Living the Normal Life 2
Mar. 24th, 2010 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nell65Title: Living the Normal Life
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
Author's Note: I'm posting this in sections that fit the lj window, rather than conceptual chapters, which are short for this piece.
Part 2 below the cut.
November first, first day of deer season, fell on a Wednesday. Deer season was becoming a particularly special occasion in Michael and Adam’s household because Adam’s birthday was November second. He would be thirteen this year. Michael was not all that enthusiastic about hunting on opening weekends in general, much less opening weekend of deer season, but with Adam’s birthday coming right on top of opening day, it was impossible for him to deny Adam’s burning desire to participate in this particularly North American annual rite. Last year was the first that Adam was old enough under Minnesota hunting law, and they had celebrated with a hunting trip. The weather had been awful and chased them home early, so this year Adam was determined to do it better.
Accordingly, on Friday afternoon after school Michael and the dogs collected Adam and then Charlie, a friend also newly thirteen, and headed northwest towards Bimidgi, where Charlie’s family had a small hunting cabin. Though nearly the same age as Adam, and like Adam an athletic boy and avid outdoor sports enthusiast, Charlie was at least three inches taller. Charlie also styled his thick wavy brown hair into a stiff brush-cut, giving him an even greater height advantage.
Michael knew it was pointless to be disappointed that Adam was unlikely to be as tall as he was, but he was anyway.
The boys were almost manic with excitement – though they were trying mightily to adopt an air of cool unconcern. They talked almost nonstop during the entire two-hour trip, comparing notes about their different middle schools, teachers, classes and friends, but mostly, giggling hysterically over inane jokes.
And of course, they talked hunting. They had gone turkey hunting together in the spring, an experience that now was re-lived in vivid detail. The afternoon Adam had shot his tom after Charlie’s expert use of the turkey call grew in the retelling into an epic of near Greek proportion.
The boys had not hunted together during the fall birding season, so they shared the stories of their individual hunts. Charlie and his older brother Paul had spent a couple of weekends at their cabin and bagged several birds each. Michael was very curious to learn how Adam would describe September’s grouse hunting expedition. But with the single mindedness of adolescent boys, Adam happily launched into detailed descriptions of the moments he shot his birds.
If Adam harbored any anger over the revelation of Michael’s infidelity to Elena, it didn’t appear to affect his memory of that day’s hunting.
At the cabin they joined Charlie’s parents, his brother and their older sister. All three Peterson children were tall and trim, like their parents. Michael had met Dan Peterson, Charlie’s dad, at a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources workshop introducing kids to basics of hunting safety almost four years ago. On discovering that their sons were the same age, almost to the day, they had introduced them and Charlie and Adam had been hunting buddies ever since.
************
For the joint celebration that night, Michael had prepared Adam’s favorite meal, a version of beef bourguignon that he had learned from his mother. It required two days to marinate in the refrigerator before slow cooking, which he had done that morning, filling their small house with smells of his childhood. It did not take long to fill the Peterson’s cabin with the inviting aromas either, for the cabin was basically a one room hunting shack that had been enlarged just enough to add a bathroom and three very tiny bedrooms with built in bunk beds. In many ways, it reminded Michael very much of many small cabins he had seen in Sweden and Finland.
Charlie’s mom Sheila served out the birthday cake and ice cream. Then Charlie and Adam ripped into the presents that had been brought for them. Michael had given Adam some smaller presents the morning of his birthday, but tonight presented him with his main gift, a brand new hunting rifle with all the necessary accouterments.
Adam, dark eyes glowing and near speechless with delight, held the rifle in his lap for the rest of the evening, occasionally stroking the smooth grain of the wood stock or the silky slickness of the new barrel with reverent fingers.
Michael could not help but reflect on the difference between Adam’s pleasure in his new rifle and the stricken horror in Nikita’s blue eyes when he had once made her the gift of a gun. His expression hardened unconsciously as he thought that if her father had wanted to Nikita to have a gun in her hands he damn well should have had the courage to put it there himself.
Michael caught Sheila looking at him inquisitively. “You okay?” she mouthed across the crowded, lamp-lit room.
He smiled reassuringly and pulled himself out of old bitterness through force of will.
As they settled into the pullout sofa bed that night, Adam whispered in the dark, “Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure I can kill a deer.”
“You’ve shot turkeys, grouse and rabbits before.”
“I know.” There was a long pause. “It’s just, well, like, deer are so, like... big.”
Michael, his small smile hidden by the night, said “Adam, you don’t have to shoot a deer if you don’t want to.”
“But I want to.” Adam’s voice broke a bit on that. “I’m just afraid that, like, I won’t hit it in the right spot and it’ll just be injured and in pain and I won’t be able to track it…”
“Adam.” Michael interrupted the flow. “You remember what you learned at the workshop this summer?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll be fine. I’ll be there with you. If we see a deer and we have a clear shot, we’ll take it. If we hit the deer, we’ll track it. We will find it and ensure that it dies quickly and cleanly. But remember, most likely we won’t even see a deer on our first day out.”
“Yeah. You’re right. It’s just,” here Adam trailed off.
“It’s a big thing, to consider killing your first deer.”
“What was it like for you?”
“The first time I killed a deer?”
Adam simply waited him out.
Michael was silent because Adam’s innocent question stirred up feelings and memories he had thought long put to rest. Michael never considered telling Adam the truth; that he had never shot a deer, and did not particularly want to either. He also could not tell him what he did remember all too clearly, what it had been like to shoot and kill his first human target.
Michael reminded himself that he had chosen hunting intentionally, and that it was imperative that Adam feel comfortable hunting big game as well as small, so he related how he had felt when he had first sailed alone in the ocean. “It was scary and exciting, all at once. It seemed like the moment lasted forever, when it was really over very quickly.”
“Oh,” said Adam. He shifted a bit, then “Guess I won’t really know until I do it myself.”
“Guess not.” Michael said with a rueful smile.
“G’night dad.”
“Good night Adam.”
As Michael drifted off to sleep he remembered the way Nikita would look at him like he had suddenly grown an extra head whenever he tried to verbalize, in English, how he had dealt with the emotional fallout from his life in Section. Apparently, he was not any better at emotional description now either.
************
An inch or more of snow fell during the night, so when they emerged before dawn the air snapped with cold and the forest floor was glowing faintly against the blackness of the pine trees. They loaded up the cars and headed for Dan’s tree stand, which lay about two miles away, just inside state forest. Once in the stand, a pretty rudimentary affair – though reassuringly solid – they waited quietly for daylight, drinking rapidly cooling black coffee from thermoses and eating cold bagels.
Michael felt no desire to spend a cold day sitting in a tree house open on two sides to the weather, so once it was light enough, he and the three boys walked a basic sweep to flush any deer towards the blind where Dan and Charlie’s sister Liza were holed up.
Michael had checked the Minnesota DNR web page and knew that this area was particularly thick with deer, on average hunters had bagged their first deer on the first day of hunting in this part of the state for about a decade. As the emerging day was clear, very cold, but clear, he knew that the odds were extremely good that before the day was out he or Adam would take a shot at a deer. He resigned himself to having to field dress a deer based only on having seen it done once before.
As they walked, the boys carried on a sporadic conversation about sports. The Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team looked good this year and the boys were excited by the prospect of being able to root for the home team.
