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Through a glass, darkly
by phineyj
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood
as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became
a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then
face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.
I Corinthians, ch. 13, v.1
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You look down at the people sitting out there - your mom and auntie in the front row (you wonder if there's any situation in which auntie Lisa wouldn't look elegant); a motley mixture of former patients and their fidgeting, over-dressed families; a whole load of doctors you've never seen before and a few you recognize. It's like a bizarre medical conference; you saw the black guy - Eric - and whatshisname the Aussie swapping business cards outside in the foyer just now. You can tell you're not the only one surprised by the turnout.
You glance down at your cello, and then up at the music to Faur's Elegy, which is sitting open on the stand in front of you. Your left hand is sticky with sweat where it rests against the instrument's neck. The music's borrowed from a friend, but you don't really need it; it's just for security. Your black dress is uncomfortably tight; it's an old one, you couldn't bring yourself to go shopping yesterday. It's your old cello too, but that's not a problem; in fact you still feel more comfortable with your well-loved Schnabl than the much ritzier Luxardo waiting for you back in Florence. And then you remember who bought you both instruments, and you lose it; you can't do this. Your eyes prickle and you want to cry, but you're not, no way, not with all these people watching.
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You do not like this place. The lights are too bright, it smells funny and you don't know the people. A boy called Frazer just kicked you and when you kicked him back, you had to go and sit in a special place on your own. You want your dad. Or your mom. Or your auntie. But you don't want this Susan lady with the ugly hair who says, "Hush, Emily, you're okay," because you are NOT okay. You don't know what to do, so you cry and cry, until your eyes hurt, and your head hurts, and after a while, Susan cries too. And then, at last, your dad comes and gets you.
He picks you up and says, over your head, "Don't take it personally; she's got a thing about bottle blondes."
You don't know what this means. You know bottle, but what is bottle blonde?
------
"If anyone gives you a hard time, pinch them. Smile when you do it, and blame someone else," he whispers in your ear, as he leaves you there.
You hate it here. They keep saying you can't do stuff. Like, you can read, but the teacher said you can't have read the whole book yet, and tells you to go back and do it again properly.
"I'm not going back there," you tell him, when he picks you up.
"Bad luck," he says, "Kiddie prison lasts another ten years, minimum, it's state law."
But he buys you an ice cream on the way home, and he doesn't yell when you spill most of it on the car seat.
------
School's not so bad; what they ask you to do is easy and you're always done before they think you will be, leaving lots of time for thinking up ways to annoy the teacher and make the other kids laugh. You make a friend, Sarah, who invites you to her apartment after school one day. Her mom is not at all like yours. Mrs Gould is loud, and laughs a lot, and says things like, "That would be awesome!" She asks about your parents, so you say they're both doctors, and that sounds boring, so you add, "And my dad only has one leg."
------
What your mom just told you sounds so unlikely that you nearly ask her if you heard right. She's sitting across from you at the kitchen table; there's a pile of neatly graded papers on one side of her, the daily newspaper on the other, and what she just said was, "Uncle James died this morning." She has the gray, tired look she has when there's bad news about one of her patients, and you don't think you're going to ask any questions, not at this minute.
------
You've never slept much; you can sleep for three or four hours at a time and then you wake; it's always been like that. It doesn't make you all that tired. Your mom just laughs and says it'll come in handy if you go to med school. Sometimes you listen to music on your headphones; other times you read a book, but mostly, you go downstairs to the study because your dad's nearly always awake too.
He'll be playing a computer game, half watching TV, or lying on the couch, reading a medical journal. You talk about anything and everything, keeping your voices down so as not to disturb your mom, because she has to get up early. You can tell him what's on your mind; somehow, the calm quiet of three in the morning encourages this. And it's only years later that you realize pain kept him awake and your conversations were one of his distractions.
