Now I'll have to find some of this, so I can see what she's up to.
I get very cranked at many depictions of parents in popular culture. Especially when you think that as a culture we don't really live in big, multi-generational groups now, so that we have very few examples of parenting in front of us as we struggle to figure out what we are like as parents (usually some variation on "not what my parents were") more and more people turn to the media for examples, however incomplete, of what the parent/child dynamic should be. I cannot tell you how many times I heard people refer to "Michael and Hope vs Elliot and Nancy" styles when Iz was young -- ack! I've never seen Modern Family, but I'm sure I've seen copies of those parenting styles reflected in my community as I see young parents...
Hadn't heard "carguement" before (from the wiki article) -- very succinct.
Just finished the story you pointed me to -- I think one of the troubles I have with fan fiction is that so much of it is written by very young people. I would be surprised if the person who wrote that story was a parent.
I've given up trying to determine how old people are based on the fanfic they write. I assumed *for years* that Casandra Claire, of epic Harry/Draco slash fame before she went on to mainstream publishing YA sucess with her Mortal Instruments series, must be very young, what with her tastes, her affection/feel for teenage protagonists and their ALL CAPS DRAMA, her difficulties with mimicry verging on plagirism, her flair for pasitche .... Then I caught a pic and a bio on one of younger boy's copies of her books.
She is not *very young.* She's not even a little young. She was born in 1973, which makes her only 8 years younger than I am. She was in her thirties when she was writing her Harry/Draco tales.
So - I am not at all sure that the authors of the *very few* Doris-centric-ish stories aren't old enough to be parents. They may even be parents of young children. I rather doubt they are currently parents of teens. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, I hope they are not currenlty parenting teens. Or none of the above, of course, but.... sadly enough, I don't think their fic gives any true clues. Except, of course, to their giant ass blinkers of unexamined cultural misogyny. I mean, they are self-aware enough to write perfectly reasonsble and persuasive and canon compliant back story, giving Doris voice and independence and professional savy... and then seem to just assume that it is obvious that the audience will naturally hate her. Wierd.
My fingers have hoovered over the keyboard more than once, longing to ask why they think the Doris they've just created is such a bad person, because to me she doesn't seem bad at all.... And then good sense returns and I do not. :-)
As I asked a friend recently, why is it that being an adult means always choosing the boring option?
(as I passed on a road trip to see a young choreographer in Vancouver, since I've got deadlines to meet and a kid to get back to school)
Maybe, after you finish up with your trio fic here, you should write something from Doris' point of view. She's how old? Where does she fit alongside the development of the women's movement?
This all spilled out last week - it was so close to the surface I decided to just type it out and then set it aside for later revisions. I was reading a discussion of Pacific Rim, and it the (apparently, I haven't seen it yet) awesome woman character is enough to create a new test in addition to the Bechdel Test. Pacific Rim has only the one woman with a speaking part, so no conversation between two women, not about the male leads or about anything else either. Which made me realize that H50, with three people on the run, two women and one man, had created a sitution for LOTS of Bechdel Test passing. (not that I expect them to exploit it....) And boom. In my head and hands. I'm not sure if I want to call it "Two Women, Talking" or "Two Broads, Talking." Doris is a great broad, and I suspect would take pride in having earned the epithet. Kono may be one someday.....? In terms of fic, Lahti has created such a strong character, her voice is fairly easy to capture. Kono doesn't talk nearly so much, or fill the screen nearly so powerfully, so I'm not nearly as confident of her voice here. One of hte reasons these won't be done for quite a while, as I'll eventually try to catch some Kono-centric eps to make sure I have captured her rythms better.
The show has been quiet about many of the character's ages.... only an aside the Doris is 'in her sixties' - which is about right, timing wise. So I went with Lahti's actual birth year, 1950. Grace Park, who plays Kono, is actually nearly the same age or slightly older than all three of the other main character actors (dudes playing Steve, Danny, Chin) - but plays and is presented as much younger and has just finished (in the opening episode) Police Academy. So, I've waved my hand and decided Kono is an even ten years younger than Park actually is, and have assigned Kono a birth year of 1984.
Doris raised her eyebrows as she huffed a faint laugh. “It? Singular? Oh, honey. I regret so many things I wouldn’t know where to begin.” She gave her head a quick shake as she reached for the coffee pot. “Maybe with that last round of sake last night.”
Kono ducked her head with a snort of agreement. Adam had refused to get up this morning, still nursing his own regrets over the sake. “Okay. Bad question.” She thought for a moment. “How did you get started, down this path?”
Doris shrugged, dumping a heaping spoonful of sugar into her coffee and stirring vigorously. “Paths branch, kid. But, if you’re asking me how everything began, well, Hmm.”
Doris was quiet, looking at her hands cradling the small porcelain cup. Kono began to think she would brush the question off, when Doris took a deep breath, looked up and said, “I think it begins because I wanted to be Modesty Blaise.”
The reference confused Kono for a moment, and then she placed it. “From the comic strip?”
“Yep. The very same. Are you familiar with her?”
“Only a few images. Piled dark hair, pointy boobs, lots of leather. And cars. She was some kind of secret agent?”
Doris grinned widely. “Yeah. That’s her.”
“So, how did you go from wanting to being?”
“Well, I never did get the boobs. Or a Willie Garvin of my own.”
“Okay. Funny.”
