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Title: Et Tu 10b/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laguera25
Fandom(s): CSI:NY/Numb3rs
Pairing: Flack/OFC
Rating: FRM
SPOILERS: CSI:NY S1-S403; HP to Book 6; Numb3rs S1-S3.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events herein are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part Xa
Diana was over the moon after that. She redoubled her practice and her demands for a new dress. Your ma eventually relented since Diana rarely begged for anything except books to read. She took her to Bergdorf's and bought her a tailored navy blouse and skirt combo. She drew the line on new shoes. Told Diana she could make do with her Church shoes or go without a dress. It didn't take Diana long to make her choice, and she came home and preened in front of the mirror.
She told anybody who'd listen that her daddy was comin' to see her play-the mailman, the pizza delivery guy, the crossing guard, her teachers, and her piano teachers. Especially Gert Rabinowicz. Gert was probably the first person she told.
Daddy's comin' to see me play, Daddy's comin' to see me play, she'd sing as she skipped through the house and around the sofa. It was the same song and the same route through the house every day, and after it was all over, you wondered if she hadn't been tryin' to weave a protective web of magic, to petition whatever childhood gods she believed in for grace and the appearance of her father at the appointed hour.
The day of the recital, she came straight home after school and threw herself into preparations for her big moment. She bathed and washed her hair and fussed at your ma to braid it just so. She was irritable and frenetic, and she said things that would've earned her a reprimand and a smack in the mouth, but your ma, sensing how important this was for her, let it go with nothing more than a stern warning tug on her plait and a clipped Diana Elizabeth when she pushed too hard.
Your old man had promised to be there at six so that he could escort Diana on the twenty-minute walk to the school, but by ten after, he was still nowhere to be found, and your mother was castin' worried, knowin' glances at the phone.
Mommy, where's Daddy? He said he'd be here, Diana asked.
Your ma offered a fragile smile and smoothed imaginary creases from Diana's dress. Don't worry, honey. I'm sure he'll be here. He's probably just late, that's all.
But twenty after came and went, and there was neither your old man nor a call explaining his absence. Your ma knew then, you think, because her eyes were misty and sad, and she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders the way she always did when she was getting ready to stiff-neck it through what she called a rough patch. She knew that your father had pissed on a promise to his only daughter, but she was determined to let Diana hope a little longer.
Come on, honey, she said. Let's start walking. Daddy will catch up on the way. You don't want to be late.
But Daddy-, Diana began, and stopped. She studied your mother's face, searchin', perhaps, for a truth her bones already knew. Her shoulders, which had been so straight and proud throughout her breathless preparations, sagged. Okay, Mommy. She took your mother's proffered hand, took a last, forlorn, dismally hopeful look around the livin' room as though she expected to see her father hidin' behind the end table, and allowed herself to be led from the house.
The twenty-minute walk to the school took twenty-five because Diana kept stoppin' in the middle of the sidewalk to scan the passing crowds for signs of your father-his square jaw, the flash of his blue eyes, his confident stride, the conspiratorial wink of his badge at his hip-but the only badges she saw belonged to the pair of beat cops on routine footpatrol. Her head turned to track their progress, and her lips twitched with the unasked question, Have you seen my father? It reminded you of that story you read as a squirt, the one about the baby chick who asks the dog if he's his mother. Diana might've asked, too, if your ma hadn't tugged her into the crosswalk.
She balked once she got to the school, stood on the front steps with her chin tremblin' and refused to go in. The truth your ma had known since six o'clock had come and gone had finally sunk in for her, and she was heartbroken.
I don't wanna go, Mommy, she said. Not without Daddy.
Your ma hugged her and smoothed her hair. Don't be silly, sweetheart. You've been talking about this for weeks, and you look so pretty in your dress. Besides, I want to see you play.
But Diana didn't care. She dug in her heels and shook her head. I don't wanna. I can't. Can we please just go home?
Diana Elizabeth. Your ma's voice was firm now, and she pulled away. I know you're disappointed, but that's enough. Your brother and I are here, and we want to see you play. You told Mrs. Todecky and Mrs. Rabinowicz that you were going to play tonight, and you're going to. A Flack keeps their promises. Do you understand?
Pop sure as shit didn't keep his promise, you thought, but the bravado of twenty-two was still eleven years in the future, so you kept your mouth shut and pretended the sour expression on your face was the result of your dress shoes pinchin' your feet. And anyway, Diana did it for you a minute later.
Daddy promised he'd be here, and he's not, she pointed out.
She got exactly what you expected. Your ma fetched her a stingin' slap across the face.
Ma-, you started, dismayed, but got no further. You were too shocked to say anything else because she'd never hit either one of you in the face before. On the ass, sure. She was fond of sayin' asses had been created expressly for that purpose, but never the face. Hell, your old man, the family disciplinarian, had never hit you in the face, either, though that'd change the night your sister died and a few days later, when he slapped you over and over again in the car on the way home from getting photographed at the precinct. He slapped you plenty, then, slapped until your head bounced off the passenger window. But that was your father, who thrived on his anger, not your mother, who kissed the wounds and healed them with her mother's magic.
She looked as shocked as you felt, frozen on the steps with her hand still hovering in the air. She stared at the imprint of her hand as it rose to the surface of Diana's skin, a Polaroid exposed to the light. She curled her fingers as though they pained her, and her mouth worked. She reached out as though to retrace the evidence of her loss of control, but drew back at the last instant and let her hand fall to her side.
That's enough, Diana, she said dully even though Diana hadn't made a peep since the unexpected slap. Your father has a very important job. If he's not here, I'm sure he had a good reason. Now let's go inside.
Diana trudged inside without further resistance, face set and unreadable as she moved through the halls in search of the cramped, dilapidated auditorium cum concert hall. She sniffled periodically and swiped irritably at the saline itch of a tear as it dangled from the tip of her nose, but she didn't whimper or mewl or blubber. Maybe she knew that it wouldn't do any good, or maybe she was tired and savin' the energy she had left for her performance. She didn't look at you or your mother again.
Mrs. Todecky was in the auditorium, chivvying her charges to the small room behind the stage where they'd wait their turn. She offered your ma a harried smile as Familia Flack approached.
Hello, Mrs. Flack. How wonderful to see you. Hello, Diana. You look so pretty tonight, she said to the top of your sister's head. Diana was starin' fixedly at the shine of her patent leather shoes.
Diana looked up. Hello, Mrs. Todecky. I'm glad you like my dress. But she looked anything but glad. She looked thoroughly miserable. My Mom bought it special for me, so I could be pretty at the piano.
I'm sure you will be, dear, Mrs. Todecky assured her. Her smile faltered when she caught sight of the red mark on Diana's cheek. Are you all right, dear?
A half-hearted, one-shouldered shrug. My Daddy's not coming anymore. She tugged on the end of her plait and brought it to her mouth like she was gonna chew on it. May I go to the grey room now?
The green room, Mrs. Todecky corrected gently.
Oh. But it's grey, Diana said stubbornly.
Mrs. Todecky opened her mouth to reply, clearly flustered, but before she could say anything, a couple with three small children in tow arrived, the smallest child a baby in a swaddle swing that hung from her mother's chest like a deformed breast. You can go, Diana, Todecky said, struggling to maintain her smile in the face of the howling toddler onslaught.
Diana disappeared into the stream of arrivals before your ma could stop her and threaded her way to the front of the auditorium, where she slipped from sight behind an ugly, grey curtain.
She didn't emerge from behind it for nearly an hour and a half, and in the interim, you watched the auditorium fill with parents and siblings press-ganged into service on behalf of their performing counterparts. You watched a fat kid your age pick his nose and surreptitiously wipe the results of his expedition underneath the cold, metal seat. You watched a put-upon older sister bravely endure the burden of her younger sibling's ambition with a mighty roll of her eyes. And from her seat to your right, you heard your mother mutter, I'd give the both of you brats a hearty dose of reality.
And through it all, you looked for your father. You turned in your seat in the second row and scanned the sea of incomin' faces, hopin' against hope. You knew it wasn't likely; you'd learned the hard and fast truth of havin' Don Flack, Sr. as a father before you made it out of kindergarten, and you'd long since learned not to ask him for anything more than his name and his genes. It was easiest if you just pretended he was dead when he didn't turn up to your Little League games. That way, you could pretend that it wasn't because he didn't give a shit.