Michael was the first to see the group of three deer just ahead through the trees. At his gesture, the boys froze in place, eyes straining to follow the direction he pointed. The deer froze too, heads lifting as they rotated their ears, seeking the direction of the sound that had caught their attention. As one, the deer turned, bounding effortlessly through the trees for twenty feet or so before stopping again.
Then, in the way that deer will, one buck drifted to the left and moseyed away from the group, crossing Michael’s path not forty feet away. Unfortunately at the angle the buck chose the boys were all slightly behind Michael. If any of them were going to take the shot, it had to be him.
With a sense of the inevitable, Michael signaled the boys that he would take the shot, then raised his rifle, clicked off the safety, aimed and fired in one smooth sweep. His shot found its target, just behind the front legs. The buck jumped, ran a few yards, and then gracefully collapsed to the ground.
After a moment of respectful silence for the fallen buck, the boys rushed forward to kneel beside it, reaching out to touch the soft fur, the bony antlers, the velvet nose. Michael’s quick, “Stop,” brought the boys up short, their gloved hands waving in the air. “Let’s make sure he is dead.”
Adam and Charlie both giggled self-consciously, Charlie’s older brother Paul flushed but stayed quiet. After checking carefully that the buck was, indeed, dead, Michael ran a reverent hand down the animal’s powerful neck. Seeing this, Adam and Charlie both reached out and did the same.
“Wow,” Charlie murmured. “A six point buck. This is so cool.”
“Oh man,” breathed Adam, “you did it Dad, you got us a deer.”
Adam turned to look up at his father, cheeks pink with cold and pleasure, eyes bright with excitement, “This is so cool.”
Looking at his son, Michael fought his guilt by reminding himself once again that Dan and his family were normal, sane people. That Dan was following the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and great grandfather before him, as he taught his children to hunt, that there was nothing bizarre or unusual in it all. That he, Michael, was not warping Adam, or setting his son up for a lifetime of pain by teaching him to hunt. That there were good and valuable traditions here too, about the inter-relatedness of man and nature, about woodcraft, about being still and observing the world around you, about self-confidence and self-reliance. And guns. If he had to teach Adam about guns, which he knew he did, this was the best way.
And, if he was going to be truthful with himself, there was something about this experience that reached deep inside him, setting off a certain satisfaction. Satisfaction not so much at the death of the buck, but at the connection with all the generations of men who had hunted over millennia to feed their families, their tribes. He considered most popular American men’s psychology extremely silly, but maybe there was a small kernel of insight there after all.
Michael returned Adam’s smile, “Cool, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
***********
The two black-clad operatives moved silently across the floor of the command center, heading directly for the briefing table.
They came to a stop, one on either side of Operations. As the words, “that will be all,” left her lips, the shorter of the two men caught her eye and said, “please come with us.”
With a resigned sigh she let her eyelids droop and her shoulders slumped briefly, then squaring them, she lifted her chin and nodded. Following her guards to the perch, she didn’t flinch when she caught sight of the shadowed figure of the Director of Oversight standing at the window, looking down over the bustling heart of Section One.
“Well, Nikita” he drawled, still looking out across the floor below, “it seems that our relationship will come to an end after all.”
Nikita said nothing.
“I am sorry to see it end this way, of course,” he continued in the same slightly sardonic tone, “but your recent string of compromised missions has been the proverbial straw.”
Nikita still said nothing.
“I’ll take control now.”
Nikita reached into the neck of her jacket and withdrew the necklace that symbolized command of section, the keys to power, the keys that controlled the self-destruct systems, removed it and held it out to her side, waiting for one of the guards to relieve her of it.
Once the command keys were in Oversight’s hand, he motioned with his head, and with a light touch on the elbow, Nikita was escorted out of the perch, down across the main floor below and into the waiting elevators. Operatives stood silently along her path, watching her progress with troubled, angry faces.
She was led directly to the white room and strapped into the chair. She never once looked at her escorts. Her jaw was set and tight, but her defiant chin was in stark contrast to the exhaustion plainly written on her pale, thin face, in the dark circles under her eyes, in the look of resigned acceptance in their blue depths.
The small red hole appeared on her forehead almost simultaneously with the quiet pop of the gun.
Feeling as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest, leaving only a gaping emptiness behind, Michael tried run, to raise his arms to cradle her broken body, to scream her name, but couldn’t get enough air in his lungs to do more than gasp, “Ni-ki-ta, Ni-ki-ta”
He knew he was dreaming, but the tears on his cheeks felt real. With a supreme effort he wrenched his eyes open and was relieved to see the familiar slopping ceiling of his bedroom.
He lay for a moment with his heart pounding, the adrenaline surge from his nightmare slowly seeping out of his system. He touched his face to discover that it was damp.
He concentrated on slowing his heart rate – breath in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Breath in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. One his pulse had returned to normal, he levered himself out of bed, ignoring the rusty groan, and reached for the flannel shirt he’d tossed on the chair. Pulling it on, he made his way quietly down the stairs – wincing slightly at the various creaks and squeaks of the seventy year old floorboards – trying to avoid waking Adam, who was a very light sleeper.
Once in the kitchen, he flipped on the light over the stove and started the water for some hot tea. While he waited for the kettle to boil, he pondered what had prompted the dream this time.
It was a familiar enough dream, he’d had dozens of versions of it in the nearly seven years since leaving Europe, though more regularly during the early years. He hadn’t had it for a while now, seven or eight months he figured, trying to remember when exactly it had been. That he was terrified that Nikita would be dead before he could get back to her was obvious, he was fully able to work himself into an anxious, nausea-ridden state about that in broad daylight. It didn’t matter how often he scolded himself that Nikita was a skilled operative, a subtle strategist and an able leader in whom he should have more confidence. Twelve years was a very long time to survive at any level in Section, and even the most talented had not lasted much longer than that. And no one knew her weaknesses better than her mentor did. At moments like this one it was all he could do to keep himself from tossing caution and Adam to the winds and running directly to her side.
But why now? Why tonight?
Michael slowly reviewed the evening, seeking the catalyst for his nightmare. He and Adam had had dinner with Scott, his latest girlfriend and his eight-year-old son. Scott was Michael’s most regular sparring partner at the dojo and had become a friend over the years. Cindy, whom he didn’t care for very much, had been teasing Adam, trying to get him to ask her what she’d overheard about him in the women’s locker room at the dojo. When a red-eared Adam hadn’t risen to the bait, she’d turned her attentions to Michael, telling him in wildly inappropriate language, given the company of the children, exactly what she’d overheard with regards to him. Scott, whose superb skills on the mat failed utterly to translate in any way into his regular life, had made some ineffectual efforts to shut her up, but she persisted until the arrival of the waiter had provided a distraction.
Michael had regretfully dismissed his first impulse to shut Cindy down using the same throat tap he had used on trainees who pissed him off. Which had got him thinking about Nikita, on whom he had never used that move no matter how much she mouthed off in training. He should have realized that even then she was affecting him differently than anyone else ever had. Then he had wished Nikita had been there at the restaurant, by her presence alone protecting him from Cindy’s impertinence and saving Adam from embarrassment. Then came the familiar emotional cocktail of resentment and anger directed at Jones and himself, followed by the depressing reminder that he had six more years to get through before he could be with her again. That she had to survive six more years in the viper pit that was Section, Oversight and Center, alone and without his help.
