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Chapter Twenty-Four
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"The baseboard was cracked, pulled away from the wall by about a tenth of a inch - "
Dave's phone rang. Seeing who it was, he said, "Excuse me a moment," and stepped out into the hallway. In the background, he heard the Atlanta agent continue telling the story to Blake.
"Spencer, how are you?" Dave asked.
"Dave…"
There was something wrong - the hesitation told him that - but he thought he knew what it was. "Look, I'm sorry I had to leave so abruptly. I want to talk to you about - "
"No, Dave, listen! That's not important right now."
"Of course it's important. We really need to talk about the show. I'm busy right now, but I absolutely promise I'll call you tonight and we'll - "
"Dave," Spencer said, interrupting again. "Your friend, Sergeant Scott…his son Thomas just called. Dave, I'm sorry, but Harrison Scott passed away this morning."
It was funny, but all the sound in the world seemed to stop just then. Blake and Agent - what was his name? Bridewell? Brydon? - talking, the forensic crew in the kitchen, the traffic outside, it all seemed to compress and fade out without him being aware of it.
He heard Spencer anxiously asking, "Dave, are you still there?" from the other end of the line.
"Yeah, yeah, Kid. I'm still here."
"I'm so sorry, Dave. I know he meant a lot to you."
Saddened though he was, Dave couldn't help but smile a little. "Thank you, Spencer. That helps. It really does."
The next few days were rough on Rossi; he'd only seen Harrison Scott twice in the last forty-five years, but the bond that comes from facing death together is not one to easily be set aside, and though he hated leaving the team in the lurch when they were already a man short, the idea of not flying out to Santa Monica to pay his last respects to his old friend was something he couldn't face. His heart swelled with gratitude when the team told him they understood and wished him well, but what really surprised and touched him was when he saw Spencer waiting for him at his stop-over in St. Louis.
"What are you doing here?"
Spencer looked away, a bit shyly. "I thought you could use the company, so I had Garcia find me a connecting flight."
"You're a hell of a kid, do you know that?"
Spencer looked stunned. "Am I?"
"Yeah, you are. You goddamned bet you are!"
As it turned out, not only did Spencer stay by his side as he bid his old friend farewell, he broke his self-imposed vow to make a clean break from the team and acted as a consultant so that Dave could focus on assisting the Scott family without guilt.
"I know what that cost you, Kid," Dave said when he found out.
"What are you talking about?"
"Hey, I know. I left the team once too, remember. Making a clean break is just about the only way to survive it."
Spencer shrugged. "One time won't kill me. It was important."
Dave walked over to where Spencer was sitting on the bed in the hotel room. Placing a hand on either side of Spencer's face, he kissed his son on the top of his head. He got the idea Spencer still found that odd, but at least the kid was no longer flinching or pulling away. "It was," Dave agreed. "And I am very thankful to you for doing it."
"Don't mention it," Spencer mumbled.
Dave examined him. "Ah, see now, if you'd chosen to look more like me, that blush wouldn't show up so much," he teased.
"You can't choose your DNA!"
"So you say," Rossi argued sceptically.
It went back and forth like that for a little bit and Dave was happy that he'd successfully managed to lighten the mood a little, but deep inside was a growing sense of just how badly the years apart had scarred his son's sense of self-worth. It wasn't that Spencer wasn't well-adjusted in his own way (Really, Dave thought, all things considered, the Kid is almost heroically stable), but occasionally there was a meekness, a willingness to put himself last, that Rossi believed couldn't all be put down to natural personality. For roughly six months now, Dave had found himself constantly dwelling on what he had been robbed of, but more and more he was beginning to see that it was nothing to what Spencer had had taken from him.
Still, coming home on another flight three days later, Rossi thought about what Thomas Scott had said to him after the older Scott's funeral.
"Do you think it would be hurting this much now if I hadn't made up with him?" Thomas had asked.
"I don't know," Dave had told him honestly. "There would have been the regret of leaving things unresolved, perhaps."
"Versus the grief and feeling every damn one of those lost years all the more because I grew to love him again?"
Dave didn't know what to say.
"Yeah, me neither," Thomas said in response to Rossi's unspoken statement. But then he placed a hand on Dave's shoulder. "But I'm still grateful you talked me into giving the old man another shot," Thomas said quietly. "We might have lost years, but we didn't lose these last eight months. That's not perfect, maybe, but it's something."
Dave looked at the man fast asleep in the seat beside him - crammed in tightly, bad leg, crutches and all. The pain of missing all those years with his son was a thing that would never go away, but at least they had their time right now, and that was something.
-x-
Two days after they returned from California, Dave found Spencer doing laps in the pool. When the younger man spotted him there he swam over and grabbed hold of the edge.
"It's funny, but I never pictured you as much of a swimmer," Dave told him.
Spencer shrugged. "I'm not. I don't like the beach and public pools are even worse with all the noise and the chaos of small children running everywhere. But Ms. Apaza says it will help."
Dave nodded. "All right, but don't overdo it. You look tired."