“This part is boring family history. Sure you want it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. My dad was a young army officer, stationed in Seoul, South Korea in late 1949. He was there when North Korea invaded in 1950. He survived the rout, running south for Pusan along with everyone else.” Doris paused, and added, “I was born while it was all going on. My mother had no idea if my father had made it when she brought me home from the hospital.”
“Rough.”
“She was an army wife.” Doris shrugged matter-of-factly. “And, he survived. Yay! But, on that panicked retreat, he picked up a lot of Korean. Surprisingly quickly for a white guy in his twenties. Turned out he had an ear and a knack for Asian languages. When his term was up, he left the Army, got a PhD, and became a professor. At George Washington, in D.C.”
“Impressive!”
“Mmhm.” Doris took another sip of her coffee. “Given his background, you shouldn’t be shocked to learn that he did a lot of consulting. Army, State, DOD, CIA.”
“No. Not shocked.”
“It all seemed terribly glamorous to me.” Doris looked up and winked, “and a stepping-stone to becoming Modesty Blaise. With his help, I got an internship with the State Department the summer before I headed up to Wellesley. Dad had taken us to Korea several times while I was growing up, twice for a whole school year. So I spoke Korean well, Chinese acceptably, and had a smattering of Vietnamese and Japanese. The State Department, seeing all that, sent me back to Seoul, to intern in the cultural affairs office at the Embassy there.”
Doris paused again, her eyes looking at something far away and long ago. Kono kept still.
“It was 1967. The world was staring to burn. Given my background, I was no hippy. I believed in the American Dream. I believed that we were involved in a titanic struggle, east and west, tyranny and freedom. I believed we lived under constant threat of nuclear Armageddon. I believed all of it. So damn hard. Cold Warrior all the way.”
She looked at Kono then, humor back in her eyes. “I was so damn young. And so easy to recruit.”
“CIA?”
“CIA.”
“Did you come home and go to college?”
“No. I did my level best to become Modesty Blaise. Only the American version.”
“I bet you were good at it.”
Doris nodded. “Damn good.”
Kono shook her head. No false modesty here. Steve apparently came by this trait honestly.
“I worked all over Asia for the next six years or so. I loved it, especially the first four, maybe five of them. By then it was the early seventies, though, and the world was changing again. We’d lost the war in Vietnam, which increasingly looked to have been a colossal mistake. Watergate happened. It was clear that policy makers in Washington were paying no attention at all to knowledgeable people in the field. Good agents fought and died to bring in actionable intelligence and, nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Same stupid mistakes, same stupid orders. I shot my mouth off to the wrong people,” she caught Kono’s eyes, “Surprise!”
Kono chuckled encouragingly.
“After that I found myself in more difficult missions, doing more dangerous, complicated things. Bad stuff went down. I became a feminist. And a hippy. You know. For the CIA version of the same.” She rolled her eyes, gently mocking her past self. “I got reassigned to a desk job in Honolulu in late 1974.”
“That’s where you met Steve’s dad?”
“Yep.” Doris’s smile turned gentle and full of delight. “He was handsome as could be, a Vietnam vet, about eight years older than me. He was still in uniform, on the street, ticketing my car day after day. I’m not sure how long it took him to figure out I was doing it on purpose. A while. Eventually he asked me out for coffee.”
“And you fell in love.”
Doris’s smile faded and she was quiet for a time. At last she said, “He fell in love. I fell in love with the idea of falling in love, quitting the CIA, playing house, having babies, gardening, knitting, decoupage, getting involved with the women’s movement, finally getting a college degree…”
“Decoupage?”
“It was a thing. It was the seventies. You shellacked paper cut outs or photographs onto, well, everything that couldn’t run. Rosanne Barr, back in her stand up days, had a bit about decoupaging her husband because he never moved from in front of the T.V. I laughed so hard I pissed myself the first time I heard it.” Doris laughed heartily again, in memory. Though of decoupage, Rosanne Barr, or John McGarrett, it was impossible to say.
Kono wasn’t interested in weird 1970s decorating habits. Or Rosanne Barr. “So. You married him.”
“Yes.” Doris nodded. “I married him. Quit the CIA. Moved into our cute little house out in xxxx, and threw myself into my new life.”
Kono wasn’t aware of making a sound, but Doris shot her a sharp-eyed glance and waved an admonishing finger at her. “Don’t look so judgmental, Kono. I wife-d the hell out of John McGarrett. Perfect meals, spotless house, charming hostess, tiger in the sack. I wanted him to be as happy as I was. And I was happy. So, so was he.” Her voice softened again. “In my memory that time is always bright, sparkling with sun and laughter and flowers.”
This time, Kono didn’t interrupt.
“The babies came, they were beautiful. John made detective. I started classes at the university. In fact I was part of one of the early day-care collectives on campus. Still one of the things I’m proudest of. Getting the University of Hawaii to provide child care for students.”
“Go you!”
“The personal is political, baby.” Doris bumped Kono’s raised fist with her own. Then her smile faded and she took up her story again. “The glow started to come off about the time Mary started school. I’d finished my degree. In Asian studies, natch. John was gone most of the time on cases, fantastic cases. He was doing brilliantly. But it meant I was more or less a single parent. I got lonely. And bored. And frustrated. So I volunteered everywhere and started talking about looking for a part time job.”
“Someone must have been watching and waiting, because I’d no more than admitted it, in my heart, that I was unhappy to be so without purpose, when the CIA came calling again.”
Kono had no difficulty at all imagining a bored, restless, high-energy Doris McGarrett, kids at school, husband on the job, time hanging heavy on her hands. “An easy mark.”
