All My Son
Every mother, given the opportunity, would claim her child is special. Mary is not exempt from that category, and therefore is inclined to believe whole-heartedly that her son is the epitome of greatness incarnated. Despite this, it still catches her by surprise when the boy, all of four years old, pets her five-month-along-but-not-showing-thank-you-very-much pregnant belly with tenderness and affection twinkling in his beautiful leaf green eyes, and whispers "Sammy" so lovingly it's almost like a purr.
Things only go downhill from there.
The attention that Dean, aforementioned greatness incarnated, bestows upon her expanding belly rivals her own, and her attention is constant since she's literally attached to the little miracle. She would pick him up from kindergarten and see how his eyes would immediately latch onto the bulge stretching her shirt over her abdomen, lighting up with joy as he would sigh out an adoring "Sammy" and reach up with a chubby hand to caress it, laughter like tinkling bells bubbling out of his smiling lips when the baby would kick back in reaction to his voice.
Four glorious months later find Mary screaming on top of her lungs as she pushes the little miracle head first into the world. Her first thought, and this she is not proud of, when they tell her that it's a girl, is how to tell Dean that the little brother he's been doting on for half a year, playing one-sided Twenty Questions and going by the baby's kicking with, purring lovingly at, that Dean's "Sammy", is more like a 'Samantha'.
Dean stops talking for a week, shuts himself in his room and for all the world looking like he's just lost the love of his life. Which is weird, because he's nearly four and a half and he shouldn't even be able to read and write, let alone fall in love. But it is what it is, and Dean is honest-to-god grieving, for the little brother that never was.
He comes out of his self-imposed exile quiet and reserved, determined in a way she has never seen him, an expression that has no place on a four-year-old face becoming a rather permanent feature in their lives, scowling glares and pouty lips and a constant, heavy air of loss. But the fire never leaves his eyes, the drive, the desperate need that consumes Dean in the years to come, and as his sister grows up and up and up, Dean just becomes more withdrawn, more determined, more fixated on something he never lets Mary see, never lets Mary help.
Dean is twelve when the call comes in, and at school where he can't answer it. Mary does, and she is surprised to hear the gentle, terrified voice of a child asking if he could talk to Dean, please, the politeness broken by a hitch at the end of her son's name. Mary tries to keep him on the line, ask for his name, his location, because she doesn't like how the boy sounds, doesn't like the trembling horror dripping from every syllable, and it brings her back to times she would rather not think of, or about, or anywhere near, tucked in and locked away in the very darkest corner of her subconscious. She doesn't get his name, or his location, just the sound of the disconnected call after she tells him Dean is at school.
And Mary can't, for the life of her, leave it alone. She wrenches out the painful memories and sifts through articles in every newspaper she can get her hands on, looking for tells, for clues, and finding absolutely nothing for her trouble.
It hurts to let it go, but Mary has to think about her children – about her daughter who sometimes comes crying to Mary after her older brother snaps at her viciously, saying that he wishes she had never been born, and about her son, who grows more agitated with each day passing, walking around with tense shoulders and a frown and prone to fits of rage that are never violent in anything but words. John tells her it's just teenage angst, that it's normal. Mary doesn't see how it's normal for a twelve-year-old to wake up in the middle of the night crying for a "Sammy" that doesn't exist only to fall asleep, exhausted, to his mother's soft embrace and comforting words and not remember a thing in the morning.
Yes, Mary knows about those. Is aware that her son, a decade later, still believes in a "Sammy" so fiercely that it's borderline religious, agonized by dreams and tortured by false hope and Mary knows, knows like only a mother could ever know, that this will break him. Like a twig. Because he's so close to breaking already, Mary can tell.
At sixteen, Dean has his first panic attack. Mary doesn't know if the nightmares count, because the sheer terror on Dean's face one sunny Tuesday morning at breakfast as the cup of coffee – "Let him have some, Mary, he's sixteen for god's sake" – he has in his hands shatters on the floor and Dean sinks to the ground, head between his knees and dirty blond hair, so much like Mary's, gripped tightly in his fingers, is a long way from the desperate sobs that wreck her boy at night.
John is on the floor in a second, asking Dean to look at him as the boy shakes and gasps for breath. Coffee soaks into their clothes but Dean is pretty much out of it and John doesn't seem to care. Mary fills a plastic cup with water while she instructs her daughter, who has just turned twelve, to go fetch a broom and try to sweep away the bits of broken china that are not in the immediate vicinity of Dean.
When Mary turns around to look at her husband and son, Dean is clutching at his chest and looking at John like he's the last lifeline on earth. Mary can't help but feel proud of both of them.
John proceeds to go through a simple set of motions, arms up, arms down, encouraging Dean to mimic them until he no longer looks like he's about to pass out. John then guides their child through a breathing exercise for about three minutes, and by the end of it Mary can honestly say she couldn't have done a better job at it. John is just amazing like that.
Dean drinks a few sips of water before he slumps, exhausted, into John's waiting arms. Mary gives her husband a nod of approval as he carries the 160lbs of muscle up the stairs. Mary sighs and picks up the broom her daughter had left leaning on a wall before she had retreated upstairs to 'do homework'. She cleans up the rest of the mess, mopping the floor to discourage any ant wishing to feast on the sticky coffee staining the tiles.
When Dean comes back downstairs in the early afternoon, looking a bit more rested than the rings-under-his-eyes that had stumbled into the kitchen that morning, two identical pairs of green eyes meet, and Mary knows that she has lost him.
She's not wrong.
On January 24th, 1997, she finds a note on the kitchen table. 'Gonna to find Sammy. Call you tonight – D'.
Dean never calls.