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Sons and Mothers
by Phoenix4
Author's webpage: http://www.concentric.net/~phoenix4/slashdex
Author's disclaimer: Apologies to D.H. Lawrence for the title. Characters are not mine (although tomorrow is Christmas, so that could change...are you listening, Santa?)
Sons and Mothers
By
Phoenix4
I didn't recognize him.
New Delhi to Cascade is far from a direct flight. After all the trouble over the dissertation, I definitely needed to process; the best place I've ever been in search of enlightenment has been India, so I'd spent the months between "the incident" and December travelling its back roads. I found some beautiful silk saris, but no enlightenment. By the time I dragged myself off the plane in Cascade, I'd been either in the air or in an airport for over twenty hours. By that time, my priorities had narrowed to hugging my son, popping some ginkgo biloba and a gallon of mineral water, then sleeping ten hours.
So when I saw Jim's cropped head above the rush of holiday travelers, I just assumed that Blair would be standing next to him. Somewhere in the mental fog generated by extreme exhaustion or really good wine, I moved through the terminal on autopilot until the man bending over the water fountain caught my attention.
From the back, he had the kind of build that makes me think of sleek, deadly animals. Wide shoulders, narrow hips, nicely muscled without being too bulky. Short, black hair that curled in all directions at his nape. Faded jeans and a weatherproof jacket. Living proof that masculine didn't automatically equal tall. I wondered vaguely if I could bump into him, maybe get his name for the next time I was in Cascade.
Then he turned around.
Once in Argentina I went looking for my host's library in the middle of the night. I took a wrong turn, opened the wrong door, and came face to whisker with the largest tiger I've ever seen. Seems my host had been disposing of business rivals and feeding his pet in the process. I thought I could never be that surprised again. I never should have tempted the universe.
"Mom!" Before I could back up, this stranger with my son's face threw his arms around me. "I thought your plane was never going to land. You must be exhausted." Strong arms, a lot stronger than I remembered, hugged me tightly, then Blair backed away. "Jim, could you get her bags? Two, right? Never let it be said that Sandburgs can't travel light."
Jim smiled at me, the perfunctory smile he gives people he's trying to be nice to, and says, "Sure, Chief. Why don't you two head for the truck, catch up a bit."
And so Blair swept me out the door, still speechless beneath the weight of his overflowing words. That, at least, had not changed.
I felt much more centered after a few hours' nap. This wasn't the first time I'd been away a while and returned to find my son looking completely different. I won't get into the unfortunate attempt to copy Billy Idol's hairstyle when he was seventeen; I'd managed to keep a straight face, and that's all the mother's guild could ask of me.
The loft was decorated for Christmas, of course. I'd never really practiced the Jewish holidays with Blair, so I wasn't surprised. I'd wanted to give him the freedom to choose his own path instead of weighting him down with tradition. I thought he was happy doing something new every year. Maybe it should have been a clue that he chose anthropology; since I didn't give him any traditions of his own, he chose to immerse himself in the traditions of other cultures.
Anyway, they had a tree which obviously had the fear of Ellison scared into it; not a single needle dared to drop the entire time I was there. It was nothing elaborate, just mismatched ornaments, unblinking colored lights and gold tinsel. About what you'd expect two bachelors to manage. A wooden bowl on the coffee table held four iridescent blown glass balls. The last time I was there, the coffee table had been swamped in books and paper as Blair rushed to finish his dissertation. The pristine table and its carefully arranged ornaments stung like a sudden slap.
I emerged from Blair's little bedroom just as my son and his partner came home from work. Partner. If the realities of having my son become a cop hadn't sunk in during that scene in Captain Banks' office after the press conference, then the sight of the gun harness under his jacket finally drove the point home.
I must have made some sound through the sudden knot in my throat. Blair turned to me, blue eyes a little concerned, and asked if I was all right. Oh Gaea, I am so far from all right. But I covered it with a vague smile and a comment about the effect of the travelling on my circadian rhythms.
