Living the Normal Life 4
Title: Living the Normal Life
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
************
After long consideration, Michael decided that Marie had to end the relationship on her own terms, and without any ridiculous schemes on his part. So, Michael dutifully saw Marie on Tuesday, in the morning and for the early dinner, and on Thursday morning, again at her apartment. No matter how much he scolded himself about it either, he still found it was a bit of a thrill to know that once again an attractive, intelligent woman was eagerly waiting to welcome him into her bed.
Michael debated asking Marie to accompany him to the middle school winter festival on Friday night - a talent show-cum-variety acts featuring awkward middle schoolers, some of them surprisingly talented, most of them just awkward. In the end, Michael decided that he was not ready to so publicly announce he had a serious girlfriend, especially one who, as he reminded himself, wouldn’t be around all that long anyway.
If Marie was miffed about not being invited, she hid it admirably, regaling him the next day with a long retelling of her evening with friends, an evening that began at a local watering hole with after work drinks and ended many, many hours later at a downtown dance club. Michael was glad the conversation was over the phone, so he didn’t have to work too hard to hide his reaction - which was primarily relief. Even with the all it’s awkwardness and unintended humor, the middle school winter show was far more appealing to him than a long evening of forced gaiety in the company of strangers.
Hanging up the phone, it occurred to him that he was getting old. Or, maybe, he always had been. Even as a young revolutionary in Paris, he hadn’t been all that enthusiastic about spending long evenings wandering from bar to restaurant to club to bar in the midst of a motley assortment of friends and acquaintances. Or, on second thought, maybe he had, and he just didn’t remember any more. On that depressing note, Michael decided it was time to take the dogs for a run.
***********
The following Friday night he skied as usual with Adam and the middle school ski club, missed the week before only because of the winter festival. At the small, local ski hill Michael tried not to be too contemptuous, or remember too clearly his beloved French Alps. Michael had taught Adam to ski during their first winter in Minnesota, and as with most sports, Adam had taken to it immediately. They had skied together after that each winter, all winter long. Michael, meanwhile, had also seized the rare opportunity to live out a childhood dream and qualified for the Ski Patrol.
Marie said she skied some, but had so far declined Michael’s invitation to ski with them. This Friday, she came along. It turned out she had not skied in many years, and after her second over-ambitious run, and third hard fall, Michael parked her in the bar at her suggestion and stopped in to check on her once an hour or so until it was time to leave. He tried not to remember how quickly Nikita had taken to the slopes, even when she had laughingly rejected skies as old-fashioned and insisted on snowboarding instead.
As a volunteer member of the Ski Patrol unit at the ski hill, he was on duty rousting twelve year old tipplers from the back trails - it mystified him that they should think they were the first kids to ever sneak botas full of peppermint schnapps’ in under their jackets - and picking up tumbled skiers. There was one broken leg that night and two twisted or sprained ankles and one sprained wrist. All things being equal, it was not too bad for a Friday night at the end of peak season.
Marie was gracious enough about it, but it was clear to Michael that the evening could not be considered a success.
After they dropped Marie off at her apartment, the evening immediately went further downhill when Adam said, in a tone full of contempt, “sort of a drag, isn’t it Dad? Having a girlfriend who can’t ski?”
Michael said, “There are plenty of other things to do besides ski.”
He immediately had cause to regret his choice of phrase when he heard Adam’s barely swallowed, smirking, “uh huh.”
Michael elected to retreat into selective parental deafness and didn’t rise to the bait.
The thing that sent Michael to sleep with a smile on his lips was the pleasant thought that the evening had clearly demonstrated to Marie some of the differences between them.
************
Michael measured the last of the pancake mix into the bowl for the fourth batch of pancake batter of the morning, and marveled at his obtuseness that he should have forgotten to factor in competition over who could eat the most when he purchased groceries designed to see himself and four thirteen year old boys through three and half days of skiing. At the rate they were going he was going to have to make a run for more provisions before the day was out.
Just then, Adam sang out, "Da-ad, more pancakes please!"
This was accompanied by a round of giggles and exaggerated groans, and as Michael flipped the pancake cooking in the pan he heard Charlie Peterson say, "Geez, dude, I can't believe you're going to eat more!"
"Why not? I'm still hungry!" Jon Yang declared, turning to face Michael who was bringing another loaded plate to the table. " Could I have some more pancakes too, please?"
"Of course." Michael couldn't help but smile as tiny roly-poly Jon turned directed a beseeching glance his way. "Coming right up."
Returning to his labors at the stove, Michael acknowledged to himself that the ski-trip over Adam's mid-winter break was actually turning out to be far more fun than he had anticipated when he had originally agreed, in a moment of madness he frequently regretted afterwards, to let Adam invite three friends to come with them. The insufferable Jake Litman was fortunately elsewhere with his family, so the three friends Adam had invited were all boys that Michael both approved of and genuinely liked. Charlie, of course, was a familiar traveling companion for Michael and Adam, and Jon Yang and Paul Emad were turning out to be easy to take as well.
Michael had actually been a bit surprised that Adam had chosen to invite Jon and Paul, for unlike Adam and Charlie, they were not avid outdoor sports enthusiasts. Jon had never skied in his life and towering Paul, all elbows, knees and ears, at best could be described as an advanced beginner. In fact, Michael would have been hard pressed to describe the boys as a group in a single word, for the only thing they had in common was Adam.
This morning, their second of the three full days at an old ski resort in the snow-belt of Michigan's upper peninsula, Michael found himself wondering how consciously Adam had shaped the group, and how much his choices reflected simple impulse. Given the split in experience and, to be honest, ability, he had expected to see the boys break up into competitive pairs based on skill, and was completely wrong. Michael insisted that the novices take the formal lessons each morning while Adam and Charlie risked life and limb as they struggled to outdo each other on the terrain slopes, and he had expected that the division would last into the afternoons. So he was pleasantly surprised yesterday when Adam took Jon under his wing and Charlie partnered with Paul, and for the most part the four of them stuck together on the hills.
He had not been skiing with the boys. Not only would they have resented it, he was also using the opportunity to test his ability to keep constant track of the whereabouts of four moving targets in a crowd, a task made much simpler by their choice to stay together.
Pouring more batter into the dented pan that came as part of the ‘fully equipped kitchen' in the rental units located along the edge of the ski-runs, Michael glanced at his watch. "Jon and Paul need to be at the lodge for their lesson in ten minutes."
This announcement produced a flurry of activity. The boys inhaled, apparently without chewing, every last pancake on the table, drained every glass, fought their way through the pile of outerwear, donned gloves, helmets, boots, goggles, coats and scarves, and disappeared in a barrage of banging doors as each of them reappeared at least once in search of something left behind.
Once they were finally gone, the silence inside the rental-unit was almost deafening by comparison. Michael poured himself a second cup of coffee and set about cleaning up from breakfast, enjoying the morning sun pouring in the high clerestory windows of the 1970s-era condo.
In the quiet, he found his thoughts turning, again, to the question of Marie and what to do about their relationship. In the three weeks since they had become lovers he had come to realize that as much as he might wish he had never started the affair, he was equally loath to end it and return to a single, celibate existence.
With very mixed motives, he had actually invited her to come along on this trip, an offer that had been received gratefully and declined with horror. If he had been the slightest bit disappointed, he hadn't been at all surprised. Not only was Marie unlikely to enjoy a skiing vacation, during the last two or three times that Michael, Marie and Adam had done something together, Adam had been remarkably unpleasant without actually crossing a line that would allow Michael to reprimand him for his behavior. Adam had alternated between politely quelling disinterest whenever conversation was directed at him and astonishing garrulity when it was not. He carried about such boy things as violent computer games, obscure sports facts and hunting arcana, all seemingly calculated to maximize Marie's boredom and distaste, all offered with his most engaging smile so firmly in place it was impossible to cut him off without being rewarded by a look of hurt befuddlement.
While this in general suited his purpose of showing Marie just how difficult a long-term relationship would be, it had also been surprisingly mortifying. Michael had never, until now, had occasion to be ashamed of his son's behavior, and he had not liked it one bit.
Leaning on his poles late the following afternoon, Michael knew to his pride that he had nothing to be embarrassed for in Adam's behavior with his friends this weekend. The boys had continued to get along amazingly well, there had been no serious arguments, no sulking, and no ganging up one on three, and Charlie and Adam had continued to ski with Paul and Jon in the afternoons. This had meant that Jon and Paul were forced to ski far past their ability most of the time, and endure uncounted numbers of falls with good grace, but somehow the boys managed to find this consistently hilarious and not, as Michael had feared, humiliating.
It also meant that by the last day, all four boys were able to ski on the longest, most pleasant, moderately difficult runs. However they did it, by the end of the trip Michael was impressed by all of them, and especially by his son's instinctive ability to create a cohesive group out of an unlikely assortment of individuals.
It reminded Michael of Nikita.
Watching Adam with his friends, he remembered the way Nikita would lead teams forged on the basis of her individual relationships with each member of her squad, until they were bound together by their seamless loyalty to her, absolutely confident in her loyalty to them. If Walter's stories were to be believed, it was the way Paul Wolfe had once led his men as well. Michael sometimes thought even now that if he had not done the blood work on Jones' body and Nikita himself, he might still suspect Wolfe of having been her father after all.
