Clark slipped back into the bedroom through the open window and switched to his street clothes. He could smell meatloaf and potatoes baking in the oven downstairs. He smiled to himself. It had been ages since he’d had meatloaf. He’d heard that Alice White was a good cook.
He heard Perry’s heavy tread on the steps to the second floor, laid down on the bed and waited for the knock on the door.
The knock came right on time. “Clark? Alice has dinner ready.”
“I’ll be right there,” Clark told him, getting up and going to the door. He followed Perry down the stairs to the dining room.
Alice had set the baby in her carrier on a dining room chair. The infant was asleep again.
“So, Perry says you’ve been in South America the whole time you were gone. You weren’t in the middle of all those drugs and all that fighting, were you?”
“I did my best to avoid it. Getting involved in that is a good way to get killed,” Clark said. “Especially for an American.”
“Well, how did you meet her? The baby’s mother, I mean,” Alice asked.
“I was trying to avoid getting shot and wound up in this little village on the border. It seemed like a nice enough place, and the jefe’s daughter took a liking to me, and one thing led to another and you know the rest,” Clark explained. His eyes widened as he remembered something he’d overlooked.
“Clark, what’s wrong?” Perry asked.
“My mother,” he blurted out. “She’s going to kill me. It was bad enough when I told her about Jason. I am so dead.” How could I be so stupid? If anybody’s called her . . . I am so dead.
“You didn’t tell your mother you got married while you were gone?” Alice asked. Disbelief was evident in her voice.
“No, it was the other part I may not have been clear on,” Clark said. “May I borrow your phone?”
“The wireless is in the kitchen,” Perry told him. Clark nodded thanks and went to the kitchen to grab the phone. He walked out onto the back deck, closing the door behind him as he dialed his mother’s cell phone number.
“Mom?” he said as the other end picked up. “It’s Clark. Um, are you alone?”
“Yes. Ben is outside,” she said. “Is there something wrong? Perry called me yesterday asking if I knew where you and Lois were.”
“Lois and I are fine,” he said. “But things have gotten kind of weird. While we were gone, we were given a baby, a little girl. Her mother is dead and her father . . .that part I’ll explain later. It’s complicated.”
“So, what does this have to do with you?” his mother asked.
“The baby isn’t from around here. I mean she really isn’t from around here. And Lois and I decided . . . , actually Lois decided,” he amended, “the best way to explain the whole thing was if I got married while I was gone, my wife had a baby while I was trying to bring her into the country and Superman found the baby alive but the mother dead.”
“What was her name?” Martha asked. “The woman you married?”
“Conza Nor-Et,” Clark answered. “I’ve named the baby Esperanza Ester.”
“Clark, have you any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?” Martha asked. “Taking on the responsibility of a baby isn’t a spur of the moment type of decision.”
“Mom, if I hadn’t done it, the people who brought her to where we got her would have killed her,” Clark explained. “Her existence was politically inconvenient. We couldn’t let that happen.”
“Do you want Ben and me to fly out there?”
“Mom, I don’t even have a place to live yet, the city’s so messed up,” Clark said. “Perry and his wife are putting me and the baby up in one of their guest rooms for the time being.”
“What about Lois? Is she going to help?”
“She said she would,” Clark said. “But I’m not sure how much she can. She has a fiancé so I’m not sure what she can do, except be supportive. Look, I’ll call you in a few days, let you know what’s going on.”
“Clark,” Martha said gently. “I know you’ll do the right thing. I just hope you’ll be okay. And remember, I can always come out there if you need me to.”
“I know, Mom. Love you, and thanks.” He hit the end button on the phone and sighed. At least she didn’t yell at me. Maybe she figures the responsibility lecture stuck.
“Ben and I were in Metropolis to see you,” Martha had told him. “I wanted to be there for you, be there for my boy. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to . . . I was afraid I’d be burying an empty coffin next to your father’s. . . .We saw Lois and her son leaving the hospital. He’s a fine looking boy.”
“Yes, he is . . . Mom, Lois told me – at least I think she did, it was when I was in the hospital, when they thought I might not make it. She told me that Jason might be mine. Although I can’t quite figure out how.”
“Babies are a common hazard of sex, you know.”
Clark had chuckled. “You know what I mean. I didn’t think humans and, you know, I didn’t think we’d be compatible.”
“We know better, now. I’m a little disappointed though. I thought your Dad and I . . .”
“You thought you’d taught me better,” Clark had completed for her. “You did. Before the article about Krypton was published, before I decided to leave, I asked Lois to marry me. I gave up my powers to be with her, Mom. And yes, I spent the night with her. At that moment, it was absolutely right.”
“But you haven’t lost your powers.”
“No. It became obvious pretty quickly that for me to do that was the worst decision of my life. I couldn’t do it. Maybe I was selfish and wanted it all, but it wasn’t going to work. As much as I’ve always wanted to be normal, to be human, I couldn’t. Lois. . . Lois couldn’t handle it. So I erased her memory of us. I didn’t know she’d gotten pregnant. I swear to God I would never have left if I’d known.”
“I know that, son. What do you plan to do?”
“Her fiancé is a good man . . . It’s probably better if I don’t do anything. But it’s tearing me up inside.”
“Clark, I know you’ll do what’s right.”
But what the devil is right when your world has been turned upside down and inside out? When two entire universes conspire against you?
0 0 0
“I’ll get the guest room ready for you,” Lois announced, getting up from the table. Jason watched her with confusion written across his small face.
