White Collar Fic: Laugh a Spineless Laugh
Title: Laugh a Spineless Laugh
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Neal's mother, Ellen Parker, Peter; gen
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Kidfic. Spousal abuse. Some homophobic language. Shameless melodrama.
Word Count: 3,900
Summary: To what lengths would Neal's mother go to keep him safe?
A/N: AU telling of Neal's childhood, set in S4, so Neal's back from wherever he went after “Judgment Day.” This fic was inspired by the lyrics to “Exit Music (For a Film)” by Radiohead. Yes, I am committing songfic. Additional notes at the end.
Fills the “loss of home or shelter” square on my H/C Bingo card.
----
Neal stood back from the painting he’d begun and eyed it critically. He knew he didn’t like it, he just couldn’t put a finger on why. Since returning from his self-imposed exile-cum-escape, he’d been dealing with a low-level melancholy that skirted depression, and he wasn’t entirely sure where it stemmed from. He chewed a thumbnail as he contemplated the dark swaths of black and Prussian blue warring with each other, and probably would have scrapped it entirely if there hadn’t been a knock at his door.
“Ellen!” he said as he opened it. “What a lovely surprise.”
She smiled as Neal bent down to kiss her cheek and take her arm to guide her into the apartment. He noticed she held a small box in her hands, about the size of a shoebox, and he looked at it quizzically. “Oh, honey, this is for you,” she said kindly and pressed it into his hands. “Now that you’re back, I remembered I had these things.”
Neal took the box from her and shook it; it was light, and the things inside slid around and hit the edges - they were much smaller than the box. “More things you saved for me?”
“A few,” she said with a slight smile.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
She stayed for a pleasant hour and they spoke of nothing of consequence, like they did when he was a teenager, but even so, he enjoyed it and her company. Ellen always had a way of putting him at ease.
When she’d gone, he managed to clear up the tea things and tidy the kitchenette before allowing his curiosity to get the better of him. He opened the box and inside were several pictures, a Matchbox car, a stuffed animal, and a purple plastic whistle on a nylon cord. He picked up the topmost photo and looked at it.
It was of him and his mother. He was small in the picture - perhaps four - wearing a blue and white striped t-shirt and shorts, a pair of too-large Chuck Taylors on his feet. He smirked, remembering - he was always tripping over his feet as a kid, because they were always growing too fast and his mother would always buy him shoes that were too big so that he could grow into them.
They were sitting in a park or something - Neal could see a fountain and greenery in the background. Something else in the photo caught his attention and he brought the photo closer. There were faded bruises on his mother’s inner arm - four of them, perfectly spaced, like fingers. Suddenly, he remembered the day the photo was taken.
And what happened later.
xXxXxXxXx
Wake from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today we escape, we escape
Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before all hell breaks loose
“Neal? Come on, puppy, it’s time to get up.”
“Don’ wanna. Still dark, Momma.”
“Oh, I know, sweetie, but we need to go soon, OK?”
Her voice was gentle, soft in his ear, like always. Neal sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawning.
“Here you are,” Momma said, laying a small backpack across his thighs. “You need to pack for an adventure. What will you bring?” She moved across the room, efficiently packing some of Neal's clothes, underwear, and sneakers into a soft-sided duffel.
Neal blinked at her, still sleepy and confused, but something in her voice made him pay attention to her. This was Important, and he needed to Cooperate. He jumped out of his bed and regarded the array of stuffed animals on the bed, chose two, then went over to his toy box and stuffed a few puzzles and cars into the bag. Finally, he went to the battered plastic easel set up near the wall by the closet and took his pad of paper down, and the box of all his crayons - he had a lot of crayons. He shoved the box into the bag, and tried to get the pad inside, but it was too big. It was too big, and the bag was full and soon the bag fell from his too-small hands with a clatter.
“Oh, shh, shh, shh, honey, you don’t want to wake Daddy.” Momma’s eyes were wide when she came to crouch in front of him. She glanced back at the door to Neal's room and then back at Neal, and he saw there were maybe tears in her eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Momma.”
“Oh, Momma’s not sad, puppy.” She stood and went to zip up Neal's suitcase, then came back to help him with the backpack. “Leave the paper - I’ll get you more tomorrow, OK?”
Neal nodded and followed her to the door. She turned and smiled at him; the finger she held against her lips was shaking. “OK, now, this is a secret adventure, and we need to be real quiet so no one knows. Can you do that?”
Neal nodded. “Is Daddy coming?”
“No. No, Daddy has to stay. You ready?”
Neal followed her to the front door, his socked feet making no noise, especially because he tiptoed.
