deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 83: sweet mother love

Without a moment's hesitation, Marla called Zelda and told her what was happening, but the only problem was the three of them were told that they would arrive home in New York City at around three o'clock in the morning given they left East Midlands almost two minutes before midnight.
It felt so strange that she had established a relationship with Joey, and yet Sam had to fly back home with an empty seat next to her on the red eye. She nestled down in the seat by the window: for the first forty minutes of the flight, she gazed out there to the blackness that blanketed the British Isles. Every so often, a small cluster of golden lights emerged from the darkness like a flurry of fireflies, but then they disappeared away with the nightfall. Within time, she was met with the vast stretch of black nothing was the Atlantic Ocean as it loomed underneath them in every direction possible. Every so often, she took a glimpse before her to the faint slivers of clouds, lit up ever so faint despite by the darkness: far off to the north, she caught those glimmers of the rich neon green near the northern side of the ocean.
She thought of Cliff right then, and she wondered if one of the last things he got to see was in fact the northern lights. The aurora. Aurora Borealis. She hoped that Aurora and Emile would return home soon enough themselves.
Meanwhile, in the seat right in front of her, Marla's crown of cherry red hair shone under the soft dimmed lights on the ceiling overhead. She had gone through a few of the Polaroids she had taken over those few days and then she tucked them away into her hand bag. Sam hoped that the negative of Joey would stay within the camera because she couldn't bear the thought of Marla finding out that she had spied on him in Austin. If she had a scoff at a joke about Sam daydreaming about Alex, then surely she would have a fit at the thought of Sam gazing on at Joey. Belinda had sank down with her arms folded across her chest the whole entire trip; thus Sam had time to herself and only herself. Every so often, she took a glimpse to her left at the empty seat.
She thought about drawing something before she fell asleep, and yet she couldn't hardly bring herself to it.
She had had Joey's flesh right in her hands, right in her mouth as well. An itch she couldn't quite scratch and yet she felt the need to scratch it, and yet she couldn't bring herself to it, either. She closed her eyes and pictured Alex right next to her. He leaned back against the seat with his guitar case propped up right next to him and the plume of gray over his brow strong and bright against the soft lights overhead.
She kept her attention fixed on his side profile, on the prominent aquiline shape of his nose. His deep eyes were closed part of the way, and he sat there with his arms folded across his chest. His soft lips pouted a bit. Soft like a young boy and yet stoic and serious like an old man.
"Are you awake?" she asked him in a soft voice.
He raised those thick dark eyebrows for her, but he never opened his eyes. Those dark eyelashes formed a deep shadow around his brow. He seemed to fade in and out of the shadows around him.
"Alex?" she whispered to him. He shook his head. The mysterious man, especially once he opened his eyes for her.
"What do you think I should do?" she asked him. He gazed hard and deep into her. He parted those sensual lips as if he beckoned a kiss. She moved in closer to his face, to the deep shadows that surrounded his full face: he resembled to the full moon, complete with the gray plume at the crown of his head.
"Alex?" she whispered to him the softest of whispers. The shadows cleared up into the pale skin on his cheekbones and he returned to her. He opened his eyes, and his face was soft and gentle, like a little doll. More of a doll than Belinda.
"What should I do?" she breathed right into his ear.
"Please—don't unwrite me," he begged to her, and he closed his eyes again. She then pressed her hands to either side of his face and she set her lips onto his.
"Please don't," he begged to her again.
"I won't—I won't, I promise." She kissed him again. He tasted like nothing, but she could taste him regardless of it. He tasted like the dream she never wanted to end.
"Please—Sam—" he begged to her a third time. She gazed right into his eyes, baffled by that. He always called her Samantha up to that point.
"Sam, wake up," he said to her in a broken voice. His dark eyes seemed to grow darker with the incoming night. The man of her dreams, about to swallow her whole.
"Huh?" she asked him, puzzled.
