Swaying slightly from side to side as the cab weaved through traffic, Mab thumbed her phone idly and ran her fingers along the side buttons. She hadn't heard from Steve in a few days. He had told her not to wait until it was raining to reach out again, but that seemed to remove her usual reason for calling.
David mumbled something from the other side of the cab, head lolling from side to side. "Ladies and… and gentlefuns…" He burped, and it sounded mildly distressed.
"Hey lady, if he throws up back there you owe another fifty," the cabby called irritably through the partition.
"He won't," Mab replied, glancing at her uncle to be sure, "he has a strong stomach."
"It's your money," the cabbie grumbled.
Mab scrolled through her messages; a collection of congratulations for David, a comment or two about his televised interview, regrets for missing the reception. The usual. In her perusal she saw her message to Steve from earlier in the evening when she hadn't been so emotionally exhausted and David hadn't been blackout-drunk.
M: What do you call a duck that's also a doctor?
M: A Quack.
M: I had to read that terrible joke and now so have you. You're welcome.
He hadn't read it yet. It had been marked as delivered, but Mab could imagine an entire universe of ways in which he was too busy to read it. Honestly, she felt silly for sending it at all.
She'd sent it right before she noticed David drinking a few too many glasses of champagne, and laughing a little too long at someone's off-color joke. The glamor of the Laureate celebration had gotten to her, lifted the tint of smog from her world and made everything glitter at the corners.
But the dirty reality of the world drifted through the air like dust shaken from old curtains, lingering in the air only briefly to finally settle on formerly clean surfaces. That dirt gradually built up on satiny, glittery places, leaving them sad and dim once more. The beauty of her dress and David's suit wouldn't matter in the face of everything they were doing their best to hide.
But Mab smiled until her cheeks hurt. She deferred and laughed and played the gentle niece until it no longer hurt to pretend. And then, as the evening grew long and the liquor grew short, Mab poured her uncle into a cab and directed them home.
She paid the cabbie generously for keeping the ride smooth and David's dinner in his stomach. It was a challenge getting him up the short rise of steps and into the brownstone.
The rich, warm, smell of coffee grounds washed over them as Mab closed the thick security door, reminding her that she'd forgotten to close the coffee canister after the late afternoon brew. The floorboards creaked with similar warmth; a musicality reserved for well-loved homes that hadn't been overly-maintained or babied through the years.
Mab decided against turning on any lights, trying to make David's progression to bed as smooth as possible Christine's eyes gleamed like vintage light bulbs in the darkness of the upstairs landing as they started up the stairs.
"Tell th' stairs to stop… stop m'ving…" David mumbled. "I already lost m' feet, I don' wanna lose th' stairs…"
"You're doing great," Mab encouraged gently, "just keep doing what you're doing."
Christine stayed mercifully away from the landing - maybe it was the double set of sloppy feet making her a little leery, but Mab didn't care; she would take whatever grace the universe was offering. That grace extended across the landing and all the way into David's bedroom, where it swiftly expired as he sat down on his bed and looked at her with oddly mournful eyes.
"The room keeps whirly-whirling…but you're here." He stared at her as she swung his legs up onto the bed and went to work on his shoes.
"Okay, David - let's get your shoes off."
"I can do it m'self, Andy," he grumbled, swatting ineffectively at her hands from too far away.
"I'm not-" Mab fumbled with her words, unsure whether or not to correct her uncle.
"Oh, Andrea," David rambled, "I miss… I miss…"
She understood the sadness in his eyes now. Through the intensely drunken haze and a poor choice of garment on Mab's part, David was seeing his sister in her face. "Miss what?" she asked, smiling through the twist in her heart.
"When life…" he sighed, "was simpler. I miss the time before… so complicated now. I miss," he sighed wearily, "I miss when it was just me and Christine. But… don't tell Mab…" he slurred, "she'll be so sad…"
Mab pulled off his shoes once she'd loosened his laces, letting them fall unceremoniously to the floor. The hard leather hitting hardwood startled Christine, who Mab hadn't realized had been lurking in the doorway until a frantic scratching of claws on wood signaled her hasty retreat.
"Okay, David," Mab pulled the covers up over her uncle, speaking quietly, "you get some rest."
David grabbed her hand loosely, squeezing it. "I miss you, Andy."
Mab squeezed his hand back and he let go. "Do not stand at my grave and weep," she whispered.
"I am not there," David finished the poem's stanza, "I do not sleep." He sighed, his eyes closing as he lay back against the flattened pillows.
Mab closed the door with a heavy settling of old latches that were always maintained by someone who hated squeaky hinges. She pressed her forehead to the thick wood door, grounding herself in a way that helped none at all.