By the time Michael dropped off the last of the exhausted boys at their own doors, he was also impressed by the shear number of fart jokes, fueled by enormous amounts of soda and pizza, that could keep thirteen year old boys laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
************
In the weeks that followed the ski trip, Michael was both flattered and dismayed by the way Marie threw herself into making the most of the time she and Michael had together. Michael’s life continued to place limits on the amount of time they could spend together, but it was not as troublesome to her as it might have been for another woman. She had tremendous professional burdens herself in her first year of teaching and trying to get her own scholarly writing and research program up and running, and her responsibilities easily could have absorbed fully all her available hours. Sometimes, Michael even suspected that she was grateful that their time together was relatively tightly scheduled.
She called Michael daily, though, sometimes more than once, just to chat briefly, and during their continuing mid-day dalliances treated Michael to a parade of new lingerie and increasingly bold and adventurous sex play. While Michael had nothing against such activities in general, in this case he felt more than a little like he was unknowingly acting out scenes from various erotica aimed at women. It made him long for Nikita’s sensible lycra sports briefs and athletic bras, or even Elena’s white linen nightgowns. That he remembered perfectly clearly that both women also had a penchant for expensive lingerie, as indeed had Simone, was somehow totally irrelevant.
He could, of course, have taken firmer control of their sexual life, but he chose not to. He wanted Marie to feel in charge of their relationship, and she was obviously getting a thrill out of what seemed to be a role-change of sorts for her, and her pleasure in that was infectious in its own way.
Michael and Marie also had developed what amounted to a standing Saturday night date, sometimes with her friends, sometimes with his, most often just the two of them, supported by the odd dinner worked in and around Michael’s and Adam’s other obligations, occasionally with a still sulky Adam in attendance.
Michael continued to enjoy the time he spent with Marie. He knew, in the back of his mind that he wanted the relationship to end, but in the day to day, it was easy to push that thought aside in favor of enjoying the moment. Her passion for her work was captivating, and the sex, however awkwardly framed, was more than satisfying and certainly far better than the alternative of sex for one. Her stories of internal University politics and bureaucratic inanities, though, gave him pause, and made him wonder if the Section had been as unique as he had thought, or just deadlier than most.
Given Marie’s determination to find ways to accommodate Michael’s priorities, though not without an occasional sharp remark, Adam’s continuing about-face in attitude had Michael shaking his head in frustration.
Adam not only stopped encouraging the relationship, he stopped asking about it altogether. Not that Michael wasn’t perfectly happy to forgo the dreaded post-date interrogation, but the thoroughness of the change was unsettling. Adam stopped delivering messages from Marie as soon as he saw Michael. Instead he left them scrawled by the phone, often on scraps of paper that bore no resemblance to the message pad placed by the phone for that very purpose, and which Adam continued to use for all other calls he took for Michael. It reached the embarrassing point where Michael had to tell Marie to use only his cell number to reach him, as the home number was no longer reliable.
On the first Wednesday of March, Adam actually went so far as to complain about Michael’s time with Marie. They were unloading groceries from a late evening run to the store on their way home from their usual workout at the dojo, and talking over the schedule for the upcoming weekend when Adam stopped so quickly that Michael almost stumbled into him. Adam dropped the bag of dog food he was lugging into the kitchen with a dramatic thud and exclaimed, “You’re seeing Marie again? That’s like, the fifth Saturday in a row!”
Michael blinked at this outburst. Moving past the obstruction of boy, dogs and dog food to deposit the bags he was carrying on the counter, he said, “She is, as you have pointed out, my girlfriend.”
“Yeah - I know - but - geeze . . .”
Michael looked curiously at Adam, “But, geeze, what?”
“Does she have to take so much of your time?”
As Marie had said something almost exactly the same with regards to Adam, and with far more justification, that very afternoon, Michael nearly did a double take of astonishment. “That’s generally how it works.”
Adam muttered a resentful, “I suppose.”
Michael looked carefully at his son’s glowering expression. “I thought you liked Marie, and wanted me to date her?” Michael was concerned enough that he ventured a very, very cautious, “What’s up, Adam?”
Adam only shrugged and turned away, saying, “nothing. Don’t worry about it. Sorry I over-reacted.”
“It’s okay.” Michael contemplated Adam’s answer briefly, and decided to move on. “So - what do you want to do Saturday night?”
Adam was putting the bag of dog food away. Closing the closet door, he looked at his father and said, “Can I stay over at Jon Yang’s? He called this afternoon and asked me and Dave Lutjens,” Michael recognized the name of a fellow acolyte, “over to play battlenet. We’re all serving the ten o’clock mass and his mom will take us to church.”
Michael stared incredulously at Adam, unable to keep his laughter at the absurdity of the situation from bubbling up and coloring his voice as he said, “you want to spend the night with friends playing computer games, but object to me taking Marie out the same evening?”
Adam looked startled, then abashed. “Oh. I guess I didn’t think of that.”
Adam was so flustered and dismayed, Michael couldn’t help himself and stared to laugh out loud, and after a moment, Adam joined in. Rolling his eyes, he grinned at Michael and said, “pretty stupid, huh? I guess, it’s just, like, weird, ya know? You having a girlfriend all of a sudden.”
Michael reached out and gripped Adam’s shoulder, shaking him lightly into a half embrace. “For you and me both, Adam.”
*************
Near the middle of March a long-brewing fight between two of Michael’s three full-time painters exploded, with the end result that they both quit. That meant that work picked up dramatically for Michael personally over the next several weeks as he and his lone employee struggled to meet their commitments and hire two new painters as quickly as they could. He regularly put in eight- and nine-hour days, and worked Saturday afternoons as well, once even on a Sunday afternoon. To his bemused pride, Adam even volunteered to help out and they painted side-by-side, three Saturdays running.
Marie was as determinedly cheerful as ever throughout, though there were increasing flashes of petulance as well, especially over Michael’s non-existent free time. This might have bothered Michael more, but having survived Nikita, a world-class master of petulance in her early twenties, Marie’s occasional complaints did not trouble him at all.
Just when Michael had finally settled his employee crisis, Adam came down with a hideous three-day flu sweeping his middle school and promptly passed it on to Michael, who in turn passed it on to Marie. Somewhere in the midst of the siege of the stomach virus, Marie insisted on having her first fight with Michael, who was too weak himself to do much to head off the storm.
Naturally enough, her complaints centered on time, or rather, his lack of it for her. Michael had been unable to see her during the day for weeks because he was painting each day without a break, and his evenings remained as full of obligations as ever. Her unhappiness with the situation was certainly reasonable under the circumstances, and Michael, still sore from long bouts of nausea and the accompanying dehydration, thought it might be best to let her vent her frustrations.
To his faint surprise, what she zeroed in on was not her desire that he devote more time to her away from his responsibilities, but rather, that he let her more fully into his life.
“Why can’t I ever stay at your house?” She wanted to know, “and why are the only times you can spend the whole night with me are when Adam is away with friends?”
The true answers to these questions were ones that Michael could not, would not give her. He did not want Marie in his bed because it implied a level of commitment he simply did not feel. And he would not leave Adam alone at night because he was still afraid of terrorists with long memories, or new knowledge of Nikita’s weaknesses.
But he had not told Marie even the sanitized version of Adam’s kidnapping. All he had given her was the cover story he and Adam always used. He told Marie that Europe held too many painful memories because of his unhappy separation from his wife prior to her fatal accident. After Adam’s mother’s death, Michael had decided to start over someplace new, someplace where he and Adam could build a new life, free from the past. The kidnapping, Michael’s long absence before Elena’s death, and the story that Adam knew regarding it was, under strictest confidence, shared only with a trusted few. So far, Michael had avoided sharing that version of their past with Marie, feeling it would generate both pity and interest, and he did not want to encourage either. The result was that to his dismay, he now found himself in a predicament he had sworn he would never let happen again - he was in a relationship studded with lies, mostly lies of omission it was true, but deeply important central lies that now had to be covered up with more lies.
“My bed squeaks and I’m not any more ready to face Adam after knowing he heard us making love than you are to face your departmental secretary.”
This momentarily silenced Marie. Michael had met the departmental secretary once when he joined Marie at her office for a departmental cocktail party, and the secretary was in fact a truly awesome gorgon in the making, a woman whom even Michael judged would be a challenge to out-face.
However, once things had returned, more or less, to normal and everyone’s health was restored, Michael decided to find more ways to let Marie into his life after all. He came to the conclusion that perhaps he had been wrong to block her out so completely. He thought that maybe more, rather than less knowledge of his life as a tradesman, regular church-goer and lone parent of a thirteen year old deep in the testosterone storms of puberty, would make clear to her that their lives did not, and could not even if he had wanted them to, truly mesh.
************
Michael put his new profile into action the very next weekend.
It was mid-April, spring wild-turkey hunting season in Minnesota. Wild turkeys were very popular game - so popular that there was state lottery for the limited number of permits available. This year, the Peterson’s had invited Adam to enter the lottery with them; groups of up to four could enter on an all or nothing basis. Dan, Charlie, Charlie’s brother Paul and Adam all had their permits by April first. Michael, who had entered as an individual, was not so lucky this year and had not won a permit.
