Blood of Abraham - Chapter Twenty Two
by Mik
"Fox, what did you do?"
I felt mildly sickened by her expression, by the unexpected accusation in her voice. There was some unnamed thing within them against which I had no defense. "I...I didn't do anything," I answered flatly.
"Then how do you explain this...this..." she shook the little black thing in her hand at me. Her voice jerked up just a notch or two below hysteria. "What did you do?"
Her voice, her expression, her body language conveyed so palpable a threat I backed up instinctively, stopping short of an actual cower. "I didn't do anything."
Her face darkened, her lip curled. "Don't lie to me, Fox Williammmm..." Realizing that her emotions were getting away from her like that apocryphal white whale, she began to reel her feelings in, tacking and pulling in prim jerks until she had gaffed them and had them tucked away from sight. With one final composing breath, she lifted her eyes to me again and demanded, "Where is it?"
It. Not he. I pretended not to understand. She didn't pretend to understand my pretense. She gave me a glare so sharp it could perform surgery. "The..." still, she wouldn't say baby, wouldn't give him humanity, wouldn't give him the acknowledgement of being. She held out the lamb again. When I reached for it reflexively, she yanked it away. "Where is it?"
There were so many inexplicable aspects to Bram's existence that they almost defied inventory, but I have to confess, her reaction was the most inexplicable of all. When I had allowed myself to contemplate her response to the knowledge of a grandchild I had imagined her joy, her denial, her confusion, her determination to claim this connection to her daughter, but I hadn't expected this not so faint disgust and indictment. Unable to counter either, I merely nodded toward the door to the nursery. She turned away from me, and slipped into the room, closing the door quietly but with an effable firmness that said I was not welcome at this introduction.
Not that I wanted to be there.
As that horrible exchange was taking place, I had been aware of Rachel hovering nearby, her hands wound up tightly in a dish towel, prepared to do battle at the first sign of danger to her charge. As soon as my mother had turned toward Bram's bedroom, I gave Rachel a sharp shake of my head, warning her off any action she was contemplating. She backed up and a moment later I heard the door to her room slide shut, leaving me alone to wonder, fear and dread what could be taking place behind the nursery walls.
I didn't have to wait long to find out.
Mom didn't bring the baby with her, as I expected, when she returned. I had thought she'd appear, cooing and overcome with the realization that her daughter lived and she held the proof, or wild eyed in determination to get the baby out of my clutches and make a dash for it, or some combination therein. However, she emerged from the room, empty armed, white faced and shaken, coming only a step or two toward me. I could see her glance up the foyer, longing for a graceful exit, or at least a hasty retreat. At last, hands knotted around that ancient woolly thing, she considered the carpet between us and sighed in resignation. "I think it's time for the truth, Fox."
I let out my exasperation and bewilderment in an explosive groan. "If I knew it, I would tell you." My voice was shakier than I would have liked. I needed to sound confident and composed, yet even to me, I sounded like a child desperate not to be blamed for the broken lamp or missing money. "All I can tell you is what happened: I came home from work one night to find him in a basket on my doorstep. There was a note that said he belonged to me. I can show it to you, if you'd like." I flicked a hand out toward the stairs nervously. "He's not mine. It's not possible." I made myself meet her eyes, but her eyes weren't there. They were fixed on the floor, still. "Believe me, we did try to find his parents, we looked at the Missing and Exploited Children database, and Scully did some tests, looked at DNA. There was enough of a match to indicate he had to be related to me, and there was that lamb, so we assumed he was Samantha's and-"
Her head jerked up. "Why would you assume that?" she protested. "Samantha's not-"
"She might still be alive, Mom." I tried to say it gently, with hope, but truthfully I was angry at her. What right did she have to give up on her daughter, her own flesh and blood? I never did. I'd never give up on Bram, either, and I would hardly qualify as Father of the Year. Yet here was this paragon of motherhood, the mother of all June Cleavers, who had given up on both of her children years ago. "She must be. There's no other explanation. Bram's DNA is so close to mine, he has to be related to me some way. Mom," I finished as compassionately as I could, "I think he is her son."