"Sam?" And she opened her eyes, and Belinda hovered right above the vacant seat next to her: her long blonde locks dangled down from the side of her head much like Joey's jet black curls. She looked on at Sam with an expression on her face that said that she had not slept at all during the flight and yet it never bothered her for a second.
"Sam, we landed," she told her in a voice otherwise broken by sleep. Indeed, Sam peered behind her to the bright amber airport lights right outside of the window. The tarmac outside was covered in a fine layer of rain water, and she knew that Zelda had to be sound asleep at that moment, given she offered to care for Genie while she and Marla were overseas. She then rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms over her head.
"Okay—okay—I'm awake—"
"You got your art stuff with you?" Marla asked her as she picked up her purse from the seat next to her.
"Right here, yeah—" Sam gathered her things and then she climbed out of the seat. The three of them filed down the narrow aisle to the front door of the plane and the terminal gate. The airport stood vacant but bright lit despite it being almost three o'clock in the morning. Almost three o'clock in the morning and yet Sam and Belinda both were wide awake.
"Want me to drive us back?" Belinda offered.
"If you could, Bel," Marla told her with a rub of her eye. "I don't really feel like doing much of anything right now if I'm honest."
The vast bright corridor stood still and silent with the middle of the night all the way to those big sliding front doors. A heavy dew was falling in the wake of a strong rain some time before then. Belinda took to the driver's seat while Sam slid in the passenger spot next to her and Marla lay down in the back seat. She had fallen asleep once they had reached the airport driveway.
"So what're you gonna do once we get back to your place?" Belinda asked her as they reached the first stoplight.
"Like what do you mean?"
"You gonna call your parents and tell 'em we got home safe and sound and in one piece?"
"Of course. They told me to call any time, so hell to the yes." Sam then turned her head in her direction. "Why? What'd you have in mind?"
"Kinda hungry," Belinda confessed as the light turned green. "That airline food just isn't very good."
"No, it's not."
"When we get back to Hell's Kitchen, I'll get you and me some pizza if you'd like."
"Pizza at three o'clock morning sounds excellent."
Within time, they reached their apartment in Hell's Kitchen overlooking the harbor. The windows of the building all beheld the darkness of the night, and Sam thought of that morning that she and Cliff had Mexican hot chocolate together. She even pictured Zelda and Louie on the corner up ahead of them as well.
Just so long as no one found out about them then she would keep their secret locked away under the proverbial lock and key forever.
Marla had a difficult time in climbing out of the back seat but she managed to climb out of there: the amber light from the street lamp next to them shone down on her cherry red hair such that she resembled to a literal sunrise there on the sidewalk. She rubbed her eyes as she unlocked the front door and propped it open for Sam and Belinda; she yawned and then she trudged over to the far corner of the room for the mail. It took her a few tries to slip the key into the hole but she finally did, and she took out a full stack of mail out of its hiding place.
"We'll go through this stuff tomorrow," she told Sam as she shut the door and locked it. "I'm just too beat right now."
"Makes sense," Sam assured her with a shake of her head. The elevator brought them up to the third floor, and Marla almost fell asleep standing up right there next to Belinda. But they made their way back to the apartment and Sam offered to unlock the front door for her.
They were met with total darkness except for a small night light plugged into the bathroom: through the shadows, Sam could see that Zelda had stretched out on the couch, sound asleep and with the back of her hand pressed upon her brow. Genie had curled up right down by her feet, but she lifted her head once Sam and Marla had come into the room; indeed, once Marla switched on the lamp, she had pinched her eyes shut even more in adjustment to the sudden bright light.
Sam stooped over Zelda's face and set a hand on her shoulder.
"Zelda?"
She breathed heavy with sleep, and thus Sam shook her harder.
"Zelda?"
She stirred and groaned in her throat.
"Hey—hey—hey, Zelda—"
"Huh?" She rubbed her eyes and she looked at the three of them with bloodshot eyes.
