Title: A Thimble For Peter III - Back Through the Window Follows A Thimble For Peter and A Thimble For Peter II: Tiny Arrow Summary: Catherine Mulder makes a difficult trip. Author's Notes: This is the second companion piece to A Thimble for Peter, a story written by myself and Cheryl De Luca. It would make sense if you've read that before this, otherwise some parts of this could get cryptic. Thanks go to Cheryl De Luca who was the editor/beta reader. She's been a co-conspirator since we started this little franchise. Thanks again for your help and enthusiasm. "Thus Wendy and John and Michael found the window open for them after all, which of course was more than they deserved. They alighted on the floor, quite unashamed of themselves, and the youngest one had already forgotten his home." (Excerpt from "Peter and Wendy" by J.M. Barrie; A Millennium Fulcrum Edition (c)1991 by Duncan Research) The bus is moaning and keening with the curves. I still hear that kid's discman buzzing behind me, the little fucker. He's offering me proof positive that rap is the true Satan spawn of the world. I am three miles from home. I am Catherine Mulder. But, if you're going to refer to me, I use Cate. A leftover of the man waiting for me three miles away. When one takes an appearance inventory, I think I turned out to be more Scully than Mulder. I gleen a brief one from the translucent reflection hovering in the window I'm looking out of. Brick houses and kids and lawn mowers and all of those sublime suburban props outside try, but they can't obscure my features completely. Wavy brown hair bobbing at my shoulders and the slight tinge of green in my eyes say that I am my father's child. Yet the defiant chin, slim nose, and defined plane of my cheeks assure Dana Scully's involvement in my production. Oh, by the way, they're married. Just, my mother's fully modern and independent. Gotta love her for it. My father does, I'm sure. You should know that I've been gone for nearly three years. Gone since I was seventeen and could pass for twenty-four according to the bar guy who told me that in a scotch-filled haze. They have been busy years, spent trying to claim a life I can completely call my own. In my opinion, I got as close as I could have. Now I'm back to take responsibility for the cost of this life, to see if I can forgive and to see if I can be forgiven. The last two years found me sleeping in the former storage room of a truck stop in Wyoming. I swapped the owner my back for rent. I bussed his tables, mopped his floors, and ate with his family. He was a decent human being. Don't ever let anyone tell you they don't exist anymore. They do and they make great pancakes. My life has not been void. I have a G.E.D. and soon I'll have college. Social security numbers obtained with the birth certificates of several dead young women have helped me lie my way into one hell of a shot at being someone. I had this particular penchant for picking girls who had died of unnatural means: murders, car crashes, etc. Somewhere in my head, I thought that if they had to die so soon out of the gate, perhaps my little games could in some way help carry them on. Maybe it was some form of spiritual justice. My sense of drama probably alerts to goal, to be a writer, or more precisely an author. That little truck stop I mentioned produced my first collection of short stories, "Everyday Olympus" which accompanied my application to Georgetown. It was 24 ct. good luck. I'm in and I'm up for the challenge. Shifting in the seat, the scene stretches further down a street strung out to an uncertain front door, I pull my black leather jacket more firmly across my breasts and shudder to think of the most immediate battle. My father, Fox Mulder, a more complex man I've never known. He is at once the most frank and the most guarded person you could face. A minute in a room with him and you know exactly what he expects even though he'll never tell you. He is charismatic without effort and desperate without a plea. He is a haunted man who has never been afraid to face his ghosts. I have known him intimately all my life. I love him. But nonetheless, I left and no doubt, hurt him deeply. Further, I have no intentions of apologizing for leaving. It will not surprise me if the holes we have torn in each other and the walls we have built to cover them are too high to scale. He has been waiting a long time according to the thirty second phone calls with my mother. The last one told me he requested she leave him alone to welcome me home on his own. Therefore, I am terrified, but not surprised. Today, the waiting comes to an end and both of us take up journeys very different from the one's we're used to. If I've done my job as the author I'm trying to convince myself I am, then you are asking yourself why I left. Surprisingly, I have discovered after three years, the answer is simple: I'm scared of him. There's an inexplicable rumble under the bus underscoring my sudden panic to explain. Fox Mulder has never struck me. NEVER. Although I've seen the frustrated desire in his eyes. I don't fault him for that. As I recall, I had a high asshole potential. I wouldn've probably smacked the shit out of me many times. What scared me out of childhood petulance and into my now form- fitting rebellion was the truth. This truth literally rose from the floor of our home and stole my illusions. I had only been looking to kick the surge protector back on at Dad's computer. But the fuckin floor board had to rock under my hands as I crawled beneath his desk. I had to catch the acid