by John Ridley
Soledad was realizing there was so much more to her mother than she knew. Was it some kind of law of nature you had to be close to losing something to appreciate it?
"How's Dad taking it?"
"Well. He's well in my presence. I think he cries alone, wishes that he could do something. I haven't… There are some things you avoid talking about, but I know it must be horrible for him. When you marry, you take a vow to love, to protect. Then there comes a time when the vow is useless."
"It's not useless. He still loves you."
Gin appreciated her daughter's insistence. But she was in a place of frankness. "Not useless, then. Hollow. How much does it hurt to love someone, to say you'll always protect them… I know he'd give his life for me. But he can't. He can't, and that's a hurt beyond imagination. I've felt it about you. There have been so many times where I've felt-"
"Do people know? Have you told people?"
"No." A slight smile. Even at this juncture Soledad steamrolled her mother, kept the personal conversation from becoming too intimate. "I told… do you remember Mrs. Schoendorf? Her daughter was in your class."
Soledad remembered the girl, her mother. She indicated so to Gin.
"Right after," Gin continued. "I got out of the doctor's office, in a store I ran into her. Don't even know why I'd gone shopping except so that I could pretend everything was normal. Pretend the doctor hadn't told me what he told me. So there I was. Mrs. Schoendorf, she was talking, going on about… whatever. About nothing, really. I don't know. Maybe it was important. Maybe it was the most important tiring in the world to her. But once you know you have, you have this thing, you have this thing that's actively trying to end your life inside you… once you know your self is trying to kill you, that's the only thing that's important. And I said that to her. I said: I can't talk now, I have cancer.'"
"… How did she, what did she-"
"Well, I think I shocked her. I did. I know I did. You say something like that… but not so badly that… I saw her again. A day later. She shunned me. She actually shunned me."
"What do you mean?"
"She…" As if it were a cat lying on the table, as if it could feel and respond to her movements, Gin's hand, the tips of her fingers, moved up and down over the fork that rested near her discarded plate. "I don't know how else to describe what she did. She did not wish to encounter me, and did everything she could to keep from doing so. Because I was sick. Just because I was sick, she treated me like I was some kind of-"
"I want to come home. I want to go home with you." Soledad was forceful with that. Put the same energy into her words she would if she were kicking in a door, executing a warrant.
Her mother, not as forceful, was equally indisputable. "No."
"This isn't… we're not taking a vote."
"Soledad, I love you. There it is. The cliche I didn't want to… I love you, you're all the daughter I could have ever wanted."
A lie. It hurt Soledad that at such a moment her mother was so mindful of her feelings she felt compelled to engage in emotional subterfuge. That Soledad, despite, in spite of her faults-her baggage that she portered poorly. The distance at which she kept people-could be as a daughter anything close to all Gin could have hoped for was beyond Soledad's comprehension. Both her self-perception and her perception of her mother were that badly adjusted. When she looked in the mirror, all Soledad saw was a cop who did work. That she was a cop who was honest and true and selfless was as lost on her as it was precious to Gin.
And that it was lost on Soledad made her all the more beloved to her mother. Tears free-flowing from her. The cloth napkin not nearly enough to contain them. Giving effort to rejoin her own thoughts: "But since the day you left home you've been your own woman, I haven't agreed… I haven't even liked every choice you've made. But I've let you live your life the way you wanted to." She was pointed with that. "All I'm asking, if I'm done, let me end my life the way I see fit."
Soledad tried to think of a time-after Reese had a pit burned in her chest by that fire freak. After the tag team of a metal morpher and a telepath had cut through half her element. Even when a weather manipulator, for a minute, looked unstoppable to the point Soledad thought for sure she was staring death in the eye-she did not want to face a day of work.
Couldn't come up with one.
Her work gave her purpose. Even being benched from MTac. maybe especially because she was benched, her work gave Soledad a sense of purpose.