As he reached to take the faintly hissing kettle off the burner he decided that had to be it. He’d been thinking about Nikita a lot lately, and not just tonight. He supposed it was because as Adam was getting more independent, the more time Michael had to himself. And in that time, Michael was slowly coming to realize that he was both bored and lonely. The older Adam got, the less he could be relied upon to provide constant occupation for Michael in the future. The next six years suddenly seemed to loom ahead as an endless gray tunnel.
Michael decided that in thinking about Nikita, he was also stoking his fear that something would happen to prevent him from ever rejoining her. It was also probably a warning from his subconscious. Bored and lonely operatives make mistakes, mistakes that end their lives and the lives of those who depend on them. He could not let his own vigilance slack off just because he was feeling sorry for himself.
Knowing he wouldn’t go back to sleep, he sat in the kitchen sipping tepid tea, watching the clock move slowly to the hour that he could begin the day’s work. He spent the time wrestling with the guilty fear that his desire to be with Nikita was preventing him from wholly embracing his second chance with his son, that rather than dreaming of some future date when he would have the woman he wanted, he should fully live the life with his son he had now.
************
Michael heard the small chime that signified a door or window opening in the house. The dogs, who’d been dozing nearby, leapt to their feet and rushed to the door of the garage, pacing and whining and letting out sharp yips, begging to be released to see who it was. Michael told them to be quiet; knowing from a quick glance at his watch that it must be Adam, home from school.
Indeed, a few minutes later, the garage door thudded open and, to the enthusiastic reaction of the dogs, Adam poked his head in. Catching Michael’s eye, he said, “Hey. You’re home early.”
“Client changed her mind again about the color.”
“Oh. What are you doing?”
Deciding to interpret this as a conversational opening as opposed to the moronic question it appeared to be, Michael replied, “working on the snowmobiles. Come in and close the door, you’re letting out all the heat.” He nodded at the electric space heater for emphasis.
“Oh.” Adam came all the way into the garage, slamming the door closed behind him with his free hand. In the other he held a glass high above the frisking dogs. He stopped almost immediately and began showering them with much appreciated attention. Eventually abandoning his admirers he began wandering around the perimeter of the two-car garage, inspecting various items that caught his attention – a hockey stick leaning precariously against the wall, a bag of soccer balls hanging from the roof beams, a jumble of brooms and snow shovels, a low shelf holding various yard tools, the seat of his bike, now hanging from ceiling hooks, a baseball bat fallen over and rolling aimlessly against the wall – before drifting over to perch on the bumper of the only car in the garage, their six-year old SUV, to watch Michael at work on the snowmobiles in the second bay. After slugging back half his glass of milk in a single swallow, Adam asked, “can I help?”
“Yes. Hand me the small needle nose pliers.”
“Okay.” After polishing off the rest of his milk, Adam rose and searched through the open toolbox, then handed over the requested item. “Here.”
Michael accepted the proffered pliers, then turning back to his task, said over his shoulder, “you could take the engine cover off the other one.”
“Okay.”
Obviously it was his responsibility to get the conversational ball rolling, so Michael asked, “how was your day?”
“Fine,” Adam threw out over his shoulder as he bent over the second snowmobile.
With a familiar twinge of sympathy for all the women who’d loved him and had endured that same answer from him time and again, Michael probed a bit further. “Anything unusual happen today?”
As he worked to loosen the cover, Adam said, “Not really.” He wandered over to the toolbox and dredged out a screwdriver. Then he said, in a tone of complete indifference, “Jake and Erin had a fight today, right in the middle of the cafeteria.”
Wondering if this was a red herring or the real thing, Michael said “Hmmm.”
“Yeah. And oh man, it was so…,” Adam paused, searching for the right word, “like, ahhhhgg.” And he did the shake-off-the-gross-thing shiver, using body language to convey what he had no words to describe.
A corner of Michael’s mouth twitched. “That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“You know, relationship stuff.”
Whatever that might be for thirteen-year-olds, Michael thought. “Oh,” was all he could come up with to say.
Adam set the cover on the ground, then said “what next?”
“Check the oil.”
“Okay.” He turned back to the snowmobile. “Where?”
“The small cap by your right hand.” Michael gestured with his chin, wondering just what was really bothering Adam.
After deciding that the machine did need more oil, Adam began the process of refilling. “I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Michael asked, still in the dark about what was troubling Adam.
“Relationships. Girls.” He closed the oil container and replaced it on the shelf. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“The point of what?” With a slightly hysterical giggle trapped in his throat, Michael struggled to decide which would be more impossible for him to explain, relationships or girls.
“Re-la-tion-ships.” Adam repeated himself, slightly slower, patient with his clueless parent.
“Oh.” Michael scratched his chin through his beard and hoped that maybe Adam would continue talking and give him some more clues.
Adam fiddled with the clutch, then burst out, “I mean, its not like they’re having sex or anything.”
Thank the gods for small favors, was the first thought to cross Michael’s mind. The second was the disheartening suspicion that Adam appeared to think that sex was the only rational reason for a relationship. Hoping he was mistaken and that Adam was merely understandably confused about something else that he had no words for, he said, “why don’t you tell me what they were fighting about.”
“Well, it’s like.” Adam paused for a moment, then continued. “Erin thought that Jake was, like, coming on to another girl, you know. And, well, started getting in his face about it. And Jake told her to, like, just back off, he was just helping her with her homework, and Erin started to cry because she thought Jake was jerking her around and then Jake got all pissed because she was making a scene, and then he left and Erin cried some more.”
Michael had never particularly liked Jake, even though Adam and Jake had been close friends almost since they moved into the neighborhood. Michael had always thought Jake was a selfish, dictatorial whiner whose first impulse was to blame others for his problems. Jake and Adam had always spent as much time getting on each other’s nerves and squabbling as they did having fun. Jake was also physically much more mature than Adam, a handsome boy in an all-American kind of way, and as a result was adding an unbearably cocky attitude to an already unpleasant personality. But in that inexplicable way of teens, Jake was emerging as a leader in the popular crowd. Michael was not at all surprised that Jake’s choice of self-defense was to make Erin cry. And he had liked Erin almost as long as he had disliked Jake.
Giving in to a base impulse to shine a little more light on Jake’s general character, Michael asked, “was he ‘coming on’ to someone else?”
Adam sighed and rolled his eyes, “Yeah.”
“And Erin was jealous.”
Adam tossed the screwdriver he had been using into the box with unnecessary vigor. “Yeah.”
With suspicion flickering, Michael examined Adam from under drooping eyelids, to all appearances focused more or less completely on a balky gearshift. Adam was shifting his weight from side to side, cracking his knuckles and chewing on his lower lip, staring vaguely at the snowmobile in front of him. Michael asked, “did Erin ask you if it was true?”
Adam flung himself onto the snowmobile seat and groaned, “yeah.”
“And you said?”
Adam dropped his head into his hands, completely covering his face. After a moment, a slightly strangled “no” emerged.
Michael’s heart twisted. I can’t fix this one for you, he thought. “You lied to protect Jake.”
With his face still buried, Adam answered, “yeah.”
“And now you feel badly about it.”
Adam looked up and caught his father’s eye. “How do I fix it, Dad?”
“If you tell Erin the truth, Jake will be angry.” Michael chose the easier of the two outcomes, giving Adam the opportunity to defend Jake, or worry about Erin.
“And if I don’t she’ll let Jake walk all over her.” Adam pursed his lips in frustration.
Deeply relieved by Adam’s interest in Erin’s well being, Michael said. “You want to be loyal to them both.”
