Title: Under the Honor
Dec. 1st, 2010 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmic_tuesdaysTitle: Under the Honor
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes: Companion piece to Left of West. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightdog_barks for beta-reading. Title comes from “Disturbance at the Heron House” by R.E.M.
When Reuben’s six and his mother comes home from the hospital, she’s holding his new baby brother carefully so she won’t hurt his wings. He remembers that day all the way down to the bottom when his oldest aunt smiled at him and said what a blessing his parents have, how fortunate they are – but his mother was at the hospital so long he almost doesn’t care about meeting his new brother, no matter how much everyone else does.
It’s not his first memory. That’s one he keeps secret because he doesn’t know how to otherwise or the right questions he should ask. He’s jumping up to see over the back of a couch to see his father’s face – he remembers the big window behind him and the ugly purple of the couch and his father’s big smile. The couch in the living room now has green stripes on tan and it doesn’t face the windows. That’s how he knows he’s remembering his first house. He doesn’t know how old he was but he knows he was almost two when they had to move before Michael was born, to where it’d be better for him.
For James, too – both of his brothers are so light in his arms, their wings leather-soft and paper-tight, their bodies small and skinny, not round and plump the way he knows he was, and Jimmy’s fingers are so thin when they grab his own he doesn’t want to move in case they’ll break. He’s proud he knows to hold him right.
Mike plays peek-a-boo with his baby brother without using his hands, and when Jimmy cries their mother takes him to her bedroom so he can eat in private. When he goes to sleep he doesn’t need a blanket, all curled up underneath his wings.
-
After the first real snow of the year – not the little flakes so far that aren’t good for anything but clinging to shoes on the walk to school and making mom fuss – when there’s finally enough to get out and play in the three of them argue over who goes on which team for the backyard snowball fight. They can’t all fight each other and Jimmy can’t be on his own because he’s the youngest and Jimmy and Mike against Reuben wouldn’t work because their parents have told them that so many times. In the end they all decide Mike against Jimmy and Reuben is the fairest because Jimmy’s four years old and can’t fly yet but he can leap up to glide a bit and Reuben’s ten and the strongest so it’s pretty even, as even as three can be.
They use the front yard instead of the back so they can run around the side and get the snow there. Mike flaps up whooping from behind the car and Jimmy ducks down and pulls his wings over his face to shield himself while Reuben throws snowballs back from behind the wall they pushed together, and then he gives Jimmy a push and tosses him up flapping to throw double armfuls down onto Mike. His wings aren’t so strong but Reuben can tell they will be soon because they scatter so much snow off the top of the wall.
They fight for ages, all the way to lunchtime. But Mike and Jimmy get cold so fast – they have to go inside early and don’t want to come back out after lunch. So Dad comes out instead to help him make a snowman from everything left in the yard, and there’s still some cocoa left when they come back in.
-
In school he learns the names and dates of battles and kings, the meaning behind holidays and how numbers eat each other, how to talk to God. He runs across fields and plays catch at recess and with his brothers eat the lunches his mother packed. They get their own lessons, some of the same and some of it different. When he’s inside learning about six-year presidential term limits and tricameral legislation proposals, his brothers are outside because otherwise they won’t be able to sit still in the rest of the day – too much energy, too much want to be up, something they’ll learn how to deal with when they get older, their mother says. Everyone knows him as their brother, unless they don’t know him yet, but that’s not too many people nowadays.
When the weather’s bad their mother picks them up after school and he rides up front with his seatbelt on and they ride in the back with the seats folded down holding onto the handles their father screwed on for them. They all talk and laugh about what they learned at school, what prime numbers are and what the evil tongue is and why leaves turn yellow in fall, and she laughs and talks along with them. Back home they have snacks and Jimmy and Mike finish another jar of almond butter and they spread out in the dining room to do their homework, Jimmy and Mike hooking their legs on their stools. They wait for their father to come home and whoop greetings on days he works late, telling him everything their mother’s already heard.
Some days they'll leave their homework to late at night, spending the day with friends – some of those nights, they do the work in their rooms, alone from each other.
