Thanks, Carol!
From Chapter 47
“So you came up here last night as you were trying to escape your guilt.”
“Yeah. Not that it worked. But I was looking for… I guess the peace of being up here.”
“Do you ever fly off somewhere to visit?” Lois asked as I started to descend. “You know, spend an afternoon as a tourist in China or something?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’m not sure why. I’ve really only used my flying to get places for two things – for being the Boy in Black and for coming home to see Mom and Dad. I come home a lot.”
“I didn’t realize you were a Mama’s boy,” Lois said with a grin.
I shrugged. “I don’t know that I am. Although I don’t know that I’m not. My parents are… well, you just need to meet them.”
“Aren’t I about to?” Lois asked as she looked around the cornfield.
“Yeah, I guess you are.”
“Clark?” Mom called from the porch. “Is that…” Mom’s voice trailed off as Lois caught up to me and Mom could see that I hadn’t come alone.
Chapter 48
“Clark?” Mom repeated, this time as a question.
“Mom, this is Lois Lane. Lois, this is my mom, Martha Kent,” I introduced them. I tried to keep my voice even and calm, but both Mom and Lois gave me a look that made it clear my nervousness was coming through loud and clear.
“Nice to meet you, Lois,” Mom said, always gracious, even when I could tell that she was trying to decide if it would be appropriate to rip me to shreds right in front of Lois. Of course, I was guessing that she presumed I had told Lois – that this was my way of making amends for cheating. Not that Lois had caught me.
Although, now that I thought about it, that probably wouldn’t change her desire to rip me limb from limb, since Lois wouldn’t have caught me if I hadn’t been careless.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Kent,” Lois said. I suddenly remembered what Lois had said about her parents, and suspected that unlike other kids, Lois didn’t immediately respect adults just because they were adults. Still, she hadn’t sounded rude to Mom, just… wary? No, that wasn’t it. I guess just like she was waiting to pass judgment. Which she probably was.
Mom led us into the kitchen. “Jonathan,” Mom called up the stairs, a strangled quality to her voice. “Clark is here…. And he brought along a friend.”
Dad’s response came almost immediately. “Very funny, Martha. Clark couldn’t bring a friend home without telling them…” His words stopped as he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Lois standing there.
“Hi, Mr. Kent. I’m Lois Lane. And Clark hasn’t told me anything yet.”
“How… how did you get here?” Dad asked, downright confused by Lois’ statement.
“We flew,” I confirmed.
“Flew?” Mom asked, trying to determine how we got here. I think she was starting to think that flying commercially was an option based on Lois’ words, but was trying to determine the logistics of the last minute tickets, our getting to the cornfield, and all that.
“Well, really Clark flew,” Lois clarified. “I was just a passenger on the Clark Kent Express.”
“You flew,” Mom said, sitting down at the table as she realized that her first assumption was right. No commercial flights involved.
“But… I thought… You said he hadn’t told you…” Dad nearly sputtered in confusion.
“He didn’t,” Lois said, still sounding so calm I almost wanted to smack her to wake up the real Lois. “I saw him flying last night. I demanded some answers, and he said he’d give them to me. Here. So, here we are.”
“You saw him flying?” Dad asked, and now his eyes were on me. He didn’t sound angry. Not yet. That wasn’t Dad’s way. He waited first to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Then he let you know how angry he was.
Mom, though. Well, when Mom was angry she was more of a ‘take casualties, ask questions later’ kind of person. So, while Dad tried to determine exactly what happened, Mom decided Lois’ presence did not mean she couldn’t take me down.
“Lois saw you flying, Clark?” she asked, only it was no longer a real question. “Don’t take this the wrong way, dear,” she said to Lois. “It’s just that Clark knows how important it is to be careful that no one sees him using any of his gifts. Or at least I thought he did.”
“Any of his gifts?” Lois repeated. “You can do other things besides fly?” she asked me.
Mom’s cheeks got red as she realized her mistake, but Lois’ comment didn’t really redirect her anger. “Clark Jerome Kent, you better explain yourself right now!”
“Jerome,” Lois snickered under her breath. No one but me could have heard her.
“It was Mom’s grandfather’s name,” I said to her. Right now Lois was easier to deal with than my mother. I couldn’t believe such a thing was possible, but it was.
“I didn’t… I didn’t mean to,” I finally said to Mom.
“Well clearly,” Mom replied, not looking like she forgave me one iota. “I presume you got careless, Clark, not that you completely took leave of your senses!”
“It wasn’t really Clark’s fault,” Lois cut in, and all of our heads swung in her direction. What did she mean it wasn’t my fault? “I was investigating Clark. I had followed him to the math building, and although I hadn’t been able to figure out where he went, I waited for him. I’m sure he thought no one would be there when he landed given it was four in the morning.”
