Hi, I'm only late, but ... only by about 18 minutes. That's still pretty good, right? I mean, it's not like I went to sleep again. Right?
My thanks to:
RiceKrispy
Katydid
DMB
Alien_Friend
Trulov
Aurorabee
Roswell4Life - nice screen name.
Jo - yeah, that Tess is pretty damn evil, ain't she?
uw51
Cereth
Behrluv32 - Okay, you don't really have tar, right?
Heavenli24
JojoTheOrange - Seriously. Loving the screen name.
Chelle - my only ally. In oh so many ways.
Luna_Seer
Synera
Cocogurl
L-J-L 76
Skynet
Carter13
Bettylove8 - I seriously love your story. When are you updating again?
Alien614
Raemac
Kristy
Ti88
Emz80m
Zanssoulmate08 - you evil, sadistic, incredibly lucky little witch. IT WAS YOUR CHALLENGE! How come everyone's blaming me?
Paper
Dreamerfrvrp3 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Dreamer_6
Wench on a Leash
Tears_Of_Mercury
Sirio
Lurkers
Thanks for all the support, everyone!
The Butterfly Loss
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Remember. Breath.
I feel the earth move under my feet,
I feel the sky tumbling down,
Tumbling down,
Tumbling down,
Tumbling down,
Tumbling down.
-I Feel The Earth Move
Carole King
Anna stood in front of the bathroom mirror with her shirt pulled up, resting over the swell of her belly. She knew she wasn’t huge – her stomach was barely the size of a small cantaloupe – but that wasn’t what she was looking at. She was trying to see if there was anything going on inside the tummy.
She was looking for little glowing hands.
It sounded crazy. She knew it sounded crazy. If she didn’t see something soon, she would begin to believe that she was crazy. That she’d just imagined those tiny handprints in the mirror after the photo shoot, now over two weeks ago.
But at the same time, she knew she hadn’t imagined it.
“Anna!” Cynthia called through the closed door. “Are you okay in there?”
Startled, Anna shoved her shirt down. “Yeah! I’m fine,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, you’ve just been in there for a while. We were getting worried. You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be right out.” Anna looked at herself in the mirror. “Keep it together,” she told herself. “You’re fine. You’re fine.” Her pep-talk complete, she exited the bathroom and went back to work.
Twenty minutes later Mabel walked in through the café doors from her Sunday morning services and errands. After checking in with Thom, who was always the de-facto manager whenever Mabel was gone, she pulled her stool in from the back room and set up her usual perch, keeping her eye on customers and staff alike. No one and nothing escaped her omniscient gaze.
After another ten minutes, Mabel called Anna to her. “What’s up,” she said.
“You workin’ too hard?”
“What?” Anna asked.
“You lookin’ pale, honey.”
“I think I’m all right.”
Mabel shook her head. “You need a break, you let me know.”
“I’m fine, Mabel,” Anna said, smiling at her in a way that tried to say, ‘Quit worrying.’ Mabel gave her a dubious look, but she backed off anyway.
“You’re so laid back with this whole pregnancy thing, Anna,” Cynthia said to her as they filled up sodas at the fountain.
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve got Mabel to worry about everything.” Anna smiled at her, and Cynthia laughed as she turned to deliver the drinks.
Anna had found that as time went on, she stopped counting her shifts by the hours. She worked so often, picking up the slack here, filling in there, that counting the hours probably would have depressed her anyway. Instead she started measuring by customers. Three customers at Table 12, the closest table to the kitchen, and one customer at Table 1, the booth by the window, later, Mabel’s son Dylan came flying into the café. His perfect professional demeanor was destroyed by the sheen of sweat that shone on his head and pooled at the neck and arms of his blue T-shirt.
“Where is she?” he yelled, a jubilant grin on his face.
“Boy, what on the Lord’s green earth are you yellin’ about?” Mabel yelled right back with a voice that could be heard a block away. But Dylan had already spotted Anna. He ran to her, still yelling incoherently, circled his arms around her hips and twirled her into the air. Startled and the smallest bit scared, Anna pushed her hands across Dylan’s chest, forcing him to put her down. But he didn’t remove his arms.
“Dylan, wha—”
“I sold the pictures!” Dylan gasped, his lack of breath finally catching up to him. “I sold those pictures to that pervy mag and,” he gasped again, “the graphics editor called. He loved them! He handed them off,” Dylan wheezed for a second, but shook his head when Anna offered him some water, “to another editor who wants more! He wants,” Dylan coughed, “he wants you to do some modeling for them! He wants you to come in next week for a fitting. A thousand bucks!” Dylan looked down at her with a smile that practically took up the entire restaurant. But his joy began to turn to worry as Anna continued to stare dumbly at him. “Anna, didja hear me?”