-
They can’t share summer the way they share winter. Reuben’s old enough now to know it doesn’t work that way. Jimmy and Mike can’t come with him to camp for pottery lessons and hikes and sleeping away from home, they can’t spend a hot afternoon in a cool movie theater, and they can’t help Dad pull vines from the yard all day. But they can pile in and drive to the beach to eat a picnic lunch and make castles with moats that fill in, help each other spread on sunscreen and splash each other when the waves come in.
The beach isn’t that far – Reuben could bike it if he wanted, knows he could even though he hasn’t yet. Today it’s just him and mom and dad, now that Jimmy’s strong enough to fly all the way there and Mike’s old enough to lead and make sure they get there.
Mike and Jimmy can’t swim. With Dad they stick near the edge looking for sea glass at low tide, headscarves on tight. Mom swims with him instead, hair in a cap, matching his strokes evenly before going back. She’s the only woman at the beach swimming in a dress. He’s seen pictures of her from what she calls ‘way back when’ – way back when she wore pants, didn’t keep her hair covered, swam in a bikini. He put them away, put the photo album right back.
He dunks under the water, eyes closed tight to keep the salt out, shaking his hair out when he comes back up. His brothers aren’t on the beach: looking up, he sees his brothers wave down at him from the wide blue sky, so he waves back, treading water and watching before taking a breath and going back into the deep blue ocean.
-
It’d been an accident, seeing what he saw, and he’d apologize if he thought he should, if he knew it’d be okay to tell her, let her know what happened without either of them intending it.
Over at David’s house for lunch, a hard rainy day when Mike and Jimmy have to exercise in the basement and Reuben can bike all the way to his friend’s house. He’s got three sisters, all younger, and he’s Reuben’s age and they’ve known each other forever. They take over the living room and get out the boxes of trains, threading wooden tracks under and around all the furniture. None of his sisters need to use the basement to exercise on a day like this – Ruth’s older sister did, but she moved away when she got married – and they’re all hanging around, going in and out, up and down. David’s house has stairs that aren’t just for the basement and that still seems strange.
He has to go upstairs to use the bathroom. When he’s done, he turns down the hallway – and that’s where he stops. He’s never seen David’s mother’s hair. Nobody has but David’s father, nobody can but David’s father. Reuben stops moving, stops breathing: the door’s open just enough for him to see her face in the mirror, brushing dark blonde hair that looks so soft and just reaches her neck, three more strokes before she takes out her everyday brown wig, getting everything ready to put it back on. He doesn’t stay to see it – he creeps back, trying to get downstairs as quietly and quickly as he can, without letting his friend know how he accidentally saw his mother so naked.
He’ll never know if she knows he saw her, and that’s somehow the hardest part of it all.
-
He’s always glad when Jimmy calls, always – he misses home being away at school and it’s different to talk to him than Mom and Dad, no worries about asking him about grades and sleeping, just knowing there’s a couple of big subjects he can’t ask him about. He has to ask Mom or Dad how his brother’s doing and what’s going on at home now that – well, now that so much changed. Jimmy calling to talk about his will was something he didn’t need to ask about, could guess why, and even though he’s glad to talk to Jimmy he doesn’t want to be talking about this. His books, his blankets, things like that are easy, but anything more personal he wants to ask about first.
“It’s not a hard question. I just want to know if you want my Kiddush cup or not.”
“What do you expect me to say to something like that?”
“Yes or no would work pretty well.”
“Why are you doing this now?”
“Because Mom and Dad said I should and I don’t want them more upset than they are already. Please just say yes.”
“Will you ask your friends if I say no?”
“Does it matter? Look, I’m not – it’s not like I won’t revise it later.”
He remembers Jimmy crying a year ago, yelling that he wouldn’t understand. It hurt, not for the yelling: nobody wanted to say it out loud. He has a test on Wednesday and a paper on Friday and doesn’t want to argue over this so he says yes to end the conversation. He knows why he’s here and why his brothers weren’t ever going to get lives from secular educations and jobs, other things not talked about. And he misses home but he’s glad he’s not there now.
-
“It’s pretty small,” Reuben says when he gets to the place Jimmy’s so happy about, just one floor off the street.
Jimmy smiles, standing in the middle of the empty room stretching his wings out as far as they go and not hitting the walls. “It’s pretty big.”