Michael had intended to go out with the hunters anyway, he simply wouldn’t carry his gun, now he altered the plans to include Marie. Marie didn’t have any interest in hunting, she had already made that clear, but as Michael couldn’t hunt this season anyway so he invited Marie to come along with the group. Adam would stay with the Peterson’s as planned, and Michael and Marie would stay at a nearby motel, joining Adam and the Peterson’s for breakfast and supper of course, but while Adam and the Peterson brothers were off hunting, having some time to themselves as well.
Marie eagerly accepted, and by seven-thirty Friday evening the Peterson hunting shack was bursting at the seams with light and noise.
For Michael, the drive up was unexpectedly pleasant. Charlie and Adam dutifully kept up their end of the polite chatter for the first hour of the trip, and that allowed Marie to relax enough herself that she was able to let loose with genuine laughter and applause at the end of a spontaneous rap performance from the backseat.
The only negative that night was that the closest motel Michael was able to get a room in wasn’t very close at all - it was a good forty-five minutes away from the Peterson cabin, and was very definitely on the ‘budget’ end of the motel quality scale.
Marie had no sooner gamely remarked that at least there were no bugs, when a roach scuttled out from under the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
Michael and Marie exchanged a startled glance, and then they both burst into laughter and the evening, on the verge of careening over a precipice, righted itself.
Adam and the Peterson boys had all expressed a willingness to be out by dawn, so Michael and Marie did not join them for breakfast, instead arriving at the cabin by midmorning after shopping for that night’s supper at the market in Bimidgi.
The sun was shining and the air felt like spring was coming. The only snow still on the ground was in small soft piles in the deepest shade and the rest of the ground was covered in new greening grass, or mud. Michael and Marie and Sheila took a walk after lunch to enjoy the weather, sticking to the roads and wearing bright colors, and were rejoined by tired, happy and successful hunters late in the afternoon.
The next day, Sunday, the hunters went out again early, but were due back at the cabin for a late brunch/early lunch so that the two families could head back to the cities in good time for homework to be completed before bedtime.
Sheila and Marie were getting the mean ready in the kitchen and as Michael came inside with a fresh armload of wood, he overheard Sheila saying, “…pretty amazing, Mike must really care for you.”
Michael froze, and listened.
Marie answered Sheila with a self-depreciating laugh, “Well, I really care for him.”
“No, really. I’ve never even heard of him taking a woman out for dinner, and now you two have been dating for months. That must mean something about how he feels.”
“I guess.” Marie sighed doubtfully. “I’m not ever really sure with him. He is very difficult to read.”
Sheila snorted lightly. “No kidding. The original poker face. I’ve known him and Adam for almost five years and I don’t know how to read him at all. I know he is unfailingly polite, kind, responsible and generous. He’s smart, and sometimes wickedly funny. He has a good relationship with his son, who adores him and whom he adores, and I have absolutely no idea what Mike really thinks about anything or anyone else.”
“I’ve been dating him for months and I don’t either.”
“Weeeell -“ Sheila dragged the word out insinuatingly, “I might add, he’s incredibly sexy.”
Marie laughed again, this time a knowing, possessive, satisfied sound. “Oh yes - very, very sexy.”
“Uhm hmm!”
Marie’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “Think Michelangelo’s David come to life plus every tradesman fantasy you’ve ever had and multiply by, like, a hundred! A million!”
“Oh my! Lucky lady!”
“Yes . . . and no.” Marie’s voice was plaintive, and a little lost. “Sometimes it frustrates me how little I know about him - despite having been his girlfriend for months.” Marie paused briefly, then burst out with, “I don’t even know what his wife’s name was!”
Sheila didn’t answer for minute, and then Michael heard her say, “That’s funny - now that you mention it, I don’t think I do either.” Sheila sounded thoughtful as she continued. “I think I’ve only ever heard him refer to her as ‘Adam’s mother’.” Sheila lowered her voice, and Michael had to strain lightly to catch her next words. “I’ve always wondered why he really walked out on her and Adam - and if that’s the resaon he’s been so devoted to Adam since her death, sort of trying to make up for mistakes that you can’t recover from.”
“Devoted is the word.” Marie sounded defensive and slightly bitter. “They’re sort of like an impenetrable unit of two.”
“Well - you’re part of the unit now!” Sheila was clearly attempting to rally Marie’s suddenly black mood. “Looks like a unit of three to me!”
“More like a unit of two with an occasional appendage.” Marie’s voice was wry, and sad.
“Oh come on, you’re here aren’t you?”
“Do you honestly think that if Mike had gotten a turkey permit, I’d be here?”
“Yes. I do.” Sheila replied stoutly. “Of course, . . . you would’ve spent most of the weekend with me, not Mike….” Sheila trailed off on a warm laugh.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound down.” Marie made an obvious effort to lift herself out of her funk. “It’s just that this weekend has been so wonderful - two nights and two whole days with him, and your family has been so warm and welcoming to me - and yet, it makes me realize just how much more of him I want - but don’t seem to have any way to get.”
Michael realized he didn’t want to hear any more and slipped silently back outside.
************
Michael carefully dropped his armload of wood, then let the memories pushing painfully at his consciousness overwhelm him. Behind his closed eyelids he saw a kaleidoscope of images of Nikita, her eyes burning in anger, anguish or sadness as she told him in one of a thousand ways that she didn’t know him, that she couldn’t reach him, that she didn’t even want to try.
No matter that they had somehow managed to put those early days of their relationship behind them. No matter that despite the secret schemes and power plays, despite the tremendous price lying to and manipulating each other, all in the name of some non-existent greater good, had exacted from each of them, they did come to know each other, heart and soul, body and mind. No matter that in time, Nikita had known him as no one else ever had or ever could.
In Marie’s voice he heard again all the things he had sworn he would never intentionally do to another human being. He heard her anguish, her disappointment, her silence-fueled insecurities and fears. And he knew it was because of him, what he had done and what he had chosen not to do. The self-disgust he had lived with for so many years in Section - and had thought safely diffused in Minnesota - proved to only have been in hiding and ready to strike as soon as he gave it a chance, rose up and nearly choked him.
Michael had also heard in Marie’s despondent voice the end of their relationship. He was certain, now, that in time Marie would leave him of her own accord, even if she had not reached such a conclusion herself yet.
That this was just as he had planned was unexpectedly bitter fruit.
It also made the time he had left with Marie seem as precious as it would be fleeting.
Michael had liked Marie from the first, now he knew just how much he liked her, how much he had liked spending time with her as an adult, as a woman, as a lover, after years of going without that kind of companionship. He recognized how much he would miss her company when he no longer had it.
For he had heard his future in Marie’s hurt. He would not seek out another relationship, casual or not after this one was over. He knew now that there was no way to have the kind of relationship he wanted, and that any person worth spending time with was owed, if he had to constantly shield his lover from the truth of who and what he had been and what that meant about who he was now.
Unfortunately the pool of women with whom he could have that sort of completely truthful relationship was limited to one, and she might as well be living on the moon for all she was accessible by him.
Michael leaned over to recover his armload of wood, and decided that Adam’s sensibilities be damned, Marie could sleep in his bed tonight if she had a mind to.
************
In trying to make more nights to spend with Marie before time ran out on him, Michael implicitly urged Adam to seek out sleepover invitations, agreeing even to Adam spending more time with Jake. At first, things seemed to be working out better. Adam seemed pleased to be allowed more time with his friends and Marie was definitely pleased to be seeing more of Michael, and Michael, savoring what he knew was coming to an end, was pleased to be seeing more of Marie.
The tentative peace was shattered at three o’clock in on a Sunday morning at the beginning of May. For the first time in seven years, the beeping ring of Michael’s cell phone brought him awake instantly in the middle of the night, heart pounding and adrenaline surging.
Bolting upright, he plucked his cell phone from Marie’s bedside table. Flicking it open, he said, “Hello?”
And heard Adam’s drawling voice on the other end of the line. “Hey da-ad! Anything -- up?”
This was followed by a slightly hysterical chortle.
Terror was replaced by a fury so blinding Michael literally saw red behind his eyelids, even in Marie’s dark bedroom. “I will be there in twenty-five minutes. Do not make me come inside to get you.”
Closing his cell phone, he swept his legs out from under the tangled duvet, pausing only when he felt Marie’s hand on his arm. “Mike? Qu'arrive il?”
“Adam.” Michael stood and started dressing. “Being foolish. I’m going to get him now.” Sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and boots, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll call you later.”
Driving through the dark and nearly empty city streets, Michael recalled a fellow tradesman once talking about raising children, saying that as babies you wanted to drown them, but by puberty you only wanted to beat them senseless. Michael had been flabbergasted at the time that any parent, much less one he had respected because of the man’s three pleasant and responsible children, should harbor such thoughts, much less admit them aloud. He had never once wanted to kill Adam when he was small, no matter how horribly he was behaving. True, lately, he had considered smacking him upside the head, hard, a few times, but tonight, tonight, he understood the sentiment completely. The thought of beating Adam black and blue, along with the thought of Jake Littman dead at his feet, was immensely satisfying.
It suddenly occurred to him, as well, that he had beaten trainees into submission, respect, and obedience for years - all in the guise of martial arts training, of course, but he had beaten them all the same. Even Nikita. As in turn, had he been beaten, first in prison and then later in Section.
He knew he wouldn’t beat Adam, tonight, or any time of course. But as to what he would do, he had no idea. Rage had gotten him up and out of Marie’s so fast he hadn’t yet focused on coming up with a suitable response.
