CHAPTER 15
MRS MULDER'S RESIDENCE
WEST TISBURY, MASSACHUSETTS
17:54 pm
Mulder had spent more time in the air this weekend than he had on the ground, and the stress of that as well as the emotional trials he had been through had so thoroughly exhausted him that he had little strength left to confront his mother when he arrived at her home. He felt as though the sun empathized with him as its tired, dying light painted the house a deep ochre, highlighting the terracotta tones on the planters his mother kept in the front yard and the deep-mahogany woods in the awnings and frames.
He pressed the buzzer and wondered if perhaps he should have called first. It seemed an eternity as he waited for her to reply, and all the questions he needed to ask her flew around in his head like birds testing new wings.
She smiled warmly at him when she opened the door. She looked well and much stronger now after her stroke. She'd put a little weight back on her face and her eyes were a clearer sky-blue than they had ever seemed before.
'Fox! It's good to see you! What are you doing here?'
'Hey, Mom. I just thought I'd drop by and see how you were doing.' He kissed her cheek. 'I'm sorry I haven't called.'
He never just dropped by and they both knew it, but she was just glad to see him.
'It's alright. I understand that you're busy.' She looked past him as she closed the door and bustled him in. 'Dana not with you?'
'No, she had to work, but she sends her love.'
She nodded and smiled. 'She's a wonderful woman. So considerate and kind. It's a shame she couldn't make it. I don't suppose you've asked her yet?'
'No,' he answered patiently, as he'd answered her several times before. 'We're just fine as we are. We're just taking each day at a time. We haven't even told the Bureau yet.'
'Well, you're both not getting any younger, you know.'
'I know,' he said, but he didn't want to talk about it anymore and tried to change the subject. 'How have you been?'
'I'm fine. Great really. The doctor doesn't want to see me again until next year. Have you eaten?'
'No.'
He followed her out to the large, well-equipped, if slightly dated kitchen and sat down at the breakfast bar. He watched her pulling vegetables out of the cupboard and pour oil into a pan, trying to imagine her with the Cancer Man. She had never explained the photographs taken at their summerhouse just before she'd had the stroke because she couldn't remember anything about what happened, and he didn't want to upset her by dredging up the past. He saw no purpose in it except to salve his own conscience. He loved his mother…and reliving painful memories for her wouldn't help anyone now. Even if she did confirm his worst fears, what difference would it make? What would he do?
She put a coffeepot on the stove to warm and dumped the potatoes she'd been peeling into a saucepan and added onions and mince to the pan. When they were ready to be turned down, she poured the coffee for them both and set it on the table with cream and sugar.
'So, why are you here, Fox?'
'I just wanted to see you.' He would have been hurt by that question if he didn't know and understand her so well. They both knew he was here for a reason, and she was far too tenacious to beat around the bush.
Suddenly, he couldn't look at her anymore.
'Is something wrong, Fox? Are things okay between you and Dana?'
'Yeah, fine.' She fixed him with a gaze that mothers always fix on their children when they know they're being lied to. 'No.'
'Do you want to talk about it?'
He laughed sadly. 'No, not really.' He pinched at the bridge of his nose and sighed. 'Mom, on the way up here I thought of hundreds of ways I could ask you about this, but I couldn't think of any that wouldn't sound...I don't know...rude, or inconsiderate.'
'Well…then perhaps you shouldn't ask. Some things are better left unsaid. Unless you believe that it's worth it. Is it?'
'I think it is. I need an answer, mom. It's important to me. The day you had your stroke, a man came to see you. He wanted something. He used to work with Dad years ago. I think his name is Spender. Do you remember?'
Her face clouded and he thought he saw her sigh, but she avoided his gaze by concentrating on the cooking.
'Yes. I remember.'
'Can I ask you about him?'
She shrugged. 'There's nothing to say. It was a long time ago.' She had grown cold and distracted, and she banged and clattered lids on pans with increasing vigor as she checked on the mince.
