Orchid Ch. 03

Even through the anger, it still feels good to be seen as one. "Thank you."

"There's no reason you couldn't pursue a career at that level."

I try to calm myself, breathing slowly.

"Is it because of your mother?"

"Fuuuuuuuuck you! How do you know about that?"

"Court proceedings are matters of public record," she says, shrugging lightly. "Especially if you know where to look."

"Yes. Fine. Because of her. Are you happy?"

"Do you have a lawyer?"

"Yes," I say, gritting my teeth.

"Who?"

"Danielle Fein."

Susan pursed her lips. "Reed & Platz is a good firm."

"The estate lawyer recommended her."

"Would you mind if we switch topics?"

"Gladly," I grumble.

"You and Calvin."

I narrow my eyes and look at her sideways. "We're not switching topics at all, are we?"

"See? Perceptive. I like that."

"Go ahead."

"You call him Daddy. He likes that, you know. It scratches an itch for him he didn't even know he had."

"I'm so glad," I growl.

"It seems like an odd choice of pet names, given how—"

"I don't really want to talk about this."

"—given how your father passed away recently."

"Fuck you."

"He supported you?" Susan folds her arms across her chest and tilts her head. "Emotionally, I mean. He supported your transition?"

"Yes."

"And your mother opposed it?"

"Yes." My fingers turn white on the wheel. "Said it... said I was unnatural, and... against God's plan. Me and my sister both, really, but I'm the one she blames."

"I'm sorry," Susan said, looking down.

"She's contesting his will because she said the canc..." I put a hand over my mouth when my voice fails, and clear my throat roughly. "That he wasn't in his right mind when he changed it. Because of the chemo."

"She's failed you in a pretty significant way. As a parent."

I nod. I hate sniffling.

"There's no excuse for that. You support your children. If they do something that comes up against your values, you owe it to them to re-examine those values."

"Thank you," I whisper. Miles markers flick by in a blur.

"The unfortunate truth is that all parents scar their children. In different ways. By not protecting them enough or protecting them too much. Exposing them to the things we like and shielding them from the things we don't like. Some scars are deeper than others, obviously, but the impact we have is... daunting. It really makes you think. It's easy to see that your father was someone that you... felt safe around. Someone that never judged you, and helped you find your way. I'm glad that Calvin is—"

"It is really not okay for you to be laying this out for me," I snap.

"It's better to be aware of our motivations, Kit. I'm not here to tell you that what you and Calvin have is inappropriate, and I'm glad that you have him in your life. I'm glad he can fill that role for you."

"I'm not fucking my father!"

"Even if you are, even if you close your eyes and picture your father touching you, that's not for me to judge."

"Then what are you telling me?"

"That I am not your mother."

"Thanks," I laugh bitterly. "I had no idea."

"Kit, please."

I glare sideways at her.

"Our interactions, so far, have been more... combative. More... adversarial. And that's okay. I have really enjoyed that. I just don't want you to resent me." She bites her lip and takes a deep breath. "The influence parents have is so deep and subconscious that, if we didn't talk about it, you and I, I don't know what would happen."

"Great. Wonderful. So glad we're talking about this."

"I watched my father beat my mother," Susan said quietly. "He'd drink. A lot. He was an old-fashioned kind of asshole. You think I don't worry about how much of my time with Calvin is just revenge-seeking behavior against my father, or... or how much of our time is fetishizing the abuse my mother endured?"

"I'm sorry," I say, slowing down and taking a breath. "I didn't know."

"I don't know any other way to handle these kinds of things but to be upfront and open about them."

I nod slowly, chin tucked against my chest. The dashboard pings at me frantically, and I gasp as I try to steer back into my lane. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," Susan says, sounding much more calm about it than I am. "That's what it's there for."

"I hate her," I say, voice weak. "It wasn't enough for her to disown me the day after he passed. She had to try to... She had to..." Her hand on my shoulder. "He was the first person to tell me I was beautiful, and she wants to poison that. Everything he did and said those last few years, she wants to... to..." My voice fails completely as I sob. The asphalt is a dark, watery blur even in the bright afternoon sun.

"It would invalidate that."

I nod, wiping the back of my hand under my nose.

"It would make it so that it wasn't him saying those things, it was the drugs."