Anna didn’t say anything.
“Honey?” Mabel said as she walked up to the pair, putting her hand on Anna’s shoulder.
“A … a th-thousand dollars?”
Dylan’s face relaxed and the joy returned. “Yes! A thousand dollars. More if they want you back again after that.”
But Anna couldn’t think that far ahead yet. “A thousand dollars? As in, dollars?!”
“Yes, yes!” Dylan laughed. “It’ll take a few days, at least one for fitting and another day or two for shooting, but yes! A thousand dollars.”
“I … I …”
“Git her over to the table, now!” Mabel ordered, and Dylan, like the rest of the staff in the dining room, rushed to obey, leading Liz to the nearest empty table so she could sit down.
“Water!”
“I … can’t. I can’t do it.”
“What?!” Dylan screeched.
“Anna, what?” Cynthia asked with astonishment.
“I can’t do it. It was supposed to be a one-time thing.”
“Anna, darling,” Dylan chuckled, “I don’t think you heard me. A thousand dollars!”
“I tell you, I can’t do it!” Anna insisted excitedly.
“A’right, everybody calm down,” Mabel ordered. “Dylan, sit down and eat something, boy. Get some meat on those bones. Cynthia, you and me’re gonna take Anna upstairs. Now.”
No one thought of disobeying her orders for an instant.
“I can’t do it,” Anna kept mumbling as Cynthia and Mabel helped her up the stairs. “I don’t want to do it.”
“That’s fine, honey, just don’t faint again,” Mabel told her.
That was Mabel, ever the voice of reason and common sense.
Anna was near panic. A thousand dollars … maybe more. She could go to a doctor again, make sure everything was all right with the baby. But what if somebody else saw hands glowing through her stomach? Anna might not know much about having babies, but she was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to see glowing hands. If somebody else saw, she’d have to explain it. And if she couldn’t explain it, then something might happen to her. To her baby. And she couldn’t let anything happen to her baby.
“I can’t do it,” she said again after Mabel sat down next to her on the sofa in the apartment upstairs, the one that usually doubled as a resting place for some of the employees on the night shifts.
“No one’s saying you have to, honey. All you have to do right now is drink this,” Mabel instructed her, holding a glass of water that Cynthia had fetched to her lips. Liz drank as instructed. “Good. Now, honey, you know you can’t get all upset like that. It’s not good for the baby. Dylan shouldn’ta behaved that way. You feelin’ better now?”
Anna nodded. “Yes, I’m all right.”
“Good. Why don’t you rest up for a while? You can finish your shift later.” Anna started to object, but Mabel wouldn’t hear of anything else. “It ain’t like I don’t know where to find you when I need ya.” With a smile, she ushered Cynthia back downstairs. “And honey,” Anna turned to look at Mabel as she stood at the top of the stairs, “remember. Breath.”
Anna took her time to relax. She sat on the couch a long time, staring into space and thinking. Now and then the sound of customers laughing loudly, of dishes clanging in the kitchen, of Mabel’s deep contralto drifted up to her. She looked around at the living room. A pile of sheets, used by whoever had slept on the pull-out couch the night before, sat in a corner near the stairs. She looked through the door to the bathroom and stared at the cupboard under the sink, where, nestled in among the cleaning supplies and extra rolls of toilet paper, a box of individually wrapped toothbrushes sat. Was this the sort of place that would be good for a baby? At least one of the diner employees slept here each week, usually closer to one a night. More on the weekends. Having a screaming baby in the next room while they were trying to sleep wouldn’t exactly be good for morale.
On the other hand, where could she go? Even if she took the money, Anna had quickly realized that even a thousand bucks didn’t last too long. She bought only necessities for herself, spent almost nothing on food since she worked so much at the diner, and had saved up nearly seven hundred dollars after paying back Mabel for the clothes and shoes. But that was already changing with her pregnancy. She’d started to look at cribs, strollers, blankets, bottles, clothes, and maybe a monitor for when she was downstairs. Seven hundred dollars was barely going to cover all that. Seventeen hundred dollars, though, might be enough to find a place somewhere. A studio, maybe.
But was that wise? After all, Anna didn’t really know anything about taking care of a baby, and something told her maternal instinct would only take her so far. She’d meant to go to the library and borrow some books, but she’d been running ragged at the diner lately, and then was spending an awful lot of time looking in the mirror searching for glowing hands. The library had sort of fallen off her list of Things To Do. Living above the diner would give her plenty of experienced mothers to learn from. Many of the other waitresses in the diner had kids who could advise her. And if she ever did anything wrong, Mabel would undoubtedly let her know it. Not to mention she’d be guaranteed a babysitter any time she needed it.