"We're home," Belinda told her.
"I can tell—wow." She propped herself up on her elbows, but Genie never budged from her spot. "I didn't think you guys'd get home until much later."
"We were told of our flight plan after the fact," Marla told her, and she yawned a second time. She set the mail down on the kitchen table, and then she doubled back down the hall to her bedroom. Sam and Belinda then turned back to Zelda.
"Long flight?" she asked them as she ran her fingers through her short black hair.
"Eh, could've been worse," Sam assured her.
"Yeah, you could've been flying out to California, too!"
"How'd she do?" Sam gestured to Genie, who finally stood up from her spot next to Zelda's feet and climbed up onto the arm: her black fur glowed in the light from the lamp.
"Excellent. She always ran up to the door and meowed at me whenever I came in. She always rubbered on me whenever I even so much as went to the bathroom. And last night, I decided that I better just come on over and spend the night with her. I think she gets lonely."
"She's an outdoor cat," Belinda told her.
"An outdoor cat who didn't really have a home, either," Sam pointed out.
"She's a good cat, too," Zelda continued as she reached over to pet her head. "The first night I came over, you know I sat with her and petted her, and she was purring the whole entire time, too. Just this full, loud, real content purr. And at one point, she looked up at me with real sleepy eyes and then she bumped her head right into my face."
"Aw," Sam tilted her head to the side at that.
"One time when Louie and I were together, and we went to a pet shop together, and there were these cats on one side of the room. We couldn't get a pet together because we were hurting for money, you know? But there was this one black cat who came up to me and rubbed on the grates of the cage and was just meowing at me the whole entire time. A couple more did, too. Louie told me it's because they know someone's true to themselves, but who knows really."
Zelda swung her legs around the edge of the couch and stretched her arms over her head.
"What time is it, by the way?" she asked them with a yawn.
"Three in the morning," Sam replied.
"Shit. Don't really feel like going home, though."
"Don't blame ya," Belinda told her, "are you hungry? I'm not tired at all and I was about to go up the block and get us something to eat."
"Oh, yeah! The whole late night rituals that just follow anyone who's on tour. If I'm honest, that's a habit that's gonna follow me until I drop dead."
Sam chuckled at that, but Belinda adjusted the strap on her purse and then she bowed back out of the door. Genie slunk up to the back of the couch and curled up on a spot right behind Zelda's head.
"I gotta call my parents," Sam told her.
"At this hour? Sam, I knew you were nuts, but not like this."
"They're three hours behind us," she pointed out as she doubled back into the kitchen for the phone.
"Oh, I see."
"My mom's bit of a night owl, too—if nothing, she'll be up."
As she made her way into the kitchen, she thought back to when Cliff was alive. The three hour time difference and the fact that it was late at night. It all felt so familiar to her as she dialed her parents' number and held the receiver up to her ear. She peered over her shoulder at Zelda, who stood to her feet and ducked behind the dividing wall between the kitchen and the front room there. Genie stayed in her spot on the back of the couch as the phone rang once, twice, three times—
"Hello?" Esmé's voice crackled onto the other end.
"Hi, Mommy—"
"Oh, hi, Sam! I was just thinking about you."
"Marla, Belinda, and I all just got home from England. Oh my god, it was beautiful there. One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen."
"That's fantastic! Well, your father just went to bed, I'll have to tell him about it in the morning."
"Marla got a couple of Polaroids, too, so we can share some good things with you, too."
"Wonderful! Oh, my little girl went overseas the first time with her friends..."
Sam then thought about that journal in her desk all the while, the one with the drawing of the mysterious man from when she first started dreaming of him the two years before. Two years later, and she still hadn't finished that drawing. But at least now she could give him a face and a body.
It was three o'clock there in New York and therefore midnight back on the West Coast. It dawned on her right then. She was alone with her mother. Joey stayed in England to tour with Anthrax. No one else there with her in that kitchen.
