A/N: So I've just gone back and added a nice little coda to this chapter to juice it up a bit...sorry this has been so long in the making, folks. But this chapter was really written just to set up the next one, which personally I'm pretty excited about. So get pumped.
"How are you with directions, Link?" Zelda asked as they pulled out of the restaurant's parking lot.
"Oh, not bad," he replied. "I can usually find my way without getting lost, if I've been shown at least once."
"Excellent. You'll notice now that we're on Winter Road? Just down this way to the left is the Stop & Shop, the Duane Reade, and also a nice little coffee shop. Follow?"
"Yeah, and you go through Monroe Square to get onto Winter, right?"
"Very good," Zelda remarked. "Now if you keep going down here, there's this intersection. Gorcey is a dead end, but you see that big building down there? That's the elementary school Megan goes to. And Halop here leads to the highway." She turned the car right, onto, "Meryl Street."
"Meryl Street?" Link repeated, thinking he might have misheard.
"It's California, Link," Zelda answered swiftly, barely suppressing a smirk. "I'm waiting for a J. Lo Lane to spring up somewhere…anyway, on Meryl is the nearest mall, where Megan would probably like spending a few days before school starts."
"What's that next to it? Presbyterian church?" Link asked.
"No, Catholic," Zelda said, as the front of the building came into view. "St. John and Paul's; kind of a funny place to put a church, right by a mall, but….anyway, you know what street your parents live on?"
"Diamond. Hey, there it is," Link said, looking surprised. "Wow, that was trippy."
"That's one word for it," Zelda said. She turned onto Diamond. "And then the adjacent drive would be, of course, mine, which is Waverly."
"Huh," Link snorted. "I'm impressed. It's a concise little area, considering…"
"Yes, it's pretty easy to, uh…learn," Zelda said awkwardly. A few moments later, they were in the driveway. Link noticed his boss' eyes flick up to a room on the second floor, where the lights were on. Getting out of the car, she muttered, "Why can't I ever trust Malon to do a thing…"
She pulled something off her key ring and tossed it to Link. "For the front door. If you lose it, there's another one under the dog house."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, slipping the key onto his own chain.
The humor of the latter part of the evening seemed to have disappeared. Zelda was no longer smiling, and there was no indication of her earlier amusement. Entering her domain, Zelda said needlessly, "Follow me." She led him into the kitchen, then opened a door on the far end of the room Link hadn't noticed before. Turning on the light, Zelda started down a staircase and Link followed, wondering how women could maneuver stairs in shoes so high-heeled.
"Welcome to basement one, or as I like to call it, the hard labor room," Zelda said unceremoniously. "Washing machine, drying machine, ironing board, furnace. I'd tell you how to work the machines, but there's really no need: my last nanny was a complete idiot, and had to keep asking me how to use them, so I finally just typed out instructions and taped them onto the lids. Now if you go through this door—" she opened said door by the furnace—"we have basement two."
Link raised his eyebrows. He'd already thought "the hard labor room" was spacious enough, but the second part of the basement put it to shame. There was a large-screen TV on one side, next to the biggest set of music speakers he had ever seen. Facing these was a plushy looking couch with plain black pillows. On the other side of the room was an exercise bike, a treadmill, and a lateral-row machine. Right nearby was a prodigious A/C.
"The entertainment and exercise room," Zelda sighed. "Please feel free to use anything in here." She led him towards a cabinet by the TV. "This bottom shelf here has all of the movies I'd let Megan watch. A bit of Disney, Dreamworks, the Rugrats, a few oldies…then the rest is just crap I've accumulated over the years—once again, at your leisure, watch any of them, but…I have a very strict policy concerning movies and my daughter that I'd like you to be aware of."
"Uh, okay, shoot," Link said amiably, mostly because he felt it had been too long since he'd spoken.
"Firstly, I do not allow movies on school nights," Zelda started. "The thought of watching something usually tends to distract her from her homework. Now secondly…do not let her watch anything above this second shelf. I didn't think it was too much to ask, but my first nanny lost her job because she let a six year old watch Marathon Man."
"Are you kidding?" Link blurted.
"Not kidding," Zelda wearily assured him.