But would it be fair to leech off of their kindness like that? All the waitresses had their own jobs and their own kids to take care of. It wouldn’t be right to use her co-workers as sitters like that. It wasn’t exactly in their job description. And they had their own kids to take care of.
Plus, would it really be a good idea to have other people looking after her baby all the time? Anna knew only one thing for certain, and that was that the baby she carried inside of her wasn’t exactly normal. That didn’t change her feelings for her child; in fact, it only made her love the baby even more. She knew that she was all this baby had to protect it against the world, against people who would want to hurt her baby. And there would be people, she knew. Monsters, more like. Anna would be responsible for making sure that no one knew, that no one ever suspected, that her baby might not be normal. And since she was already experiencing glowing hands and the baby hadn’t even been born yet, that might not be an easy task.
But all this was in the future. The problem she had to deal with now was, whether she should pose for these pictures. In God knew what.
Unconsciously Anna ran her hand over her tummy. Her baby was healthy, she could tell, and resting. Anna nodded. Rest sounded like a very good idea. Slowly she walked back to her soft, warm bed. She curled onto one side and pulled her legs up and drifted into sleep in the fetal position.
Inside her belly, her baby fell asleep in exactly the same position.
~*~*~
TBC
The Butterfly Loss (ML Adult) Ch. 29 10Nov.08 [WIP]
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LairaBehr4
- Addicted Roswellian
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LairaBehr4
- Addicted Roswellian
- Posts: 227
- Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 3:48 pm
- Location: Reading over Katydid's shoulder.
- Contact:
Re: The Butterfly Loss (ML Adult) AN p.4 8Oct
I'm sorry, did somebody say "update"?
My thanks to all the people who left feedback that I lost when this story was sent to D&B. I really apologize. I'll spare you guys the drama of what my life's been like the last several months, but suffice it to say, .... she's baaaa-aaaaaaaack!
Thanks to:
Uw51
Maxandlizforever
Christyevansbehr
Katydid and her never-ceasing ... shall we call it "encouragement"?
Morning Dreamgirl - ditto the above.
Destinyc
Dreamerfrvrp3
Starcrazed
Cocogurl
Wench on a Leash
Hazz
RiceKrispy
AvalonRose - I like your avie.
Cereth
Et al.
And here we go.
The Butterfly Loss
Chapter Twenty-nine – Darkest Before the Dawn
Isn’t she lovely?
Isn’t she wonderful?
Isn’t she precious?
Less than one minute old.
I never thought
True love would be
Making one as lovely as she,
But isn’t she lovely?
Made from love.
- Stevie Wonder, Isn’t She Lovely
August 11, 2001 – three months later
Thump, thump.
“Max! Wake up, honey,” his mom called. Max squeezed his eyes shut and pretended not to have heard. It was Saturday and he wanted to sleep, damn it. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.
~*~*~
Downstairs, Isabel said to her mother as she walked back into the kitchen, “Mom, it’s Saturday. Let him sleep in.”
“All he ever does is sleep in. He falls asleep at eight thirty at night and sleeps until noon. It’s not healthy. And school will be starting soon. He won’t be able to do this in a few more weeks,” she shook her head.
“Maybe it’s just what he needs to do, though,” Isabel shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant as she bit into her toast and jam.
She wasn’t about to tell her mother why Max was really sleeping. She didn’t know herself, not with 100% certainty, but she was willing to bet that it had something to do with Liz’s death, and with the way that, ever since that party at the soap factory, Tess had been hanging all over Max. Sitting next to him when they hung out together, at the Crashdown, at the movies. Sharing the food from his plate. Showing up wherever he went. Bringing him small tokens of affection, from a new wallet to new T-shirts, to food.
And drink.
And Isabel couldn’t help but notice that, whenever Max consumed the drinks that Tess gave him, he just wasn’t the same.
And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
“I just wish he’d take a bit of interest in life again. It’s been months now. I know that he...,” Diane paused for a moment, trying to think of how to say what she wanted to say, “that he was very, very close to Liz, and that he misses her still. But I just feel like he’s wasting his own life. He’s still alive. I just wish he’d act like it.”
“That sounds like you’re standing on the precipice of a Pandora’s Box, Mom,” Isabel said.
“Why do you say that?”
Isabel looked at her mother in complete seriousness. “You know as well as I do, Mom. Max doesn’t do things by halves.”
*~*~*
All he wanted was a chance to be alone. Truly alone. No people from the small town, recognizing him, staring at him before turning away in whispers. No family members who couldn’t decide whether to smother him or let him be, but always kept a watchful eye on him. No Brody, who only stopped suspecting him long enough to feel sorry for him.
And no friends, who meant well, but ended up hurting more than they helped.
He snuck back onto the West Roswell campus after dark. It wasn’t hard, with a little help of some alien powers. Without really thinking, or feeling, he walked to the middle of the football field and lied down in the slightly damp grass. He stared up at the sky and tried not to think.