“All over again. New verse, same as the first.”
Doris looked directly at Kono then. “If I have one thing I could do over, it would be that. I would turn them down.”
“I was doing analyst work, I refused to do anything that would endanger my family, or require me to leave Honolulu. For a few years, that was good. The part that sucked was that John couldn’t know. He thought I was a part-time secretary.”
“Did he believe that?”
“Yes. Given how everything turned out in the end, I know I fooled him. Completely. That’s another regret. A big one. Though,” Doris frowned, “it also irritates the hell out of me. How could he have not known? Was he really paying so little attention to me?” She paused, then shook herself out of whatever memories were surfacing with a wry smile. “Actually, it seems that there are a whole lot’a regrets right there, missy. And none of them any of your business.”
Kono accepted that door closing, and returned to the main thread of the story. “You didn’t stay an analyst.”
“No. I still wouldn’t leave Hawaii, so I became a case manager, a handler. A desk jockey. I swore I wouldn’t make the same mistakes as all those stupid fuckups in DC, back when I was in the field.”
“But?”
“But I did. And it came back to bite me in the ass. So fucking hard.”
“Wo Fat.”
“Is part of all that. Yes.”
“You’re still not going to tell me what all went down, are you.”
“No. I haven’t told Steve, who has more right to know than anyone. I’m definitely not going to tell you.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Told Steve?”
“Yeah.”
“They aren’t my secrets, Kono. They are state secrets. Matters of national security. Not just information I’m holding back to be mean to Steve. I took oaths, made promises. Stars in my eyes, yes, but, steel too. There’s a part of me that still believes in all that crazy patriotic stuff I believed when I was seventeen. I really do believe that what I gave up most of my adult life for, matters. There is also still stuff I don’t fully know, about who and how and why. Steve, being his father’s son, and mine, won’t stop until he has it all. Or dies trying. The only way I can see to prevent that is to give him nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Even if he hates you?”
“He doesn’t hate me. He loves me. That’s what makes it hurt so bad.”
“Is that why you stayed dead as long as you did?”
“I’d’ve stayed dead until I really died, if it had been up to me. But Steve pushed so hard that others thought that my coming in from the cold was the only chance of slowing him down.”
“Why would you have stayed dead?”
“Peace and ignorance seemed the only gifts I could give my children. Now they don’t even have that. There’s another regret for you.”
Doris pushed aside her cup and rose, brushing off her hands.
Kono stood as well, accepting that this conversation was over.
“Your turn.” Doris sat down beside Kono, dangling her own legs over the small dock. “Why did you run with Adam?” She raised her brow and added, “and don’t tell me ‘true love.’ He didn’t expect you to come with him, and neither did anyone else.”
“Okay. Fair enough.” Kono was quiet, getting her thoughts in order. She’d been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after her long chat with Doris a week or more earlier, so it wasn’t too hard to begin. “You might understand more than anyone else, actually. I had one life, surfing, and it ended. After a few years of flailing around and being miserable, I went to the police academy, figured I’d follow along in the family business. And ended up with Five-O before I’d even worn my uniform once. It seemed like an amazing opportunity. And, don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved it. Every minute. But….”
Doris nodded understandingly. “But. It’s a dead end, career wise.”
“Yeah. I started looking ahead, ten years, fifteen years out…. All I could see, if I stayed with Five-O is more of the same, assuming for a minute that we managed to go that long with none of us getting hurt too bad, or, worse, killed on the job. Me, running after the guys. No room for anything else, but nothing to reach for either.” She laughed ruefully, “I mean, it’s not like Steve is going anywhere, or Chin or Danny. And I don’t want them too, but, as long as they’re there - I’m always the youngest. Chin Ho Kelly’s little cousin.”
“Yep. That was your bind.”
“I should have turned Steve down, I realize now. Done my time in uniform, on patrol, walked the beat. Earned my promotions. I would have had a whole department worth of options and transferrable skills, opportunities to lead. Instead, well, I have a rep for high risk, high violence, and low respect for procedure. Not great calling cards for transfer. I mean, I couldn’t do what Danny did, move from Hawaii to Jersey and expect to get a job on a Jersey police force.”
Doris raised an eyebrow. “You planning a move to Jersey?”
Kono laughed. “No! I don’t want to leave the island, actually. Or, well,” she shrugged, “not forever.”
“You could get a job with the Feds. I’m sure you’d have no trouble being accepted to Quantico.”
“Yeah. And the whole, not leaving the islands?”
“Okay.”
“Besides. I only had a chance. Now? Now I’m on the run with a disgraced Yakuza boss. No job with the Feds in my future.”
“CIA?”
“Seriously? After knowing your story? Um. No!”
“Seriously. They’d love to have someone like you.”
“Hmmph.”
“But, if you want traditional things like, a family, kids, a spouse….”
“I’m still not sure if I do. But, I’m not sure I don’t either! I’d like to leave that possibility open…” Kono sighed. “Another reason staying on the bottom rung with Five-O for the long haul was pretty unappealing. Families haven’t been safe. At all.”
“No. They haven’t.”
“Yeah. Okay. So, jumping off with Adam wasn’t necessarily the solution to any of those problems.”
“No. Not so much.”
“But. Standing there. On the dock, waiting for Adam to leave, I thought - what if? What if I regret this for the rest of my life? Would I always wonder what might have come if I didn’t take the leap? Seize the chance for romance and adventure and breaking all the ties that bind? And Chin. He saw it. Understood. Told me to grab on with both hands.”