"Must be hard taking her to the dentist."
"You have no idea" Zelda mumbled, her shoulders drooping. "It's taken me over a year to convince her that her dentist is not a Nazi. She doesn't even know what a Nazi is! I—ah. Just nothing too violent, bad language, sex, etc…basically, no PG-13s or R's. Or, while I'm at it, nothing PG from the '80s."
"Right," Link said with a wry smile. A tape on the second shelf caught his eye. "Wait a minute…you'd let her watch Deep Throat?"
Closing the cabinet, Zelda said with a slightly disgusted air, "A documentary on Nixon and Watergate." Walking away from the TV, she headed back for the stairs. "Well, that's principally it; the rest of the house just has your normal appliances in the normal rooms. Any questions?"
"No, no, I'm good," Link said. He shut the door to the basement(s) behind them. "Thanks for the evening, Ms. Cleverly, it was…very helpful."
She was walking up the main staircase with him instead of going to her own room. He had a feeling she was going up to check on her daughter, whose light had been on when they'd arrived home. Link's room was first in the hallway, and when he opened the door to go in, Zelda automatically stopped. For a brief moment Link's heart was hammering against his chest, but then he remembered Zelda had not yet seen his newly painted walls.
"Forest green, then?" she asked.
"Er, yes," Link replied cautiously, not sure if she was about to yell a negative opinion at him or if she'd just been making an observation.
"It looks much better this way," she stated submissively. "To be honest, I never really was one for pink."
Which doesn't surprise me, Link thought to himself before saying out loud, "I'm glad you like it."
"Yes…" With a sigh, Zelda pulled her head out of the room and let him go in. "Thank you for humoring me this evening. You seem to be perfect for this job as Megan's 'bodyguard.' Speaking of whom, I'm going to go play mother and find out why her light is still on. Good-night, Link."
"Night." He hesitated in the doorway as she walked down the hall, teetering on the edge of saying one more thing. "Ms. Cleverly," he blurted out.
She turned and raised her eyebrows. "Yes?"
He put his hand on the knob of his door to steady himself. "You have a beautiful smile." With a shy grin, he closed the door.
Zelda stood frozen in the hall. She felt shock flowing through her body and slowly she turned around. Feeling oddly numb, Zelda made her way down the hall. Link's words rang in her head; she shook it lightly before pushing open Megan's door.
Not too surprisingly, Megan was actually asleep in her bed. Malon was sitting in the rocking chair nearby, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration at the book in her hand.
"That might be slightly above your reading level," Zelda remarked, breaking the silence. Malon looked up. Her blond friend stepped into the room with a smirk. "Try not to slip up on the big words."
"Oh, ha," Malon said, closing Good-Night Moon. "I was just trying to dig into the…psychological…subtext …meanings of children's books."
"Yeah, of course you were," Zelda snorted. Folding her arms, she crossed over to the bed and nodded towards Megan's sleeping figure. "How long has she been out?"
"Oh, about 8:00," Malon answered, getting out of the rocker as quietly as she could. "Little thing wanted to stay up 'til you got home. So I played along and just read to her until she dropped off."
"Was Good-Night Moon one of the things she asked you to read her?" Zelda asked, in a tone that indicated this book was too juvenile for a seven-year-old.
"Actually, no, relax," Malon said, smiling at Zelda's subtle indignation. "I was a bit impressed, she went for the old classics—Beezus and Ramona."
"Oh, yes, she's going through that Beverly Cleary phase most girls go do," Zelda said, flipping through the pages of Henry and Ribsy. "Funny thing is, she hates stuff like 'Ralph the Skating Mouse' or Mitch and Amy. She'll only read the ones about Beezus, and Henry, and Ramona, and Ribsy." She paused. "Just like I used to."
"How'd you know that about her?" Malon asked quietly.
"My daughter is not a complete stranger to me, in spite of how it may seem," Zelda hissed defensively.
"Wow, cool your heels, sparky," Malon said, putting her hands up. "I'm…sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."
"No, I'm sorry," Zelda sighed, almost cutting Malon off. "I'm just in a…hey, let's go downstairs; I don't want to wake her up." She continued after shutting Megan's door. "Tonight I'm just in a very unusual mood."