You were surprised that Diana hadn't learned the same lesson by now. Then again, Diana'd never had much reason to ask him for anything before now. She hadn't been into T-ball or peewee soccer or ballet. She'd been content to come home from school and read her books. Piano was her first childhood fever, the first time she understood that she was different from you, was somethin' infinitely more complex and wonderful than a copy of her parents. She hadn't learned about Pop yet because it hadn't needed to be taught, and sittin' in that stuffy auditorium, dressed in your church best and squirming against the hard bite of the folding chair and the ruthless pinch of dress shoes getting too small for your feet, you wanted it to be put off a while longer.
Maybe it would be. There was still time for him to turn up. Surely, he'd come, slippin' between the rows and edgin' past parents with camcorders who'd give him the pissface until they saw the glint of copper and tin on his hip. He'd slide into the seat your ma had saved and mutter a gruff excuse about some douchebag rapist who'd needed getting off the streets. Then he'd ruffle your hair and slide his arm and your ma and turn his attention to the stage, and when Diana tinkled the ivories and took her bow, he'd clap hard enough to shake the rafters. He would come for her even if he wouldn't come for you because the rules were different. They had to be because Diana was a girl, and the first lesson your old man had taught you was that boys never, ever hurt girls. So he would come, because if he didn't, he'd be a dirty, rotten liar and an asshole.
So, you watched and waited, started at every shadow that flickered and loomed on the bunched, grey curtain on either side of the stage, but the first performance became the second and then the third, and by the time the fourth act took the stage-a tubby Asian kid doin' his best Barry Manilow with a sedated version of "Chopsticks", you gave up on a miracle. Diana was next, and your father's seat remained steadfastly, implacably empty.
Tubby took his leave with a gravity-defying bow that threatened to send him topplin' headlong off the stage with his sheet music clutched in one pudgy hand like a failed parachute. Mrs. Todecky took his place, and after a brief introduction, Diana appeared onstage. She paused at the midpoint, pivoted with crisp precision, and bowed stiffly from the waist. So it was that she came to her first lesson.
She was lookin' for you, you see, lookin' for her family and the same miracle you'd hoped for. She saw your ma, who gave her an encouragin' smile, and you, who scowled and fidgeted with your starched collar and wriggled your underwear out of the crack of your ass. And she saw your father's empty chair, holdin' nothin' but the flimsy paper program for the recital. Her brows knitted in confusion, and her mouth worked, and for one horrible, heart-poundin' moment, you thought she was gonna burst into tears before she ever made it to the piano. She was pinched and gut-punched, and when her eyes met yours for the briefest instant, they were glassy and wounded. Then she straightened on a deep breath, brushed her plait behind her squared shoulder, and marched to the piano.
She took the bench with pained grace, as if her joints pained her, and carefully arranged her sheet music in front of her. Then she brushed her plait aside again and stretched her long fingers. She scanned the sheet, pursed her lips in concentration, and set her feet on the pedals and her fingers on the keys. Another glance at the music, and then she began to play.
The music was hardly transcendent; let's face it: it might've been of a higher caliber than Tubby Manilow and his sentimental version of "Chopsticks", but it was still "Frere Jacques", and in your head, you heard your father laughin' and tellin' Diana that he didn't want her playin' "Frere Jack Off" 'til she was older, and maybe not even then. It was Diana who held you in thrall, and to this day, you wish you could unsee it all, just unspool that thread from the tapestry of your life and pretend it never happened, because you know now that you were bearin' witness to a breakdown.
Diana's fingers glided over the keys, guided by muscle memory and long hours of practice on that plastic keyboard, but her body was rigid, shoulders set and feet jerking gracelessly on the pedals. Her eyes were distant and blank, too bright in the glare of the lone spotlight that shone on her like a pitiless, silver sun. They looked thin, cracked veneers on a dead wooden face, and the longer you looked, the surer you became that they were eventually gonna pop out of her head and roll across the warped, wooden stage like painted ball bearin's. You tried not to look, but it felt too much like a second treachery, and you found yourself compelled to watch her tinkle and jerk and look into the artificial sun with her painted glass eyes.
She was a puppet on that stage, a little marionette girl in her big-girl dress and Sunday Mary Janes, worked by invisible, inexpert hands. You thought that if you looked underneath her skirt, you'd see wooden joins in place of flesh and bone. Ma had made a mistake, and the real Diana was still and home, sittin' patiently on the sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles and her sheet music in her hand. She was still at home, wonderin' why she'd been left behind on one of the biggest nights of her life. She wasn't here, marchin' to the dirge she played with her own hands and hidin' deep hurts behind lifeless eyes that made your bladder shrivel and throb and your spit turn to sand inside your mouth.
The song finally ended, and you were so relieved that you let out a sigh that was perilously close to a sob. That prompted a sharp, searchin' look from your ma and an appearance of her magical, temperature-takin' hand, but you were anythin' but feverish. You were cold, frozen and huddled in your seat. The hand retreated, receded into the darkness like a serpent delivered of its venom, and you almost moaned.
On the stage, your sister slid from the bench and moved to take her bow, and you had to cram a knuckle in your mouth to keep from screamin'. She jerked and scissored across the stage, and beneath the surging white noise of applause was the furtive clack of wooden joints and the creak of catgut strings. As she drew closer to the bleary, silver sun of the spotlight, you swore you could see the faint outline of a jaw hinge.
My sister's a Muppet, you thought in incredulous stupefaction. Somebody turned her into Miss Piggy. Ribbit. You giggled and earned a cuff to the back of the head from your ma, who thought you were bein' a smartass and laughin' at your sister.
Diana stepped onto center stage, and you held your breath, sure that the trick would be revealed at last. Your sister was a little marionette girl, and when the light struck her just so, you'd see the strings that moved her drifting into the rafters like wisps of smoke. Either that, or the inexperienced puppet master, weary from his ambitious game, would falter and send her teeterin' over the edge to land in a heap of strings and sticks and clothes. You expected her to curtsey, shins bowed at an impossible angle and index fingers pointed heavenwards to reveal their master's secret hidin' place, but all she did was bow at the waist and spring upright again. She shuffled offstage on the ebb of the applause, and the curtain closed.
After the last buddin' Mozart had left the stage, the lights came up and scores of parents blundered toward the green room in search of their children, blinkin' and stumblin' in the sudden brightness. You jostled your way to the head of the throng, usin' your skinny build and sharp elbows to your advantage, and when you entered the green room, Diana was slouched on a bench furthest from the door. She didn't look up when you came in or when you called her name. Instead, she swung her feet to and fro and watched her toes scrape the bare concrete floor. Back. Blink. Forth. Back. Blink. Forth. Her sheet music lay scattered beside her on the bench, and a wayward sheet slithered to the floor.
You dropped your music, Di, you told her.
Back. Blink. Forth. Back. Blink. Forth.
You better pick it up before somebody steps on it.
Back. Blink. Forth.
She's crazy, said the tubby Asian kid. She don't talk.
You were tempted to introduce his lips to his teeth courtesy of a Flack five-knuckle special, but other parents had begun to arrive, bringing their chatter and their cameras and camcorders, and so you ignored him and focused on your sister instead. She was smaller than ever now that the room had begun to swell with strangers, and you were seized with an instinctive urge to protect her.
You bent and picked up her sheet music from the floor. Here you go, you said, and held the piece of paper out to her.
Nothin'. Not even a twitch, and your belly filled with lead as you watched her small feet swing. Back. Blink. Forth.
The Hanged Man, you thought nonsensically, and in your mind's eye, you recalled a hangin' scene from some spaghetti western you'd seen as a runt. The sheriff and his posse had rounded up a wife-killin' desperado and hung him from the branch of a birch on the outskirts of town. The wind was high when they strung him up, and after the villain had shuddered and jerked his last, the wind swung his body on the breeze. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. And the branch of the old birch creaked in companionable time, like the runners of an old rockin' chair. And the sheriff's posse sat astride their horses and watched him swing with impassive, taxidermists' eyes.
Diana? you said tentatively. You didn't dare touch her. You were afraid that when you did, her head would fall off and roll into the middle of the room, where it would watch the ensuing panic with milkglass eyes. You turned to her scattered sheet music instead, began gatherin' it and stackin' the haphazard, haggard pages in a tidy pile. You should keep your music neat. Pop would have a cow if he saw this mess.
