Amazing, Shayne! Fantastic!
She'd seen part of a horror movie when she'd been smaller, before Aunt Lucy had come in and changed the channel. It had been about aliens taking over the world. When viewed through special glasses, they looked like skinless monsters. For weeks afterwards, Lisa had nightmares dreaming that everyone around her was an alien.
If she'd only known. Seeing people skinless had been the first way in which her powers had manifested themselves, and she'd spent an entire school day terrified to move, fearing that the monsters were coming for her. Seeing her mother like that had been almost more than she'd been able to bear, and she'd spent a sleepless night before her vision had returned.
The unbelievable nightmare you describe here, in such a low-key manner, with such subdued words, is like a punch to the solar plexus.
When things had changed, and she began to see people nude, or as skeletons, she'd decided that she was just crazy. The world wasn't filled with aliens out to get her. Instead, it was her own mind devouring itself. She'd begun to worry more about the implications of what she was seeing than the actual thing.
Lisa would have to conclude that the world was not full of monster, but that she was the monster, the stark raving nutcase, instead. Would that be any better?
Lisa frowned as she stared at the walls. Instead of the more mature wallpaper she'd seen when she'd first come to stay here, she was seeing something else. The wall underneath was brightly colored, with balloons and circus animals. The whole thing was gaily painted, the sort of thing Lisa would expect to see in a nursery, although the colors were curiously faded.
Lisa's room is the nursery that Clark built for his and Lana's child!! But they didn't have any, did they?
“Mr. Kent was hoping to show us more of the property.” Lisa could almost hear her mother frown. “Are you sick?”
Her mother stepped forward and lifted one skinless hand toward her forehead.
Lisa flinched.
Horrible! Horrible!
“Do you think her father could have given her something?” Lois asked.
“What?” Her father looked up at Lois.
“Maybe he has some kind of Kryptonian germ or something,” her mother said. Her voice sounded worried. “Something just the two of them would be vulnerable to.”
Lois suspects Superman of having made Lisa sick. It's unbelievably unfair, and yet in a way it is true... because if Lisa had had another father, she wouldn't be seeing skinless people right now.
“Did this place used to be a nursery, Mr. Kent?” Lisa asked.
It was the only way Lisa could think of to tell him what was wrong while her mother was watching. Also, she really wanted to know.
“What makes you think so?” he asked.
“The wallpaper,” she said.
His eyes widened a bit, and he said, “I was married once. My wife hoped to have children.”
“You didn't have any?” she asked. Part of her hoped he had. The idea of having a brother or a sister she didn't know about appealed to her, even if they had to live with some other mother.
He shook his head. “We couldn't. After a while, this place just got to be a reminder of what we couldn't have.”
He'd wanted children. That was what he was telling her. He'd wanted children and hadn't been able to have them.
Lisa is telling Clark, in a roundabout way, of her vision problems, and she learns that Clark wanted to have children.
Lisa felt oddly better. She'd wondered whether he wanted her, or whether he was doing everything just out of a sense of duty. She needed his help with her powers; she wasn't like some human child he could just make payments on and send cards every birthday.
He was obliged to help her. It was the only decent thing to do. But whether he wanted her to be his daughter, that was a question that had been nagging her since the beginning.
At least now she knew that he'd wanted some kind of a child. Whether it was her or not remained to be seen.
I love her worries, her uncertainty. Indeed, she really can't be sure that she is the child that her father would want.
“Are you having trouble with your vision?” he asked carefully.
Slowly she nodded.
...
“What's wrong with your vision?” her mother asked sharply. The tone of her voice indicated that she wasn't going to let things go.
How typical! Lois seems almost angry. Yes, mothers demand to know everything about their children, don't they? I can so completely sympathize with Lisa for trying to keep Lois in the dark. After all, there would be nothing that Lois could do to help her, so what good would it do to burden her mother with such terrifying information about her daughter?
“Look at me,” Lois said.
Eye contact had always been very important to her mother.
“I'd rather not,” Lisa said. She sighed. “I see through things.”
“Like what? Walls?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I see through other things…skin, bones…”
She could almost hear her mother frowning, then the hiss of indrawn breath. “So I look like…”
Lisa nodded. “Sometimes I can't see what I'm doing because I'm looking through things.”
But I'm so glad that Lisa told Lois after all.