"Why? How do you mean?"
"I'm not sure. It's like I said earlier when you called me…I'm use to interviewing people and feeling prepared, confident, ready…but he really threw me for a loop."
"Caught you off guard, you mean?" Malon prompted her.
"Exactly. It just felt very improvised, impromptu, random. I'm used to uptight people who memorize all the answers and have no color at all."
"Maybe that's why Megan likes Link so much," Malon reasoned. "He's actually interesting, as opposed to the boring dunderheads you usually hire."
"Dunderheads. That's a good one." Emitting another loud sigh, Zelda collapsed onto the sofa. Rubbing her eyes, she added, "Din, I'm tired. I tried really hard to be courteous to him, and it's tough."
"Zel, you've always been courteous," Malon said sounding exasperated as she plunked down next to her. She put an arm around her shoulder. "Really. For all you cut yourself up, I'd have expected you to have turned into some evil Prada-wearing devil, but you really haven't changed all that much. You're still that girl." She shoved her (now famous) open album onto Zelda's lap.
The blonde looked down at the book against her will. This particular page had a picture on it in which she and Emily were pretending to fight over a basketball. They looked falsely angry in one photo, but in the next one they were laughing hysterically.
"I'm used to correcting your mistakes, Malon, and I feel obligated to do so now," Zelda said, shutting the book and giving it back to her. "You're wrong. I'm not the same, I'm not a kid anymore. People change. I don't really like the fact that I've had to, but I accept it. You said I haven't changed 'that much,' and maybe for the most part I haven't." She got to her feet. "I'm still head-strong, still easily stirred into a temper, still independent, still….female…"
"But you don't seem to have a sense of humor anymore," the red-head concluded, also getting up.
"You know, Malon, I did think that was the case, and I did rather think I was a lost cause," agreed Zelda, heading for her room, "but we were both mistaken. I do smile, and I do laugh, just not very often."
"Wh—did he make you laugh?" Malon gasped. "Oh, that's so cute, what did he do? Tell a dirty joke, pull a Ninotchka? Spill!"
"It's no big deal."
"Hey, no, you don't go disappear behind your little door without giving me the low-down, Zelda!"
"I'll say this, Mal: it concerned reminiscing about Viv, McLise, one rainy day, and a staircase. Good night." Shutting the door behind her, Zelda heard Malon's laughter of dawning comprehension.
Climbing the steps to her room, Zelda's mind was uncharacteristically blank. She seemed to be merely concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and nothing else. Upon entering her secluded bedroom, she issued a faint sigh. Zelda walked towards her closet, and as she began to undress herself, the wheels in her brain finally started turning again. Link's words about her smile came to her.
Without being vain, she knew she was far from ugly. Mostly Zelda attributed this to the fact that her mother (a beautiful person herself) would rather have died than marry someone anybody might find the slightest bit unattractive. She had never directly told Zelda this, but it hadn't been all that hard to figure out. Consequently, Zelda knew that she herself was undeniably good-looking, but presently acknowledged that she hadn't been told so to her face (by a sober person, anyway) since high school…until tonight.
Why was that one simple thing Link said having such a weird effect on her? You have a beautiful smile. Zelda looked into her dresser mirror and attempted a smile. No—the fake hat trick wasn't working.
She contemplated just going to bed, and then remembered something Vivien had once said her husband had told her: putting a mirror across from one's bed (like Zelda had) was bad feng shui. Recalling how ludicrous she'd found the statement upon first hearing it, an unwilling smile crept onto her features. Quickly she turned to the mirror again, then burst out laughing because she felt so ridiculous for wanting to look.
Zelda fell backwards onto her bed, trying desperately to suppress the sounds of mirth coming out of her mouth. Finally getting a grip on herself, she sat back up and took her hair out of it's achingly strong tie. A ripple of pain flowed from root to tip and only then did she feel as close to relaxed as she could ever get. The shot of pain worked like a jolt of a reminder to never forget…what right did she have to be happy? Goddesses, it had been so long since she'd last laughed. She had forgotten what it sounded like.
