Chapter 15: Anthem

“…and I'm wasted, and I can't find my way home”

The Cosmic Postman stood ankle deep in the Sea of Despair and took stock. It hardly seemed reasonable; all this pain held hostage in one small room. He very much wished to make his last delivery to someone still among the living. A letter tucked into the pocket of a corpse probably wasn’t what Sam had in mind.

Eleven men in rumpled black suits huddled around the body of his father. He didn’t think they wanted to be there but had no one to lift them up. There was no Frank to hold his brothers’ hearts while they crawled out of suits that were on fire long before they put them on. He walked over, bent down, and extubated his father. Leaving him like that wouldn’t have been intentional, no matter how bad he’d been.

He dropped the tube on the floor and addressed the last of the brotherhood. “This is going to sound stupid but maybe have a little faith, blind or otherwise. Get off the floor and go outside; Dr. Webb disarmed the building, it’s safe now. Go to the back of the parking lot and take off your suits. Yup, right down to your tighty-whities and your socks. Put ‘em in a pile and then you decide what should be done next. I’d take you if I could”.

Three of them got up and walked to the elevator. The other eight couldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s OK guys, it takes as long as it takes. But you’re not alone, OK?” Coop turned back and surveyed the room.

He saw Dr. Webb, out of his tweeds and into a white jacket, with a stethoscope, tongue depressor, and a clipboard. Jeffry Franklin was sitting up on Christie’s reception desk in his underwear and socks. Dr. Webb also had a small taser hooked to his belt. When Jeffry opened wide, Coop saw at least one extra row of teeth in there. Well. Dr. Webb was the best candidate for that job.

There were two people Coop was sure he’d never seen. They wore the remains of what must have been very nice corporate uniforms and sat side by side looking at their bare feet. They both had what looked like random tufts of fur and the woman was a solid candidate for adult orthodontia. He thought these must be Mr. Franklin’s staff. He was glad to see they were wearing people suits again. Mostly.

He saw Mr. Hunter standing over the terribly hairy Mr. Franklin who seemed to have grown a tail. Mr. Hunter slid down the wall next to Mr. Franklin and held his hand. Coop didn’t know who told them, but he couldn’t think what else would make them cry like that. He wanted to help them, just like he wanted to help his brothers in black, but he couldn’t stop yet.

He knelt in front of them anyway and spent a minute in silence. Mr. Hunter patted his shoulder and said it was time to get going again. “Don’t stop looking, Mr. Anderson. Grief spreads and sticks and sometimes kills if you find yourself alone too long.”

Coop looked around the room and mentally checked off names. Working backwards, he could account for all but three.

Laura, Greenwich, and Marty were missing and one of those people had a letter to sign for.

He wandered into the hall and closed the door behind him. He missed Margaret and hoped she was OK. He knew you could put the moon and stars at somebody’s feet, and it might never matter; not if that somebody’s world had gone dark. Coop leaned against the wall and listened to the sadness in the air; he could hear waves of darkness crashing against the shore.

Coop heard the hiss of an oxygen tank; no voices, but maybe a whisper or two. He practiced his newly developed skill and floated like a shadow toward what he truly hoped were three live bodies.

He performed the compulsory knock and opened the door. Greenwich didn’t look up; she had both hands on a boy who looked pretty damn dead as far as Cooper Kettering Anderson could tell.

“Greenwich.”

“Yes, Coop?”

“Is that Marty?”

“Yes, Coop.”

“Greenwich…”

“No, Coop, Marty is not dead.”

“Well, he sure looks dead. Do you want me to get Margaret just to be sure?”

“Leave Margaret alone. She doesn’t need any more pain just now, and I don’t think she can help anyway.”

“So, we just wait?”

Without taking her hands off Marty’s chest, Greenwich turned her head far enough to look at Coop. “In a manner of speaking, we’re doing just that, Coop. We’re waiting on Marty. He’s either going to spit this thing out on his own or it’s going to flash fry his brain in the next five to ten minutes.”

Coop noticed two fingers sitting in a basin on the counter. “Greenwich, what happened to the kid’s fingers?”

“Jeffry bit them off.”

“Can you sew them back on?”

“I could have, but he would have expired before I finished reattaching the first. Marty’s fingers are full of poison, Coop. Don’t touch them. As a matter of fact, please get away from the counter. That stuff is entirely uncontained right now. I’d have taken care of it hours ago; except I can’t take my hands off this kid.”

“Greenwich, I have to find Laura, it’s kind of important. I’m not asking for anything, just if you know, if you could tell me.”

“Yup. I expect you do need to find her, and I do know where she’s at, more or less. Go a little further down the hall, same direction you were floating just a minute ago, and close the door on the way out, please.”

“But where am I going?”

“You’ll know when you get there. Be the shadow again, your hearing’s exceptional when you do your invisible thing.”

“OK, thanks, Greenwich, and I’m really sorry about Marty. I hope he spits it out, whatever it is.”

Coop stepped into the hall and reached back to close the door. Greenwich was still looking at him. “What?”