The first white-hot heat of anger faded by the time he was halfway across the city. As his temper cooled, Michael was able to acknowledge that his fury had derived mostly from terror of the past reaching out to take Adam from him, rather than from the obnoxiously silly comment that Adam had actually made. As much as he wished that Adam recognized that such a call would inevitably trigger Michael’s memories of the past, Adam was still only thirteen and, mostly, still a boy who would not think of that possibility.
But he was on his way to get Adam anyway, so Michael did what he often did when he was stumped by a discipline problem - he asked himself what Roberta Wirth, had she been sober and attentive, ought to have done for Nikita in a similar situation.
The instant Adam slunk into the SUV on a cloud of distinctive odors, a bittersweet mingling of tobacco, beer and marijuana, Michael jettisoned his hazy plan for a gentle but firm father/son chat. Tossing aside any notion of what Bobbie Wirth ought or ought not to have done, Michael decided to do exactly what he had done when he was in charge of Nikita’s training and she had indulged in foolish adolescent behavior.
Pulling away from the curb, Michael headed directly for the dojo.
************
As Michael swung the SUV onto a major artery heading away from their house, Adam cried “Dad?! Where’re we going?”
“The dojo. I have keys.”
There was an incredulous pause, then, in the careful accents of someone pointing out the obvious to clearly insane and possibly dangerous person, Adam said, “It’s the middle of the night!”
“Sensei suggested I work your techniques with you, tell him if I think you’re ready for the Sho Dan tests. If you have enough energy to be making rude phone calls at this hour, we can make better use of the time.”
Adam said nothing for so long Michael began to wonder if he was going to a react at all, when he heard Adam’s tentative, “Um, Dad…?”
“Yes.”
“I’m really sorry.” Adam’s voice grew firmer, sounding like the verbal equivalent of squaring his shoulders. “I know I shouldn’t’ve done it. I’ll apologize to Marie tomorrow, honest.”
“Yes,” was all Michael said, and he kept driving toward the dojo.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Adam cleared his throat and tried again, sounding warier by the second. “Uh, Dad, I’m really tired…I don’t think I’ll be able to do a good job right now.”
“What did you and Jake do tonight?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Adam bite his lip and look down at his tightly fisted fingers, but Adam didn’t reply to his question, so Michael parked the car and prepared to get out.
“We just hung out.” Adam’s tone was a peculiar mixture of anxious plea and sullen defensiveness.
Michael could remember hearing that same self-pitying whine all too frequently from Nikita during her first year of training. It annoyed him just as much now as it had then. “Doing what?”
When he received no answer, Michael got out and slammed his door, walked around to Adam’s side of the SUV, opened the passenger door and stood waiting for Adam to move. After a moment in which he wouldn’t look Michael in the eye, Adam slipped out of his seat, making as wide a berth around his father as possible, and followed Michael into the dojo.
Once inside, Michael headed directly for the locker room, turning on the lights as he went, Adam trailing after him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
Now that he could see him clearly, Michael looked Adam over carefully and saw that his son was tired, probably even as tired as he claimed to be. His dark eyes were large and dull in his pale face, and exhaustion was pulling all the childish softness out of his skin, revealing more clearly than ever the shape of his jaw and the arch of his cheekbones, a living echo of his mother. The out of the ordinary situation also brought home to Michael just how much Adam had grown over the school year - he was at least three inches taller than he had been last fall, maybe four. Like most of his friends, Adam had the doughy in-transition-from-child-to-youth look, despite being so wiry, but tonight Michael thought that chrysalis was more transparent than ever, and he could see more of the shape of the man to come.
Michael could also see lurking in the shadows of Adam’s eyes the fear and guilt Adam was trying so hard to hide from his father, and from himself. Michael was determined to capitalize on that opening and make as dramatic an impression as he could about the limits of teen experimentation that he was willing to tolerate.
“I…I, um…” Adam faltered under Michael’s unwavering gaze, dropping his eyes to the floor and shifting restlessly from one foot to another.
“Adam.” After a long beat in which Adam wouldn’t look at him, Michael offered what reassurance he could. “You know all these techniques. We won’t be doing anything differently than if you were working with your class.”
Adam’s head shot up and he flung his arms in the air, a flash of defiance in his abrupt, “Yeah, but my class doesn’t work out at four in the morning!”
Glad to hear a spark of life, Michael merely nodded and said, “you might have thought more about the time an hour ago. Get changed.”
After staring angrily at Michael, Adam turned to his locker and began changing his clothes, sharing his feeling of being ill used by muttering barely audible obscenities and repeatedly banging the locker door and otherwise making as much noise as possible as he stripped off his street clothes and changed into his workout wear.
Michael ignored all the extraneous activity and quickly changed his own clothes, finishing long before Adam and waiting quietly at the door to the dojo proper for his now sullenly angry son to join him.
Certain that a lengthy period of reflection would be utterly wasted on Adam right now, Michael allowed them only a very perfunctory period of meditating in front of the traditional shine before rising to his feet and beginning a series of warm up stretching and breathing exercises.
When Adam made no move to join him, Michael barked the command to start, and Adam drug himself upright and began half-heartedly following Michael’s lead. After an extremely cursory warm up, especially on Adam’s part, Michael stepped to the middle of the mat and called the first technique, taking attacking role, and waiting for Adam to assume the receiving role. The instant Adam was in position Michael slowly ‘attacked’ Adam from the front, giving Adam time to take the required stance and prepare to offer the proper defense, in this case a strike followed by a hold.
Adam’s first strike was extremely lame, so lame that even though Michael was fully prepared to recoil against the strike and into the hold, the only way Michael could recoil in the correct direction was by launching himself that way. Michael knew that Adam was more than skilled enough to know that he was not performing the technique correctly, and was fully alive to Adam’s half-angry, half-embarrassed disgust that Michael was doing so much of the work himself.
Further aggravating Adam, Michael refused to give the ‘slap’ of concession, which indicated that the technique was successfully holding the attacker, until long after it was obvious that Adam wasn’t even truly holding him, much less inflicting any pain from the incorrectly applied nerve pinch.
When the time came to switch roles, after Adam had performed the first technique, listlessly, four times, frontward and backward, right and left, Michael watched Adam’s glare go from sullen to full alert as Michael prepared to receive Adam’s attacks. With each attack, Michael hit Adam, more than hard enough to sting though not to enough to injure him, before pulling him into a painfully tight hold, pinching the nerve with the accuracy of long practice.
By the time Michael released Adam from his fourth hold, Adam was bristling with fury, his cheeks pink and his eyes sparking enough vengeful ki that Michael should’ve dropped to the mat from that alone, had Michael believed in the psychic power of ki, which he did not.
Through the second technique, the third, the fourth, even into the fifth, Adam’s anger lent his moves force and determination, but random focus and accuracy. During these techniques, Michael declined to be held, pined or thrown unless Adam performed the maneuver correctly - something that Adam was too unfocused to achieve with consistency - and instead, as was central to the art of Aikido, used Adam’s momentum send him to the mat in Michael’s place.
After the final pin of the fifth set of techniques Adam banged the mat in a furious slap, rolling up and onto his feet almost before Michael had fully released him, spinning to face Michael and snarling, “You’re not being fair!”
Michael, long familiar with the power of silence, stared quietly at Adam until Adam dropped his eyes and sighed bitterly, curling his full lips into tired pout.
“What did you and Jake do tonight?”
Adam’s eyes flew open in surprise, angrily denying the accusation Michael hadn’t made. “Nothing!”
Michael called the name of the next technique, a series of throws, and assumed the attack stance.
Adam stared at him for a long minute, then dropped his head and seemed to shrink in on himself. Shrugging tiredly, he said, “we met up with some of the guys. One of them had some beer and we shared it.”
Michael nodded in approval, and hidden relief. Once the subject starts talking, the interrogation is almost over.
The story was easy enough to guess - some other boys from school had come over to Jake’s, where they had shared beer, cigarettes and a joint or two. As a means of entertaining themselves, they had started on a long series of prank calls, ending abruptly with Adam’s call to Michael - though Michael was certain that he had not heard the full extent of either the amounts of intoxicating or illegal substances consumed, or the number and level of obscenity of the calls. But, question by question, Michael pried out enough details to leave Adam red-eared with shame and embarrassment, though whether Adam was more ashamed of his behavior or simply having been caught and having to recount it, Michael wasn’t able to decide.
Once Adam fell silent, Michael said, “I see. What should I do now?”
“I dunno.”
“You may not stay at Jake’s house in the future…”
Adam interrupted, “ever?”
“Ever. You can have Jake over to our house during the day; you may not go to his. No more overnights with him at all. In addition, for the next month - you’re grounded.”
“Daad!”
“Under what circumstances may you drink alcohol?”
Adam sighed heavily, and then dutifully repeated the rule he had known for years. “When I’m with you or twenty-one.”
“Smoke tobacco or marijuana?”
“Never.”
“Make obnoxious phone calls in the middle of the night?”
Adam rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and then snorted self-consciously. “Never.”
Michael nodded then stepped toward the middle of the mat. “Begin again with the first technique.”
“Now?” Adam’s surprise was palpable.
“Now. Once you’ve shown me that you can pass the tests,” Michael paused and smiled cheerfully at Adam, “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
After a minute of staring at Michael in exaggerated incredulity, Adam shook his head, sighed, nodded in resignation, and moved into position to receive the first attack.
