Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  Since another invitation was needed, I assumed that my father had uninvited Harry after he left the last time, probably at my mother’s insistence. Harry did not rush his entrance, nor was he so ungentlemanly as to cast a smug smile at my mother. He merely crossed the threshold like a shadow falling across the room.

  “I thank you,” Harry said, inclining his head, “and accept your kind invitation. Would you allow me to once again approach your bedside?”

  My father nodded, his eyes darting to his water glass. Harry obliged without being asked, brought the glass, and angled it so the straw reached dad’s lips. When dad’s thirst was quenched, Harry set the glass carefully on the nearby table, then tucked his long coat under him gracefully as he sat in the wooden chair next to the bed.

  “The house is quiet tonight. What a blessing. How well I do remember the days it was not always so.” Harry did not look back at me, but I felt his desire to have me closer to him, so I ignored my mother’s icy glare and went to the bedside.

  My father was a frail imitation of the man he’d once been; where my mother had barely changed in the years I’d been away, my father was nearly unrecognizable. There was more than a stroke going on, here. More than the drink, too, I imagined. Knowing him, he’d heard a diagnosis and ignored it, avoiding the doctors and treatments. Reluctant to feel the answers, I balled my gloved hands and crammed them into the pockets of my parka.

  Harry went on, “How perfectly terrible it must be, sir, to be in your present condition and surrounded by six Baranuik women—six! — and unable to defend oneself.”

  “Tor…ture,” my father said with difficulty.

  “Oh my, yes, of course it is, I do not doubt this. You are a beleaguered wanderer in an uncharted territory of Hell, a soldier with neither weapons nor armor, an explorer without a compass, besieged on all fronts by shrews and sirens, harpies and harridans.” Harry showed my father a dark look full of meaning that earned him an enthusiastic snort of agreement. “Dark Lady knows I have enough trouble with just the one, carrying on the way she does, always fussing and flailing about.” Harry’s lips made a little moue of complaint about me, and he shook his head sadly. “Sunday dinners, now that the girls are grown up, must be deafening. Every ounce of my masculine patience cringes on your behalf. You have my profound sympathies.”

  One half of my father’s lips curled into a wavering, unpleasant smile and he exhaled in several sharp bursts; I realized he was laughing.

  I sighed. “Harry, don’t tire him out with your jibber jabber.”

  “And lo, I have thoughtlessly and insensitively brought the seventh back to darken your door. Soon you will again witness the inevitable tirade of your eldest; much like the inelegant ramblings of a madwoman, it will go on and on with neither logic nor limitation.” His eyes were heavy-lidded with teasing affection. “I do hope you will forgive me for not coming alone. Only, I thought you might like to see her.”

  “Not… hear her,” my father said, and half his face smiled again.

  Harry said, “Just so.”

  “Hey!” I squawked.

  “Hush… you.” Dad’s eyes settled on me, and he sighed heavily, a satisfied sound. The Blue Sense wiggled to attention to reveal his relief at seeing me; he had thought I wouldn’t come. My mother slipped from the room in obstinate silence.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, mollified a little by his teasing. It had been ages since my dad had joked with me. I rolled my eyes at him. “I get the hint. I’ll sit here and be quiet.”

  Harry affected a shocked gape. “Silenced by two words! Your father must teach me this blessed magic.”

  I stuck my tongue out at them. Harry beamed, and released a dollop of contentment through the Bond at me; he was enjoying himself, and the fact that I was loosening up.

  Dad pointed at me and frowned. “Face.”

  I touched my fat lip. “Oh, that. A ghost gave me a swift kick in the kisser and whapped me with some licorice. It was a whangdilly of a fight, all right, but I’m still kicking ass and sucking wind.” I made two fists to display to my father my balls-out enthusiasm. Then I did a flex and growl that would have made any of the more flamboyant 80’s era WWE wrestlers proud. I'm amazed my muscles didn't totally blow out the sleeves of my jacket. Dad wheezed something that sounded like amused approval.

  “We’ll sing an ode to your delusional greatness some other time, shall we?” Harry murmured. The teasing smile he sent me was irksomely beautiful, which any other time would have caused some heavy breathing. Tonight, standing beside my father’s sickbed, with my mother lurking stonily somewhere nearby, it merely lifted my mood and reminded me that I wasn’t always the screw up everyone thought I was.