Out in the hall, there was another suitcase, the kind with wheels. Momma picked Neal up, slung his duffel over her shoulder and put her hand on the suitcase’s handle. Neal hugged Momma’s neck, his backpack dangling from both his hands, and watched the door to their apartment retreat from view. It disappeared when the elevator doors closed, and Neal buried his face against Momma’s neck as they rode down to the lobby and away.
Away on their adventure.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal blinked, disturbed by the memory. It was not one he’d ever recalled before, though he didn’t doubt its accuracy. Still, it puzzled him.
He never had any recollection of his mother taking him away at all, had in fact assumed when he learned the truth about his father that he had been the one who left Neal and his mother. This memory left him off-balance and unsure how to feel.
Had his mother stolen him away from his father? Why? He looked down at the picture in his hands and his thumb ghosted over the bruises on his mother’s slender arm.
xXxXxXxXx
”Momma, I don’t like it here,” Neal whispered against his mother’s neck, scrunching his eyes shut. The waiting room was gray and dingy and smelled like throw-up.
“I know, puppy, it’s only temporary.”
“Part of the ‘venture?”
“Mm-hmm. Can I put you down now? I have to fill out some papers.”
Neal shook his head no.
“Will he let me take him?” a rich voice behind him asked.
They both turned their heads to find an older African American woman standing there with a kind smile on her face. Neal hugged Momma’s neck even harder.
“I promise I won’t bite if you won’t, little man,” she said with a laugh that sounded from deep in her chest, a laugh that made everyone feel better, a laugh that soothed even Neal's suspicions.
“I don’t bite!” he insisted.
“Well, that’s good, angel, because I don’t want to get bitten.”
Miss Wanda - that was her name, and it made Neal laugh - carried Neal to a line of chairs and sat him down and handed him his backpack. “You wanna show me what you got in there?”
Neal pulled out his box of crayons and opened them, showing them to her proudly. “My goodness, they’re arranged by shade,” Miss Wanda observed.
Neal nodded gravely. “So I can find the right ones.”
“Of course. And who’s that?”
Neal pulled out the two stuffed animals in his backpack. “This is Sandy,” he said, hugging the light brown dog to his chest.
“And this?” Miss Wanda held the stuffed poodle lightly in her hands and stroked her head.
“That’s Sandy’s Momma.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sandy’s Momma.”
“I see.”
“They’re my friends. They look after me and Momma.”
Miss Wanda found Neal some paper, and even though it was yellow and the colors wouldn’t be right, he thanked her and began to draw her portrait.
“What is this place, Miss Wanda?” he asked as he drew.
“This is Libby’s House. We’re a women’s shelter. We look after people and their mommas too.”
xXxXxXxXx
Neal blinked as the memory faded, shaken by its suddenness and clarity, and his eyes were caught by his old, threadbare, stuffed dog Sandy laying on the table across the room, watching over him, again.
xXxXxXxXx
Breathe, keep breathing
Don't lose your nerve
Breathe, keep breathing
I can't do this alone
Neal was hot. He was really hot and his pajamas were all sticking to him and he was hot.
“Momma,” he tried to call to her, but his voice wouldn’t work, so he rolled out of the lowered crib they had given him to sleep in - a crib! he wasn’t a baby - and went to wake Momma.
“What is it honey?” Momma asked almost as soon as Neal nudged her shoulder.
“I don’t feel good,” and it was so bad it made him cry.
Momma’s hand on his forehead confirmed it. “Oh, puppy, I’m sorry. Here, lie with me and you’ll feel better by the morning, all right?”
But by morning, Neal wasn’t better. By morning, he was so, so much worse, with wracking coughs shaking his tiny body.
“We have to take him to the hospital,” Miss Wanda insisted.
“I can’t, Wanda, Jack’ll find us if we do. You don’t know him, you don’t know what he’s capable of,” Momma said, her voice getting really high.
By lunchtime, Neal was finding it hard to breathe, and Miss Wanda had to call the 911. Momma held onto Neal's hand in the ambulance, and she was crying, and Neal didn’t want her to have to cry, but he couldn’t talk around the oxygen mask. At the hospital, the doctors were using big words like “respiratory distress” and “bilateral pneumonia” and Neal was taken away for some tests. He didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t make them listen and then he fell asleep.
Sing us a song
A song to keep us warm
There's such a chill, such a chill
When Neal woke up again, he could hear his Momma singing “You Are My Sunshine” to him, softly. She had him in her lap with her arms wrapped around him and they were sitting in the hospital bed when Daddy came.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal woke with a start, the covers wrapped around his legs feeling like a trap. He surged from the bed, gasping for breath around the sob that ripped itself from his throat. He fumbled for his phone and hit the last number called.