Blair noticed my fascinated, horrified gaze on the gun he wore, and bit his lip. With the speed of practice, he extricated himself from the harness and hung it on the hook beneath his coat so I wouldn't have to see it. For a moment, his hand pressed to his stomach, then slipped away guiltily.
"Zantac time," Jim said, his tone a gentle order that would not be ignored. Blair shot him a glance and muttered under his breath. I watched them, wondering how many times a day they communicated this way using Jim's senses, while I tried to place the word Jim had said.
"Don't forget the other one, too, Sandburg."
Blair made a disgusted grunt and headed for the bathroom. Evidently in manspeak, the grunt meant "okay", because Jim favored me with his level three smile, the one that meant that he was a little smug about winning their disagreement and trying to be nice to me.
"What was that about?" One of the benefits of aging -- as I grow older, I have more freedom to be blunt.
Now Jim gave me a look so blank, I'd think he only had two active brain cells if I hadn't seen him in action. "What?"
"Is something wrong with Blair?"
A shadow darkened Jim's eyes for just a moment. "Nothing to speak of," he denied quickly.
"Then there's something you can't speak of," I pounced, that latent mother's instinct rearing its head.
"Don't bother browbeating Jim," Blair interrupted calmly as he rejoined them in the living room. "It's no big deal, just an ulcer. Between the Zantac and the antibiotic, it should be gone in a few weeks."
No big deal. My precious boy who always found the silver linings and hated western medicine had worried a hole into his stomach bad enough to persuade him to take pharmaceutical drugs.
I wanted to blame the job, convince him to quit for his health, but then I remembered seeing him do the same little aborted tummy-rub right after the press conference. It had been a hard year, and I was sure I only knew a small portion of it; the signs were there on the outside in the strands of silver catching the light and the lines under his eyes. It made sense that a few of the battle scars were on the inside. Unfortunately it didn't make my heart hurt for him any less just because, like his gun, they were out of my sight.
We went out for dinner, interrupted a hit on a mob boss, then grabbed some ice cream on the way back to the loft. Nothing new for them, I know, but it was the first time I saw Blair act like a cop. Gone were the awkward, halfpanicked attempts to help subdue the suspect. Now Blair just got the guy in an armlock while Jim faced down a quartet of bodyguards intent on ending the threat to their boss in a permanent manner. Situation defused with a liberal application of Ellison charm and a Cascade PD badge, Blair cuffed the hit man, read him his rights and hauled the larger man out to the truck to wait on a patrol car.
Remember that enlightenment that I searched all over India to find? It landed on me like three lifetimes of karma right then. Blair wasn't studying a cop anymore, he wasn't pretending to be a cop, he was a cop. Because Sid and I had made being an anthropologist impossible, and Jim had stepped into the vacuum left behind.
Enlightenment doesn't always lighten your soul, in spite of its own advertising. "Enburdenment" would have been much more accurate.
I watched my son interacting with the other cops in Major Crimes, and suddenly I felt a great affinity for another Jewish mother two thousand years ago, give or take a few years. Like any other non-Christian, I'd picked up most of the Christmas story through sheer osmosis. When Mary held her baby that night, had she prayed for health and happiness and a long, peaceful life? Somehow I doubt she would have wished for his true fate. I wonder if she knew all those years as she watched him grow that she would lose him to this great destiny, and my heart aches for her.
When I had gazed into those huge blue eyes thirty years ago, I hadn't prayed that he'd run for President or win a Nobel Prize. Instead, I'd dreamed a mother's small dreams of a happy, loving child growing into a compassionate human being. Why did I forget those small dreams? In one moment of amazing arrogance, I became my son's Judas, and he lost everything. I watched him crucify himself in the name of love so unselfish that I couldn't bear to meet his eyes afterward and see the anguish there.
If Mary had gone to Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane, would she have begged him to save himself, deny his destiny? Would she have argued with a mother's breaking heart to change his mind? It's probably just as well that Blair didn't tell me what he planned to do at the press conference. The only thing he's ever denied me is when I asked him to stop working with the police. Asked, hell. I demanded, schemed and even tried to undermine his position with Captain Banks. If I'd had the chance to try to talk him out of the press conference ... well, it would have been ugly. I could have destroyed the bond between us in my efforts to save him.