“Sam burned every bit of gargoyle off her mother but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still full of nasty bits and if I were her right about now, I’d have very little self-control. Tread lightly, OK? I don’t think my brother could cope with your loss, and the rest of the Franklin Family can’t cope with hers. And you know what? I don’t think I’m much up for it either. I hardly know you, Coop, but I do believe you’re one of mine. And I haven’t got many, OK?”

“OK, Greenwich. You can be one of mine too. I only have one and I’d sure like another.”

“I’m not interested in crying again today, get the hell out of here, Coop.”

But she was smiling.

*

“Ring the bells that still can ring”

He found her in the hospital suite. He didn’t hear, so much as feel what she was; a broken china doll in the back of a very dark closet...

“Yes, Coop, and I was broken a long time ago, but I’m not armed, so come on in.”

“Mrs. Franklin? I have to give you something, but I want to say a few things first, is that OK?”

“Come on in, Coop, pull up a spot on the floor, there’s more than enough of it in here.”

“Mrs. Franklin, I can hear you fine, but I can’t see you. I expect there’s a perfectly good reason for that, but it sure would help if we could talk, human to human. I wouldn’t ask it of you, Mrs. Franklin, but it might help if I held your heart for a bit.”

Laura Franklin materialized between the tub and the bathroom sink. He hadn’t been anywhere near the bathroom. He asked if she was cold, and she said she was cold as hell and there was no help for it. So, let it be, Coop.

“Mrs. Franklin, I’m gonna hand you something in a minute, but I don’t want you to look at it yet. I just want you to hold it until I’ve said what I’ve got to say.”

Laura sat up and held out her hands. Coop thought, she really has no idea what I’ve got. He heard her tell him she was scared. “I want to tell you, Mrs. Franklin, I believe you’ve got more courage than the rest of us combined. You just got to find it now.” He put a fat envelope in her hands and reminded her not to look. Laura closed her eyes and held the envelope in her lap.

“Mrs. Franklin, when things go sideways it’s because they’ve been too close to the edge way too long. I think most of the world walks around this way, I really do. I think we’ve got our own ideas about what and who we ought to be, and it might not line up with other people’s ideas and I think that’s how some of us get broken.”

“Could you not call me Mrs. Franklin? Plain old Laura will do just fine.” Coop nodded solemnly and continued.

“I guess I really should be speaking to Laura Allen anyway; this Mrs. Franklin business is where you lost yourself. That’ll probably make sense when you read that letter you’ve got in your hands.”

“Can I look now? I’m really scared, Coop, and maybe I ought to just rip the Band-Aid off.”

“Nope. It’s not a Band-Aid and you’re not ready yet, but let’s see if we can get you there.”

“OK, Coop.”

“First thing, I’ve read that letter, a couple of times, actually. I would never have done that except I wrote it so it’s kind of hard not to know what I wrote. I don’t mean I wrote it; I mean I wrote what Sam told me to write.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know and that’s OK. Sam had a lot of things to say, and I think she’d have filled an entire notebook if she had time, but this should be enough. The rest is up to you; she said you could do it. Sam thinks you lost yourself once, when you were little, but that changed when you when you were twenty-six. That sound about right?”

“That’s exactly right, Coop.”

“Sam said you fell off the world a few months after she was born. It wasn’t your fault, but you’re the only one that can stand yourself back up. That’s why I’m here, Laura Allen, I’m here to hold your heart because you’re going to need it; maybe longer than you think. I found out a couple days ago that if you can let somebody hold your heart, the getting up’s a lot easier ‘cause you know at least one person cares enough to have your back no matter what. Just one more thing, OK?  This could be the feather on the scale if you let it. Laura Allen, I’m not here because Sam asked me to do this; I’m here to hold your heart because I want to do that for you. The only thing she asked was that I deliver the letter. So, what’s it gonna be?”

Laura reached into her chest, retrieved her heart, and placed it in Coop’s hands. Coop noticed it was kinda mangled but didn’t think he should point that out. He gave it a kiss and slid it next to his own.

“I didn’t know you could do that, Coop.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of surprised too. Feels nice, doesn’t it?”

“It feels safe.”

“That’s right, Laura Allen, it is safe. You go ahead and read. I’m not going anywhere.”

Laura opened the envelope and pulled out three pages of college ruled paper filled top to bottom, front and back, all the way to the edges in very small, incredibly legible print. She turned the last page over; just as the others, it was filled top to bottom side to side, but the printing got a little smaller at the very bottom.

Momma,

I could fill a notebook with all the things I want to say, but Mr. Anderson’s already crying, and I don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to tell you some things you don’t know, and some things you do know but probably can’t see anymore. 

You did a thing to yourself when you were twenty-six, right before you left the robot job. I don’t think you were considering the long-term effects when you did it, but most of us don’t. Not with this kind of thing.  I know you did a lot of side work because those guys wouldn’t let you play in the sandbox. Guys do that sometimes, I’ve noticed. So, you made your own sandbox and because quiet girls are sometimes invisible, you didn’t have anybody to say, hey, maybe that’s not such a good idea, let’s get some hamsters instead.