She knew, of course; how could she not? Mab was more than aware that she represented a significant burden to her uncle. She cost money - for power, for food, for the never-ending sequence of medical anomalies that carved out her existence - and she simply was not charming enough to make it worth enjoying that burden.
Mab was not her mother. She couldn't face down adversity with a smile and a powerful attitude. She shared a face and a dress size with the woman who bore her, but took her disposition from a sour father who had no interest in parenting.
She could scarcely remember his face, seen only in a few photographs from her mother's much simpler younger days. Mab pushed off of the wall, her interest drawn to holding that memory. She slipped into her room, sidling around the ever-present stacks of boxes so the flaps of cardboard didn't snag on the silk gown. Another purple beauty, another inherited story.
Not quite diving, but nothing so casual as perusing, Mab worked her way down the box of photo albums until she found one with a worn brown cover. She knew it well. Sitting down on the edge of her bed and opening it reverently, she slipped her fingers over the protective plastic over the photographs, like she could reach out and touch the memory itself.
The pictures from the art gallery could have been from another dimension with how distant they seemed. Andrea - brown of hair and eye - stood in the same dress Mab wore. Next to her, a stone-faced man with blue-green eyes Mab had stolen away. His face inscrutable, his disposition sour; Mab found most of herself in him, even as her mother had always insisted that he'd all but phoned in his part of her conception.
Andrea had given all of her glamorous life up for Mab. As she'd grown sicker and her father had left, the number of beautiful things in their homes always seemed to dwindle. They moved from large homes to increasingly small ones as the medical bills mounted. Andrea always smiled.
Mab could remember the little delights - flip through the photobook and see snippets of treasured memories, of trips to tiny zoos and indulgent restaurant nights - but that part of her life didn't feel real anymore. She didn't feel that off expectation some described with lost loved ones - she didn't think that her mother was going to walk through the door at any moment, or bring her a cup of tea, or ask if she'd remembered her medications. She was gone, and at the moment of her passing it had felt as though it was always going to be that way.
For all her sour words, for all the unkind thoughts and bitter comments she had ever said out loud or tucked deep inside, Mab felt like she deserved this somehow. This tax on her life was the cost of just being not a very good person.
She shut the photo album and set it carefully back in its box with the others she didn't have the heart to display. She left her mother and all those happy pictures together, where they belonged. She didn't want to taint them with her bitterness.
The zipper of the purple silk dress moved smoothly, as it always had, the way that only expensive garments can be expected to behave properly every time. She pulled narrow pins form her hair as the ornate style was disassembled, and counted them to be sure she'd gotten every one. Nine in, and nine out. Makeup washed away revealed her true face in the mirror, with no more pretty powders and soft lipstick to hide the tired shadows under her eyes and the sour downturn of her mouth.
Mab knew exactly what she was. It wasn't a matter of disliking herself, or feeling sorry for herself that she had to sit down briefly in the shower to take a break from standing; Mab had an incredible sense of self that told her that effort should not be expelled on the things that didn't matter anymore. She lived on borrowed time, expensive borrowed time. There was no use in wasting what little time she had left on wishing; she had a debt to repay.
Providence had provided her with a way out of purgatory - to support her uncle during this beautiful lie of Laureates - and find redemption in return for securing a Dumont legacy. She would happily write for him without complaint. She would smile and laugh at parties. Mab didn't dream of being a pillar of history. She had never allowed herself the delusion of being important. Her little footprint would be washed away with the tides of death, but if she performed her part of the play to perfection she hoped her uncle would be able to build a castle made of more than sand.
Mab dressed in pajamas she fished out of the pile of clean laundry she'd never put away. She braided damp hair to keep it from tangling in the night and shoved the covers and blankets away to climb into bed. She would dream, as she often did, of a life where she was ordinary. She would dream of a life where her heart pumped solid life through her body, and not an ever-weakening stream of ache. She would dream of a beautiful, bland world where she had a bland, beautiful job and bland, wonderful children, and bland, ordinary complaints about traffic and forgotten vegetables in the fridge.
She'd accepted the reality a long time ago. It hurt every time to be reminded of her imposition, but she would retreat to that perfectly boring dream place and it would hurt less in the morning.
If Mab hadn't taken the time to plug in her phone she wouldn't have noticed the text coming in.
S: Did you have a good week?
She blinked at the screen. Mab's lip trembled as the carefully rehearsed and oft-repeated checklist that contained her self-loathing was interrupted by a casual question from the strangest of friends.
M: Not even a little! She typed, tears pricking at her eyes. She stared at it, then deleted the message without sending it. She tried again.
M: Can you just tell me about your week instead?
She stared at it. Still not right.
She glanced at the time at the top of her phone, tapping her thumb on the edge of the phone case. She'd seen the news; seen the flash of his uniform as he exited a Raft transport late in the evening. What was he even doing up at this hour?