“Peter, can you come over?” he said desperately to the tired voice when it finally answered.
----
“Slow down, tell me from the beginning,” Peter said, grasping Neal by the shoulders and just squeezing them reassuringly.
Neal took a breath, but found he still had the feeling of panic pressing on his ribs, so he just blurted it out. “I found out that my father didn’t abandon my mother and me when I was small,” he said.
“Oh?” Peter said.
“My mother took me and ran away because he abused her.”
“Oh my God Neal, I’m sorry. How did you find out? Why now?”
“I just… suddenly remembered it.”
Nodding once, Peter walked over to Neal's kitchen, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, and returned. He poured two fingers out and handed a glass to Neal, who drank it down in one gulp. The liquor burned on its way down, and brought tears to his eyes, but as Neal breathed out, he could feel the warmth spreading through him, calming him.
“This is awfully sudden, are you sure, Neal?”
Neal crossed over to the bookshelf and brought down the box of mementoes Ellen had delivered and handed it to Peter. “Ellen brought these by earlier today, she said she’d kept them for me all these years. When I started looking at them, I remembered things.”
“Like what?”
“Like living in a women’s shelter for weeks, getting sick and being in a hospital, and then my father found us. And my mother - Peter, she was so scared of him, but she went back with him. She went back.”
Peter laid the box on the table and began picking through its contents. “How old were you?”
“Four, maybe? And I’m remembering it like it happened yesterday, Peter, but I mean, how is it that I didn’t know?”
Peter picked up the plastic whistle and weighed it in his palm, his fingers closing lightly over it. “Memory’s a funny thing, unpredictable. Seeing these things just triggered something, that’s all.”
Neal took a step forward, transfixed by the whistle Peter held. He reached out and touched it lightly with a fingertip. Peter handed it over and as Neal looped the nylon cord around his neck, he remembered what the whistle was for - why his mother had given it to him, when she had given it to him.
xXxXxXxXx
You can laugh a spineless laugh
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one in everlasting peace
Neal watched somberly as his Momma hung the whistle around his neck. “Don’t lose this, ‘K, puppy?”
“Why, Momma?”
“It’s a magic whistle. You blow it, and Momma will always find you, OK?”
Neal nodded and went back to making his drawing on the coffee table, but Momma looked at the clock and told him to clean up his crayons and paper, because Daddy was going to be home soon. Daddy didn’t like Neal drawing, it wasn’t for boys, he said. It was for girls and faggots, he said, and no son of his was no faggot.
Neal cleaned up, but he missed the first drawing he made today - he forgot it on the table. So when Daddy came home, he saw it and he got really mad. And when he got really mad, he always started yelling.
When Daddy started yelling, Neal was supposed to go to his room, Momma said. So Neal did, and he got into his closet and pulled down all his clothes over his head so he wouldn’t have to hear. But he could. He could hear Momma scream and cry, and then it went quiet. And then it was dinner time.
Neal knew he had to eat all his dinner up, but his stomach hurt. It hurt and hurt and it made him cry.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daddy asked.
Neal looked at him but couldn’t say, he couldn’t talk.
“You want me to give you something to cry about?”
“Jack, you lay a hand on him and I swear I’ll -“ Momma said.
“You’ll what?” Daddy asked and poured himself another Dewar’s.
Neal ate up all his macaronies and went to bed, trying not to cry or puke or nothing.
Later that night, his Momma came and woke him again. “Is it time for another ‘venture, Momma?”
“You could say that.”
“Are we packing?”
“Not this time, puppy.”
Neal grabbed Sandy and Sandy’s Momma and looked around for his crayons. “I’m sorry, baby, you can only take one thing.”
“But Sandy needs his Momma,” Neal insisted.
“She can’t come, Neal. You know, all puppies grow up to be dogs and then they leave their Mommas.”
Neal was shocked. “No, Momma, he needs her.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” Momma pulled her purse over her shoulder and held her hand out for him. “We need to travel light.”
Neal stared up at her with tears in his eyes, not wanting to leave, and so she picked him up and hugged him tight and took him to the door. “Will I have to leave you someday too, Momma?” Neal asked her, his voice so quiet even he couldn’t hear it.
“Not for a long, long time, Neal.”
Aunt Ellen was waiting for them downstairs, and Momma handed Neal off to her. “You sure about this, Mary?” Aunt Ellen asked.
“Do I have a choice? I have to protect my son.”
“You remember the route?”
“You just make sure he follows me, El.”
“We’ll see you by the river.”
The next thing Neal knew, he and Aunt Ellen were sitting in a motor boat on the river, anchored near the pilings of a bridge over the Meramec River, and Aunt Ellen was letting him have a sip of her coffee.
