumstances, but the woman never changed. She couldn't seem to go five minutes without needling her daughter about her former costumed alter ego -- which had originally been Diana's creation, as she never let her forget. Like her mother before her, Dinah Lance had spent several years fighting crime before suddenly deciding to give up the Black Canary persona for domestic reasons. And ever since then, she'd been on the receiving end of scornful disapproval both for giving up the lifestyle and for having ever been silly enough to take it up in the first place.
Diana caught her expression and gave her look that held a faint note of apology.
It was enough. Changing the subject for both their sakes, Dinah asked quickly, "So...is there anything you need, Mom? Anything I can do for you?"
Diana thought a minute. "If you don't mind," she answered, "You could bring me that pile of newspapers in the corner of my living room. I've sort of neglected my scrapbooks lately, but it looks like I'll have plenty of time to fill in this place."
"Okay," her daughter agreed quietly. The older woman had always kept scrapbooks of news items, usually crime-related, that interested her. Her 'reference materials' she called them. Dinah found it depressing to think that her mother had been too ill lately to even comb through the papers she collected religiously.
"By the way, you're welcome to stay at the apartment while I'm in the hospital."
Dinah smiled but shook her head. "Thanks, but I think Oliver would probably be more comfortable in a hotel," she said, and their unseen listener breathed a sigh of relief.
Her mother smiled sardonically. "Oh. So you brought the bearded wonder along. How did you talk him into it?"
"He's planning to go on to New York tomorrow to visit Roy, but he wanted to be here for me while you were in surgery."
"Don't be defensive, dear; I never claimed the man was utterly valueless."
Dinah snorted. "Not in those precise words, no. Look, Mom, I know you and Oliver have never gotten along, but you might as well accept the fact he's a permanent fixture. After all, we've been together for nine years," she added proudly.
"Well, it's nothing to brag about, but I will admit that he certainly seems to have more staying power than your first husband. Well, your only husband, but still...."
Mother and daughter had begun fighting over the subject of boys when Dinah was about eleven years old; even then the girl had had a seemingly irresistible attraction to older boys who were utterly wrong for her. At barely eighteen years of age she'd quit college to run off and marry a graduate student in anthropology who was seven years her senior. The marriage hadn't lasted long; within nine months Craig Windrow pulled a disappearing act, leaving his young wife stranded in Seattle. And soon after that she'd met Oliver.
Diana had never cared for her daughter's live-in boyfriend. Fifteen years older than Dinah if he was a day, Oliver Queen defined the word rake. Like the two women, he'd been a costumed vigilante when he and Dinah hooked up, but the difference was he seemed disinclined to give it up.
"Mother," Dinah said warningly, through clenched teeth. Then, alarmed, "Mom? Are you okay?" as a spasm of pain passed over the older woman's face.
The man outside the door risked another furtive look inside, wondering if his quarry was going to do something unexpected like die on him. That wouldn't be good, he thought. Or...maybe it might be the best thing. He wasn't getting paid enough to try to figure out the repercussions.
Well, apparently the old lady wasn't in such bad shape after all. She was talking again, though her voice was so weak he couldn't make out what she said, and he heard her daughter laugh faintly.
The smell of coffee reached the man's nostrils suddenly, and he jumped as he realised there was someone very close to him. A tall man in his early forties with wavy blond hair and a goatee had somehow managed to sneak up behind him without being heard. Thankfully, the bearded man didn't seem to suspect anything was amiss. He glanced into the room to make sure the patient was awake, and apparently assumed that the orderly had merely stopped to enjoy the view of the younger woman's shapely backside as she bent over her mother's bed, for he gave the young Asian a knowing grin and a quick lift of the eyebrows before continuing inside with the two Styrofoam cups he carried.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the false orderly fled. While he waited for the elevator, he dialed a number on his cellphone. "Yeah, it's Johnny," he said in a low voice. "The old lady's apartment's gonna be empty tonight, once her kid stops by to pick up some stuff. Yeah. Okay. Tonight it is, then."
...to be continued
Coming up next: Flashback to 1988, and the beginning of the second Black Canary's crimefighting career, as a 19-year-old novice meets a smartass youngster who knows more about the business than she does. Stay tuned for Chapter Two: Sleepless in Seattle.