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It seems like if the two of you stick around at home for one more minute your mom might just kill you both. It's nothing either of you has done, for once, but the pile of papers to grade has completely eclipsed the desk in her study and the air of tension's enough to make sparks crackle. It probably doesn't help that you all remember last year when your dad `marked' a few papers unasked.
She always gets like this at exam time; she's chief examiner this year and she wrote two of the papers. Your dad says if she's made them too hard all the students will fail and their parents will give her grief, and if they're too easy the pass rate will be too high and the other professors will give her a hard time instead.
He tells you this while you're sitting at a table at the Barnes & Noble caf at MarketFair. Your dad absolutely hates the mall and will normally mail order anything he wants, up to and including socks; he must have really been stuck for ideas this morning. You're hoping you can leave him in the bookstore while you go look at clothes. There's a bike place around the corner, which would keep him occupied for an hour or two for sure, but if he buys another bike, that's definitely not going to improve your mom's mood.
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Luke has transferred to your school from one out of state. He's different to the other boys; the morons you've known since you were in first or second grade. You notice him watching you across the room in English class. You like how his blue eyes contrast with his dark hair.
You run into him at your friend Jessica's sixteenth birthday party. He offers you a cigarette; you refuse but it makes you feel very grown up. Later, you kiss him outside in Jessica's back porch. It's not the first time you've kissed a boy, but it's the first time you've been with one who knew what they were doing.
He tastes of nicotine and the vodka you've both been drinking, and it's excitingly adult, especially when his hands go under your top and play with your breasts. He invites you back to his place - he says his parents are away; you think about saying yes, but you know your mom will kill you if you're back after midnight.
After that, you see him every day, mostly after school - there's a caf you all go to; you get a later bus and tell your parents you were using the library, if they even notice.
You have sex with him for the first time one afternoon when you both get let off classes early because the teacher's sick. It hurts - you knew it would and it's not as much fun as you expected, either, but you persevere, because Jessica likes it, and you don't see why you wouldn't. Not that you tell Jessica, not that time and not the next time either; you don't tell anyone, and Luke promises he won't.
You're in line waiting for the dining room to open when you hear them discussing it. Danny's saying to Mark, "She thinks she's better than the rest of us, but she's easy," and you hope against hope they're not talking about you, but it's you they're looking at and the worst thing is, Jessica's with them and she is whispering something in Danny's ear, which makes him laugh. She hangs out with them now, and you haven't seen her so much lately.
You walk past them quickly, acting like you need to head back to the classroom for something, and as you go past, you hear Mark comment, "She's a natural redhead you know...all over," and suddenly you've lost your appetite.
You corner Luke after math, and ask him how many people he's told.
"I don't know," he says, and he's smiling, like it's funny, "You didn't really think I was going to keep it a secret, did you?"
You are so angry you can't think what to say back, and the rage lasts all the way through history class, but then by the time you're sitting in your normal seat at string orchestra (you don't dare skip it; there's a concert next week) you are thinking miserably to yourself that you have been a complete idiot.
You know your mom will be out; she teaches one of her graduate classes on a Thursday night; you can see your dad's watching TV in the study, so you shut the front door gently behind you, take your shoes off and creep through the hall really quietly, avoiding the creaky stair just before the landing. You close your bedroom door carefully behind you, prop your cello up in the corner by the desk and it's not until you're curled up on the bed that you let yourself go.
It's such a relief to be able to cry at last that you don't even hear him opening the door until he's sitting down on the end of your bed. You feel instantly bad that you made him come up here. Your mother's been trying to persuade him for ages that he should get a stair lift put in, because the stairs are really dangerous on crutches, and he won't use his artificial leg indoors.
You don't tell him everything; why worry him? But you tell him enough, and you're scared for just one second because the fierce expression on his face makes you think he's going to shout at you, but he relaxes, and says, "You're not the one who's in trouble." You make him promise not to tell your mother, and as far as you know, he never does.