“Thinking there was no one there is not the same thing as knowing there was no one there.” Now that he had the facts, Dad weighed in.
“What were you thinking?” Mom asked.
“He wasn’t, clearly,” Dad answered for me.
“I would have found out at some point,” Lois said. “Even if not last night. I was following him everywhere.”
I saw Mom crack a faint smile, but she still looked furious. “Even so, I would have thought Clark might have considered that.”
“Considered what?” I asked, although I knew in general it was best not to speak during these discussions.
“That Lois might be investigating you,” Mom said, and when she looked at me, there was no amusement in her eyes.
“I had,” I admitted, “but I was distracted and…”
“Distraction is not an excuse, Clark!” Dad exclaimed, and there was no mistaking the anger in his voice now. “We’ve talked about this. If someone were to see you, who knows what they would do? They’d want to see what makes you you. You could end up in a laboratory somewhere…”
“Being dissected like a frog. I know,” I took over Dad’s age old warning. “How are they going to do that, Dad? I’m impervious to knives.”
“You are?” Lois asked in amazement, but everyone ignored her.
“We talked about this before,” Mom said, her voice quiet. “When you first started the Boy in Black thing. Even if you can’t be hurt physically, that doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt.”
I nodded. She was right. We had discussed that. And every time I reminded myself of that, every time I pictured what someone who wanted to test me badly enough to blackmail me could do to Mom and Dad, I got a knot in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “You’re right. Being distracted isn’t an excuse. I should…”
“Be constantly vigilant,” Lois supplied with a smile. “Like those aliens.”
“Aliens?” Mom asked. “You know aliens?”
Lois laughed. “Of course not. I don’t even believe in aliens. I meant like the ones on Star Trek. The Borg, maybe? I can’t recall. One of them is always saying they need to be constantly vigilant.”
“You don’t believe in aliens?” I asked her. “Why not?”
Lois shrugged. “I don’t know. Little green men with antennae? The whole concept is just so weird.”
“But not all aliens are Martians,” Dad pointed out.
“Do you really think we’re the only planet with intelligent life?” I asked her.
Lois shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think it’s silly.”
“What if they looked human?” I asked quietly.
“How likely is that?”
“Not very,” I admitted. It was a thought I had had many times. Somehow, I preferred the alien idea. Because maybe then I wasn’t unwanted. Okay, probably I was – probably I was an illegitimate child or a mutant or something. But maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was a child of noble blood sent away because my parents feared for my safety. Like if there was a coup planned or something. Or a genocide. I knew it wasn’t likely, but at least it was possible.
On the other hand, if I wasn’t an alien, if I was some sort of science experiment, then I had never been wanted as anyone’s child. Worse yet, I wouldn’t just be a science experiment, but a failed experiment, since presumably if I had been a success they wouldn’t have dumped me in an uninhabited field in Kansas. And since it was unlikely that there were not only aliens, but that they happened to look human, the failed science experiment was the most likely option.
“Cheer up, Clark,” Lois laughed. “Were you hoping to meet intelligent life from other planets or something?”
“I was hoping to be intelligent life from another planet,” I said quietly.
There was silence in the room for a moment. My parents, I’m sure, were all ready to pitch in with their usual response to this. How I was wanted - I was wanted by them. How lucky they felt to have found me. Yada yada yada. None of it mattered. I knew they wanted me, but I still wanted to be wanted by someone else. Who ever was responsible for my existence.
Although given the magnitude of my screw up, maybe my parents weren’t feeling like they wanted me that much either tonight.
“What do you mean?” Lois asked, taking a seat at the table.
I shrugged, leaning against the doorframe. “The flying. The being unable to be harmed by pretty much anything I’ve been able to try. The ability to see through things. The speed that makes me faster than a Concorde Jet. The… I don’t even know what else. It all makes it pretty clear that I’m not your everyday, run-of-the mill human.”
“You can really do all those things?” Lois asked, amazed.
I nodded my head, despondent.
“That’s amazing, Clark!” she said. “Really, truly awesome.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t feel awesome.
“Don’t you think?” she prodded.
I shrugged.
“Clark?” she asked, her voice compassionate now. “Don’t you think it’s awesome?”
I shrugged again.
Mom moved over to put an arm around me. “It’s been hard on Clark. Not knowing why he can do those things. Not knowing where he comes from. And not being able to be himself, to always have to hide all the things he can do.”
“Not to mention the things you’ve already noticed – his desire to use his gifts to help others, even when doing so puts other areas of his life, like romantic relationships, at risk,” Dad added. It was clear that Mom and Dad believed my apology, and I was now forgiven.
“Like say, missing an important lunch with your girlfriend,” Lois said slowly. When I nodded, she asked, “So where were you really?”
“In Japan. Helping out at a town that was near a volcano that had just exploded,” I told her quietly.
