Thanks again for all the feedback
Here's part 05, ready to go. A
ToC for this story is available.
Good Samaritan (05/08)
I felt like an open wound after that encounter. Everything ached. My eyes burned. And I wanted nothing more than to crawl into a dark hole and stay there.
But I couldn't.
I remember sitting there in the hallway like a stunned bird who had just struck a window. Blinking. Dazed.
"I just decided to. And it was worth it," Superman had said.
Well, how did one decide that sort of thing? Flip an off switch and say everything was better?
I wish I had an off switch.
If it were only that easy.
As I blindly fumbled to recollect the fallen laundry, I heard a mumble. A buzz. Somewhere in front of me. It vaguely occurred to me that Superman had offered to assist me with the laundry. Somehow, my brain had translated the confusion into words.
I fought the urge to loose a bitter laugh. Of all the things that Superman would *help* me with, I had never imagined it would have been my laundry. The whole idea seemed absurd to me. Superman Averts Laundry Disaster, headlines would shout. "Colors don't go with whites," Superman said when asked what had prompted the save.
I shooed him away with some sort of wordless grumble before I stumbled down the hall. I had to get this load in or I would never finish my list.
My list. Had to finish it.
Despite the stupor, my breath stopped short for a heartbeat when I passed the door to the master bedroom. Master bedroom. I had trouble seeing it as mine anymore. Not when I could still feel her cold fingertips slipping past mine, letting go...
Why, of all things, did I have to remember that the most?
No, my room was down the hall now. Where I could sleep without the memories. Or at least, before today I had been able to. I didn't know what tonight would hold in store for me, not with everything suddenly so raw.
Somehow, I managed to drag myself, basket in tow, down to the basement to start the wash cycle for that load. I'd heard the girls playing in the library on my way down, but it had been a distant, dull twitter in my ears, and I'd held no curiosity over what they were doing.
The buzzer sounded, hollow and whining, as I shut the lid on the washer. I stood there for a few moments, staring off into space. The detergent shelf blurred in front of me into a lurid array of neons. I gripped the sides of the rumbling machine. My palms streaked along the cool white metal.
Just like her hands.
But when I blinked, everything was still there. Focus returned. The Tide box hovered three inches from my face. The stinging scent of detergent clipped my nose. A groan stuttered from my lips as I picked up the now empty basket and walked back upstairs.
The girls were still playing as I wandered past.
The hollow sound of water hitting the tile basin alerted me to the shower starting in the hallway bathroom as I trudged up the steps. The lock clicked and there was a thump or two as I walked past the door. At least that meant I wouldn't have to converse with him more about things.
I went in to my room to fetch the sheets for the next load.
The room, shrouded in dark with the shade over the window still drawn, was picked up and neat. The light bedspread, which was normally crunched up at the foot of my bed, smoothly cascaded over the sides to the carpet and cinched up under the pillows as though it were meant for a department store display. Again, I was struck with how, well, how normal Superman was. Beyond normal. He made beds better than I did.
My old bathrobe, which I had left out for him along with a fresh towel and some other things, was gone from the hook. His suit was folded up and laid neatly on my reading chair. The long red cape hung over the back, an elastic-looking harness thing gripping the sides of the wingbacks, I guess so it wouldn't get wrinkled. Getting creases out of that thing had to be an utter nightmare. Though I suppose if he made beds he also ironed.
Without ceremony, I picked it all up and stuffed it in the basket. Lycra body and a cotton cape, I observed with a clinical eye and a quick touch. Very earthly fabrics. Surprising. I wondered why they didn't blow up when people threw bombs in his face? Shouldn't the spandex at least have had the little tell-tale fuzzies of wear?
I sighed and tore my focus away from the basket.
Superman had no space costume. He made beds and folded things. He had a significant other. A kid. He had a life beyond the perils exposed on the news channels and in the papers.
The ache in my joints returned.
He had love.
Somehow, he had love, and I didn't.
It wasn't until I had turned to leave the room that I was knocked out of my humorless mope by an unexpected realization.
The phone.
It was right there.
The phone which Superman had used just a little while ago.
To call.
Honey.
I stared at it.
It stared back, beckoning.