"So, um—you also didn't answer my question, Mom," she said with a clearing of her throat.
"What's that?" asked Esmé.
"When Joey and I were at the house a while back with Marla and at one point, you told me that he reminds you of Dad."
"No, I said he reminds me of someone whom I went out with before your father entered the picture, Sam," Esmé corrected her. "I was about to tell you that, too, but—I never got the right time to do so when the three of you were with us."
"Well... I've got time right now," she pointed out, to which she lowered her voice as Zelda returned to the couch in front of her.
"And I have little bit of time, too, even though it is late at the moment," Esmé added, and then she fetched up a sigh. "I was ready to call it a night, too, when the phone rang. To be frank, I had a feeling you would ask me about this at some point, but it was only a matter of time. But—" A brief pause on her end.
"Okay. I met your father while we were still in high school but we never completely hit it off together by the time we both had graduated. We always took our time with each other, especially since—you know, he's a little bit younger than me, and thus I had to wait a little bit for him. A year's sabbatical between me and him, and even after that we took our time. But I was willing to take my time with him. My mom—your grandmother—always told me that love is patient. Love knows no boundaries and is willing to wait until Death herself comes. Love knows no distance, either. But what happened was I met another boy about my age during that sabbatical year, and he resembled almost exactly like Joey. Almost—he was a little bit taller and not as thin, either, like he had a little bit of weight on his body. But he had the long lush black curls down past his shoulders and with the dark brown skin as well."
"Did you go out with him?" Sam asked him as she pressed her back to the wall.
"Oh, yeah. We went out many times while your father was in school, but I never told him about him. I couldn't, either. I never told either of them about each other. And the reason why is because it got ugly a few times by the time your father came into the picture and saw me with this other strange boy." And as the words left her lips, Sam thought about Joey and also Alex. The fact Alex didn't like Joey and he didn't like the idea of Sam being around him all the while; the fact Joey didn't like Alex for whatever reason.
"So what'd you do?"
"Well, I remember I cut the boy loose a few times but he kept coming back, though. Just by a matter of fate—very strange, as if we were destined to be together. He always came back to me whenever I least expected him to, too." Sam closed her eyes and she held the phone receiver away from her ear. It was almost as if her mother had just described her own personal life.
"—I remember the first time we were intimate, too," she continued as Sam held the ear piece back to her own ear. "It was several years after we got together, which is why your father and I weren't your age when you were born. And coincidentally, it was the day before your father proposed to me. He just—lay down with me. We got down outside of the bathroom door—"
Sam rubbed the bridge of her nose as she thought of Aurora and her encounter with Mark Osegueda before the wedding.
"And then your father proposed within mere hours later," she finished.
"But you—you actually—"
"Yeah. Yes."
The silence fell over Sam's apartment and over on Esmé's end as well.
"Were you—" Sam started.
"I actually didn't find out I was pregnant until we started planning our wedding. But it was interesting because—I worked it backwards and I figured that you had been conceived right around that time."
Sam raised her eyebrows and gaped at her even though Esmé couldn't see her. "So—as far as you and I both know," she continued, that time in a low whisper of a voice, "Ruben Shelley may not even be your father. It would explain why the two of you always seem so different from one another. Why he was always doting to you, but there was this odd disconnect between the two of you. Like not how a father and a daughter should behave together."
"Well—why didn't you say anything?" Sam sputtered as Zelda giggled at Genie: she craned her neck and saw Zelda played with her with a piece of string. Genie's golden eyes were big and wide but she moved about in lethargic fashion. Not in a mood to play at such a late hour.
"It's not really something that you talk about until you're ready, sweetie," Esmé explained all the while. "And, well—you're twenty two now. You are old enough to understand these things now. Although I would have said so when you were in high school or when you planned on moving to New York, but I could never seem to find the right words, or the right time for that matter. There was just so much to do to get you prepared for life."