“And with Maddie?” she asked.
“Which time?” I asked back. “I ran out on her a lot. The last time, though, the one that broke us up, I was in Costa Rica helping clean up an oil spill.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked. “I would have understood.”
“You would have?” I challenged her. “If I had told you that I had been in Japan, you would have been okay with that?”
“Well, you would have had to tell me about the flying thing, too,” she admitted. “But I guess… what? Didn’t you ever plan to tell anybody?”
I shrugged.
“When you met the right person maybe?” she asked.
“Who’s the right person?” I asked her. “Someone who seems really wonderful but then has to deal with the fact that her boyfriend is… whatever it is I am. Space trash? Rejected alien? Failed science experiment?”
“Our son!” Mom said with a look that said she was disappointed in me for still feeling this way.
“My boy!” Dad said at the same time.
There was silence for a moment after their outburst before Lois quietly said, “My friend.”
“Where you came from doesn’t change who are, Clark,” she continued when no one else spoke. “I don’t care if you’re a failed science experiment or a Cyborg, you’re still the guy who held my hand as we walked to the disciplinary hearing, the only one I felt would be understanding enough for me to tell about my crush on Paul.”
“It really doesn’t change anything?” I challenged her. I had noticed that she hadn’t said anything about being the first guy she kissed or something like that. She didn’t want to remember that. Who would want to remember that? She was probably wondering if I had a mass of wires in my chest or green scaly skin under the more human looking stuff.
“No,” she said. Mom and Dad remained quiet, probably hoping Lois could get through to me when they couldn’t. “Well, okay, it does.”
“I thought so,” I said, looking somewhere over her head. If I tilted my head up just right, maybe the tears wouldn’t actually leak out of my eyes. I had hoped that maybe… But it was silly. Lois was great, but she wasn’t completely insane.
“It means now I know where you go when you run off. Now you can tell me. So now I’ll understand. It means that now I know something about you, something incredibly personal. Something I can’t tell anyone else about. It’s like… You ever hear old people talk about their ‘list’?”
I shook my head. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“It’s like the list of everyone they ever had sex with or something. Well, you have a different kind of list, Clark – of the people who know your secret. And I’m on it. And just like with the regular kind of list, once someone is on it, they can never not be on it. So we’re tied together. Forever.”
I nodded, not wanting to talk for fear that the tears would be audible in my voice.
“Don’t you get it, Clark?” she asked. “If I understand, I won’t get angry. It means you can run off on me all you want, well, to save the world or whatever. And it won’t mean that we need to break up.” Lois flushed as she finished talking. “I mean, if you still wanted to date, I guess.”
“You still want to date me?” I asked. “Even though…”
“Even though what?” Lois cut me off. “Even though you’re still the same boy I thought you were? Better even since it never occurred to me that you were off trying to save the world? Why wouldn’t I want to date you?”
“Cause I’m…”
“I told you,” she said, sounding a bit annoyed now. “Where you came from isn’t important to me.”
“Really?” I asked. I knew she sounded annoyed, but I had to be sure. I mean, it didn’t really seem possible.
“Really,” Lois giggled. “If you are an alien, I’d like to meet some others from your planet. Determine if you’re all lunkheads or that’s just you.”
Mom and Dad laughed at that while I flushed.
“I… um…” I stumbled over my words. I hadn’t imagined I’d ever have the opportunity to say them, and even when I fantasized that I did, Mom and Dad certainly weren’t in the room. Still, this was the right time. “I love you,” I whispered. “I wanted to tell you all this before, but…”
“But you were worried what I would think,” Lois cut me off. “I think I can sort of understand that. But it doesn’t matter to me, Clark. ‘Cause I love you, too.” Lois looked around the room, “Did we just say ‘I love you’ for the first time in front of your parents.”
Dad laughed, “It’s a little unconventional, but then if you’re going to date Clark, you have to get used to being a little unconventional.”
Lois nodded.
“Maybe, though, we could all get to know each other a little bit better,” Mom suggested, and I could see Lois relax. “After Jonathan and I give you a moment alone.” She gave a meaningful look at Dad, and they went into the living room.
“I think this is the place where we kiss,” Lois said. “Or at least I assume that’s why they left?”
“I think so, too,” I chuckled, feeling a strange mixture of amusement, relief, and exhilaration.
“Your parents are so weird,” Lois said quietly as we moved closer together.
“Well, they did raise me,” I pointed out.
“Good point,” she whispered, although I could tell from the look in her eyes she wasn’t thinking so much about my parents anymore.
“I love you,” I said again, quietly this time.
Lois smiled. “You know, despite all the stuff we’ve been through recently, I believe you. Maybe because I love you, too.”
And then, like every time I kissed Lois, the sounds of the house around us disappeared, and all I could hear was her heartbeat in my ears.