“What, you don’t like it?” she asked, incredulous, as he made a face. “It’s Italian Roast.”
“It’s yucky, Auntie Ellen!”
“You’ll like it someday, kiddo. Hey, you warm enough?”
Neal snuggled into the heavy blanket she’d draped over his shoulders and nodded, then she handed him a box of raisins to snack on.
A long, long time later, Neal could hear the screeching of tires far away. Both he and Aunt Ellen turned their heads and could see a car driving on the road that led to the bridge. The car stopped in the middle and stayed there for a few seconds. Then there was another car on the road and the first car started to move again. Before he knew it, the first car slowly tumbled off of the bridge and fell into the water, nose first.
“Oh! Oh!” Neal exclaimed, pointing, trying to stand, but Aunt Ellen held him in her arms and shushed him. “It’s OK, Neal, no one’s in it.”
Neal watched in horrified fascination as the car sank quickly, its open windows speeding the process. Soon the headlights flickered and went out, followed by a great heaving in the water as the air from the car rushed to the surface.
Above their heads on the bridge, the second car had stopped, and someone’s voice was screaming something in the dark. A few minutes later, he stopped, and the car went away.
“Hey, Neal, tell me something - did your mom give you something today?” Aunt Ellen said when the car was gone.
Neal remembered the magic whistle, resting against his chest under his pajamas, and pulled it out.
“What did your mom say about that?”
“She said if I blow it, she could always find me.”
“Then blow it, honey, blow it.”
There was a splashing sound in the water as someone swam toward them.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal opened the passenger door of the rental car before Peter had even had a chance to bring it to a complete stop and bounded up the short walk of the tidy Cape Cod, pausing only to open the front gate. The aroma of lavender and roses assaulted him as he moved through the front yard to the door.
He took all three steps at once and slid to a stop, hitting the doorbell with a knuckle and waiting for an answer. He got none.
Undeterred, he made his way around the side to the back yard, hoping he’d find who he was looking for there.
There she was, on her knees tending to her flowers in the far corner of the yard, her slender arms tensing as she worried at the root of some plant, trying to dislodge it from the soil. She seemed smaller, somehow, since he’d last seen her over a dozen years ago, and there was more grey in her dark hair, but there was no mistaking her identity from here, her grace and poise had always made him marvel.
Neal was about to call out to her, but his hand in his pocket was toying with something he’d kept there almost daily for the past week, and he pulled it out. Glancing down at the purple whistle in his hand, he put it to his lips and blew.
Its sound was anemic at best, having sat disused in a box at Ellen’s for nearly thirty years, but it still made a noise, and at least it was audible. At the sound, the woman at the foot of the yard straightened up on her knees and turned.
Even from this distance, Neal could see the grave blueness of his mother’s eyes, but when she saw him, they widened in happy surprise. She rose with some difficulty, and Neal ran to her to save her having to come to greet her.
“Neal, what a nice surprise.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“I see you have your magic whistle,” she pointed out uneasily and peered up at him.
He looked down at it, then at her, and suddenly found himself speechless. How could he begin to say what he had to say to her? To tell her he forgave her for the lies she’d had to tell him? To thank her for the sacrifices she’d made, the danger she’d faced so that she could spare them both the pain of an abusive marriage? She’d faked their deaths to escape from the man - Ellen had confirmed it. How do you talk about that? How were words even adequate?
So in the end he said nothing. He threw his arms around her neck and pressed his lips to the warm skin of her neck. He breathed in her scent - so familiar for so long, and something he’d missed so much. He hoped she could forgive him for not understanding, for not remembering.
“Ellen told me you’d come.”
Neal pulled back and looked down on her. “She told me everything. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You seemed to forget about it. It was just easier, puppy.”
Neal nodded, understanding.
“You’re not going to try to find him, are you?” Mary asked.
“I’m not sure. Part of me wants to look him in the eye and tell him off. Part of me wants to kill him. When I think of what he did to you…”
“Don’t think of what he did to me, Neal. I don’t.”
Neal shook his head, pasted on his best con man’s smile, and wished he could.
Someone should, he thought, making a silent vow to talk to Moz and maybe Peter later. They’d find a way. They would.
We hope that you choke, that you choke
We hope that you choke, that you choke
We hope that you choke, that you choke
----
Author’s Note
• So this is an alternative interpretation of the lyrics, which are actually about a young couple running away and entering into a suicide pact (yeah - a really upbeat tune), but for some reason, this week I heard the line “Before your father hears us” and it suddenly sounded like it was being said by a mother to a child, and that’s where this story came from.