She fell silent once more for another few seconds; the only sound came from Zelda's giggling and Genie's deep purr in the next room.
"If he comes on over with you again," Esmé spoke again, "you have to be careful with him because Ruben—I mean, your father, might go bananas on him."
"Why's that?" Sam asked her.
"Well, after the three of you left, he had quite the bone to pick with Joey. Like as soon as you left, he was quick to criticize him. I had to leave the room because it was bothering me some. I told him after the fact how it upset me because it seemed so unlike him to gossip like that, and so he apologized and he made up with me. But I can see it in his eyes whenever I mention you and him, and your friendship. Just so long as he's not eighteen, I don't think the reaction will be any worse than that." Sam grimaced at the thought of her father meeting Alex at the sound of that.
"You guys are still just friends, right?" Esmé asked her, and Sam turned towards the wall so Zelda couldn't hear her.
"He asked me to be my boyfriend," she whispered into the mouthpiece.
"Aw—what'd you say?"
"I said 'yes'."
"Oh, my," Esmé remarked in a breathy voice. "Two boyfriends already. But I'll make sure not to tell your father straight up yet. He has to get friendly with him first."
"Oh, yeah, yeah." Sam then stopped right in her tracks. "Well, how do you think he'd react to that little boyfriend announcement?"
"I'm not sure," Esmé confessed with a clearing of her throat. "In fact, I'm not sure as to how to break that to him. At least not yet, either. Although I will say this, Sam."
"What's that?"
"When children or any kind of innocence gets involved, that's when it becomes harrowing."
It was as if she had described her social life and also read her own thoughts all the while. She pursed her lips together at that and then she sighed through her nose; she thought of Alex at the word "innocence." Still just a boy, and Joey was, too.
"So—you have a good night, okay?" Esmé concluded. "I'll tell your father that you all got home in one piece. Don't stay up too late, okay? I've had jet lag before even just from traveling across the country, it's not something to trifle with."
"Of course! Good night, Mom."
"Good night, baby."
They hung up at the same time and Sam let out a long low whistle. She returned to the living room for her things right as Zelda walked into the kitchen herself right then. She opened her overnight bag, and there was her journal nestled down in a safe spot against the heavy canvas. She opened it to those old pages, and there he was right before her.
When the morning came, she figured to run the edge of the graphite along the outline there on the paper. The mysterious man from her dreams now had more than a face, and it made sense to bring him more so out of her dreams.
"I have him now," she whispered aloud to the paper. She tucked the journal back into its hiding place and she returned to the kitchen for a glass of water. Zelda stood over the kitchen table at the little stack of mail.
"Looks like you got something from school," she told Sam.
"Oh?"
Zelda handed her the heavy white envelope and she was quick to open it. She remembered she hadn't received her grant as of yet.
"What's it say?" Zelda asked her.
"I got on a short list to head out on assignment as part of our senior project," Sam announced. "I'll have to talk to Bill about it when school starts." She then stopped in her tracks. "Hang on—I'm getting notified about our senior project now? I'm not even a junior yet."
"Wonder if Marla got on the short list as well," Zelda muttered.
"But she's already in her senior year, though," Sam pointed out.
"Yeah." Zelda then knitted her eyebrows and frowned at that. "Yeah, I wonder what he's got in store for you. That's kinda strange." She then moved a few more envelopes out of the way, and she gasped at what rested there at the bottom.
"A red envelope—sent from some guy named Eric Peterson in the Bay Area—" Sam picked it up and opened the back: the envelope felt heavier and thicker than the previous ones before then. She took out a small pressing, one that reminded her of when Spreading the Disease came out and she and Aurora were treated to the first pressings of that. She turned it over and there, written in neat penmanship in thick black ink—
"Live at Eindhoven!" she declared, and Zelda threw her arms around her. The buzzer went off behind them, and Sam knew she had to let Belinda in. Three o'clock in the morning or not, it couldn't have been a better time to celebrate things.