I nod again.

"No one, no court of law and not even your mother, can take that away from you."

I nod. I hate sniffling.

"She wants to hurt you because she's hurting. She's lashing out. If that means taking away the money he left you, or making you spend it all in legal fees, then that's what she'll do. It's petty, and it's pathetic."

"Thank you," I say, crying. I grab her hand, the one on my shoulder, and squeeze it. Tightly.

"Do you want me to drive for a bit?"

"Yes."

***

"Okay," Susan says, as she turns onto the dirt road. "This should be it."

I have no idea where we are. After four hours of heading, I think, north, and another hour on back roads, we could be in Canada for all I know. Except that I think we'd have had to cross some water to get to Canada. I sit forward a bit on my seat as we pass down a narrow path, with trees coming right up against the winding twin ruts. After another mile bouncing along through dense forest, we come up on a beautiful old cabin. Susan's lips spread in a wide smile, but her eyes are less expressive.

"Wooow," I gasp. "This is... just..."

The X5 pulls to a stop on the gravel, and we both hop out. I'm glad I wore a pair of boots with a sturdier heel.

"You can't see it from here," Susan says, "but there's a lake around back."

"Are you serious?"

She nods. "It's not a big lake, but it's close."

"This is incredible!"

"Just wait," she says. There's something about the way she says it, though, that strikes me as off. "It's only partially furnished yet, so it isn't totally there."

"Still!"

She lags a little behind me as I walk to the front door, though she's right there with the key when I try the handle.

"Whoa," I say, as the door swings inward.

The interior of the cabin, if it can even really be called that, is all concrete. The few installations, tables and sinks, are stainless steel. There's more space than I thought there would be, and it's so cold. Not frigid, but... ascetic. Austere.

"What is this place?" I ask, as I walk slowly into the cavernous first room.

"This is my safety blanket," Susan says, as she shuts the door behind her.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that... sometimes... I..." Susan looks down and clears her throat. "Because of my position, I see a lot of dangerous people. Every day. And not all of them end up where they're supposed to." She licks her lips and grips one hand tightly within the other. "The 'system', and I really hate calling it that, is imperfect. Highly imperfect and, at least from my point of view, fragile."

"Fragile?"

Susan nods and paces. Her eyes darting here and there as she talks quickly. "Prisons are... overcrowded. Underfunded. 10 guards watching 300 inmates, if you're lucky. And between that and all the constant unrest on the outside, I... I see how fragile society is. We all walk around obeying these laws, because everyone else is, as part of some social contract, but all it takes is enough people deciding—"

"Oh my god," I gasp. "Are you one of those... what are they called? Doomsday preppers?"

"Almost," Susan says, still looking down.

"Do you have guns here?"

She shakes her head for a moment and then looks up at me. "Not yet."

"Jesus!"

"Some days, I get all the paperwork started to sell this place because I know this is not... this isn't good beha... And then some days, I lose hours ordering more supplies. Learning how to purify water, and make a semi-automatic rifle automatic."

"Does Calvin know about this?"

"No."

"Susan!"

Susan nods, chin slid forward and her lips turned down. "I'm scared. I worry. I'm afraid for myself. I'm afraid for Calvin. I'm afraid for Bridget, and..." She gestures toward me, but can't get the words out before losing her composure. Just for a moment. "I lie awake at night and I worry. I worry about people I've sentenced. I worry about—"

"Why doesn't Calvin know about this?"

"Because he doesn't..." Susan looks away, her eyes red-rimmed. "He doesn't know that I worry at all."

"Susan!"

"I feel like I can't tell him... Like I can't..."

"Like you can't what?"

"Like it would ruin his image of me," she says, shaking her head. "And I know that's wrong. And I know that's stupid. And yet..."

"What are you so afraid of?"

"I like the way he looks at me," she says, back stiffening. "I want him to rely on me. I need that. I need to be in control."

"This is completely different!"

"You don't think I know that?" She bites down on her tongue and quickly composes herself again. "It didn't happen all at once. This is... this is years of little choices. Hundreds of times when I didn't tell him."

"When you could have told him," I corrected, taking a step toward her.

"Yes! Fine!"

"Do you think Calvin's feelings for you are contingent on you being a robot?"