  Dad tried to roll his eyes at me and only one made the full trip. He motioned at a stack of Moleskine notebooks beside his bed. I moved to hand him a pencil and he shook his head and jabbed a finger at them.

  “You want these?” I asked, and offered him the top two. He waved them away.

  “Your father would like you to have those,” Harry said without looking at me; there was a subtle shift in the Bond and I felt Harry attempting to shut me out. He smiled at Dad and laid one cool, pale hand atop my father’s.

  I shifted through the books. “These aren’t empty. There’s writing in these, dad. It’s your work…”

  “He knows,” Harry said, still not looking at me. “Your mother will have a plastic bag in which to carry them. You should excuse us now; Roger wishes to speak with me in private.”

  I took the hint and went to sit at my mother’s kitchen table, smelling fried sauerkraut, Oktoberfest sausage, and potatoes with onion. Harry and I weren’t staying for their late dinner, but she insisted on feeding me something. The Blue Sense reported her feelings of reluctant duty, like I was a stray cat she only fed because to do otherwise would mean death. When she put a heaping plate of her winter fry-up in front of me, I reached for the salt. She made a disapproving little hum that made my hand pause. The fact that my mother’s little disapproving hums still worked so well grated my second-to-last nerve. I picked up the salt shaker—shaped like a little grey owl—and did not look up at her, daring her to say anything.

  “I already salted the potatoes,” she said.

  “Good. I like salt.” I salted some more.

  “At least taste them first before you assume my cooking is bland.”

  “I never said your cooking was bland,” I said calmly. “I said I like salt.”

  “I put lots of garlic in this time.”

  “Good,” I said. It was getting hard not to roll my eyes. “Garlic is great.”

  “Your father likes garlic,” she said tightly. “I made this to suit his palate, Marnie-Jean.”

  “What part of ‘garlic is great’ did you take for an insult?”

  “Your father enjoys sauerkraut with his fry-up.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, “since he’ll be eating it tonight.” I tried to cool down, and, thinking to diffuse the tension with a compliment, added, “It’s very good. Tasty.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t throw every herb I had in the pot.”

  I frowned. “I don’t do that either.”

  “Always did go overboard with things.”

  Overboard with things? Oh, bitch. I stabbed a potato, shoved it in my mouth, and demanded around it, “Like what things?”

  Mom peeked into the oven to check the progress of the pork chops. “Just things.”

  “Like herbs?” I guessed, noticing the potato in my mouth was, in fact, too salty; there was no way in hell I’d take a sip of water. No fucking way.

  “Herbs, spices, salt... ”

  “And?”

  She went to stand by the fridge, aimed her glare at Dad’s sick room for a moment, where Harry’s gentle laugh could be heard in response to something my father had said. “You always added far too many onions to every pot. That’s why I discouraged you from cooking.” She gave her homemade applesauce a stir, and it hissed and plop-bubble
d. “Too many onions to every pot.”

  Onions to every… “Why are we fighting about cooking, Mom?” I asked, knowing damn well she wasn’t talking about onions.

  “We’re not,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, more habit than necessity. “We’re not fighting. There’s no need to fight. Just keep your voice down.”

  “Oh, that’s right, Mom,” I felt myself teeter on the brink of losing my shit. “Keep your voice down. Don’t talk back. Don’t rock the boat. Just shut up, that’s what you really want to say, right? Just sit down and shut up and stop making my life complicated.”

  Harry’s soft throat clearing from the threshold of the sick room distracted both of us. When we looked over, he beamed a glorious smile. “How it warms my cold, black heart to see the two of you sharing a meal.” He aimed his smile at me, and it gained a knowing tilt. “Why are you adding more salt? Tsk tsk, Dearheart, salt is terrible for your blood pressure.”

  I gripped the shaker, just noticing I was still clutching it, my knuckles white around the little owl’s neck. “Maybe I’ll open this shaker, guzzle the whole damn thing, and end it all!”