She was chewing on her lips, trying to keep words inside. But they came out anyway. "It didn't occur to you to talk to me when this happened? To ask me if it could be possible?"
I flinched at more unspoken accusation. "I was afraid, Mom," I admitted. "I thought you'd insist I give him up, turn him over to authorities...or take him away. I couldn't do that. He means too much...the idea of him means too much. As long as there was a chance he was related to me, as long as there was a chance Samantha was still alive-"
"This has nothing to do with Samantha," she insisted crisply, looking anywhere but at me, anywhere but at the possibilities.
"It has everything to do with her, Mom," I shouted, frustrated. "That kid is so close to me genetically, the only way he could be any more related to me would be if he were my own son. Since he is not, the only other explanation is Samantha." I lowered my voice belatedly. "Can't you see that?"
She shook her head. Just a sharp, short chopping away of any truths but her own. "That child cannot be..." she wrestled emotion for breath again, "cannot be related to Samantha."
"How can-"
"Not if, as you say, he appears to be related to you."
"That makes no sense," I argued. "Mom, for once in your life, try to be open to possibilities. Samantha must still-"
"Samantha was not your sister."
I didn't move, I couldn't have. I was already backed against the chair. But I felt as if I'd staggered and fallen all seventeen stories to the ground. "But...I...what do you mean?" Everything I was, everything that had made me the man I'd been to that moment was jerked out of me and smashed. "I...of course she was my sister." Even in my own ears, my voice was small, strident. "I was there. I remember..."
She tried to work up a smile from the diluted well of her feelings for me, but it wasn't coming. "Fox." She held out her hands as if she might touch me, but she didn't. Not because she couldn't, but because she wouldn't. Instead, they jerked in the direction of a chair behind me. "Sit down, Fox. I believe I said it was time for the truth."
I still remained standing. To sit down would be to concede that she was going to tell me something that, for all her protestations, couldn't be true. Somehow I managed to keep my gaze steady and looked down on her, for the first time in my life keenly aware of my height, and her lack of it. For the first time in my life, she seemed to be aware of it as well. She stepped away from me, still clenching the lamb in one white knuckled fist. "Samantha was not your sister," she said again. Sensing my protest before it existed, she held up one hand and turned her face away. "Not biologically."
"Mom." I'm not sure what I was trying to say to her...I was still angry, I was still confused, but I couldn't help being a little relieved and amused as well. "I know she was only my half sister. Dad...her dad...I mean..."
"No." Just that one word took something else away from me. More than discovering the truth of my parentage, the one little word took away William Mulder's role not as my father, but as my dad. "That's not what I mean, Fox. You are…you were an only child. We had..." she paused, lifting her chin with a twitch, "considered having another child." There was a brief look of defiance in her expression but it was not aimed at me. Then it vanished. The glance she sent my way was much softer, almost kind. "You may have overheard us discussing that possibility and assumed things."
I shook my head faintly. I had no memory of such a discussion. I remembered her being brought home, and being charged with keeping her safe. Those were real events, not just childish imagination.
She paced away from me. "There were circumstances...concerns. Your father was in a very dangerous business." She paused, laughing grimly. "Business." She turned and looked at me. "That's what we used to call it. The 'business'." When I didn't respond, she continued to pace. "There had been threats. There were times when we had feared for your safety. Having two children just increased those fears, those threats exponentially."
"But you had two-"
She silenced me with another look. A warning to be silent before she was forced to tell me more than I could bear hearing. "There was a man…a man your father worked with. He was..." she paused again, delicately weaving the narration together in her mind before continuing, "he was what you might call your father's equivalent behind what was then the Iron Curtain. He had two children. Twins." She smiled again but only for a moment. The smile gone, her face was shuttered and dark. "Like us, he had been threatened, his children threatened. Unlike us, he had already lost his wife and one of his children. They were taken away. He never saw them again. He appealed to us to protect his daughter."
"Samantha." I didn't believe it. I wasn't going to. I was determined.