“Regrets?”
“No. None.” Kono grinned, then sobered. “I’m not blind. I don’t think this is going to end well. Adam is truly stuck. He can only save his ass if he goes back to the Yakuza, does his penance, and gets with the program. Or, turns on them completely. Which, well, he isn’t prepared to do. Because that’s just not who he is. So for now, all I’ve got is - seize the day. Live every one like it might be the last.”
Doris looked up as Kono came stomping into the small kitchen yard. After watching her pick up and set down about a dozen small utensils, all the while sporting a glower strong enough to power an electrical storm, she sighed. Kids. What are you going to do? “Sit down,” she said, pointing to a small stool. “I’ll make some tea.”
“I don’t want tea.”
“Yes. You do.” Doris picked up the kettle and filled it from the filtered water dispenser. “You also want to tell me what’s wrong.”
“No! I don’t!” Kono exclaimed, loudly. Then she seemed to hear herself, and grinned shamefacedly. “Okay.” She sat down. “I do. Want to tell you.”
Doris prepared the tea, and waited for Kono to begin. Something she was obviously having trouble with, fidgeting on the stool, biting her lip, playing with her folding knife.
Doris waited for the water to heat, and said nothing.
When she finally drew up a stool to sit near Kono and the tea tray, Kono shook herself out of the reverie she’d fallen in to and accepted the cup Doris offered.
After blowing on her tea and taking a small sip, she began. “Growing up, I always thought of the women’s movement, of feminism, as a white lady thing. A haole thing.” She offered Doris a mildly apologetic shrug. “Something that didn’t have much of anything to do with me.”
“Fair enough. It’s a reasonable, accurate, and long-standing, criticism of the movement. Especially in the U.S.”
“And, I was born in the eighties, you know? Women could vote, go to college, get whatever jobs they wanted. Be cops, doctors, soldiers,” she shot Doris a wicked look, “spies. Whatever. It was all done, right?”
Doris shook her head, but didn’t try to hide her smile. “Young women, especially the pretty and successful ones, often think that. There’s an obvious explanation, if you want it.”
“Yeah.” Kono grimaced. “I think I’m already working that out for myself, thanks.”
After a moment she went on, “But it wasn’t done. Isn’t done. At all.”
“No.” Doris agreed. “It isn’t. Several millennia of cultural and political practices and assumptions can’t be undone and redone in a generation or three. Not even by pretty, privileged white ladies. Who carry their own baggage and wear their own blinders, just like everyone else.”
“Hmmph.” Kono scowled.
“So,” Doris asked, “What’s got you re-thinking your assumptions about feminism?”
“Adam. This,” Kono waved around the kitchen yard, but Doris was sure that she meant far more than this little village in (Cambodia?).
Doris waited.
“The first few times we let people assume Adam and I were married, it was no big deal. Right? A cover that made things easier.”
“Yes.”
“But when I insisted we try without it, shit got hard. Real hard.”
Doris, vividly remembering the bar-brawl that had resulted from one of those experiments, nodded and made an affirming murmur. At least they had all learned that Adam had wonderfully quick instincts as a knife fighter, and she had been working with him to hone those ever since.
Kono sighed. “People really don’t like unattached women.”
“No. They don’t.”
“And that sucks. Hard.” Kono scowled again. “Why should I have to be covered by some dude in order to go about my own business?”
“Well. There’s a reason we called ‘Women’s Liberation.’ Back in the day.”
“Women’s libbers. Huh.” Kono rocked back with a grin as she made the connection. “I’d always wondered where that name came from. I thought it had something to do with ‘liberal’….”
Doris shook her head and laughed. “Trading that name in for Feminism made some sense, at the time, but looking back, I think it was, maybe, a mistake.” Not wanting to take this detour, Doris continued, “Anyway, feminists, or women’s libbers, would say that you shouldn’t have to be covered by a dude.”
“Yeah.” Kono’s grin turned into a scowl. “I’m starting to see their point. And how it applies to me.”
Doris waited.
“So, I’ve been letting the wife thing happen.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Which would be fine, as a cover. Only,” Kono sighed hugely, “only, Adam gets this look in his eye. All warm and satisfied.”
Doris made another affirming noise. She knew exactly what Kono was talking about. She’d seen the same thing. Had known it would happen and was both resigned and tickled when it did. Watching Adam struggle not to let Kono see how puffed out with pride being her ‘husband’ made him had been amusing her for weeks now.
“He loves it!” Kono burst out. “He loves the idea. He loves knowing that claiming me like that gives him status and me safe passage.”
“Men do. Even the good ones. All their training and conditioning tells them to feel that way.”
“Yeah.” Kono laughed then. “He knows better than to ever say anything. But I can tell he wants too. So freaking bad.”
“I know, because I was there, in the seventies, that there is a whole school of thought about openness and honesty. But, for what it’s worth, I think you’ve both chosen wisely in not having a conversation about this. At least, not right now.”
Kono looked extremely doubtful. “Maybe.”
“And, also for what it’s worth, the older you are, the less anyone cares about your status. I’m so old these days I’m practically invisible. Even in places where you would think I’d stand out like a sore thumb.” Doris waved her had around the yard, taking in the ramshackle buildings clustered in a poor neighborhood in a middling city that saw few foreign visitors each year. “It’s a useful asset, actually, in my line of work.”
“Maiden, wife, crone, yeah?”