"Of course not!"

"Then tell him!" A step closer.

"I can't!"

"Why not?" A step closer.

"Because look around!" she screams. "This isn't a small thing! This isn't a purse I bought on a whim without permission. This is a house. This is land. This is a lot of money, and time, and taxes, and a lot of decisions I made without him!" She holds a quivering hand over her mouth. "He looks at me, and he-he thinks I'm perfect."

I look around, gobsmacked. Jaw hanging low as I turn farther and farther until I'm staring at her again. "But you're not."

"No," Susan says, shaking her head sadly. "No."

"So I'm, what? Here to be your witness?"

"I needed..." She shakes her head and curls in on herself, and her voice is barely above a whisper when she says, "I needed you to see me like this."

"No," I say, turning back toward her fully and stepping in closer. Growling. "This is not okay."

"I didn't know what else to do with all the..." She stops to wipe at her eyes and shakes her head.

"You brought me out here, because... you don't want to lie to me?"

Susan nods.

"And you know you need to tell Calvin."

Susan nods, and I take the final step between us. Tips of my boots just an inch from hers.

"And you want me to make you do it."

She looks up at me, shaking her head slowly with her mouth open.

"You want me to drag you back there," I snarl, pointing back over my shoulder, "by your hair, kicking and screaming, because then you'll have had the choice taken out of your hands."

"No," she whispers. "No, I—"

"You want me to punish you."

Susan has never looked small. So out-of-countenance. And that's before I slap her.

"Ow!" she cries, covering her pinkened cheek with one hand. She backs away from me, but there's only a few steps between her and the wall.

"Is that about right?"

"No!"

"Do you really want to feel what it's like when someone takes away your power?"

She starts to respond, and her eyes bulge when my hand shoots up for her throat.

"You treated him like dirt, and you need to feel a little of that yourself?"

"Yes," she sobs, in between hacking coughs to clear her airway.

"Too bad."

Susan's eyes nearly pop out when I let go of her and turn away. Stalking angrily through the house toward what I think is the back door.

"You have to," Susan insists, staggering after me in shock. "You have to do this."

"I don't have to do anything," I shout back. "I'm not beholden to you. I'm not your fucking conscience."

"Please!" she cries, as I throw open a door to the back porch. Susan follows right behind, grabbing at my scarf. "I can't-I can't—"

I spin, enraged, and swat her arm away. "You. Can't. What," I shout. "Be a decent fucking human being?"

"Hey," she says, backing away as I turn on her again.

"I can't make you not be a piece of shit."

"Kit," she says, dragging out the vowel while her face hardens.

"What?" I say, leaning in until my nose is nearly brushing hers. She just stares at me, blinking and thinking furiously. "What?"

"I—"

I slap her again. "You're pathetic. I had no idea how pathetic until just this moment."

"That is—"

I slap her again, and this time she pops right back.

"That's enough," she yells, though she doesn't see my left hand coming in from the other side. It connects even more loudly than the others, cracking against her cheek, and this time she whirls away with it. Cradling her stinging skin. I shake my hands, trying to get rid of the throbbing, and the moment my back turns to her she starts shrieking. I whirl just in time to grab her wrists as she reaches for my hair, and claws at my face.

The self-defense classes my dad insisted on finally pay off as I let her momentum work against her, twisting her arm around behind her and shoving her into and over the edge of the round picnic table in the middle of the deck. Susan yells as I drive her hand up along her spine toward her shoulders.

"Stop!" she screams. "That's not fair!"

"What's not fair?" I hiss, shifting my grip to be holding her arm with just one hand while the other takes a fistful of her hair and yanks backwards.

"You're a..." Her eyes roll wildly as she clamps her mouth shut.

"I'm a what?"

She stares back at me out of the corner of her eye, breath coming hard and fast through her nose.

"What am I, Susan?"

"A mmm-mmm-"

"Excuses," I whisper, barely holding off my own fury. "Weak." She yelps when I tug harder on her hair, arching her head back. "Even if I was, this is pathetic."

"Fuck you," she grunts, and then mewls when I give her arm another twist. A shuddering, knee-buckled mewl.

"This is what you want, isn't it?" I grunt, angrily grinding my hips into her while she's bent over the table. "This is why I'm here. To bring you to heel."