Zelda opened her top desk drawer. Moving aside an old photograph and a rosary, she picked up a hand mirror that was slightly larger than average. Turning her back on the desk mirror, Zelda held the hand one out in front of her—due to the fact she was wearing only a slip and undergarments, the scar running between her shoulder blades was still resolutely visible, still hard to look at. It brought up grisly memories most people would generally want to forget, but for Zelda, scars of both the physical and emotional kind were what kept her going through her pathetic excuse for alife. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Putting the mirror back in it's place, she felt too tired and too hot to put on any manner of a nightgown. Pulling the stranger's jacket out from under the bed (where it had fallen the previous night), Zelda reached up to shut off the light and attempt sleep.
&-
Several weeks flowed endlessly together, and it wasn't until three months later that Malon had announced it was high time she get out of the Cleverly family's hair and head on home. She had tried her best to hold on to a steady job in California, but couldn't find anything that maintained her interest long enough. For the most part she felt as if she had been mooching off of her pal, and so it was with a resolved conscience that the redhead declared her intention to move out.
"But Malon, you can't leave now!" Megan whimpered, morphing immediately into her I'm-a-cute-little-girl-and-you-can't-say-no-to-me act. "Can't you at least stay for Thanksgiving with us?"
"Ah, there's the thing!" Malon chuckled, poking Megan on the nose before settling herself into a kitchen chair. "Hasn't your mother told you about our Thanksgiving plans yet?"
"Apparently not," Link laughed at seeing Megan's nonplussed expression. The phone rang then, and he leaned back in his own chair to pick it up. "Speak of the devil, it's your mother," he said upon seeing the number.
"My mom's not the devil!" Megan said, sounding offended, just after Link had put it on speaker phone.
"Thank you very much, honey," came Zelda's voice through the speaker, causing Link and Malon to laugh.
"Oh, mom, hi!"
"Hey, big Z!"
"Ms. Cleverly."
"Ah, you have me on speaker phone. That's probably just as well. Anyway, the reason I'm calling is that I have a five minute break between appointments and so I thought I'd pass along a message that I'm sure Malon was probably about to divulge anyway. As I'm sure you're aware, Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and you know what that means, Megan—Aunt Vivien and Uncle Henry's annual attempt to get us to come up for their Thanksgiving party."
"Are we going this year??" Megan guessed, sounding thrilled at the very idea.
"You'll be glad to know that your boring old mother finally agreed to do just that," Zelda sighed, trying to sound as if her defeat had been a happy one but (at least to Link and Malon's trained ears) not faring so well. "Anyway, when Aunt Vivien heard that Malon has been free-loading—I mean staying with us, sorry, Mal—"
"You're a scream, Zelda," Malon laughed, rolling her eyes.
"She invited her to come along with us. And of course that goes for Link as well, although if you want to stay with your parents I completely understand. But Vivien did express an interest in meeting you."
"Actually, I don't have any Thanksgiving plans this year," Link said, surprised that he was invited. He wondered if Zelda had just been trying to be polite and thought that he would have to decline, but quickly discarded this idea as he got more intrigued by the idea of spending a holiday with her. "My parents are headed up to spend it with my dad's parents, neither of whom will speak to me, so I…don't really have a place to go."
"You have to come with us, then!" Megan insisted. "Right, mom? He can come to Aunt Vivien's, right?"
"Of course, that would be fine," Zelda said, and this time her tone was harder to read. "I just hope you won't be bored, or scared. All of my siblings are likely to be there and it may get… intense."
"Oh my gosh, I'm so excited!" Malon squealed. "It's been so long since we had a Cleverly family reunion, Zel! I mean, I haven't seen your brothers and sisters in years! This'll be great! I am pumped beyond belief! I can just barely hold it in! I mean really, this is going to be SO much fun! It really is! I'm going to bring all my photo albums and try and dig up some old home videos and it's just going to be amazing!"
There was silence from the other line.
"Ms. Cleverly? Are you there?" Link asked.
"Yes, I was just waiting to check and see that Malon's rant was over," Zelda replied, causing her redheaded pal to roll her eyes again. "Well, this is great. I'll just get the tickets booked, then, and we'll be on our merry way in a few weeks. Ah, my 3:00 has finally decided to show up. I'll talk to you all later."