********
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
************
After long consideration, Michael decided that Marie had to end the relationship on her own terms, and without any ridiculous schemes on his part. So, Michael dutifully saw Marie on Tuesday, in the morning and for the early dinner, and on Thursday morning, again at her apartment. No matter how much he scolded himself about it either, he still found it was a bit of a thrill to know that once again an attractive, intelligent woman was eagerly waiting to welcome him into her bed.
Michael debated asking Marie to accompany him to the middle school winter festival on Friday night - a talent show-cum-variety acts featuring awkward middle schoolers, some of them surprisingly talented, most of them just awkward. In the end, Michael decided that he was not ready to so publicly announce he had a serious girlfriend, especially one who, as he reminded himself, wouldn’t be around all that long anyway.
If Marie was miffed about not being invited, she hid it admirably, regaling him the next day with a long retelling of her evening with friends, an evening that began at a local watering hole with after work drinks and ended many, many hours later at a downtown dance club. Michael was glad the conversation was over the phone, so he didn’t have to work too hard to hide his reaction - which was primarily relief. Even with the all it’s awkwardness and unintended humor, the middle school winter show was far more appealing to him than a long evening of forced gaiety in the company of strangers.
Hanging up the phone, it occurred to him that he was getting old. Or, maybe, he always had been. Even as a young revolutionary in Paris, he hadn’t been all that enthusiastic about spending long evenings wandering from bar to restaurant to club to bar in the midst of a motley assortment of friends and acquaintances. Or, on second thought, maybe he had, and he just didn’t remember any more. On that depressing note, Michael decided it was time to take the dogs for a run.
***********
The following Friday night he skied as usual with Adam and the middle school ski club, missed the week before only because of the winter festival. At the small, local ski hill Michael tried not to be too contemptuous, or remember too clearly his beloved French Alps. Michael had taught Adam to ski during their first winter in Minnesota, and as with most sports, Adam had taken to it immediately. They had skied together after that each winter, all winter long. Michael, meanwhile, had also seized the rare opportunity to live out a childhood dream and qualified for the Ski Patrol.
Marie said she skied some, but had so far declined Michael’s invitation to ski with them. This Friday, she came along. It turned out she had not skied in many years, and after her second over-ambitious run, and third hard fall, Michael parked her in the bar at her suggestion and stopped in to check on her once an hour or so until it was time to leave. He tried not to remember how quickly Nikita had taken to the slopes, even when she had laughingly rejected skies as old-fashioned and insisted on snowboarding instead.
As a volunteer member of the Ski Patrol unit at the ski hill, he was on duty rousting twelve year old tipplers from the back trails - it mystified him that they should think they were the first kids to ever sneak botas full of peppermint schnapps’ in under their jackets - and picking up tumbled skiers. There was one broken leg that night and two twisted or sprained ankles and one sprained wrist. All things being equal, it was not too bad for a Friday night at the end of peak season.
Marie was gracious enough about it, but it was clear to Michael that the evening could not be considered a success.
After they dropped Marie off at her apartment, the evening immediately went further downhill when Adam said, in a tone full of contempt, “sort of a drag, isn’t it Dad? Having a girlfriend who can’t ski?”
Michael said, “There are plenty of other things to do besides ski.”
He immediately had cause to regret his choice of phrase when he heard Adam’s barely swallowed, smirking, “uh huh.”
Michael elected to retreat into selective parental deafness and didn’t rise to the bait.
The thing that sent Michael to sleep with a smile on his lips was the pleasant thought that the evening had clearly demonstrated to Marie some of the differences between them.
************
Michael measured the last of the pancake mix into the bowl for the fourth batch of pancake batter of the morning, and marveled at his obtuseness that he should have forgotten to factor in competition over who could eat the most when he purchased groceries designed to see himself and four thirteen year old boys through three and half days of skiing. At the rate they were going he was going to have to make a run for more provisions before the day was out.
Just then, Adam sang out, "Da-ad, more pancakes please!"
This was accompanied by a round of giggles and exaggerated groans, and as Michael flipped the pancake cooking in the pan he heard Charlie Peterson say, "Geez, dude, I can't believe you're going to eat more!"
"Why not? I'm still hungry!" Jon Yang declared, turning to face Michael who was bringing another loaded plate to the table. " Could I have some more pancakes too, please?"
"Of course." Michael couldn't help but smile as tiny roly-poly Jon turned directed a beseeching glance his way. "Coming right up."
Returning to his labors at the stove, Michael acknowledged to himself that the ski-trip over Adam's mid-winter break was actually turning out to be far more fun than he had anticipated when he had originally agreed, in a moment of madness he frequently regretted afterwards, to let Adam invite three friends to come with them. The insufferable Jake Litman was fortunately elsewhere with his family, so the three friends Adam had invited were all boys that Michael both approved of and genuinely liked. Charlie, of course, was a familiar traveling companion for Michael and Adam, and Jon Yang and Paul Emad were turning out to be easy to take as well.
Michael had actually been a bit surprised that Adam had chosen to invite Jon and Paul, for unlike Adam and Charlie, they were not avid outdoor sports enthusiasts. Jon had never skied in his life and towering Paul, all elbows, knees and ears, at best could be described as an advanced beginner. In fact, Michael would have been hard pressed to describe the boys as a group in a single word, for the only thing they had in common was Adam.
This morning, their second of the three full days at an old ski resort in the snow-belt of Michigan's upper peninsula, Michael found himself wondering how consciously Adam had shaped the group, and how much his choices reflected simple impulse. Given the split in experience and, to be honest, ability, he had expected to see the boys break up into competitive pairs based on skill, and was completely wrong. Michael insisted that the novices take the formal lessons each morning while Adam and Charlie risked life and limb as they struggled to outdo each other on the terrain slopes, and he had expected that the division would last into the afternoons. So he was pleasantly surprised yesterday when Adam took Jon under his wing and Charlie partnered with Paul, and for the most part the four of them stuck together on the hills.
He had not been skiing with the boys. Not only would they have resented it, he was also using the opportunity to test his ability to keep constant track of the whereabouts of four moving targets in a crowd, a task made much simpler by their choice to stay together.
Pouring more batter into the dented pan that came as part of the ‘fully equipped kitchen' in the rental units located along the edge of the ski-runs, Michael glanced at his watch. "Jon and Paul need to be at the lodge for their lesson in ten minutes."
This announcement produced a flurry of activity. The boys inhaled, apparently without chewing, every last pancake on the table, drained every glass, fought their way through the pile of outerwear, donned gloves, helmets, boots, goggles, coats and scarves, and disappeared in a barrage of banging doors as each of them reappeared at least once in search of something left behind.
Once they were finally gone, the silence inside the rental-unit was almost deafening by comparison. Michael poured himself a second cup of coffee and set about cleaning up from breakfast, enjoying the morning sun pouring in the high clerestory windows of the 1970s-era condo.
In the quiet, he found his thoughts turning, again, to the question of Marie and what to do about their relationship. In the three weeks since they had become lovers he had come to realize that as much as he might wish he had never started the affair, he was equally loath to end it and return to a single, celibate existence.
With very mixed motives, he had actually invited her to come along on this trip, an offer that had been received gratefully and declined with horror. If he had been the slightest bit disappointed, he hadn't been at all surprised. Not only was Marie unlikely to enjoy a skiing vacation, during the last two or three times that Michael, Marie and Adam had done something together, Adam had been remarkably unpleasant without actually crossing a line that would allow Michael to reprimand him for his behavior. Adam had alternated between politely quelling disinterest whenever conversation was directed at him and astonishing garrulity when it was not. He carried about such boy things as violent computer games, obscure sports facts and hunting arcana, all seemingly calculated to maximize Marie's boredom and distaste, all offered with his most engaging smile so firmly in place it was impossible to cut him off without being rewarded by a look of hurt befuddlement.
While this in general suited his purpose of showing Marie just how difficult a long-term relationship would be, it had also been surprisingly mortifying. Michael had never, until now, had occasion to be ashamed of his son's behavior, and he had not liked it one bit.
Leaning on his poles late the following afternoon, Michael knew to his pride that he had nothing to be embarrassed for in Adam's behavior with his friends this weekend. The boys had continued to get along amazingly well, there had been no serious arguments, no sulking, and no ganging up one on three, and Charlie and Adam had continued to ski with Paul and Jon in the afternoons. This had meant that Jon and Paul were forced to ski far past their ability most of the time, and endure uncounted numbers of falls with good grace, but somehow the boys managed to find this consistently hilarious and not, as Michael had feared, humiliating.
It also meant that by the last day, all four boys were able to ski on the longest, most pleasant, moderately difficult runs. However they did it, by the end of the trip Michael was impressed by all of them, and especially by his son's instinctive ability to create a cohesive group out of an unlikely assortment of individuals.
It reminded Michael of Nikita.
Watching Adam with his friends, he remembered the way Nikita would lead teams forged on the basis of her individual relationships with each member of her squad, until they were bound together by their seamless loyalty to her, absolutely confident in her loyalty to them. If Walter's stories were to be believed, it was the way Paul Wolfe had once led his men as well. Michael sometimes thought even now that if he had not done the blood work on Jones' body and Nikita himself, he might still suspect Wolfe of having been her father after all.
