Sunnydale, 10/01: An Oz only a mother (and Giles) could love
When Oz takes a right out of the Magic Box's alley, instead of the usual left, Giles looks surprised. Oz bites his lip and keeps his eye on the road, weaving up Main Street, then cutting across Calendula, and Giles' brows are lifting and he's about to open his mouth and ask where they're going as Oz slows to nab a parking space
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Following Oz across the street, he takes a quick look at the house. It's like every other house on the street-big, low, pseudo-Spanish with a red tile roof-if just a touch run-down. The neglect doesn't surprise him, but the conventionality does. It's easier to imagine Oz growing up in a hut or a palace than in this icon of middle-class respectability.
At the top of the slightly warped steps, Oz pauses, hands in pockets, and takes a breath. "It'll be all right," Giles says, and rests his hand between Oz's shoulder blades, caressing through the thick wool of his jumper. But something about the posture makes him think of a policeman escorting a delinquent home, so he drops his hand. Oz takes another breath, stands up a little straighter, and rings the doorbell.
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Oz glances at Giles, mouthing love you and thanks, just as the door opens.
"Danny!" His mom's barrelling down on him, all blue cotton and long red hair, hugging him, and his face is buried in the same soft skin of her neck, just like always, smelling like Jean Nate and whatever's on sale at The Body Shop. She pulls him inside and Oz twists around, looking crazily for Giles. "Danny, Danny."
Terry props him against the back of the couch and holds both his hands in hers. Guilt slams like board into Oz's gut at her face, all soft and wet-eyed, and he opens his mouth to say he's sorry.
But she's turning, still clasping one of his hands, and smiling her best date smile at Giles. "And whoever is this?"
"Giles," he says. "He's -" Boyfriend, partner, lover: they're all stupid words. "Giles. My, you know. Boyfriend."
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He's always imagined her as cold, a stony harridan like Maggie Walsh. But she's smiling back and forth from him to Oz, calling Oz "Danny" as though he's a child, and the word "boyfriend" doesn't seem to bother her at all.
"Sit down, sit down," she says, fluttering one of her tiny hands towards the sofa. Oz seems almost tall beside her. Giles sits, and Oz, with Teresa still holding both his hands, takes half a step and then gives up. He looks overwhelmed, shoulders hunched and his eyebrows drawn together, but all Giles can do is stare. He can see Oz's features in her, and despite the matronly, unflattering caftan she's wearing, she can't be much more than forty.
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"I got your postcard from Mexico," his mom says, pulling him down, and Oz finds himself in the guest chair, while Giles and his mom are on the couch. "And Devon said at one point that you were moving on south. Surely you didn't pick up this delicious Dutchman in South America?"
She's just the same and the guilt explodes under Oz's skin, leaving only comfort, bright and silly. He tries not to laugh, but, even more importantly, not to look at Giles, which *will* make him laugh. "English, Terry. He's English."
"Ohhh," she says, turning to look at Giles more appraisingly. "Really?"
"And he's actually from - here, before I left." The words come out in a rush, and he does look at Giles now, thinking his apology as hard as he can. "But we're in London now."
Terry has a thing for Keith Moon and Mick Jagger and all things Carnaby Street; she actually claps her hands, then grabs Giles' knee.
"Welcome, then!" she says brightly, and his mom, flirting? Has to be right up there in Oz's pantheon of nightmares, with the Initiative and the wolf. "However did you find your way to Sunnydale?"
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"I was, er, working here temporarily. I'm a librarian." He looks over at Oz, trying to beg him not to say it was the high school library. Although that might be enough to make her stop flirting, at least, if she knew he'd been one of her son's, his lover's, teachers.
"You don't seem like a librarian," she answers, lashes half-lowered over eyes that are a stronger, darker green than Oz's.
"I am, I assure you." She smiles again, girlishly, and something about that makes him feel calmer. This is just silliness, he thinks, a mannerism that most women would've outgrown years ago, rather than attraction. "And what do you do, Mrs. -" He corrects himself before she even opens her mouth. "Teresa." Let her remember she's an adult.
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"Social skills," he says and Terry grins at him. "Not the work ethic, though. Neither of us have that."
