The oracles Tale - Part 5 / Client DR.HA.110 -Tape 6

(Beep. Music fades in.)

Speaking from personal experience, if you are the type who gets motion sickness, your entertainment options for long car rides may be limited to just sleeping, but that isn't so bad. If you can do it, that is. Some brains are capable of the slow shutdown required when it's convenient, but not all are, and I'm personally very grateful that mine is. Particularly back then, on that road trip I didn’t even want to be on. Because my only other option was to actually talk to my mother, which was technically out of the question. Or it should have been. I mean, I knew better.

It's a family trait to carry anger in our blood. I am completely convinced that It is etched in our DNA. But I try not to think about it, though. I avoid it. Much like I do her.

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Professor, I don't know how well you remember my class, my classmates, or the way we used to sit. We weren't all that memorable. Not for good reasons, anyway. But you go have an absurdly good memory. It's like you know everything. Literally everything. I'm not even kidding.

But the point… there was that girl who sat a couple seats over from me. Her hair would change from blonde to brunette. Do you remember her? Vaguely maybe. She loved your class too. So much in fact that just the other day she got her favorite quote of yours tattooed on her ribcage. It was like the impromptu haircut moment I had. (Pause) Actually, she had one of those a few weeks back, but that isn't the point.

Her life had changed a lot recently. And now that she's at a new stage, she wanted something to connect her to the foundation that had unknowingly been laid out years prior. That you had laid down in that class. It was there, waiting for her, waiting for her when she finally was ready to settle upon it.

(Pause) You know. She's attracted to women too. And knowing that I wonder if she and I could have been together. Can you imagine that? It's not a terrible thought, but it's an irrelevant one. We both landed on our feet. She's still catching her footing, but she’ll get there. You prepared her for this. So it will come in time.

(Music fades out. Beep. New music fades in)

Have you ever done a road trip before? In the United States specifically, I guess. I've been told the terrain makes a very different experience. And it also makes for pleasant dreams. Ones full of the laughter of the various people who had driven down those roads. That’s what I had. Maybe because I was connected, in the some way through the same vein that made my dreams. Maybe I was connected to the memories of those other world of family vacations. Other families, full stop.

You know, there was a time when my mom and I could be that way, too. Happy. Laughing. Not angry. Dad was alive back then. It was a whole other life back then. (Pause) Back when there was less anger in my life. And in my mother.

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Professor, do you remember the presentation you gave a few months ago at a university you know all too well. Because of your wife.

There was a young woman in the audience four rows back. And yes, I'm counting the empty front row. It's amazing how academic conferences can resemble churches. But that’s neither here nor there.

If you do remember her, you likely remember talking to her after the whole presentation was over. But before then you might remember that she was staring intently or scribbling wildly in her notebook. And maybe you caught a glimpse of her pen when she raised her hand for the Q and A and saw that it was bright pink. An unexpected choice to be sure.

You know her name, but I don't use names here, you know. You probably couldn't know that, but now you do.

She was getting pretty discouraged, you know? Ditto on the whole knowing thing. I need to stop using that expression. A hard life, a divorce that didn't land right, and the fact that academia tends to eat its own young were all things working against her. And then you mentioned her work during the presentation, praised her for what she had done so far. And that revived her spirits. She had looked up to you for a very long time. You were part of the reason she made her career choice. After the divorce. When she finally could, in theory, have her own life as a consolation prize.

She shared that admiration with a woman in her workplace, and when she returned to work after that conference, she raced down the hall to that woman. Partially to discuss you, and partially because by then, it was love, I think. It had been there for a while. Love at first sight, all that. But all that is equal parts romantic and impractical. I mean, where do you go after that first sight. What comes next? For them it was a conversation about a mentor-type figure. And then it was a bunch of other things. And that's great because sometimes hands need holding. Especially during a tattoo.

(Music fades out. Beep. Music fades in.)

I woke up to find myself alone in a parked car sitting in my grandpa's driveway. It wasn’t even our car. I had been moved at some point. I looked up at the house. And it wasn't any more rundown than it had always been. I was expecting it took a lot a worse. Time hadn't been kind to Grandpa. Why was it apparently kind to his home? And then there’s the practical element, Grandma had taken on the overall caretaking responsibilities when Grandpa's health declined. But by then she had passed on too. And none of his children were around to offer him any assistance. Like my mom, they had all left.

Time hadn't been kind to Grandpa. He'd had so many losses in his life, particularly those couple years. And you can't even say they were all undeserved.