"Her name wasn't Samantha then," she told me, as if somehow that detail was, in the whole scheme of things, even remotely pertinent. "We gave her that name in the Jewish custom of naming a baby after a recently deceased relative. You had a great-uncle Samuel, so we..." she shook off the dusty history. "We named her Samantha."
"What was her name before?"
"That doesn't matter." She was smiling again. "She was a beautiful little baby. So sunny. So sweet." She looked at me, still smiling. "You were terribly jealous of her."
'Were'? I was somewhat jealous now, seeing the expression on her face. It was painful enough not to be the preferred one with a biological sibling in the house, but to find out my own mother preferred a stranger's child to her own? I felt my psychological sphincter clench. I couldn't let that out. "I still don't understand. Why would you take her? You were worried about my safety. What made her safer with you than with-"
"You don't understand, Fox." Her voice
was still light, thoughtful, but there was a dangerous warble to it. "This
was the
The son I was supposed to be wanted to reach out to her but the man she'd made me had nothing to say, no way to comfort her. And where was my comfort? My entire reason for living, working, fighting, pursuing had been the horrible way I had lost my sister. I wanted her back. And now I discovered she wasn't even my sister. I dropped into the chair, staring at her.
Her expression sank into disappointment, a familiar enough face to me to clutch like a rudder and right myself. I had disappointed her because I hadn't rushed to comfort her. And yet, having done this familiar thing was comforting to me. Her eyes went over me, sizing up my reaction. "She's gone," she said with finality. "We must accept that. We must also accept that..." a fingertip swept to one side, indicating the nursery door, "is your son."
I swallowed. I hadn't bothered to make that connection. I'd been slightly distracted by other revelations. "I don't know how."
"Oh, Fox," she said with great weariness, "I'm sure your father had that discussion with you."
Actually, he never had, but it didn't matter. I was resourceful. I had many discussions with many people, and probably knew more on that topic than my father could ever dream of knowing. I felt a cramp of memory shudder through me, and a faint sweat on my id. "My father," I repeated dryly.
"Well, all right." Now she just sounded exasperated. "William. The man who raised you."
"Mom…" I arched a brow. "Let's get this clarified before I go on. You are my mother, aren't you?"
"Well," her voice got crisp, "I can see this was a mistake telling you."
Yes. A fucking huge mistake. "Are you?"
"Yes." She held out the lamb. "And he is your son."
I shook my head. "It's not possible."
"And you mocked me for not believing in 'possibilities'," she jeered. "You, with your fine ambitions, your high ideals, your superior perception of yourself, looking down on we mere mortals because we accept facts for what they are. You're always searching for truth. But we…" her voice twisted like a knife in my chest, "we know the truth. We know it and accept it. You deny it. You are a hypocrite, Fox Mulder. And I'm ashamed of you for that."
I'm surprised I couldn't hear the screeching violin behind her words, or see the slashing curtain in the shower. Her words were the Norman Bates to my psyche. But she was right. That was the worst thing of all. I stood, heavily. "You're right. Here's some truth for you. I haven't been with a woman in over three years." I drew a deep breath. "Mother, I'm gay. I like men. I sleep with men. I am living with another ma-"
She slapped me. Of course she did. She would. She had to. "Don't say that." And then she said, because she had to, "You were married."
"Why do you suppose she left me?" I finally touched her, grasping her shoulders, squeezing slightly, but with a great urge to dig my fingers in, to hurt her and at the same time to be part of her flesh again. "Mom. Mother. If he's my..." I let the denial go. If I denied him, I was no better than the people who denied me, denied the girl I'd always believed my sister. "All right." I embraced it as I wanted to embrace her, as I had always wanted her to embrace me. "He is my son. I don't know how, when or with whom, but I won't deny he's mine."
She was trembling between my hands but her conviction was strong. "You can't keep him."
For her to suddenly present me with the argument I had expected before my life had been gutted like a pig in an abattoir pushed me from the last centimeter of my reason. "Why not?"
Her eyes were round and more open and revealing than I'd ever seen them, her expression more unguarded than I'd ever known. And in that expression I saw her reason. I let my hands drop from her shoulders. If she fell, I didn't care.
End Chapter Twenty Two