In the end there isn’t that much stuff Jimmy wants to call his own or keep. Either way it makes moving easier, just a few boxes for what he’s not buying readymade or hand-me-down. Some of it does trickle back to Reuben’s house, into the garage and attic and basement, things that Jimmy held onto that he says he doesn’t have the space for right now and it’s not that big a favor, really, please. He helps Reuben carry it up and it’s all unpacked by dinnertime. There’s the things they both know Jimmy missed that he’ll need to get but that can come tomorrow, later, eventually.
“I went right from living at home to being married. I’d like to at least try living on my own.”
Reuben doesn’t want to think about how he feels this isn’t just a reaction to the messy and much-gossiped-over divorce and doesn’t even want to put his feelings into words. He doesn’t want to think how much his brother’s lost it to want to come here instead of coming home, but he’s not going to argue with him, not going to start that now. He’s not going to think about how hard Jimmy will have to work, how much he’ll have to endure, if that’s the right word and not persevere, to remain who he is in this world that isn’t right for him to be in, how much he’ll need to do just to remain who he is and who he’s supposed to be.
-
She’s named for her maternal grandmother on her father’s side, to remember the name and pass it on and keep it alive – he was there in the room, there to see her breathe and then cry. It’s rushing forward, this permanence of his new life, different and the same as before, his older two children waiting for him and their mother to come home with their new little sister. No surprises, this time: everyone checks, nowadays, now that they can. Their first two were boys, small and strong, and all three came into the world with riotous ease.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” her mother asks.
She is, so much. She’s got so much hair all soft and dry now that she’s been her own person for so many hours, such dark eyes. Her face is round and plump, her fingers gripping his with strength and what he knows is determination. He knows, after a long time of thinking back on his childhood, how hard his parents worked to make sure he had what he needed, how he wouldn’t be seen as just an auxiliary version of his brothers – how hard it is to make sure everyone knows they’re valued without ever wondering about the question.
She’ll never need special clothes, never have to worry about where she can sit. She’ll never need to be careful as to how much or when she eats, she’ll never have to worry about being so cold in winter. She’ll never have rare songs sung about her, never get lifted up and weighted down by so many things all strange and wonderful because of what parts of her parents happened to mix together long before she was ready to be born. She’s very normal, very extraordinary, completely wonderful.
She’ll never fly.
“She’s perfect,” her father answers.
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes: Companion piece to Left of West. Thanks to
nightdog_barks for beta-reading. Title comes from “Disturbance at the Heron House” by R.E.M.When Reuben’s six and his mother comes home from the hospital, she’s holding his new baby brother carefully so she won’t hurt his wings. He remembers that day all the way down to the bottom when his oldest aunt smiled at him and said what a blessing his parents have, how fortunate they are – but his mother was at the hospital so long he almost doesn’t care about meeting his new brother, no matter how much everyone else does.
It’s not his first memory. That’s one he keeps secret because he doesn’t know how to otherwise or the right questions he should ask. He’s jumping up to see over the back of a couch to see his father’s face – he remembers the big window behind him and the ugly purple of the couch and his father’s big smile. The couch in the living room now has green stripes on tan and it doesn’t face the windows. That’s how he knows he’s remembering his first house. He doesn’t know how old he was but he knows he was almost two when they had to move before Michael was born, to where it’d be better for him.
For James, too – both of his brothers are so light in his arms, their wings leather-soft and paper-tight, their bodies small and skinny, not round and plump the way he knows he was, and Jimmy’s fingers are so thin when they grab his own he doesn’t want to move in case they’ll break. He’s proud he knows to hold him right.
Mike plays peek-a-boo with his baby brother without using his hands, and when Jimmy cries their mother takes him to her bedroom so he can eat in private. When he goes to sleep he doesn’t need a blanket, all curled up underneath his wings.
-
After the first real snow of the year – not the little flakes so far that aren’t good for anything but clinging to shoes on the walk to school and making mom fuss – when there’s finally enough to get out and play in the three of them argue over who goes on which team for the backyard snowball fight. They can’t all fight each other and Jimmy can’t be on his own because he’s the youngest and Jimmy and Mike against Reuben wouldn’t work because their parents have told them that so many times. In the end they all decide Mike against Jimmy and Reuben is the fairest because Jimmy’s four years old and can’t fly yet but he can leap up to glide a bit and Reuben’s ten and the strongest so it’s pretty even, as even as three can be.
