From Last Time:
They parted ways after the session was over, he to return to the farm, she to fly a patrol. Tomorrow, he would help his father finish the last of the work for the fall harvest and she would fly commercial with Jon back to Metropolis. Clark and Jon would have the week to explore Metropolis together while she worked on her article.
She was suddenly very thankful for the mask, which did a decent job of hiding the fact that she’d been crying. The long conversation they’d just had with Dr. Friskin was weighing heavily on her mind and though she wasn’t deluded enough to believe that it was over, she needed a few moments’ reprieve. No, she and Clark still had a tremendous amount to talk about, but she wasn’t sure how they were going to get through it. Hearing him say again how he’d given up when Nor held him prisoner tore her apart. As had his most recent confession, that he had considered infidelity…it shouldn’t have been so shocking, especially given that she’d thought that very same thing. But to hear how and why he’d considered it. Her stomach turned.
Lois blinked back fresh tears as she made her first sweep over Suicide Slum. She needed some crime to fight. Or a bridge to hold up. Or a kitten to rescue from a tree. Anything to take her mind off it.
********
New Stuff:
Clark’s jaw clenched as he waited for the elevator to make its way to the newsroom. Jon tugged at his hand and he looked down at his son and tried to smile. “Where are we going, Daddy?” Jon asked.
“We’re going to Mommy’s work. Uncle Perry and Uncle Jimmy work here, too.” The elevator doors slid open and for the first time in four and a half years, he was greeted by the sight of a place that was once home to him. The bustle and din of the newsroom seemed to come to an immediate halt as their arrival was noticed.
“Hey, Clark’s here!” someone shouted. All eyes turned to him and he found himself frozen to the floor. He saw Eduardo, Rick in Sports, Stephanie the Society columnist and other familiar faces in a crowd that now included so many that were new to him.
“Son, it’s so good to see you back here!” Perry shouted from the doorway to his office. The familiar voice cut through the haze that surrounded his brain. Lois appeared behind the old editor and smiled at him, helping him finally shake free of his near stupor.
“How are my guys?” she asked as she crossed the bullpen toward them.
“Hi Mommy!” Jon shouted excitedly. Clark felt his son’s hand slip from his as the little boy ran toward his mother. Lois met him with outstretched arms, drawing him into her embrace. She picked him up and carried him back toward Clark, favoring her husband with a chaste peck on the cheek. Clark placed a hand gently on her shoulder, wondering if she knew that he drew strength from her presence. With Jon settled on her hip, she took Clark’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. She smiled at him—a silent gesture of support. She knew that this was hell for him. The well meaning questions, the attention of large groups of people, he hated these things. But it wasn’t like he could hide from the newsroom forever. The first of his colleagues bounded over to shake his hand and clap him on the shoulder, as though to convince themselves that it really was Clark Kent, after an absence from the newsroom that had stretched out for years.
Lois and Jon disappeared and he did his best to chat casually with all of the well wishers. Most of them were colleagues and even friends, but a few were new faces, people who had joined the Planet since he’d last worked here. Eduardo and Carl were sharing an amusing anecdote about something that had happened while he was away, but he couldn’t quite focus on it. The other men were laughing so hard they had to take turns telling the story, but Clark was fixated on the layout of the newsroom. The desks had all been moved around. There were no nameplates announcing that this space belonged to Lois Lane or Clark Kent. He couldn’t see any of her stuff or his stuff anywhere. Her Superman coffee mug. His hand carved penholder made of Turkish rosewood. But why should these things have been there? Lane and Kent hadn’t been working in the newsroom for years. The Daily Planet had moved on with half of its top investigative reporting team missing in action and the other half working as a columnist based in Kansas.
Glancing surreptitiously over the top of his glasses, he spotted Lois and Jon in Perry’s office, playing with the knickknacks on Uncle Perry’s desk. She’d given him space because she knew he needed it. After the fiasco with her book tour, she knew he couldn’t stand looking like he was hiding behind his wife. He wanted the world to look at him and see an ordinary man, not a curiosity and not a nervous, jumpy shadow of a human being. Clark tried to turn his attention back to his colleagues. He hoped he was smiling and not grimacing as he accepted the well wishes of those around him.