By the time Michael dropped off the last of the exhausted boys at their own doors, he was also impressed by the shear number of fart jokes, fueled by enormous amounts of soda and pizza, that could keep thirteen year old boys laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
************
In the weeks that followed the ski trip, Michael was both flattered and dismayed by the way Marie threw herself into making the most of the time she and Michael had together. Michael’s life continued to place limits on the amount of time they could spend together, but it was not as troublesome to her as it might have been for another woman. She had tremendous professional burdens herself in her first year of teaching and trying to get her own scholarly writing and research program up and running, and her responsibilities easily could have absorbed fully all her available hours. Sometimes, Michael even suspected that she was grateful that their time together was relatively tightly scheduled.
She called Michael daily, though, sometimes more than once, just to chat briefly, and during their continuing mid-day dalliances treated Michael to a parade of new lingerie and increasingly bold and adventurous sex play. While Michael had nothing against such activities in general, in this case he felt more than a little like he was unknowingly acting out scenes from various erotica aimed at women. It made him long for Nikita’s sensible lycra sports briefs and athletic bras, or even Elena’s white linen nightgowns. That he remembered perfectly clearly that both women also had a penchant for expensive lingerie, as indeed had Simone, was somehow totally irrelevant.
He could, of course, have taken firmer control of their sexual life, but he chose not to. He wanted Marie to feel in charge of their relationship, and she was obviously getting a thrill out of what seemed to be a role-change of sorts for her, and her pleasure in that was infectious in its own way.
Michael and Marie also had developed what amounted to a standing Saturday night date, sometimes with her friends, sometimes with his, most often just the two of them, supported by the odd dinner worked in and around Michael’s and Adam’s other obligations, occasionally with a still sulky Adam in attendance.
Michael continued to enjoy the time he spent with Marie. He knew, in the back of his mind that he wanted the relationship to end, but in the day to day, it was easy to push that thought aside in favor of enjoying the moment. Her passion for her work was captivating, and the sex, however awkwardly framed, was more than satisfying and certainly far better than the alternative of sex for one. Her stories of internal University politics and bureaucratic inanities, though, gave him pause, and made him wonder if the Section had been as unique as he had thought, or just deadlier than most.
Given Marie’s determination to find ways to accommodate Michael’s priorities, though not without an occasional sharp remark, Adam’s continuing about-face in attitude had Michael shaking his head in frustration.
Adam not only stopped encouraging the relationship, he stopped asking about it altogether. Not that Michael wasn’t perfectly happy to forgo the dreaded post-date interrogation, but the thoroughness of the change was unsettling. Adam stopped delivering messages from Marie as soon as he saw Michael. Instead he left them scrawled by the phone, often on scraps of paper that bore no resemblance to the message pad placed by the phone for that very purpose, and which Adam continued to use for all other calls he took for Michael. It reached the embarrassing point where Michael had to tell Marie to use only his cell number to reach him, as the home number was no longer reliable.
On the first Wednesday of March, Adam actually went so far as to complain about Michael’s time with Marie. They were unloading groceries from a late evening run to the store on their way home from their usual workout at the dojo, and talking over the schedule for the upcoming weekend when Adam stopped so quickly that Michael almost stumbled into him. Adam dropped the bag of dog food he was lugging into the kitchen with a dramatic thud and exclaimed, “You’re seeing Marie again? That’s like, the fifth Saturday in a row!”
Michael blinked at this outburst. Moving past the obstruction of boy, dogs and dog food to deposit the bags he was carrying on the counter, he said, “She is, as you have pointed out, my girlfriend.”
“Yeah - I know - but - geeze . . .”
Michael looked curiously at Adam, “But, geeze, what?”
“Does she have to take so much of your time?”
As Marie had said something almost exactly the same with regards to Adam, and with far more justification, that very afternoon, Michael nearly did a double take of astonishment. “That’s generally how it works.”
Adam muttered a resentful, “I suppose.”
Michael looked carefully at his son’s glowering expression. “I thought you liked Marie, and wanted me to date her?” Michael was concerned enough that he ventured a very, very cautious, “What’s up, Adam?”
Adam only shrugged and turned away, saying, “nothing. Don’t worry about it. Sorry I over-reacted.”
“It’s okay.” Michael contemplated Adam’s answer briefly, and decided to move on. “So - what do you want to do Saturday night?”
Adam was putting the bag of dog food away. Closing the closet door, he looked at his father and said, “Can I stay over at Jon Yang’s? He called this afternoon and asked me and Dave Lutjens,” Michael recognized the name of a fellow acolyte, “over to play battlenet. We’re all serving the ten o’clock mass and his mom will take us to church.”
Michael stared incredulously at Adam, unable to keep his laughter at the absurdity of the situation from bubbling up and coloring his voice as he said, “you want to spend the night with friends playing computer games, but object to me taking Marie out the same evening?”
Adam looked startled, then abashed. “Oh. I guess I didn’t think of that.”
Adam was so flustered and dismayed, Michael couldn’t help himself and stared to laugh out loud, and after a moment, Adam joined in. Rolling his eyes, he grinned at Michael and said, “pretty stupid, huh? I guess, it’s just, like, weird, ya know? You having a girlfriend all of a sudden.”
Michael reached out and gripped Adam’s shoulder, shaking him lightly into a half embrace. “For you and me both, Adam.”
*************
Near the middle of March a long-brewing fight between two of Michael’s three full-time painters exploded, with the end result that they both quit. That meant that work picked up dramatically for Michael personally over the next several weeks as he and his lone employee struggled to meet their commitments and hire two new painters as quickly as they could. He regularly put in eight- and nine-hour days, and worked Saturday afternoons as well, once even on a Sunday afternoon. To his bemused pride, Adam even volunteered to help out and they painted side-by-side, three Saturdays running.
Marie was as determinedly cheerful as ever throughout, though there were increasing flashes of petulance as well, especially over Michael’s non-existent free time. This might have bothered Michael more, but having survived Nikita, a world-class master of petulance in her early twenties, Marie’s occasional complaints did not trouble him at all.
Just when Michael had finally settled his employee crisis, Adam came down with a hideous three-day flu sweeping his middle school and promptly passed it on to Michael, who in turn passed it on to Marie. Somewhere in the midst of the siege of the stomach virus, Marie insisted on having her first fight with Michael, who was too weak himself to do much to head off the storm.
Naturally enough, her complaints centered on time, or rather, his lack of it for her. Michael had been unable to see her during the day for weeks because he was painting each day without a break, and his evenings remained as full of obligations as ever. Her unhappiness with the situation was certainly reasonable under the circumstances, and Michael, still sore from long bouts of nausea and the accompanying dehydration, thought it might be best to let her vent her frustrations.
To his faint surprise, what she zeroed in on was not her desire that he devote more time to her away from his responsibilities, but rather, that he let her more fully into his life.
“Why can’t I ever stay at your house?” She wanted to know, “and why are the only times you can spend the whole night with me are when Adam is away with friends?”
The true answers to these questions were ones that Michael could not, would not give her. He did not want Marie in his bed because it implied a level of commitment he simply did not feel. And he would not leave Adam alone at night because he was still afraid of terrorists with long memories, or new knowledge of Nikita’s weaknesses.
But he had not told Marie even the sanitized version of Adam’s kidnapping. All he had given her was the cover story he and Adam always used. He told Marie that Europe held too many painful memories because of his unhappy separation from his wife prior to her fatal accident. After Adam’s mother’s death, Michael had decided to start over someplace new, someplace where he and Adam could build a new life, free from the past. The kidnapping, Michael’s long absence before Elena’s death, and the story that Adam knew regarding it was, under strictest confidence, shared only with a trusted few. So far, Michael had avoided sharing that version of their past with Marie, feeling it would generate both pity and interest, and he did not want to encourage either. The result was that to his dismay, he now found himself in a predicament he had sworn he would never let happen again - he was in a relationship studded with lies, mostly lies of omission it was true, but deeply important central lies that now had to be covered up with more lies.
“My bed squeaks and I’m not any more ready to face Adam after knowing he heard us making love than you are to face your departmental secretary.”
This momentarily silenced Marie. Michael had met the departmental secretary once when he joined Marie at her office for a departmental cocktail party, and the secretary was in fact a truly awesome gorgon in the making, a woman whom even Michael judged would be a challenge to out-face.
However, once things had returned, more or less, to normal and everyone’s health was restored, Michael decided to find more ways to let Marie into his life after all. He came to the conclusion that perhaps he had been wrong to block her out so completely. He thought that maybe more, rather than less knowledge of his life as a tradesman, regular church-goer and lone parent of a thirteen year old deep in the testosterone storms of puberty, would make clear to her that their lives did not, and could not even if he had wanted them to, truly mesh.
************
Michael put his new profile into action the very next weekend.
It was mid-April, spring wild-turkey hunting season in Minnesota. Wild turkeys were very popular game - so popular that there was state lottery for the limited number of permits available. This year, the Peterson’s had invited Adam to enter the lottery with them; groups of up to four could enter on an all or nothing basis. Dan, Charlie, Charlie’s brother Paul and Adam all had their permits by April first. Michael, who had entered as an individual, was not so lucky this year and had not won a permit.