"Good-bye," the three of them said in unison, although they all severely doubted the last thing Zelda had said. If there was one thing Link in particular had learned about his boss, it was that she was rarely home and when she was, she liked to be alone. Ever since the night she had taken him out for dinner those few months ago, he had only seen her twice—sometimes even once—a week. He was sad that Malon was leaving, because she had been a tremendous help to him: keeping him sane when he wanted someone older than six to talk to, assisting him with some household appliances, and other niceties.
"Incidentally, where does Vivien live?" Link asked, not wanting to think about the depressing subject of Malon's departure anymore.
"What did Tennessee?" Malon guffawed. Link stared at her. "What Arkansas! Come on, you know that one!"
"Oh, yeah. Arkansas, huh? Can't say I've ever been there before."
"Well, just you wait a couple more weeks and you won't be able to say that anymore!" was the best thing Malon could come up with. She jumped when another phone rang loudly, then quickly calmed down when she realized it was her own cell coming from her pocket. Furrowing her brow in confusion, Malon muttered, "I thought I had this thing turned off, weird." Upon seeing who it was that was calling, her expression did not perk up very much. "Oh dear, it's dad." She flipped it open and headed out for the backyard, where she wouldn't disturb anyone. "Hello?"
Link watched her go, nothing that Ugg boots had never looked better than they did on Malon at this moment, covering just about as much skin as the denim shorts she was wearing. He wondered vaguely if he should have made a move on her before now: Malon was gorgeous, very funny, fairly smart, and also seemed to like him quite a bit. Any other guy with half a brain would have asked her out by now. So what was holding him back? The answer came to him abruptly in the form of another question, this one asked by a rather perceptive six-year-old girl.
"Hey, Link?" she said, drawing his attention away from the backyard and back to the kitchen. "What do you think of my mom?"
"Your mom?" Link asked blankly, staring at Megan's eager face from across the table. "What do I think of her? What… do I think of your mom?"
"Yeah," Megan said, not sure why Link had felt the need to repeat the question (in various forms) three times. "What do you think of her?"
He hadn't been prepared for this question. "Well, I guess I—"
"Do you like her?"
"Like her?" She probably hadn't meant it the way Link had automatically perceived it, but all the same the inquiry had flustered him. "I don't kn …I mean sure, I like your mother, Megan."
"Do you think she's pretty?" Megan pressed him.
"Honestly, Megan?" Link snorted, grinning. There was no point in lying, really. "Guilty as charged—as your mother might say. I don't think there's a man on this earth who could get away with saying your mom is anything but beautiful." He sobered up enough to add, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her I said that, though."
That seemed to satisfy Megan, who sat back with a pleased smile. "Don't worry, I won't tell her," she assured Link, although she had a look on her face that indicated she would use it to blackmail him sometime in the future if necessary. The grin faded after a few moments, though, and Megan asked her next question with a certain gravity that Link was not accustomed to hearing in the voice of a little kid. "If that's true, though, why don't I have a new dad, Link? Why isn't she married?"
"That's…a bit harder to answer, kid," Link responded gruffly. "But your mom is… she's…" The truth of it was, he didn't really know what Zelda was. Malon could probably paint a better portrait of the woman, but he didn't want to buck the question over to her. "Megan, your mother is very busy."
"Duh. She's never home."
"Okay, I mean she's really…tired. And I do think sometimes she might feel like she has to get out there on her own, like she's trying to prove to the world that she can do it alone—even if she doesn't want to. But I don't think she knows she doesn't want to, she's too busy showing that she can. Do you know what I mean?"
In response to this, Megan raised one eyebrow.
"Guess not," Link chuckled. "I'm not doing a very good job, I'm afraid. Tell you what, kid. You just wait a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, and then you'll have so much time with your mom, you won't know what to do with it! She'd probably be better up to answering these questions than I am."
"Maybe," Megan said with a shrug. With a heavy sigh, she got up off of her chair and headed over to the calendar that was stuck to the refrigerator. "I'd better start counting down the days!" she explained, grabbing a marker from a nearby drawer. "I think this is gonna be great."