“Mommy, what’s going on?” he asked, voice small.
“Daddy is moving to France on Monday.,” Lois explained. “Across the ocean.”
“Does that mean he won’t live here any more?”
“Yeah munchkin,” Richard told him, ruffling his hair. “But I can come back for holidays, or you and Mommy can come visit.”
“But I don’t want you to live across the ocean,” Jason complained, breaking into tears. “I want you here to tuck me in and read me my stories. Don’t you want to be my daddy anymore?”
“Jason, Richard will always be your daddy, I promise,” Lois try to reassure him. “And we can visit him in Paris, just like he said. It’s just that . . . when Clark came back, and Superman came back too, things changed and your daddy and I have decided it would be better if we didn’t get married and we didn’t live together right now.”
Jason looked from one adult to another. “Are we still going to the zoo Saturday?”
“Sure thing, sport,” Richard told him. He poured himself another glass of wine, finishing off the bottle.
Jason nodded, content for the moment. Then: “If Daddy is moving across the ocean, then is Mister Clark going to move in here with my sister?”
Richard choked on his wine. “What makes you ask that, Jason?”
“Well, if Mister Clark is my other daddy, and my first daddy isn’t around . . . You said Mister Clark’s baby doesn’t have a mommy. A baby should have a mommy . . .” Jason told them solemnly.
“Yes, a baby should have a mommy,” Lois agreed. “And I did promise Mister Clark I would help. But that doesn’t mean he and the baby are going to move in with us.”
“Yet,” Richard murmured under his breath, softly enough Lois shouldn’t have been able to hear. Jason gave him a puzzled look. He heard me?
“When can I meet my baby sister?” Jason asked.
“How about now?” Lois offered.
Richard shrugged. “I’ll clean up here, get my stuff moved out.” He ruffled Jason’s hair once more. “See you later.”
0 0 0
“How did she take it?” Perry asked.
“Better than I thought she would,” Clark admitted. He sat back down at the table. Alice had brought in dessert – apple pie – and poured more coffee.
An alarm went off somewhere in Midtown followed by a siren. Clark stopped to listen for a moment, to determine what, if anything, was happening. A report on the police band indicated a convenience store robbery, a little cash taken but no one was hurt. The police had the situation under control.
“Clark? Clark?” Alice’s voice intruded. He turned to see her watching him worriedly.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered. “I, um, just heard something. A siren, I think.”
She didn’t look convinced. “Clark, have you seen a doctor about these seizures?”
“Seizures?” Clark asked. He had no clue as to what she was talking about. He took a bite of the pie. It was very good. Not as good as Mom's but very good.
“You were just staring off into space for a good thirty seconds,” Alice explained. “Although from what I’ve read, you are a little old for petit mal seizures.”
“Petit mal seizures?” Clark repeated. She thinks I have epilepsy?
“Alice, leave the boy alone,” Perry admonished. “I’m sure if I turned on the police band we’d find out there’s something happening three streets over. Clark’s just been on the city beat for so long he’s positively psychic when it comes to sirens and alarms.” Perry smiled at his own joke as he picked up his coffee cup, beckoning Clark to follow him.
Clark picked up the baby, making sure she was well wrapped in the pink and yellow blankets Polly had bought for her, and followed Perry out onto the back deck.
“When you do that, it really does look like you’ve completely spaced out. The sirens were over in New Troy somewhere, weren’t they?”
“I don’t know what . . .”
“Don’t lie to me, boy,” Perry warned him. “You’re the second best investigative reporter I have, next to Lois. That puts you as one of the top five in the world and that buys you a lot of slack, a lot of unexplained disappearances, a lot of tardiness. But I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive and right now, I want the absolute truth. Who are this child’s biological parents?”
“You’ll have me hauled off to Belle Reve,” Clark muttered.
“Clark, I live in Metropolis. A man who flies saved the city last week. A man who looks an awful lot like you. Try me.”
“You’ve heard of the theory that there are multiple parallel universes? That every decision made, every random event creates a new time-line, a new universe?”
Perry nodded. “I’ve heard of it. I’m not sure I buy it, but I’m familiar with it.”
“It’s not a theory,” Clark said. “That’s what happened to me and Lois. We ended up in an alternate time-line. We were there for maybe twenty hours.”
“You were gone for three days,” Perry reminded him.
“I know. We were lucky to have gotten back at all,” Clark said. “This little one comes from that time-line and her biological parents really were a woman named Conza Nor-Et and Clark Kent. Clark Jerome Kent. My alternate. He’s about six years older than I am, been married for ten years, has four kids, and he’s the editor in chief of the Daily Planet.”
“So he what, had an affair with this woman?”
“Nothing so simple. He hadn’t even seen her in over ten years. In that time-line their Clark ended up involved in some political issues before he got married, enough to make him a target for their version of terrorists. They managed to get a sperm sample or something, impregnated the daughter of one of the terrorist leaders when she was old enough. I won’t go into the government structure of the place they were from there except that this little girl’s existence would be enough to completely destabilize their government and plunge the place into chaos if not civil war.”
“So you and Lois decided to bring the child here for safekeeping?”
“It seemed to be the right thing to do.”
“So, why are you going through with the charade that she’s yours?”
“Perry, her mother was Conza, daughter of Nor, Lord of the House of Et, of the colony of New Krypton,” Clark told him. “She’s Kryptonian.”
“Does Lois know?”
“Oh yeah. She knows.” Lois knows everything. Oh God, what have I gotten myself into? Perry knows too.
