<<< Chapter Nineteen >>>
Jonathan drove the four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle along the fence line, checking for any breaks or weak points he’d missed before. “This part of the fence look good to you, Clark?” he called behind him.
“It wouldn’t hurt to replace the posts,” Clark called back from his perch on the back of the ATV, “but I wouldn’t do it unless you don’t have anything else to do. They should last another year, at least.”
Jonathan laughed. “There’s no such thing as down time on a farm, son. You know that.”
“I do. And if you’ll park the ATV, I’ll put away the tools and spare supplies. I’m ready for some of Mom’s apple pie.”
“I’m glad you were here to help me. Would’ve taken me another three hours if I’d been out there alone the whole time.”
“Many hands make light work,” Clark quoted.
“And super hands make it even lighter.”
They shared a chortle as Jonathan steered the ATV into the barn and switched off the motor. Clark jumped down from the back and unhooked the small trailer while his father drew the tarpaulin over the ATV, then both of them stowed the tools in their proper places. Jonathan clapped his hand on his son’s shoulder and smiled. “Let’s go get some of the best cooking in the state of Kansas.”
“I’m ready for it,” Clark grinned back.
As Jonathan opened the back door, he smiled at his wife. “Martha, look what the cat dragged in.”
He stepped aside to reveal their son. Martha looked startled for a moment, then did something neither man expected.
She broke out in gales of uncontrolled laughter.
Father and son gazed at the unexpected apparition for several long moments before Jonathan leaned over to Clark and whispered, “Son, are my pants unzipped?”
“No. How about mine?”
“No.”
“Then what’s so funny?”
“She’s your mother. You ask her.”
“I’m not sure it’s safe.”
Martha apparently heard the last part of their exchange and clapped her hands twice, then walked over to Clark and put her hands on his shoulders. “You need – ha-ha-ha – you need to go and – ho-ho-ho – go sit in your Fortress – he-he-he – for two minutes – ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Uh, Mom? Are you okay?”
Martha got herself under enough control to smile at her son. “I’d tell you why, but I promised I wouldn’t. Besides, you’re both too hard-headed!”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Jonathan protested. “What did I do?”
His wife stepped into his enveloping embrace and shook with laughter once again. “Nothing, dear, nothing at all! I wasn’t talking about you!”
Jonathan and Clark exchanged a questioning look, but since neither of them had any answers for the other, Clark shrugged his shoulders and took a step toward the back door. “I assume that I will receive some kind of wisdom while I’m there?”
Martha jerked out of her husband’s arms and pointed her right index finger at Clark’s face. “Promise me you’ll stay there for at least two minutes.”
“Why two minutes?”
“I can’t tell you! But you have to promise me!”
Clark appeared to think about it for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. A minimum of two whole minutes, not one second less.”
“Good. Now go before you lose your light!”
“Mom, I can see in the dark like – “
“Go!”
Without another word – but with concern for his mother’s mental state scribbled all over his visage – Clark spun and opened the door.
Martha pulled back the curtain and looked out the door. Jonathan bent down close to her and whispered, “Is he gone?”
Martha all but jumped up and down in place. “Yes. Yes! Oh, yes! And Jonathan, just you wait till he comes back!”
*****
As he walked across the field to his Fortress of Solitude, Clark tried to figure out what his mother might have intended by extracting that promise. Was she making something special for him for dinner? No, she hadn’t known he was on the farm today, and two minutes at the Fortress plus the time he spent walking in between wasn’t enough to whip up anything. Had she planned to surprise him with some present and had decided on the spur of the moment to give it to him today? Possibly, but he couldn’t link the Fortress to anything she might have planned at the house.
He decided to climb the wooden ladder instead of floating up to the platform. Was there something hidden up there, something she planned to surprise him with? Also possible, but what could she hide up here that would be safe from animals and the weather that he –
“Clark?”
He froze in place, his head and shoulders barely above the level of the platform. He looked in the direction of the unexpected voice. “Lois?”
Together, they said, “What are you doing here?”
She laughed and waved at him to continue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in Smallville.” She rolled to a crouch and made as if she were about to take off. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“No! I mean, that’s not necessary. I’m just here because my mother told me to come here.”
“What?” Lois frowned. “She let me come up here knowing you were home?”
“No. I mean, she didn’t know I was here until I walked in the house with my dad. We were repairing fence line on the west side.”
“Oh.” Lois’ frown faded. “I see. In that case, just let me get out of your way so you – “
“My mom made me come here.”
“What?”
He finally pulled himself onto the platform and sat on a crate near the ladder. “She made me promise to come out here and spend a minimum of two minutes before I went back to the house.”
Lois’ frown returned. “What for?”
Clark shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me. All I do know is that she was laughing her head off when she did it.”