'Did he come to see you much?'
'He worked with your father. They locked themselves in his study and discussed whatever it was they discussed and then he left. That's it.'
'Didn't he ever tell you what they were working on? I mean, you had to have been curious. Not even when Samantha was taken and I recalled the memories of her being abducted?'
'No, Fox. I didn't want to know. Samantha's disappearance had nothing to do with your father, so - '
'Oh, don't…not you, too. Please, Mom. I need to know the truth.'
She stared at him as though he had just slapped her.
'I'm sorry, Mom, but you, above all people, should understand how much this whole thing has driven me since I was twelve years old. How hard I have fought to get where I am today. I need some answers, and I really need them now because it's affecting everything in my life. I love Dana, but I'm going to lose her if I don't make some sort of commitment to her soon, and I can't do that while I have all these things eating me alive. I need this to end. Please. I want the truth about what happened that night. About Sam. About me. About you and Spender.'
She wouldn't look at him. She added sauce to the mince and for the longest time, said nothing. Eventually, she sighed. 'What do you want me to say?'
He had been hoping for something more than that. 'How can you be so indifferent? I'm your son, for God's sake! Doesn't that count for anything? Don't you care about me at all?' Steam rose from the tomato sauce and she flicked on the overhead fan. 'Have you ever loved me?'
She flew across the kitchen and slapped him hard enough to knock him from his seat.
'How dare you say such things to me?' She was shaking with anger, but driving it was a searing, chronic pain that was far older than her son. Clenching a still shaking fist to her mouth, she lowered herself into the chair. He couldn't find the strength to look at her.
'You are my son,' she said, her voice heavy with ancient pain. 'You always will be. No matter how old you are or what badge you hold. I love you. Don't ever doubt that.'
'Then help me, Mom. Can't you see that this is killing me?'
She was still reticent, but there was nothing in her eyes now but love, sorrow and regret.
'I thought I was protecting you,' she confessed weakly. 'Ever since that night, I've watched you change from a happy, contented, bright boy into someone consumed with guilt and hatred, driven by revenge. It has been so hard to see how much all this has hurt you. But the alternative was even more terrible, and the truth of it would have been just as hard for you to take. I thought that as long as hope was still alive for you, then it would make things easier and the guilt you felt at being so helpless would have been lessened.
'I don't have any excuses to offer you for what I did. All I can say is that your father and I were young, and hadn't been married very long. He worked so hard and was away such a lot. He was never around when I needed him. Chris used to come around to see me and - '
'Chris? His name is Chris? Jesus, Mom,' he muttered, his hands covering his face. He already knew what was coming. His worst fears were being confirmed, and the realization of what she'd done hit him with the strength of a runaway juggernaut. Never had he felt so rootless, so adrift and alone. He saw images and memories of his life, but filmed from a different angle to the one he remembered, like a silent observer had been there at every step, always watching.
Sobbing like a lost child, shaking his head, he silently begged for explanations that could never quench the searing fire that was rapidly consuming the life he used to have. He was shattered, devastated, and not even his mother's arms around him could console him.
'How could you?' he whispered. 'Do you have any idea what a monster that man is? Don't you know the terrible, evil things he has done?'
She wasn't listening. Or maybe wouldn't hear him. 'He was a good man. Kind and attentive. So much more considerate of me and my feelings than your father. I know what happened between us was a mistake, but I never regretted having you, Fox. I loved you from the second I knew I was pregnant. So did he.' She sighed, and her arm tightened around him. 'I know that he is far from perfect. He and I haven't had anything to say to each other for years. But I don't believe he's the man you're trying to make him out to be.'