She wouldn't, could not consider not working, even though the stats said her work would eventually catch up to her. Kill her.
There were, yeah, times alone when Soledad found herself with the shakes. The night after going against that telepath she'd gone home and vomited. Spilled from her gut contents she didn't even know it had. That reaction was human. It was a reminder she hadn't actually "seen it all." Like Vin had said: the kind of nerves that keep you on your toes.
What Soledad was feeling now… competing needs: the need to come up with a reason to pry loose her grip on her Prelude's steering wheel, get out of the car, cross the parking lot and go into the DMI offices. Into work.
Vs.
Come up with an excuse not to do all that. Flip the ignition. Go home.
Her mother's dying of cancer. A reason. No excuse needed.
But telling people, telling Abernathy about her mother meant opening a door a little. Letting people view a sliver of herself.
Wasn't going to happen.
So there had to be something else; another reason to go in or drive off. Stay or leave. Do work or-
Metal tapped the glass right next to Soledad's head. Unexpected, but it didn't startle her. Not that she was startleproof. She was in another space where sound took its time traversing, and when it had, it was garbled among thirty-three other sensations coming to her on a lag. Even turning her head was a process where thought and action were filtered by delay.
At the window of her car: Raddatz rapping his wedding band against the glass. He said something. Through the door it was just a fog of wordless sounds.
Soledad dropped the window.
"You good, O'Roark?"
"Yes," she said. Quick, but without conviction. "Sitting in your car alone? You sure you're good?"
Soledad's eyes drifted over Raddatz. Over his body. She wondered: What did he look like naked? What kind of damage did his clothes hide? Massive scars? Burns?
Twisted flesh that would never be a well-tailored suit again? She wondered: Was it better to have your wounds on display-a missing arm, a leg gone-was it better to look damaged than to walk around normal on the outside only to, end of the day, have to strip down to the truth of yourself?
"O'Roark… " Raddatz tossed out her name trying to catch her focus.
"I'm not okay," Soledad said.
Raddatz squatted, came down to Soledad's level. "Got issues you want to talk about?"
Soledad took what seemed the appropriate amount of time she figured it should take to work through the pre-articulation of a difficult thought.
She said: "Talked to my physical therapist this morning. My knee's only going to get so much better."
"How much?"
"Not enough to go back to MTac."
"What are you going to do with yourself?"
"That's what I'm sitting here thinking about."
"What would you like to do with yourself?"
"I guess… what I've been doing with myself for the last month. Working DMI."
Coming up off his haunches: "Make it sound like we're a consolation prize, and not much of one."
She wasn't an expert on such things, but common sense told Soledad the best deceptions are the ones that aren't deceptions. The best deceptions are truths that hide lies.
"If you're asking me, yeah, it is a consolation prize.'" Soledad modified herself none. Didn't plane any edges. As such she sounded as though she spoke with honesty. "But a prize is a prize.
And a job where I can still help do something abo
ut muties is a whole hell of a lot better than working security at the Beverly Center. I'm still in the fight. If this is the way it's got to be, I'm good with that."
She put up the window on Raddatz. She went back to sitting alone. She was pretty sure the lie about her knee would stick. And just that quick she was working for Tashjian. That quick she had purpose again.
The thing is, the thing is how right she was." "Mothers have a way of being annoyingly correct."
Soledad was with Vin. In his place. Lying on his couch. Staring at his ceiling.
Vin was across the room, in a chair. Same chair he'd been sitting… planted. As much time as he spent there, «planted» was the better, was the more accurate word. Same chair he'd been planted in last time Soledad'd been over. If Vin hadn't opened the door for her. Soledad would've figured Vin and the chair were never apart.
"And the way she said it." Soledad giving color to the context of her conversation with her mother. " 'I don't want you to come home.' So to-the-point. So… harsh."
"The apple doesn't fall far from the-"
"Don't give me that shit."
