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Table of Contents Good Samaritan (07/08)
As I sat in the passenger seat of the Explorer, listless, my splint cradled in my lap like I was a bird with an injured wing, I was struck with the irony of the situation. Superman was driving me back home in the dark. Lights were blinking out as we went. The kids sat quietly in the back seat though, contrary to last time, they weren't upset.
I snorted loud enough that I diverted his gaze from the road, but he said nothing.
The world had come back to me slowly, earlier. It had been strangely white. And there had been a beeping noise. Beep. Beep. Beep. How annoying.
I'd blinked and inhaled. Antiseptic.
"Welcome back, Mr. Lancer. You fainted again," a disembodied but friendly voice had said.
I'd looked woozily down, only to find that there were stitches on my arm. A woman with a shock of orange hair had been tying them off, and I remember thinking, in my slight disorientation, that she looked rather like a candle. A candle with an extremely frizzy flame. Could fire be frizzy?
"Don't move your arm yet," she'd commanded, though I hadn't been inclined to move much at the time, regardless. "We'll need to put a splint on it, but it's set, at least, and it was a very clean break."
Break. Broken. What?
I'd swallowed thickly, sitting up as fast as the sickening spinning in my head would allow. "Where are my kids?" I'd asked. The room had tumbled back and forth as I'd waited for an answer.
My voice had sounded as though it emanated from some place far away. Underwater.
Candle Lady had smiled. "Don't you worry. Your brother Charlie is out in the waiting room with them. Such little angels they are."
"My broth--" I'd begun, but clipped my words off. "Oh."
The rest of the night had been a blur.
And rather unpleasant.
And now Superman was driving my car. I wondered, did he even have a license? He certainly seemed well-versed in ground travel, which I found extraordinary. What use would Superman have for a car?
Then again, I suppose this entire situation was a perfect example.
He was wearing a pair of my old jeans -- the ones that had a hole in the knee except for a few clinging strands of denim that held the leg together -- and a loose Metropolis University sweatshirt. One of the only remnants of my college career that I hadn't retired to a thrift store, the trash, or an early grave. My class ring had gone down the drain by accident a few years ago, and I hadn't been back to pick up any new stuff since I had left. College. Back from when I had a lot more muscle volume. I was still surprised he fit into anything of mine at all, though it gratified me a considerable amount.
Out of uniform, his hair not slicked with grease, he looked so completely unlike any preconceived Superman image in my head, I really wasn't surprised the nurse had taken him for his word that he was my brother. Heck, he even had a bit of stubble at this point. He looked rather scruffy for the immaculate Man of Steel.
He was looking a *lot* better though, regardless. The circles were gone from under his eyes, and he had his color back. Lines of pain weren't pinched around his eyes like crows' feet. It didn't look like it was an effort for him to be commanding my vehicle in the dark. Actually, he looked like there was nothing unusual whatsoever about the situation.
It was hard for me to come to grips with the fact that he had been at death's door twenty-four hours ago.
I looked back to my girls. "How are you two doing?"
"Good," they said in unison.
"And you?" I asked pointedly to him.
"Fine," he replied offhandedly. He didn't sound interested in discussing it.
*Just* like him. I thought vaguely back to the conversation I'd had with his wife. Then I wondered about the fact that I now knew Superman well enough that I knew his typical response to pain. Hide it.
I stared at his profile as he smoothly navigated a four-way stop, amazed at not only how lackadaisical I was being that he was in my car, that he was *driving* it, but that I wasn't even particularly worried about my arm yet. Or how I was going to deal with taking care of two young kids this way. Must be the pain medication. Very good stuff, I suppose.
I sighed.
Superman. I wondered what his real name was? Superman couldn't be it.
Cl-Superman. That was what his wife had called him. The start of a name, a syllable, but she'd realized she'd slipped and fixed it before the whole word had gotten out. Cl-. Clyde? Good lord, I hoped not. SuperClyde to the rescue? No. Cliff? Clay? Clive? Or maybe it had been a K. And why was I assuming it was an earth name? Maybe he was the alien formerly known as Klignot. Or Klepto. Or Klatu!
I began to doubt the benefits of leaving myself on OxyContin for the remainder of my venture into broken-armdom.
But my mind happily continued along.
Wait. The woman had said her name.
What was it? Lois, she'd said. Mad dog. And she'd mentioned a Cl- name. What had it been. Claude. Right, Claude. But I'd gotten the distinct impression that Claude wasn't the Cl- in question. And I don't care how oblivious I was, Superman was not French, and if anything, I detected the mid-western 'non-accent' so typical of, well, Midwesterners.