“Yeah. I was once certain I would never be a crone. That along with my generation, I could break that old paradigm. It turned out to be way more deeply rooted that we ever realized. And, eventually, I realized that invisibility carries it’s own magic power.”
Now I'll have to find some of this, so I can see what she's up to.
I get very cranked at many depictions of parents in popular culture. Especially when you think that as a culture we don't really live in big, multi-generational groups now, so that we have very few examples of parenting in front of us as we struggle to figure out what we are like as parents (usually some variation on "not what my parents were") more and more people turn to the media for examples, however incomplete, of what the parent/child dynamic should be. I cannot tell you how many times I heard people refer to "Michael and Hope vs Elliot and Nancy" styles when Iz was young -- ack! I've never seen Modern Family, but I'm sure I've seen copies of those parenting styles reflected in my community as I see young parents...
Hadn't heard "carguement" before (from the wiki article) -- very succinct.
Just finished the story you pointed me to -- I think one of the troubles I have with fan fiction is that so much of it is written by very young people. I would be surprised if the person who wrote that story was a parent.
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She is not *very young.* She's not even a little young. She was born in 1973, which makes her only 8 years younger than I am. She was in her thirties when she was writing her Harry/Draco tales.
So - I am not at all sure that the authors of the *very few* Doris-centric-ish stories aren't old enough to be parents. They may even be parents of young children. I rather doubt they are currently parents of teens. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, I hope they are not currenlty parenting teens. Or none of the above, of course, but.... sadly enough, I don't think their fic gives any true clues. Except, of course, to their giant ass blinkers of unexamined cultural misogyny. I mean, they are self-aware enough to write perfectly reasonsble and persuasive and canon compliant back story, giving Doris voice and independence and professional savy... and then seem to just assume that it is obvious that the audience will naturally hate her. Wierd.
My fingers have hoovered over the keyboard more than once, longing to ask why they think the Doris they've just created is such a bad person, because to me she doesn't seem bad at all.... And then good sense returns and I do not. :-)
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(as I passed on a road trip to see a young choreographer in Vancouver, since I've got deadlines to meet and a kid to get back to school)
Maybe, after you finish up with your trio fic here, you should write something from Doris' point of view. She's how old? Where does she fit alongside the development of the women's movement?
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This all spilled out last week - it was so close to the surface I decided to just type it out and then set it aside for later revisions. I was reading a discussion of Pacific Rim, and it the (apparently, I haven't seen it yet) awesome woman character is enough to create a new test in addition to the Bechdel Test. Pacific Rim has only the one woman with a speaking part, so no conversation between two women, not about the male leads or about anything else either. Which made me realize that H50, with three people on the run, two women and one man, had created a sitution for LOTS of Bechdel Test passing. (not that I expect them to exploit it....) And boom. In my head and hands. I'm not sure if I want to call it "Two Women, Talking" or "Two Broads, Talking." Doris is a great broad, and I suspect would take pride in having earned the epithet. Kono may be one someday.....? In terms of fic, Lahti has created such a strong character, her voice is fairly easy to capture. Kono doesn't talk nearly so much, or fill the screen nearly so powerfully, so I'm not nearly as confident of her voice here. One of hte reasons these won't be done for quite a while, as I'll eventually try to catch some Kono-centric eps to make sure I have captured her rythms better.
The show has been quiet about many of the character's ages.... only an aside the Doris is 'in her sixties' - which is about right, timing wise. So I went with Lahti's actual birth year, 1950. Grace Park, who plays Kono, is actually nearly the same age or slightly older than all three of the other main character actors (dudes playing Steve, Danny, Chin) - but plays and is presented as much younger and has just finished (in the opening episode) Police Academy. So, I've waved my hand and decided Kono is an even ten years younger than Park actually is, and have assigned Kono a birth year of 1984.
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“Do you ever regret it?” Kono asked.
Doris raised her eyebrows as she huffed a faint laugh. “It? Singular? Oh, honey. I regret so many things I wouldn’t know where to begin.” She gave her head a quick shake as she reached for the coffee pot. “Maybe with that last round of sake last night.”
Kono ducked her head with a snort of agreement. Adam had refused to get up this morning, still nursing his own regrets over the sake. “Okay. Bad question.” She thought for a moment. “How did you get started, down this path?”
Doris shrugged, dumping a heaping spoonful of sugar into her coffee and stirring vigorously. “Paths branch, kid. But, if you’re asking me how everything began, well, Hmm.”
Doris was quiet, looking at her hands cradling the small porcelain cup. Kono began to think she would brush the question off, when Doris took a deep breath, looked up and said, “I think it begins because I wanted to be Modesty Blaise.”
The reference confused Kono for a moment, and then she placed it. “From the comic strip?”
“Yep. The very same. Are you familiar with her?”
“Only a few images. Piled dark hair, pointy boobs, lots of leather. And cars. She was some kind of secret agent?”
Doris grinned widely. “Yeah. That’s her.”
“So, how did you go from wanting to being?”
“Well, I never did get the boobs. Or a Willie Garvin of my own.”
“Okay. Funny.”
“This part is boring family history. Sure you want it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. My dad was a young army officer, stationed in Seoul, South Korea in late 1949. He was there when North Korea invaded in 1950. He survived the rout, running south for Pusan along with everyone else.” Doris paused, and added, “I was born while it was all going on. My mother had no idea if my father had made it when she brought me home from the hospital.”
“Rough.”