Michael had intended to go out with the hunters anyway, he simply wouldn’t carry his gun, now he altered the plans to include Marie. Marie didn’t have any interest in hunting, she had already made that clear, but as Michael couldn’t hunt this season anyway so he invited Marie to come along with the group. Adam would stay with the Peterson’s as planned, and Michael and Marie would stay at a nearby motel, joining Adam and the Peterson’s for breakfast and supper of course, but while Adam and the Peterson brothers were off hunting, having some time to themselves as well.
Marie eagerly accepted, and by seven-thirty Friday evening the Peterson hunting shack was bursting at the seams with light and noise.
For Michael, the drive up was unexpectedly pleasant. Charlie and Adam dutifully kept up their end of the polite chatter for the first hour of the trip, and that allowed Marie to relax enough herself that she was able to let loose with genuine laughter and applause at the end of a spontaneous rap performance from the backseat.
The only negative that night was that the closest motel Michael was able to get a room in wasn’t very close at all - it was a good forty-five minutes away from the Peterson cabin, and was very definitely on the ‘budget’ end of the motel quality scale.
Marie had no sooner gamely remarked that at least there were no bugs, when a roach scuttled out from under the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
Michael and Marie exchanged a startled glance, and then they both burst into laughter and the evening, on the verge of careening over a precipice, righted itself.
Adam and the Peterson boys had all expressed a willingness to be out by dawn, so Michael and Marie did not join them for breakfast, instead arriving at the cabin by midmorning after shopping for that night’s supper at the market in Bimidgi.
The sun was shining and the air felt like spring was coming. The only snow still on the ground was in small soft piles in the deepest shade and the rest of the ground was covered in new greening grass, or mud. Michael and Marie and Sheila took a walk after lunch to enjoy the weather, sticking to the roads and wearing bright colors, and were rejoined by tired, happy and successful hunters late in the afternoon.
The next day, Sunday, the hunters went out again early, but were due back at the cabin for a late brunch/early lunch so that the two families could head back to the cities in good time for homework to be completed before bedtime.
Sheila and Marie were getting the mean ready in the kitchen and as Michael came inside with a fresh armload of wood, he overheard Sheila saying, “…pretty amazing, Mike must really care for you.”
Michael froze, and listened.
Marie answered Sheila with a self-depreciating laugh, “Well, I really care for him.”
“No, really. I’ve never even heard of him taking a woman out for dinner, and now you two have been dating for months. That must mean something about how he feels.”
“I guess.” Marie sighed doubtfully. “I’m not ever really sure with him. He is very difficult to read.”
Sheila snorted lightly. “No kidding. The original poker face. I’ve known him and Adam for almost five years and I don’t know how to read him at all. I know he is unfailingly polite, kind, responsible and generous. He’s smart, and sometimes wickedly funny. He has a good relationship with his son, who adores him and whom he adores, and I have absolutely no idea what Mike really thinks about anything or anyone else.”
“I’ve been dating him for months and I don’t either.”
“Weeeell -“ Sheila dragged the word out insinuatingly, “I might add, he’s incredibly sexy.”
Marie laughed again, this time a knowing, possessive, satisfied sound. “Oh yes - very, very sexy.”
“Uhm hmm!”
Marie’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “Think Michelangelo’s David come to life plus every tradesman fantasy you’ve ever had and multiply by, like, a hundred! A million!”
“Oh my! Lucky lady!”
“Yes . . . and no.” Marie’s voice was plaintive, and a little lost. “Sometimes it frustrates me how little I know about him - despite having been his girlfriend for months.” Marie paused briefly, then burst out with, “I don’t even know what his wife’s name was!”
Sheila didn’t answer for minute, and then Michael heard her say, “That’s funny - now that you mention it, I don’t think I do either.” Sheila sounded thoughtful as she continued. “I think I’ve only ever heard him refer to her as ‘Adam’s mother’.” Sheila lowered her voice, and Michael had to strain lightly to catch her next words. “I’ve always wondered why he really walked out on her and Adam - and if that’s the resaon he’s been so devoted to Adam since her death, sort of trying to make up for mistakes that you can’t recover from.”
“Devoted is the word.” Marie sounded defensive and slightly bitter. “They’re sort of like an impenetrable unit of two.”
“Well - you’re part of the unit now!” Sheila was clearly attempting to rally Marie’s suddenly black mood. “Looks like a unit of three to me!”
“More like a unit of two with an occasional appendage.” Marie’s voice was wry, and sad.
“Oh come on, you’re here aren’t you?”
“Do you honestly think that if Mike had gotten a turkey permit, I’d be here?”
“Yes. I do.” Sheila replied stoutly. “Of course, . . . you would’ve spent most of the weekend with me, not Mike….” Sheila trailed off on a warm laugh.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound down.” Marie made an obvious effort to lift herself out of her funk. “It’s just that this weekend has been so wonderful - two nights and two whole days with him, and your family has been so warm and welcoming to me - and yet, it makes me realize just how much more of him I want - but don’t seem to have any way to get.”
Michael realized he didn’t want to hear any more and slipped silently back outside.
************
Michael carefully dropped his armload of wood, then let the memories pushing painfully at his consciousness overwhelm him. Behind his closed eyelids he saw a kaleidoscope of images of Nikita, her eyes burning in anger, anguish or sadness as she told him in one of a thousand ways that she didn’t know him, that she couldn’t reach him, that she didn’t even want to try.
No matter that they had somehow managed to put those early days of their relationship behind them. No matter that despite the secret schemes and power plays, despite the tremendous price lying to and manipulating each other, all in the name of some non-existent greater good, had exacted from each of them, they did come to know each other, heart and soul, body and mind. No matter that in time, Nikita had known him as no one else ever had or ever could.
In Marie’s voice he heard again all the things he had sworn he would never intentionally do to another human being. He heard her anguish, her disappointment, her silence-fueled insecurities and fears. And he knew it was because of him, what he had done and what he had chosen not to do. The self-disgust he had lived with for so many years in Section - and had thought safely diffused in Minnesota - proved to only have been in hiding and ready to strike as soon as he gave it a chance, rose up and nearly choked him.
Michael had also heard in Marie’s despondent voice the end of their relationship. He was certain, now, that in time Marie would leave him of her own accord, even if she had not reached such a conclusion herself yet.
That this was just as he had planned was unexpectedly bitter fruit.
It also made the time he had left with Marie seem as precious as it would be fleeting.
Michael had liked Marie from the first, now he knew just how much he liked her, how much he had liked spending time with her as an adult, as a woman, as a lover, after years of going without that kind of companionship. He recognized how much he would miss her company when he no longer had it.
For he had heard his future in Marie’s hurt. He would not seek out another relationship, casual or not after this one was over. He knew now that there was no way to have the kind of relationship he wanted, and that any person worth spending time with was owed, if he had to constantly shield his lover from the truth of who and what he had been and what that meant about who he was now.
Unfortunately the pool of women with whom he could have that sort of completely truthful relationship was limited to one, and she might as well be living on the moon for all she was accessible by him.
Michael leaned over to recover his armload of wood, and decided that Adam’s sensibilities be damned, Marie could sleep in his bed tonight if she had a mind to.
************
In trying to make more nights to spend with Marie before time ran out on him, Michael implicitly urged Adam to seek out sleepover invitations, agreeing even to Adam spending more time with Jake. At first, things seemed to be working out better. Adam seemed pleased to be allowed more time with his friends and Marie was definitely pleased to be seeing more of Michael, and Michael, savoring what he knew was coming to an end, was pleased to be seeing more of Marie.
The tentative peace was shattered at three o’clock in on a Sunday morning at the beginning of May. For the first time in seven years, the beeping ring of Michael’s cell phone brought him awake instantly in the middle of the night, heart pounding and adrenaline surging.
Bolting upright, he plucked his cell phone from Marie’s bedside table. Flicking it open, he said, “Hello?”
And heard Adam’s drawling voice on the other end of the line. “Hey da-ad! Anything -- up?”
This was followed by a slightly hysterical chortle.
Terror was replaced by a fury so blinding Michael literally saw red behind his eyelids, even in Marie’s dark bedroom. “I will be there in twenty-five minutes. Do not make me come inside to get you.”
Closing his cell phone, he swept his legs out from under the tangled duvet, pausing only when he felt Marie’s hand on his arm. “Mike? Qu'arrive il?”
“Adam.” Michael stood and started dressing. “Being foolish. I’m going to get him now.” Sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and boots, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll call you later.”
Driving through the dark and nearly empty city streets, Michael recalled a fellow tradesman once talking about raising children, saying that as babies you wanted to drown them, but by puberty you only wanted to beat them senseless. Michael had been flabbergasted at the time that any parent, much less one he had respected because of the man’s three pleasant and responsible children, should harbor such thoughts, much less admit them aloud. He had never once wanted to kill Adam when he was small, no matter how horribly he was behaving. True, lately, he had considered smacking him upside the head, hard, a few times, but tonight, tonight, he understood the sentiment completely. The thought of beating Adam black and blue, along with the thought of Jake Littman dead at his feet, was immensely satisfying.
It suddenly occurred to him, as well, that he had beaten trainees into submission, respect, and obedience for years - all in the guise of martial arts training, of course, but he had beaten them all the same. Even Nikita. As in turn, had he been beaten, first in prison and then later in Section.
He knew he wouldn’t beat Adam, tonight, or any time of course. But as to what he would do, he had no idea. Rage had gotten him up and out of Marie’s so fast he hadn’t yet focused on coming up with a suitable response.