Lois.
Hmmm.
Lois Lane. Cl-. Clark. Clark Kent.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
I jerked my gaze forward and stared pointedly at the road, watching the divider lines blur in the darkness.
Superman didn't just act like a normal guy.
He *was* a normal guy.
At least all the scandals made more sense now. Though I guess they had to get a laugh out of being accused about having affairs with themselves. Or maybe it wasn't so funny, considering it dragged their reputations through the dumps for something that wasn't even a lie. How many times had they refuted the claims? At least four over the years, though the first time the scandal had hit it had been the biggest doozy, especially with those peace talks on the line.
Wow.
Again, it struck me that the man sitting beside me had done some truly amazing things.
And he was... he was Clark Kent!
I blinked, forcing myself to calm down.
Why did I find it so surprising? It wasn't like I hadn't been smacked with hints all weekend.
Which was true.
And all at once, I was dumbfounded by it all. He didn't just manage a wife and a kid, he managed a whole other job. A job where he was expected to have serious product to be consumed by millions, every morning at the breakfast table. By me, even. I got the Sunday edition of the Planet every week. And he managed, somehow. Something I never, ever would be able to do. I could barely take care of my kids without killing myself, it seemed.
The world swam funnily as Superman pulled my car up the drive, interrupting my quickly spiraling thoughts.
Things moved rather blurrily. When my next lucid thought hit me, I was in the master bedroom in my old bed, and he was leaving the room, quiet, agile. And that lucid thought was precisely, oh, God, I'm back in the room. My bones almost skipped right out of my skin and onto the floor, but I was there already, and the flight mechanism flopped into impotency. Moving seemed an enormous task, one I didn't want to tackle right then.
Inertia was fast becoming my friend. And I found it strangely comforting. The sheets were warm. And soft. And I imagined I could smell her. Far from the terrifying feeling that I had been somehow defiling something when I'd almost slept in the bed last night, I was okay this time. And I hadn't even had to count to make myself that way.
I sighed.
He stopped in the doorframe and looked back at me for a moment. Then he looked back out at the hallway. And then back at me. He seemed suddenly small, standing there like he was. His shoulders hunched over. As if he were debating something very important and he just couldn't decide what to do.
As if he thought he were intruding...
"Superman?" I called into the dim blear. Clark, I added in my head.
"Can I..." he began, sounding so ridiculously uncertain now that I had no doubts whatsoever that Superman was a complete facade. Clark Kent was a guest in my house. Superman was gone for the weekend.
Wow.
"What's wrong?" I prodded. The drugs were making me quite happy to chat, I think.
"I'm not sure this is any of my business."
"Tell me," I said. It was obvious enough to me that this was something he considered to be serious. And I could take a little criticism, especially with whatever the doctors had put me on. Right? I could. Sure.
"Jake," he began, his voice cutting off into silence as he wheeled around and sat in the chair beside my bed. "I'm not exactly sure, but I think Baxter might be imaginary."
I blinked. That certainly hadn't been a topic I'd been expecting. Superman looked very worried. "But..." I began, stuttering, "Well, isn't that normal for kids her age?"
He gave me a placating shrug. "Well, sure. I've had tea-time with my daughter's at least twice."
Another bit of information to file away in my wow category. My wow category for the weekend was seriously close to exploding. I tried to picture Superman, cape and all, sitting at a little table drinking fake tea out of plastic cups. Despite all that I had pieced together, I just couldn't quite manage it.
"Oh," I replied lamely. And then my thoughts skittered to a different track. Honestly, overall, I think I was handling things quite decently up to this point.
I wondered what he was trying to get at. It did make a lot of sense, though. It would explain why I knew nothing of this Baxter, although I was a little bit miffed that Superman was the one who had to spell it out for me. I didn't think I was *that* oblivious about my daughters' lives.
I wasn't. Was I?
I swallowed. I was.
"In fact, when I was eight or nine, I had one myself," Superman continued. He had a faraway look in his eyes. And the skin around the corners of his face was pinched. "I called him Bob, I don't know why. That was when my speed started to become apparent. And my invulnerability..."
Well, sure, that made sense, I thought dumbly. Though a heaping portion of my brain was beginning to shut down under the weight of so much revelation. Too much for one day, I think.