Thank you for your time.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Neal, Neal's mother, Ellen Parker, Peter; gen
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: Kidfic. Spousal abuse. Some homophobic language. Shameless melodrama.
Word Count: 3,900
Summary: To what lengths would Neal's mother go to keep him safe?
A/N: AU telling of Neal's childhood, set in S4, so Neal's back from wherever he went after “Judgment Day.” This fic was inspired by the lyrics to “Exit Music (For a Film)” by Radiohead. Yes, I am committing songfic. Additional notes at the end.
Fills the “loss of home or shelter” square on my H/C Bingo card.
----
Neal stood back from the painting he’d begun and eyed it critically. He knew he didn’t like it, he just couldn’t put a finger on why. Since returning from his self-imposed exile-cum-escape, he’d been dealing with a low-level melancholy that skirted depression, and he wasn’t entirely sure where it stemmed from. He chewed a thumbnail as he contemplated the dark swaths of black and Prussian blue warring with each other, and probably would have scrapped it entirely if there hadn’t been a knock at his door.
“Ellen!” he said as he opened it. “What a lovely surprise.”
She smiled as Neal bent down to kiss her cheek and take her arm to guide her into the apartment. He noticed she held a small box in her hands, about the size of a shoebox, and he looked at it quizzically. “Oh, honey, this is for you,” she said kindly and pressed it into his hands. “Now that you’re back, I remembered I had these things.”
Neal took the box from her and shook it; it was light, and the things inside slid around and hit the edges - they were much smaller than the box. “More things you saved for me?”
“A few,” she said with a slight smile.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
She stayed for a pleasant hour and they spoke of nothing of consequence, like they did when he was a teenager, but even so, he enjoyed it and her company. Ellen always had a way of putting him at ease.
When she’d gone, he managed to clear up the tea things and tidy the kitchenette before allowing his curiosity to get the better of him. He opened the box and inside were several pictures, a Matchbox car, a stuffed animal, and a purple plastic whistle on a nylon cord. He picked up the topmost photo and looked at it.
It was of him and his mother. He was small in the picture - perhaps four - wearing a blue and white striped t-shirt and shorts, a pair of too-large Chuck Taylors on his feet. He smirked, remembering - he was always tripping over his feet as a kid, because they were always growing too fast and his mother would always buy him shoes that were too big so that he could grow into them.
They were sitting in a park or something - Neal could see a fountain and greenery in the background. Something else in the photo caught his attention and he brought the photo closer. There were faded bruises on his mother’s inner arm - four of them, perfectly spaced, like fingers. Suddenly, he remembered the day the photo was taken.
And what happened later.
xXxXxXxXx
Wake from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today we escape, we escape
Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before all hell breaks loose
“Neal? Come on, puppy, it’s time to get up.”
“Don’ wanna. Still dark, Momma.”
“Oh, I know, sweetie, but we need to go soon, OK?”
Her voice was gentle, soft in his ear, like always. Neal sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawning.
“Here you are,” Momma said, laying a small backpack across his thighs. “You need to pack for an adventure. What will you bring?” She moved across the room, efficiently packing some of Neal's clothes, underwear, and sneakers into a soft-sided duffel.
Neal blinked at her, still sleepy and confused, but something in her voice made him pay attention to her. This was Important, and he needed to Cooperate. He jumped out of his bed and regarded the array of stuffed animals on the bed, chose two, then went over to his toy box and stuffed a few puzzles and cars into the bag. Finally, he went to the battered plastic easel set up near the wall by the closet and took his pad of paper down, and the box of all his crayons - he had a lot of crayons. He shoved the box into the bag, and tried to get the pad inside, but it was too big. It was too big, and the bag was full and soon the bag fell from his too-small hands with a clatter.
“Oh, shh, shh, shh, honey, you don’t want to wake Daddy.” Momma’s eyes were wide when she came to crouch in front of him. She glanced back at the door to Neal's room and then back at Neal, and he saw there were maybe tears in her eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Momma.”
“Oh, Momma’s not sad, puppy.” She stood and went to zip up Neal's suitcase, then came back to help him with the backpack. “Leave the paper - I’ll get you more tomorrow, OK?”
Neal nodded and followed her to the door. She turned and smiled at him; the finger she held against her lips was shaking. “OK, now, this is a secret adventure, and we need to be real quiet so no one knows. Can you do that?”
Neal nodded. “Is Daddy coming?”
“No. No, Daddy has to stay. You ready?”
Neal followed her to the front door, his socked feet making no noise, especially because he tiptoed.