He tried not to think about whether there was a heaven, and if Liz might be there. He tried to concentrate instead on the moisture seeping into his skin through his shirt, which collected the water from the grass. He tried to concentrate on the sensation of the cold against his back. Not on what he knew was true. That there wasn’t a heaven in the clouds. There were just other planets, and on some of those planets, other life. Lives where other people died. It seemed to him that the entire universe, all of existence through all of the solar systems, were all connected through grief all commonly felt but not knowingly shared.
But he was trying not to think about that.
He didn’t even realize someone else was there until he heard footsteps approaching from only a few feet away. He didn’t turn his head. He knew enough to know that if it was anybody trying to chase him off, they wouldn’t have been so quiet. No, he had a very good idea of who it was. And while she wasn’t particularly someone he wanted to see, he was too grateful for the distraction to turn her away.
Tess lay down near him, with their head together, but her feet facing the opposite direction. For several minutes she didn’t say anything, but finally she spoke. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
It was true, but he didn’t want to talk about that. “I’ve been sick.”
“We don’t get sick,” she gently reminded him.
She didn’t need to remind him. He knew they didn’t get sick. He just didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to think about how he’d ... he’d shared something with her, something that had previously only belonged to a woman whom Tess couldn’t even compare to. He wasn’t sure how it had started, or why. He wasn’t sure why he kept going back to her. But the truth was that hanging out with Tess – drinking with Tess, fucking Tess – was the only time he could really forget about the things that tormented him at night. It was the only time he truly achieved his goal of not thinking. For some reason the drinking and the fucking made him feel numb. And feeling numb was the only way he didn’t feel pain.
“Tess?” he asked softly.
“Yes?” she responded in a similarly dulcet tone.
“Do you have ...?”
She didn’t answer. Just handed him a paper bag. When he reached out for it, he felt the shape of the glass bottle through the bag.
He didn’t question. He just took a long, therapeutic swig. He let the liquor burn the roof of his mouth, the narrow tunnel of his throat, and slowly invade his system. And he tried not to think about what the consequences might be.
~*~*~
August 12, 2001
Anna was large as a tent. And she felt twice the size that she was. At her last doctor’s appointment at the clinic, she’d weighed in at 130 pounds, which might not sound like very much, but considering she’d barely crossed into triple digits at her first physical, it felt like a helluva lot to her.
Her back hurt. Her chest hurt. Her skin felt tight and stretched and itchy. She hadn’t seen her feet in months. She tried to wiggle her toes once in a while, but it was just too much effort.
Anna looked around at her new apartment and sighed. Not for the first time, she thought that perhaps she should have stayed in the little flat above the diner, at least until after the baby was born. But she could not risk such exposure. She knew that her baby would not be as normal babies were, and that if she was too casual with her safety, with her baby’s, it might mean unspoken horrors for them both. And that she would not risk. But now she was here in this apartment, far from Mabel and her safe, warm hands and confident, commanding voice; far from Thom’s ever-cool head; far from her old co-workers and friends. Her modelling career, if it could be called that, had taken off quite well, and Anna was more embarrassed than she could say that pictures of her pregnant body were clammored for by smut magazines all over Los Angeles. She spent no small amount of time worrying that the pictures might appear somewhere over the internet, and so, upon Mabel’s advice, she had found an agent, who now boggled her down with contracts and negotiations that she could hardly understand; but they included clauses for airbrushing and disguising parts of her body and face, so as hopefully to make her beyond recognition should it occur. The contracts also included a clause which made the publishers responsible for the distribution and a lot of other jargon which Sybill, Anna’s agent, explained meant that should any of her photographs appear on the net, the publishers would have to pay Anna directly a hefty fine of $200,000, and $25,000 more for every day over three days that the image remained online.
Since signing with Sybill, Anna’s paychecks had more than tripled, and she also began to earn commissions based on the number of photographs sold, and the sales of the publications. Even with her ten percent, and setting aside money for taxes and savings, she was now able to afford her own apartment in Santa Monica, close to the ocean and near the pier. It had only one bedroom but a rather large kitchen and living room area, making it not a bad space at all. She was afraid to get a driver’s license, and instead used taxis or private card to travel between studios and photo shoots. She still worked with Dylan often – it was he who had recommended Sybill to her – and he and some friends, along with Thom and one of the other short-order cooks, had moved her things into this apartment only two weeks earlier, with Mabel sitting on a chair she had procured from nowhere shouting orders to them of where to put boxes or how to assemble the furniture or organize the apartment. Anna, in her heavily pregnant condition, had been all but forbidden from the entire endeavour, short of signing the lease.