A smile slowly replaced Lois’ frown. “Oh, I see. I’m pretty sure she sent you out here so we could talk.”
“Well, yeah, I guess so. Or we can sit up here and stare at each other for another ninety-six seconds.”
She stood up and sighed. “Not that looking at you is all that stressful an activity for me, Clark, I doubt that’s what she wanted us to do.”
“I don’t know what she expected, Lois. But since we’re here, and since there’s no one else around, I’m sure there’s something you’d like to talk about.”
“All right. What’s the subject?”
“Um – the weather? It’s been a bit warm this fall, don’t you think? Not too much, and not enough to hurt the harvest – “
She crossed her arms. “Not the weather, Clark.”
He nodded. “Okay. How about, uh, how you and Asabi are getting along at the office?”
“We’re getting along fine and that can’t be it either.”
He bit his lip and stood. “Fine. I think she wanted us to talk about our – our shared losses.”
Lois’ arms dropped to her sides and she turned away from him. “That’s – I already have a therapist. But thanks.”
He nodded again, then realized she couldn’t see behind her head any more than he could. “I know. Maybe she wanted me to talk to you about that guy in your therapy group.”
She turned halfway and gave him a stunned look. “Who?”
“That guy in your group.”
“What guy in what group?”
“The guy you were talking about the other day.”
She took a step toward him and gave him a puzzled frown. “What other day?”
“When you told Lucy and me that you – that Lex wasn’t the guy for you.”
“He wasn’t. But what does that have to do with my therapy group?”
Surely that relationship hadn’t vanished already! “Oh, Lois, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“What didn’t you know?”
“That you and the guy in your therapy group had broken up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she snapped. “Will you please make some sense? What guy in what therapy group?”
He lifted his hands in confusion. “The guy you said you loved instead of Lex. I knew it wasn’t anybody at work, so I figured it had to be someone I hadn’t met. I’m sure he’s a wonderful person or you wouldn’t – feel that way about him.”
He took a step back because Lois was leaning closer and looking a little scary. Very slowly she enunciated, “Who told you I was in love with someone in a therapy group?”
“You did!”
“I never!”
“You did! You sat at your dining table and told me and Lucy that you lied to Lex about wanting to marry him because you were in love with someone else!”
“And you got ‘therapy group guy’ from that?” she snarled.
“Who else could it be?”
“It’s you, you big lunkhead!”
Clark could almost feel his brain grind to a halt and his body lock up like the Tin Man’s before Dorothy squirted him with oil. This wasn’t just the last thing he’d expected, it was the last thing on a list of infinite possibilities. Lois loved him? Could she have actually said that?
During the moment he stood rooted to the platform, Lois’ face paled and she gasped. She turned and stumbled to the edge of the platform and jumped off, then rocketed almost straight up.
Clark knew that even if he could catch her, he couldn’t force her to listen to anything he might say.
So he sent it.
-* Lois, please come back. *-
-* No! *-
-* Please? I have something very important to tell you. *-
-* Oh, Clark, I swore I’d never say that to you! I’m so sorry! I never wanted to put any pressure on you or try to force you into anything or complicate your life or get in your way and now I’ve gone and done exactly what I didn’t want to do! Please forgive me! *-
-* There’s nothing to forgive. Please come back. *-
-* No! You’ll be reasonable and nice and forgiving and you’ll tell me how much I mean to you as a friend and how much you value our teamwork both in the office and in the field and I don’t think I could take that! *-
Amazing, he thought to himself. Even speaking mentally, she could put out the babble like no one else in the world. -* I promise you, Lois, that’s not what I want to say. *-
-* Then just send it to me! Please, Clark, I’m mortified! *-
-* You shouldn’t be. And I want to say this to your face. *-
-* No! My face couldn’t take it either! *-
He sighed. -* Okay. Do you remember what Bob told us about the link? *-
-* He told us a lot of things and at the moment I’m not in the right frame of mind to list them in any kind of order. *-
-* He said we couldn’t lie to each other over the link. Remember that part? *-
-* Of course I do. That’s why I haven’t been leaving it open because I was trying to avoid this whole conversation. *-
-* Then remember that now. *- He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then sent, -* I love you, Lois. *-
Nothing.
He could tell the link was open, but she wasn’t sending to him. -* Lois? *-
He waited for a moment, then – there! He felt something. He couldn’t tell just what it was, but he knew he’d felt it.
He looked up into the sky and saw a tiny speck quickly grow into a woman’s shape. A beautiful woman’s shape, he thought.
A heartbeat later, Lois stood in front of him, breathing deeply, her clothes and hair and skin speckled with frost. She’d really gained some altitude in a hurry, he mused.
But it wasn’t her strength or speed that came across to him at that moment.