Diana muttered somethin' unintelligible in reply, but at least it wasn't the tinklin', musical twitter of a music-box ballerina singin' "Chopsticks" in her tiny, wind-up voice. If it had been, you might'a snapped and joined her in the silent club of Move along; there's nothin' to see here. Your ma might'a come into the green room and found you both swingin' your feet from the bench and watchin' your toes scrape the floor.
I liked your music. It was real good. In truth, you couldn't remember a single note she'd played. You were too busy imaginin' her as a little marionette girl with painted-on eyes and a hinged mouth and strings on the ends of her fingers and toes, but you couldn't say that. She'd think you were gaga, and besides, you didn't want to hurt her feelin's.
It didn't matter anyway; she never said boo, and a minute later, your ma swept into the room, all reprimands for you and smiles for your sister.
Donald Flack, Jr., she scolded, you know better than to run ahead of me. Before you could muster the obligatory, Yes, Ma. Sorry, Ma, she'd turned to your sister and enfolded her in a hug. There's my girl, she said proudly. You did so well tonight. You were wonderful, sweetheart.
Diana returned the hug, but her movements were ungainly, and you thought of wooden arms and wooden legs.
Let me take your picture, sweetheart, your ma said, and pulled her blocky, brick-and-dick camera from her handbag. Diana never made a peep while she was bein' posed and primped and shuffled an inch to the left and three inches to the right. She was the perfect little doll, all blank eyes and boneless limbs, but she was hard when you put your arm around her. It was like touchin' a mannequin, and that close, you thought you could see the seam of her hinged jaw, etched into her face by an imprecise chisel. It made your belly crawl, and you wondered why your ma couldn't see it, couldn't see everythin' that was missin' from your sister.
She never did, though. She just kept snappin' pictures, chattierin' away and stoppin' periodically to rearrange your sister, who moved obediently but without enthusiasm, pale and sickly in the strobe of the flash. The flash washed her out, made her look old and used up at nine, and given how little time she had left-just five years-maybe it was only tellin' the truth. Flash has a way of doin' that, tellin' truths that are buried beneath the skin. It exposed yours well enough when the forensic tech photographed your naked ass the day after she died in that house. If you need to remember how well, you can retrieve the evidence box from the top shelf of the bedroom closet(the one Rebecca can't reach or even see well; you'll use her weakness against her if it'll keep that secret safe, bastard that you are)and thumb through the photos. Your pinched, white face and bruised, watery eyes. The ugly blossom of your father's hand on your face. The cold, pallor of your fingers as they cradled the fleshy, purple-pink heaviness of your balls. You can revisit that power any time you please. Maybe that brick-and-dick camera was takin' pictures of a ghost.
You'll never know because your ma never developed the pictures, not after what happened. Or maybe she did, and you just never knew it. Maybe she brought them home from the developer's, took one look, and tossed the whole sleeve into the oven. You never saw them in any photo album, even before the purge, when all traces of Diana were excised from the familial records on your father's orders. You can't blame her. You've spent the past eighteen years buryin' those images as deep as they'll go.
The flash was still poppin' merrily when Mrs. Rabinowicz appeared, dressed in her Social Security best, white hair piled into a downy chignon at the back of her head and a thick, homemade shawl around her bony shoulders. She was dressed in black, with square-toed matron's shoes on her feet. Silver gleamed on her blue-veined fingers and wattled throat. She smelled of talc and menthol and the faint, yellowing dignity of old woman.
She rubbed your back with her stiff, cool hand and smiled warmly at your sister. Hello, Diana, dear, she said in her nasally, Bronx voice.
It was a measure of your sister's respect for her that Diana straightened and met the old woman's gaze. 'Lo, Mrs. Rabin'wicz.
The old woman patted Diana's cheek and brushed a stray hair from her shoulder. You were lovely tonight, dear. Very nice, clear tone. You must've worked very hard on your pedaling.
Diana shrugged. I practiced some with Mrs. Todecky, but it's kinda hard, 'cause all I gots at home is a plastic keyboard.
'Got', your ma corrected, absently strokin' your sister's hair.
Well, you did very well. Mrs. Todecky should be very proud. I see you brought your family. She smiled briefly at your mother. Then she craned and scanned the room. Where is your handsome father? I know you were so excited for him to be here.
A sharp intake of breath, and Diana's mouth worked. It opened and closed, and then she grimaced as though she'd swallowed somethin' bitter. Her hands fisted and drew up to protect her stomach from an unseen blow. She dropped her gaze to the floor and Mrs. Rabinowicz' clodhoppers.
He didn't come, she informed the floor. He had important things to do. The subtle emphasis on important was as grave and final as the tollin' of a bell.
Oh, honey, your ma began, and now it was her turn to look wan and gut-punched. Tears filled her eyes, and she reached for your sister, but her hand was full of Minolta plastic, so it looked like she was tryin' to pass the camera.
And then your sister crumpled, felled by the slow-workin' poison in that word your ma had so carelessly tossed out as a rebuke. She wilted to her haunches, and then she sat down hard on the dirty, concrete floor, and that jolted the first sob from her. It was a leviathan sound from such a tiny, bird-bone chest, and it rose up from her toes on an ever-upward spiral of the human register. It was guttural and shrill and choked with a dozen sounds, each fightin' to become a word.
The din of conversation and the whirr of clicking shutters died instantly, smothered by her inarticulate roar of disappointment and premature understanding of the world's cruelty. Other children watched her in avid incomprehension, shocked by the outburst but titillated by the entertainment it promised. Parents watched more warily but with no less curiosity. You could see the anecdotes and savory bits of water cooler and break room gossip crystallize even as they instinctively herded their gawkin' kids toward the center of a protective circle. Your mother moved toward your howlin' sister, but Mrs. Rabinowicz was closer and faster. She dropped into a crouch in front of your sister with astonishin' agility.
Oh, now, she crooned, and wrapped her arms around Diana, who promptly buried her wet, red face in her shawl. Oh, now. Oh, oh, now.
Your sister cried her guts out on that stupid, bare floor, oblivious to the stares of the other kids and their parents and to the outstretched arms of your mother, whose face was contorted with anguish and mottled with guilt, and to Mrs. Todecky, who was hurryin' toward her, face stamped with solicitous dismay. You've never forgotten Diana's face or the strangled sounds she was makin'. They were the sounds of defeat, of the end and no mas. Your sister had begun and concluded her education concerning the priorities of Don Flack, Sr. in one fell swoop, and the awareness of her position at the end of the line was more than her nine-year-old soul could stand. She was drowin' in knowledge come too hard and too soon, and no hand could reach low enough to pull her out. Only Mrs. Rabinowicz, with her homemade shawl and her thin arms and her grandmother's empathy, kept her from goin' under right there in the grimy grey room of P.S. 109. You could only watch.
There are other things you remember from that godawful night-the delirious, drunken walk home with Familia Flack lurchin' and staggerin' down the sidewalk like refugees from a hostage crisis; your mother kneelin' on that dirty sidewalk in her nylons, beggin' Diana to eat her ice cream bar in a shrill, hysterical voice, as though that damn Neopolitan would be cold and sweet enough to numb the pain of disappointment; the heavy, dead thud of Diana's footsteps as she trudged upstairs to her room. Five years later, she'd tumble down another set of stairs with the same terrible, ponderous finality; Diana's sweat-soaked body as she cowered against yours in the throes of night terrors you thought she'd left in toddlerhood. She'd been feverish and rabbity inside her nightclothes, twistin' and shiverin' and moanin', all bony elbows and clutchin' fingers and silver-dollar eyes in the dark; the cuttin' blade of your mother's anger as she berated your father, a hatchet that split the thin walls of your house and scraped your ears red and raw with confusion and lead-bellied shame; your father's silence, blunt in the face of her anger; the sight of him sittin' on the edge of your sister's bed, hands interlaced loosely between his bare knees. He was hunched and loomin' dressed in his undershirt and watchin' you with silver-dollar eyes of his own; the tracks of his tears on his cheeks; the thought that drifted through your sleep-fogged mind as you watched him reach for her, smoky and venomous as moonlight on ripplin' water: I got her. I got her. We don't need you; the shameful, forbidden urge that accompanied the thought, the longin' to snap and snarl and bite off his reachin' fingers at the knuckles.