Mabel’s generosity continued still; not only in coordinating Anna’s move but also in her house-warming gift, which was the queen-sized bed Anna now slept in. It was an elegent bedframe, with a head and footboard and postered legs, and the mattress and box spring were soft and inviting. Anna had spent very little money on herself, saving her prenatal vitamins and check-ups and what maternity clothes were necessary, and instead had funnelled most of her income – again, besides her savings – on items for her baby, including little dresses and shoes for baby girls. Mabel had remarked on her buying these things, since Anna had not asked the clinic to tell her the sex of her baby, but what Mabel did not know was that Anna didn’t need a nurse or doctor to tell her the sex. She already knew she carried a little girl.
That little girl was, at this moment, causing Anna no small amount of discomfort, as she had been for the past hour. Nothing seemed to appease the unborn infant for long, and just when Anna would think that the baby was calm, the pains would begin again. They were not unbearable, but they were rather constant.
Tossing over again, Anna looked at the clock. It was now past 3:30 in the morning. Luckily she had no appointments tomorrow, but that didn’t make a good night’s sleep any less precious to her. Especially in her condition.
Anna turned onto her side, curled her legs up and closed her eyes. Sleep came quickly, but it did not stay, and at 2:52 in the morning she woke up again, this time moaning from the pain. Concern pricked her mind for a second, but sleep quickly carried it away again.
Until 3:14, when she woke up again, this time with pains worse than those before. As it washed away, Anna’s eyes grew wide with realization and no small amount of fright. She was in labor.
Her palms gripped around the sheets as her mind scrambled for control. She was early, she was unprepared. She was unsure of what to do. She would do this alone; she had to, she knew, not only because of the time of the morning but also because she must, no matter the danger to herself, protect her child more than anything else. The glowing hands that had appeared earlier in her pregnancy had not been the least strange thing she’d experienced in the past months. Her child was not normal, would never be normal, and Anna could not endanger her child by seeing medical attention, in case anything should go amiss. She’d die first.
Thinking as quickly as she could, she stood up, slowly and sorely, and walked to the kitchen. There she found the largest pot she could, filled it with water, and turned it on the stove. Then she went to the linen and storage closet and pulled out a few clean sheets and towels. Another bout of pain hit her suddenly; she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, gripping her back until the pain subsided. She managed to soak the towels in the boiling water, and then took them and the dry sheets back to the bedroom and tried to set up a delivery room as properly as she could. She stacked up pillows to support her back, put the dry sheets off to one side, and kept the wet towels nearby where she could reach for them easily. Then she laid back and waited, clock in eyesight, for the pain to come again.
She wasn’t disappointed. Contractions came quickly, and then more quickly, and each time they lasted longer and longer. Anna felt as if she were being torn into two. The pain was near unbearable, but at least, somehow, she knew, she instinctively knew beyond any doubt, beyond any maternal instinct, but deeper, in her real connection to her baby, she knew that there was nothing wrong. Her baby was alive, and strong, and wasn’t in danger. There was blood, but not inordinate amounts. There was pain, but nothing that seemed more than what was normal. She and her baby were safe. And that was what was important to her.
Minutes seemed to stretch into hours, and the hours into days. Anna had to wipe the sweat from her own brow, had to check her dilation as best she could on her own. And above all, she had to stop herself from crying out with pain. Santa Monica was by no means deserted in the hot summer months, and if anyone heard her screams and called to inquire, or called the building super or the police, all her careful work would be ruined.
She hadn’t even realized until this minute that this had been her plan all along.
By the time the sky had turned a pinkish-orange, Anna’s contractions were right on top of each other, her lip was bleeding and her pillowcase bore her teethmarks. Tears were mixing with her sweat, and she marvelled how women throughout history, through all of time, had endured this excruciating pain. Gritting her teeth so hard she thought they’d crack against each other, she summoned strength from a source she didn’t know she had and opened her mouth in a silent scream.
She moaned heavily trying to catch her breath. But suddenly her cries weren’t the only ones in the room. The head was out, and her baby, her daughter, was alive and breathing. It took only one last push before Anna felt her belly empty completely for the first time in months. The pain seemed to ebb away like the tide; she knew the worst was over and that all was well, and she forced herself up onto her knees and got her first look at her daughter.
She cried, but not too loudly. She squished up her face, but not too much. She waved her arms and legs around, but as soon as Anna took her into her arms and wrapped her in the clean sheets, she settled down and became calm, gurgling in happiness as Anna felt the warmth seep through her skin.
Anna wiped away the bits of placenta and fluid from her baby girl’s head just as the sunshine began to shine over the rooftops of the neighboring houses. Through the dawning light Anna saw that her daughter had a patch of dark, soft fuzz at the top of her head, matching dark eyebrows, offset by olive skin, and hazel eyes that seemed to be a blend of sea green and bright amber.
