A/N: Checking in to thank everyone who's been sticking with the story! I really appreciate your support. :)
6. Home
Nessa's vexation wanes and she writes almost daily in her rushed, mercurial style. She begs to be removed from Shiz no less than six times in the first month, but it's paradise as often as it's purgatory, so Melena concludes that adjustment is well underway. She also concludes that a large part of this is owing to Elphaba, who fields the silences, the whining, and the outright manipulation, proving a pair of capable hands for Nessa to have fallen into and another willing subject for those ever-grasping claws.
By the autumnal turn of the leaves, the girls are devoted to each other, and Nessa is so thrilled with the friendship that Frex can no longer fault Melena for declining Madame Morrible's offer to have Nessa stay in her personal apartments. He even commends it, albeit warily, as if reserving his right to revoke it at the first sign of trouble.
There isn't any.
The first term nears completion, snow descends on Munchkinland, but not yet on Shiz, and Melena curls up with the letters clutched inches from her face. She passes her fingers over the sentence fragments and the creases and the multitudes of exclamation points, weaving the glimpses into a comprehensive vision and marvelling at the independence it affords them.
She imagines the dormitory: cramped and sloppy, with papers strewn every which way and stacks of books tipping at perilous angles. Elphaba stomping around at all hours of the night on the verge of some revolutionary thought. Nessa participating lazily in the dialogue, penning her latest letter when she should be catching up on her readings. Elphaba is an absolute trial to live with, to hear her account, but the grievances are petty and light-hearted, designed to distract from the admiration that lurks beneath. She's too punctual, Nessa writes, along with Melena's personal favourite: She's so annoyingly studious.
After finals, Melena reaches out to make Lurlinemas arrangements, but Nessa refuses to budge from Gillikin until she has her results – a stipulation that Melena suspects she's borrowed from Elphaba – and they ultimately meet her halfway, at a resort by Munchkin Rock, so as to spare her another bout of homesickness. Nessa glows and gushes and then she is gone, leaving Melena blinking in her midst, trying to process what it is about her daughter that has changed and left her with the impression of having met someone she doesn't know.
(Confidence, Melena will later deliberate, or perhaps a total lack of it.)
The second term slides by even faster, though it is a whirlwind of developments: soon there is a Galinda and then, disconcertingly, a Boq and every so often a Fiyero. There's dancing and drama and some strange episode with a hat that leaves Melena bristling. There are finals, once more, and a good deal of agonizing over them. (Who let me believe that 'Introduction to Philosophy' was a good idea? Nessa writes.) There are goodbyes. And then there is a final letter that not so much asks as informs the Thropps that their daughter will be returning home with company.
They wait for the girls on the platform.
When the train surges into the station and the smoke dissipates, Melena searches the sea of stolid Munchkin faces until she spots the three of them, her heart jumping into her throat. They have grown, but they are young, so young. Nessa greets her parents with hugs. Galinda is incandescent, wide of smile and firm of handshake, bubbly and warm and flawlessly genuine even when she is not. Elphaba remains diffident, hanging back during the exchange of pleasantries with a book tucked tightly into the crook of her arm. (Melena notes this and smiles to herself. She has prepared the guest room with the most natural light for Elphaba and outfitted it with a strong lamp besides.)
At dinner, they begin talking and do not stop for anything.
Melena has heard every story through Nessa, but she listens to them again in Galinda's voice – and sometimes Elphaba's, when she unfurls from her thoughts and chimes in with a dose of sarcasm or an amendment she deems crucial to the integrity of the narrative. From what Melena gleans, she bears immense disapproval for Fiyero and is clearly dubious of Boq's intentions, but disposed to hiding it in Nessa's vicinity. She is enthused by her history classes, less so by Morrible's sorcery seminar, and shamelessly invested in her political opinions, to the point that she gets into it with Frex a few times. ("You do realize, sir, that you are being ruled by a migrant, don't you?" she says, shortly after charging him with thinking in terms of antiquated hierarchies.) Melena is riveted by these performances. The three girls are living a life that is utterly alien to her and yet she sees figments of herself everywhere she looks, as if she's shedding.
They wander the grounds, the markets, the town square, and eventually settle in the orchard, in a circle of sunlight, animatedly discussing nothing and everything. Galinda is always careful of her conduct, feigning the serenity that Nessa longs for her to have in Munchkinland, but when she receives a letter from Fiyero and announces that she will be departing for the Vinkus, her façade slips. She extends the invitation to Elphaba – Fiyero wouldn't mind, I'm sure – and is met with only wordless scoffing, to which she pouts and concedes until her next attempt. Melena stumbles upon one such discussion, lingering by the door of the dining room while Galinda frames her entreaty like a gift, their long-sought escape, and then demands a proper explanation for Elphaba's recalcitrance.
"But why?"
"I like it here," Elphaba says simply, and that is that.