These snapshots of bitter memory are all recorded and preserved in your internal photo album, warped and yellow with years and dusty with the desire to forget, but the expression on your sister's face and the quality of her sobs remains the most vivid, a high-quality color print among the gallery of sepias and monochromes. It refuses to fade or curl and brown at the edges, and you swore-swore on her tears and before this miserable tribute to her wasted life-that you'd never become that man, never became the monster who shattered the hearts of those who loved them and crept back to them under cover of darkness to offer apologies and silver tears they'd never hear or see.
Well, the joke's on you, ain't it, kid?
He blinks, and with the reflexive shutter-click of his eyelids, he sees Diana's face, framed by the hood of her red sweatshirt and staring at him in wounded incredulity as he'd cast his lethal spell and banished her to the land of Never-Was in a fit of rage and thwarted libido. Another blink, and Rebecca takes her place, suppressing her hurt and betrayal with a stream of useless chatter and a white-knuckled grip on the padded rims of her wheels. She's older than Diana was at the time of her education, and she hadn't cried as fiercely, but the expression is the same, lost and shell-shocked, a child carried to the deep, dark heart of the forest and left there without so much as a breadcrumb to point the way home. He'd never meant to hurt either of them, had promised to love and protect them. In the end, he'd failed them both. One slept beneath the earth and returned to him only in the strange, mapless weaverwold of dreams and aching memory. The other had taken flight with the silent rush of wings and might never return to him.
"I messed up bad," he tells Diana again, and draws his knees to his chest. "I hurt her so bad. She made excuses for me and said it was okay, just like Ma used to do for Pop, but Rebecca, she tells me the truth even when she doesn't mean to. I saw some papers she left behind when I went lookin' for her. It's not okay. It's not fuckin' okay at all, and I don't-I don't know what to do."
"What d'you want to do?"
He gives a short bark of laughter. "I want to get on a plane and go after her, turn up on her doorstep with an armful of flowers and a mouthful of apologies. I want to hold her and tell her I'm sorry and never meant for it to be this way, you know? 'Cause I didn't. I don't. Christ. I just-I just want her to stop lookin' at me like-,"
"Like?" Diana folds a lean, fourteen-year-old leg closer to her body. She is a gentle but merciless inquisitor.
"Like she knows she's at the end of the line," he finishes. He goes quiet for a minute and gently rocks, chin propped on his knees. "She's not. She's not, Di. I swore to myself when I married her that I'd never let that happen, not with her. We were gonna be different. We weren't gonna be like-,"
"Mom and Daddy?" Diana finishes for him.
He can only nod. After a pause, he adds, "Well, more like him and us. I guess him and Ma have it pretty good, being married thirty-four years and all."
They held it together longer than I'm probably gonna.
Diana considers him for a moment. "Then go to her," she says at last.
"You think I wouldn't if I could?" he counters. "It isn't that simple, Di."
"Yes, it is."
"The hell it is. Maybe it would be if it were just me workin' undercover. I could slip the assignment and take the heat, get busted back to beat cop, do my time on the traffic circuit, and get my shield back in three years. I'd ride that out for her in a heartbeat. But it's not just me on this thing. I got a partner to look out for. If I ditch the assignment, and it goes bad and Maddox gets hurt or dies, that's on me. My head. And I can't live with that. How could I live with tellin' her parents that their daughter died because I was chasin' my wife to California?"
Diana rolls her eyes. "Dramatic much, Donnie? Do you really think that anything like that is gonna happen?" She toys with a page of her book, folds the corner and smoothes it again.
"Naw, I don't. Odds are, this case'll tread water until the next score, and the only casualties will be bruised egos and a couple of missing Cartier necklaces and Tiffany brooches. Fu-the only reason I'm on the job now is because Sinclair was targeted. He sighs. "But I can't take that chance, however small."
He laughs, a bitter strangled sound. "I swore. Swore I was never gonna be like him. I was so damn sure. Yet here I fuckin' am, just a chip off the old block. Maybe I'm worse. They say every generation is worse than the last these days, and I don't remember Pop ever chuckin' us out on the street. Jesus fuck."
He swipes at his eyes with the meaty palm of his hand. He knows how crazy he must look, huddled beside a grave and holding a one-sided conversation with a slab of white granite. If he could see himself, he'd be tempted to run himself in to Bellevue for observation, but this is all he has, the only place he can come to spill the secrets that shame him, the confessions that would make Rebecca turn from him in disgust and Stella gaze at him with pity. Even here, shame nettles him. He tears his gaze from his sister's so that she won't see the tears that scald and simmer in the corners of his eyes.
"You could quit," Diana offers pragmatically, and though she hasn't left the bed, her fingers graze his shoulder.
He's thought about it. After the Mc-AK shooting, he'd considered turning in his badge and taking a gig in private security. The pay was better, and the risk was lower. Instead of chasing child molesters and dope pushers through the city and wondering if his fingers were going to find an HIV-infected syringe the hard way in some skag's back pocket, he'd be baby-sitting debutantes and turning a blind eye to their perfectly catered drug orgies and gangbangs. He could work for six hours and make more money than he would pulling a double on the city's clock. He could work nights and weekends, and Rebecca wouldn't be so pinched and fretful when he left the apartment, hiding her fear behind idle chatter and lingering kisses.
But in the end, he couldn't do it. The idea of babysitting the rich and famous and cleaning up the human messes they left behind nauseated him. He was a cop. He helped the weak and the wounded and hunted the monsters who hunted them. He didn't guard the doors to privileged ivory towers and offer hush money to teenage rape victims so that their tragedy wouldn't ruin Junior D. Rockefeller, IV's chances of getting into Harvard. He might not be a saint, but neither was he a soulless bastard. So he'd buried the idea as quickly as it had come and never breathed a word of it to Rebecca, lest it inspire an impossible hope.
"I can't."
Diana shrugs. "Then what do you want from me?" Bewildered and tired, as though he's asked too much and offered too little in return. He probably has.
"Just…remind her that I'm here, I guess, that I still love her." He runs his fingers through his hair. "Rebecca has this thing where she retreats when she's hurt, hides until she feels safe again. Most of the time, it works for us, keeps us from saying things we can't take back later, but most of the time, it only lasts a few hours. A day at most. It's going on seventeen days, and I know it's my fault, but… The last time this happened was after I opened my big, fat, stupid mouth and told her she'd done enough damage after she accidentally put her hand on my bombed gut. That lasted nearly two months and nearly killed us. I don't think we can handle another patch like that. I know I can't."
As though to illustrate the point, his stomach burns and cramps, and he tastes blood in the back of his throat. He holds his breath and kneads the rough wattle of scar tissue over his right hip until the pain recedes. He swallows the blood and exhales. Another twinge, and the threat passes, but he knows it will return.
"It's not like Casper, you know, being a ghost. I can't just beam down to California and rattle the walls until she gets the message. I'm not even sure I could write your name on a foggy mirror."
"I know. I know. I just-,"
Cool fingers caress his temple and cheek, and unseen lips skim the warm flesh of his cheek.
"I'll see what I can do. No promises, okay?"
He lets out a shuddering breath. It's enough, more than he has any right to ask for. "Thanks, Di." He rises and brushes blades of grass from the seat of his jeans. "I gotta go, but I love you, you know?"
There's no answer. Diana and her book are gone, though he can see their faint outline, etched on the canvas of his mind, a Shroud of Turin that traces the face of the departed divine. His fingers itch to touch it, but he knows it will disappear the moment he does. So he caresses her name instead, lets his fingers flow over the inscription on her headstone.
"I miss you," he says.
No voice issues from the earth, but her rosary shifts beneath his shirt, suddenly snug against his heart. It's unexpectedly warm, as though recently handled, perhaps held in a small hand and lifted to absently nibbling lips. He smiles and blinks back tears, and then he turns on his heel and leaves while he still has the strength.
The grass rustles and crunches beneath his feet as he heads for the car and the suit and tie waiting for him in the trunk. His badge grows heavy on his belt, and in the sky, the sun continues its ascent and grows hot.
There is no more sanctuary, no more respite, no more time to lick his wounds or mourn his choices. The day and the rest of him belong to the city, and so he goes, without a whisper or a complaint. He knows neither will do him good, and in the back of his mind and at the bottom of his broken, guilty heart, he hopes Rebecca is proud of him.