It had never occurred to me that, far from being just a normal guy, he had actually had an insecure childhood, somewhere. With real parents. Well, I suppose I was making a bit of a leap. He hadn't mentioned parents. But how would he not have them?
How many other people on the planet had been trusted with all this information?
I doubted very many.
Though perhaps it wasn't so much an issue of trust, but rather himself forgetting who he was supposed to be. Maybe he was falling into the natural patterns of his other persona. I imagined that sort of confusion would be easy when you had two distinctly different faces to shuffle between and the defining characteristic of Superman -- the suit -- was decidedly missing. Regardless, I don't think he realized just how much I had pieced together on my own.
Heat flooded into my cheeks.
"I've done some reading on this." He pressed onward, oblivious to my musings, though his voice cracked funnily, as though he were still wary of broaching the subject despite my prodding. "Children sometimes make up friends during stressful times in their lives. Or in response to a traumatic event..."
His gaze flicked so briefly to the bedside table where my wife's things still lay that I thought I had maybe imagined it.
But rampant imagination was enough for me to assemble some meaning.
Oh. Oh...
What he was trying to say hit me and sank in. Hit me. Really, really hit me. I felt as though I had been slammed in the gut.
I guess I wasn't so agreeable at the moment after all.
"I get it," I responded in clipped tones. My chest was suddenly feeling extremely thick. Heavy. As though something were sitting on it. I turned my bleary gaze to the earrings that I had looked at yesterday. They sparkled a little in the dim light. The moonlight flecked off the face of the alarm clock behind them. Eternally stuck in time.
He nodded. His lips were drawn into a straight line. He stood, his movements wooden, and he shuffled toward the door with very un-Superman-like lack of grace. "Sorry," he mumbled. And then he was gone. I heard him moving down the hallway, his footfalls fleeting across the area carpet.
Then, everything went silent.
How had he known? I hadn't said a word about Beth to him. And it wasn't as if I had photographs of her lying around. For all he knew, I was just the survivor of a bad divorce. Then again, that could be a traumatic event, couldn't it?
No. No, he knew. Somehow.
Maybe Annie had told him.
Or maybe it had been Claire.
They'd both spent time alone in the waiting room with him while my arm was getting set. Perhaps they'd had a conversation. Or, hell, he *was* paid for his investigative skills. It was feasible he hadn't received any clues from the dynamic duo at all.
But he knew.
And the meaning of his words was all too clear. I was a bad father. I was.
Or was that what *I* thought?
He hadn't said anything of the kind.
How had I jumped to that from the thought that an imaginary friend might be the result of a traumatic event?
I didn't know anymore. This whole weekend had turned my life upside down. For months, I hadn't played host to a single thought of Beth, and now I was dreaming of her. Remembering. Imagining her beside me when I woke. Her image was entering every waking thought. As though she were burned into me. Like a brand. And my children...
How was I supposed to care for them?
Beth had left me here.
Alone.
I threw back the covers and began to pace, agitated, not caring how much noise I was making. My breaths came in heaving, ragged gasps as I tried to gain some control over myself. But it wasn't working.
And suddenly I felt like I was back in the tree, my view-field swinging around wildly as I clutched at Claire. Green leaves pitched across my sight as I spun around the branch. Don't let go, I had urged her. Don't you dare. Her eyes were wide and glistening. Blue with a delicate spiral of green. Just like her mother. Just like.
Don't leave me.
And I remembered, just then, at that moment, when she had been slipping away. When I had thought I might lose my grip on her. There had been a spark. A small one, but a spark. And I had *felt*... well, I had *felt*. Her skin had slipped past mine, and I had been so afraid. So very afraid to let go again. Which would only make sense if I hadn't let go already.
I sucked in a breath.
What was it Lois had said?
Do you really feel nothing at all? Or are you so used to pushing it away that you just think you don't?
Yes, that was it.
So, did I? Really, did I feel nothing?
I bit back a strange thickness in my throat and stalked out of the bedroom and down the hall. The soft mumblings of Superman once again using my phone drifted through the door to my room as I strode past. The thought of him talking sweet nothings to his wife burned at the back of my throat and pricked my eyes. I wouldn't break down. Not now.
The door at the end of the hallway had no light framing the underside of it through the crack, which meant the girls were sleeping. I suppose Superman had put them to bed for me. Had they behaved for him? Had they smiled at him like Beth used to smile at me?
