The Good Fight 4: Homefront

by Ian Thomas Healy

“Hallory says it’s time to make my move,” my-daughter-as-Windsong says.

  “Hallory?” I splutter. “My agent?”

  “Dad, she’s my agent too.”

  “Since when?”

  “Well . . . sort of recently,” Tessa says in her best explaining voice, not quite making the requisite eye contact.

  “We’ve sort of had to keep it on the down-low.”

  “The ‘down-low’?”

  “Because of the age thing.”

  Tessa tries to rev me back up, pulling another exuberant, totally fake excited face.

  “I turn eighteen next month, dad,” she says. “It’d be cool if you remembered.”

  “If age is an issue, why hasn’t my agent spoken to me about it?” I ask. “You’re a minor, for chrissakes. You still need your parents’ consent for . . . some things.”

  “I know. I went to mom,” Tessa says. “Or ‘mum’ maybe I should say now on account of her being in Engla. . .”

  “You went to your mom to approve signing up to my agent and not . . . me?”

  I don’t need to’ve read half a book on Transactional Analysis once to note when my daughter drops to the age of about three in her efforts to avoid scrutiny.

  “Honey?”

  “Well, you sorta weren’t around. . . .”

  “Really?” I say. “This was while I was gone?”

  “Well. . . .”

  “Or since I got back?”

  “Sort of. . . .”

  “Honey, you can have all the super powers in the world, but if you can’t be straight up with me, we don’t have shit.”

  Tessa drops her eyes, ashamed far more powerfully than I intended. I wave off a sudden intrusion from Jimmy Kimmel emerging out of the crowd like a goddamned scarecrow, and refocus my troubled attention on Tessa, steering her by one arm further into the shadows as the music shifts gear and the lightshow responds accordingly and Twilight walks past in the middle distance trailing Shade and I see security evict a dude in a cow onesie and a woman coughs up her G&T and it looks like bees fly out of her mouth in a necromantic cloud.

  I force my attention back on my daughter and then FBI agent Vanguard steps in between us and I emit an exasperated moan.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m busy,” I yell at him.

  “Where were you, Zephyr? Siren’s been trying to call.”

  “Isn’t she a telepath?”

  Vanguard gives me a look.

  “I think it’s a bit rude not to use the phone,” the agent snaps. “We need you to come in ASAP.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m just . . . we’re having a moment here, okay?”

  Vanguard nods. I think this guy used to loathe me, but something’s shifted. It’s disturbing to realize how uncomfortable I am with people not hating me. Vanguard mimes making a phone call, shadow puppetry, or possibly directing air traffic, and leaves me to turn back to my daughter standing with her arms folded so much like her mother it’s enough to weaken my resolve without anything else said.

  “Why can’t you be up front with me?” I say to her regardless.

  “That quip before about the mask?” I add. “That’s you going on at me again about leading a normal life, huh? So how good are you at that, Windsong?”

  Tessa’s eyes flick sideways.

  “Thanks dad, you totally managed to ruin my good news.”

  Checkmate, though admittedly, somewhere in there I forgot there was an announcement to go along with the announcement.

  “Is this about the book . . . deal. . . ?”

  “No, dad,” she says and rolls her eyes. “You killed that too.”

  “I didn’t kill anything.”

  “Well after talking to you, I decided not to do it!”

  “And that’s me ‘killing your book deal,’ is it?”

  Windsong sighs prettily. I can’t help chuckle, affection mixed with a desire to choke her unconscious so I can just go and drink, even though neither of us are getting the relief of oblivion tonight.

  “What’s your news, babe?”

  “Just forget about it.”

  “Oh my God Windsong how many hours of our lives are we going to waste having these precise same fucking conversations and just get to the point where you tell me,” I say in one long epic growl. “You know I want to know, so just tell me.”

  “You only want to know because you scan everything I tell you for danger,” she snaps. “I hate it. It’s . . . fucked.”

  Her insight rather than aggrieved tone soothes me. I find myself nodding in agreement.