'Goddammit, Mom!' He stood up, throwing off her meaningless, empty embrace. 'How can you be so blind? That black-hearted son of a bitch is responsible for Dad's death, Dana's cancer and Samantha's abduction. You know everything I've gone through – do you know how it feels to find out that the man who's been responsible for everything bad that's happened in my life is my father? That my own mother has been lying to me for over thirty years? Do you know the pain I've gone through, trying to figure out why Dad seemed to treat me the way he did?' His voice rose with his emotions and until he was almost screaming at her. 'Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?!'
'I'm so sorry,' she stammered. 'I haven't betrayed you, Fox, I was trying to protect you! I only knew what he told me, and I believed him because at one time I loved him. He promised me that he would protect you, and told Bill that giving up Samantha was the only way to ensure that we would all survive. Bill never asked me to make a choice, Fox. We never had a choice. If I had, I would have chosen to die myself before losing either one of you. He told us that we were helping to save everyone. That Sam would have a wonderful, secure, safe upbringing. Better than the one we could ever have given her. It was the colonizers' decision. Their price. All the men who wanted to survive were required to give one of their own. It was the best of a bad choice.'
She sighed deeply, remembering things long past. She must have arrived at some kind of internal decision because she blinked and her face closed off to him with that subtle movement, as if, as far as she was concerned, the subject was closed. She rose again and went back to the dinner as if she hadn't just shattered her son's life.
'Go sit down, Fox. It's almost ready.'
He blinked with through sore, tearful eyes. 'What?'
'Dinner, it's - '
'Jesus Christ, I don't feel like eating, Mom,' he cried, desperately struggling to take it all in. 'You knew for all these years. Don't you understand that I need to talk about this? I need to know why this has been done to me. Why you've kept all this from me for so long.'
'I don't have all the answers you're looking for,' she said wretchedly. 'I don't want to dredge up the past. Nothing that happened back then makes a difference now. In any case it is private. Between Chris, your father, and myself.'
She put a lid on the meat sauce, switched off the stove and went through to the living room. Mulder's head throbbed in time with his pulse and his mouth and throat felt as though he'd been eating hot sand.
Nothing felt real anymore. He had never felt so thoroughly exhausted and bone weary. His entire system felt drained, and he felt sick to his stomach to think of the way he'd been forced to speak to his mother. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air was syrup and his lungs were immovable lead weights in his chest.
He followed her, dreading what the rest of the conversation might bring. She had folded herself into an overstuffed, faded armchair next to a living flame fire that cast dancing shadows across her face and made her look far older than she was. She didn't raise her head as he sat opposite her. Pale lamps backlit a display cabinet, silhouetting trophies that Mulder had won in high school, but his name engraved into the brass plaques couldn't be read in this light. The accolades could have belonged to anyone. His father's books still lined the shelves on the antique bookcase next to his mother's seat, and as he watched her staring at them, chewing absently on her fingernail, he wondered why she'd decided to keep them when everything else that had been his father's had been thrown out with him. He doubted whether he would ever understand the complex relationship that had obviously existed all along between two people he had loved and one he so vehemently detested. But he desperately needed to try.
'I didn't tell Chris that I was pregnant. At least not at first,' she began slowly, staring into the fire. 'Your father knew you couldn't be his. Those first few months were awful. He refused to see me, to talk to me, and I couldn't stand to even hear Chris's name.' She breathed in deeply and tilted her head as her focus shifted. 'I don't have any right to ask you to try and understand how it was for me then. To feel that alone, knowing that in a few months I would be having a baby that I would probably have to raise alone. But I wanted you. I needed you. I loved you from the moment I knew I was going to have you, and there never was another option for me.
'In time though,' she continued, 'when you were born, things changed. When your father saw you, he loved you as though you were his own. It was like an underlining of everything that had gone on previously, the beginning of a new start for us. He tried to leave the group, but Chris wouldn't let him. He said the work was too important. He never gave me details, and I learned not to ask. Chris wanted to be a part of your upbringing, but it wasn't possible. He had his own family, and your father wanted nothing to do with him outside work. But I kept in touch with him where I could. Sent photos of you. And Samantha.'