Do you remember the needle, Momma? I’m asking because I don’t think you remember much about that time. When you put that needle in your leg, you made a choice for yourself. I don’t think you had any idea what would happen to you. I don’t think you would ever have hurt yourself like that, not on purpose. You shot yourself up with the bots you made without really knowing what they’d do. I think you did it because you were curious, and bored, and lonely. I think you need to forgive yourself for that, straight off. If you don’t, the rest of what I’ve got to say won’t mean much.

Two things happened when you were pregnant. You know how what you eat and drink and breathe goes straight to the placenta and into your baby? Well, I’m a direct beneficiary, as is Jeffry, but I’ll get to that. Momma, nobody means for this sort of thing to happen. Nobody does it on purpose, well mostly nobody. It was an accident.

 The second thing that happened when you were pregnant, happened to you. I don’t know when that gargoyle business started up, but I think you’ve been fighting it since just after I was born. Momma, I think that’s why you didn’t go back to work, and I think that broke you. I think you got salt in your wounds from both directions. I think you were shamed by the women you used to work with, shamed by Aunt Susi, and then you disappeared because you decided you weren’t relevant anymore.

That’s what we do to SAHMs, isn’t it? We take their relevance away. Except, there’s this thing called accountability. I’m not saying this to shame or demean anybody, but we don’t have to accept any of this. We’re told we do. We’re conditioned to accept all of it. We’re conditioned to turn on other women and rip out their throats. But if we keep saying ‘they’, haven’t we cut ourselves from the pack? I think we have, and I believe we have a choice. Nobody said those choices were easy, but if we don’t make them, nobody’s going to do it for us.

Are you seeing a theme yet? Don’t worry, there’s more.

Laura stopped reading to make sure Coop was still there. “Do you want me to read this out loud, Coop?”

“Yeah, I already know what it says but I’d like to hear it again and, I think it might remind you that you’re not sitting on the floor of a hospital bathroom by yourself. Do you want to get up? The couch out there looks kind of comfy.”

Laura and Coop got up and left the bathroom. She looked at the couch but wanted to lie down. “Coop, I know it’s tight and you’re a big guy, but would you lie down on that bed next to me?”

Coop was already on the bed and there was just enough room. He put his arm out and pulled her close.

“You know, the night Frank helped me up, we sat on the back of his truck for a while, and he put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in close and nobody ever did that before. Not even my mom. I thought it was a little weird at first, you know, that guy on guy business, but Frank told me to stop being an asshole. He said that sort of thinking helped give guys a bad name.”

That made it a little easier, because he was already holding her heart and she still felt safe. Laura picked up the letter and found her place.

Mom, did you ever ask yourself why you’re such a bad mom and dad’s technically a great dad? I think you might need to stand on your head or something, to look at this properly. Both of you made two babies. Hard stop, Momma. Hard stop. Remember how excited everybody got when Daddy changed Jeffry’s diaper when Jeffry was like, three or something? That was the first time he ever changed a diaper in his life, and he got Dad of the Year for it. Do you see a problem here? I see an epic problem. And at the same time, Daddy gets to unilaterally make stupid rules. I don’t understand how either parent can make any sort of unilateral rule.

Can you explain to yourself why Jeffry’s running around with shoelaces he’s not going to be ready to tie until he’s nine? Because, Mom, that’s when he will have the motor skills required to tie shoelaces. Instead, I have to tie them and he’s ashamed. When he does his yes, no thing, it’s because he’s confused because he thinks he’s supposed to understand something he clearly does not.

Now, about that biting business. That was a gift from the bots, and he cannot control himself right now. He needs help and you happen to be fortunate enough to have exactly the help he needs right in the AO building. OK, Greenwich doesn’t work here but Dr. Webb does, and I bet Greenwich will stay close if you need her. I don’t have any idea how or why Dr. Webb and Greenwich got their talents, but it doesn’t matter. They both went through the same thing growing up and they learned how to deal with it. Although, I’d really like it if Jeffry didn’t decide periodic people munching was acceptable.

Mom, I think it’s time for you to stand up. You won’t be alone, but you’ll have to look around to find your tribe. I promise they’re out there and I know they’re looking for you. It’s going to be hard, because you’re battling both men and women, but it will be easier if you choose not to fight, at least not that kind of fight. Nobody’s going to stop you from being who you are.

You know what’s next, right? You will be the one to stop you. You will agree with the judgement because it’s easier than standing alone. It also gives you an out if you fall on your face. Mom! Everybody falls on their face!

I think Coop’s running out of room, so I guess I’ll have to get to the point. Mom, do you really think Dad’s the right partner for you? I’m not asking if you’re right for Dad, because that’s not your call, it’s his. Your call is what you do with the rest of your life and a big part of life is who we choose as a mate and partner, if we choose that at all. I think you probably still love each other, but, Mom, love is NOT enough. Stop sacrificing, the world expects more of you, and I bet you remember when you expected more of you. You were right.

I wish I had pages and pages to tell you why I love you and how I love you, but I don’t. I would have said those words first, but I think the words I made Coop write are the most important.

Last thing, would you rather have a boxed heart or a broken heart? That’s a question to ask yourself every day for the rest of your life which I hope is really, really long life. I love you so much, Momma gotta go now.