“They’re my best friends, Dad.” The anguish in Adam’s voice was palpable.
Michael sat up on his heels and looked at Adam, who was a picture of teenage misery, slumped in despair over the handlebars, kicking the starter pedal and running his fingers through his fashionably styled hair. His son was a pleaser, a responsible fixer of other peoples’ problems, almost always the first make an effort to make someone happy, to share what he had, to let his own desires take a back seat to those of more demanding friends. Michael believed that this aspect of Adam’s personality was another manifestation of Adam’s fears of abandonment, and accordingly tortured himself with guilt about his role in it. And now Adam had backed himself right into a box with no simple, painless way to please everyone.
“I don’t think there is anything you can do this time.”
Adam scrunched up his face, unhappy with this advice.
“But the next time, and with Jake there will be a next time, you need to decide how to handle it now.”
“Yeah.” Adam half chuckled, half snorted in acknowledgement.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t let Jake rely on you to lie for him.”
Adam sighed and dropped his chin onto his hand. “I just wish it wasn’t Erin, ya know?’
Michael kept to himself the depressing thought that if it were some other girl Adam apparently would not feel so badly about covering for his unpleasant friend. “I know.”
After waiting a beat or two, Michael turned back to the machine he was working on. “You helping with these or just sitting there, feeling badly for a while?”
With a small, self-conscious grin, Adam replied, “helping.”
************
As was their custom, Michael and Adam joined Erin’s family, the Andersen’s, her parents Pete and Miranda, and Erin’s younger brother Johnny for Thanksgiving Diner. This year they were all at Miranda’s brother Jim’s house. Pete usually brought along a few strays from the “U” – and this year was no exception. The English department, of which Pete was chair, had made a new hire, a young woman from California, and she was there along with a friend, a new assistant professor of French lit. Since Michael was in charge of the appetizers he and Adam had arrived fairly early, in time to catch most of the game on TV.
Michael was in the big, warm kitchen getting a fresh beer and talking with Miranda and Carol, Jim’s wife. Pete, a big bear of a man with wispy, fly-away gray hair, wandered in explaining, as he did each year, that he had no interest in commercials. As the adults stood around chatting, Adam and Erin came in for snack refills. Remembering his conversation with Adam in the garage the week before, Michael asked Erin how Jake was.
Erin, pale and pretty like her mother, froze, flushed and airily announced, “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” before fairly flying out of the room.
“DAD!” Adam shot his father an agonized look and rushed after Erin.
“What?” Michael spread his hands helplessly as he stared after Adam’s rapidly vanishing back.
Before the kids were out of earshot, the adults in the kitchen heard Erin wail in horror, “A-DAM! How could you tell your father?!”
Catching Pete’s twinkling eyes, Michael found his own lips twitching. Pete, who had unfortunately just raised his beer bottle to his lips, suddenly cracked and burst into a loud guffaw, spewing beer across the floor. At which point Carol and Miranda both lost it too, sagging helplessly against the countertops, wracked with whoops of laughter. Michael couldn’t help but join in.
“Oh Mike,” Miranda paused, still giggling, to wipe her streaming eyes, “you couldn’t have known it but the ‘big break up’ came last night.”
“More like the ‘big dumping’, ” added Pete, rolling his eyes. “It was unbelievable. Went on for hours, tied up the phone, involved several girlfriends and copious tears.”
Michael suddenly recalled being vaguely aware that Adam had spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone last night too. He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “And you people always want to know why I don’t date.”
Later, at the large, heavily laden table Michael found himself seated next to the new French lit professor, a slim, attractive woman named Marie. She was in her early thirties, fair with masses of red-hennaed curls. He doubted this seating arrangement was at all accidental as Miranda regularly tried to set him up with new women. However, in this case, given the very real pleasure of speaking French, if not with a countryman then someone from Quebec, he discovered that he was enjoying this mild flirtation.
Michael and Marie talked about books they’d read in common, argued briefly over the relative significance of Sartre in the pantheon of twentieth-century intellectual figures, and bemoaned the incredible provinciality of much of Minnesota, rolling their eyes over the lack of a venue for French language films and books.
At the end of the evening Marie asked him for his phone number, and to the delighted reaction of Miranda, he not only gave it to her, but also got hers in return.
************
Michael wasn’t very surprised when Marie called him the day after Thanksgiving and invited him to a campus showing of a French film the following evening. He had been having second thoughts ever since he had asked her for her phone number – regretting the encouragement and invitation it suggested. He was about to say no, but caught sight of Adam, who had answered the phone and guessing the nature of the conversation was eagerly nodding his head and giving him the thumbs up sign. Then Michael recalled that the most recent examples of dating Adam had were Scott and Cindy and Jake and Erin, representing a very limited range of possibilities. And so, with a deep breath and a quelling glance in Adam’s direction – who was making panting faces across the kitchen counter – he said, “I’d like that.”
What did surprise him how much it bothered him to say yes, the way his stomach tightened just a bit and that he had to resist the urge to wipe his hands on his jeans when he hung up the phone, fully aware of Adam’s avid gaze.
Later, the only explanation he could think of was that he was completely and totally out of practice. It couldn’t be that he was upset because he felt a little like a cad. He hadn’t promised Nikita sexual fidelity while he was gone, nor had he assumed any on her part. And going to see a movie was hardly the same thing as a love affair. But, he did feel like he was betraying someone. And then he realized it was Marie, not Nikita, who had the greatest potential to be hurt – because he was not really available. After that he snorted in disgust at his own presumption that merely meeting him was all Marie needed to become emotionally vulnerable and attached.
Despite his hesitations, he had a good time. Nikita was incredibly picky about what movies she would see, particularly which French movies. On one especially memorable occasion, after seeing Bunuel’s Belle du Jour, at her choice he reminded himself, she had turned on Michael in a fury and demanded that he explain how this could be an acclaimed film, unless all Frenchmen were really misogynist, arrogant, unfeeling pigs. It was hardly the moment to remind her that he had tried to suggest a different movie, knowing ahead of time that she would be troubled by the suggestion of the heroine’s childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest – not that that was the limit of her critique, he remembered with a fond smile. After that – in the exceedingly rare times they’d had enough leisure to have any interest in catching a movie – they stuck with farces.
Tonight, he had had the chance to see one of the more recent films by an up and coming auteur in the world of French Cinema, a film Nikita would never have agreed to. And he had enjoyed it very much. And enjoyed the company too. Marie was smart and attractive and witty. Afterwards they went to a small wine bar in a neighborhood that abutted the main Minneapolis campus of the state university. Watching her laugh, learning about her life in graduate school and the way she was adjusting to Minnesota, it was all so amazingly fresh, untainted by his past history. He felt an odd kind of hyper awareness, feeling a split between realities, as though he were gazing through the looking glass into one of the lives he might have lived if he had made different choices long ago and in another life.
When he got home, Adam was waiting up, camped out in front of the TV.
“So,” he drawled, eyes flickering back and forth between the screen and Michael’s face. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“Fine? That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Com’on Dad, give.”
“Do I ask you for details about your dating life?”
“I don’t have a dating life, remember? I’m too young.” Adam smirked at being able to quote his father back to him.
“It was very nice. I enjoyed the movie.”
“And….?”
“And the company.”
“Are you gonna see her again?”
Michael had spent the entire drive home in the car trying to figure out if he wanted to see her again, if it was a good idea or a terrible mistake to pursue the friendship. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Way-to-go Dad!”