Terry nods and pushes her hair back off her shoulders. "It's true. Just now I'm doing secretarial work for one of the construction companies out of Santa Barbara. I've done paralegal, food-service, hospitality -"
"Hotel stuff," Oz says, because Giles is starting to look confused, his eyes moving restlessly between Oz and his mom. "Like, reservations and things." Giles nods, relieved, and Oz scoots the chair closer so he can touch Giles' hand.
"- but I'm thinking of chucking that in," Terry says. "Time to explore different avenues."
"Already?" Oz asks and his mom just nods. "You sure?"
"I'm sure, Daniel," she says. "But I'm being rude. Giles! And my Danny. Are you in town for a while? Have you seen that hideous mall they're putting in? Paved right over the last wetlands in the county, you know. How long have you known each other? Is this what they call the real thing?"
Oz feels the words all stopped up, midway up his throat, and he opens his fingers blindly, hoping that Giles touches him back. He does, just lightly, shyly, but it's enough and Oz exhales. "Yeah, it is."
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"We met at the Espresso Pump," Giles says quickly, just in case Oz takes her request for everything a little too literally. Blindly, too nervous to look, he reaches to brush his fingers against Oz's. "It was an open mic night. I played. Oz was working." Too late, he realizes that if she remembers when Oz had that job (if she even knew he had it, of course), she can figure out the rest. That Oz was only seventeen. That Giles was, by California law, a child molester.
But there's no sign that Teresa is tracking down memories, doing math, worrying belatedly about her son's safety. Instead she's watching Giles, turned sideways with one leg drawn up. "You play? You're a musician? How wonderful. And so romantic." She smiles at him, at Oz, and it's as though they're a film she's enjoying enormously. "A café, a dashing English musician, and the real thing. And now London. Do you like London, Danny? You must be glad to be out of this awful country, anyway." Oz looks as though he's about to answer, but Teresa turns back to Giles and adds, "We Americans aren't all like George W. Bush, you know, Giles."
Giles says, "Of course," which he hopes is sufficient answer for the last question, and leaves the rest of them alone. He should be helping Oz, smoothing the way and trying to make this moment bearable if not comfortable, but he's never been good at small talk. He glances over at Oz and smiles in a way that he hopes isn't too pleading.
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"He's pretty amazing on the guitar," Oz tells her and rubs his palms up and down his thighs. Terry's grinning at Giles and Giles' eye looks like it's about to start twitching with the effort of politeness. "What about you? Keeping up with the drumming?"
"I drum," she says, and Giles nods. "Some rock, a little folk, but mostly I was concentrating on the shamanic aspects of it. The SB county women's drum circle was a good scene for a long time, but then Jacqui got perimenopausal, and we splintered a bit. Lots of politics in the circle. I'm thinking of starting up something a little more local, maybe over at the UC. There's a few progressive-thinking professors over there, a really active Wicca group."
Giles is coughing and Oz stands up. "Kitchen still in the same place?"
"Last I checked," Terry says and Oz rushes to get some water for himself and Giles. The cold tap's not running - probably hasn't run since he replaced the washer last time he was here - so it's two bottles of Rolling Rock. When he gets back to the living room, knocking his knee on his grandfather's mahogany dining table like he *always* did, Terry's excitedly telling Giles about how spiritual and magical the feminine power of the drum circle is.
"- of course, this must all be ridiculous to you," she says. "But I firmly believe in forces outside our control."
She glances at Oz, and he knows what she's thinking. He nods, she nods, and Giles looks confused. Wolf, he mouths, as he hands over the beer, and Giles coughs again.
"I just hope you're not an Episcopalian," Terry says.
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No wonder that she seems as if she's barely here. She ought to be hoeing the garden in a lesbian commune somewhere. Maybe she would have found one, years ago, if it hadn't been for Oz.
"Not to worry," Giles says, uncapping the beer and gulping down a swallow before he notices Oz didn't bring one for Teresa. He offers her the bottle, but she shakes her head. "I was raised in the Church of England, of course. I was even a choirboy, before I went away to school. But I wouldn't describe myself as a believer." He'd like to ask what she especially objects to about Anglicanism, but that seems rude, even though she brought it up.