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Auntie Lisa is all kinds of cool. She's not really your auntie; your parents are both only children and she has five proper nephews and nieces, but you're the one in Princeton, so...she's the one who introduces you to mascara, and gives you your first glass of wine, and tells you it doesn't matter when you fail your driving test three times in a row, but finds enough time to coach you until you pass, because your mom's too busy and your dad tried but that attempt ended with shouting (his) and tears (yours).
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You and your dad drive down to Wildwood together, taking turns to choose the music. He picks the Stones, you choose Nina Simone and you have a mild disagreement over the CD your friend Donna lent you, because apparently Led Zeppelin thought of it all first, but you agree to differ on that one.
It should take three hours but you screw up the map reading so it takes four. Neither of you mind though; you're not late and you've got all weekend. It's pretty down there, with the ocean and the beach, or it would be, if ten thousand people weren't milling about like multi-colored ants that've been kicked out of their anthill. The two of you drink Coke and eat popcorn and watch trucks with ridiculous names squash each other.
You go to get some more food and when you get back your dad is talking on his cell; you know it's your mom on the other end, because he has the phone tucked into his shoulder in a private sort of way. He looks toward the arena, where Gravedigger is busy crushing an RV into a flat piece of twisted metal, and says into the handset, "Yes, he's here," and smiles.
The next day, he lets you drive some of the way back, and only someone who knows him very, very well would notice that despite his carefully casual expression, he's holding onto the road atlas so tight his knuckles are white, every time you take a corner too fast or cut up the car in front.
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This is terrifying. You rub your sweaty palms surreptitiously on your skirt, afraid your fingers are going to squeak on the strings or the bow will slide out of your grip. The music which sounded so good at home when you practiced in your bedroom isn't coming out right in this high-ceilinged, polished hall, and you wish the panel would crack a smile, or at least attempt to look like you aren't the worst cellist they've ever had the misfortune to audition.
You look over at the pianist, who gives you an encouraging nod. You wish you could have persuaded your dad to accompany you. You did ask him, but he said you should have a proper pianist. You don't see why; it's not like he can't play the parts and you've been practicing with him for months.
When he picks you up, he asks how it went, and you can't answer, because you are suddenly filled with an awful fear that you screwed up. This is your one thing, and you never doubted till now you would get it right. He doesn't push you for an answer, just drives you home in silence. He must tell your mom not to ask you how it went, because you hear them conferring in low voices down in the kitchen, and they leave you alone for the rest of the evening.
And when a week later you get the letter offering you a place, your mom squeals like a banshee and your dad says, "I knew they wouldn't be able to resist the House charm."
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You don't get a lot of mail so you're excited to see a letter on the hallway table in the residences when you get back from classes. You rip open the envelope and a piece of paper flutters out, with a post-it note attached. It's a personal check for two hundred and fifty dollars, made out to you, and on the note is scrawled, "I always used to run out of money about this stage of the semester, Dad."
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You hate the sickly-sweet smell of this place; a mlange of stale air, talcum powder and flowers rotting in their vases. It makes you act overly cheerful to compensate and you detest the person you become here, bright and breezy and glossing over life's unpleasant realities. But then you think how your dad must loathe it, and you refuse to feel sorry for yourself when you know you can walk out the door any time you like. So you make an effort, although it's hard, because your dad has always seemed invincible to you. And when the nurses here talk patronizingly to him like he's just another patient, you want to slap them. On a good day, though, he can still make them cry.
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Florence is not how you expected it to be, at all. You'd wanted to go there ever since you were a little kid, and your Uncle James told you it was his favorite place on earth. He told you about the amazing buildings, the art galleries, the history...but he didn't mention the drains, the lack of air con and the student-hating gallery staff. Still, once you become used to flattening yourself against the wall so you don't get run down by some maniac on a Vespa and reach the stage where you can get by in Italian (you thought you were pretty good before you actually had to communicate with real Italians), it's okay.