Out in the hall, there was another suitcase, the kind with wheels. Momma picked Neal up, slung his duffel over her shoulder and put her hand on the suitcase’s handle. Neal hugged Momma’s neck, his backpack dangling from both his hands, and watched the door to their apartment retreat from view. It disappeared when the elevator doors closed, and Neal buried his face against Momma’s neck as they rode down to the lobby and away.
Away on their adventure.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal blinked, disturbed by the memory. It was not one he’d ever recalled before, though he didn’t doubt its accuracy. Still, it puzzled him.
He never had any recollection of his mother taking him away at all, had in fact assumed when he learned the truth about his father that he had been the one who left Neal and his mother. This memory left him off-balance and unsure how to feel.
Had his mother stolen him away from his father? Why? He looked down at the picture in his hands and his thumb ghosted over the bruises on his mother’s slender arm.
xXxXxXxXx
”Momma, I don’t like it here,” Neal whispered against his mother’s neck, scrunching his eyes shut. The waiting room was gray and dingy and smelled like throw-up.
“I know, puppy, it’s only temporary.”
“Part of the ‘venture?”
“Mm-hmm. Can I put you down now? I have to fill out some papers.”
Neal shook his head no.
“Will he let me take him?” a rich voice behind him asked.
They both turned their heads to find an older African American woman standing there with a kind smile on her face. Neal hugged Momma’s neck even harder.
“I promise I won’t bite if you won’t, little man,” she said with a laugh that sounded from deep in her chest, a laugh that made everyone feel better, a laugh that soothed even Neal's suspicions.
“I don’t bite!” he insisted.
“Well, that’s good, angel, because I don’t want to get bitten.”
Miss Wanda - that was her name, and it made Neal laugh - carried Neal to a line of chairs and sat him down and handed him his backpack. “You wanna show me what you got in there?”
Neal pulled out his box of crayons and opened them, showing them to her proudly. “My goodness, they’re arranged by shade,” Miss Wanda observed.
Neal nodded gravely. “So I can find the right ones.”
“Of course. And who’s that?”
Neal pulled out the two stuffed animals in his backpack. “This is Sandy,” he said, hugging the light brown dog to his chest.
“And this?” Miss Wanda held the stuffed poodle lightly in her hands and stroked her head.
“That’s Sandy’s Momma.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sandy’s Momma.”
“I see.”
“They’re my friends. They look after me and Momma.”
Miss Wanda found Neal some paper, and even though it was yellow and the colors wouldn’t be right, he thanked her and began to draw her portrait.
“What is this place, Miss Wanda?” he asked as he drew.
“This is Libby’s House. We’re a women’s shelter. We look after people and their mommas too.”
xXxXxXxXx
Neal blinked as the memory faded, shaken by its suddenness and clarity, and his eyes were caught by his old, threadbare, stuffed dog Sandy laying on the table across the room, watching over him, again.
xXxXxXxXx
Breathe, keep breathing
Don't lose your nerve
Breathe, keep breathing
I can't do this alone
Neal was hot. He was really hot and his pajamas were all sticking to him and he was hot.
“Momma,” he tried to call to her, but his voice wouldn’t work, so he rolled out of the lowered crib they had given him to sleep in - a crib! he wasn’t a baby - and went to wake Momma.
“What is it honey?” Momma asked almost as soon as Neal nudged her shoulder.
“I don’t feel good,” and it was so bad it made him cry.
Momma’s hand on his forehead confirmed it. “Oh, puppy, I’m sorry. Here, lie with me and you’ll feel better by the morning, all right?”
But by morning, Neal wasn’t better. By morning, he was so, so much worse, with wracking coughs shaking his tiny body.
“We have to take him to the hospital,” Miss Wanda insisted.
“I can’t, Wanda, Jack’ll find us if we do. You don’t know him, you don’t know what he’s capable of,” Momma said, her voice getting really high.
By lunchtime, Neal was finding it hard to breathe, and Miss Wanda had to call the 911. Momma held onto Neal's hand in the ambulance, and she was crying, and Neal didn’t want her to have to cry, but he couldn’t talk around the oxygen mask. At the hospital, the doctors were using big words like “respiratory distress” and “bilateral pneumonia” and Neal was taken away for some tests. He didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t make them listen and then he fell asleep.
Sing us a song
A song to keep us warm
There's such a chill, such a chill
When Neal woke up again, he could hear his Momma singing “You Are My Sunshine” to him, softly. She had him in her lap with her arms wrapped around him and they were sitting in the hospital bed when Daddy came.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal woke with a start, the covers wrapped around his legs feeling like a trap. He surged from the bed, gasping for breath around the sob that ripped itself from his throat. He fumbled for his phone and hit the last number called.