  “Yep, babe, I do,” I answer. “One of us has to be watching your back, and I think that’s easier for me than you, huh?”

  She stares at me a moment, unable to glean any actual insult. And in that treble of heart beats, I fight and fail to ward off wanting to go back and still make my first point.

  “Baby, you don’t understand what a charmed life you’ve lead so far.”

  “Dad.”

  “You saved everyone on that bridge that one time and that . . . that made you, overnight.”

  “Dad.”

  “And now they know you’re Zephyr’s daughter, for Frigg’s sake.”

  “Dad.”

  I want to remind her she’s never had a serious beating, but its more than just reining myself in lest the commentary spiral completely out of hand. It’s like I’m worried if I say it, I’ll only hasten the awful moment when I find out I was right all along.

  “Tell me. Your. News.”

  Tessa relents.

  “Hallory says Syzygy and Blackbird and I should form our own team.”

  I blink.

  “Didn’t I . . . suggest this already. . . ?”

  “Dad,” she laughs.

  “What about your other team? The Sentinels?”

  “The New Sentinels,” she says.

  “The New ‘New’ Sentinels.”

  “Please stop,” Tessa says. “If you can keep a secret, Vulcana wants to come back on board.”

  I give a wry and pained laugh which goes completely unnoticed beneath our present soundtrack.

  “First, never assume someone’s going to keep your secret and then just tell them before they agree, huh?”

  “It’s not really a secret.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Didn’t you guys run Vulcana and Smidgeon off the team last year?”

  “We agree now really the problem was just Smidgeon,” Tessa says. “He’s an annoying little fuck.”

  “That he is,” I say. “But Vulcana went and started her own team.”

  “She doesn’t get along with Seeker.” Unnecessarily, Tessa adds, “Your ex.”

  “I got that, thanks for the reminder.”

  “How are things with you and the hot teenager you’re banging?”

  “Gretchen’s not a teenager,” I say. “Don’t change the subject. And don’t say ‘banging’. What was that crack before about my mask?”

  “You never met my challenge.”

  “To . . . get a life?” I try keeping the self-pity and astonishment from my voice. “I’ve been kinda busy with the life I have right now, thanks all the same.”

  “You’re never going to know yourself until you spend some time without that mask, dad,” Tessa says. “I don’t even know why you wear a mask any more since you don’t really have an identity to protect. If you want me to listen to you, how about listening to me for once?”

  “‘For once’,” I say and resist adding, “Lol.”

  “Well, how about it?”

  “What, exactly?”

  “Let’s start small,” Windsong says. “You’re awesome at lots of things, dad, but being an ordinary person’s not one of them. Don’t you think it’s weird we mostly run into each other in nightclubs?”

  “Actually I do,” I say. “You’re not even eighteen, let alone twenty one.”

  “There’s so many ways the rules don’t apply when you’re wearing a mask,” she answers glibly. “That’s why you need to try some time without one. Yo
u’re . . . so fucking privileged it almost hurts to watch. Like a sun lamp. Can we just be a father and his nearly grown-up daughter, just for one afternoon, once, like, really soon, please?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” she says. “Then it’s a date. I’ll text you.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “You’re not getting out of it that easy,” Tessa says. “You don’t need a phone to meet me at the clock tower in New Central tomorrow at three.”

  “Tomorrow at three,” I repeat like an automaton.

  Piece of cake. Whatever that means.

  * * *

  Technically it’s the next day. It’s eerily quiet in my not-so secret hideaway. Tomb quiet, like the deserted palace of some forgotten king . . . and I don’t mean that in a good way.

  With Tessa in mind and the past night’s club chatter in my ear, I cast a look around me with the subtle disbelief of not really knowing quite how I got here . . . in life, not flight . . . as well as not entirely settled into it, now I know it’s for real.

