Sibling Song
The days when she's not chasing Jarod pass slowly. She's seen more of these days since her father disappeared, more long days of waiting for signs and leads that never come.
On these days Miss Parker passes time by making a list of everything contemptible in her life:
The noise her heels make as she walks across the marble foyer; the way people still look at her whenever she uses the elevator; the techies who are afraid of her and will take the stairs rather than share her elevator space; the freaks in Sydney's lab experiments who single her out for special attention.
The way Lyle calls Mr Raines ëUncleí when he's being obsequious and Mr Raines who talks about her father in past tense with a hint of glee in his voice; Sydney consistently asking if she's considered going on a holiday and Broots who seems to actually enjoy his work.
And then there's Jarod who hasn't been heard of in months. Life at the Centre passes much as it always did since her father disappeared somewhere off the coast of Canada but it seems even Jarod isn't inspired enough to keep up their game of hide and seek. Rarely do they receive word of his exploits and he doesn't taunt them with heavily coded clues the way he used to.
He's not digging up the past the way he used to either or if he is, he's not sharing.
In these days of living in between the past and the future they congregate in Sydney's lab, partly to exchange information and partly because Mr Lyle and Mr Raines only visit the lab under duress. It's the best way to avoid them.
"I hope he's okay," Broots is saying. "I mean, we'd know if something happened to Jarod, right?"
"I'm sure he's fine," Sydney says, placating as always.
"He's probably in the Bahamas," she says, sourly. The ball is always in Jarod's court - something else contemptible.
She's sitting in Sydney's chair with her feet up on Sydney's desk. Broots and Sydney are watching Angelo arrange and rearrange pictures of Mr Parker.
Even Angelo refuses to be conclusive on her father. Sometimes he feels him and sometimes he doesn't. He arranges the pictures according to his readings - Mr Parker is laughing and smiling in the middle pictures if Angelo can sense him, he is looking dark and austere if Angelo senses nothing. She was interested in the first few readings, she's become less and less so as the weeks pass without finding her father.
There's an "ahem" and they all look up to find the mail-boy looking as surprised to draw their attention as they are to find him there.
"What do you want?" She always finds her voice first.
"Registered mail for you, Miss Parker." He hands her an envelope. She notes the postmark says, "Portland, Oregon." Not the Bahamas.
She waves the mail-boy away and opens the envelope without changing her position in Sydney's chair. Inside is a smaller envelope with the words, "Robert Franklin Parker," written in fluid handwriting on the outside. She recognises the handwriting, of course - her mother.
She opens it and reads. Amongst her mother's many secrets was her propensity to record life in the Parker family in expressive language and flowing cursive, as if she were writing them into a poetry they would never experience in life. She loved to read her daughter stories but it was many years after she died that Miss Parker realised her affinity for storytelling extended to her written expression. She narrated them, drew them in artful language and sympathetic prose -herself, her daughter, her husband and now, it would appear, her not quite stillborn son.
She reads quickly, inhales a deep breath and calmly folds the letter. She looks up and realises there are three sets of eyes staring at her expectantly.
"Well?" Sydney says.
"It's nothing."
Broots eyes wander from Sydney, to Miss Parker, and back to Sydney again. Broots is always looking for cues on when to speak.
"Miss Parker..." Sydney says.
She holds up her hand. "Don't."
Sydney rolls his shoulders and looks away, smiling at the wall. Sydney's peace with himself is something else that grates on her. Why should he not suffer in moral turmoil like the rest of them?
Broots gets brave. "That's your mother's handwriting isn't it, Miss Parker? Did Jarod send it?"
The answer to the first question is "yes" and the answer to the second question is almost invariably "yes." She used to tell herself that Jarod exposed her private life to embarrass her, now she's knows something of his crusade to heal the past. She doesn't understand but at least she doesn't question his motives anymore.
"Who else?" she says.
"It's incredible isn't it," Sydney says. "How he manages to find these remnants of your history."
"He's a regular David Copperfield." She lets the letter fall to Sydney's desk, rests her elbow on the arm of Sydney's chair and leans her head into her hand. She wishes she was in the Bahamas. She'd wish herself into Siberia if it meant she escaping the graveyard of skeletons in her closet.
She catches Sydney and Broots eyeing the letter on the desk. "Oh go ahead," she says, waving her hand in exasperation. "Read it."
Broots snatches it up but reconsiders and hands it to Sydney. Sydney reads with Broots looking over his elbow.
"I'm afraid I'm partly to blame," Sydney says, when he's finished reading. "I encouraged your mother to write to her still born son to give her a chance to say goodbye. I was unaware she followed my advice..."
"Wow." Broots says. "But he's not dead, is he? I mean, technically this letter belongs to..." He exchanges a quick look with Sydney. "Well it belongs to Mr Lyle."
She leaps out of her chair, marches over to Sydney and snatches the letter out of his hand. "Mr Lyle and this child - " she points to the letter. "- Are not the same person. That child is dead. This letter should not even exist."
She storms out of the laboratory, crumpling the letter in her hand. Whatever his motivations Jarod deserves to be crushed like a bug for bringing this letter to light.