“Peter, can you come over?” he said desperately to the tired voice when it finally answered.
----
“Slow down, tell me from the beginning,” Peter said, grasping Neal by the shoulders and just squeezing them reassuringly.
Neal took a breath, but found he still had the feeling of panic pressing on his ribs, so he just blurted it out. “I found out that my father didn’t abandon my mother and me when I was small,” he said.
“Oh?” Peter said.
“My mother took me and ran away because he abused her.”
“Oh my God Neal, I’m sorry. How did you find out? Why now?”
“I just… suddenly remembered it.”
Nodding once, Peter walked over to Neal's kitchen, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, and returned. He poured two fingers out and handed a glass to Neal, who drank it down in one gulp. The liquor burned on its way down, and brought tears to his eyes, but as Neal breathed out, he could feel the warmth spreading through him, calming him.
“This is awfully sudden, are you sure, Neal?”
Neal crossed over to the bookshelf and brought down the box of mementoes Ellen had delivered and handed it to Peter. “Ellen brought these by earlier today, she said she’d kept them for me all these years. When I started looking at them, I remembered things.”
“Like what?”
“Like living in a women’s shelter for weeks, getting sick and being in a hospital, and then my father found us. And my mother - Peter, she was so scared of him, but she went back with him. She went back.”
Peter laid the box on the table and began picking through its contents. “How old were you?”
“Four, maybe? And I’m remembering it like it happened yesterday, Peter, but I mean, how is it that I didn’t know?”
Peter picked up the plastic whistle and weighed it in his palm, his fingers closing lightly over it. “Memory’s a funny thing, unpredictable. Seeing these things just triggered something, that’s all.”
Neal took a step forward, transfixed by the whistle Peter held. He reached out and touched it lightly with a fingertip. Peter handed it over and as Neal looped the nylon cord around his neck, he remembered what the whistle was for - why his mother had given it to him, when she had given it to him.
xXxXxXxXx
You can laugh a spineless laugh
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one in everlasting peace
Neal watched somberly as his Momma hung the whistle around his neck. “Don’t lose this, ‘K, puppy?”
“Why, Momma?”
“It’s a magic whistle. You blow it, and Momma will always find you, OK?”
Neal nodded and went back to making his drawing on the coffee table, but Momma looked at the clock and told him to clean up his crayons and paper, because Daddy was going to be home soon. Daddy didn’t like Neal drawing, it wasn’t for boys, he said. It was for girls and faggots, he said, and no son of his was no faggot.
Neal cleaned up, but he missed the first drawing he made today - he forgot it on the table. So when Daddy came home, he saw it and he got really mad. And when he got really mad, he always started yelling.
When Daddy started yelling, Neal was supposed to go to his room, Momma said. So Neal did, and he got into his closet and pulled down all his clothes over his head so he wouldn’t have to hear. But he could. He could hear Momma scream and cry, and then it went quiet. And then it was dinner time.
Neal knew he had to eat all his dinner up, but his stomach hurt. It hurt and hurt and it made him cry.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daddy asked.
Neal looked at him but couldn’t say, he couldn’t talk.
“You want me to give you something to cry about?”
“Jack, you lay a hand on him and I swear I’ll -“ Momma said.
“You’ll what?” Daddy asked and poured himself another Dewar’s.
Neal ate up all his macaronies and went to bed, trying not to cry or puke or nothing.
Later that night, his Momma came and woke him again. “Is it time for another ‘venture, Momma?”
“You could say that.”
“Are we packing?”
“Not this time, puppy.”
Neal grabbed Sandy and Sandy’s Momma and looked around for his crayons. “I’m sorry, baby, you can only take one thing.”
“But Sandy needs his Momma,” Neal insisted.
“She can’t come, Neal. You know, all puppies grow up to be dogs and then they leave their Mommas.”
Neal was shocked. “No, Momma, he needs her.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” Momma pulled her purse over her shoulder and held her hand out for him. “We need to travel light.”
Neal stared up at her with tears in his eyes, not wanting to leave, and so she picked him up and hugged him tight and took him to the door. “Will I have to leave you someday too, Momma?” Neal asked her, his voice so quiet even he couldn’t hear it.
“Not for a long, long time, Neal.”
Aunt Ellen was waiting for them downstairs, and Momma handed Neal off to her. “You sure about this, Mary?” Aunt Ellen asked.
“Do I have a choice? I have to protect my son.”
“You remember the route?”
“You just make sure he follows me, El.”
“We’ll see you by the river.”
The next thing Neal knew, he and Aunt Ellen were sitting in a motor boat on the river, anchored near the pilings of a bridge over the Meramec River, and Aunt Ellen was letting him have a sip of her coffee.
