A Helping Hand

In which everything comes quite clear

A few months later, Tony sat down to dinner with Howard on a sunny Sunday afternoon and hoped that the conversation he wanted to have would not be too horrible.

"Howie...what do you think about Alison being a bigger part of this family?"

Howard froze. He had not said anything about his conversation with Sarah- he hadn't even told his father that she had joined him in the waiting room or that she had cleaned up the house with James .

"So...no too happy?"

"Dad, she doesn't like anything I like. She doesn't want me writing fanfiction or building models of the Enterprise or drawing alien planets. She doesn't like any of the things I do. She keeps saying she'll be my mom someday, and she won't be."

"Why didn't you talk to me about this earlier?"

"I know, I know- Sarah even told me I should. But you were so happy and then you just lost it..."

"My weakness shouldn't stop you from telling me my girlfriend makes you miserable."

"But it did- me talking landed you in the hospital."

"No, no. Just no. I did it because I'm an idiot. You did not cause it."

"Sarah said you had a choice to do something else but chose drinking instead."

"You did not make my bad decision for me."

"I guess."

"And when did you talk to Sarah? I thought you weren't texting as much because you got in trouble at school for it."

"She sat with me while you were in the hospital."

"She did?"

"I needed somebody to talk to. You were so out of it, you didn't know who was with you anyway."

"Wait, who was in the room with me?"

"Uncle James and Alison. Two people only. I went out the waiting room after Alison got there. I asked Sarah to come sit with me. She was great. She even came back after to help clean up the mess."

"Really?"

"Really."

"OK. So she and you talked about stuff?"

"She said I should tell you all the stuff about Alison and that I didn't ever want to call her mom. She said that even if Alison turned out to be an awesome step-mom, she needed to know I'm going to keep calling her Alison. And that's not going to change, no matter how close we all get."

Tony ran his fingers through his hair, "Wow, Howie- I wish you had told me about this earlier. I kind of want to ask her what she thinks about getting married someday and we really should talk about this first."

"Well then talk about it soon. Because Mom is my mom and Alison will always be Alison, not mom. And she'd better get used to Star Trek, because I'm going to be Spock for Halloween this year. I've been working on making ears."

Howard left the table and returned to the library and his homework, a large scale model of the Parthenon with the Elgin Marbles reattached.

Tony called Alison and asked to meet her while Howard was at school the next day.

When they sat down for coffee, he told her exactly what Howard had said. She fiddled with a napkin and told him she needed time to think. Two hours later, she called him and told him she would rather not see him anymore. She wanted to be a full part of the family or nothing at all, and Howard calling her by her first name felt like she was still an outsider. She wished him well before saying goodbye.