  Seems like I always use the deck entrance, and probably should beef up the home security with that in mind, but on my return I simply nencourage the still-suit to peel open like a surfer’s wetsuit as I pad silently through these vast winterhalls of longing, a blockade of unopened parcels and boxes couriered over by the toy company filling the main entrance. I break a couple open, looking down on Nautilus as a shrink-wrapped figurine, squinting because I don’t remember him ever wearing a cape, unaware my agent’s people let the signatories make minor changes. A plasticated Vulcana stares back at me too, tiny and entombed, the three-quarter-inch head conveying her arbitrary mix of scorn and impatience with disturbing accuracy. The third and final toy kills my appetite for the whole enterprise, one of the three versions of the Windsong figurine, the design more lithe than my strong-framed daughter in real life and undoubtedly another tiny “cosmetic” amendment.

  I clear my throat, alone in the mansion, feeling the many days since I’ve been here last.

  “Do I have that thing installed yet where I can talk and the house does what I say?”

  Then I stand there like an idiot, voice echoing through all the unfurnished rooms I don’t have any use for, vaguely disappointed someone’s recently cleaned up.

  * * *

  Tessa’s irritation gives way to amusement when she realizes my excuse’s totally legit. Two hours after I was meant to meet her, she follows me in my trunks through to the bedroom’s empty side chamber, breaking into snorting laughter as I hold up my sole distended t-shirt, accessorized now with a trademark smirk.

  Tessa’s mirth fades and she nods slowly all of a sudden, eyeing me up like a junior casting agent as I throw my tee on the bed in the absence of a chute or mini robots or something.

  “Yeah dad,” she says. “You’re pretty cut.”

  I shrug like I’m a victim of it all.

  “So much has been going on lately,” I tell her. “I’m not sold on this whole daddy-daughter, incognito-date thing, you know, but I’ve been . . . looking forward to seeing you.”

  Tessa smiles and looks away and I chew the inside of my cheek at the pang of my own discomfort sensing the ever-widening distance between us as my daughter heads off into adulthood sharpened by the past couple of years of pretty much having the run of her own life. At least I was a good junior superhero and actually finished high school, not that the grades were much to brag about or that I might’ve ever done anything with them even if they were. Tessa’s about to get her own line of action figures and she’s still years from being legal for a drink. It’s hard to relate.

  “It’s kinda weird,” Tessa says with a sudden flair for telepathy. “Just being here and . . . you know, nothing else going on. Weird, huh?”

  “You’re in costume.”

  “You made me fly here,” she snaps. “I have a gorgeous little outfit getting totally crushed in this bag.”

  She throws a neat leather accessory down on the bed in the same design as her Road Warrior costume. In her haste, Tessa hasn’t bothered drawing on the silver lightning bolts she’s started wearing on her cheekbones of late. I hope no innocents die while she’s doing her make-up, though later she tells me they’re stick-ons anyway, and also that her bag’s the first in a range Hallory says might be worth taking to market. Sheesh.

  I feel like Windows 10 updating, and can’t restrain the yawn. Tessa scoffs at my tiredness and it’s not even six.

  “When’s the last time you slept?”

  “1945.”

  “Funny.”

  “I don’t have any clothes,” I say. “I didn’t think you wanted me turning up nude.”

  “Neither of us wants that crowd scene.”

  “I’m thinking about that Jim Carrey film,” I say. “You know, the one that drove him mad.”

  My cool reference’s lost on Tessa’s tight frown as she implicitly checks me out again like only a daughter knows she can.

  “You’re actually getting insanely massive, dad,” she sighs.

  She makes a mild sick-face at least fifty per cent repressed jealousy.

  “What?”

  “What happened to me, huh?” she asks. “Did I skip a gene or something?”

  “What are you talking about, honey?” I say. “You’re awesome.”

  “Yeah, you’d totally tap this, huh?”

  She motions as she stands, dismissive, unaware of her own beauty in her scowl. A few deep breaths retains my diplomacy.

  “I’m sure everyone’s got something they’re not happy about, babe.”

  “Oh yeah? And what are you unhappy about, dad? Huh? With yourself?”

  I shrug, uncertain, buried so quickly by my own words.

  “You’re on your way to looking as big as Twilight or Sentinel or Titan,” Tessa says.