It felt like hours had passed, but he knew it was barely twenty minutes before Perry came looking for him. “All right, that’s enough, we’ve got a paper to get out, don’t we?” the old editor grumbled as he dragged Clark to the conference room.
Perry clapped him on the shoulder as he laughed. “Son, you don’t know how happy I am to see you in this newsroom. The place wasn’t the same without you.”
“Perry, I’m not sure it makes sense for me to come back to the Planet,” he began hesitantly as he buried his hands in his pockets. He leaned against the door and stared at the floor, trying to tune out the sounds of his colleagues still speaking about him.
“I know things are going to be different,” Perry replied as he sat down on the corner of the conference room table. “But that doesn’t mean the paper isn’t itching to get you back.”
He shook his head; he’d had all of these arguments with himself before. “I can’t go back to being an investigative reporter.”
“What about editing? Mike Burns is thinking of retiring. The Planet is going to need a new managing editor, someone to manage the assignment process and help develop new talent.”
Clark felt his shoulders shrug. “I don’t know, Chief…”
“I know it’s a lot to think about, but if Mike leaves, it won’t be for months. Please at least consider the job.”
He didn’t really want to be an editor. He wanted to be a writer. But what if that wasn’t an option for him anymore? He had to do *something.* That still didn’t mean this was the right choice. Lois worked much more closely with Perry, but Mike Burns was technically responsible for the Planet’s editorial content. Even if it was mostly in name only, could he actually be Lois’s boss? What would that do to their relationship? “All right,” he replied noncommittally. “I’ll think about it.”
Perry grinned. “So how is everything going?”
Clark sighed as he wondered where exactly to begin. “I’m trying to make up for an awful lot of lost time. It isn’t easy.”
“I can’t even imagine, son,” Perry replied with a rueful shake of his head.
“Maybe things will feel more normal when we’re back in Metropolis permanently.” He said it more to convince himself than Perry.
“Establishing a routine couldn’t hurt,” Perry agreed. “How long are you and Lois planning on staying in town this trip?”
“Probably about a week. She doesn’t think it’ll take much longer than that to do the follow up on her column.”
“If you need anything at all, you let me know, understand?”
“Sure thing, Chief. And thanks.”
“Don’t be a stranger, son.”
Clark smiled faintly before exiting the conference room to find his wife and son.
********
The elevator doors closed and he let out a long, deep sigh. She watched as he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. Jon was fast asleep in his father’s arms.
“My parents want to have dinner with us tonight,” she said flatly. She could see him wince. After all he’d lived through, he suddenly looked like there wasn’t anywhere he wanted to be less. “I’m sure I can get out of it,” she added off his pained expression.
“No, I’ve been home for months. I can’t keep this up forever,” he said.
“Jimmy said he’s around this week if we need a babysitter,” she said. “I don’t think Jon’s idea of a good time involves going to Chez Josephine with my parents.” In truth, she wasn’t really looking forward to this either. Clark didn’t need her mother’s passive aggressiveness or her father’s complete lack of social skills. Her family’s dysfunctions were better kept at a distance, but he was right, they couldn’t avoid her parents forever.
Outside the Planet, she hailed a cab and they rode in silence back to Clark’s apartment. It was so surreal to be back at this place with both her husband and her son. For years, she’d held on to the apartment as a tangible link to Clark. She remembered the first time she’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder on his couch. They’d planned their future together here. Their son was born here.
Clark carried their sleeping little boy into the bedroom and returned silently to the living room. He favored her with a lopsided smile, his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He looked like he did seven years ago, when he was a wide eyed, hopeful young reporter, looking for a job. She wondered how she could have ever believed him to be a ‘hack from nowheresville.’
Lois stepped toward him reaching out to wrap her arms around his waist. He engulfed her in a warm embrace and she placed her head against his chest, feeling his heart beat under the firm muscle. “I love you,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss against her hair.
“I love you,” she said. She felt him sigh, knowing he was thinking the same thing she was. “I’ll call my parents.”
