PawPaw #19, Vanilla Custard #18 + gummy bunnies + malt
Story: Blaze Mafia Family
Title: Family Update
Prompts: PawPaw #19: from the bottom of my heart, Vanilla Custard #18: Allons-y! + gummy bunnies (500themes #251: all sorts of complicated) + malt (Roisin's Easter Egg - "The nice thing about standards is there are so many of them to choose from." Andrew S Tanenbaum)
Rating: PG13
Words: 1088
Characters: Paul Robinson, Heidi Robinson
Summary: Holy crap. I started this piece with the intention of fleshing out the one sister Paul still talks to and instead all this family drama jumps out of freakin nowhere! Paul gets an update about his family from his sister.
"Cate's pregnant again."
"Christ," Paul said. He dropped down on his couch with a beer in one hand and the phone in the other. Firebird was safe in the house for the night so Paul had slipped into his suite to place his bi-monthly call to his sister. "How old is the last one she had?"
"Not even twelve months yet. Her and John are like cats in heat. It's disgusting." Heidi didn't sound disgusted. She sounded envious. Paul could relate because he was a little jealous of his oldest sister too. Cate had been married for sixteen years, had four kids all under the age of ten, and still was wildly in love with her husband. Cate had always been the lucky one in love.
"What about you, Di?" Paul asked. "Your love life still impersonating the Sahara?"
"Piss off," she said affectionately. "For a while there was a guy that looked like he might meet standards but it didn't work out."
Paul grinned. "What was wrong this time? Did he have a stray eyebrow hair? A scuff on his boots?"
"Piss. Off." Heidi repeated again, then laughed. "For your information, he had crooked teeth. I thought it would be okay because he didn't show his teeth when he smiled but then we kissed and I could feel it. It was...unbearable."
Paul laughed. "You're hopeless, kid."
"Who're you calling a kid, baby brother?" Heidi shot back. She'd always taken every opportunity to lord over the fact that she was older than him, even though it was only by one year. "Anyway, what about you? How's it going for you in romantic New Palermo?"
"The usual," Paul said noncommittally. "Nothing to comment on."
Heidi's sigh sounded harshly over the phone lines. "You never have anything to comment on, Paul. About your love life or otherwise."
"Let's not have this argument until after you tell me what's happening with the twins. Then you can throw a fit and hang up on me to your heart's content."
"I don't throw fits," Heidi sniffed, but she let Paul guide the conversation back to safer waters. "The twins are fine. Joanna's still getting by on ten hours of sleep a week while she's in the ER but she just got picked to present one of her papers at some orthopedic conference so she's over the moon. Gretchen's poor, as usual. It looks like her library is going to cut back her hours again."
"She's not going to be able to afford food if those tightwads cut her hours again," Paul said. "Is she going to be alright?"
"Gretch'll be fine, stop worrying. Bruce's garage is making good money. Plus I think this is going to be the straw that breaks Gretchen's back. She said she talked to a couple people she knew about the possibility of working at the university library. It'll be good for her to work at a place that isn't run by senile old maids."
"It'll be a change of pace, anyway." Paul grumbled. He took a long drink from his beer then asked quietly, "What about Mom, Di?"
Heidi hesitated and Paul felt his gut twisting. "No change, good or bad. Her white blood cell count is holding steady. She still doesn't have much energy though. Winslow and I have taken over most all of the ranch work these days."
Paul nodded even while his throat tightened. "Heidi, have you talked to her about coming to the clinic here?"
"Yeah," she said, and her tone made it clear how well that had gone over. "Paul, Mom wouldn't even let me finish once I mentioned the clinic was in New Palermo. She walked out of the room."
"What about Joanna? She's a doctor. She should know that the best cancer specialists are here! Why isn’t she convincing Mom to come?"
"She's tried too. Mom won't listen to her either." Heidi let out a deep sigh, one full of pent up emotion. "Paul, you know what it's going to take for Mom to go. When are you going to talk to her?"
"The last time I tried to talk to Mom she threw her wine glass at me," Paul reminded his sister ruthlessly. "If I come anywhere near her, it'll just agitate her and make her condition worse."
"Then what are you going to do?" Heidi snapped. "You won't come talk to her to help her get better. Are you just going to wait for it to get worse? Will you come when she's on her death bed? How about the funeral? Will you grow a set and show up then?"
"Mom's not going to die," Paul growled.
"You don't know that!" Heidi yelled into the phone. Paul let a moment of tense silence stretch out while his sister regained her composure. When she started again her voice was softer in volume, but no less intense. "Paul, please. It's been four years since your discharge. You two need to resolve your issues at least enough that she can stand to be in the same city as you."
Again the phone lines went silent. Paul leaned his head back against the back of the couch and stared blindly at the ceiling. All the anger and accusations that his mother had thrown at him the last time he'd seen her came back to him like it had happened earlier today, not four years ago.
What had been the worst part about that nightmare encounter was that everything she'd said was true. He wasn't someone Lyla Robinson could be proud to call her son. Not then and not now. She'd demanded that he stay away from her until he became the good man she raised him to be. Paul knew he would never be that man. He'd resigned himself to the loss of his place in the Robinson family when he'd joined the Blaze Family. By and large, he didn't regret his choice. His mother, his older sisters and their families, even Heidi couldn't understand that Paul wasn't the good natured, church going, country boy that they'd grown up with. That boy had died a long time ago on a dark night in a country far away, and the man that'd taken his place wasn't capable of that kind of innocent goodness.
But his mother was sick. It was the twist of fate that rendered all his inner arguments pointless because, much as she despised him, Paul still loved his mom.
"Alright," Paul said into the phone. "I'll try to talk to her."