  “Oh, dear heavens, such a fuss you make. Just eat your potatoes, you ungrateful child, and we’ll discuss your plans to slowly poison yourself at a more appropriate time.” Harry gave an exasperated and unnecessary exhale. He rolled his eyes at my mother and swept back in to Dad’s room.

  I turned to bite my mother’s head off and caught the tail end of a smirk sliding off her lips. “What’s so funny?”

  “Astute, for a monster. He certainly has your number.”

  I bit my tongue, hard. She took the seat across from me at the table and poured a cup of tea from the blue and white Corningware pot that lived eternally in the middle of their kitchen table. I knew it was likely stone cold, and steeped strong enough to strip the enamel off teeth. Four or five sad, sodden tea bags were probably drowned at the bottom.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “You are an ungrateful child, and you’ve hardly grown up. I spoiled you rotten, Marnie-Jean. You and Carole-Anne both. I was so excited to be a wife and mother, to live my life properly, not the way my mother did, shunning her responsibilities, traipsing around Europe with…” She didn’t say Harry’s name, but she wagged an indicting finger at the other room. “I was happy to be nothing like her, and I worked very hard at keeping house.”

  I opened my mouth to defend Grandma Vi, but my mother’s temper was stirring like that applesauce, hot and hissing, and the Blue Sense warned me to let her speak, to get this off her chest and out in the open once and for all, even if it hurt me to hear it.

  “You never had to lift a finger around this house,” she said, “and I did you no favors in that respect. I thought I was being a good wife and mother, and perhaps I was. But I taught you nothing of hard work. I suspect when something tough crosses your path, to this day you sulk about it like a teen in a snit, instead of rolling up your sleeves and digging in.”

  I let that settle in the room for a minute, let her feelings have a moment in the spotlight. I could see where she was coming from, understood her motives. The fact that she was flat fucking wrong was beside the point.

  Or maybe it wasn't.

  “I don’t think that’s a fair assessment,” I said, not pointing out that she’d flipped a switch when I was about ten and proceeded to treat her youngest five children like prisoners of war; it might explain why I was currently mothering my own brother. “When it comes to hard work, I might pout, but I do it, and I don't give up. Or hadn't you noticed my face?”

  “Is that why you’re hiding in the mountains in a shit-hole cabin like some crazy hermit?”

  Whoa. Mom dropped the S-bomb. Shit just got real. I very carefully hid my surprise. “Okay, I retired early,” I admitted, “because of some poor personal choices and a fucking bullet wound. I don’t know if you forgot that part? But I’m working again. I have a job with the F-B-frickin’-I. I’m using my degree, and my Talents. I’m not hiding, and I’m not a crazy hermit. You might see how I've flown halfway across the continent, to another country, to help solve a mystery the police need help with. I haven’t moved to the city because it’s beautiful at Shaw’s Fist, and I like the peace and quiet.” And the occasional kinky sex -chase through the woods. “And, despite what you might think, I’m actually kinda good at what I do.”

  “I wonder if your policeman friend would agree with that.”

  “Constable Schenk was here?” I stabbed another potato and scooped fried onion with it, desperately wanting a drink of water. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to ask about your psychic abilities.”

  Schenk didn’t have to come here for that; he’d seen my abilities first hand. I suspected he was here for other reasons, though I couldn’t imagine what he was nosing around for. “What did you tell him?”

  Mom raised her mug to her lips but didn’t drink. “I told him you were the real thing.”

  “Oh?” I blinked in surprise.

  “Yes.” She put her mug down carefully, deliberately, like she didn’t want it knocked over in the event of a rumble. I braced for it. “I told him the way it all started, how it worked.”

  “From your point of view.”

  “I could hardly do otherwise,” she said. “I speak my mind, Marnie-Jean. It’s not a crime to have an opinion that differs from yours.”

  Oh, Aradia, give me strength. I took a steadying breath. “Well, I can’t wait to hear this. Go ahead, Mother.”

