LII
Henry parks the car next to a dumpster, in front of a modest little house. Beside him, Eleven frowns.
"Where are we?" she asks, puzzled.
"This is the Ives residence," Henry replies, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Eleven turns to him abruptly: "Ives…? As in… As in my mom's last name…?"
Henry doesn't say a word; he just watches her with a serious expression.
"You said… years ago… You said… you couldn't find my mom…"
He had told her so when he revealed her birth name and last name to her: that, even though he had found out this much, he had never been able to track her mother after her failed incursion into the laboratory.
"So I said," Henry admits. "And I also told you, just today, that I must stop hiding the truth from you."
Eleven wants to get angry, but Henry doesn't give her any time to react: he gets out of the car, slams the door shut, and heads towards the porch of the humble house.
She doesn't take long to follow him.
"Don't want whatever you're selling!" comes the female voice from inside the house.
Eleven startles at the scream, but soon feels Henry's hand on her shoulder. When she turns her face just enough to look at him, she sees him smiling calmly at her.
Suddenly, the door is unlocked and opens by itself.
Some feet ahead, a blonde, middle-aged woman turns around, surprised. Before she can say anything, however, Henry begins to speak: "Good afternoon, Mrs. Ives. I'd like to have a word with you, if it's not too much to ask."
"I thought… you wouldn't come back," Mrs. Ives murmurs, sitting across from them on the rickety sofa in the living room. She wastes no time thrusting the cigarette into her mouth in an uncouth gesture.
"Oh, that makes two of us, but I considered it necessary for Jane, here with us, to know her origins."
Hearing Henry's words, the woman's honey-colored eyes search her face. Eleven would like to shrink and disappear; the woman's gaze, fixed on her, looks… sad. Desolate.
"You're…?"
"Jane," Eleven completes. "Yeah."
The woman nods once, twice. The girl notices the tears that she tries to hold back.
"Jane," she repeats her name as if it were a prayer. "You don't know how sorry I am that Terry…" She makes a face. "That you couldn't meet her… before."
Eleven shoots Henry an uneasy look. His smile doesn't falter.
"Well, it's never too late to be reunited with family, is it?" He stands up and indicates with a movement of his head he wants her to go with him. "Come, Eleven: let's meet your mother."
Although she's never had a mother figure—and possibly a father figure, too, if she's being honest with herself—Eleven finds that, at thirteen, she's not ignorant of the ideas associated with one. For example: a mother should be affectionate, she should worry about her children, she should love them, she should play with them…
It's just another tragedy in her life that her mother can't do any of these, that she's confined to a rocking chair, her vacant eyes fixed on the television, her face frozen in an expression of grim indifference.
And her words, fixed, repeated, a loop with no apparent end: "Breathe. Sunflower. Rainbow. Three to the right. Four to the left. Four-fifty."
"What… happened?" Eleven asks.
Terry, of course, doesn't answer. Neither does Becky—that's her sister's name—or Henry, who just keeps his hands folded behind his back.
Eleven kneels in front of her mother and whispers: "Mama? It's me. Jane. I'm here now. Please talk to me. Please…"
Her pleas go unanswered.
…
That is, unanswered in a verbal way. Because all of a sudden, the TV screen starts jumping between channels and the lights start flickering repeatedly.
Carefully, Eleven wipes the trickle of blood from Terry's nose with a finger.
"I think… I think Mom wants to talk to me…"
She wasn't asking his permission; nevertheless, Henry, in any case, grants it: "Go ahead."
With the television set to white noise and a makeshift blindfold Becky prepared for her, Eleven is ready to make contact with her mother's mind.
"It's okay if I sit here, right?" Becky asks, perched on a chair to her right, while Henry stands to her left.
"Yes," Eleven assures her.
"And… I won't mess it up or anything?"
"No."
"Okay." Becky takes a breath and continues. "If you talk to Terry, could you tell her that I love her very much? And I'm also sorry I didn't believe her—"
"Stop talking."
"Okay, sorry."
Henry presses his knuckles to his lips to hide his laughter.
When Eleven rips off her blindfold and throws her head back, hyperventilating, Henry is there at her side.
"Eleven," he calls her, and she knows she's never been so happy to hear his voice. "What did you see?"
She opens her mouth to reply only to end up closing it back: her lips are trembling too much. Henry places his hands on her shoulders with the clear intention of grounding her. Becky remains completely silent at the scene unfolding in front of her.
"Eleven…"
"I saw… everything," she finally stutters. "I saw… I saw the day I was born and… the sunflowers and… the rainbow room and… and… the gun… and what Papa… what Papa… did…"
She doesn't cry—she's been through too much to cry about this—but she does feel a deep sadness. The smile that Henry offers her seems to be in tune with her feelings, as it does not reach his eyes.
"You see, then, why I have warned you, over and over again, of the dangers we face?" His voice is soft, calm, without the slightest hint of anger or annoyance. "Do you see, Eleven, what Brenner and those like him are capable of?"
Eleven closes her eyes and nods, her features breaking in pain.
"Good," Henry murmurs, and Eleven feels her body light, free, all because he's now carrying her in his arms, as if she weighed nothing. "That is enough for today.
"Let's go home."
After exchanging one or two more pleasantries with Becky, Henry walks Eleven back to the car.
All the way back, she doesn't look at him—she simply watches the raindrops slide past the car window in contemplative silence.
Henry says nothing—he doesn't need to. He's never considered himself a paragon of virtue, and he's not going to apologize for doing what's necessary to survive.
And yet, the aftertaste the whole affair has left in his mouth is bitter: how he wishes, on days like this one, that he could avert his eyes from the truth.
Or, at least, cover Eleven's so as not to hurt her.
…
How he wishes, on days like this one, not to be who he is.