I tore the door open, but the hallway carpet muted the noise and slowed it down from a horrific rattle to a muffled rasping noise. I plowed into to the girls' room and struck to a halt, harsh energy buzzing just underneath my skin. My hand still gripped the doorknob, so hard that I felt it forming dents in my skin. I breathed in jerky, sucking motions.
Annie was curled up strangely in the corner of her bed, kind of like a cat, whereas Claire was draped across her mattress like a sheet. The haunting, dim glow of the night light sprawled across her back and set the skin of her cheek into a state of almost luminescence. Her mouth was open a little. As I let go of the doorknob and walked over to her, I noticed that there was a small wet spot on the pillow near her lips, and her soft breaths coursed over the pillow, slow and steady. Relaxing. Soothing in the silence.
My thudding heart calmed down.
As I put my good hand on her back, my skin was flooded with the warmth radiating off her.
For a moment, before I spoke, I basked in the feeling. This was someone I had made.
"Claire," I whispered.
She blinked slowly and looked up at me. Her nose turned up, and her pupils dilated as her eyes soaked in the light.
"What?" she whispered back.
"Is Baxter... Baxter..." I stuttered. "He's not real, is he?"
Her eyes widened as the sleep bled away. She raised her fingers, clenched in a fist, to her mouth, almost as if she were intending to suck her thumb, which to be honest, I wasn't sure if she ever did or not. And then she nodded.
"Did he... did he start spending time with you after Mommy died?"
Another nod.
I felt like something was crushing me. I saw her falling from the tree, over, and over, and over. The image wouldn't go away. "Claire, I want you to promise me that you'll talk to me. I know I've..."
An image of Beth flashed through me as though someone had slapped me, and then it melted away again to the tree. And Claire was falling again. Over, and over, and over.
I couldn't finish what I'd started to say. The words were struck from me as though I had been given a mortal blow. God, I was a complete and utter mess. Bad father, indeed. Self-recrimination tore through me like a lance. I left the room before I broke down in front of her.
How had I messed all this up so badly?
Over, and over, and over, she fell.
I crawled back into the bed in the master bedroom. I was a horrible father. Horrible. It was true. I had left the girls alone for years. So alone that they were making up imaginary cats to keep them company and chasing after them up large trees. And, worse, I didn't even really know how to get the feeling back. It had sparked, sure. But as I lay there, thinking intensely on the subject, I just couldn't conjure it again. I thought of Claire, and Annie, and I was blank. Blank.
Why was I blank?
What was *wrong* with me?
The only thought coursing through me was that I was a horrible, horrible person.
Over, and over, and over, she fell.
A whisper to my left struck me from my nightmare. "Daddy?"
Claire stood there, her hair going every which way, as though she'd been plugged into a socket. Her threadbare teddy bear was clenched in her grasp. The moonlight streaming in from the window framed her in her little white nightgown. She stood there, immobile.
"What is it?" I asked. My voice sounded surprisingly even given my inner turmoil, I thought.
Her little feet padded on the floor as she walked over to my side of the bed and looked at me. "Can I sleep in here tonight?"
"I..." The breath was gone from me. I couldn't speak. I just stared at her.
For long moments, she didn't move or speak. And neither did I.
Don't let go. Don't you dare.
I lifted the covers for her and scooted over, my large body sliding over the sheets. She settled there at my side, and within moments, she was asleep again, as though I had never woken her in the middle of the night to quiz her. Never had a breakdown.
The images of her falling slowly faded away, until I lay there stiffly, thinking of nothing in particular. And several moments after that, I began to feel something softer bloom.
Peace.
I pulled the bedspread up higher, past my waist and even with her chin, and listened intently to her breaths. In and out. In and out.
Several minutes later, I felt another tiny body sliding into the bed, and Annie's hands curled over my shoulder.
"G'night," she muttered, and then her nose pressed into my breastbone and she was sleeping too.
I couldn't move. Claire and Annie had me pinned. My arm made things extremely awkward. My muscles began to hurt. But I stayed there, staring at the ceiling, my eyes blearily out of focus. The hours stretched onward. I glanced at the clock once or twice, unsurprised to find that it still read just minutes before eight.
The girls curled up more tightly against me. I was almost afraid to breathe. But slowly, as the time passed, the blur became more pronounced.
The sound of them next to me on either side became hypnotic. In and out. In and out, they sighed. In and out. Water creased from my eyes as I blinked once. Twice.
At some point, my eyelids didn't lift again.
And for the first time in years, I fell asleep to the sound of someone else's breathing.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 07/08)