Mom was gone. From the car, I mean. She had moved me, but she hadn't bothered to wake me up before she went inside. Not surprising. She had a tendency of just leaving me places when it was convenient for her. That hasn't entirely stopped.

I wasn't a small child, though. I mean, I wasn't helpless is how I should say it. So I climbed out of the car. And even from the driveway, I could hear their arguing. The yells and accusations both sides flung as if they can just knock down what they perceived to be the threat looming overhead. It was unsettling, disconcerting, but, yes, strangely normal.

And that makes everything worse, doesn't it?

"I told you what she was," I heard my grandpa yell. Referring to me, I imagine.

"Then fix this," Mom demanded.

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Mom was a being made of anger, born out of his fire. But she couldn't seem to realize that she stood the risk of burning down her family, her own daughter, just to prove a point. Sometimes now, I wonder if she cared.

(Beep. New music fades in.)

Professor, people come and go. That's how it works in your profession. But it's usually the students doing the coming and going. But once it was a colleague of yours. But that was many years ago. Back when you were both so young. One day, you found her crying in a few flung corner of the courtyard.

She was scared, she told you. Her wedding was closing in, and her resolve was waning. Because being married to him meant being a stepmom to his kids, kids who didn't want a mom of any kind. It was a dirty word to them. And they weren't exactly wrong for thinking that.

"I don't know what to do," she said to you.

You didn't know what to say to her.

So you settled for "If anyone has a chance of making it work with those kids, it's you."

Do you remember that? She does. She'll never forget it. It was the only word of support she had gotten. And luckily for everyone it was the only one she would need.

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"There's no going back," Grandpa said. He didn't yell it. I wish he had. "She is what her father made her to be."

"You're growing senile,” Mom yelled. “He wasn't born into your mess."

"But he listened. Unlike you and your moron of a new husband."

I couldn't see them when I entered the front door. But I could hear them. And I could hear the dish my mother threw to the ground. It shattered. I was enveloped in the noise, and I was left frozen. I was scared of my mother, of the sound, of a lot of things, but I was too scared to even tremble.

"You're a maniac,” Mom yelled. “Your granddaughter is suffering. At least lie to her. Lie so she can have her own life."

"She shouldn't have her own life," he snapped back. His voice momentarily grew, as if it were trying to smother my mother's fire. "What's that going to do? What good can come from it? I ask you. We all have our duties. We all have our roles. Your daughter isn't any different. Her father has been given a great mission. He sees suffering from the other side and uses her to fix it. They were chosen, and now she has to obey."

He grew calmer after he invoked my father. The only member of my little familial unit that Grandpa was ever able to love unconditionally. By the end, Grandpa presented his speech so naturally, like he was pointing out the color of the sky or the weather that day. And it was easy to treat his words as if they were any other fact. It made it so hard to argue with him, merits of his points aside.

Mom was a ball of anger, but even she said nothing to him.

"Your oldest stepdaughter is going to die," Grandpa suddenly said. And Mom started to object, but he stopped her. "You know that just as well as I do, so stop denying it. She’s going to die. And had she listened to her parents, it could have been avoided. We all have to obey. How hard is that for you to understand We have a place in the larger order of this world. We fit in it and should be happy for the honor. And if we stray, we will be nothing but miserable.”

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Professor, have you heard about those childhood scars that seem to define our present? There's probably an actual term for it, I know, but I couldn't be bothered to look it up. That moment was my scar. That was the shackle that held me down, and you--despite having so many better uses of your time--knelt down and set me free.

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You were never one for grand gestures or feats. "Skeptical" might be the best word for your feelings. And that feels appropriate. Because you could never be the hero who pulls the great stunt. Instead you are the hero of a thousand little tales. And they might be small but they matter, you know. Both the stories and the keepers. Us. We matter. And you do too.

I know the darkness you find yourself in. I called it home for a while, as terrible of a home as it was. It was only moderately better than the home I had been raised in, so I… so I know I can't pull you out of it. I want to. I really do. But I can’t. But I know firsthand that you need to come out, and that’s what my problem has always been. I can’t save you, but I know why you need to saved. You need to come out and be a hero again. The hero only you can be. And I can't help you.

You need to go to someone who can. And I… I  need to do something about these dreams. Because they’re going to destroy me as much as your problems are going to destroy you. So I'll make a deal with you because even against my better logic, you care about me.  If this is the only leverage I have, then okay. I’ll make a deal with you. Climb your mountain, and I'll climb mine. I’ll figure out what’s causing these dreams, and I’ll make them stop

We can meet back here. When? I don't know. The future isn't set. And we both have long journeys ahead of us.

(Music fades out. Beep.)