Author:
laguera25Fandom(s): CSI:NY/Numb3rs
Pairing: Flack/OFC
Rating: FRM
SPOILERS: CSI:NY S1-S403; HP to Book 6; Numb3rs S1-S3.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events herein are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part Xa
Diana was over the moon after that. She redoubled her practice and her demands for a new dress. Your ma eventually relented since Diana rarely begged for anything except books to read. She took her to Bergdorf's and bought her a tailored navy blouse and skirt combo. She drew the line on new shoes. Told Diana she could make do with her Church shoes or go without a dress. It didn't take Diana long to make her choice, and she came home and preened in front of the mirror.
She told anybody who'd listen that her daddy was comin' to see her play-the mailman, the pizza delivery guy, the crossing guard, her teachers, and her piano teachers. Especially Gert Rabinowicz. Gert was probably the first person she told.
Daddy's comin' to see me play, Daddy's comin' to see me play, she'd sing as she skipped through the house and around the sofa. It was the same song and the same route through the house every day, and after it was all over, you wondered if she hadn't been tryin' to weave a protective web of magic, to petition whatever childhood gods she believed in for grace and the appearance of her father at the appointed hour.
The day of the recital, she came straight home after school and threw herself into preparations for her big moment. She bathed and washed her hair and fussed at your ma to braid it just so. She was irritable and frenetic, and she said things that would've earned her a reprimand and a smack in the mouth, but your ma, sensing how important this was for her, let it go with nothing more than a stern warning tug on her plait and a clipped Diana Elizabeth when she pushed too hard.
Your old man had promised to be there at six so that he could escort Diana on the twenty-minute walk to the school, but by ten after, he was still nowhere to be found, and your mother was castin' worried, knowin' glances at the phone.
Mommy, where's Daddy? He said he'd be here, Diana asked.
Your ma offered a fragile smile and smoothed imaginary creases from Diana's dress. Don't worry, honey. I'm sure he'll be here. He's probably just late, that's all.
But twenty after came and went, and there was neither your old man nor a call explaining his absence. Your ma knew then, you think, because her eyes were misty and sad, and she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders the way she always did when she was getting ready to stiff-neck it through what she called a rough patch. She knew that your father had pissed on a promise to his only daughter, but she was determined to let Diana hope a little longer.
Come on, honey, she said. Let's start walking. Daddy will catch up on the way. You don't want to be late.
But Daddy-, Diana began, and stopped. She studied your mother's face, searchin', perhaps, for a truth her bones already knew. Her shoulders, which had been so straight and proud throughout her breathless preparations, sagged. Okay, Mommy. She took your mother's proffered hand, took a last, forlorn, dismally hopeful look around the livin' room as though she expected to see her father hidin' behind the end table, and allowed herself to be led from the house.
The twenty-minute walk to the school took twenty-five because Diana kept stoppin' in the middle of the sidewalk to scan the passing crowds for signs of your father-his square jaw, the flash of his blue eyes, his confident stride, the conspiratorial wink of his badge at his hip-but the only badges she saw belonged to the pair of beat cops on routine footpatrol. Her head turned to track their progress, and her lips twitched with the unasked question, Have you seen my father? It reminded you of that story you read as a squirt, the one about the baby chick who asks the dog if he's his mother. Diana might've asked, too, if your ma hadn't tugged her into the crosswalk.
She balked once she got to the school, stood on the front steps with her chin tremblin' and refused to go in. The truth your ma had known since six o'clock had come and gone had finally sunk in for her, and she was heartbroken.
I don't wanna go, Mommy, she said. Not without Daddy.
Your ma hugged her and smoothed her hair. Don't be silly, sweetheart. You've been talking about this for weeks, and you look so pretty in your dress. Besides, I want to see you play.
But Diana didn't care. She dug in her heels and shook her head. I don't wanna. I can't. Can we please just go home?
Diana Elizabeth. Your ma's voice was firm now, and she pulled away. I know you're disappointed, but that's enough. Your brother and I are here, and we want to see you play. You told Mrs. Todecky and Mrs. Rabinowicz that you were going to play tonight, and you're going to. A Flack keeps their promises. Do you understand?
Pop sure as shit didn't keep his promise, you thought, but the bravado of twenty-two was still eleven years in the future, so you kept your mouth shut and pretended the sour expression on your face was the result of your dress shoes pinchin' your feet. And anyway, Diana did it for you a minute later.
Daddy promised he'd be here, and he's not, she pointed out.
She got exactly what you expected. Your ma fetched her a stingin' slap across the face.
Ma-, you started, dismayed, but got no further. You were too shocked to say anything else because she'd never hit either one of you in the face before. On the ass, sure. She was fond of sayin' asses had been created expressly for that purpose, but never the face. Hell, your old man, the family disciplinarian, had never hit you in the face, either, though that'd change the night your sister died and a few days later, when he slapped you over and over again in the car on the way home from getting photographed at the precinct. He slapped you plenty, then, slapped until your head bounced off the passenger window. But that was your father, who thrived on his anger, not your mother, who kissed the wounds and healed them with her mother's magic.
She looked as shocked as you felt, frozen on the steps with her hand still hovering in the air. She stared at the imprint of her hand as it rose to the surface of Diana's skin, a Polaroid exposed to the light. She curled her fingers as though they pained her, and her mouth worked. She reached out as though to retrace the evidence of her loss of control, but drew back at the last instant and let her hand fall to her side.
That's enough, Diana, she said dully even though Diana hadn't made a peep since the unexpected slap. Your father has a very important job. If he's not here, I'm sure he had a good reason. Now let's go inside.
Diana trudged inside without further resistance, face set and unreadable as she moved through the halls in search of the cramped, dilapidated auditorium cum concert hall. She sniffled periodically and swiped irritably at the saline itch of a tear as it dangled from the tip of her nose, but she didn't whimper or mewl or blubber. Maybe she knew that it wouldn't do any good, or maybe she was tired and savin' the energy she had left for her performance. She didn't look at you or your mother again.
Mrs. Todecky was in the auditorium, chivvying her charges to the small room behind the stage where they'd wait their turn. She offered your ma a harried smile as Familia Flack approached.
Hello, Mrs. Flack. How wonderful to see you. Hello, Diana. You look so pretty tonight, she said to the top of your sister's head. Diana was starin' fixedly at the shine of her patent leather shoes.
Diana looked up. Hello, Mrs. Todecky. I'm glad you like my dress. But she looked anything but glad. She looked thoroughly miserable. My Mom bought it special for me, so I could be pretty at the piano.
I'm sure you will be, dear, Mrs. Todecky assured her. Her smile faltered when she caught sight of the red mark on Diana's cheek. Are you all right, dear?
A half-hearted, one-shouldered shrug. My Daddy's not coming anymore. She tugged on the end of her plait and brought it to her mouth like she was gonna chew on it. May I go to the grey room now?
The green room, Mrs. Todecky corrected gently.
Oh. But it's grey, Diana said stubbornly.
Mrs. Todecky opened her mouth to reply, clearly flustered, but before she could say anything, a couple with three small children in tow arrived, the smallest child a baby in a swaddle swing that hung from her mother's chest like a deformed breast. You can go, Diana, Todecky said, struggling to maintain her smile in the face of the howling toddler onslaught.
Diana disappeared into the stream of arrivals before your ma could stop her and threaded her way to the front of the auditorium, where she slipped from sight behind an ugly, grey curtain.
She didn't emerge from behind it for nearly an hour and a half, and in the interim, you watched the auditorium fill with parents and siblings press-ganged into service on behalf of their performing counterparts. You watched a fat kid your age pick his nose and surreptitiously wipe the results of his expedition underneath the cold, metal seat. You watched a put-upon older sister bravely endure the burden of her younger sibling's ambition with a mighty roll of her eyes. And from her seat to your right, you heard your mother mutter, I'd give the both of you brats a hearty dose of reality.
And through it all, you looked for your father. You turned in your seat in the second row and scanned the sea of incomin' faces, hopin' against hope. You knew it wasn't likely; you'd learned the hard and fast truth of havin' Don Flack, Sr. as a father before you made it out of kindergarten, and you'd long since learned not to ask him for anything more than his name and his genes. It was easiest if you just pretended he was dead when he didn't turn up to your Little League games. That way, you could pretend that it wasn't because he didn't give a shit.