Mab deleted her text. She bobbed her head a little, deciding on a bold move.
He didn't look the same on television. Of the little she'd seen in snippets here and there he looked so stern and tight-lipped; standing at attention without saying a word. A perfect soldier.
Between aisles of books, sitting on a bench in the park, he was a different person completely. Everything about the clever glint in his eyes, the playful smile, the quick comebacks, all spoke volumes about the tight box he was trying to squeeze wide shoulders in to fit. It must be unbearably painful, she thought, to maintain that level of self-discipline all the time. It must be an agony of the soul to know that you are not wanted as a man, but only as a symbol.
That kind of pain could keep you up at night.
She dialed.
"Hello?"
"Let me read you the worst sentence ever written by mankind," Mab said, grabbing a particular book from the pile on the floor.
He didn't ask why she was awake, and she didn't ask either. She could hear it in the air - the desperation for normalcy and a life made ordinary. And if not ordinary, for it to contain an order that made sense. This was her way of telling him she understood, even if he couldn't know how much.
She read every horrible line she could find, then she switched to the beautiful moments, and the sad ones. She shared with him the escapism of literature that, while a cold comfort, could make the nights less awful.
She read through a crack in her voice, through all the discomforts and fighting past a cough. She wanted Steve to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wasn't wasting his time reaching out to her. She still had some use left to the world. A small act, but one she could still do. She read until light snoring drifted through the connection; a reward beyond measure.
"Sweet dreams, Steve."
Morning light cut through the kitchen window in little slivers - cut off by street lamps and overgrown trees on the sidewalk. Mab danced through the light to light classical music, swaying gently so as not to burn off the light excess of energy she'd been afforded by some cosmic miracle.
A creak of flooring overhead and a weak moan of pain sent Mab to the coffee pot, checking that the magical brew was ready for the approach of a walking hangover. "Good morning, Uncle David," Mab greeted, pouring coffee into a mug as he shuffled into the kitchen. "You're feeling splendid this morning, I see."
He grunted, hand shading his eyes against the weak beams of light. "What day is it," he mumbled, "and what year is it?"
Mab handed him the black coffee. "I prescribe coffee, eggs, and toast."
He sipped at it slowly, sighing reverently. "Could you just hit me really hard in the head instead? I think I'd barely notice."
"You'll be alright," Mab smiled, cracking a few eggs into a bowl and whisking them to a light froth before pouring them into a warm pan with a healthy slab of butter.
"Could you stir more quietly," David begged, wincing, "It's making my brain hurt."
"That'll teach you to drink like you're twenty."
"You wound me," David grumbled, grabbing the remote and clicking on the little counter-tv across the kitchen. He flinched as the volume came on too high for him, button-mashing until he found the mute.
David flipped through the channels and eventually landed on the news. "Wow," he breathed, "would you look at that. Three in three days."
Mab looked over at the television, reading the quick glimpse of captions that informed about yet another collection of enhanced being shipped off to the Raft. But Mab wasn't watching the reporter, she was watching the collection of figures in the background.
She stared at the screen, watching the heroes do their best to look inconspicuous in the crowd of navy blue fatigues. Her gaze was drawn to one in particular, of course, who she knew more than all the rest. She knew. Maybe it was because she knew that she could see he looked so tired.
Her hand moved on its own to retrieve her phone from her apron pocket. It moved on its own, unlocking the screen and sending a text. It moved without her needing to think about it, because she knew with her whole body in that moment that she had been too selfish to keep the truth from him for this long..
M: Are you busy today?
He managed to make taking his phone out of his pocket look like an action of military precision, but the twitch of a smile on his face gave him away. Something in her stomach felt quite warm to be the reason for the crack in that perfect facade.
Mab laughed to herself as she saw that Steve texted by poking the screen with his index finger like someone's grandpa.
S: My shift is almost over.
Mab flexed her feet up and down, testing the steadiness of her balance. Better. She felt good. Well, not good, exactly; but not about to fall down at a moment's notice. Good enough.
M: This afternoon, then. Have you been to the Met lately?
"Mab, the eggs!" David cried just as the scent of burning food invaded her nose.
"Shit!" Mab cried, grabbing the handle of the skillet and tossing the whole pan into the sink just as the eggs-turned-charcoal caught alight. She doused the pan with water, sending a foul-smelling plume of steam up into her face.
"So," she coughed, waving the steam away from her face, "still want eggs?"
A/N: You guysssss I'm super stoked for the next chapter. Like… Y'ALL HAVE NO IDEA. This chapter isn't great, but it's done now. The next one is the one I'm really excited for.
God, grant me the motivation to write more than one chapter every month. Amen.
I love my reviewers! Cameron1812, nekokairi, huffle-bibin, K. Lynx, NullifySky, Luna, and DanaFruit!
PLEASE REVIEW!