Vin kind of mumbled something. Back when he had two legs, when he had two legs he didn't mumble. His comments, always sharp, were never gagged by self-pity.
And then he kind of eked out: "She wanted to make it stick."
"She could have just-"
"Just what? It" somebody told you to breathe, you'd suffocate yourself just to be your own man." Force to the thought, but not much to his tone. "She doesn't want you to watch her die."
"Don't say that!"
"That she's going to die or that she doesn't want you around?"
"Any of it. Take your pick."
Vin's head dropped back, sort of lolled around. "I didn't. Didn't say it. She, she did." That last bit was slurred slightly as it gimped its way off Vin's tongue. Something besides pity was washing out his words.
Soledad looked to Vin. He was slumped some in the chair. Was as if, even sitting, he needed all of the furniture to keep him propped up. A little sweat was on his brow, collecting on his upper lip. It was there never mind the AC being on.
Vin, like he was waking up from a snooze, realized he'd caught Soledad's eye. "So… so what are you going to do?"
"Stay on the job. Stay here. Mom made it real clear what she wants."
"Do you care? If someone told you to, to breathe-"
"You said that. You said that. Vin. You said it already." Soledad drifted where she lay. She drifted to the day prior, to her lunch with her mother. Before, like a little girl who'd messed her best dress, Soledad feared having to explain her damaged leg to her mom. But at lunch… "She didn't even ask about my leg. Barely she did."
"She's got cancer."
"Cancer'll kill you. It doesn't stop you from being a mother. Nothing does. She knew I didn't want to talk about my leg; she knew the boundaries I'd set."
"So she knew."
"All this time I'd been pushing her away. Didn't have to. She knew to keep some distance. But I kept pushing when I should've been-"
"Soledad, you've got a unique ability to make everything about you."
Vin's words didn't set Soledad right. Just made her more morose. "The death I was feeling… thought it was mine. It was hers."
Vin: "How Is your leg?"
"Good. Recovering good. Moving to a cane in a couple of weeks. I could put in for active duty." And on the subject of limbs: "Where's your leg?"
Vin flipped a finger, Indicated across the room. Through a doorway Soledad could see the prosthetic lying, surreal, on the floor. Some kind of exhibit on loan from MOCA.
She said: "Doesn't do much good parked there."
"Doesn't do much good at all unless I've got somewhere to go. I'm not going anywhere."
"If you had it on, maybe you would."
"And one day I'm going to put your little theory to a test."
That was that. So Soledad moved the conversation on by returning to the central subject. "I couldn't even cry. I sat there feeling like I should. Feeling it, knowing it. Was like I went through a checklist-heartache, guilt, denial-but I couldn't finish the emotion."
"You're shut down. That's what we…" Vin was mealy mouthed with that, feebled the word «we» as if ashamed at the attempt to equate himself with working cops. Doing an edit: "That's the way you get through things."
"This isn't cop shit. I've been shut down since May Day. Since San Francisco I've been about taking a stand against the freaks to the exclusion of every other thing around me. It's like I was so set on dying I took out a scorched-earth policy on the rest of my life."
Pathos with such pretty words.
Putting spin on it, Vin: "And good for it. Well, not good, but… good came, came out of it." He stumbled a little. "If you hadn't taken out that telepath-"
"Some other cop would have."
"Without that gun you put together? Doubt it. And even if… we only lost Yarborough. How many cops would've been lost if things were different?"
Despite what Vin was putting out, Soledad's lament stayed constant. "My own mother… Tell you something: You're looking at the end of things, you realize you weren't even decent with your own mother… Sometimes, Vin, sometimes I feel like-"
"Don't get sentimental. You'll regret it tomorrow."
"Sometimes, sometimes I feel like I'm fighting for normal humans and I traded my humanity in the deal."
"And you talk about me going soft. Act like you don't know what love is just 'cause some guy broke your heart."