Spencer shrugged again and Dave couldn't help but think that something was bothering the younger man. "Nonna's been hiding my language books again," Spencer finally said. Anyone who didn't know Reid, or the situation, might have considered his statement a complete non sequitur, but Dave quickly figured out it was code for, 'I'm used to living alone and all this family togetherness is wearing me out, but I can't that because it's rude.'
"I'll talk to her." Seeing his son at loose ends now that Spencer wasn't working, Dave had bought Spencer several learning packages featuring different Asian languages. The plan had been to not only give Spencer something constructive to work on, but also to let the kid know he was willing to encourage and support him in his own wishes for the future. "Making yourself as an attractive employee as possible can only be a plus in helping to convince the Foundation to take you," he'd explained at the time, but of course, he hadn't counted on his mother. Appalled at the idea of her grandson planning on moving to a separate continent only months after they'd got him back, Elisabetta Rossi had not-so-subtly trying to throw obstacles in Spencer's way at every turn.
"Try the freezer," Spencer suggested.
"No, she knows you know that spot. They're probably in the flour bin this time. Anyway, I need to talk to you about something."
Spencer caught the change in tone and looked up warily.
"You know my publisher is pushing for us to do more interviews because my book is coming out next month."
"Yeah."
"They want us to do another long interview."
"Oh."
"But I'll say no if you don't want to."
"Aren't you obligated to by the terms of your contract?"
Dave shrugged this time. "I can work it out."
Spencer thought about it for several minutes. "Which program?"
"That's the one bright spot: it's CBS Sunday Morning. I mean, it's still a news program and they're probably going to ask intrusive questions, but I've seen the show and it's a pretty classy affair as far as these things go."
Reid nodded; he'd seen the show a time or two as well. "I guess it wouldn't be any worse than the last one."
"It's got a much bigger audience," Dave warned.
"It's okay. I'll do it."
"You sure? I'm only asking because you look like you're about to be sick."
"I'm sure. If you can sign an affidavit for me, I can do this for you."
"This isn't tit-for-tat, Kid," Dave said, a little disappointed. "I don't want you doing this because you feel like you're in debt to me for something."
"That's not it. I'm doing it for the same reason you did that." Because it's something you need and I want to help, was the thought that wasn't said, but Dave caught it anyway.
He smiled again. "Thank you, Spencer. Now come on, out you get. Nonna's put lunch on."
-x-
It was a revelation.
They were both interviewed separately while outdoors (Dave - along with Mudgie - near his cabin and Spencer on the streets of D.C,) a common trait of the show, and together in Dave's living room. The questions were difficult, but the whole thing was tastefully done. However, Dave didn't see Spencer's part until the broadcast aired.
Spencer was in his room; he had no urge to watch the show, so Dave watched on his own as the host, Charles Osgood, introduced the segment and then turned it over to correspondent Martha Teichner.* For the next seventeen minutes - an eternity - David Rossi listened avidly, and with some shock, as his son revealed things that even seven years of knowing each other had not disclosed to him.
Flashes stayed with him:
Martha: You had no idea you were adopted?
Spencer: No, none.
Martha: Why do you think your adoptive parents never revealed that to you?
Spencer: To be honest, I can only speculate. Perhaps it was the unusual nature of the adoption or some unconscious feeling that something was wrong making them more nervous to have it in the open. Or perhaps they were simply waiting until I was older, but then circumstances got in the way. I was only ten when my Dad left and my mother's illness grew worse. After that, well, who was there to tell me?
Ms. Teichner's voiceover explained Diana's diagnosis and some of the problems faced by the young Spencer, as pictures of mother and son were shown onscreen.
Martha: How did your mother's illness affect you?
Spencer: It shaped my entire life.
Martha: How so?
Spencer: It's hard to know where to begin. In a practical sense, it tied me to home. It isolated me. I couldn't have people come over. It was difficult to join outside activities because she became dependent on me being home at a certain time, or because she wasn't able to give me rides to places or volunteer to help out like other children's mothers.
And it shaped my behaviour. Small things mostly. For instance, many people have assumed I have OCD because I like things to be in certain places, but really, it's simply an ingrained habit from dealing with my mother. If things were out of place, she'd react badly, thinking someone had been in our house during the night or while we were out. But there was also guilt and fear, and a great need to always placate her in order to keep her calm. My friends sometimes tease me because I never really rebelled as a teenager, thinking me too meek and mild for my own good, but honestly, I just didn't have that luxury. If I agitated Mom, things could get bad for her. She might hurt herself, and certainly it would be a rough time for her. And, well, she didn't always know who I was. How do you rebel against that? If I broke curfew, it was only a 50/50 shot as to whether she'd even be in a state to notice I was gone.
Dealing with her also skewed my perception of normal emotional responses. My mother's reactions could be…extreme. After years of coping with that, reading calmer, healthier people is not always easy. Their emotional responses are often much quieter and more subtle than I'm used to.
Martha: Was your mother ever violent?