They use the front yard instead of the back so they can run around the side and get the snow there. Mike flaps up whooping from behind the car and Jimmy ducks down and pulls his wings over his face to shield himself while Reuben throws snowballs back from behind the wall they pushed together, and then he gives Jimmy a push and tosses him up flapping to throw double armfuls down onto Mike. His wings aren’t so strong but Reuben can tell they will be soon because they scatter so much snow off the top of the wall.
They fight for ages, all the way to lunchtime. But Mike and Jimmy get cold so fast – they have to go inside early and don’t want to come back out after lunch. So Dad comes out instead to help him make a snowman from everything left in the yard, and there’s still some cocoa left when they come back in.
-
In school he learns the names and dates of battles and kings, the meaning behind holidays and how numbers eat each other, how to talk to God. He runs across fields and plays catch at recess and with his brothers eat the lunches his mother packed. They get their own lessons, some of the same and some of it different. When he’s inside learning about six-year presidential term limits and tricameral legislation proposals, his brothers are outside because otherwise they won’t be able to sit still in the rest of the day – too much energy, too much want to be up, something they’ll learn how to deal with when they get older, their mother says. Everyone knows him as their brother, unless they don’t know him yet, but that’s not too many people nowadays.
When the weather’s bad their mother picks them up after school and he rides up front with his seatbelt on and they ride in the back with the seats folded down holding onto the handles their father screwed on for them. They all talk and laugh about what they learned at school, what prime numbers are and what the evil tongue is and why leaves turn yellow in fall, and she laughs and talks along with them. Back home they have snacks and Jimmy and Mike finish another jar of almond butter and they spread out in the dining room to do their homework, Jimmy and Mike hooking their legs on their stools. They wait for their father to come home and whoop greetings on days he works late, telling him everything their mother’s already heard.
Some days they'll leave their homework to late at night, spending the day with friends – some of those nights, they do the work in their rooms, alone from each other.
-
They can’t share summer the way they share winter. Reuben’s old enough now to know it doesn’t work that way. Jimmy and Mike can’t come with him to camp for pottery lessons and hikes and sleeping away from home, they can’t spend a hot afternoon in a cool movie theater, and they can’t help Dad pull vines from the yard all day. But they can pile in and drive to the beach to eat a picnic lunch and make castles with moats that fill in, help each other spread on sunscreen and splash each other when the waves come in.
The beach isn’t that far – Reuben could bike it if he wanted, knows he could even though he hasn’t yet. Today it’s just him and mom and dad, now that Jimmy’s strong enough to fly all the way there and Mike’s old enough to lead and make sure they get there.
Mike and Jimmy can’t swim. With Dad they stick near the edge looking for sea glass at low tide, headscarves on tight. Mom swims with him instead, hair in a cap, matching his strokes evenly before going back. She’s the only woman at the beach swimming in a dress. He’s seen pictures of her from what she calls ‘way back when’ – way back when she wore pants, didn’t keep her hair covered, swam in a bikini. He put them away, put the photo album right back.
He dunks under the water, eyes closed tight to keep the salt out, shaking his hair out when he comes back up. His brothers aren’t on the beach: looking up, he sees his brothers wave down at him from the wide blue sky, so he waves back, treading water and watching before taking a breath and going back into the deep blue ocean.
-
It’d been an accident, seeing what he saw, and he’d apologize if he thought he should, if he knew it’d be okay to tell her, let her know what happened without either of them intending it.
Over at David’s house for lunch, a hard rainy day when Mike and Jimmy have to exercise in the basement and Reuben can bike all the way to his friend’s house. He’s got three sisters, all younger, and he’s Reuben’s age and they’ve known each other forever. They take over the living room and get out the boxes of trains, threading wooden tracks under and around all the furniture. None of his sisters need to use the basement to exercise on a day like this – Ruth’s older sister did, but she moved away when she got married – and they’re all hanging around, going in and out, up and down. David’s house has stairs that aren’t just for the basement and that still seems strange.
He has to go upstairs to use the bathroom. When he’s done, he turns down the hallway – and that’s where he stops. He’s never seen David’s mother’s hair. Nobody has but David’s father, nobody can but David’s father. Reuben stops moving, stops breathing: the door’s open just enough for him to see her face in the mirror, brushing dark blonde hair that looks so soft and just reaches her neck, three more strokes before she takes out her everyday brown wig, getting everything ready to put it back on. He doesn’t stay to see it – he creeps back, trying to get downstairs as quietly and quickly as he can, without letting his friend know how he accidentally saw his mother so naked.