“She was an army wife.” Doris shrugged matter-of-factly. “And, he survived. Yay! But, on that panicked retreat, he picked up a lot of Korean. Surprisingly quickly for a white guy in his twenties. Turned out he had an ear and a knack for Asian languages. When his term was up, he left the Army, got a PhD, and became a professor. At George Washington, in D.C.”
“Impressive!”
“Mmhm.” Doris took another sip of her coffee. “Given his background, you shouldn’t be shocked to learn that he did a lot of consulting. Army, State, DOD, CIA.”
“No. Not shocked.”
“It all seemed terribly glamorous to me.” Doris looked up and winked, “and a stepping-stone to becoming Modesty Blaise. With his help, I got an internship with the State Department the summer before I headed up to Wellesley. Dad had taken us to Korea several times while I was growing up, twice for a whole school year. So I spoke Korean well, Chinese acceptably, and had a smattering of Vietnamese and Japanese. The State Department, seeing all that, sent me back to Seoul, to intern in the cultural affairs office at the Embassy there.”
Doris paused again, her eyes looking at something far away and long ago. Kono kept still.
“It was 1967. The world was staring to burn. Given my background, I was no hippy. I believed in the American Dream. I believed that we were involved in a titanic struggle, east and west, tyranny and freedom. I believed we lived under constant threat of nuclear Armageddon. I believed all of it. So damn hard. Cold Warrior all the way.”
She looked at Kono then, humor back in her eyes. “I was so damn young. And so easy to recruit.”
“CIA?”
“CIA.”
“Did you come home and go to college?”
“No. I did my level best to become Modesty Blaise. Only the American version.”
“I bet you were good at it.”
Doris nodded. “Damn good.”
Kono shook her head. No false modesty here. Steve apparently came by this trait honestly.
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“I worked all over Asia for the next six years or so. I loved it, especially the first four, maybe five of them. By then it was the early seventies, though, and the world was changing again. We’d lost the war in Vietnam, which increasingly looked to have been a colossal mistake. Watergate happened. It was clear that policy makers in Washington were paying no attention at all to knowledgeable people in the field. Good agents fought and died to bring in actionable intelligence and, nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Same stupid mistakes, same stupid orders. I shot my mouth off to the wrong people,” she caught Kono’s eyes, “Surprise!”
Kono chuckled encouragingly.
“After that I found myself in more difficult missions, doing more dangerous, complicated things. Bad stuff went down. I became a feminist. And a hippy. You know. For the CIA version of the same.” She rolled her eyes, gently mocking her past self. “I got reassigned to a desk job in Honolulu in late 1974.”
“That’s where you met Steve’s dad?”
“Yep.” Doris’s smile turned gentle and full of delight. “He was handsome as could be, a Vietnam vet, about eight years older than me. He was still in uniform, on the street, ticketing my car day after day. I’m not sure how long it took him to figure out I was doing it on purpose. A while. Eventually he asked me out for coffee.”
“And you fell in love.”
Doris’s smile faded and she was quiet for a time. At last she said, “He fell in love. I fell in love with the idea of falling in love, quitting the CIA, playing house, having babies, gardening, knitting, decoupage, getting involved with the women’s movement, finally getting a college degree…”
“Decoupage?”
“It was a thing. It was the seventies. You shellacked paper cut outs or photographs onto, well, everything that couldn’t run. Rosanne Barr, back in her stand up days, had a bit about decoupaging her husband because he never moved from in front of the T.V. I laughed so hard I pissed myself the first time I heard it.” Doris laughed heartily again, in memory. Though of decoupage, Rosanne Barr, or John McGarrett, it was impossible to say.
Kono wasn’t interested in weird 1970s decorating habits. Or Rosanne Barr. “So. You married him.”
“Yes.” Doris nodded. “I married him. Quit the CIA. Moved into our cute little house out in xxxx, and threw myself into my new life.”
Kono wasn’t aware of making a sound, but Doris shot her a sharp-eyed glance and waved an admonishing finger at her. “Don’t look so judgmental, Kono. I wife-d the hell out of John McGarrett. Perfect meals, spotless house, charming hostess, tiger in the sack. I wanted him to be as happy as I was. And I was happy. So, so was he.” Her voice softened again. “In my memory that time is always bright, sparkling with sun and laughter and flowers.”
This time, Kono didn’t interrupt.
“The babies came, they were beautiful. John made detective. I started classes at the university. In fact I was part of one of the early day-care collectives on campus. Still one of the things I’m proudest of. Getting the University of Hawaii to provide child care for students.”
“Go you!”
“The personal is political, baby.” Doris bumped Kono’s raised fist with her own. Then her smile faded and she took up her story again. “The glow started to come off about the time Mary started school. I’d finished my degree. In Asian studies, natch. John was gone most of the time on cases, fantastic cases. He was doing brilliantly. But it meant I was more or less a single parent. I got lonely. And bored. And frustrated. So I volunteered everywhere and started talking about looking for a part time job.”
“Someone must have been watching and waiting, because I’d no more than admitted it, in my heart, that I was unhappy to be so without purpose, when the CIA came calling again.”
Kono had no difficulty at all imagining a bored, restless, high-energy Doris McGarrett, kids at school, husband on the job, time hanging heavy on her hands. “An easy mark.”
“All over again. New verse, same as the first.”
Doris looked directly at Kono then. “If I have one thing I could do over, it would be that. I would turn them down.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.”