When Galinda does leave, she embraces Nessa, then Elphaba, and Melena is astonished by the depth of their friendship. She almost regrets the zeal that drove her to arrange for the ticket herself, to assign three members of the staff to packing, to indulge the impulse that's wanted Galinda gone since Fiyero granted the opening. But the train gathers steam, vanishing with a roar, and the guilt vanishes alongside it, because then they are home, sitting down to lunch together, and when they are done Frex exits to draft an address on the new land taxation system. Nessa retreats to her room for a nap. Elphaba drifts off to the library. Melena situates herself at her desk to work through her correspondences, and everything is right, perfectly right.
This is a risky way of thinking, however, and Melena doesn't delude herself for long. She knows how fragile this peace is, that it can be fractured in a few words, perhaps in the form of another letter, and lives in a state of apprehension until the burning question of Elphaba's departure scalds her tongue out of stillness.
Pulled aside, Nessa says bluntly, "She won't be leaving. She's quarrelling with her father."
"Why?" Melena pries. "About what?"
Nessa leans in conspiratorially. "After finals, she left for the Emerald City and returned within three days. She won't talk about it, but she went straight to the registrar to inquire if it was too late to enrol in summer courses. I couldn't bear the thought of her alone the whole holiday, so I invited her to stay."
"She didn't ask for herself?"
A shrug. "Elphaba never asks for anything."
Over the course of the month, Melena will revisit this statement multiple times. Nessa is more comfortable with Elphaba, more inclined to leave her behind and tail Frex into town, which leaves Elphaba open to scrutiny. Melena watches the way that the girl eats (meticulously – one food group at a time, allowing for no cross-contamination), how late she stays up (too late), what she wears (frocks ranging from frumpy to lugubrious), and tells herself that she could not have broken the habits even if she was around to try. Elphaba is admirably incorrigible and endlessly peculiar: all clumsy charisma and self-deprecating wit. Hard to like but easy to love.
And, contrary to Nessa's claims, she is rather quiet.
Melena finds it fascinating that a girl who has trained herself to cut such a fierce first impression should soften into a shyness this profound, but Elphaba appears most tranquil on her own. She takes to the library, to sprawling along the sofa with her nose in a book, her hand blindly scrawling notes, and Melena takes to inventing subtle-but-not excuses to interrupt – peering in, mainly, or poking around without aim. Sometimes she incurs a peripheral glance, but often it is nothing, not until the day that she is driven to the third floor for a legitimate reason.
As she crosses to the shelves, seeking a map that Frex has accused her of misplacing, she is stalled halfway by the sight of Elphaba at the window – arms wrapped around her torso, hands on opposite elbows. She is taller and thinner than Melena ever was, but the outline of her is close enough to stun, transfixing Melena as a dam breaks and twenty years flood in.
Melena's hand fumbles over the table, knocking over an inkwell. Elphaba whirls around, tensing, and then relaxes and says, "What direction does this window face?"
"East." Melena thinks. "No…west, I believe."
"It looks like a painting."
"It does," Melena agrees, righting the inkwell – sealed, thank goodness – and joining Elphaba. The treeline is thicker than she remembers, the corn crops are bean crops, but the hills roll towards the horizon with the same complacency. "I used to spend hours here. I didn't think there could be anything more mundane. I thought: there's not one thing about this view that makes me feel something."
"There are worse things than mundane," Elphaba says.
"Naturally," Melena says. "But wisdom is no easy feat when you're twenty-two and pregnancy has made a pulp of your brain."
Elphaba shifts, rocking on her heels. "Do you still feel that way?"
"Pregnant? I should hope not."
"Unsatisfied, I mean."
Melena clings to levity, though the word tugs at her very core. "Sometimes. I try not to entertain those thoughts."
"Does Nessa?"
"Do you?"
Elphaba shrugs. "I used to wish that I had roots. You know…a history, an ancestry, a homeland that I could fathom. Somewhere the links the past and the future. I would've traded my soul for proof." She bites her lip and thinks on her answer. "I don't feel that way anymore. Between Shiz and Munchkinland, I've lost my sense of home."
"Surely there's no need to be that dramatic," Melena says.
"I didn't mean it negatively. It's freeing, actually." Elphaba runs her hands along her forearms. "Have you read the work of Reginalf Pantherin?"
Melena laughs. "I don't recall the last time I read something that wasn't one of Nessa's letters or a newspaper, so I expect not." She gestures towards the sofa.
Elphaba glances back, as if startled that it's there, and perches on the edge, one leg tucked under her and one swinging like a pendulum. She says, "He's a Tiger, from Gillikin, who conducted a study on the habitation tendencies of every known species and concluded that 'home' is a concept impressed on Animals by humans."
"But animals have homes, don't they?"
"See, we tend to think that, because they have dens, and colonies, and territories, but if those are destroyed, they can adapt without much distress," Elphaba says. "They find another. They rebuild. They move on, provided that they have the space to do so." She stops abruptly, as if realizing that she's toeing the line of no return.
"Go on," Melena urges.