“I’ll call Jimmy,” he replied.
********
“Hey CK! Hey little J!” she heard Jimmy call out cheerfully from the front hall. Lois finished putting on her earrings and walked back out into the living room.
“Hi Unca Jimmy!” Jon shouted.
Jimmy hoisted the little boy up in his arms. “Man, you’re getting big!” Jon grinned in response.
“Come on, let’s go get your PJs on,” Lois said. “Then you can play with Uncle Jimmy.” Reluctantly, her little boy stretched out his arms and let his mother gather him up. She carried him back into the bedroom, but could still hear her husband and Jimmy talking in the living room.
“When I offered to babysit, I figured you’d be taking Lois out for a night on the town, not dinner with your in-laws.”
“Tell me about it, Jim.” She couldn’t help the half smile that turned up the corner of her mouth at her husband’s response. A romantic evening with her husband just didn’t seem to be in the cards. She helped Jon into his Scooby Doo pajamas and he dashed back out into the living room. Lois picked up her purse and overcoat and followed suit.
“You look great, Lois,” Jimmy said. For appearance’s sake, she put her coat on over the long, sleeveless navy blue dress she was wearing.
“Thank you, Jimmy,” she said as she gave her young friend a hug. “He should be in bed by eight.”
“No problem,” Jimmy assured her. “We’re gonna have fun, aren’t we, buddy?” He leaned down to give Jon a high five.
“Yeah!” Jon exclaimed.
Clark dropped to his knee. “Be good for Uncle Jimmy, I love you,” he said as he hugged Jon and kissed the top of his son’s head.
“Love you, sweetie,” Lois said. “If you’re a good boy, Grandma and Grandpa will take you to the zoo tomorrow.” She kissed Jon goodnight.
Jon kept smiling. “I love you, Mommy. I love you, Daddy.”
“Have fun you guys!” Jimmy said.
Clark held the door open for her, and placed his hand on the small of her back as she walked through the doorway. He pulled the door closed and she kissed his cheek. “Thank you for doing this,” she said quietly. She brushed away a tiny speck of lint from his topcoat. He wore a gray suit with a light blue shirt and silk navy blue tie with tiny white polka dots. It was elegant and tasteful and the tie couldn’t possibly have been less like Clark’s style. Or at least what his style was years ago. She couldn’t believe she was missing the gecko lizards, wild colors, and strange geometric patterns of his ties of old.
The muted ties were just one of the myriad things she needed to adjust to. Her husband’s smile didn’t come as easily as it used to. He was quieter, less trusting of those around him. His patience wore thin faster and he was quicker to anger. He treated laughter as though it was rationed; carefully measuring and dispensing it as necessary. Clark squeezed her hand gently, bringing her thoughts back to the moment. She could see the love in his dark brown eyes. Some things hadn’t changed.
He hailed a cab, holding the door open for her. She gave the cabbie the address for the restaurant. Still holding hands, they rode to Chez Josephine’s in silence. She took a deep breath, hoping everything would go all right. Stealing a glance at her husband, she could see his jaw grimly set; he wasn’t looking forward to this.
The maitre d’ welcomed them graciously and offered to show them to Dr. Lane’s table. The restaurant wasn’t too crowded, which wasn’t surprising, given it was a Tuesday night. Clark held her hand tighter as heads turned to look at them. They could both hear the whispers as patrons asked their companions whether that was Clark Kent, famous alien abductee and his wife, the bestselling author, Lois Lane. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the softly murmured questions her superhearing couldn’t avoid picking up. The maitre d’ led them to a quiet corner of the restaurant, where her parents were studiously ignoring each other. Her father took a sip of his scotch. The warm flicker of candlelight and the soft sounds of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the background did nothing to thaw the icy air surrounding her parents.
Her mother stood as she saw them approach, smiling a bit too brightly. Sam Lane stood as well and stretched out his hand to Clark. “Welcome home, son,” he said. He grabbed Clark’s shoulder as he shook his son-in-law’s hand.
“Thanks,” Clark replied.