Laundry basket forgotten, I took a baby step toward it.
No. No, I couldn't. And I didn't want to know. I didn't. The man had a right to his privacy, contrary to media opinion.
But...
How did he do it? Live?
And how did she? Live knowing?
I had wondered those things.
I closed the distance and was reaching for the phone with shaking fingers before I realized what I was doing.
Stop it.
Stop it, Jake.
Leave the man alone.
For several long, impregnable seconds, I stared at it, forlorn. This was the phone I had called 911 from. She had come in here to put some of our spare boxes away, insisting she was all right, though I had thought at the time she looked far too pale. I should have known not to listen to her assurances. It had been almost fifteen minutes before I had come to find her. Collapsed. God, she had collapsed right here.
I reached for the phone, and this time nothing stopped me.
It rang several times before a woman picked up, just as a dry, choked sound fell from my lips.
"Hello?" she said.
Not ten seconds earlier I had been so sure of myself, so ready to seek answers, but now as I heard her, everything froze up inside. My heart thudded, cantankerous, rebelling.
I suppose I was half hoping she would sound like a witch. Like someone I could hate.
She didn't.
Her voice was confident, but it had a soft quality to it. As though she knew she could dish it out in a pinch, but was more mellow under normal circumstances. The pitch of it was not high or annoying or nasal like some women I had heard in my lifetime. It was... Pleasant. Alto. I bet she sang beautifully.
"Hello?" she said again into the din of my thoughts, though her voice lowered in tone to a less friendly realm of greeting.
God, what was I doing? And what was wrong with me? I've never been a spiteful person. And here I was, dismayed that I didn't dislike her immediately.
"Listen, cloth ears," she snapped. "Pick another house to prank call next time, or I'll star six nine you and track you down."
Her sudden venom was at least enough to siphon words out of me, but despite it all, she didn't sound cruel. Just defensive. A fight or flight response that strangely stuck on fight. I decided she must be brave.
Unlike me.
"I'm sorry, I..." I somehow managed to stutter. I feared I had waited too long to speak and that only a fleeting moment remained before I would be met with a clack, dead air, and then the whine of a dial tone. But the moment the cadence of my voice fell to a brief silence, she burst in with more questions.
"Yes, what is it? Who is this?"
Rapid fire. Her demanding tone set me so off kilter I answered without hesitation. "Jake. My name is Jake Lancer. And I don't really know--"
She cut me off. "How did you get this number? It's unlisted."
"I... I'm sorry. I hit redial."
Her soft breathing buffeted the receiver. A long, long pause followed, and I had the moment of peace I needed to catch up with the situation. What are you doing, Jake, I asked myself. I didn't know.
I really didn't.
It was one of those instances where you jump into the water so fast you don't stop to think just how you intend to get back out. Perhaps you can't even swim.
Just what was I looking for here?
"You're the Jake that saved him," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
There was another long pause as she absorbed this. "Did something..." Her voice broke a little for the first time, and I stood there, stunned. What had I said? "Did something happen?" she asked, recovering from the halt. Her voice dripped with a worry I had heard before. In myself.
I'm sorry, the doctor had said, after I was allowed back into the room to see her. She had been unmoving. They had tried to revive her. Shoved me out of the way as soon as she had flat-lined. But they had failed. I'd told the doctor thank you. And that was how I had sounded.
*Just* like that.
"No," I said, sinking. I listened. The shower was still going, mere static noise in the background. Since our discussion, Superman hadn't spoken to me. And, though he hadn't looked all that well, it didn't take a medical degree for me to determine he was on the mend. "No... He seems... fine now."
Her sigh of relief buffeted my ear, and I pulled the phone back just a bit.
"Make sure he gets a lot of sun," she said after she recovered. "It helps." Her former confident voice held just a shade of itself in that soft tone.
"I hadn't even thought about..." My gaze shot to the blinds that still hung gloomily over the windows. "I... I'm sorry."
Stupid, stupid. Hadn't the fact that his powers may be solar induced been speculated time and time again? I moved to open the shades.
"He'll be all right," she said, her voice much stronger. "Is there some reason you called, then?"
"I..." I struggled over the word in a vain attempt to fill dead air.