Elphaba's eyes flick up at her almost suspiciously. "Well, essentially, he concluded that 'home' is a construct borne of human insecurity. It's been one of the most divisive academic controversies of the last fifty years. Critics lashed out instantly, claiming it was discriminatory drivel."
"All human, I assume?"
Elphaba nods.
"That proves his point, doesn't it?"
"Exactly! Doctor Dillamond said I was being uncharitable, but the responses did nothing but corroborate the findings. Men have disastrously fragile egos." Elphaba pauses again, fists scrunching in her skirts, and then says, "But there's another aspect to it – it begs the question of whether Animals are more animal than human. It puts the difference on a scale and claims it's measurable, and critics didn't like that either. Critics from both sides."
Melena frowns pensively, for she hasn't shared a memorable interaction with an Animal in years. Not since her youth, when she was tutored by a crusty Rhinoceros with a singular distaste for her penmanship – and, of course, there was the midwife who turned her world upside down. She says, "And what do you think?"
"Me?" Elphaba looks surprised by the inquiry. "Well, I think…why do they have to be one of two options? Why can't they just be?" Her eyes are briefly drawn to the window, then she says, "I asked my father to read it. I thought it would strike a chord with him too."
Melena quirks an eyebrow. "And did he?"
"I don't think so." Elphaba drops her concentration from the window to the floor, her heel scuffing the panels. "He took it, but I'm sure he was just humouring me. Every time I try to make my case, he shuts me down. 'We'll speak later,' he says, and then nothing comes of it."
"What case?"
Elphaba shakes her head slightly, as if to imply that it is beyond the scope of what she is willing – or permitted – to share.
"He must be under tremendous stress," Melena says offhandedly, "but he seems to be faring well. These are trying times, after all."
Disdain rolls off of Elphaba in waves. "That's what everyone tells me," she says. "Has there been a period of history that wasn't trying?" Melena readies her lips to spout more platitudes, but Elphaba adds, "I didn't mean to snap at you – I just – well, any perspective would be appreciated."
Melena hears this and the words stick in her throat. She studies Elphaba and says, "He's hiding something from you."
"I thought so." Elphaba's eyes descend to the floor again. "I used to sit with him as he was working through his correspondences. I would draw or read or just mill around the study, but he'd always stop me and pull me into his lap and explain what he was doing. 'This is just for show,' he'd say, 'but show is everything.' Or: 'Remain cryptic and they won't know what to expect.' Sometimes he'd even have me sign my name below his." The spark of a smile; it doesn't catch. She looks up, puzzled and pained and – from where Melena is sitting – so very small. "I can't be the only one who thinks it absurd that a five year old could scrawl across the documents, but a nineteen year old is restricted from seeing the envelopes."
This time, Melena formulates her words before she relays them. She says, slowly, "Maybe it's not the content so much as the fact that he's keeping it from you. Maybe he's ashamed of the secret itself."
"Why would that be?"
"I can't say for certain, but the situation reminds me of something I was recently told – and that I am inclined to believe."
"Which is?"
"That men have disastrously fragile egos."
They have better luck with this match; the spark ignites. Elphaba's frown twitches upwards in recognition and then it is a smile. "The person who told you that must be very wise," she says.
"Well, she's not twenty-two, or pregnant, or me for that matter, so the odds are in her favour."
Elphaba stares.
The air tightens. Melena is pierced with shame. It was the wrong thing to say – too pathetic, too pitying, too personal – and it has left her open to a pang of loss, which she swiftly smothers in false laughter. She says, "That was a foolish thing to spring on you."
"No, it's just…you shouldn't feel that way." All at once, Elphaba straightens, shaking her surprise for solemnity. "I think you're—"
"Elphaba!"
At the sound of Nessa's call, Elphaba's eyes go wide and the embarrassment catches up and encloses her, for she flushes and clamps her mouth shut. She flips her book closed and scampers to the door, hesitating and then nodding awkwardly at Melena before launching herself from the room.
The two girls disappear into town all afternoon, only turning up for a brief meal before retreating to the terrace to take in the sunset. Nessa chatters about the dress she bought in town – it is perfect, just perfect, to wear to the Ozdust – and Melena feigns interest without letting on to her concerns about Elphaba, who pokes at her potatoes and gives no indication of their earlier conversation. This leaves Melena in a state of flustered apprehension, believing that she's failed somehow; squandered her chance. But when she turns in for the night, she finds the public library's edition of There's No Place Called Home by Reginalf Pantherin on her pillow.
It is a slog, far beyond Melena's understanding, at times reading like a different language, but she perseveres well into the early hours of the morning and finishes it in two days. On the third, she tracks Elphaba to the library and they discuss. She asks for clarification, Elphaba elucidates eagerly, and that evening Melena is met with another book on her pillow, and another within a few days of that, and another, and another.
When Elphaba and Nessa depart for Shiz, Frex and Melena see them to the station. Nessa blows kisses through the shining pane of the window and Elphaba raises an uncertain palm in farewell. She looks uncomfortable but grateful.
My girls, Melena thinks, surprising herself.