tang of fresh sealant in my nose. Pulling the oak slats away I was immediately infected by Pandora's itch at the sight of the taped boxes. They would turn out to be files of me, about me, my life. Hell, they *were* me, every school I attended, every friend who slept over, every thing I ever was outside of their sight. There were notes from ghosts with initials like F. and L. and B. The pages and photos and folders smelled like a library after it rains, like a grandmother's attic except far more unholy, musty like secrets always do. Even secrets kept in the light. I immediately knew I had to run. I left virginity far before I left home and still I felt penetrated. Molested. I had to run not just for my life, but in order to own my life. Stupid little dope that I was, I thought I could get away with it. And there was some success. Still, there's my own private pain that is floating hard and hollow in my stomach, my chest, my heart. It still shakes me in my sleep and calls me home with promises of safety and resolution. The whispering becomes a coo in Dad's lullaby voice, the one that offered tales of Peter and Wendy. I'm coming closer as this haphazard band makes the final turn before my stop. I remember my father's voice like you remember a touch. You can remember how hard or soft. How warm or how cold. Where it graced your skin. But you can never recreate it, hum it, or look at it in a photo. Because it requires that the one who offered it must offer it again. My eyes close at the question begged here. Will he offer it again? Fox Mulder was not a cold parent. Now "cautious"? "Cautious" is a word I would use. Our laughs, wrestles, tickles, silly whisperings were private treasures, my mother the only privileged outsider allowed to share them. My father, out of sight, possessed a beautifully goofy side I think I gave him an excuse to unchain. If he was Peter Pan, I was Never Never Land. I gave him flying lessons. Did you know that crisp white dress shirts make the most wonderful slapping sounds when you wave your arms? They do, especially if you have long arms a little girl can get lost in when she's just hit herself in the head with a basketball or lost yet another lead in a school play to Avery Goldstein. My father loved me beyond reason. Not the reason of thought and discrimination, but the reason of right and wrong. And I came to both ache and hate him for it, for making me leave him, making me leave my mother. My thoughts turn to her now. No one, not my father nor a lover has ever embraced me as she did and will again, without pretense or demand. The emotion rises hot and prickling in my throat as I open my memories of her fully for this. I have missed her. I know she has missed me as well. If she knew what Fox Mulder did in the name of fatherhood, she never told me. It is a question I plan to pose. Until my decision to return, I decided to ignore the goddamn possibility. My soul may be cautious, but it isn't stone. How could I bear turning them both out? My moments along the wire with her tell me she remains the same reserved, empirical act of class she has always been. But the art of loving my mother is finding the truth within the lines. Just ask my Dad. I have no proof, but I believe Dana Scully was Fox Mulder's savior. Even as a younger, selfish little snot I could sense the moments in our lives when my parents realized what they had managed to capture and hang onto with bloody emotional finger- nails. It was a quick bottomless glance or the liquid timbre in their voices when they spoke in hushed tones. I know from both of them that they almost failed. They both speak of "The Bad Time." At first they refused to elaborate because I was a child. Later, when I could have understood, I saw first that it was their own hearts they were protecting by keeping this particular scar in the mist. I remember funny stirrings in my "tummy" as a four year-old when I could lay squashed between them in their bed on a Sunday morning, my hair an early morning tangle of sleep and mischief. What I discovered buried in their warm, twisted blankets and sheets was the pleasant weight the remnants of passion made in your lungs, even if it was days old. I've been looking for that ever since I could name it. I want what my parents have always had. They are my love-heroes. The bus is coming to a halt and I am faced with the final leg of my journey. The walk is only a couple of blocks to their...our house and I am so bold to think I feel like Christ as he trod the stations of the cross. Although this profane crucifixion I suffer is of my own making I know. Even though it didn't feel that way during my time out in the world. I get up from the cheap upholstery, silently curse the frigin "gangsta" of buzz and exit into my neighborhood. I hike in sunshine with only my knapsack to make me look like a traveler. It carries my tools: the mirrors, the picks, the laptop. I may be softened by remorse, but not blinded by naiveté. When his madness begins again, my father will have to discover an opponent as well as rediscover his child. I have vowed to myself he will be surprised. The house is there, still more brick than white. I hear the random cry of a child being chased in a nearby yard. That was my voice not so long ago. The house is clearer as I am closer. My swallows sting with the force necessary to get past the pulse in my throat. The door is open, as is my hope, as is the man standing just inside of it. Let whatever will be...begin. The End "I made this!" All comments welcomed and even wished for. s_anders@ix.netcom.com |