  Her lips did a prim little twist. The Blue Sense told me she knew she was going to come off badly, but was resigned to the fall-out from her choices. Hers was a stubborn brand of cruelty. She’d been punishing me for my choices for a decade, now, but no harder than she punished herself, so she felt she was being fair. “I told him a monster stole my real daughter away at the tender age of seventeen, and replaced her with a lunatic witch with no moral compass and no sense of—”

  “Enough!” The bark that cut the air made me jerk in my seat. It had been a long time since I’d heard Harry’s voice so sharp. I noticed he was holding Dad’s Moleskines, and felt through the Bond a press of irritation and anxiety; Harry had had his fill and was ready to go. “At the risk of sounding ungentlemanly, might I say, madam, that your hospitality leaves much to be desired. I am no disease that has infected your home, stealing away your loved ones like a cancer, though you seem determined to see me as such. I am a gift that your mother chose to offer, which your daughter freely and shrewdly chose to accept. Under my care, she continues to flourish and prosper. Your husband has, in his wisdom, come to accept this, and though I do not hold a hope that you will join him in this opinion, I will thank you to keep in mind that I am your daughter’s most loyal supporter, her guardian and companion, whether she be a lunatic witch or not.”

  “Um, not,” I piped up between the two, waving my fork in the air to make my point. “Not a lunatic witch.”

  Harry continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “And you ought to guard your tongue from passing blasphemous slurs against a gentleman of my caliber.” He passed a smoothing finger across his thrice-pierced eyebrow, and then brushed away imaginary lint from his shirt front. “Say goodnight to your father, my pet, and bid him sweet dreams. We must be about our business.”

  I was quick to abandon the table, feeling Harry’s patience dwindle rapidly. I popped in to see my dad, and then let Harry help me with my parka. We hurried into sub-zero temperatures that were far more cheery than the atmosphere in my mother’s kitchen.

  “Way to stick up for me, Harry,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “But of course you can speak for yourself?” He made it a question, studying my face. “You don’t need me to rescue you. However, if it would please the secret damsel that lies in distress behind your bold front, I will rally to your charge and return to battle.” He balled a fist and made to return to the porch where my mother stood glaring.

  I
grabbed his forearm. “No. You’re right. Leave it.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked, holding the passenger door open for me. “Only, it seems after rousting the dragon of your father’s jealousy from its decade-long hibernation and slaying it neatly, I am feeling rather heroic.”

  I had to smile, though I wasn’t quite up to laughing just yet. “Home, brave Galahad. I need a drink of water like you wouldn't believe.”

  CHAPTER 25

  I’D LAST SEEN Rowena when she was a sullen tween in braids and short-shorts, long before her bar hopping and her drinking and her accident and her slap on the wrist from the courts. She was a woman, now, but no less sullen.

  The morning sun was glaring off the snow, and Mr. Merritt had some seriously bad-ass sunglasses on; Combat Butler goes Men In Black. I, on the other hand, looked like I’d been beaten down from all sides and left for dead. I pulled the ski mask off and left it on the passenger seat, smoothed back my bedraggled hair, checked my fat lip in the rearview mirror, and then got out to face the youngest of my five sisters. A mere eleven months older than Wesley, Rowena would, before long, look like she'd lapped him in physical age. Where Wesley would continue to look a scarred twenty forever, Rowena was weathering with the stresses of life like a normal, mortal human, even without her living harder than most of the family was happy with.

  Of all my sisters, Rowena had the oldest soul. Today, from a distance and with the winter sun turning her blonde hair to windblown threads of white gold, she seemed all of eighteen everywhere but those steady eyes. Bird’s egg blue, hers were full of melancholy and experience, and belonged on a grizzled old war veteran, not plopped in the middle of an angelic face. She was wrapped in an afghan that had likely come from Claire’s talented hands. As she got closer, I saw the hint of bony shoulders under that blanket, a silver cross hanging outside a grey Roots sweatshirt, thin legs in matching grey sweatpants, cheeks gaunt but swept with a bit of blush. Or maybe that was wind burn from the chill off the lake. There were fine lines on her forehead and black circles under her eyes that shouldn’t have been so pronounced. If I didn’t know better I’d think she had taken Wesley’s place as the family addict, but these were the ravages of an internal war, of deep self-loathing and reparations, as if she could make amends with karma by starving herself or making her life more difficult than it needed to be. Her penance would never satisfy the jury in her head. Rowena saw a different end to the accident that had injured but not killed a pedestrian, and the end she saw was unforgivable.