He’ll never know if she knows he saw her, and that’s somehow the hardest part of it all.
-
He’s always glad when Jimmy calls, always – he misses home being away at school and it’s different to talk to him than Mom and Dad, no worries about asking him about grades and sleeping, just knowing there’s a couple of big subjects he can’t ask him about. He has to ask Mom or Dad how his brother’s doing and what’s going on at home now that – well, now that so much changed. Jimmy calling to talk about his will was something he didn’t need to ask about, could guess why, and even though he’s glad to talk to Jimmy he doesn’t want to be talking about this. His books, his blankets, things like that are easy, but anything more personal he wants to ask about first.
“It’s not a hard question. I just want to know if you want my Kiddush cup or not.”
“What do you expect me to say to something like that?”
“Yes or no would work pretty well.”
“Why are you doing this now?”
“Because Mom and Dad said I should and I don’t want them more upset than they are already. Please just say yes.”
“Will you ask your friends if I say no?”
“Does it matter? Look, I’m not – it’s not like I won’t revise it later.”
He remembers Jimmy crying a year ago, yelling that he wouldn’t understand. It hurt, not for the yelling: nobody wanted to say it out loud. He has a test on Wednesday and a paper on Friday and doesn’t want to argue over this so he says yes to end the conversation. He knows why he’s here and why his brothers weren’t ever going to get lives from secular educations and jobs, other things not talked about. And he misses home but he’s glad he’s not there now.
-
“It’s pretty small,” Reuben says when he gets to the place Jimmy’s so happy about, just one floor off the street.
Jimmy smiles, standing in the middle of the empty room stretching his wings out as far as they go and not hitting the walls. “It’s pretty big.”
In the end there isn’t that much stuff Jimmy wants to call his own or keep. Either way it makes moving easier, just a few boxes for what he’s not buying readymade or hand-me-down. Some of it does trickle back to Reuben’s house, into the garage and attic and basement, things that Jimmy held onto that he says he doesn’t have the space for right now and it’s not that big a favor, really, please. He helps Reuben carry it up and it’s all unpacked by dinnertime. There’s the things they both know Jimmy missed that he’ll need to get but that can come tomorrow, later, eventually.
“I went right from living at home to being married. I’d like to at least try living on my own.”
Reuben doesn’t want to think about how he feels this isn’t just a reaction to the messy and much-gossiped-over divorce and doesn’t even want to put his feelings into words. He doesn’t want to think how much his brother’s lost it to want to come here instead of coming home, but he’s not going to argue with him, not going to start that now. He’s not going to think about how hard Jimmy will have to work, how much he’ll have to endure, if that’s the right word and not persevere, to remain who he is in this world that isn’t right for him to be in, how much he’ll need to do just to remain who he is and who he’s supposed to be.
-
She’s named for her maternal grandmother on her father’s side, to remember the name and pass it on and keep it alive – he was there in the room, there to see her breathe and then cry. It’s rushing forward, this permanence of his new life, different and the same as before, his older two children waiting for him and their mother to come home with their new little sister. No surprises, this time: everyone checks, nowadays, now that they can. Their first two were boys, small and strong, and all three came into the world with riotous ease.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” her mother asks.
She is, so much. She’s got so much hair all soft and dry now that she’s been her own person for so many hours, such dark eyes. Her face is round and plump, her fingers gripping his with strength and what he knows is determination. He knows, after a long time of thinking back on his childhood, how hard his parents worked to make sure he had what he needed, how he wouldn’t be seen as just an auxiliary version of his brothers – how hard it is to make sure everyone knows they’re valued without ever wondering about the question.
She’ll never need special clothes, never have to worry about where she can sit. She’ll never need to be careful as to how much or when she eats, she’ll never have to worry about being so cold in winter. She’ll never have rare songs sung about her, never get lifted up and weighted down by so many things all strange and wonderful because of what parts of her parents happened to mix together long before she was ready to be born. She’s very normal, very extraordinary, completely wonderful.
She’ll never fly.
“She’s perfect,” her father answers.