Phoebe Marquez had joined the human race.
~*~*~
In Roswell, where the sky was still changing from pitch black to deep violet, Max bolted upright in his bed. He was covered in sweat; he was gasping in pain. His eyes were watering with tears.
He was gasping. He felt as if all the air had suddenly left him.
“Max?” Tess rolled over to face him. “What’s wrong?”
Max couldn’t answer her. He just stared into space, at nothing.
The pain seemed to come from nowhere, and, eventually, it seemed to return to nowhere as well. Exhausted from the physical ache unlike any he’d ever known, as well as from being disturbed from his rest, he laid back down again as soon as he felt himself able to, ignoring his tangled instincts and instead letting sleep claim him again.
TBC
My thanks to all the people who left feedback that I lost when this story was sent to D&B. I really apologize. I'll spare you guys the drama of what my life's been like the last several months, but suffice it to say, .... she's baaaa-aaaaaaaack!
Thanks to:
Uw51
Maxandlizforever
Christyevansbehr
Katydid and her never-ceasing ... shall we call it "encouragement"?
Morning Dreamgirl - ditto the above.
Destinyc
Dreamerfrvrp3
Starcrazed
Cocogurl
Wench on a Leash
Hazz
RiceKrispy
AvalonRose - I like your avie.
Cereth
Et al.
And here we go.
The Butterfly Loss
Chapter Twenty-nine – Darkest Before the Dawn
Isn’t she lovely?
Isn’t she wonderful?
Isn’t she precious?
Less than one minute old.
I never thought
True love would be
Making one as lovely as she,
But isn’t she lovely?
Made from love.
- Stevie Wonder, Isn’t She Lovely
August 11, 2001 – three months later
Thump, thump.
“Max! Wake up, honey,” his mom called. Max squeezed his eyes shut and pretended not to have heard. It was Saturday and he wanted to sleep, damn it. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.
~*~*~
Downstairs, Isabel said to her mother as she walked back into the kitchen, “Mom, it’s Saturday. Let him sleep in.”
“All he ever does is sleep in. He falls asleep at eight thirty at night and sleeps until noon. It’s not healthy. And school will be starting soon. He won’t be able to do this in a few more weeks,” she shook her head.
“Maybe it’s just what he needs to do, though,” Isabel shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant as she bit into her toast and jam.
She wasn’t about to tell her mother why Max was really sleeping. She didn’t know herself, not with 100% certainty, but she was willing to bet that it had something to do with Liz’s death, and with the way that, ever since that party at the soap factory, Tess had been hanging all over Max. Sitting next to him when they hung out together, at the Crashdown, at the movies. Sharing the food from his plate. Showing up wherever he went. Bringing him small tokens of affection, from a new wallet to new T-shirts, to food.
And drink.
And Isabel couldn’t help but notice that, whenever Max consumed the drinks that Tess gave him, he just wasn’t the same.
And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
“I just wish he’d take a bit of interest in life again. It’s been months now. I know that he...,” Diane paused for a moment, trying to think of how to say what she wanted to say, “that he was very, very close to Liz, and that he misses her still. But I just feel like he’s wasting his own life. He’s still alive. I just wish he’d act like it.”
“That sounds like you’re standing on the precipice of a Pandora’s Box, Mom,” Isabel said.
“Why do you say that?”
Isabel looked at her mother in complete seriousness. “You know as well as I do, Mom. Max doesn’t do things by halves.”
*~*~*
All he wanted was a chance to be alone. Truly alone. No people from the small town, recognizing him, staring at him before turning away in whispers. No family members who couldn’t decide whether to smother him or let him be, but always kept a watchful eye on him. No Brody, who only stopped suspecting him long enough to feel sorry for him.
And no friends, who meant well, but ended up hurting more than they helped.
He snuck back onto the West Roswell campus after dark. It wasn’t hard, with a little help of some alien powers. Without really thinking, or feeling, he walked to the middle of the football field and lied down in the slightly damp grass. He stared up at the sky and tried not to think.
He tried not to think about whether there was a heaven, and if Liz might be there. He tried to concentrate instead on the moisture seeping into his skin through his shirt, which collected the water from the grass. He tried to concentrate on the sensation of the cold against his back. Not on what he knew was true. That there wasn’t a heaven in the clouds. There were just other planets, and on some of those planets, other life. Lives where other people died. It seemed to him that the entire universe, all of existence through all of the solar systems, were all connected through grief all commonly felt but not knowingly shared.
But he was trying not to think about that.
He didn’t even realize someone else was there until he heard footsteps approaching from only a few feet away. He didn’t turn his head. He knew enough to know that if it was anybody trying to chase him off, they wouldn’t have been so quiet. No, he had a very good idea of who it was. And while she wasn’t particularly someone he wanted to see, he was too grateful for the distraction to turn her away.