The first white-hot heat of anger faded by the time he was halfway across the city. As his temper cooled, Michael was able to acknowledge that his fury had derived mostly from terror of the past reaching out to take Adam from him, rather than from the obnoxiously silly comment that Adam had actually made. As much as he wished that Adam recognized that such a call would inevitably trigger Michael’s memories of the past, Adam was still only thirteen and, mostly, still a boy who would not think of that possibility.
But he was on his way to get Adam anyway, so Michael did what he often did when he was stumped by a discipline problem - he asked himself what Roberta Wirth, had she been sober and attentive, ought to have done for Nikita in a similar situation.
The instant Adam slunk into the SUV on a cloud of distinctive odors, a bittersweet mingling of tobacco, beer and marijuana, Michael jettisoned his hazy plan for a gentle but firm father/son chat. Tossing aside any notion of what Bobbie Wirth ought or ought not to have done, Michael decided to do exactly what he had done when he was in charge of Nikita’s training and she had indulged in foolish adolescent behavior.
Pulling away from the curb, Michael headed directly for the dojo.
************
As Michael swung the SUV onto a major artery heading away from their house, Adam cried “Dad?! Where’re we going?”
“The dojo. I have keys.”
There was an incredulous pause, then, in the careful accents of someone pointing out the obvious to clearly insane and possibly dangerous person, Adam said, “It’s the middle of the night!”
“Sensei suggested I work your techniques with you, tell him if I think you’re ready for the Sho Dan tests. If you have enough energy to be making rude phone calls at this hour, we can make better use of the time.”
Adam said nothing for so long Michael began to wonder if he was going to a react at all, when he heard Adam’s tentative, “Um, Dad…?”
“Yes.”
“I’m really sorry.” Adam’s voice grew firmer, sounding like the verbal equivalent of squaring his shoulders. “I know I shouldn’t’ve done it. I’ll apologize to Marie tomorrow, honest.”
“Yes,” was all Michael said, and he kept driving toward the dojo.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Adam cleared his throat and tried again, sounding warier by the second. “Uh, Dad, I’m really tired…I don’t think I’ll be able to do a good job right now.”
“What did you and Jake do tonight?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Adam bite his lip and look down at his tightly fisted fingers, but Adam didn’t reply to his question, so Michael parked the car and prepared to get out.
“We just hung out.” Adam’s tone was a peculiar mixture of anxious plea and sullen defensiveness.
Michael could remember hearing that same self-pitying whine all too frequently from Nikita during her first year of training. It annoyed him just as much now as it had then. “Doing what?”
When he received no answer, Michael got out and slammed his door, walked around to Adam’s side of the SUV, opened the passenger door and stood waiting for Adam to move. After a moment in which he wouldn’t look Michael in the eye, Adam slipped out of his seat, making as wide a berth around his father as possible, and followed Michael into the dojo.
Once inside, Michael headed directly for the locker room, turning on the lights as he went, Adam trailing after him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
Now that he could see him clearly, Michael looked Adam over carefully and saw that his son was tired, probably even as tired as he claimed to be. His dark eyes were large and dull in his pale face, and exhaustion was pulling all the childish softness out of his skin, revealing more clearly than ever the shape of his jaw and the arch of his cheekbones, a living echo of his mother. The out of the ordinary situation also brought home to Michael just how much Adam had grown over the school year - he was at least three inches taller than he had been last fall, maybe four. Like most of his friends, Adam had the doughy in-transition-from-child-to-youth look, despite being so wiry, but tonight Michael thought that chrysalis was more transparent than ever, and he could see more of the shape of the man to come.
Michael could also see lurking in the shadows of Adam’s eyes the fear and guilt Adam was trying so hard to hide from his father, and from himself. Michael was determined to capitalize on that opening and make as dramatic an impression as he could about the limits of teen experimentation that he was willing to tolerate.
“I…I, um…” Adam faltered under Michael’s unwavering gaze, dropping his eyes to the floor and shifting restlessly from one foot to another.
“Adam.” After a long beat in which Adam wouldn’t look at him, Michael offered what reassurance he could. “You know all these techniques. We won’t be doing anything differently than if you were working with your class.”
Adam’s head shot up and he flung his arms in the air, a flash of defiance in his abrupt, “Yeah, but my class doesn’t work out at four in the morning!”
Glad to hear a spark of life, Michael merely nodded and said, “you might have thought more about the time an hour ago. Get changed.”
After staring angrily at Michael, Adam turned to his locker and began changing his clothes, sharing his feeling of being ill used by muttering barely audible obscenities and repeatedly banging the locker door and otherwise making as much noise as possible as he stripped off his street clothes and changed into his workout wear.
Michael ignored all the extraneous activity and quickly changed his own clothes, finishing long before Adam and waiting quietly at the door to the dojo proper for his now sullenly angry son to join him.
Certain that a lengthy period of reflection would be utterly wasted on Adam right now, Michael allowed them only a very perfunctory period of meditating in front of the traditional shine before rising to his feet and beginning a series of warm up stretching and breathing exercises.
When Adam made no move to join him, Michael barked the command to start, and Adam drug himself upright and began half-heartedly following Michael’s lead. After an extremely cursory warm up, especially on Adam’s part, Michael stepped to the middle of the mat and called the first technique, taking attacking role, and waiting for Adam to assume the receiving role. The instant Adam was in position Michael slowly ‘attacked’ Adam from the front, giving Adam time to take the required stance and prepare to offer the proper defense, in this case a strike followed by a hold.
Adam’s first strike was extremely lame, so lame that even though Michael was fully prepared to recoil against the strike and into the hold, the only way Michael could recoil in the correct direction was by launching himself that way. Michael knew that Adam was more than skilled enough to know that he was not performing the technique correctly, and was fully alive to Adam’s half-angry, half-embarrassed disgust that Michael was doing so much of the work himself.
Further aggravating Adam, Michael refused to give the ‘slap’ of concession, which indicated that the technique was successfully holding the attacker, until long after it was obvious that Adam wasn’t even truly holding him, much less inflicting any pain from the incorrectly applied nerve pinch.
When the time came to switch roles, after Adam had performed the first technique, listlessly, four times, frontward and backward, right and left, Michael watched Adam’s glare go from sullen to full alert as Michael prepared to receive Adam’s attacks. With each attack, Michael hit Adam, more than hard enough to sting though not to enough to injure him, before pulling him into a painfully tight hold, pinching the nerve with the accuracy of long practice.
By the time Michael released Adam from his fourth hold, Adam was bristling with fury, his cheeks pink and his eyes sparking enough vengeful ki that Michael should’ve dropped to the mat from that alone, had Michael believed in the psychic power of ki, which he did not.
Through the second technique, the third, the fourth, even into the fifth, Adam’s anger lent his moves force and determination, but random focus and accuracy. During these techniques, Michael declined to be held, pined or thrown unless Adam performed the maneuver correctly - something that Adam was too unfocused to achieve with consistency - and instead, as was central to the art of Aikido, used Adam’s momentum send him to the mat in Michael’s place.
After the final pin of the fifth set of techniques Adam banged the mat in a furious slap, rolling up and onto his feet almost before Michael had fully released him, spinning to face Michael and snarling, “You’re not being fair!”
Michael, long familiar with the power of silence, stared quietly at Adam until Adam dropped his eyes and sighed bitterly, curling his full lips into tired pout.
“What did you and Jake do tonight?”
Adam’s eyes flew open in surprise, angrily denying the accusation Michael hadn’t made. “Nothing!”
Michael called the name of the next technique, a series of throws, and assumed the attack stance.
Adam stared at him for a long minute, then dropped his head and seemed to shrink in on himself. Shrugging tiredly, he said, “we met up with some of the guys. One of them had some beer and we shared it.”
Michael nodded in approval, and hidden relief. Once the subject starts talking, the interrogation is almost over.
The story was easy enough to guess - some other boys from school had come over to Jake’s, where they had shared beer, cigarettes and a joint or two. As a means of entertaining themselves, they had started on a long series of prank calls, ending abruptly with Adam’s call to Michael - though Michael was certain that he had not heard the full extent of either the amounts of intoxicating or illegal substances consumed, or the number and level of obscenity of the calls. But, question by question, Michael pried out enough details to leave Adam red-eared with shame and embarrassment, though whether Adam was more ashamed of his behavior or simply having been caught and having to recount it, Michael wasn’t able to decide.
Once Adam fell silent, Michael said, “I see. What should I do now?”
“I dunno.”
“You may not stay at Jake’s house in the future…”
Adam interrupted, “ever?”
“Ever. You can have Jake over to our house during the day; you may not go to his. No more overnights with him at all. In addition, for the next month - you’re grounded.”
“Daad!”
“Under what circumstances may you drink alcohol?”
Adam sighed heavily, and then dutifully repeated the rule he had known for years. “When I’m with you or twenty-one.”
“Smoke tobacco or marijuana?”
“Never.”
“Make obnoxious phone calls in the middle of the night?”
Adam rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and then snorted self-consciously. “Never.”
Michael nodded then stepped toward the middle of the mat. “Begin again with the first technique.”
“Now?” Adam’s surprise was palpable.
“Now. Once you’ve shown me that you can pass the tests,” Michael paused and smiled cheerfully at Adam, “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
After a minute of staring at Michael in exaggerated incredulity, Adam shook his head, sighed, nodded in resignation, and moved into position to receive the first attack.
********