Spencer: No, not really. There was one time when, in her panic, she knocked over a pot boiling on the stove and it scalded me, but luckily the water hadn't gotten too hot yet and the burns were minor. But mostly she would either rave about something or she would retreat into herself. However, those were only during the really bad episodes. Her symptoms mainly consisted of mild delusions, the occasional hallucination, a certain amount of social withdrawal and disorganized thinking. Schizophrenia also affects long-term memory, so it's possible she never told me I was adopted simply because she herself no longer remembered. When I last visited her, she confused my birth with that of her first child, Christopher.
You mean she confused you with Christopher, Rossi realized.
Martha: That most have been very frightening for you, a small boy.
Spencer: Yes. She's so intelligent, and so incredibly strong; to see her deteriorate, to lose the battle so completely sometimes… It was hard to feel any kind of hope at all. She'd been a professor of Literature, and then suddenly she didn't even have the motivation to get out of bed in the morning. When she spoke, her words were so confusing. A "word salad" they call it. A word salad from a woman who'd built her career on being phenomenally eloquent and erudite. And if she couldn't fight it, who could?
Martha: Is it hard now, knowing that that was not the life you should have had?
Spencer: Yes.
Dave watched as the pair made a circuit around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and Ms. Teichner's voiceover could once again be heard, moving the conversation on to Carolyn.
Martha: You never had a chance to meet your biological mother.
Spencer: No. She died of ALS in November of 2011. Well, technically she committed suicide, but that was because she didn't want go through the deterioration the disease causes.
Martha: How do you feel about what she did?
Spencer: I feel a lot of things. Cheated, resentful, heartbroken, unsatisfied. But I also lived with a dire diagnosis of my own for a long time. In my case, I never actually developed schizophrenia, nor is it fatal, but I feel like I can understand some of the despair my biological mother must have been feeling at the time. Even if she hadn't ended her life though, it's unlikely she would have survived long enough for us to meet, so I try to tell myself that, in the end, the 'how' doesn't matter so much.
Martha (gently): Unlikely, but not impossible.
Spencer: It's hard to say. But what kind of physical suffering would she have gone through in the meantime? At least she was spared that.
Oh, Kid! Dave thought.
The segment moved on to Spencer and himself. This part was lighter, fluffier. Martha Teichner asked him how it felt to find out his son was a genius.
Dave: Well, I found out about the genius part roughly seven years ago. But yes, it's been a bit overwhelming to connect something like that to a child of mine. Not that his mother and I were morons, mind you. Carolyn was a French teacher and I like to think I'm fairly sharp, but this was a bit out of the blue.
Martha: Spencer speaks quite a few languages - Russian and Korean among them. What about Italian?
Dave: No, but my mother started teaching him last week. I give it to about four o'clock tomorrow afternoon before he knows more than I do.
There was some laughter at that, then the voiceover once again filling in the details and explaining just how high Spencer's I.Q. was.
Martha (to Spencer): You don't seem to like to talk about it.
Spencer (doesn't quite meet her eye): It hasn't always been a gift. Quite often when people bring it up, they're using it to emphasize that I'm different somehow. Alien. It's ironic at times; over the years I've taken a lot of grief for "missing social cues", but very few people stop to see the insensitive nature of the things they say to me. It's as if, because I have a high I.Q., they don't think that I have emotions. That I'm a robot, or Mr. Spock, or at least that I'm trying to be. That's not true at all.
There was a bit more, but Dave stopped listening as he found himself pondering the things Spencer had said. How many of Spencer's traits had he put down to the stereotype of "the awkward genius" instead of considering any other explanations, all because he was too busy profiling to simply ask?
Well, damnit, that was going to change! he vowed.
-x-
The sight of his son simply staring out the window stopped Dave at the bedroom door.
"Spencer?"
"Is it over?"
"Yeah. Can I come in?"
"Of course."
Dave came and sat down on the bed next to Spencer. "Are you all right?"
"I didn't talk about any of the good things."
"About Diana?"
Spencer nodded. "I…I made her sound so awful."
"What you went through was awful."
"Not all of the time. There were a lot of good memories too. It's just that they're not as memorable because they're so ordinary."
"Tell me."
"There were times when she made me feel safer than anyone else ever has. She was always proud of me. When I was young, before her illness got really bad, so could be silly and funny and she'd crack a joke that would get my father and I laughing like you wouldn't believe. She was fearless; always standing up for me and everyone she loved, or even just for what she thought was right.
"And she understood me. Always. I didn't even have to tell her the problem most of the time - she would just know."
"She's your mother. They've all got a sixth sense that way."
"Yes. And now she doesn't want to see me anymore."
"You don't know that!"
"I do. She told me so the last time I saw her. She thinks the 'government' has gotten to me. And, after today, I don't blame her anymore."
One croaky sob, and suddenly the tears were there. Dave pulled Spencer to him and held him while he cried.
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* I'm not sure if Ms. Teichner is still on the show, but she's just who I had in my head when I pictured the scene.
Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me! Hope you're still enjoying it!