Despite her strength, despite her speed, despite her other powers, she reminded him of a piece of ancient pottery he’d seen years before in a Middle Eastern museum. It was a carafe with a long fluted spout which had lost part of its handle. The display case was made of thick Plexiglas mounted on an earthquake-resistant base. The interior was a total vacuum to prevent the piece from shattering due to temperature changes or oxidation due to exposure to atmosphere. The room was darkened, and visitors had to wear infrared lenses to see the pottery so that the light wouldn’t fade the markings on it. The guide told the visitors that it was the most fragile piece in the entire complex, and a person could damage it just by breathing on it.
Compared to Lois at that moment, that pottery shard would have appeared as permanent as a mountain and solid as a battleship.
She took a trembling step forward and lifted her hand. “You’d better not be kidding me, Kent, or I’ll find a way to hurt you.”
He stepped closer and touched her raised right hand with his left. With his other hand, he wiped away the melting fragments of tears from her cheeks. “I’m not kidding you, Lois. I love you.”
He thought she was going to grab him around the neck, but she stopped herself. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because you were dating another guy and I didn’t want to break that up. You and Lex seemed to get along so well, it would have been – I don’t know, unethical or something for me to try to horn in on what you two had going for you.”
She nodded. “How long have you felt this way about me?”
He frowned slightly. “What’s with the third degree? Don’t you believe me?”
Her voice wavered and cracked. “Please, Clark. I – I need to know.”
He nodded. “Okay. I guess, well, it must have been about the time you and he got back together after you had that big fight and he broke up with you. He was a total dummy about that, by the way.”
One side of her mouth quirked as if she were holding back a smile. “That far back, huh? Even before the boat trip on the Miss Emily?”
“Yep.”
She took a shallow breath. “Do you remember our last conversation up here, the one we had right here on this platform? Right after that terrible day with the home invaders?”
His voice softened. “I remember.”
“I almost told you I loved you that day, Clark. I was leaning back in your arms and you felt so very good and so very natural and so very right that I almost told you then but I was afraid to because I didn’t think you felt anything for me but friendship.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I almost told you that day, too. I was close – closer than we are now – to saying those three wonderful words but I didn’t. I was afraid of damaging our friendship too.”
“Just – I need to ask one more question.”
He nodded. “Anything.”
“Do you – does this have anything to do with Lana?”
He blinked with surprise. “Lana? No. Of all the questions you might have asked me, that one wasn’t on my radar.”
“So you don’t – you aren’t just making it easy for me to take care of you? Like Lana asked me to?”
He thought for a moment, then smiled. “You know, I’d completely forgotten you told me that. No, I’m not trying to make things ‘easy’ for you! Lana has nothing to do with – “ He paused. “Please tell me that your feelings aren’t tied up with Lana asking you to take care of me.”
She almost smiled. “No. If all I was doing was taking care of you, I would have gone to Rebecca to try to fix whatever went wrong between you.” The smile won out. “And I’m not about to do that.”
He sighed with relief. “Good. I don’t want you to do that. Not ever.”
She laughed and sobbed and put her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around him. “So where do we go from here? You’re still working at the Planet and I’m a sudden multi-millionaire who can’t remember that I don’t have to call a cab.”
“You don’t what?”
“Never mind, I’ll explain it later. But what do we do now?”
He squeezed her against his wide chest and chuckled. “I need to go back to the house.”
She pulled her head back and looked up at him. “What?”
“My two minutes are up.”
She loosened her grip. “Clark, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I need to go back to the house and have dinner with my folks.” He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “And I’d like for you to go back with me. I think my mother has some gloating to do.”
She smiled and embraced him again. “Oh! I thought – I don’t know what I thought!” She laughed into his shirt. “I know your mother wants to gloat at me. She’s been telling me to have this talk with you for months.”
“Really? Well, your sister all but read me the riot act that Sunday I was there because I wouldn’t talk to you.”
She laughed. “How come they knew and we didn’t?”
He shook his head and smiled. “Maybe because we’re not as smart as they are?”
Lois laughed again, this time with Clark. She picked him up and swirled him around, then they both levitated and kissed.
It was a soft kiss but a long one. And it didn’t end until Lois bumped her head on a tree limb.
They laughed together again. “Guess I still need a couple of flying lessons, huh?”
He shook his head. “I think you’re just fine the way you are.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Well, with one possible exception.”
Her eyes sparkled, reflecting the sun hanging low in the western sky. “And what might that exception be, Mr. Kent?”
“Your marital status.” He knelt in mid-air and took her hands in his. “Lois Lane, will you marry me?”
She floated down until her face was level with his. “Yes, Clark Kent, I will marry you.”
“Ha!” he blurted out. “Thank you! I love you!”