************
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
Author's Note: I'm posting this in sections that fit the lj window, rather than conceptual chapters, which are short for this piece.
Part 2 below the cut.
November first, first day of deer season, fell on a Wednesday. Deer season was becoming a particularly special occasion in Michael and Adam’s household because Adam’s birthday was November second. He would be thirteen this year. Michael was not all that enthusiastic about hunting on opening weekends in general, much less opening weekend of deer season, but with Adam’s birthday coming right on top of opening day, it was impossible for him to deny Adam’s burning desire to participate in this particularly North American annual rite. Last year was the first that Adam was old enough under Minnesota hunting law, and they had celebrated with a hunting trip. The weather had been awful and chased them home early, so this year Adam was determined to do it better.
Accordingly, on Friday afternoon after school Michael and the dogs collected Adam and then Charlie, a friend also newly thirteen, and headed northwest towards Bimidgi, where Charlie’s family had a small hunting cabin. Though nearly the same age as Adam, and like Adam an athletic boy and avid outdoor sports enthusiast, Charlie was at least three inches taller. Charlie also styled his thick wavy brown hair into a stiff brush-cut, giving him an even greater height advantage.
Michael knew it was pointless to be disappointed that Adam was unlikely to be as tall as he was, but he was anyway.
The boys were almost manic with excitement – though they were trying mightily to adopt an air of cool unconcern. They talked almost nonstop during the entire two-hour trip, comparing notes about their different middle schools, teachers, classes and friends, but mostly, giggling hysterically over inane jokes.
And of course, they talked hunting. They had gone turkey hunting together in the spring, an experience that now was re-lived in vivid detail. The afternoon Adam had shot his tom after Charlie’s expert use of the turkey call grew in the retelling into an epic of near Greek proportion.
The boys had not hunted together during the fall birding season, so they shared the stories of their individual hunts. Charlie and his older brother Paul had spent a couple of weekends at their cabin and bagged several birds each. Michael was very curious to learn how Adam would describe September’s grouse hunting expedition. But with the single mindedness of adolescent boys, Adam happily launched into detailed descriptions of the moments he shot his birds.
If Adam harbored any anger over the revelation of Michael’s infidelity to Elena, it didn’t appear to affect his memory of that day’s hunting.
At the cabin they joined Charlie’s parents, his brother and their older sister. All three Peterson children were tall and trim, like their parents. Michael had met Dan Peterson, Charlie’s dad, at a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources workshop introducing kids to basics of hunting safety almost four years ago. On discovering that their sons were the same age, almost to the day, they had introduced them and Charlie and Adam had been hunting buddies ever since.
************
For the joint celebration that night, Michael had prepared Adam’s favorite meal, a version of beef bourguignon that he had learned from his mother. It required two days to marinate in the refrigerator before slow cooking, which he had done that morning, filling their small house with smells of his childhood. It did not take long to fill the Peterson’s cabin with the inviting aromas either, for the cabin was basically a one room hunting shack that had been enlarged just enough to add a bathroom and three very tiny bedrooms with built in bunk beds. In many ways, it reminded Michael very much of many small cabins he had seen in Sweden and Finland.
Charlie’s mom Sheila served out the birthday cake and ice cream. Then Charlie and Adam ripped into the presents that had been brought for them. Michael had given Adam some smaller presents the morning of his birthday, but tonight presented him with his main gift, a brand new hunting rifle with all the necessary accouterments.
Adam, dark eyes glowing and near speechless with delight, held the rifle in his lap for the rest of the evening, occasionally stroking the smooth grain of the wood stock or the silky slickness of the new barrel with reverent fingers.
Michael could not help but reflect on the difference between Adam’s pleasure in his new rifle and the stricken horror in Nikita’s blue eyes when he had once made her the gift of a gun. His expression hardened unconsciously as he thought that if her father had wanted to Nikita to have a gun in her hands he damn well should have had the courage to put it there himself.
Michael caught Sheila looking at him inquisitively. “You okay?” she mouthed across the crowded, lamp-lit room.
He smiled reassuringly and pulled himself out of old bitterness through force of will.
As they settled into the pullout sofa bed that night, Adam whispered in the dark, “Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure I can kill a deer.”
“You’ve shot turkeys, grouse and rabbits before.”
“I know.” There was a long pause. “It’s just, well, like, deer are so, like... big.”
Michael, his small smile hidden by the night, said “Adam, you don’t have to shoot a deer if you don’t want to.”
“But I want to.” Adam’s voice broke a bit on that. “I’m just afraid that, like, I won’t hit it in the right spot and it’ll just be injured and in pain and I won’t be able to track it…”
“Adam.” Michael interrupted the flow. “You remember what you learned at the workshop this summer?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll be fine. I’ll be there with you. If we see a deer and we have a clear shot, we’ll take it. If we hit the deer, we’ll track it. We will find it and ensure that it dies quickly and cleanly. But remember, most likely we won’t even see a deer on our first day out.”
“Yeah. You’re right. It’s just,” here Adam trailed off.
“It’s a big thing, to consider killing your first deer.”
“What was it like for you?”
“The first time I killed a deer?”
Adam simply waited him out.
Michael was silent because Adam’s innocent question stirred up feelings and memories he had thought long put to rest. Michael never considered telling Adam the truth; that he had never shot a deer, and did not particularly want to either. He also could not tell him what he did remember all too clearly, what it had been like to shoot and kill his first human target.
Michael reminded himself that he had chosen hunting intentionally, and that it was imperative that Adam feel comfortable hunting big game as well as small, so he related how he had felt when he had first sailed alone in the ocean. “It was scary and exciting, all at once. It seemed like the moment lasted forever, when it was really over very quickly.”
“Oh,” said Adam. He shifted a bit, then “Guess I won’t really know until I do it myself.”
“Guess not.” Michael said with a rueful smile.
“G’night dad.”
“Good night Adam.”
As Michael drifted off to sleep he remembered the way Nikita would look at him like he had suddenly grown an extra head whenever he tried to verbalize, in English, how he had dealt with the emotional fallout from his life in Section. Apparently, he was not any better at emotional description now either.
************
An inch or more of snow fell during the night, so when they emerged before dawn the air snapped with cold and the forest floor was glowing faintly against the blackness of the pine trees. They loaded up the cars and headed for Dan’s tree stand, which lay about two miles away, just inside state forest. Once in the stand, a pretty rudimentary affair – though reassuringly solid – they waited quietly for daylight, drinking rapidly cooling black coffee from thermoses and eating cold bagels.
Michael felt no desire to spend a cold day sitting in a tree house open on two sides to the weather, so once it was light enough, he and the three boys walked a basic sweep to flush any deer towards the blind where Dan and Charlie’s sister Liza were holed up.
Michael had checked the Minnesota DNR web page and knew that this area was particularly thick with deer, on average hunters had bagged their first deer on the first day of hunting in this part of the state for about a decade. As the emerging day was clear, very cold, but clear, he knew that the odds were extremely good that before the day was out he or Adam would take a shot at a deer. He resigned himself to having to field dress a deer based only on having seen it done once before.
As they walked, the boys carried on a sporadic conversation about sports. The Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team looked good this year and the boys were excited by the prospect of being able to root for the home team.
Michael was the first to see the group of three deer just ahead through the trees. At his gesture, the boys froze in place, eyes straining to follow the direction he pointed. The deer froze too, heads lifting as they rotated their ears, seeking the direction of the sound that had caught their attention. As one, the deer turned, bounding effortlessly through the trees for twenty feet or so before stopping again.