You were surprised that Diana hadn't learned the same lesson by now. Then again, Diana'd never had much reason to ask him for anything before now. She hadn't been into T-ball or peewee soccer or ballet. She'd been content to come home from school and read her books. Piano was her first childhood fever, the first time she understood that she was different from you, was somethin' infinitely more complex and wonderful than a copy of her parents. She hadn't learned about Pop yet because it hadn't needed to be taught, and sittin' in that stuffy auditorium, dressed in your church best and squirming against the hard bite of the folding chair and the ruthless pinch of dress shoes getting too small for your feet, you wanted it to be put off a while longer.
Maybe it would be. There was still time for him to turn up. Surely, he'd come, slippin' between the rows and edgin' past parents with camcorders who'd give him the pissface until they saw the glint of copper and tin on his hip. He'd slide into the seat your ma had saved and mutter a gruff excuse about some douchebag rapist who'd needed getting off the streets. Then he'd ruffle your hair and slide his arm and your ma and turn his attention to the stage, and when Diana tinkled the ivories and took her bow, he'd clap hard enough to shake the rafters. He would come for her even if he wouldn't come for you because the rules were different. They had to be because Diana was a girl, and the first lesson your old man had taught you was that boys never, ever hurt girls. So he would come, because if he didn't, he'd be a dirty, rotten liar and an asshole.
So, you watched and waited, started at every shadow that flickered and loomed on the bunched, grey curtain on either side of the stage, but the first performance became the second and then the third, and by the time the fourth act took the stage-a tubby Asian kid doin' his best Barry Manilow with a sedated version of "Chopsticks", you gave up on a miracle. Diana was next, and your father's seat remained steadfastly, implacably empty.
Tubby took his leave with a gravity-defying bow that threatened to send him topplin' headlong off the stage with his sheet music clutched in one pudgy hand like a failed parachute. Mrs. Todecky took his place, and after a brief introduction, Diana appeared onstage. She paused at the midpoint, pivoted with crisp precision, and bowed stiffly from the waist. So it was that she came to her first lesson.
She was lookin' for you, you see, lookin' for her family and the same miracle you'd hoped for. She saw your ma, who gave her an encouragin' smile, and you, who scowled and fidgeted with your starched collar and wriggled your underwear out of the crack of your ass. And she saw your father's empty chair, holdin' nothin' but the flimsy paper program for the recital. Her brows knitted in confusion, and her mouth worked, and for one horrible, heart-poundin' moment, you thought she was gonna burst into tears before she ever made it to the piano. She was pinched and gut-punched, and when her eyes met yours for the briefest instant, they were glassy and wounded. Then she straightened on a deep breath, brushed her plait behind her squared shoulder, and marched to the piano.
She took the bench with pained grace, as if her joints pained her, and carefully arranged her sheet music in front of her. Then she brushed her plait aside again and stretched her long fingers. She scanned the sheet, pursed her lips in concentration, and set her feet on the pedals and her fingers on the keys. Another glance at the music, and then she began to play.
The music was hardly transcendent; let's face it: it might've been of a higher caliber than Tubby Manilow and his sentimental version of "Chopsticks", but it was still "Frere Jacques", and in your head, you heard your father laughin' and tellin' Diana that he didn't want her playin' "Frere Jack Off" 'til she was older, and maybe not even then. It was Diana who held you in thrall, and to this day, you wish you could unsee it all, just unspool that thread from the tapestry of your life and pretend it never happened, because you know now that you were bearin' witness to a breakdown.
Diana's fingers glided over the keys, guided by muscle memory and long hours of practice on that plastic keyboard, but her body was rigid, shoulders set and feet jerking gracelessly on the pedals. Her eyes were distant and blank, too bright in the glare of the lone spotlight that shone on her like a pitiless, silver sun. They looked thin, cracked veneers on a dead wooden face, and the longer you looked, the surer you became that they were eventually gonna pop out of her head and roll across the warped, wooden stage like painted ball bearin's. You tried not to look, but it felt too much like a second treachery, and you found yourself compelled to watch her tinkle and jerk and look into the artificial sun with her painted glass eyes.
She was a puppet on that stage, a little marionette girl in her big-girl dress and Sunday Mary Janes, worked by invisible, inexpert hands. You thought that if you looked underneath her skirt, you'd see wooden joins in place of flesh and bone. Ma had made a mistake, and the real Diana was still and home, sittin' patiently on the sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles and her sheet music in her hand. She was still at home, wonderin' why she'd been left behind on one of the biggest nights of her life. She wasn't here, marchin' to the dirge she played with her own hands and hidin' deep hurts behind lifeless eyes that made your bladder shrivel and throb and your spit turn to sand inside your mouth.
The song finally ended, and you were so relieved that you let out a sigh that was perilously close to a sob. That prompted a sharp, searchin' look from your ma and an appearance of her magical, temperature-takin' hand, but you were anythin' but feverish. You were cold, frozen and huddled in your seat. The hand retreated, receded into the darkness like a serpent delivered of its venom, and you almost moaned.
On the stage, your sister slid from the bench and moved to take her bow, and you had to cram a knuckle in your mouth to keep from screamin'. She jerked and scissored across the stage, and beneath the surging white noise of applause was the furtive clack of wooden joints and the creak of catgut strings. As she drew closer to the bleary, silver sun of the spotlight, you swore you could see the faint outline of a jaw hinge.
My sister's a Muppet, you thought in incredulous stupefaction. Somebody turned her into Miss Piggy. Ribbit. You giggled and earned a cuff to the back of the head from your ma, who thought you were bein' a smartass and laughin' at your sister.
Diana stepped onto center stage, and you held your breath, sure that the trick would be revealed at last. Your sister was a little marionette girl, and when the light struck her just so, you'd see the strings that moved her drifting into the rafters like wisps of smoke. Either that, or the inexperienced puppet master, weary from his ambitious game, would falter and send her teeterin' over the edge to land in a heap of strings and sticks and clothes. You expected her to curtsey, shins bowed at an impossible angle and index fingers pointed heavenwards to reveal their master's secret hidin' place, but all she did was bow at the waist and spring upright again. She shuffled offstage on the ebb of the applause, and the curtain closed.
After the last buddin' Mozart had left the stage, the lights came up and scores of parents blundered toward the green room in search of their children, blinkin' and stumblin' in the sudden brightness. You jostled your way to the head of the throng, usin' your skinny build and sharp elbows to your advantage, and when you entered the green room, Diana was slouched on a bench furthest from the door. She didn't look up when you came in or when you called her name. Instead, she swung her feet to and fro and watched her toes scrape the bare concrete floor. Back. Blink. Forth. Back. Blink. Forth. Her sheet music lay scattered beside her on the bench, and a wayward sheet slithered to the floor.
You dropped your music, Di, you told her.
Back. Blink. Forth. Back. Blink. Forth.
You better pick it up before somebody steps on it.
Back. Blink. Forth.
She's crazy, said the tubby Asian kid. She don't talk.
You were tempted to introduce his lips to his teeth courtesy of a Flack five-knuckle special, but other parents had begun to arrive, bringing their chatter and their cameras and camcorders, and so you ignored him and focused on your sister instead. She was smaller than ever now that the room had begun to swell with strangers, and you were seized with an instinctive urge to protect her.
You bent and picked up her sheet music from the floor. Here you go, you said, and held the piece of paper out to her.
Nothin'. Not even a twitch, and your belly filled with lead as you watched her small feet swing. Back. Blink. Forth.
The Hanged Man, you thought nonsensically, and in your mind's eye, you recalled a hangin' scene from some spaghetti western you'd seen as a runt. The sheriff and his posse had rounded up a wife-killin' desperado and hung him from the branch of a birch on the outskirts of town. The wind was high when they strung him up, and after the villain had shuddered and jerked his last, the wind swung his body on the breeze. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. And the branch of the old birch creaked in companionable time, like the runners of an old rockin' chair. And the sheriff's posse sat astride their horses and watched him swing with impassive, taxidermists' eyes.
Diana? you said tentatively. You didn't dare touch her. You were afraid that when you did, her head would fall off and roll into the middle of the room, where it would watch the ensuing panic with milkglass eyes. You turned to her scattered sheet music instead, began gatherin' it and stackin' the haphazard, haggard pages in a tidy pile. You should keep your music neat. Pop would have a cow if he saw this mess.
