fic: The Funerary Complexity (1/?)
Title: The Funerary Complexity (1/?)
Summary: Penny's father died on a Tuesday in August.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through current episodes
Word Count: 1518
Notes: I had to get this out and started, even though my lappy is dead and spring quarter just started. Maybe if it's a good enough idea I can come up with more? Ah well, hope it's enough to get some folks interested. Stay awesome, Paradoxicals!
Penny’s father died on a Tuesday in August.
She’d tried to tell herself for a long time (since she’d moved away to Pasadena, moved in next to Mister Wizard and Mister Roboto) that she’d moved on, that she could sever all ties and make it on her own. And for a while, she felt like she’d done it, and she’d almost forgotten where she’d come from (corn-fed Four-H honey from the heartland, reduced herself to a junior rodeo joke). With Leonard to keep her occupied, she’d hardly had reason to dwell on the past.
And then July came-that sticky-hot day that felt like centuries ago even with everything so crystal in her mind. Mostly details: cold lemonade from a cheerful stand of Girl Scouts, the green paint of the bench hot from the summer sun and pressing pink stripes against the underside of her thighs, Leonard dribbling from the nose and face swelling from allergies to the outdoors, his kite forgotten and leaning against her shinbone as Sheldon’s tore viciously through Howard’s, Leonard’s eyes tracking a blonde jogging beautifully by.
“We don’t have anything in common,” Leonard had said. She remembered his tone exactly. It wasn’t harsh, it wasn’t guilty or accusing; it was as if Leonard was just realizing at that very second that everything about them was superficial. And she knew that nothing she could say would disprove him. She was more upset that he’d beat her to it.
She had considered leaving 4B for almost an entire day. She’d known too many break-up situations that left everyone involved stilted and stinging. She couldn’t stand another one of those, not with these boys. That night, Sheldon had approved a move to Penny’s apartment in favor of a mourning clause in their roommate agreement (although, he had warned Leonard, this nullified any prolonged personal grievances that might occur in the next thirty-day period). She was glad to have them-oh, she rolled her eyes and groused, but nothing warmed her heart like the triple-knock and the boys standing sheepishly in the hallway (except for the tallest of them, always stiff-backed and proud, no-nonsense). She told them that she didn’t need their consolation and comfort (she didn’t tell them that they were enough).
Penny got the phone call from her mother the first week of August (two weeks after the breakup, if the pileup of dishes was anything to go by). It’d been even hotter, then, even with the frozen peas pressed against her forehead. Mother didn’t bother softening the blow-heart attack, she said. Out of the blue (but she was kidding no one, everyone knew how he’d liked his butter and salt and his red meats). Penny sat herself tenderly down to the couch as she heard her mother vaguely buzzing on about expenses, all the relatives she had yet to call, whether to take him to Carradine and Bruster or the Coleman Brothers funeral home.
Penny wanted to know when he died. The minute and the second, just so she would know. Know where she’d been and what she’d been doing when it happened. Was she doing her laundry, up to her elbows in her underwear when her father’s heart beat for the last time? Had she been painting her toenails (still drying, little pink cotton balls topping the trashcan)? But she never asked, couldn’t find the courage or the strength around her tightly contracting lungs. She couldn’t remember when she hung up, or if she’d left the phone to sit on the counter.
She didn’t cry. Not yet.
It was Tuesday. She was due in at work. She wordlessly found her uniform and cleaned up as best she could to make herself presentable. No one could see her insides tightening and knotting and twisting themselves dry. She’d be fine, so long as no one looked at her longer than it took to take an order.
All four of them were sitting at their usual table: Leonard, who looked pale and not-unreasonably ill-at-ease, who looked sick; Raj chatting quietly since he hadn’t seen her yet, smiling broadly and clapping Leonard carefully on the back; Howard midway through half-grin, half-sneer and nodding silently to whatever Raj had told them (odds were it was something snide about Sheldon, since they all instinctively knew that Leonard couldn’t take it, not now); and Sheldon, head high like a bird, ignoring it all with an insistent, searching look in his eyes-looking for her, for the power she holds with a check and a pen like her sword and her shield. He found her, narrowed his eyes and nodded quietly in affirmation that she’d seen him. No escaping it now.