It was as if, what it was like was Soledad had been gored from gut to chest. Some guy. Ian. He was unaware, but Vin wasn't just talking. For Soledad, he was seancing demons. And the twist in her Soledad felt… it wasn't that she had her heart broken. What was hurting her was the how of her heartbreak. It's one thing to fall in love and have love not work out. It's a very, very different thing to fall in love, have the love force you to question yourself to the core, only to find out who you love is the thing you hate most.
Soledad had fallen in love-she'd use the word in the quiet inside her, but she'd never speak it, regarding Ian, aloud-she'd fallen in love with a freak,
"How'd you know?" Soledad asked regarding Vin's knowledge of Ian.
"You make a big deal about a guy for months, then all of a sudden you don't so much as speak his name. Not since I got out of the hospital. Maybe you're being sensitive to me, knowing how I feel about you. But the next time you're sensitive to how I feel'll be the first time."
"Fuck you." Playful with that. Relieved, really. Vin didn't know the specifics of Ian, was just tossing out suppositions on some vagaries: of Soledad's heart. Coming back at Vin, deflecting, things from herself: "You want to be a detective, put your leg on and get back on the force."
Just a little smirk from Vin that said he didn't want to play anymore. From the way his shoulders slouched, his body hunched, he didn't want to do much else than sit where he was for another hour. A couple hours. Seven years. It was all the same for Vin.
But it was okay Vin didn't want to play. Soledad was ready to get serious about things as well.
She said: "Were you for real about what you asked before?"
"What I…»
"Do I want to get married? Do I want to marry you?"
"Yeah," Vin said. "Okay," Soledad said.
My motivations are screwed. I know that.
I don't know if I came out of the box screwed up, or if I got that way after San Francisco when getting sick kept me from taking a trip to the city. Kept me alive when 600,000 other people got killed.
That's a shitload o' guilt to be carting around.
So I quit living for me and started living for the give-back. Paying off a debt I didn't really owe to people I'd never met. And from day one, if that wasn't wrong, I knew what I was doing at least wasn't quite right.
Thing is, knowing you've got a dysfunction and doing something about your dysfunctionality sound the same, but are nothing alike. Maybe wi
th years of therapy and religion, tons of medication you can break patterns.
I didn't go in for any of that.
So the pattern repeated.
With MTac.
With the tattoo I wore for Reese. And now, again, with Vin.
I didn't love him. I liked him, cared about him. The little bit I understood of love, I know I didn't feel that way for Vin.
What I felt….
Pathos.
I felt it for this cop, used to be so strong, who'd let himself devolve to the point of being a gimp. Not just physically. There were all kinds of people, fewer body parts than Vin, who amounted to so much more.
That sounds harsh, but sometimes the truth hits
like All
What was damaged on him, it was his spirit that was handicapped. The most obvious indicator was he 'd casualty, quietly become a lush, thinking his slowed movements and slurred speech went unnoticed. Same with the perpetual glisten of sweat that he now wore. Or worse, he knew the signs were obvious and didn't care.
I think, really, Vin's romantic about the idea of being cliche: the busted cop who melts to an alky.
Not romantic. Just pathetic.
s couldn't let Vin be pathetic.
No matter saving Vin is an unactionable task. Like the costumed freaks from years prior who I've come to hate so well, I felt I had to-had to — try some difficult heroics. So I tested Vin. Took his offer of marriage. Any other man, receiving a belated yes to a proposal right after talking about a woman's former love would say two things to her. The second is "you," the first, "fuck." Any man wouldn't let himself, so obviously, be relegated to sloppy seconds.
Any real man.
Any self-respecting man.
Any man who hadn't let himself devolve into a one-legged drunk.
But Vin, Vin had said okay. Vin passed the test. Or flunked it. Vin needed saving. So here's Soledad the anti-hero to the rescue.
God, do I need more religion.
Or medication.
Soledad was crutching through DMI, crutching to her office. Raddatz was on his way somewhere else.