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“I was doing analyst work, I refused to do anything that would endanger my family, or require me to leave Honolulu. For a few years, that was good. The part that sucked was that John couldn’t know. He thought I was a part-time secretary.”
“Did he believe that?”
“Yes. Given how everything turned out in the end, I know I fooled him. Completely. That’s another regret. A big one. Though,” Doris frowned, “it also irritates the hell out of me. How could he have not known? Was he really paying so little attention to me?” She paused, then shook herself out of whatever memories were surfacing with a wry smile. “Actually, it seems that there are a whole lot’a regrets right there, missy. And none of them any of your business.”
Kono accepted that door closing, and returned to the main thread of the story. “You didn’t stay an analyst.”
“No. I still wouldn’t leave Hawaii, so I became a case manager, a handler. A desk jockey. I swore I wouldn’t make the same mistakes as all those stupid fuckups in DC, back when I was in the field.”
“But?”
“But I did. And it came back to bite me in the ass. So fucking hard.”
“Wo Fat.”
“Is part of all that. Yes.”
“You’re still not going to tell me what all went down, are you.”
“No. I haven’t told Steve, who has more right to know than anyone. I’m definitely not going to tell you.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Told Steve?”
“Yeah.”
“They aren’t my secrets, Kono. They are state secrets. Matters of national security. Not just information I’m holding back to be mean to Steve. I took oaths, made promises. Stars in my eyes, yes, but, steel too. There’s a part of me that still believes in all that crazy patriotic stuff I believed when I was seventeen. I really do believe that what I gave up most of my adult life for, matters. There is also still stuff I don’t fully know, about who and how and why. Steve, being his father’s son, and mine, won’t stop until he has it all. Or dies trying. The only way I can see to prevent that is to give him nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Even if he hates you?”
“He doesn’t hate me. He loves me. That’s what makes it hurt so bad.”
“Is that why you stayed dead as long as you did?”
“I’d’ve stayed dead until I really died, if it had been up to me. But Steve pushed so hard that others thought that my coming in from the cold was the only chance of slowing him down.”
“Why would you have stayed dead?”
“Peace and ignorance seemed the only gifts I could give my children. Now they don’t even have that. There’s another regret for you.”
Doris pushed aside her cup and rose, brushing off her hands.
Kono stood as well, accepting that this conversation was over.
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“Your turn.” Doris sat down beside Kono, dangling her own legs over the small dock. “Why did you run with Adam?” She raised her brow and added, “and don’t tell me ‘true love.’ He didn’t expect you to come with him, and neither did anyone else.”
“Okay. Fair enough.” Kono was quiet, getting her thoughts in order. She’d been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after her long chat with Doris a week or more earlier, so it wasn’t too hard to begin. “You might understand more than anyone else, actually. I had one life, surfing, and it ended. After a few years of flailing around and being miserable, I went to the police academy, figured I’d follow along in the family business. And ended up with Five-O before I’d even worn my uniform once. It seemed like an amazing opportunity. And, don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved it. Every minute. But….”
Doris nodded understandingly. “But. It’s a dead end, career wise.”
“Yeah. I started looking ahead, ten years, fifteen years out…. All I could see, if I stayed with Five-O is more of the same, assuming for a minute that we managed to go that long with none of us getting hurt too bad, or, worse, killed on the job. Me, running after the guys. No room for anything else, but nothing to reach for either.” She laughed ruefully, “I mean, it’s not like Steve is going anywhere, or Chin or Danny. And I don’t want them too, but, as long as they’re there - I’m always the youngest. Chin Ho Kelly’s little cousin.”
“Yep. That was your bind.”
“I should have turned Steve down, I realize now. Done my time in uniform, on patrol, walked the beat. Earned my promotions. I would have had a whole department worth of options and transferrable skills, opportunities to lead. Instead, well, I have a rep for high risk, high violence, and low respect for procedure. Not great calling cards for transfer. I mean, I couldn’t do what Danny did, move from Hawaii to Jersey and expect to get a job on a Jersey police force.”
Doris raised an eyebrow. “You planning a move to Jersey?”
Kono laughed. “No! I don’t want to leave the island, actually. Or, well,” she shrugged, “not forever.”
“You could get a job with the Feds. I’m sure you’d have no trouble being accepted to Quantico.”
“Yeah. And the whole, not leaving the islands?”
“Okay.”
“Besides. I only had a chance. Now? Now I’m on the run with a disgraced Yakuza boss. No job with the Feds in my future.”
“CIA?”
“Seriously? After knowing your story? Um. No!”
“Seriously. They’d love to have someone like you.”
“Hmmph.”
“But, if you want traditional things like, a family, kids, a spouse….”
“I’m still not sure if I do. But, I’m not sure I don’t either! I’d like to leave that possibility open…” Kono sighed. “Another reason staying on the bottom rung with Five-O for the long haul was pretty unappealing. Families haven’t been safe. At all.”
“No. They haven’t.”
“Yeah. Okay. So, jumping off with Adam wasn’t necessarily the solution to any of those problems.”
“No. Not so much.”
“But. Standing there. On the dock, waiting for Adam to leave, I thought - what if? What if I regret this for the rest of my life? Would I always wonder what might have come if I didn’t take the leap? Seize the chance for romance and adventure and breaking all the ties that bind? And Chin. He saw it. Understood. Told me to grab on with both hands.”
“Regrets?”