“I’m leaving.” She said it succinctly. No sense in dragging it out.
“Where to?” Howard asked, leaning in. Penny was back on the market but he knew better, even if he’d have the others think that he didn’t.
“Home.” Leonard hadn’t met her eye. She tapped a nervous pen to pad. “My Dad died today.”
All eyes looked up. Even Leonard had a sudden look of sympathy for her, surprising even to himself if his mix of emotions were anything to go by. Strangely, it was Sheldon who spoke up for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice in a strange new register.
She nodded. “Yeah.” It was half-hearted; maybe even she didn’t believe it’d hit her yet.
“Good,” Sheldon continued, “then nothing should hold up my barbeque burger.”
Leonard hissed “Sheldon!” whipping his head around to glare at the taller man (the only time she could really remember him coming to her defense when she hadn’t asked him to) and even Raj gave a strangled gurgle of disagreement.
“She wouldn’t have come in to work if she hadn’t expected to take our orders,” Sheldon clarified, folding his menu. “Right, Penny?”
She couldn’t even think of a comeback. Not with the strength it took to hold her insides together. She knit her lips tightly and turned her back to the hot whispering that overtook the table behind her. Leonard almost got up to follow her (she didn’t know what she’d have done if he did) but Howard took his arm and discouraged him in words she didn’t hear. She got Bernadette to take the burgers out to them-Penny sat by the big industrial sink full of cold, soapy water, knees tugged to her chest.
The triple-knock, just as expected, came exactly twenty minutes after she got back from her shift. He stood in the hallway, hands behind his back and eyes refusing to leave the bottom left-hand corner of the doorframe.
“Penny,” he precluded, not as sharply as he usually began, “it’s been brought to my attention that my disregard for your feelings this afternoon was out of line. And I apologize.”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, leaving the door open as she retreated into her apartment. He teetered on the edge of the threshold, not yet invited in and not yet taking his eyes from the corner of the frame.
“And you’re also planning on going back to Nebraska alone.”
She half-turned and his eyes ticked up. A knowing look from him, something that seemed genuinely apologetic-even if the boys had forced him here to make his apology public, he felt it. And he was trying to make amends. A worried gathering of his brow (on her behalf?) and the worrying of his fingers behind his back (working equations, counting off in base-eight sequence?), but he still hadn’t come in.
“I can barely afford the gas money,” she sighed, reaching for the milk carton and sniffing, “not like I can afford a plane.”
“Air travel wasn’t my point,” he went on, almost toeing the line of her doorframe. She nodded him in at last, and he rushed over to perch on the arm of her couch. “Crime statistics suggest that a woman traveling alone is over fifty times more likely to be a victim of theft, sexual assault or homicide than those who travel as a unit.”
He paused, her brow puckered up slowly.
“It’s dangerous to go alone,” he amended quickly. “Leonard obviously can’t accompany you, and Wolowitz can’t be trusted in enclosed spaces for prolonged amounts of time.”
She almost cracked a smile. “And Raj?”
“Koothropali, while being in one sense the ideal travel mate due to his selective mutism, loses this essential element to dealing with the bereaved.” His fists balled in his lap. “And my Meemaw wouldn’t let me let you go without someone to reduce your risks of traveling alone; I’m obviously the only one trustworthy enough.”
“You’re gonna keep me safe.” She took the opposite arm of the couch, disbelieving eyebrows arching into her messy bangs. She threw back the milk carton and drank the last, to Sheldon’s disapproving shudder.
“You’d rather go alone and risk your well-being?” High head, confident, and yet his eyes betraying a nervousness.
“If it’ll make Meemaw happy,” she said at last, crumpling the milk carton (never betraying that she needed this, needed someone-even if it was Doctor Whack-a-Doodle).