He kissed her again, but this one was interrupted by their laughter. But neither one seemed to care.
“Oh, Clark! I feel so – I can’t tell you how I feel! It’s like I was carrying a burden as big as the moon that I didn’t know I had but now it’s gone and I could fly to Jupiter and back without any extra air!”
“I know. I feel the same way.” He guided them back to the platform. “You know, Rebecca’s the one who broke up with me.”
“Really? But why? I know how she felt about you.”
He sighed. “We went to that new water park on the other side of Hob’s Bay a couple of weeks ago, and after she changed her clothes and dried her hair she came out of my bathroom and asked me to marry her.”
Lois put the palms of her hands on Clark’s chest and seemed to pull him to her. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t shout for joy and yell ‘Yes!’ so she told me we shouldn’t ever get married because I didn’t love her enough and she really didn’t love me enough either.”
“And you left it at that?”
“I wrote her a letter telling her how sorry I was that it ended the way it did, and that I hoped she would be successful in the Antarctic. She wrote back – “
“Whoa.” Lois waved one hand from side to side. “Wait a minute. Go back a little and explain that part about the Antarctic.”
“Sorry, I forgot you might not know. She’s joining an expedition near the South Pole to study penguins for at least a year, maybe longer. The work she’ll do will count toward her doctorate, and the papers she’ll publish will put her on the academic map.”
“Of course.” Lois paused, then said, “I’m guessing she made these plans without consulting you. Am I right?”
He sighed. “You are. That was one of the things that convinced her that we shouldn’t be together. She would always put her career first, and she knew I wanted a wife who would make me the most important person in her life. I think she’s is a very nice person, but Rebecca Connors is always going to be the most important person in Rebecca Connors’ life.”
She kissed him gently. “I’m sorry, Clark. That had to hurt.”
“No, not really. It was as much a relief as it was anything else. I just – I never really wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But I felt responsible for her getting shot and I wanted her to be as happy as I could make her.”
She smiled. “You are such a Boy Scout. You know you won’t be responsible for making me happy, don’t you?”
That surprised him. “I won’t? Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure. I’ve learned that my happiness is my responsibility. But if we’re going to be married – “
“And we are!”
“Glad to know you haven’t changed your mind in the last three minutes. Anyway, when we’re married, you’ll be responsible for loving me and supporting me and being faithful to your family, but you can’t be responsible for making me happy. That’s my job and you can’t do it, any more than I can make you happy.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Not sure I grasp the concept.”
She took two steps back. “Are you just the tiniest bit less happy than you were ten seconds ago? I am. But you can’t spend every second of every day fulfilling every momentary whim or desire I might whip up. Even you have to sleep some time. And there will be times when your needs and desires will be more important than mine. On top of that, sometimes your duties will take you away from me, just like my duties will take me away from you. All you can do – all you’re supposed to do – is make me the most important person in your life as long as we both live.” She blew him a kiss. “If you do that, you’ll never make me unhappy. I make that promise to you here and now.”
He nodded slowly. “I think I see what you mean. I may have to have Dr. Friskin explain it to me again, though.”
“I won’t mind. She’ll do a better job than I can anyway.” She returned to her previous position inside his personal space. “Now, Mr. Kent, don’t we have some parents to talk to?”
“Yours or mine?”
Her eyes bulged. “Oh, no! My parents! When will we tell them? What will we say?”
He grinned. “How about we tell them after we tell my parents?”
Her face relaxed. “I hope your dad is as enthusiastic about me as your mom will be.”
He wrapped her in his arms again. “Don’t worry. My dad thinks very highly of you nowadays.”
“I hope he still thinks so highly of me when we tell him I want to marry his son.”
“He will, Lois. I promise.” He picked her up and held her close. “I’m still going to try to make your life as pleasant as I can, even if I can’t make you happy.”
She laughed. “Oh, Clark, you still don’t understand. I can’t make you responsible for my happiness, but I do expect you to try very hard.” She kissed him again. “I know I’m going to try hard to make you happy.”
He thought his smile might split his face. “Too late. You already have.”
“Me too. You know, we will have to sit down and talk about our future before too much longer.”
“That’s true,” he said. “What do you think will happen?”
“You mean after we talk?”
He brushed her cheek again with his thumb, then kissed it. “Yes. After that.”
“It will take some time to work out the timing and logistics of a wedding,” she said slowly, “but I think that I will give you my heart – to keep – forever and ever.”
He moved back and took both of her hands in his. “That’s a huge responsibility.”
“I know. But I also know that you’re up to it.” She kissed his hands. “Just like I know that you love me.”
-* I do love you, *- he sent.
-* And we will love each other for a long, long time. *-
He didn’t have to answer. He knew she was right.