  “I’m not as tall as them,” I say. “See? Everyone’s got something they feel . . .”

  “Oh please,” she barks. “What else you got?”

  I knit my brows, giving this an honest shot.

  “Well . . . I always wanted to be left-handed.”

  “That’s not the same as having fat thighs or no neck, dad.”

  “Right-handedness is so common.”

  Tessa’s not buying my act. I pose with hands on hips trying neither to play the male model nor illuminate my junk in the matte light.

  “You’re talking to someone who can’t wear normal clothes, so don’t tell me I’m not a freak in my own way.”

  “You’re not that bad, yet,” Tessa says. “Let me make a few calls. This’ll be fun.”

  * * *

  “‘This’ll be fun’” is girl-code for the most excruciating hour-and-a-half of my week so far, two young women and an androgynous creature with milk-white skin and a dyed aquamarine top-knot driving up to my place while Tessa and I eat, me giving an abbreviated account of my most recent misadventures, time-traveling to Nazi Germany, playing out Twilight’s origin story, my intention to track Miss Black’s killer. We don’t even talk about the Battle of the Century, though that whole chaos was only a week ago, though I sense my guilty relief at the reprieve. I never even know how much to tell Tessa about our family history and our internecine battles still to come.

  But before she got her powers, my daughter grew up a fan girl, and with her apathy in an armistice, at least for now, she can’t restrain the smiles of incredulity and amazement at half the shit I unpack, standing, both of us at the kitchen counter, me eating oven pizza and Tessa with black coffee and fruit. Half the time you might think I’m driven by a constant need for this affirmation, but the vapidity of Tessa’s gaze sours on me.

  “I’m not telling you a bedtime story here, honey,” I say eventually. “I left out the parts where I nearly died or felt like my heart was. . . .”

  “. . . was?”

  “I’m worried about you doing what I do and I’m sick of it being a big no-go area between us.”

  “Okay,” Tessa says. “So we�
��re not talking about you any more then.”

  Still in her Windsong gear, my daughter folds her arms as I ruthlessly wipe hands on a dish towel and take a swig from my coffee too.

  “It’s not all gallery openings and civic gatherings,” I say to her. “There’s the occasional moments of blood-freezing panic and mortal terror as well.”

  Tessa slowly puts her cup down and smirks dismissively, conceited in her adolescent wisdom.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, dad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “For most of us it actually is mostly gallery openings and awards ceremonies, with the occasional moments of blood-freezing terror and panic and whatever you said.”

  “Mortal terror.”

  “Hmmph,” she replies. “I didn’t think you’d own up to something as big as that.”

  “I didn’t think I’d held that much back, to be honest,” I say. “Probably not enough.”

  We ponder this a moment before I add, “Oh, my ears.”

  Tessa lifts her eyes back from contemplation of her grapefruit.

  “What?”

  “I hate my ears.”

  “Yeah, on TV, I did notice the resemblance between you and Strummer was . . . well you’re kinda the . . . well, not the plus-sized version of him, but you know?”

  “You should shop a rumor around to the tabloids that I’m doing steroids, ha.”

  I smile a moment.

  “Na, actually, don’t do that.”

  “Yeah dad, that’s an atrociously bad idea.”

  “Sorry, I just keep thinking up stupid stories about me that would rake in the cash,” I say. “You could make 50k with that pitch easy.”

  “But not a good idea.”

  “No, I might wind up back on Oprah.”

  I shudder.

  “You shouldn’t worry about me, dad,” Tessa says. “I’m the one who’s worried about you most the time, remember?”

  “I keep imagining you getting seriously hurt, babe,” I say. “I don’t think I could take it.”

  “The guilt.”

  “Guilt is one thing,” I say, sad and angry in the same tone. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to get killed. Do you understand?”

  Tessa takes my comments more like feedback than any thin-veiled confessional. Something gives me the impression I’m still talking to the hand even though I’m pouring out my heart. I guess with children, their default expectation of parental love can sometimes have a pretty high baseline . . . especially if you’re doing it right.