I didn't understand how she could do it, be so calm. Superman had nearly *died*. Nearly been taken away from her. I, of all people, had prevented that fate, and it had been sheer happenstance. Happenstance had saved him. And, from her immediate worry when she had discovered who I was, I knew she knew it. Knew that he had been dying and there was not a blessed thing she could have done about it. And she knew Superman had been lying to her earlier on the phone when he'd repeatedly said he was fine.
The whole situation had to be terrifying. The not knowing. Being far away. At least that was something I had had. Closeness. Knowing that she was deteriorating right in front of me, because I *saw it*, *saw her*, every day getting closer to an end the doctors assured me over and over might not happen. The doctors had been lying to me, but not my eyes.
How much worse would it have been to have imagined instead of seen? Imaginations are so, so much worse.
How did she do it?
"Are you still there?" she prodded, none too gentle.
How did he do it? Live?
And how did she? Live knowing?
"How do you sleep at night?" I blurted.
"Pardon?"
"How do you sleep at night not knowing when he'll come back?" I clarified. "*If* he'll come back."
"Sleeping pills work," she answered. Her voice dripped sarcasm like poison.
My fingers turned purple as I wrapped the phone cord around them one by one. One by one. A snake. Constricting around me. "Don't joke about that," I whispered.
"--What?" Genuine surprise that time.
"Just don't."
"--Well," she stuttered. "What?"
"I..." I suppose I should have been pleased that I had turned the tables on her and for once brought her to silence. But all I felt was tension. Desperation. She was the one who could tell me, I convinced myself. She could tell me. "I just want to know how you do it. Please."
"Well..." I listened to her breaths as she thought. Soft. Steady. I missed that sound when I slept. So much, I missed it.
"I just do," she said. Vague.
Not enough. "How?"
"... Because I love him," she said, as though I had poked the words out of her with a stick.
"But what does that *mean*? Please," I begged. "I need to understand. Please."
Familiar emptiness clutched at me.
"Why?"
Why.
I stared out the window into the sunlit afternoon. Why.
I had had my epiphany back when I had chatted with Superman, I thought. I was dead. Yes, yes, I knew it. I knew it now. I had mourned like I was supposed to, like everyone who lost a great love, and then nothing. Nothing had changed. I was stuck stagnant. For years I hadn't even realized. I could vaguely remember what it had felt like before, when she had been alive, to be healthy and happy. Just enough to know I had never made it back there, not to that place.
So why wasn't it magically better now that I knew?
Why was I stuck?
Where was I?
"Because I look at him, and see what I used to be and I don't know how to get back." And she had to know. She *had* to.
"How to get...?"
"How do you care?" I demanded. Air rushed past my face as I threw myself into a loping pace. Back and forth.
"What do you want me to say, Mr. Lancer?"
She just didn't understand. I don't know, but perhaps I growled in frustration. My skin started to tremble.
"How are you people more human than me?" I was yelling. Pleading. Breathing. Rude. Insulting. If I hadn't been so angry with everything, I might have been ashamed.
But whoever this woman was, she took it in stride. "Do you want me to say that it isn't easy?" she shouted back. "That sometimes I'm scared beyond reason?"
The desperation in her voice struck a chord, and I halted mid-stride. For a moment... A tiny, tiny moment... She sounded like me. Like I was, every day. "I--"
"Well, I am," she whispered. "Sometimes."
My sudden anger fell away like a receding tide. And I felt remorse for making her feel the pain I had wrestled with for years. Sometimes without even realizing I was wrestling. Trying to force reality away from me.
But how do you *fix* it, I wanted to ask. Was there some inner strength that I just lacked?
The only time I got any peace at all was when--
Do you know those dreadful moments where some understanding that has eluded you like the wisps of a dream suddenly materializes? Your stomach clenches up, you blink, and all you can do is think... Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Oh, GodGodGod.
"I don't love them," I said suddenly, surprised, before I had time to think further, to consider.
Then I stopped. And then I felt sick.
"What? Who?"