So when they threw that gold shield at him, I smiled and congratulated him. I didn't even flinch when Banks mentioned firearms training. Then I did what I do best in the face of trouble; packed, called the airlines and left in a flurry of promises to write. Maybe if I had stayed in one place long enough to get a reply, this whole cop thing wouldn't have blindsided me.
Blair fell asleep on the couch halfway through Letterman's monologue. Jim just shrugged, whispered something about the antibiotics, and let Blair rest his head on his shoulder. I watched TV long enough to determine that I hadn't missed it, then gave in to the weariness left over from my nap.
"Do you need a hand getting him to bed?" I asked softly. "Tell me where the sheets and blankets are, and I'll get the sofa ready."
Jim gave me a strange look as he carefully slid out from under my son and settled him back on the couch cushions. "Didn't tell you, did he?" he mused. I received the distinct impression that he really didn't want an answer to that. Then he sighed, straightened up like a good little soldier, and nailed me with cold blue eyes that dared me to disapprove. "Blair sleeps with me now."
Now somewhere in a nearby dimension, I'm sure they set a limit for the number of heart-stopping surprises that can be inflicted on unsuspecting mortals in one day's time. I was now over that limit. I haven't touched real alcohol since '83, but I desperately needed a drink for this one.
"You're..." I stopped, hoping if I didn't say the word, it wouldn't be true. Wasn't life hard enough for Blair right now? I wanted to be open-minded and supportive, but all I could think about was Matthew Shepherd, homophobic cops who ignored requests for backup and the hundreds of little ways Blair would be ostracized. I'd seen it happen before, in the sixties. KKK, lynchings, the whole "separate but equal" that was never equal at all. I wanted to be angry with Jim for seducing my baby, but even in the depths of my shock, I knew that I was being irrational. I had taught my son to love the person, not the skin color or the gender or the religion. How could I blame Jim because Blair had listened to me?
"We're partners, in every sense of the word," Jim said, glancing down at my son with a loving little smile. "We belong to each other." Then he turned those cold blue eyes on me, and I shivered as I finally received the condemning glare I'd been expecting for six months. "I won't let you hurt him like that again, Naomi. I won't let me hurt him like that again. If you can't deal with this, then make up an excuse tomorrow morning and run away again."
I swallowed hard, but stood my ground. "I want him to be happy and safe, Jim. Don't expect me not to worry about this. It's a hard road he's chosen."
The glare backed down to a steady gaze. "We've chosen. He isn't alone in this. We have good friends to help us, and we're careful of the ones we know we can't trust. Besides," and here he almost smiled, "Blair is good at getting people to like him. In another year or so, I don't think anybody's going to care about what we do in bed."
Then his eyes shifted to the couch just before Blair lifted his head with a bleary squint. "Jim?"
"Bedtime, Chief." Jim helped him to his feet and steadied him as Blair glanced around.
"Naomi?"
I came forward, took his half-asleep face in my hands, and blinked back tears. There was the four-year-old who had fallen asleep under the table during the ERA planning sessions. The ten-year-old who had refused to go to sleep until Battlestar Galactica went off. The fifteen-year-old who had waited up for me to make sure I made it home safe from work. Nothing important had changed.
Kissing his forehead, I smiled and murmured, "Merry Christmas, sweetie. I'll see you in the morning." Then I moved to Jim, reached up to draw his face down low enough to kiss his forehead as well. "Sleep well, boys. How about blueberry waffles for breakfast?"
My body still hadn't settled into Washington time, so I had the kettle going by the time Blair stumbled downstairs in sweatpants and a large flannel shirt that probably belonged to Jim. "Merry Christmas," I whispered, not sure how quiet I'd have to be not to wake Jim. "Sleep well?"
Blair paused in mid-yawn, that adorably confused look on his face that I remembered from so many other mornings. No matter how many sunrise meditations he'd sat through, he never had been a morning person. Then he remembered just where he'd come from and what he hadn't told me, and blushed. "Um..."