She pours herself a drink. She keeps single malt whisky for occasions like this. Truthfully, the lack of activity in the search for Jarod means she's had less and less reason to resort to whisky at the end of the day. Stability has its upshot, she supposes, and Jarod would be more than a little concerned to know he drives her to drink.
The letter from her mother is in a crumpled ball on the coffee table. She places the whisky on the table and slowly unfolds the paper. She could never relegate her mother's words to the garbage but there was great satisfaction in crushing the letter in her hand, as though such action could destroy the relationship between her mother and Mr Lyle for good.
She takes the whisky and leans back on the couch, staring at the crumpled letter.
Her cell phone rings. No number on the display - which doesn't mean anything these days because no one she knows has the same number for long. She answers the way she always does. "What?"
"Some things never change, do they Miss Parker?"
"Very profound, Jarod. You really are the genius everyone says you are." A small and traitorous part of her is relieved to hear his voice. "I suppose you want to know what happened when I received your little surprise?"
"I didn't expect it would be easy for you." His voice is soft, less playful than usual. "I didn't take the decision to send you that letter lightly."
"You could always have sent it to its intended recipient."
"The thought crossed my mind," he says.
"What stopped you?"
He pauses. "Your mother thought her son was dead - and in many ways she was right. That child - the person Mr Lyle should have been - died at birth. Raines played god and Lyle is his creation, not your mother's. And yet..." He trails off into silence.
"And yet?"
"Ask yourself what your mother would have done if she'd learned her son was alive, Miss Parker."
She's not her mother - her mother never smoked, was never promiscuous and she's pretty sure her mother never carried a Smith and Wesson - but Jarod always gets to the side of her that wants to be like her mother.
Her mother would have rectified Raine's mistake. She would have fixed it somehow. Even if she'd encountered Lyle today she would have found away to touch the part of him that came from her.
She probably would have got herself killed for it too. One good reason why she's not like her mother.
"Where have you been?"
"Why? Did you miss me?" She thinks she can hear him smirk.
She wishes she still punctuated her words with cigarette smoke. There was a certain satisfaction to blowing smoke at the phone when Jarod was on the other end, even if he couldn't see it. "You're my job," she says. "I'm paid to miss you."
"We both know you'd do it for free if you had to." The smirk is still there. "But don't worry - I'm not going anywhere. I'm a permanent fixture in your life, Miss Parker. You can't get rid of me that easily."
She knows it's true. She's long suspected she is stuck with the Centre, and consequently Jarod, for life.
Which means unless something fatal happens she's also stuck with Lyle. And while she may choose to forget she was born with Mr Lyle, they shared a womb, spent nine months together breathing the same oxygen together and drawing life from the same blood.
She looks at the ceiling and breathes out slowly. "There are some things I'd like to forget, Jarod, however impossible." She could make a list. She's been making a list.
"I know," he says. "But you won't sleep tonight if you don't show Mr Lyle that letter."
She hasn't slept in years, but she knows what he means. It would be one more sin to the many that weigh her down already.
"Did you read it?" she asks.
There's a pause. "Yes."
"She wrote about me."
"I know."
Her mother wrote about a sister, one that loved her brother, one that knew her brother in ways only a twin could. In her mother's eyes she was always a loving sister.
She hangs up the phone and sinks back in the couch. She contemplates the whisky, swirling it so that it leaves a film on the inside of the glass. She drinks, swallows the contents in one shot.
Nothing is simple.
In the morning she calls Lyle into her office. He obeys like a dutiful servant and is suitably servile. Something else to add to her list.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" He has his hands in his pockets and the usual expression of forced innocence on his face.
She stands up and steps around the desk. "This is for you." She holds out the envelope.
He takes it, glances briefly at the name on the outside. "It's been opened?"
"Sue me."
He reads while she's standing there. "It's from mom," he says. There's a hint of amusement in his voice.
"Itís a letter to her stillborn son. I thoughtÖî She thought about destroying it for good. ì- I thought you should have it."
He finishes reading and folds the letter, tucks it into the breast pocket of his suit. "Dear old mom," he says. "She was the quite the sentimental type, wasn't she?"
She imagines choking him, her hands around his throat, squeezing the life out of him. It helps. "She thought she'd lost one of her children," she says with forced calm.
He sighs with an exaggerated slump of his shoulders. "I think about her often. I wonder - how things might have been different if I'd grown up here - with you - instead of my foster parents."
He has that slight hint of mocking to his voice, a tone that characterises nearly everything he says. It riles her. He knows it riles her and it amuses him.
"I guess we'll never know," she says, adding the same mock concern to her voice. It takes two to tango.
"I guess now - " He touches his hand to his chest. "- I'll always have a part of her with me."
If this were a fair world it would be Jarod who suffering indignity of playing nice to Mr Lyle. Jarod and his sanctimonious lessons on doing the right thing and righting the wrongs of the past.
Some wrongs can never be righted. The past is set in stone.
Lyle leaves and she returns to her seat behind her desk, taking up her usual position of heels on the desk and chair leaning back. She takes a photocopy of Lyle's letter out of the inner pocket of her jacket and reads it once more.
Her mother was a bard looking for stories to sing in the grey, songless corners of the Centre. Miss Parker never learned to sing, she struggled with piano lessons.
She folds the letter and stuffs it in a drawer on the side of the desk.
The child is dead. Time to bury him.