There's a pause, an exchange of looks between her and Oz, and Giles says, "Teresa, I know. About the . . . the lycanthropy in your family. About Oz." He's surprised at himself for saying it, and his hands sweat even against the cold glass of the beer bottle. But he wants Teresa to know that he loves Oz entirely, in full knowledge.
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Terry loosens Oz's grip on the neck of his bottle and takes a long, messy swig while Oz just grins stupidly at Giles. Giles' eyes are narrowed, the skin across his nose tight with worry, but he gradually relaxes, realizing that Oz is smiling, and it's like those stop-motion movies of sunflowers turning to the light as Giles' expression loosens into something more private and fond.
"I guess it is for real, then," Terry says after a couple more swigs. Oz takes the beer back but leaves his hand on her shoulder. Dad left for lots of reasons, but it's always been easiest to blame the wolf.
"Giles is down with the...freaky," he says quietly. "Supernatural, witch kind of stuff. Vampires."
Terry tilts her head against Oz's hand, and her skin feels soft as crepe, invisibly crinkled, and his chest starts to hurt. "Don't be silly, Danny. There's no such things as vampires."
Oz lifts his bottle at Giles in a belated toast and says, "That's leprechauns, Mom. Do you have any, like, pictures or anything of me? Finger-paintings or lumpy ashtrays?"
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"Of course I have pictures, Danny," Teresa says, rolling her eyes up at Oz. "I'm your mother-I keep pictures. There's a box of them in the basement."
Giles didn't notice, earlier, that there aren't any in the room. It's like his old flat in Sunnydale, anonymous, bare of the personal. A peripheral space, accommodating a life lived elsewhere, in secrecy or fantasy. "I'd like to see them," he says, pleased enough to drop the topic of werewolves and vampires. "If it's not inconvenient."
"I'm sure I know where they are." She pats Oz's hand and gets up. "Danny, come and help me?" Oz nods, looks intently but unreadably at Giles for a moment (his expressions are much harder to interpret from six feet away), and follows her out of the room.
Giles waits uncomfortably, listening to their faint voices and the thuds of heavy things being moved. It would be nice to look around the room, to try and understand this place where Oz lived for nineteen years, but the usual excuse for that-a bookshelf-is absent. He picks up a copy of Yoga magazine from the coffee table and pages through it.
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The basement had been dark and damp - not so damp as Buffy's, but far more cluttered; Terry's lived here twice as long as Buffy. She has back copies of The Nation and Ms. in bank boxes and the remnants of various hobbies - sewing, quilting, drumming, and so much more - standing around like angels in graveyards, still and unseen. He'd looked for boxes of his stuff, but couldn't find any. "Upstairs," Terry said. "Devon and I put it back in your room." Oz isn't sure whether to be grateful or freaked out by that; it's a little of both.
Giles takes the box from Oz's arms and kisses the top of his head quickly. "Be warned," Oz says lowly. "What counts as memorabilia for her is.... You know. Probably weird."
"Well!" Terry says, hefting her box from the dining table on her return from the kitchen. "Soy cookies, some carrot cake, and lots of Danny stuff. This is *fun*."
Giles is smiling and Oz settles on his knee, reaching for a slice of carrot cake while Giles and Terry bend over the first box.
"Never bronzed his shoes," Terry says, pulling out his red-canvas sneakers with Bozo's face on the rubber toes. "But these are so much *cuter*."
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"Yes," he says vaguely to Teresa, who's already rooting around in the box again, depositing yellowed old finger paintings and dusty school reports on the coffee table. He adds the shoes to the pile and rests his cheek on Oz's shoulder for a moment.
"Such a mess," Teresa says. "I always meant to put all the pictures into albums, but - oh, here we go." With a grin, she hands Giles a photograph. "Isn't that just adorable? It was on the fridge for years, but then Danny made me take it down." There are two naked boys, perhaps three years old, standing on a lawn. The brown-haired one poses, muscled flexed like a comic-book superhero. Half-hidden behind him is the thin, dirty-kneed, red-haired one, watching the other boy and laughing.
Oz groans like an embarrassed teenager and shakes his head at his mother. "It's charming," Giles says, as much to Oz as to Teresa. "Who's the other boy?"
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