Tess lay down near him, with their head together, but her feet facing the opposite direction. For several minutes she didn’t say anything, but finally she spoke. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
It was true, but he didn’t want to talk about that. “I’ve been sick.”
“We don’t get sick,” she gently reminded him.
She didn’t need to remind him. He knew they didn’t get sick. He just didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to think about how he’d ... he’d shared something with her, something that had previously only belonged to a woman whom Tess couldn’t even compare to. He wasn’t sure how it had started, or why. He wasn’t sure why he kept going back to her. But the truth was that hanging out with Tess – drinking with Tess, fucking Tess – was the only time he could really forget about the things that tormented him at night. It was the only time he truly achieved his goal of not thinking. For some reason the drinking and the fucking made him feel numb. And feeling numb was the only way he didn’t feel pain.
“Tess?” he asked softly.
“Yes?” she responded in a similarly dulcet tone.
“Do you have ...?”
She didn’t answer. Just handed him a paper bag. When he reached out for it, he felt the shape of the glass bottle through the bag.
He didn’t question. He just took a long, therapeutic swig. He let the liquor burn the roof of his mouth, the narrow tunnel of his throat, and slowly invade his system. And he tried not to think about what the consequences might be.
~*~*~
August 12, 2001
Anna was large as a tent. And she felt twice the size that she was. At her last doctor’s appointment at the clinic, she’d weighed in at 130 pounds, which might not sound like very much, but considering she’d barely crossed into triple digits at her first physical, it felt like a helluva lot to her.
Her back hurt. Her chest hurt. Her skin felt tight and stretched and itchy. She hadn’t seen her feet in months. She tried to wiggle her toes once in a while, but it was just too much effort.
Anna looked around at her new apartment and sighed. Not for the first time, she thought that perhaps she should have stayed in the little flat above the diner, at least until after the baby was born. But she could not risk such exposure. She knew that her baby would not be as normal babies were, and that if she was too casual with her safety, with her baby’s, it might mean unspoken horrors for them both. And that she would not risk. But now she was here in this apartment, far from Mabel and her safe, warm hands and confident, commanding voice; far from Thom’s ever-cool head; far from her old co-workers and friends. Her modelling career, if it could be called that, had taken off quite well, and Anna was more embarrassed than she could say that pictures of her pregnant body were clammored for by smut magazines all over Los Angeles. She spent no small amount of time worrying that the pictures might appear somewhere over the internet, and so, upon Mabel’s advice, she had found an agent, who now boggled her down with contracts and negotiations that she could hardly understand; but they included clauses for airbrushing and disguising parts of her body and face, so as hopefully to make her beyond recognition should it occur. The contracts also included a clause which made the publishers responsible for the distribution and a lot of other jargon which Sybill, Anna’s agent, explained meant that should any of her photographs appear on the net, the publishers would have to pay Anna directly a hefty fine of $200,000, and $25,000 more for every day over three days that the image remained online.
Since signing with Sybill, Anna’s paychecks had more than tripled, and she also began to earn commissions based on the number of photographs sold, and the sales of the publications. Even with her ten percent, and setting aside money for taxes and savings, she was now able to afford her own apartment in Santa Monica, close to the ocean and near the pier. It had only one bedroom but a rather large kitchen and living room area, making it not a bad space at all. She was afraid to get a driver’s license, and instead used taxis or private card to travel between studios and photo shoots. She still worked with Dylan often – it was he who had recommended Sybill to her – and he and some friends, along with Thom and one of the other short-order cooks, had moved her things into this apartment only two weeks earlier, with Mabel sitting on a chair she had procured from nowhere shouting orders to them of where to put boxes or how to assemble the furniture or organize the apartment. Anna, in her heavily pregnant condition, had been all but forbidden from the entire endeavour, short of signing the lease.
Mabel’s generosity continued still; not only in coordinating Anna’s move but also in her house-warming gift, which was the queen-sized bed Anna now slept in. It was an elegent bedframe, with a head and footboard and postered legs, and the mattress and box spring were soft and inviting. Anna had spent very little money on herself, saving her prenatal vitamins and check-ups and what maternity clothes were necessary, and instead had funnelled most of her income – again, besides her savings – on items for her baby, including little dresses and shoes for baby girls. Mabel had remarked on her buying these things, since Anna had not asked the clinic to tell her the sex of her baby, but what Mabel did not know was that Anna didn’t need a nurse or doctor to tell her the sex. She already knew she carried a little girl.
That little girl was, at this moment, causing Anna no small amount of discomfort, as she had been for the past hour. Nothing seemed to appease the unborn infant for long, and just when Anna would think that the baby was calm, the pains would begin again. They were not unbearable, but they were rather constant.
