So. Bear is out. – But never mind that. It is time to redeem poor Lara. Having shredded her reputation for the last 12 chapters….well…see what we can do. It might actually be too little and too late.
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Oh hell - I'll just take her down - once and for all.
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Altruism
" What she asked of me at the end of the day, Caligula would have blushed."
- The Smiths; Heaven knows I'm Miserable Now -
Lunch is nearing and Malcolm and Harold will kick up a fuss if she is a minute late. Barbara drags her feet. Some intentional slacking has been known to occur. If nothing else - just to ruffle their fastidious, nit-picky feathers a bit. The finicky, stuck-up bastards.
She knows they mock her behind her back and they do nothing to hide their disdain in front of her. No amount of saliva in their soups will ever make up for that. She knows she is no Farrah Fawsett. - Still, the insults sting.
Her cooking is infamous.
And the Hydra men have honed the whining and moaning about the inedible mush she serves up to perfection. Turning it into a callous competition, a game of goading each other on with adjectives used in an ever-evolving cruelty. Only they are too arrogant and narcissistic to realize that it is a game to her too.
Barbara can cook.
If there is anything she knows it is food. And it would hardly be surprising if anyone took a second's worth of their time to get to know the barest elementary details about her life.
Lara did.
Having literally grown up at her father's acclaimed seafood restaurant. A cosy little neighbourhood resto, that her father, war-film affascinado, had christened "The Torpedo" and decorated with all sort of bric-a-brac, mostly second world-war submarine paraphernalia. Her whole childhood and her extremely awkward adolescence had been dedicated to Torpedo's exquisite ever-evolving menu. Her father, a formidable self taught genius in the culinary business, loved her to the extreme, as some would say (her mother most notably).
Barbara Brutch, princess of the sublime Torpedo kitchen had as much in common with the gaunt, lanky person sweating it out at the Hydra canteen as a barrel of lard with a little dainty vanilla èclair. Since birth, Barbara had been a hefty girl to put it kindly. Her considerable girth made manoeuvring the cramped quarters of her father's kitchen an impressive feat and the restaurant china in their pretty handmade cupboards would clatter as she clomped by. Her father, himself a man of substantial proportions and similar colourless appearance had been blind to this side of his daughter. For him, love was food. It was his only emotional outlet and his only way to express his endearing affection for his only daughter. And he did. - With devastating results.
This is how she grew up, ankles the width of 100 year old oak-trunks and ample hips, wide as the bus she rode home on. Disturbingly colourless and dull, a person no one looked twice at if not to taunt, to comment, to giggle at.
If the 'Torpedo' was a haven for Barbara, her home where her mother spent her time, was pure, unadulterated hell. The kitchen in their little semi-detached suburban home forever swarming with disapproving, thorny aunts and their lethally barbed tongues. And in spite of existing in this environment from birth, Barbara failed to develop any kind of armour against the vicious verbal assaults that would inevitably be slung at her. All she had was her father and the Torpedo.
Her father had kicked the bucket - abruptly - on Barbara's 21st birthday. Fried into a fizzle by a short-circuit caused by his own electrical fondue-pot. Barbara suddenly found herself alone and the sole owner of the Torpedo. And though she died a bit with this decision, she immediately sold it off to the highest bidder and left her home-town, never looking back.
After her father's passing, love was gone, and with that food. She ceased to eat. The pounds dropped and had this been a soap opera, she would have soon found herself gorgeously slim and surrounded by a haggle of suitors. In Barbara's case, this was not to be. In fact, she grew so gaunt, so emancipated that she effectively disappeared. She became invisible. Until Dharma. Until Lara.
Lara, the first person to have ever seen beyond the pale eyelashes, and her face the colour of a fish's underbelly. They had met in the kitchen, a shared interest for cooking brought them together.
She had shown her an interest that had made Barbara blush, unaccustomed to be visible as she was. And later, much later, that first kiss. Barbara's first kiss ever, innocently soft and warm and completely void of judgement. Just to be loved by any person was such an anomaly to Barbara that the fact that Lara was a woman did not even register. Only to Lara had Barbara managed to reveal the shameful legacy of her childhood that hung in loose flaps of skin on her stomach, her upper arms, everywhere on her scraggy body. And Lara had not laughed. She had cupped Barbara's cheeks in her hands and looked at her with such compassion, it shattered Barbara's spindly little heart. She had rubbed the tip of her nose against Barbara the Eskimo-way and had said in her old fashioned manner of speech:
" You are beautiful. Never shall you doubt it Barbara."
And after Mr. Chang found out and Barbara was shipped off to Hydra, these words, repeated softy in her mind with Lara's imagined voice, gave her a courage she had never before possessed.
Rebellion was born from this.
A covert mutiny carried out under the ingenuous cover of food. A silent uprising that became an art form to her, a true testament to her virtuosity as a chef. She became an connoisseur, a master at making the most atrocious effort look like an innocent mistake, a simple inability to cook. She would habitually scrutinize recipes trying to find the precise angle and potential for failure. Exactly what would make this dish just revolting enough? Perhaps a hint of vinegar? Too much salt? No salt? A hint of fish stock in the fruit pudding? Barbara's creativity knows no limits.
Barbara glances swiftly out through the kitchen window just as she adds the finishing touches to her kidney pie. She almost drops the strip of pie dough in her hand.
Lara.
And it takes more than a moment of pause to digest that it isn't a figment of her imagination. It really is Lara, walking determinedly towards the building, carrying her little baby boy and a suitcase. Barbara lets go of the dough strip and wiping her floury hands on her apron she runs out to greet her. Imagine that. Lara here. Her happiness, dizzying. They embrace each other. Barbara giving both Lara and her baby a big stiff hug between her sticklike upper limbs.