“What, you don’t like it?” she asked, incredulous, as he made a face. “It’s Italian Roast.”
“It’s yucky, Auntie Ellen!”
“You’ll like it someday, kiddo. Hey, you warm enough?”
Neal snuggled into the heavy blanket she’d draped over his shoulders and nodded, then she handed him a box of raisins to snack on.
A long, long time later, Neal could hear the screeching of tires far away. Both he and Aunt Ellen turned their heads and could see a car driving on the road that led to the bridge. The car stopped in the middle and stayed there for a few seconds. Then there was another car on the road and the first car started to move again. Before he knew it, the first car slowly tumbled off of the bridge and fell into the water, nose first.
“Oh! Oh!” Neal exclaimed, pointing, trying to stand, but Aunt Ellen held him in her arms and shushed him. “It’s OK, Neal, no one’s in it.”
Neal watched in horrified fascination as the car sank quickly, its open windows speeding the process. Soon the headlights flickered and went out, followed by a great heaving in the water as the air from the car rushed to the surface.
Above their heads on the bridge, the second car had stopped, and someone’s voice was screaming something in the dark. A few minutes later, he stopped, and the car went away.
“Hey, Neal, tell me something - did your mom give you something today?” Aunt Ellen said when the car was gone.
Neal remembered the magic whistle, resting against his chest under his pajamas, and pulled it out.
“What did your mom say about that?”
“She said if I blow it, she could always find me.”
“Then blow it, honey, blow it.”
There was a splashing sound in the water as someone swam toward them.
xXxXxXxXx
Neal opened the passenger door of the rental car before Peter had even had a chance to bring it to a complete stop and bounded up the short walk of the tidy Cape Cod, pausing only to open the front gate. The aroma of lavender and roses assaulted him as he moved through the front yard to the door.
He took all three steps at once and slid to a stop, hitting the doorbell with a knuckle and waiting for an answer. He got none.
Undeterred, he made his way around the side to the back yard, hoping he’d find who he was looking for there.
There she was, on her knees tending to her flowers in the far corner of the yard, her slender arms tensing as she worried at the root of some plant, trying to dislodge it from the soil. She seemed smaller, somehow, since he’d last seen her over a dozen years ago, and there was more grey in her dark hair, but there was no mistaking her identity from here, her grace and poise had always made him marvel.
Neal was about to call out to her, but his hand in his pocket was toying with something he’d kept there almost daily for the past week, and he pulled it out. Glancing down at the purple whistle in his hand, he put it to his lips and blew.
Its sound was anemic at best, having sat disused in a box at Ellen’s for nearly thirty years, but it still made a noise, and at least it was audible. At the sound, the woman at the foot of the yard straightened up on her knees and turned.
Even from this distance, Neal could see the grave blueness of his mother’s eyes, but when she saw him, they widened in happy surprise. She rose with some difficulty, and Neal ran to her to save her having to come to greet her.
“Neal, what a nice surprise.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“I see you have your magic whistle,” she pointed out uneasily and peered up at him.
He looked down at it, then at her, and suddenly found himself speechless. How could he begin to say what he had to say to her? To tell her he forgave her for the lies she’d had to tell him? To thank her for the sacrifices she’d made, the danger she’d faced so that she could spare them both the pain of an abusive marriage? She’d faked their deaths to escape from the man - Ellen had confirmed it. How do you talk about that? How were words even adequate?
So in the end he said nothing. He threw his arms around her neck and pressed his lips to the warm skin of her neck. He breathed in her scent - so familiar for so long, and something he’d missed so much. He hoped she could forgive him for not understanding, for not remembering.
“Ellen told me you’d come.”
Neal pulled back and looked down on her. “She told me everything. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You seemed to forget about it. It was just easier, puppy.”
Neal nodded, understanding.
“You’re not going to try to find him, are you?” Mary asked.
“I’m not sure. Part of me wants to look him in the eye and tell him off. Part of me wants to kill him. When I think of what he did to you…”
“Don’t think of what he did to me, Neal. I don’t.”
Neal shook his head, pasted on his best con man’s smile, and wished he could.
Someone should, he thought, making a silent vow to talk to Moz and maybe Peter later. They’d find a way. They would.
We hope that you choke, that you choke
We hope that you choke, that you choke
We hope that you choke, that you choke
----
Author’s Note
• So this is an alternative interpretation of the lyrics, which are actually about a young couple running away and entering into a suicide pact (yeah - a really upbeat tune), but for some reason, this week I heard the line “Before your father hears us” and it suddenly sounded like it was being said by a mother to a child, and that’s where this story came from.
Thank you for your time.