This choice: Just stay home and see what happens. • Go Back...Chapter #5Just stay home and see what happens. by: Seuzz   By unspoken agreement, you and Martha don't broach the subject of the colonel's visit, or the incident that occasioned it, for the rest of the day. To Joanna's queries about where her brother is, you just say he's off with friends. She doesn't seem to accept this, and after you and Martha are in bed she confesses that she told Joanna that her brother got in trouble out at Fort Suffolk and is "staying" out there for a little while.
* * * * *
You spend Sunday on "autopilot," busying yourself with household chores and flinching from all thoughts of the current crisis. Your mind is a swamp of worry, anger, frustration, and dread; and not all of it is your own. You possessed your father in the hopes that he would have some ideas of what to do—ideas you could use—and you are vexed to find that he is at a complete loss, that his own mind, in fact, is the source of most of your black and bewildered emotions. You catch yourself being very angry with "David," for instance, which is a natural reaction for him to have, since he has spent most of the past five years being impatient with you; it would be a shock to see just what a flighty and irresponsible little jerk you've been as a teenager, except that your absorption of your father's mind and personality has made those negative impressions feel very familiar and natural.
You (and your father) are also at a loss as to what to do with the rest of your family. What will you say when Mary returns? How will you finally break the news of the disaster to Joanna? Will you actually ever reveal yourself to your family, now that you've been hiding in plain sight for more than a day? Your de facto position as head of family weighs on your shoulders, and, uneasily, you realize that all your procrastinating is just a way of balancing between your sense that you need to do something and your desire to just run away.
Now, you didn't move into your family so you could watch them as they deal with your disappearance, and even though the weekend passes without much drama, you spend it dreading the inevitable return of tears and crises. Imagine your surprise, then, when you wake in a dark bed, in the early hours between Sunday night and Monday morning, to find Martha astride you and sliding herself up and down your engorged penis. So comfortable are you inside your father's head by this point that you don't even really think about the fact that it's your own mother trying to arouse you to a sexual climax. Rather, you are mostly baffled by she's doing, and can't for the life of you understand why, at a time when she should be overcome with grief and worry, she should be feeling randy. You put all this aside, though, and let her have her way with you. She and your father are still relatively young and attractive, and your dad's exercise regimen has kept him fit and trim. It's the one really pleasant experience of the weekend, even if it leaves you feeling confused and a little guilty afterward.
Martha is subdued the next morning, though, and looks grateful when you call in to work and take a sick day. Shortly after you send Joanna to school, you get a phone call from Mary, saying that she'll be home around lunch time.
Your older sister has always been a very sober and sensible girl, though a little motherly, too. This has grated on you, but in the current circumstances you are actually glad that she's so level-headed: her mouth is set and her eyes are grim when she comes in the door, but she is very calm, and after a few hugs she insists on sitting down in the living room and getting all the details about what is known of her brother.
You do almost all the talking, while Martha curls up next to you and clutches a pillow to her chest. There isn't, in fact, much to tell. Mary takes it all in while asking only a few but very pertinent questions. When you're done, she then questions you about it all again. She is particularly curious about why the colonel thinks you might have escaped with few injuries.
"Well, he didn't say 'few' injuries," you caution her. "I think the word he used was 'apparent'."
She stares at you, and then her face turns beet red. "The fuckers," she spits, using a word that you've never heard her use in your parents' presence. "It's chemical or biological warfare agents they're worried about! Jesus Christ!"
"Honey, I don't see how it could be anything like that," her mother starts to say, but she waves her off.
"Oh, for God's sake, mother, don't be so naïve. If it was just a fire then he'd have burns, and if it was just an explosion then he'd have broken bones and bruises. But if they think he's run off and hidden himself without going to a hospital, and they're still worried about him, it must be because they think he might have been exposed to something that ... that wouldn't leave the usual marks. Oh, dear God!" She slaps her hands, sharply, against her thighs.
Martha looks over at you worriedly. You frown and wilt a little. "The man did tell me not to worry about the consequences if David showed up," you say slowly. "He said that maybe we'd all try to forget what happened."
"Then that settles it," Mary exclaims. "They're going into full cover up mode. They want him back on the base? Of course, so they can treat him without telling anyone the truth about what's wrong with him."
"Not that I like it as an alternative," you say dryly, "but there is still a chance that he didn't survive, and that they can't find him because there's nothing left to find."
That elicits a sharp gasp from Martha, and even Mary looks a little aghast. "That's still no excuse—" she starts to stammer.
"It's an excuse if that's the reason they can't find him," you interrupt her.
"But then why are they so worried about 'apparent' injuries? I mean, injuries that don't look like injuries? It means they know it's a possibility, because of what they've got out there."
You shrug; she's got a point, as you well know.
"Maybe it's even worse than that," Mary continues, and you begin to fear that she is on the verge of a real rant. "Maybe they know exactly where he is, because they've got him. Maybe they're trying to give us a story about 'Oh, we can't find any traces of him,' so that if they can't fix him up they can just keep him buried."
Martha jumps from the couch and runs out of the room. Mary pales as she goes, and you glower at her. "I wish you'd think really hard before you say some of these things," you say with clipped anger. She hangs her head.
"I'm sorry. I'll go apologize and make it up to mom in a moment. I'm just so upset and ... and ... and I don't know what to do about it."
"You don't have to do anything about it, sweetheart," you say, leaning forward and squeezing her hand. "That's for your mother and I to deal with. Well," you add with a wan smile, "mostly for me. But definitely not for you."
She is suddenly struggling to hold back tears of her own, and leans forward to hug you. You hold her tightly for a few minutes, then let her go. "I'll go talk to mom now," she says, wiping her tears away.
* * * * *
Whatever the women need to say to each other takes a couple of hours, but when they come back down they both seem recovered. They are even smiling and talking about a musical they saw a few weeks ago. Mary looks at your face and bursts out laughing. "Don't worry about us," she says. "We just got a little silly is all." She then collects her suitcase from next to the front door and turns toward the stairs. "Actually, could you help me unpack," she says over her shoulder. You wonder what she has to say outside her mother's hearing, and follow her up.
"Don't worry much about mom," she says as she starts pulling out clothes and separating them into "clean" and "dirty" piles. "Just be there for her, whatever she needs." You give her a quizzical look, but she doesn't look you in the eye. "Girls can be a little strange sometimes, and it might surprise you what we need and when we need it," is all she says. Ah, the sex thing. You blanch a little, partly because it's clear Martha told Mary about what the two of you got up to last night, and partly because it implies that Mary is well acquainted with sex and its uses. (The latter feeling, of course, is your father's reaction.)
"As for you and me, well, I have an idea that I want to float past you." She turns toward you brightly after she's got her clothes hung up and put away. "You're probably just thinking about sitting around and waiting for this colonel fellow to call you up again, but I think they need a little pressure put on them. I have some friends who are, um ..." She trails off uncertainly. "Well, they're kind of into the whole skeptical of the military-industrial complex thing, and civil disobedience. I think they'd be interested in David's case." She gives you a meaningful look.
You don't say anything. She apparently takes your silence for skepticism, and starts launching into a history of who she knows and what they've done, but in fact you are preoccupied with thoughts about what you can and should do.
You've been playing your father for almost three days now, and so it would be very awkward to reveal yourself to them under these circumstances after all this time. You've been doing a perfect job of pretending to be him, though, and you could exit him without causing any disruption. He himself has no say in the matter, but you know that he would, firmly, want to do something other than sit around and deal with emotional women. He would be at a loss as to what to do, but you now have an idea. Or, rather, Mary has had an idea ...  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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