" Lara. Lara. What are you doing here?" She can hardly speak. Lara. Beautiful Lara, kinder than an angel. Here on Hydra.
" Your boy," she breathes." I knew he'd be gorgeous Lara." And he is. His eyes shut, sleeping in spite of the commotion around him. Perhaps three or four months old. Funny little round face, apple-cheeked and with quizzical arched eyebrows.
" Barbara. I don't know. What to do." Her speech pattern cut up by breathlessness. Barbara notices the deep circles engraved under her tired eyes. "Pierre has lost his mind! He told me to get off the island."
" What are you talking about?"
" Came by, all bleary eyed and wild, shouting at me that I have to take Miles and get away. I will leave with the submarine tomorrow. I think he knows, he found out there is someone else." Her normally calm and level-headed Lara. She looks fraught and distressed up close. Barbara gestures to Lara to take a seat on the cement steps outside the building. She reaches to take the luggage off her depositing it down by their feet. Lara quietly shifts the baby in her arms as they settle down next to each other.
" So does he know? Did you finally tell Phil yet?" She nods towards the infant with the freakishly grown-up eyebrows that renders him a slightly arrogant and annoyed appearance. Wildly unsuitable for a baby. The baby stirs, perhaps feeling the burning of her judgemental eyes on him. He turns his face towards his mother's chest, rooting sluggishly in his sleep.
Lara combs the long nervous fingers of her free hand through her shoulder length black hair and looks distractedly away across the yard.
" No. Oh no. Phil isn't fit to be a father. An idiot can see that. All pent up rage and that constant hostility he carries around like a souvenir. No, I'll never tell him."
"But what about Pierre? Doesn't he suspect? I mean, clearly he has something of Phil in him. Look at those eyebrows Lara!" Barbara can't help feeling frustrated with Lara. It isn't right.
" Yes, but look Barbara, just look at him. You can hardly see any European features right? Looks pretty Chinese right?! Doesn't he?" She points pleased as cake to the baby's nose.
Her eager eyes on Barbara - waiting for her agreement, her approval.
Barbara sighs. She can but agree. Lara is one of those people that will always land on her feet, regardless of what altitude you chuck her down from. She always has a fool's luck.
" Pierre never suspected anything," she continues smugly, like she has pulled off some clever trick. " I think he was just so relieved about the baby, the convention of it… He'd have accepted a kitten, had I brought it home and presented it as ours. Beside, Phil is Uzbeki or something of the sort and that's almost Asian, isn't it?"
She smiles at little Miles, who is opening and closing his chubby little fists just below her chin.
" Good thing you didn't," Barbara mutters and almost wishes little Miles would punch his mother instead. She loves Lara like no one else but she doesn't approve of this, of passing a kid on as someone else's. Poor Phil. He is a miserable son of a bitch but he doesn't deserve this. Not in Barbara's honest opinion.
" As Chinese as a bowl of dumplings," she twitters on and Barbara can just nod in agreement and feel sorry for the poor little sod.
" Yes Lara, he looks a lot like you."
" So, this is really goodbye for us," Lara's lashes flutter slightly as she speaks. "I'll be getting on that sub tomorrow but. But he…He….I can't leave without him…." Lara's voice trails off.
Him? Barbara's mind is blank. Miles in her arms so who is she talking about?
" Hugo, Hugo Reyes. Juliet told me I might find him here. Is he here Barbara? Tell me he is here!" Lara grasps Barbara's arms so hard it almost hurts.
Oh. Oh, the fat guy. Him? So this guy Pierre think she is having a fling with – he does exist. It has been a long time since she felt like thatfor Lara but she still worries about her and her inability to control her impulses. But fat guy? Really?….And then, she thinks: why not? Lara has a tendency not to judge the book by its cover. So yes, why not Hugo? Actually it makes perfect sense. Barbara has to smile.
" Still saving lost souls then Lara?" she says and clutches her hand in her own. " So this new guy, he seems like a good guy. I am actually a little relieved that it wasn't one of the other two misfits that LaFleur packed on us. Though that angry Asian guy might actually be right up your alley – a pity project if I've ever seen one. You always did have a weakness for the hopeless ones didn't you?"
" What?…" momentarily distracted, Lara's head spins her head around to look, for him , one might assume. Then her attention returns to Barbara and she dispatches her sparkling beautiful smile back at her." Oh, yes, one might say that I guess."
" So is it serious?"
" Yes. Yes, definitely. Barb, I think this is it. Hugo is a beautiful person"
" Well then Lara, I think you'll find your prince charming behind there, scrubbing out the bear cages." She says lightly, and though it hurts, to give Lara away to someone else she knows she will be alright.
Just as the two of them gets up from their spots on the steps, all hell breaks loose from across the yard. Screaming and hysterical yelling, rising from beyond the main barrack.
The fat guy rounds the corner, his big heavy feet drumming the ground like a bulldozer. He heaves with the strain of it, sweat soaking through the armpits and the chest of his overalls. His corkscrews flapping up and down like the wings on an extraordinarily weird bird.
" Bear's out!!! The bear's made off!!!"
He stops. Mouth round and babyish set in a little open circle.
" Lara?!"
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So is it just me gone totally bananas – or is there some subtle similarities between Phil and Miles – the gloriousness of their innate crabbiness?
No? No? Really no ?
Ha, nope, didn't think so. But still - this is my story – and I have just made Phil a daddy.