“How long has this been happening?” her mother's voice had an odd, strangled quality to it.
“Six or seven months,” Lisa said.
Her mother was silent for a long moment. Lisa glanced up, but couldn't read the expression on her mother's skinless face.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I thought I was like Janice's brother.” Lisa blinked, trying to ignore the sudden lump in her throat. She'd been afraid for so long of being sent away, of being crazy and never getting better. Her entire life had been a nightmare.
She was startled as she felt herself being gathered into her mother's embrace. She blinked again as her mother held her tightly and said, “I'm so sorry.”
I love Lois's reaction. she is beginning to understand what a nightmare Lisa's life has been.
“I was afraid I'd have to go away,” Lisa said.
Janice's brother had been forced to live at an institution for months, and even after he'd come home, he'd never been the same.
“I wouldn't do that,” Lois said. “We're a family. We stick together.”
Janice's parent's hadn't wanted to send her brother away either, but they hadn't seen any other way. It had been the best of many bad options for him.
If sending her away was the only way to keep Lisa safe, Lisa knew her mother would do it in a heartbeat. She'd hate it, but she'd do it.
That sort of strength was part of what Lisa admired about her mother, part of what helped her feel safe. Sometimes, though, it could be a little scary.
Lisa has been afraid that Lois would send her away to some mental institution. Lisa knew that Lois would always, always do what was best for her daughter, but she couldn't trust her mother not to decide that it was best for Lisa to be sent away.
He reached out, and Lisa gasped as she felt a pair of frames slipping over her eyes. The world slid into focus, and she glanced at her mother.
Her mother's face was as beautiful as ever, although her eyes looked a little red. The rest of the room was back to normal.
“I know the frames may not be right, but we'll have a better looking set made up for you.”
Lisa slipped the glasses down her nose. The world slipped back into the ugliness she'd been dealing with all morning.
Through the lenses though, everything was crystal clear.
Fantastic!!! You are giving Lisa glasses!!!
Prescription glasses, too!!!
The implications struck her. No more staring at the lunch ladies in the nude. No more floating stomachs or skinless faces around the cafeteria at lunch. No more bumping into things because she was seeing straight through them.
The nightmare was over.
Despite herself, she burst into tears and lunged forward, hugging her father.
Lisa's relief brings tears to my eyes, too.
It had been two years since the last time Lois had seen Lisa cry. In some ways, she'd wondered if it was a sign of distrust between them. Eventually she'd decided it was just her daughter trying to grow up faster than she'd had to.
Oh, poor Lisa. Poor Lois. Lisa hadn't allowed Lois to see her cry, because she had had too many things to cry about, so she had to shut her mother out.
Clark Kent looked vaguely embarrassed as Lisa hugged him and cried. After a moment though, his hand reached up and he began patting her on the shoulder. His expression of embarrassment changed into something Lois couldn't interpret.
Clark is comforting his child, who is clinging to him in gratitude, and who is showing him that she so much needs him. She is asking him to be a father to her. And he is responding.
He'd told Lisa that he hadn't been able to have children. Lois wondered what it was come face to face with the evidence of everything you'd never have. Would it highlight the emptiness in your own life?
What must it be like o be able to afford everything in the world except the one thing you could not have?
Lois couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Clark Kent, all alone here in this massive house. He'd lost almost everyone he'd ever loved, and yet here he'd given her daughter the one gift Lois never could have given her.
He'd won her daughter's heart, not with fancy cars, big houses or cool toys. All it had taken was a pair of glasses.
I wonder if Lois is going to guess at the truth. clark is not just the man who is in charge of the Superman foundation. He
is Superman, the father of Lisa.
Her daughter's sobs were evidence of the long nightmare she'd been through.
“How?” she asked.
“Leaded glass,' he said. “The vision doesn't work through lead, so…”
Oh wow!!! So
that is why Clark always had to lower his glasses when he wanted to use his supervision on anything!!
He gave a shy smile, which was unlike the polished facial expressions she'd seen him with in the past. For the first time he seemed open and almost vulnerable.
As he held her daughter, Lois couldn't help but love him a little too.
Wow. Lois, Clark and Lisa. Suddenly you really showed us the entire Kent family here, Shayne.
Fantastic! Even better than usual!! I just adore this story.
Ann