Lois hugged her mother and then her father. “Hello Mother, Daddy,” she said.
Clark kissed Ellen on the cheek. “It’s good to see you, Ellen,” he said.
They took their seats and were presented with the menus immediately. Lois was grateful for something to hide behind. “The filet here is excellent,” her father offered. The small talk at the table seemed to be extracted from all four parties by force.
“We’re glad you finally made it to Metropolis,” Ellen said. Her mother’s passive aggressiveness was out in full force.
“The trip home was pretty rough,” Clark said as he took a sip of his water.
“Of course, the loss of bone density, orthostatic imbalance, the drop in blood pressure,” Sam Lane offered. “I’m impressed you’ve recovered as quickly as you have.”
Clark gave his father-in-law a tight-lipped nod in response. Lois kept studying her menu, even though the entrees were unlikely to change. It surprised her how easily Clark dodged her parents’ questions. Before, he’d always been a terrible liar.
The waiter returned to take their orders. Lois changed the subject to her parents’ plan to take Jon to the zoo the following day.
“I can’t wait to see my sweet little grandson,” Ellen gushed. “Honey, you really should bring him to visit us more often. What about Christmas this year?”
Lois inhaled sharply. “We really want to spend this Christmas at the farm,” she began. “We’ll be back in the city again, soon.” The appetizers arrived and Lois was thankful for the distraction her salad provided.
“So it must be quite an adjustment, having the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood dropped on you all at once,” her mother said unsubtlely.
Lois heard the clatter of Clark’s fork hitting his plate. “Clark is nothing but an excellent husband and father,” she cut in, hoping to divert this conversation before it could crash and burn.
“I didn’t mean to suggest he wasn’t…” her mother began somewhat lamely.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lois could see Clark frown grimly. He was holding his right fist against his thigh, she knew he was trying to keep it from trembling. “Your daughter and grandson are more important than anything in the world to me,” he said. “But I have no intention of sitting here and justifying myself all evening.” The muscle in his jaw jumped and twitched as he set his mouth in a thin, hard line.
Ellen’s eyes narrowed. “Whether you intended to or not, you left my daughter alone and pregnant. She spent four years raising your son without you.”
“I would have done anything to be here with them,” Clark said, his tone harsh but quiet. “You have no idea what I went through to come home.”
“Let’s all just settle down,” Sam interjected.
His ex-wife shot him a murderous look. “Don’t patronize me, Sam,” Ellen snapped.
Clark looked like he was formulating a response, but he suddenly grew ashen, his jaw falling to hang loosely, as he heard the same thing she did. A call for help.
“What is it?” her father asked, frowning.
“My phone, it’s on vibrate,” Lois replied hastily. She picked up her purse and pulled out her phone, pretending to answer it. She looked back up at her parents and Clark. “It’s Jimmy, I’m going to take this.” She stood up and walked away from the table toward the restaurant’s entrance.
********
Clark stood up, dropping his linen napkin on the table. “Excuse me,” he said and turned away without waiting for acknowledgement from his in-laws. He followed his wife toward the doors and caught up to her just outside the restaurant. He reached for her hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said, turning around.
“Lois…”
“Please, Clark, just let me take care of this,” she pleaded.
“I can’t just do nothing!” he said forcefully.
“That’s exactly what you have to do,” she said. “Until you’re ready to come back, you have to let me do this.”
He grimaced, not sure what he’d expected. He wasn’t Superman. She was Ultrawoman. This was squarely in her jurisdiction, not his. But the sound of that call for help tore through him. He’d sheltered himself from it for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like. Someone needed help and he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He was going to let someone else fight his battles for him. Like he’d been doing for quite some time now. His heart thundered. His mouth went dry. He hadn’t known what else to do, but follow Lois out.
“The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back,” his wife continued. She was anxious to go; he could hear it in her tone and see it in the way she kept glancing over her shoulder. Now it was Lois who raced off to the rescue on instinct. “I’m sorry, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said plaintively, and she disappeared.