"Fuck you!"

I shift hands again, pinning her wrist firmly against her back and letting go of her hair, and lean forward over her. "I am not your keeper."

"Fuck!"

"Say it," I snarl.

"You are not my keeper!" she groans.

"I am not," I say, really grunting through the last word, "here to police you!"

Susan groans louder as I give her arm another twist, and the way her voice comes down when I let off just a little is incredibly distracting. "You're not here to police me."

"Having me around doesn't excuse you from being fair to Calvin!"

"Fuck," she groans, back arching when I give her arm another push. "I'll be fair!"

"I am not your conscience!"

"You're not!" she pleads. "You're not!"

I can feel heat pouring off of me. Righteous, furious anger. Overwhelming anger. So much that I am literally seeing red. Susan sobs beneath me, and, luckily for her, she doesn't move when I let go of her arms and storm off the back porch into the woods.

***

She doesn't get up from her seat at the table when I come back inside the house. There are lights on in the next room but none in the kitchen, and full dark settled over the woods just as I was circling back around to a trail I recognized. I pull up a chair across from her, at the far end of the table, and settle into it, trying to hide how tired my legs are. Hiking is a much tougher workout than the treadmills back home.

"I called him," she croaks, still without looking up. "We talked."

I nod, folding my arms a little tighter.

"I've spent much of my life... personally and professionally... crafting an image. A facade. Trying to be the woman I want to be... or think I need to be. I let that get in the way of some pretty important things."

I nod.

"He was upset."

I nod.

"It wasn't fair to put you in the middle of that. I'm sorry."

I nod... and shift how I'm sitting. Leaning forward to rest my arms on the table. She looks up, a small darting of her eyes while keeping her face cast downward. "I'm sorry too."

"You don't—" Susan shakes her head. "You don't need to be sorry."

"No," I say, moving my hand slowly to get her attention. "It's not all on you. Do you understand?" She blinks at me. "If you take all of this on your shoulders, you're right back where you started."

She looks down again and nods slowly. Her eyes widen when I get up, and she watches me with something close to fear as I come around to sit next to her.

"So you talked?"

"Yes," she says tightly.

"How did it go?"

"Badly."

"Well," I say, nodding slowly, "badly is about the best you could have hoped for."

Susan nods. "We're going to talk more about it."

"Good."

"I"m sorry that I tried to use this to... manipulate you." She sighs and sits back, looking around at the bare walls. "Because I did. This place is just... I felt so guilty, and I needed to have that off of my chest."

"I can imagine."

Susan looks at me, her eyes narrowing slightly in estimation.

"Trust me. I know what it's like to agonize over the way I present myself."

She nods, and even in the low light I can see her eyes watering. I reach over and lay my hand on her knee, which she immediately grabs and squeezes.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, rapidly losing her composure. "I'm sorry. I—"

"Hey," I say, turning my hand to squeeze hers back. She grips my palm so tightly that it's hard not to yelp. "You talked to Calvin?"

"Yeah," she says, sniffling.

"And you're going to talk more?"

She nods.

"Did you imagine having that conversation a hundred times?"

"Yeah."

"Did it usually end with him leaving you?"

She nods. I wrap my other hand around hers, clenching it tightly with both hands.

"Telling him was the right thing to do," I say, and she nods emphatically. Wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her free arm. "He's a good man."

"I know," she says, looking down in her lap. She groans as she wipes at her eyes again. "Not telling him had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with fear."

I nod, holding her hand, and lean forward.

"I know it's late," says Susan, "but if we leave now, I can have you back in the city before—"

"Hey," I say, squeezing her hand. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Fuck," she whimpers.

"You know, when he... when Calvin came to my apartment and told me you wanted to show me something, the thing I really wanted you to show me the most was that you were human."

Susan chortles miserably, and I can't help by snicker with her. "I kind of did," she says.

"Which you kind of did," I say, repeating for emphasis. Smiling. "I don't have a problem admitting that I'm envious of your poise, and the way you carry yourself."

"Yeah, but look where it got me." She shakes her head.

"Surely you can appreciate the value of a system of checks and balances."

Susan barks loudly, smiling and trying really hard to immediately make it disappear from her cheeks.