Tossing over again, Anna looked at the clock. It was now past 3:30 in the morning. Luckily she had no appointments tomorrow, but that didn’t make a good night’s sleep any less precious to her. Especially in her condition.
Anna turned onto her side, curled her legs up and closed her eyes. Sleep came quickly, but it did not stay, and at 2:52 in the morning she woke up again, this time moaning from the pain. Concern pricked her mind for a second, but sleep quickly carried it away again.
Until 3:14, when she woke up again, this time with pains worse than those before. As it washed away, Anna’s eyes grew wide with realization and no small amount of fright. She was in labor.
Her palms gripped around the sheets as her mind scrambled for control. She was early, she was unprepared. She was unsure of what to do. She would do this alone; she had to, she knew, not only because of the time of the morning but also because she must, no matter the danger to herself, protect her child more than anything else. The glowing hands that had appeared earlier in her pregnancy had not been the least strange thing she’d experienced in the past months. Her child was not normal, would never be normal, and Anna could not endanger her child by seeing medical attention, in case anything should go amiss. She’d die first.
Thinking as quickly as she could, she stood up, slowly and sorely, and walked to the kitchen. There she found the largest pot she could, filled it with water, and turned it on the stove. Then she went to the linen and storage closet and pulled out a few clean sheets and towels. Another bout of pain hit her suddenly; she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, gripping her back until the pain subsided. She managed to soak the towels in the boiling water, and then took them and the dry sheets back to the bedroom and tried to set up a delivery room as properly as she could. She stacked up pillows to support her back, put the dry sheets off to one side, and kept the wet towels nearby where she could reach for them easily. Then she laid back and waited, clock in eyesight, for the pain to come again.
She wasn’t disappointed. Contractions came quickly, and then more quickly, and each time they lasted longer and longer. Anna felt as if she were being torn into two. The pain was near unbearable, but at least, somehow, she knew, she instinctively knew beyond any doubt, beyond any maternal instinct, but deeper, in her real connection to her baby, she knew that there was nothing wrong. Her baby was alive, and strong, and wasn’t in danger. There was blood, but not inordinate amounts. There was pain, but nothing that seemed more than what was normal. She and her baby were safe. And that was what was important to her.
Minutes seemed to stretch into hours, and the hours into days. Anna had to wipe the sweat from her own brow, had to check her dilation as best she could on her own. And above all, she had to stop herself from crying out with pain. Santa Monica was by no means deserted in the hot summer months, and if anyone heard her screams and called to inquire, or called the building super or the police, all her careful work would be ruined.
She hadn’t even realized until this minute that this had been her plan all along.
By the time the sky had turned a pinkish-orange, Anna’s contractions were right on top of each other, her lip was bleeding and her pillowcase bore her teethmarks. Tears were mixing with her sweat, and she marvelled how women throughout history, through all of time, had endured this excruciating pain. Gritting her teeth so hard she thought they’d crack against each other, she summoned strength from a source she didn’t know she had and opened her mouth in a silent scream.
She moaned heavily trying to catch her breath. But suddenly her cries weren’t the only ones in the room. The head was out, and her baby, her daughter, was alive and breathing. It took only one last push before Anna felt her belly empty completely for the first time in months. The pain seemed to ebb away like the tide; she knew the worst was over and that all was well, and she forced herself up onto her knees and got her first look at her daughter.
She cried, but not too loudly. She squished up her face, but not too much. She waved her arms and legs around, but as soon as Anna took her into her arms and wrapped her in the clean sheets, she settled down and became calm, gurgling in happiness as Anna felt the warmth seep through her skin.
Anna wiped away the bits of placenta and fluid from her baby girl’s head just as the sunshine began to shine over the rooftops of the neighboring houses. Through the dawning light Anna saw that her daughter had a patch of dark, soft fuzz at the top of her head, matching dark eyebrows, offset by olive skin, and hazel eyes that seemed to be a blend of sea green and bright amber.
Phoebe Marquez had joined the human race.
~*~*~
In Roswell, where the sky was still changing from pitch black to deep violet, Max bolted upright in his bed. He was covered in sweat; he was gasping in pain. His eyes were watering with tears.
He was gasping. He felt as if all the air had suddenly left him.
“Max?” Tess rolled over to face him. “What’s wrong?”
Max couldn’t answer her. He just stared into space, at nothing.
The pain seemed to come from nowhere, and, eventually, it seemed to return to nowhere as well. Exhausted from the physical ache unlike any he’d ever known, as well as from being disturbed from his rest, he laid back down again as soon as he felt himself able to, ignoring his tangled instincts and instead letting sleep claim him again.
TBC
Last edited by LairaBehr4 on Mon Nov 10, 2008 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.