He closed his eyes, his heart still hammering against his ribs, his breaths still shallow, his hand still trembling. Clark exhaled slowly, trying to calm himself. God, he hated feeling so useless! There was nothing left to do but go back inside to his probably bewildered in-laws. Turning around, he walked back into the restaurant.
“Everything all right?” Sam asked as he approached the table.
“Fine,” Clark replied crisply, taking his seat. “Jon was just having trouble going to sleep.” For close to twenty minutes, the trio sat mostly in awkward silence as they ate. Sam made a few abortive attempts at conversation, finding himself abruptly cut off by Ellen. Lois’s sea bass sat untouched on her plate. Clark couldn’t help glancing over every minute or so, alternately wishing she’d return and fuming that he’d been left here to deal with this alone.
Finally, his wife returned, walking briskly back to the table. Composed, smiling, she was the picture of understated elegance.
“Jon get to sleep okay?” Clark asked as he held her gaze.
“Yeah,” she replied without missing a beat. “Once I’d read ‘Hop on Pop,’ to him.”
“How did you read him a book from here?” her father asked quizzically.
Lois merely arched a brow. “Do you really think I don’t have that story memorized at this point?”
The remainder of dinner passed uneventfully, but as far as Clark was concerned, the evening couldn’t have ended soon enough. When they’d finally said their goodbyes, it felt like a lead weight had been removed from around his neck. But instead of relief, all he felt was exhaustion. He hailed a cab, thankful to be able to go home at last. They rode back to his apartment in silence. He knew that he had no right to be angry with his wife. Leaving him to cover for her, she’d done nothing to him that he hadn’t done to her hundreds of times in the past. And by carrying the burden of being the superhero, she was giving him the space he needed to deal with his issues with a clear conscience. So where was the resentment coming from? He sighed. God, why didn’t anything make sense anymore? Why couldn’t he figure out what was going on in his own head?
Her warm hand covered his, and squeezed gently. Normally, he would have interlaced their fingers. Instead, he did nothing. Clark just sat there dumbly, not sure what to do, how to explain what was wrong. He just wanted to be right with her, right with this world, again.
The cab pulled up to his apartment and he pulled out a few bills to pay the driver. He followed his wife up the stairs to the door, struck by the surreal feeling of being back at his old apartment – a place that had changed so little in the last four and a half years, despite the fact that nothing else in his life seemed to have stayed the same.
Jimmy looked up at them from his spot on the couch as they entered the apartment. “How was dinner?” he asked softly.
Lois rolled her eyes. “About what you’d expect from my parents,” she said. “How was Jon?” Clark took her overcoat and hung it along with his own in the hallway closet.
“He was great,” Jimmy said as he stood up and gathered his jacket. “We had a blast playing with Legos. Whenever you need a babysitter, you let me know.”
“That won’t put a cramp in your social life?” Lois asked.
“Are you kidding, I’m sure Jon’s a babe magnet. You’ve got to let me take him to the park,” Jimmy replied with a wink.
Lois shook her head. “You are not using my son to pick up women, Jimmy.”
“Just kidding, Lois,” Jimmy said, holding his hands up in surrender. He pulled on his jacket as he headed toward the door. “Have a great night, guys.”
Clark took off his tie, thankful to be rid of the damn thing, and undid the top button of his shirt.
“You okay?” his wife asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” he answered. She looked slightly startled and he realized his tone was more abrupt than he’d intended.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” she said, slipping out of her heels.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he replied half-heartedly as he draped his suit jacket over a chair.
She removed her pearl earrings. He didn’t recognize them and wondered idly if she’d gotten them during their long separation. Lois stepped toward him and he pulled her into his arms, running one hand up and down her back. “How was the rescue?” he asked.
“It was a pretty bad car accident, but nothing life threatening. Everyone should be fine,” she replied.
“That’s good,” he said absently. “The best kind of rescues, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You miss it, don’t you?”
He stepped back. “Of course I do. Being Superman gave me purpose.”
“I know. It’s part of who you are.”
“Were,” he corrected.
She shook her head. “It’s still part of you, I can see that.”
“You’ve been Ultrawoman longer than I was Superman. I’m not sure people actually expect him to come back anymore. I wonder if people miss him.”
