Jokers child

A newsletter

I stood in front of apartment 2D at the retirement home, where half of my work is done, and gently knocked on the door. "Mrs. Koffle? Are you in?" I knew she was because she isn't allowed to leave her room.
"Who is it?" She barked, I could hear her rummaging through the kitchen cabinet, probably grabbing a pot to protect herself with.
"It's Dr. Harleen Quinzel, it's Tuesday, our therapy day Miss." I pushed my long blonde hair over my shoulders and waited.
The elderly woman peeked out from behind her door as it creaked open, I flashed her my I.D. "Remember me? I was here last Tuesday, and the Tuesday before that, I promised you a present."
Then she started speaking in Russian, and throw open the door, charged me. I side stepped and she threw the pot at me, it bounced against my stomach followed by her fists, but I grabbed those carefully, so not to break them. She looked up at me, "So it is you." She said on Russian.
I smiled and nodded.
She let me in, set her pot down in the kitchen, and sat on the couch. "Do you have it?" She was speaking English again, but with a heavy Russian accent, as her brown eyes shown with excitement.
I reached into my long strapped briefcase and dug out a paper bag, "A bakers dozen of Russian chocolate covered cherries and black Russian tea." I held it out to her, her old wrinkled hands shook as she took it.
"Could it be," She opened the bag a took a deep breath in, "It is!" She stood fast and walked into the kitchen, grabbing a boiler and filling it with water, she popped a cherry in her mouth. "When I was a little girl, before the war, my mother made our tea, and it smelt and looked like this. We'd have a cup with breakfast and a cup before bedtime, every day, no exceptions." She twisted her brown graying hair into a bun.
I took out my notebook and began taking notes.
"And sometimes father would take a cup to work with him." She watched the water heat up. "My younger brother, Buck, he'd race me to the table to get the biggest cup. You see we only had four cups, fathers heavy clay cup, two tea cups, one that was always mamas, and a coffee cup that my cousin brought back for us from Ireland. You could imagine that it was the one we'd always fight over, father would laugh at us at times, but every morning we raced."
I laughed at little, "My brother and I would fight over the TV remote when I was young."
"We didn't have a tv, in fact we didn't have a tv until I was in my late forties, married with kids." I wrote that in my notes.
"When I started in my eleventh year of school, I was 17 of course, that's when the war hit the home front badly. Father worked in a bank, every holiday the bank would throw parties and father would grab me some chocolate covered cherries. They were my absolute favorite. However, it didn't matter that he worked in a bank," She put the tea in. "Because they need all able bodied men, so he was shipped off, and even though my brother was only 15, they shipped him off too." She did a zip motion with her hands then poured two cups of tea and handed me one of them.
"Thank you," I sipped it. "It's excellent." It was spicy and warm, with a hint of honey. "How did that affect you?"
She sat down at the table with me and pondered, "Well, three years before that mama has stopped making tea and went to work, so after school everyday I went to work with her, sewing clothes and weaving baskets. Life got hard," She sipped more tea, "Buck came home one Christmas, told mama and me that father wasn't coming home, said he was on a important mission. The next day we received $2,000 in the mail. Mama and I still worked but the money went straight to bills and food."
"What ever happened to you father and brother?" I stopped writing to take a sip of tea, it was bitter, maybe needed a little extra honey.
She sighed, "Father never came home from the war, and we never got his body back, we don't know if he died or if he ran away with some other woman. We got $2,000 every six months from the military. Mama never remarried but she did open a tea shop like father always wanted her too."
I bite into my lip, waiting, but she stared down at her cup. "One last question," She looked up at me, "What about your brother?" 
"Oh, Buck, the first time I saw him after that Christmas was on my wedding day. I wrote his commanding officer, begging him to send my brother home for my wedding, telling him that our mama missed him something terrible.  And he did, he walked me down the isle, and joked that I married to dork of the school." We both laughed.
After a moment of silence, "So tell me, how did your mama make tea?" We started laughing again.

Later, I was sitting in my office working on some files when I received an email, it was from an old coworker who had helped me get this job in England, and attacked to it was a file.
I opened the file, and it turned out to be a newsletter, the heading read "Local psychiatrist, Patrica J. Mattson, study's the Joker! Love story 2.0?"
My eye twitched.
Patrica Mattson is counseling the Joker? It took her an extra year to graduate and she didn't even graduate in the top twenty of her class!
"Counseling our Puddin'!"
"We're over him."
"She isn't worth listening to his problems."
"Or stare into those green eyes."
"Who cares?"
"Let her get her heart broken."
"Second level psychiatrist."
"She's over there loving-"
"She's not!"
I laughed, "Wow that's some strong Russian Tea," I scrolled through the short paragraph, blah blah, she accepted the job, blah blah, the Joker is a hard time criminal with a life sentence, blah blah, due to Harleen Quinzel's absence, blah blah, hoping she does better.
I groaned and deleted the email. "I need something stronger than that tea."