Then, in the way that deer will, one buck drifted to the left and moseyed away from the group, crossing Michael’s path not forty feet away. Unfortunately at the angle the buck chose the boys were all slightly behind Michael. If any of them were going to take the shot, it had to be him.
With a sense of the inevitable, Michael signaled the boys that he would take the shot, then raised his rifle, clicked off the safety, aimed and fired in one smooth sweep. His shot found its target, just behind the front legs. The buck jumped, ran a few yards, and then gracefully collapsed to the ground.
After a moment of respectful silence for the fallen buck, the boys rushed forward to kneel beside it, reaching out to touch the soft fur, the bony antlers, the velvet nose. Michael’s quick, “Stop,” brought the boys up short, their gloved hands waving in the air. “Let’s make sure he is dead.”
Adam and Charlie both giggled self-consciously, Charlie’s older brother Paul flushed but stayed quiet. After checking carefully that the buck was, indeed, dead, Michael ran a reverent hand down the animal’s powerful neck. Seeing this, Adam and Charlie both reached out and did the same.
“Wow,” Charlie murmured. “A six point buck. This is so cool.”
“Oh man,” breathed Adam, “you did it Dad, you got us a deer.”
Adam turned to look up at his father, cheeks pink with cold and pleasure, eyes bright with excitement, “This is so cool.”
Looking at his son, Michael fought his guilt by reminding himself once again that Dan and his family were normal, sane people. That Dan was following the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and great grandfather before him, as he taught his children to hunt, that there was nothing bizarre or unusual in it all. That he, Michael, was not warping Adam, or setting his son up for a lifetime of pain by teaching him to hunt. That there were good and valuable traditions here too, about the inter-relatedness of man and nature, about woodcraft, about being still and observing the world around you, about self-confidence and self-reliance. And guns. If he had to teach Adam about guns, which he knew he did, this was the best way.
And, if he was going to be truthful with himself, there was something about this experience that reached deep inside him, setting off a certain satisfaction. Satisfaction not so much at the death of the buck, but at the connection with all the generations of men who had hunted over millennia to feed their families, their tribes. He considered most popular American men’s psychology extremely silly, but maybe there was a small kernel of insight there after all.
Michael returned Adam’s smile, “Cool, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
***********
The two black-clad operatives moved silently across the floor of the command center, heading directly for the briefing table.
They came to a stop, one on either side of Operations. As the words, “that will be all,” left her lips, the shorter of the two men caught her eye and said, “please come with us.”
With a resigned sigh she let her eyelids droop and her shoulders slumped briefly, then squaring them, she lifted her chin and nodded. Following her guards to the perch, she didn’t flinch when she caught sight of the shadowed figure of the Director of Oversight standing at the window, looking down over the bustling heart of Section One.
“Well, Nikita” he drawled, still looking out across the floor below, “it seems that our relationship will come to an end after all.”
Nikita said nothing.
“I am sorry to see it end this way, of course,” he continued in the same slightly sardonic tone, “but your recent string of compromised missions has been the proverbial straw.”
Nikita still said nothing.
“I’ll take control now.”
Nikita reached into the neck of her jacket and withdrew the necklace that symbolized command of section, the keys to power, the keys that controlled the self-destruct systems, removed it and held it out to her side, waiting for one of the guards to relieve her of it.
Once the command keys were in Oversight’s hand, he motioned with his head, and with a light touch on the elbow, Nikita was escorted out of the perch, down across the main floor below and into the waiting elevators. Operatives stood silently along her path, watching her progress with troubled, angry faces.
She was led directly to the white room and strapped into the chair. She never once looked at her escorts. Her jaw was set and tight, but her defiant chin was in stark contrast to the exhaustion plainly written on her pale, thin face, in the dark circles under her eyes, in the look of resigned acceptance in their blue depths.
The small red hole appeared on her forehead almost simultaneously with the quiet pop of the gun.
Feeling as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest, leaving only a gaping emptiness behind, Michael tried run, to raise his arms to cradle her broken body, to scream her name, but couldn’t get enough air in his lungs to do more than gasp, “Ni-ki-ta, Ni-ki-ta”
He knew he was dreaming, but the tears on his cheeks felt real. With a supreme effort he wrenched his eyes open and was relieved to see the familiar slopping ceiling of his bedroom.
He lay for a moment with his heart pounding, the adrenaline surge from his nightmare slowly seeping out of his system. He touched his face to discover that it was damp.
He concentrated on slowing his heart rate – breath in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Breath in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. One his pulse had returned to normal, he levered himself out of bed, ignoring the rusty groan, and reached for the flannel shirt he’d tossed on the chair. Pulling it on, he made his way quietly down the stairs – wincing slightly at the various creaks and squeaks of the seventy year old floorboards – trying to avoid waking Adam, who was a very light sleeper.
Once in the kitchen, he flipped on the light over the stove and started the water for some hot tea. While he waited for the kettle to boil, he pondered what had prompted the dream this time.
It was a familiar enough dream, he’d had dozens of versions of it in the nearly seven years since leaving Europe, though more regularly during the early years. He hadn’t had it for a while now, seven or eight months he figured, trying to remember when exactly it had been. That he was terrified that Nikita would be dead before he could get back to her was obvious, he was fully able to work himself into an anxious, nausea-ridden state about that in broad daylight. It didn’t matter how often he scolded himself that Nikita was a skilled operative, a subtle strategist and an able leader in whom he should have more confidence. Twelve years was a very long time to survive at any level in Section, and even the most talented had not lasted much longer than that. And no one knew her weaknesses better than her mentor did. At moments like this one it was all he could do to keep himself from tossing caution and Adam to the winds and running directly to her side.
But why now? Why tonight?
Michael slowly reviewed the evening, seeking the catalyst for his nightmare. He and Adam had had dinner with Scott, his latest girlfriend and his eight-year-old son. Scott was Michael’s most regular sparring partner at the dojo and had become a friend over the years. Cindy, whom he didn’t care for very much, had been teasing Adam, trying to get him to ask her what she’d overheard about him in the women’s locker room at the dojo. When a red-eared Adam hadn’t risen to the bait, she’d turned her attentions to Michael, telling him in wildly inappropriate language, given the company of the children, exactly what she’d overheard with regards to him. Scott, whose superb skills on the mat failed utterly to translate in any way into his regular life, had made some ineffectual efforts to shut her up, but she persisted until the arrival of the waiter had provided a distraction.
Michael had regretfully dismissed his first impulse to shut Cindy down using the same throat tap he had used on trainees who pissed him off. Which had got him thinking about Nikita, on whom he had never used that move no matter how much she mouthed off in training. He should have realized that even then she was affecting him differently than anyone else ever had. Then he had wished Nikita had been there at the restaurant, by her presence alone protecting him from Cindy’s impertinence and saving Adam from embarrassment. Then came the familiar emotional cocktail of resentment and anger directed at Jones and himself, followed by the depressing reminder that he had six more years to get through before he could be with her again. That she had to survive six more years in the viper pit that was Section, Oversight and Center, alone and without his help.
As he reached to take the faintly hissing kettle off the burner he decided that had to be it. He’d been thinking about Nikita a lot lately, and not just tonight. He supposed it was because as Adam was getting more independent, the more time Michael had to himself. And in that time, Michael was slowly coming to realize that he was both bored and lonely. The older Adam got, the less he could be relied upon to provide constant occupation for Michael in the future. The next six years suddenly seemed to loom ahead as an endless gray tunnel.