I took pity on him and handed him a cup of tea. Peppermint and comfrey, for the ulcer. "Jim explained last night."
He took a cautious sip, his lashes veiling his eyes. "How do you feel about this?"
"Worried," I admitted honestly. "Happy for you. Terrified of what the other pi...cops will do. Glad you've found someone to love. Dreading the prejudice you're going to have to face."
He smiled, just a little. "The festival of Janus, the twofaced god doesn't start until next week. Feeling a bit ambivalent?"
"I'm a mother. I worry. It's part of the union rules."
Shaking his head, he looked up at me. "Mom, I've been facing discrimination and prejudice all my life. I'm a short Jewish man with long hair, or at least it used to be long. I'm too smart and too in touch with my feelings. I was always the new kid in town, the one who blew the grading curves, the one who didn't fit in. If I'm not being slammed for being gay, it's because I'm Jewish, or a bastard, or a cop, or white, or environmentally aware. I've been chased, spit on, beat up, vandalized, and excluded. And that was just in grade school."
Suddenly I am furious, white-hot anger directed at all the idiots who ever hurt him, and even more at myself. "Where the hell was I when this was going on?"
Blair shrugged, cupping both hands around his mug. "Making a living. Campaigning for civil rights. Preventing corporations from spilling toxic waste into the rivers. Children are cruel, because they learn from their parents. You were trying to teach the parents not to pass the hatred down to another generation."
Tears well in my eyes. "It must have been so hard for you." And if I'd had any idea during those years, I must have ignored it.
"Yeah. Sometimes. But I knew that no matter how bad it was, we wouldn't be there long. And it wasn't all bad, either. I made friends sometimes, and I always knew that you loved me. No matter what the other kids said, I knew it couldn't be true because if I was a monster, you wouldn't have loved me."
Then the tears were running down my face. "I'm sorry," I whispered, meaning for more than just the childish taunts and ridicule. "I'm so sorry, baby. For everything."
He came to me, put his arms around me and led me to the couch. Kneeling before me, he held my hands and let me cry. "It's all right. I should have known years ago that I could never submit my dissertation. Jim hates the concept of fate, but I believe that everything that happens to us leads us to where we have to be. We had to go through the pain and the lose everything else before we realized that we couldn't lose each other."
It doesn't surprise me that he knows exactly what I'm apologizing for. What is surprising and humbling is the serenity in his eyes. No wonder I hadn't recognized him at the airport; so much has changed on the inside as well. There is a maturity and peace in him now that he never had before. All those years he'd been searching blindly like me, trying to find something that was missing without knowing what it was. And now he'd found it in the most unlikely place in the arms of a man who wore a badge and a gun.
Another of those little dreams parents have for their children you hope that your child will surpass you, become more than the sum of the mother and the father. Looking at my son kneeling at my feet, feeling the power of the spirit world shimmer around him and seeing the ancient wisdom in his eyes, I couldn't help the wave of awe and pride that swept through me. Bringing our linked hands to my lips, I smiled through my tears. I wanted to shout it from the balcony: look what I helped create.
"I have always been proud of you. I will always love you. No matter what."
A small choked gasp made us both look up. Jim stood at the foot of the stairs, painful hunger on his face. Remembering the little Blair had let slip about Jim's family, I knew that it was quite possible that Jim had never heard those words from either of his parents. I raised one hand to him, palm open, and waited as he edged over slowly to take it. He knelt gracefully beside Blair, his face solemn as I stroked my other hand over his hair.
I had raised a son alone long before it became fashionable or accepted. It hadn't been easy, and Hera knows I'd made so many mistakes, but I had done it without the support of a family or society. If I could do that, I could accept this complex, scarred man into my heart as well.
"You gave my son what he needed, the one thing I never could," I told him. "You gave him a home and a place to belong. I didn't raise you, but I am proud of you, James Ellison. And I will always love you. No matter what."
As both sets of arms closed around me, I closed my eyes and made a note to get a picture of the two of them before I left. I had a new son. What better present could a mother receive for Christmas?
->>>* The End *<<<-