And you have a great tutor here, Signor Vianello, who unlike your teachers back home is not obsessed with technique and actually seems to think it's important to make a musical sound. As a bonus, he tells you all the backstage stuff at the opera house where he plays in the pit band: who's sleeping with whom; which tenor deliberately spits at the soprano he hates when they have a duet together; the stage manager who forgets to cue the lights when he's hung over.
You make some friends; Laura, a singer, who comes from Michigan and has an Italian dad, so the language is less of a struggle for her, and through her you meet Riccardo, who is tall, thin and dark with a cheeky grin. And at that point your junior year abroad starts to seem a whole lot better. You email your dad and tell him some of this, because you know when you first got here you probably sounded a bit down, and you don't want him to think you're miserable. But his reply is short and scattered, which isn't like him, and you think of calling your mom or auntie to check he's okay, but somehow, you don't get round to it.
---
Riccardo much prefers his electric guitar to the clarinet he's supposed to be studying, and as a result you get to hear a load of student bands, ranging from the good to the ear-destroying dreadful. He kisses you in a dark, smoky bar at one of these gigs, and you don't go home with him that night, but you know you will soon.
You have to do a solo recital towards the end of the semester; it counts toward your degree mark. You're well prepared and normally you like playing in public, but you do have a moment of severe self-doubt when you look at the blurred rows of faces down in the audience, fanning themselves with their programmes, texting their friends and gossiping - don't they realize how important this is? It doesn't help at all that Laura, who was on before you, has just run off stage in tears after corpsing in the middle of her final song - you told her not to try it off copy if she didn't feel ready, but she wouldn't listen - and you say a silent prayer that it won't happen to you.
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It's hours after your performance, and you're still on a high. For the first time ever, it wasn't just as good as when you practiced, it was actually better, as though the presence of an audience was the alchemy you needed to transcend the heavy physicality of wood and string and varnish and turn the concerto from notes on paper to real music. It makes you feel powerful, knowing that everyone is quiet and listening to you. You can take them with you, you can fly.
You're at the post-concert party, with Riccardo and some of his friends; all squashed into an apartment the size of a postage stamp. You look over at him, and he's got the exuberant smile on his face that's there on the rare occasions when his band manage to play together and you know he gets this - gets you - and suddenly you want to be in bed with him right now. Perhaps this shows on your face, because soon he's making excuses to leave, not that 4am is an unreasonable time to leave a party, and you feel a bit guilty, because Laura's drowning her sorrows in cheap white wine in the corner. But she winks at you as the two of you pass by, and you think maybe she'll be okay.
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Okay, so, this sex thing...is not overrated, you reflect, aching quite pleasantly in a few places. You're just thinking of waking Riccardo so you can start all over again, when the bedroom door is wrenched open and Laura's standing there, backlit by the late morning sun, wearing slippers and with her hair hanging dripping wet down her back. It occurs to you she must have just run across the courtyard. Seemingly unbothered by the fact neither of you have a stitch of clothing on; she says, breathlessly, "Emily, you've got to ring home right now."
You pull the covers up over you both, and grab your cell off the nightstand. You switched the ringer off last night before the concert and you must have forgotten to put it back on. There are five missed calls, three from your mom's number and two from your aunt's. You press the call button with a sick feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach.
You can tell from the tremble in your mom's voice that he's really sick this time. You're on the flight that evening; Auntie Lisa calls and tells you to put it on her credit card.
---
You sleep on the plane; you don't mean to but after hardly sleeping the last two nights you can't help it, and when you wake, your eyes sticky and with a crick in your neck, you're already starting the descent into Newark. And as the dull grey clouds part to let you through and the captain starts to spout cheerful banalities about the local weather, you know with a leaden certainty that you're already too late.
------
People are starting to stare. You need to pull yourself together.
You remember your teacher saying, "Being a professional means going out there and doing the best you can, even when you don't feel like it."
You remember your dad telling you, "Life is not a test."
You'd give everything you have, to see him one last time.
And you pick up your bow and say goodbye the only way you can.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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