“Of course they do. I do.” Her voice was small, almost fragile.
He frowned. “Do you?”
“He’s part of who you are, what makes you, you. I know you wanted me to fall in love with the ordinary man, but I love all of you, farm boy and superhero.”
He laughed humorlessly as he shook his head. “I can’t believe how hung up I was on that. It seems kind of pointless now that you’re the one in tights.”
“I never wanted to take this away from you,” she said.
“Yeah, well nothing’s really turned out the way we thought it would, has it?”
“Clark…”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what you’ve done, but what am I supposed to do? What purpose do I serve?” He could hear the frustration in his voice.
She reached out to take his hand but he kept his hands stubbornly buried in his pockets. “The world’s always going to need Superman…”
“It didn’t for more than four years,” he retorted. “Dammit, not again!” he yelled. She got that distant look on her face as they both heard another cry for help. His own timing had once been this bad, he knew that, but poetic justice was still hell.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Just go,” he replied flatly. In a blur, she darted out the window and disappeared. Clark made his way the couch and flopped down. Closing his eyes, he sighed heavily. What had happened to his life?
********
“It’s strange to be here, talking to you about Clark,” Lois confessed as she sat down on the couch. Her follow up on the scandal in the city courts was progressing slowly, in no small part because of her own preoccupations. Which meant that talking to her shrink was probably in order.
“That’s perfectly understandable,” Dr. Friskin replied. “This sort of doctor patient relationship, where all three of us work together, but we hold individual sessions as well, is difficult to navigate. But why don’t we start with you telling me what’s bothering you?”
Lying back on the couch, she stared up at the ceiling tiles. Lois hated how her shrink made things sound so simple. She exhaled as she tried to collect her thoughts. “I’ve been trying so hard for so long to keep everything together. To keep moving forward because it was the only thing I could think to do to keep from falling apart. When I saw that message on the globe, I just couldn’t keep it up anymore. It’s like I came apart at the seams. And it doesn’t seem to matter that nothing happened. Four years ago, I never would have doubted Clark. Four years ago, he never would have blown up about it.”
“I know it’s an uncomfortable topic to revisit,” Dr. Friskin began. “But why do you think you reacted the way you did to the message?”
Uncomfortable was an understatement. Lois sighed. “Clark is a very attractive man. For as long as I’ve known him, women have practically thrown themselves at him. Even before we were seeing each other, it bothered me. When I was dumb enough to think he was just some naïve hayseed, I was afraid he was going to fall for some honeypot trap and compromise a story. But he quickly became the best friend I’ve ever had and I started to worry I was going to lose him. I wouldn’t let myself consider a relationship with him, but I got jealous every time any woman showed any interest in him.”
“And when you and Clark started dating?”
“I learned I could trust him, completely. Well, it wasn’t that simple; when I figured out he was Superman, it took me a long time to get over that. I mean, how could Clark, someone who was so scrupulously honest about everything, lie about something like that?”
“It wasn’t as though he had much of a choice though, was it?”
“No,” Lois agreed. “He didn’t. But he still should have told me before he proposed!” Her gaze turned from the ceiling to her shrink. Dr. Friskin was nodding sympathetically.
Dr. Friskin scratched away at her notepad. “You’re probably right about that. But you did eventually forgive him.”
“I did,” Lois admitted. She was tempted to play with the edges of her cape, like she always did when she talked to her therapist about uncomfortable subjects, but she realized that she was here as herself, and not the superhero. It made her feel strangely more vulnerable. “And I had to trust him more than I’d ever thought I could trust someone. Women flirted shamelessly with Superman and that wasn’t going to change just because Clark Kent and Lois Lane were in a relationship. But he deserved my trust. He proved that, over and over again.”
Dr. Friskin stared down at her notes. “But this message was different. How?”