"My children," I said, swallowing around the thick lump in my throat that was threatening to choke me. "I don't love them. They're mine. But when I look at them, I feel empty. I...? God, what's wrong with me?" My voice deflated further with each word. "You must think I'm an absolute nut job. I don't even know who I'm talking to. I'm sorry to have bothered you--"
This whole idea had been foolish. Foolish. She couldn't fix me. Not Superman's wife. Nobody. Nobody could. I'd walked the phone back to the receiver and had almost dropped it onto the cradle when I heard her voice, small and distant.
"Do you really feel nothing at all? Or are you so used to pushing it away that you just think you don't?"
I scooped the phone back up and clutched it to my ear like a life preserver. "I--"
"Because I used to be like that," she continued, not bothering to pause for me. "Most of my coworkers thought I was a domineering bitch."
My breath hitched. "I--" I wanted her to have a solution. Really, I did.
"There goes Lois, they'd say. Ice queen. Mad dog. And what a horrible lay. That last part was Claude's fault. Not that you know who Claude is. He was French. He had an accent."
Breathless confusion replaced squelching angst. "I--"
But my stuttering had opened floodgates. Large floodgates.
"I just shut down," she breezed onward. "I swore all men were pigs. Chauvinists. And that I'd never let another one touch me as long as I lived. I worked my butt off to get half as far. I kept working, and working, and working. And they kept making their snide comments. I'd go home to my Ivory Tower reruns and my tub of Rocky Road and I'd let myself cry over a bunch of fictitious characters. But do you think I let myself care even once that there was a running pool on who I was going to chew up and spit out next?"
"Um." The only word I could manage.
"No, I didn't. Heck, I even started to believe the gossip. To revel in it. I was happy I scared them."
"Who could imagine?" I managed to interject, dazed.
"I kept trucking. Do you think my sick leave balance was anything short of epic?"
"No?"
"Of course not," she replied, as though surprised I could question it. "I was bad. I was MAD. I took no prisoners, and I didn't care who I stepped on in the process. But then you know what happened?"
"I'm sure you'll tell me."
"Cl-Superman."
I don't know when I had ambled back over to the window, but I found myself there, and I collapsed in a heap onto the chair.
"Oh," I said.
For the first time since her tirade had begun, she paused. Her words stung, though I doubt she realized it, or she wouldn't have spoken them in the first place. For a moment, when the opening statements had reached my ears, I was hopeful that she would be able to help me.
But she hadn't a clue.
Her solution was finding love.
But I had lost mine.
"I met him," she continued. "And all those snide remarks... All those little side bets. They started to hurt again. And I hated it. But in the end, I was better for it. I relearned how to feel. To love. Superman did all that for me. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"I guess."
I did. I did see what she was saying. It didn't help me, but I did see.
"Not that I'm an expert."
"I--"
"But is it something like that? I could give you Dr. Friskin's number if you like. She does phone consultations and is really very help--"
Exasperation overtook me as she launched into another monologue, but I had caught up sufficiently with the conversation that I found the courage to interject. "Your lung capacity amazes me," I said with wonder.
The pause that followed lengthened into a pregnant silence, and I wondered if I had managed to offend her. But, far from it, she said, "You know, I can't say I've ever received that compliment."
A compliment. It made me want to chuckle.
Superman being her significant other was making more and more sense to me. She was spirited. He was reserved, but possessed a quiet strength. And I doubted very much anyone other than Superman could temper those long-winded explosions of hers. Both had wills to match.
"Sorry," I fumbled. "I... Thank you."
"Glad I could help," she said after a pause, and then added in a hoarse whisper, "Keep him safe for me."
It was only after she had hung up that I realized... She'd called herself Lois. I didn't have much time to consider that, however, because moments after I hung up the phone, Superman had come back in.
His hair was wet and unruly, and seeing him in my robe, out of uniform, was truly strange. He looked like a regular Joe, perhaps on his way to the breakfast table to read the paper or do the crossword puzzle.
And *that*, I had even less time to ponder, because as soon as he entered the room, his eyes went wide. He clapped his hands over his ears and fell forward a little, making a strange groaning noise as his eyes screwed up in what looked like pain. What--?
Then, I heard it, too. A quiet whine. Almost indiscernible.
A kid was screaming, and it was coming from outside.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 05/08)