Diana muttered somethin' unintelligible in reply, but at least it wasn't the tinklin', musical twitter of a music-box ballerina singin' "Chopsticks" in her tiny, wind-up voice. If it had been, you might'a snapped and joined her in the silent club of Move along; there's nothin' to see here. Your ma might'a come into the green room and found you both swingin' your feet from the bench and watchin' your toes scrape the floor.
I liked your music. It was real good. In truth, you couldn't remember a single note she'd played. You were too busy imaginin' her as a little marionette girl with painted-on eyes and a hinged mouth and strings on the ends of her fingers and toes, but you couldn't say that. She'd think you were gaga, and besides, you didn't want to hurt her feelin's.
It didn't matter anyway; she never said boo, and a minute later, your ma swept into the room, all reprimands for you and smiles for your sister.
Donald Flack, Jr., she scolded, you know better than to run ahead of me. Before you could muster the obligatory, Yes, Ma. Sorry, Ma, she'd turned to your sister and enfolded her in a hug. There's my girl, she said proudly. You did so well tonight. You were wonderful, sweetheart.
Diana returned the hug, but her movements were ungainly, and you thought of wooden arms and wooden legs.
Let me take your picture, sweetheart, your ma said, and pulled her blocky, brick-and-dick camera from her handbag. Diana never made a peep while she was bein' posed and primped and shuffled an inch to the left and three inches to the right. She was the perfect little doll, all blank eyes and boneless limbs, but she was hard when you put your arm around her. It was like touchin' a mannequin, and that close, you thought you could see the seam of her hinged jaw, etched into her face by an imprecise chisel. It made your belly crawl, and you wondered why your ma couldn't see it, couldn't see everythin' that was missin' from your sister.
She never did, though. She just kept snappin' pictures, chattierin' away and stoppin' periodically to rearrange your sister, who moved obediently but without enthusiasm, pale and sickly in the strobe of the flash. The flash washed her out, made her look old and used up at nine, and given how little time she had left-just five years-maybe it was only tellin' the truth. Flash has a way of doin' that, tellin' truths that are buried beneath the skin. It exposed yours well enough when the forensic tech photographed your naked ass the day after she died in that house. If you need to remember how well, you can retrieve the evidence box from the top shelf of the bedroom closet(the one Rebecca can't reach or even see well; you'll use her weakness against her if it'll keep that secret safe, bastard that you are)and thumb through the photos. Your pinched, white face and bruised, watery eyes. The ugly blossom of your father's hand on your face. The cold, pallor of your fingers as they cradled the fleshy, purple-pink heaviness of your balls. You can revisit that power any time you please. Maybe that brick-and-dick camera was takin' pictures of a ghost.
You'll never know because your ma never developed the pictures, not after what happened. Or maybe she did, and you just never knew it. Maybe she brought them home from the developer's, took one look, and tossed the whole sleeve into the oven. You never saw them in any photo album, even before the purge, when all traces of Diana were excised from the familial records on your father's orders. You can't blame her. You've spent the past eighteen years buryin' those images as deep as they'll go.
The flash was still poppin' merrily when Mrs. Rabinowicz appeared, dressed in her Social Security best, white hair piled into a downy chignon at the back of her head and a thick, homemade shawl around her bony shoulders. She was dressed in black, with square-toed matron's shoes on her feet. Silver gleamed on her blue-veined fingers and wattled throat. She smelled of talc and menthol and the faint, yellowing dignity of old woman.
She rubbed your back with her stiff, cool hand and smiled warmly at your sister. Hello, Diana, dear, she said in her nasally, Bronx voice.
It was a measure of your sister's respect for her that Diana straightened and met the old woman's gaze. 'Lo, Mrs. Rabin'wicz.
The old woman patted Diana's cheek and brushed a stray hair from her shoulder. You were lovely tonight, dear. Very nice, clear tone. You must've worked very hard on your pedaling.
Diana shrugged. I practiced some with Mrs. Todecky, but it's kinda hard, 'cause all I gots at home is a plastic keyboard.
'Got', your ma corrected, absently strokin' your sister's hair.
Well, you did very well. Mrs. Todecky should be very proud. I see you brought your family. She smiled briefly at your mother. Then she craned and scanned the room. Where is your handsome father? I know you were so excited for him to be here.
A sharp intake of breath, and Diana's mouth worked. It opened and closed, and then she grimaced as though she'd swallowed somethin' bitter. Her hands fisted and drew up to protect her stomach from an unseen blow. She dropped her gaze to the floor and Mrs. Rabinowicz' clodhoppers.
He didn't come, she informed the floor. He had important things to do. The subtle emphasis on important was as grave and final as the tollin' of a bell.
Oh, honey, your ma began, and now it was her turn to look wan and gut-punched. Tears filled her eyes, and she reached for your sister, but her hand was full of Minolta plastic, so it looked like she was tryin' to pass the camera.
And then your sister crumpled, felled by the slow-workin' poison in that word your ma had so carelessly tossed out as a rebuke. She wilted to her haunches, and then she sat down hard on the dirty, concrete floor, and that jolted the first sob from her. It was a leviathan sound from such a tiny, bird-bone chest, and it rose up from her toes on an ever-upward spiral of the human register. It was guttural and shrill and choked with a dozen sounds, each fightin' to become a word.
The din of conversation and the whirr of clicking shutters died instantly, smothered by her inarticulate roar of disappointment and premature understanding of the world's cruelty. Other children watched her in avid incomprehension, shocked by the outburst but titillated by the entertainment it promised. Parents watched more warily but with no less curiosity. You could see the anecdotes and savory bits of water cooler and break room gossip crystallize even as they instinctively herded their gawkin' kids toward the center of a protective circle. Your mother moved toward your howlin' sister, but Mrs. Rabinowicz was closer and faster. She dropped into a crouch in front of your sister with astonishin' agility.
Oh, now, she crooned, and wrapped her arms around Diana, who promptly buried her wet, red face in her shawl. Oh, now. Oh, oh, now.
Your sister cried her guts out on that stupid, bare floor, oblivious to the stares of the other kids and their parents and to the outstretched arms of your mother, whose face was contorted with anguish and mottled with guilt, and to Mrs. Todecky, who was hurryin' toward her, face stamped with solicitous dismay. You've never forgotten Diana's face or the strangled sounds she was makin'. They were the sounds of defeat, of the end and no mas. Your sister had begun and concluded her education concerning the priorities of Don Flack, Sr. in one fell swoop, and the awareness of her position at the end of the line was more than her nine-year-old soul could stand. She was drowin' in knowledge come too hard and too soon, and no hand could reach low enough to pull her out. Only Mrs. Rabinowicz, with her homemade shawl and her thin arms and her grandmother's empathy, kept her from goin' under right there in the grimy grey room of P.S. 109. You could only watch.
There are other things you remember from that godawful night-the delirious, drunken walk home with Familia Flack lurchin' and staggerin' down the sidewalk like refugees from a hostage crisis; your mother kneelin' on that dirty sidewalk in her nylons, beggin' Diana to eat her ice cream bar in a shrill, hysterical voice, as though that damn Neopolitan would be cold and sweet enough to numb the pain of disappointment; the heavy, dead thud of Diana's footsteps as she trudged upstairs to her room. Five years later, she'd tumble down another set of stairs with the same terrible, ponderous finality; Diana's sweat-soaked body as she cowered against yours in the throes of night terrors you thought she'd left in toddlerhood. She'd been feverish and rabbity inside her nightclothes, twistin' and shiverin' and moanin', all bony elbows and clutchin' fingers and silver-dollar eyes in the dark; the cuttin' blade of your mother's anger as she berated your father, a hatchet that split the thin walls of your house and scraped your ears red and raw with confusion and lead-bellied shame; your father's silence, blunt in the face of her anger; the sight of him sittin' on the edge of your sister's bed, hands interlaced loosely between his bare knees. He was hunched and loomin' dressed in his undershirt and watchin' you with silver-dollar eyes of his own; the tracks of his tears on his cheeks; the thought that drifted through your sleep-fogged mind as you watched him reach for her, smoky and venomous as moonlight on ripplin' water: I got her. I got her. We don't need you; the shameful, forbidden urge that accompanied the thought, the longin' to snap and snarl and bite off his reachin' fingers at the knuckles.