“I got used to women lusting after Clark. Don’t get me wrong, I still strongly disliked just about every woman who ever showed any interest in him, but I realized that no matter how much attention women paid to him, infidelity just wasn’t part of who Clark was. But this was different. The woman in that message wasn’t flirting with my husband. She was trying to hide how she felt about him. The thing is, you can’t hide the fact that you’re saying goodbye to the man you love from another woman who’s done the same thing.” She felt tears prick at her eyes. Dammit, she was so tired of crying over this.
“Whom do you think she was trying to hide her feelings from?”
She closed her eyes and wondered why she hadn’t put those simple dots together from the very beginning. “From Clark,” she said at last. It made perfect sense. Commander Talan would never have known that someone other than Clark was going to watch that message. “He had no idea how she felt about him and she intended to keep it that way.”
“Did you believe Clark when he told you his relationship with her was strictly platonic?”
“I did,” Lois said. “And he told me about what Nor had done to him. He told me about wanting to die. And in here, he told me about ‘us’ being the only thing left of him, the only thing Nor couldn’t take away from him. And I realized, I’d been questioning the one thing that to him, was absolutely certain. How could I do that to him?” She wiped away the solitary tear that spilled over and rolled down her cheek.
“You made a mistake, an understandable one, at that,” Dr. Friskin counseled sympathetically. “But it’s important that Clark knows that you know that.”
Lois sighed heavily. “I feel like…It’s almost like I’m not allowed to make mistakes, though. I’m not saying my husband is fragile, but after all he’s been through, he deserves someone he can depend on, someone who’ll know the right thing to say, the right thing to do.”
“You’re not always going to have the right answers, or know just what to do. It isn’t possible,” Dr. Friskin said. “But you are going to have to accept that spending four years completely isolated from one another, in rather unusual circumstances, means that making assumptions and taking ordinary things as given, become quite hazardous.”
“I know we’re not the same people we were four years ago, and we’re trying to get back there, but we can’t. And it’s like every time I see something that isn’t the same, that isn’t going to work the way it used to, it scares me. I know he still loves me, but I guess I’m afraid that I might not be able to make him happy anymore. What if he needs more than I can be? What if he’s keeping things from me because he knows I’m not strong enough to face them?”
“Do you believe that’s true?”
Lois closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, not sure what to say. “He shouldn’t have to bear this burden alone. I’m his wife; I’m supposed to be able to help him. I know that what I went through was nothing compared to what he dealt with, but after four years, I was exhausted. I don’t know where I’m supposed to get the strength to handle this.”
“I wish there was an easy answer to this,” Dr. Friskin replied as she removed her glasses. “But first, you need to stop selling yourself short. What you did while Clark was gone was tremendous and it would have exhausted anyone. There is no shame in that. I think you’re right that neither one of you is the person they were before. But I think you’re jumping to conclusions by assuming that Clark has been reluctant to open up because he perceives shortcomings in you. Are there any other reasons why he might possibly be reluctant?”
“I know it’s difficult for him to talk about the things that happened…” she began.
“He’s told a great deal of it to me,” Dr. Friskin countered. Lois frowned severely. What was her shrink trying to do, make her jealous? “Why do you think it might be easier for him to talk to me than you?”
“Because you’re a professional?”
“Why was it that you could talk to me and not your own friends or family?” As usual, the good doctor answered a question with a question.
“Because I wouldn’t have been disappointing you if you saw me fall apart,” she said flatly as the epiphany broke over her suddenly. “I wouldn’t have been letting you down.”
“Can you imagine from Clark’s perspective how the last four years look to him? How he’s come home to find that his wife is, professionally, as successful as possible? That she’s admirably taken over a role he was once uniquely qualified to fill? That she’s established a parenting routine that didn’t depend on him?”
“But he saved a whole planet without the benefit of powers!” Lois exclaimed. “And since when was a marriage a competition?”
“I agree, it shouldn’t be one,” Dr. Friskin replied. “But you yourself were quick to dismiss your own accomplishments, Lois. I think that, while you and Clark approach problems differently and bring different life experiences to every issue, you’re really not that different from one another. Neither one of you wants to let the other down, but we can’t hide the things that bother us from the ones we love for very long. The old saying, ‘communication is the key to a successful marriage,’ there’s a reason why it’s a cliché.”