Mulder thought of the bloodstained photo found at the log cabin in Canada. He'd spent many nights afterwards thinking on the reasons why Spender should have or even want such a thing. It had never made sense until now.
'The arrangement wasn't perfect, but at least your father and I had managed to patch up our marriage and Chris was kept involved. He used to send you cards at Christmas and on your birthday, but I hid them from you and your father. I kept them all though. I don't know why,' she said with a sad smile, 'or perhaps I do now. He sent money, too. He never shirked on his responsibility for you, even though Bill didn't want you involved with him. He said Chris was manipulative. Sick. He didn't want that type of person around his son. The real problems started when he came to see us in 1973, the first time he actually came to our home since you were born. He told me about the threat from an alien race that had been in contact with them since 1946, before Roswell. It was all just too ridiculous for words, but he brought proof. Photographs, the stiletto that I still had up until a few years ago. He explained...well, I suppose you know most of what he told me that night, don't you? Trying to convince me, with your father, of what I should do.'
'I can take a pretty good guess,' Mulder muttered. 'He made you think that you were giving up a child to help save humanity. People have died to help me discover secrets that you knew all along.'
'They weren't my secrets to share. They have my little girl, Fox. They took her as their insurance of our silence, but it was also the price we had to pay to ensure our survival when the aliens released their virus. I hated the situation. It made me ill for a long time, although you were too young to remember – the thought of all those people who would die. I convinced your father to lobby his group for another solution, to buy time to build a weapon against them. He succeeded in convincing them, eventually, that it was the best chance for all of us rather than just a select few. It has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do. He didn't take just Samantha from us that night. He took you, too. It broke my heart to see how shattered you were over Samantha's disappearance, how completely you blamed yourself, knowing that there was nothing I could do to comfort you. Chris even insisted on the hypnotherapy sessions you underwent to try and help you cope when he saw how badly you were taking it. He promised me that you would never want for anything and that he would always protect you, no matter what.'
Mulder shook his head. Bit his lip, willing the tide of devastation to recede. His heart was a centre of lead in his chest and wings of grief were battling for freedom against his tightly clenched eyelids. He felt so incomprehensibly alone. All his life, right from the start, he had lived for a lie. He had no idea who he even was anymore. He was completely drained, his emotional core had been exhausted and he was left hollowed out, empty, dried out and discarded as though he were meaningless and had never really mattered to anyone. All he had ever been was a trophy, a gauge by which the battle between his parents and Cancer Man could be measured. He was nothing but a useful piece of propaganda to be used by whichever side whenever needed, a patsy to blame when things went wrong. He no longer had the strength to hate his parents. He'd spent too long targeting that particular emotion onto Spender. His life had been ruined before he'd even had a chance.
How he ached in that moment for Scully. She was the only one who had never lied to him. The one constant in his life. The one thing that still seemed real.
'I'm tired, Mom,' he said brokenly, stepping away from her. 'I need to go now.'
'Go? Where? You can't leave while you're upset like this.'
'I need some space, Mom. I'll check into a motel.'
'Don't be ridiculous. You can stay here. We still have things to talk about.'
Why wasn't she upset? Wasn't any of this bothering her?
'We are for now.'
'Fox, please. Don't let's part like this. We have to talk about the way you - '
'You want to talk now? Why didn't you when it might have made a difference?'
Was that actually a hint of emotion shining in her eyes, or just the firelight? She looked so small and frail. Pathetically lonely. And she was still his mother.
'Alright. I'll stay.'
He went upstairs to the guestroom and collapsed onto the bed. He waited silently in the dark for sleep to come as freely as the warm tears still slipping down his cheeks, hoping that in just a second he would hear his mother's footsteps on the stairs and she would come in and smooth back his hair from his face, whispering that it was just a nightmare, that he was loved, and everything would be alright in the morning.
But he knew it wouldn't be. He knew that nightmares were real. He knew those footsteps would never come.