Michael decided that in thinking about Nikita, he was also stoking his fear that something would happen to prevent him from ever rejoining her. It was also probably a warning from his subconscious. Bored and lonely operatives make mistakes, mistakes that end their lives and the lives of those who depend on them. He could not let his own vigilance slack off just because he was feeling sorry for himself.
Knowing he wouldn’t go back to sleep, he sat in the kitchen sipping tepid tea, watching the clock move slowly to the hour that he could begin the day’s work. He spent the time wrestling with the guilty fear that his desire to be with Nikita was preventing him from wholly embracing his second chance with his son, that rather than dreaming of some future date when he would have the woman he wanted, he should fully live the life with his son he had now.
************
Michael heard the small chime that signified a door or window opening in the house. The dogs, who’d been dozing nearby, leapt to their feet and rushed to the door of the garage, pacing and whining and letting out sharp yips, begging to be released to see who it was. Michael told them to be quiet; knowing from a quick glance at his watch that it must be Adam, home from school.
Indeed, a few minutes later, the garage door thudded open and, to the enthusiastic reaction of the dogs, Adam poked his head in. Catching Michael’s eye, he said, “Hey. You’re home early.”
“Client changed her mind again about the color.”
“Oh. What are you doing?”
Deciding to interpret this as a conversational opening as opposed to the moronic question it appeared to be, Michael replied, “working on the snowmobiles. Come in and close the door, you’re letting out all the heat.” He nodded at the electric space heater for emphasis.
“Oh.” Adam came all the way into the garage, slamming the door closed behind him with his free hand. In the other he held a glass high above the frisking dogs. He stopped almost immediately and began showering them with much appreciated attention. Eventually abandoning his admirers he began wandering around the perimeter of the two-car garage, inspecting various items that caught his attention – a hockey stick leaning precariously against the wall, a bag of soccer balls hanging from the roof beams, a jumble of brooms and snow shovels, a low shelf holding various yard tools, the seat of his bike, now hanging from ceiling hooks, a baseball bat fallen over and rolling aimlessly against the wall – before drifting over to perch on the bumper of the only car in the garage, their six-year old SUV, to watch Michael at work on the snowmobiles in the second bay. After slugging back half his glass of milk in a single swallow, Adam asked, “can I help?”
“Yes. Hand me the small needle nose pliers.”
“Okay.” After polishing off the rest of his milk, Adam rose and searched through the open toolbox, then handed over the requested item. “Here.”
Michael accepted the proffered pliers, then turning back to his task, said over his shoulder, “you could take the engine cover off the other one.”
“Okay.”
Obviously it was his responsibility to get the conversational ball rolling, so Michael asked, “how was your day?”
“Fine,” Adam threw out over his shoulder as he bent over the second snowmobile.
With a familiar twinge of sympathy for all the women who’d loved him and had endured that same answer from him time and again, Michael probed a bit further. “Anything unusual happen today?”
As he worked to loosen the cover, Adam said, “Not really.” He wandered over to the toolbox and dredged out a screwdriver. Then he said, in a tone of complete indifference, “Jake and Erin had a fight today, right in the middle of the cafeteria.”
Wondering if this was a red herring or the real thing, Michael said “Hmmm.”
“Yeah. And oh man, it was so…,” Adam paused, searching for the right word, “like, ahhhhgg.” And he did the shake-off-the-gross-thing shiver, using body language to convey what he had no words to describe.
A corner of Michael’s mouth twitched. “That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“You know, relationship stuff.”
Whatever that might be for thirteen-year-olds, Michael thought. “Oh,” was all he could come up with to say.
Adam set the cover on the ground, then said “what next?”
“Check the oil.”
“Okay.” He turned back to the snowmobile. “Where?”
“The small cap by your right hand.” Michael gestured with his chin, wondering just what was really bothering Adam.
After deciding that the machine did need more oil, Adam began the process of refilling. “I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Michael asked, still in the dark about what was troubling Adam.
“Relationships. Girls.” He closed the oil container and replaced it on the shelf. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“The point of what?” With a slightly hysterical giggle trapped in his throat, Michael struggled to decide which would be more impossible for him to explain, relationships or girls.
“Re-la-tion-ships.” Adam repeated himself, slightly slower, patient with his clueless parent.
“Oh.” Michael scratched his chin through his beard and hoped that maybe Adam would continue talking and give him some more clues.
Adam fiddled with the clutch, then burst out, “I mean, its not like they’re having sex or anything.”
Thank the gods for small favors, was the first thought to cross Michael’s mind. The second was the disheartening suspicion that Adam appeared to think that sex was the only rational reason for a relationship. Hoping he was mistaken and that Adam was merely understandably confused about something else that he had no words for, he said, “why don’t you tell me what they were fighting about.”
“Well, it’s like.” Adam paused for a moment, then continued. “Erin thought that Jake was, like, coming on to another girl, you know. And, well, started getting in his face about it. And Jake told her to, like, just back off, he was just helping her with her homework, and Erin started to cry because she thought Jake was jerking her around and then Jake got all pissed because she was making a scene, and then he left and Erin cried some more.”
Michael had never particularly liked Jake, even though Adam and Jake had been close friends almost since they moved into the neighborhood. Michael had always thought Jake was a selfish, dictatorial whiner whose first impulse was to blame others for his problems. Jake and Adam had always spent as much time getting on each other’s nerves and squabbling as they did having fun. Jake was also physically much more mature than Adam, a handsome boy in an all-American kind of way, and as a result was adding an unbearably cocky attitude to an already unpleasant personality. But in that inexplicable way of teens, Jake was emerging as a leader in the popular crowd. Michael was not at all surprised that Jake’s choice of self-defense was to make Erin cry. And he had liked Erin almost as long as he had disliked Jake.
Giving in to a base impulse to shine a little more light on Jake’s general character, Michael asked, “was he ‘coming on’ to someone else?”
Adam sighed and rolled his eyes, “Yeah.”
“And Erin was jealous.”
Adam tossed the screwdriver he had been using into the box with unnecessary vigor. “Yeah.”
With suspicion flickering, Michael examined Adam from under drooping eyelids, to all appearances focused more or less completely on a balky gearshift. Adam was shifting his weight from side to side, cracking his knuckles and chewing on his lower lip, staring vaguely at the snowmobile in front of him. Michael asked, “did Erin ask you if it was true?”
Adam flung himself onto the snowmobile seat and groaned, “yeah.”
“And you said?”
Adam dropped his head into his hands, completely covering his face. After a moment, a slightly strangled “no” emerged.
Michael’s heart twisted. I can’t fix this one for you, he thought. “You lied to protect Jake.”
With his face still buried, Adam answered, “yeah.”
“And now you feel badly about it.”
Adam looked up and caught his father’s eye. “How do I fix it, Dad?”
“If you tell Erin the truth, Jake will be angry.” Michael chose the easier of the two outcomes, giving Adam the opportunity to defend Jake, or worry about Erin.
“And if I don’t she’ll let Jake walk all over her.” Adam pursed his lips in frustration.
Deeply relieved by Adam’s interest in Erin’s well being, Michael said. “You want to be loyal to them both.”
“They’re my best friends, Dad.” The anguish in Adam’s voice was palpable.