These snapshots of bitter memory are all recorded and preserved in your internal photo album, warped and yellow with years and dusty with the desire to forget, but the expression on your sister's face and the quality of her sobs remains the most vivid, a high-quality color print among the gallery of sepias and monochromes. It refuses to fade or curl and brown at the edges, and you swore-swore on her tears and before this miserable tribute to her wasted life-that you'd never become that man, never became the monster who shattered the hearts of those who loved them and crept back to them under cover of darkness to offer apologies and silver tears they'd never hear or see.
Well, the joke's on you, ain't it, kid?
He blinks, and with the reflexive shutter-click of his eyelids, he sees Diana's face, framed by the hood of her red sweatshirt and staring at him in wounded incredulity as he'd cast his lethal spell and banished her to the land of Never-Was in a fit of rage and thwarted libido. Another blink, and Rebecca takes her place, suppressing her hurt and betrayal with a stream of useless chatter and a white-knuckled grip on the padded rims of her wheels. She's older than Diana was at the time of her education, and she hadn't cried as fiercely, but the expression is the same, lost and shell-shocked, a child carried to the deep, dark heart of the forest and left there without so much as a breadcrumb to point the way home. He'd never meant to hurt either of them, had promised to love and protect them. In the end, he'd failed them both. One slept beneath the earth and returned to him only in the strange, mapless weaverwold of dreams and aching memory. The other had taken flight with the silent rush of wings and might never return to him.
"I messed up bad," he tells Diana again, and draws his knees to his chest. "I hurt her so bad. She made excuses for me and said it was okay, just like Ma used to do for Pop, but Rebecca, she tells me the truth even when she doesn't mean to. I saw some papers she left behind when I went lookin' for her. It's not okay. It's not fuckin' okay at all, and I don't-I don't know what to do."
"What d'you want to do?"
He gives a short bark of laughter. "I want to get on a plane and go after her, turn up on her doorstep with an armful of flowers and a mouthful of apologies. I want to hold her and tell her I'm sorry and never meant for it to be this way, you know? 'Cause I didn't. I don't. Christ. I just-I just want her to stop lookin' at me like-,"
"Like?" Diana folds a lean, fourteen-year-old leg closer to her body. She is a gentle but merciless inquisitor.
"Like she knows she's at the end of the line," he finishes. He goes quiet for a minute and gently rocks, chin propped on his knees. "She's not. She's not, Di. I swore to myself when I married her that I'd never let that happen, not with her. We were gonna be different. We weren't gonna be like-,"
"Mom and Daddy?" Diana finishes for him.
He can only nod. After a pause, he adds, "Well, more like him and us. I guess him and Ma have it pretty good, being married thirty-four years and all."
They held it together longer than I'm probably gonna.
Diana considers him for a moment. "Then go to her," she says at last.
"You think I wouldn't if I could?" he counters. "It isn't that simple, Di."
"Yes, it is."
"The hell it is. Maybe it would be if it were just me workin' undercover. I could slip the assignment and take the heat, get busted back to beat cop, do my time on the traffic circuit, and get my shield back in three years. I'd ride that out for her in a heartbeat. But it's not just me on this thing. I got a partner to look out for. If I ditch the assignment, and it goes bad and Maddox gets hurt or dies, that's on me. My head. And I can't live with that. How could I live with tellin' her parents that their daughter died because I was chasin' my wife to California?"
Diana rolls her eyes. "Dramatic much, Donnie? Do you really think that anything like that is gonna happen?" She toys with a page of her book, folds the corner and smoothes it again.
"Naw, I don't. Odds are, this case'll tread water until the next score, and the only casualties will be bruised egos and a couple of missing Cartier necklaces and Tiffany brooches. Fu-the only reason I'm on the job now is because Sinclair was targeted. He sighs. "But I can't take that chance, however small."
He laughs, a bitter strangled sound. "I swore. Swore I was never gonna be like him. I was so damn sure. Yet here I fuckin' am, just a chip off the old block. Maybe I'm worse. They say every generation is worse than the last these days, and I don't remember Pop ever chuckin' us out on the street. Jesus fuck."
He swipes at his eyes with the meaty palm of his hand. He knows how crazy he must look, huddled beside a grave and holding a one-sided conversation with a slab of white granite. If he could see himself, he'd be tempted to run himself in to Bellevue for observation, but this is all he has, the only place he can come to spill the secrets that shame him, the confessions that would make Rebecca turn from him in disgust and Stella gaze at him with pity. Even here, shame nettles him. He tears his gaze from his sister's so that she won't see the tears that scald and simmer in the corners of his eyes.
"You could quit," Diana offers pragmatically, and though she hasn't left the bed, her fingers graze his shoulder.
He's thought about it. After the Mc-AK shooting, he'd considered turning in his badge and taking a gig in private security. The pay was better, and the risk was lower. Instead of chasing child molesters and dope pushers through the city and wondering if his fingers were going to find an HIV-infected syringe the hard way in some skag's back pocket, he'd be baby-sitting debutantes and turning a blind eye to their perfectly catered drug orgies and gangbangs. He could work for six hours and make more money than he would pulling a double on the city's clock. He could work nights and weekends, and Rebecca wouldn't be so pinched and fretful when he left the apartment, hiding her fear behind idle chatter and lingering kisses.
But in the end, he couldn't do it. The idea of babysitting the rich and famous and cleaning up the human messes they left behind nauseated him. He was a cop. He helped the weak and the wounded and hunted the monsters who hunted them. He didn't guard the doors to privileged ivory towers and offer hush money to teenage rape victims so that their tragedy wouldn't ruin Junior D. Rockefeller, IV's chances of getting into Harvard. He might not be a saint, but neither was he a soulless bastard. So he'd buried the idea as quickly as it had come and never breathed a word of it to Rebecca, lest it inspire an impossible hope.
"I can't."
Diana shrugs. "Then what do you want from me?" Bewildered and tired, as though he's asked too much and offered too little in return. He probably has.
"Just…remind her that I'm here, I guess, that I still love her." He runs his fingers through his hair. "Rebecca has this thing where she retreats when she's hurt, hides until she feels safe again. Most of the time, it works for us, keeps us from saying things we can't take back later, but most of the time, it only lasts a few hours. A day at most. It's going on seventeen days, and I know it's my fault, but… The last time this happened was after I opened my big, fat, stupid mouth and told her she'd done enough damage after she accidentally put her hand on my bombed gut. That lasted nearly two months and nearly killed us. I don't think we can handle another patch like that. I know I can't."
As though to illustrate the point, his stomach burns and cramps, and he tastes blood in the back of his throat. He holds his breath and kneads the rough wattle of scar tissue over his right hip until the pain recedes. He swallows the blood and exhales. Another twinge, and the threat passes, but he knows it will return.
"It's not like Casper, you know, being a ghost. I can't just beam down to California and rattle the walls until she gets the message. I'm not even sure I could write your name on a foggy mirror."
"I know. I know. I just-,"
Cool fingers caress his temple and cheek, and unseen lips skim the warm flesh of his cheek.
"I'll see what I can do. No promises, okay?"
He lets out a shuddering breath. It's enough, more than he has any right to ask for. "Thanks, Di." He rises and brushes blades of grass from the seat of his jeans. "I gotta go, but I love you, you know?"
There's no answer. Diana and her book are gone, though he can see their faint outline, etched on the canvas of his mind, a Shroud of Turin that traces the face of the departed divine. His fingers itch to touch it, but he knows it will disappear the moment he does. So he caresses her name instead, lets his fingers flow over the inscription on her headstone.
"I miss you," he says.
No voice issues from the earth, but her rosary shifts beneath his shirt, suddenly snug against his heart. It's unexpectedly warm, as though recently handled, perhaps held in a small hand and lifted to absently nibbling lips. He smiles and blinks back tears, and then he turns on his heel and leaves while he still has the strength.
The grass rustles and crunches beneath his feet as he heads for the car and the suit and tie waiting for him in the trunk. His badge grows heavy on his belt, and in the sky, the sun continues its ascent and grows hot.
There is no more sanctuary, no more respite, no more time to lick his wounds or mourn his choices. The day and the rest of him belong to the city, and so he goes, without a whisper or a complaint. He knows neither will do him good, and in the back of his mind and at the bottom of his broken, guilty heart, he hopes Rebecca is proud of him.