“No. None.” Kono grinned, then sobered. “I’m not blind. I don’t think this is going to end well. Adam is truly stuck. He can only save his ass if he goes back to the Yakuza, does his penance, and gets with the program. Or, turns on them completely. Which, well, he isn’t prepared to do. Because that’s just not who he is. So for now, all I’ve got is - seize the day. Live every one like it might be the last.”
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Doris looked up as Kono came stomping into the small kitchen yard. After watching her pick up and set down about a dozen small utensils, all the while sporting a glower strong enough to power an electrical storm, she sighed. Kids. What are you going to do? “Sit down,” she said, pointing to a small stool. “I’ll make some tea.”
“I don’t want tea.”
“Yes. You do.” Doris picked up the kettle and filled it from the filtered water dispenser. “You also want to tell me what’s wrong.”
“No! I don’t!” Kono exclaimed, loudly. Then she seemed to hear herself, and grinned shamefacedly. “Okay.” She sat down. “I do. Want to tell you.”
Doris prepared the tea, and waited for Kono to begin. Something she was obviously having trouble with, fidgeting on the stool, biting her lip, playing with her folding knife.
Doris waited for the water to heat, and said nothing.
When she finally drew up a stool to sit near Kono and the tea tray, Kono shook herself out of the reverie she’d fallen in to and accepted the cup Doris offered.
After blowing on her tea and taking a small sip, she began. “Growing up, I always thought of the women’s movement, of feminism, as a white lady thing. A haole thing.” She offered Doris a mildly apologetic shrug. “Something that didn’t have much of anything to do with me.”
“Fair enough. It’s a reasonable, accurate, and long-standing, criticism of the movement. Especially in the U.S.”
“And, I was born in the eighties, you know? Women could vote, go to college, get whatever jobs they wanted. Be cops, doctors, soldiers,” she shot Doris a wicked look, “spies. Whatever. It was all done, right?”
Doris shook her head, but didn’t try to hide her smile. “Young women, especially the pretty and successful ones, often think that. There’s an obvious explanation, if you want it.”
“Yeah.” Kono grimaced. “I think I’m already working that out for myself, thanks.”
After a moment she went on, “But it wasn’t done. Isn’t done. At all.”
“No.” Doris agreed. “It isn’t. Several millennia of cultural and political practices and assumptions can’t be undone and redone in a generation or three. Not even by pretty, privileged white ladies. Who carry their own baggage and wear their own blinders, just like everyone else.”
“Hmmph.” Kono scowled.
“So,” Doris asked, “What’s got you re-thinking your assumptions about feminism?”
“Adam. This,” Kono waved around the kitchen yard, but Doris was sure that she meant far more than this little village in (Cambodia?).
Doris waited.
“The first few times we let people assume Adam and I were married, it was no big deal. Right? A cover that made things easier.”
“Yes.”
“But when I insisted we try without it, shit got hard. Real hard.”
Doris, vividly remembering the bar-brawl that had resulted from one of those experiments, nodded and made an affirming murmur. At least they had all learned that Adam had wonderfully quick instincts as a knife fighter, and she had been working with him to hone those ever since.
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Kono sighed. “People really don’t like unattached women.”
“No. They don’t.”
“And that sucks. Hard.” Kono scowled again. “Why should I have to be covered by some dude in order to go about my own business?”
“Well. There’s a reason we called ‘Women’s Liberation.’ Back in the day.”
“Women’s libbers. Huh.” Kono rocked back with a grin as she made the connection. “I’d always wondered where that name came from. I thought it had something to do with ‘liberal’….”
Doris shook her head and laughed. “Trading that name in for Feminism made some sense, at the time, but looking back, I think it was, maybe, a mistake.” Not wanting to take this detour, Doris continued, “Anyway, feminists, or women’s libbers, would say that you shouldn’t have to be covered by a dude.”
“Yeah.” Kono’s grin turned into a scowl. “I’m starting to see their point. And how it applies to me.”
Doris waited.
“So, I’ve been letting the wife thing happen.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Which would be fine, as a cover. Only,” Kono sighed hugely, “only, Adam gets this look in his eye. All warm and satisfied.”
Doris made another affirming noise. She knew exactly what Kono was talking about. She’d seen the same thing. Had known it would happen and was both resigned and tickled when it did. Watching Adam struggle not to let Kono see how puffed out with pride being her ‘husband’ made him had been amusing her for weeks now.
“He loves it!” Kono burst out. “He loves the idea. He loves knowing that claiming me like that gives him status and me safe passage.”
“Men do. Even the good ones. All their training and conditioning tells them to feel that way.”
“Yeah.” Kono laughed then. “He knows better than to ever say anything. But I can tell he wants too. So freaking bad.”
“I know, because I was there, in the seventies, that there is a whole school of thought about openness and honesty. But, for what it’s worth, I think you’ve both chosen wisely in not having a conversation about this. At least, not right now.”
Kono looked extremely doubtful. “Maybe.”
“And, also for what it’s worth, the older you are, the less anyone cares about your status. I’m so old these days I’m practically invisible. Even in places where you would think I’d stand out like a sore thumb.” Doris waved her had around the yard, taking in the ramshackle buildings clustered in a poor neighborhood in a middling city that saw few foreign visitors each year. “It’s a useful asset, actually, in my line of work.”
“Maiden, wife, crone, yeah?”
“Yeah. I was once certain I would never be a crone. That along with my generation, I could break that old paradigm. It turned out to be way more deeply rooted that we ever realized. And, eventually, I realized that invisibility carries it’s own magic power.”
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