Michael sat up on his heels and looked at Adam, who was a picture of teenage misery, slumped in despair over the handlebars, kicking the starter pedal and running his fingers through his fashionably styled hair. His son was a pleaser, a responsible fixer of other peoples’ problems, almost always the first make an effort to make someone happy, to share what he had, to let his own desires take a back seat to those of more demanding friends. Michael believed that this aspect of Adam’s personality was another manifestation of Adam’s fears of abandonment, and accordingly tortured himself with guilt about his role in it. And now Adam had backed himself right into a box with no simple, painless way to please everyone.
“I don’t think there is anything you can do this time.”
Adam scrunched up his face, unhappy with this advice.
“But the next time, and with Jake there will be a next time, you need to decide how to handle it now.”
“Yeah.” Adam half chuckled, half snorted in acknowledgement.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t let Jake rely on you to lie for him.”
Adam sighed and dropped his chin onto his hand. “I just wish it wasn’t Erin, ya know?’
Michael kept to himself the depressing thought that if it were some other girl Adam apparently would not feel so badly about covering for his unpleasant friend. “I know.”
After waiting a beat or two, Michael turned back to the machine he was working on. “You helping with these or just sitting there, feeling badly for a while?”
With a small, self-conscious grin, Adam replied, “helping.”
************
As was their custom, Michael and Adam joined Erin’s family, the Andersen’s, her parents Pete and Miranda, and Erin’s younger brother Johnny for Thanksgiving Diner. This year they were all at Miranda’s brother Jim’s house. Pete usually brought along a few strays from the “U” – and this year was no exception. The English department, of which Pete was chair, had made a new hire, a young woman from California, and she was there along with a friend, a new assistant professor of French lit. Since Michael was in charge of the appetizers he and Adam had arrived fairly early, in time to catch most of the game on TV.
Michael was in the big, warm kitchen getting a fresh beer and talking with Miranda and Carol, Jim’s wife. Pete, a big bear of a man with wispy, fly-away gray hair, wandered in explaining, as he did each year, that he had no interest in commercials. As the adults stood around chatting, Adam and Erin came in for snack refills. Remembering his conversation with Adam in the garage the week before, Michael asked Erin how Jake was.
Erin, pale and pretty like her mother, froze, flushed and airily announced, “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” before fairly flying out of the room.
“DAD!” Adam shot his father an agonized look and rushed after Erin.
“What?” Michael spread his hands helplessly as he stared after Adam’s rapidly vanishing back.
Before the kids were out of earshot, the adults in the kitchen heard Erin wail in horror, “A-DAM! How could you tell your father?!”
Catching Pete’s twinkling eyes, Michael found his own lips twitching. Pete, who had unfortunately just raised his beer bottle to his lips, suddenly cracked and burst into a loud guffaw, spewing beer across the floor. At which point Carol and Miranda both lost it too, sagging helplessly against the countertops, wracked with whoops of laughter. Michael couldn’t help but join in.
“Oh Mike,” Miranda paused, still giggling, to wipe her streaming eyes, “you couldn’t have known it but the ‘big break up’ came last night.”
“More like the ‘big dumping’, ” added Pete, rolling his eyes. “It was unbelievable. Went on for hours, tied up the phone, involved several girlfriends and copious tears.”
Michael suddenly recalled being vaguely aware that Adam had spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone last night too. He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “And you people always want to know why I don’t date.”
Later, at the large, heavily laden table Michael found himself seated next to the new French lit professor, a slim, attractive woman named Marie. She was in her early thirties, fair with masses of red-hennaed curls. He doubted this seating arrangement was at all accidental as Miranda regularly tried to set him up with new women. However, in this case, given the very real pleasure of speaking French, if not with a countryman then someone from Quebec, he discovered that he was enjoying this mild flirtation.
Michael and Marie talked about books they’d read in common, argued briefly over the relative significance of Sartre in the pantheon of twentieth-century intellectual figures, and bemoaned the incredible provinciality of much of Minnesota, rolling their eyes over the lack of a venue for French language films and books.
At the end of the evening Marie asked him for his phone number, and to the delighted reaction of Miranda, he not only gave it to her, but also got hers in return.
************
Michael wasn’t very surprised when Marie called him the day after Thanksgiving and invited him to a campus showing of a French film the following evening. He had been having second thoughts ever since he had asked her for her phone number – regretting the encouragement and invitation it suggested. He was about to say no, but caught sight of Adam, who had answered the phone and guessing the nature of the conversation was eagerly nodding his head and giving him the thumbs up sign. Then Michael recalled that the most recent examples of dating Adam had were Scott and Cindy and Jake and Erin, representing a very limited range of possibilities. And so, with a deep breath and a quelling glance in Adam’s direction – who was making panting faces across the kitchen counter – he said, “I’d like that.”
What did surprise him how much it bothered him to say yes, the way his stomach tightened just a bit and that he had to resist the urge to wipe his hands on his jeans when he hung up the phone, fully aware of Adam’s avid gaze.
Later, the only explanation he could think of was that he was completely and totally out of practice. It couldn’t be that he was upset because he felt a little like a cad. He hadn’t promised Nikita sexual fidelity while he was gone, nor had he assumed any on her part. And going to see a movie was hardly the same thing as a love affair. But, he did feel like he was betraying someone. And then he realized it was Marie, not Nikita, who had the greatest potential to be hurt – because he was not really available. After that he snorted in disgust at his own presumption that merely meeting him was all Marie needed to become emotionally vulnerable and attached.
Despite his hesitations, he had a good time. Nikita was incredibly picky about what movies she would see, particularly which French movies. On one especially memorable occasion, after seeing Bunuel’s Belle du Jour, at her choice he reminded himself, she had turned on Michael in a fury and demanded that he explain how this could be an acclaimed film, unless all Frenchmen were really misogynist, arrogant, unfeeling pigs. It was hardly the moment to remind her that he had tried to suggest a different movie, knowing ahead of time that she would be troubled by the suggestion of the heroine’s childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest – not that that was the limit of her critique, he remembered with a fond smile. After that – in the exceedingly rare times they’d had enough leisure to have any interest in catching a movie – they stuck with farces.
Tonight, he had had the chance to see one of the more recent films by an up and coming auteur in the world of French Cinema, a film Nikita would never have agreed to. And he had enjoyed it very much. And enjoyed the company too. Marie was smart and attractive and witty. Afterwards they went to a small wine bar in a neighborhood that abutted the main Minneapolis campus of the state university. Watching her laugh, learning about her life in graduate school and the way she was adjusting to Minnesota, it was all so amazingly fresh, untainted by his past history. He felt an odd kind of hyper awareness, feeling a split between realities, as though he were gazing through the looking glass into one of the lives he might have lived if he had made different choices long ago and in another life.
When he got home, Adam was waiting up, camped out in front of the TV.
“So,” he drawled, eyes flickering back and forth between the screen and Michael’s face. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“Fine? That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Com’on Dad, give.”
“Do I ask you for details about your dating life?”
“I don’t have a dating life, remember? I’m too young.” Adam smirked at being able to quote his father back to him.
“It was very nice. I enjoyed the movie.”
“And….?”
“And the company.”
“Are you gonna see her again?”
Michael had spent the entire drive home in the car trying to figure out if he wanted to see her again, if it was a good idea or a terrible mistake to pursue the friendship. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Way-to-go Dad!”
************
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Date: 2010-03-24 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 09:54 pm (UTC)