Chapter Text
Christine didn’t bother much with other people. Her neighbours were just that – her neighbours. They were people that lived next to her and made noise. They had their own lives and she had hers.
Perhaps if she did bother with them she might have heard from Pat sooner once he’d moved. Perhaps of she did, then maybe she would have given him a call rather than believing that his escape to another country was a sign his life didn’t include her anymore.
Not that she knew much of his life before he moved. They’d never been very close.
Once he’d become a teen every conversation was an argument. There was not a step she could make without encroaching on something he was doing and there was not an action that he made that didn’t have her worrying.
In the end, before he moved, it was for the best that they didn’t talk. It was how they found peace.
She just wishes that she’d found a different way to do that now there’s a more permanent silence at the end of his telephone. The distance no longer the reason they don’t talk, her own blasted device never showing his area code since his wife phoned her a few days after the fact.
It hadn’t been until she’d hung up that Christine realised she’d never wished him well on his wedding day. The journey too far for her in her age, a letter sent in lieu – lengthy and filled with every bit of pride she had for her boy, but the words never actually spoken.
Now, stewing in her silence, she finds peace again by ignoring the shouting of her upstairs neighbours and the banging that comes from the boy who’s just moved in next.
She doesn’t leave the house too often since she broke her hip. Her son would say she’s scared, but she thinks she’s being sensible. The elevator is out of order and the stairs are slippery with how much rain and sleet is being dragged and trampled up the stairs.
She might not get out much, but she reads the paper. Her youngest grandchild says she shouldn’t read the drivel that she does. Thinks that there’s better out there than The Bugle, and Christine agrees with her to a point but she’d been buying The Bugle long before superheroes took the scene. Jameson may be wrapped up in the silliness of it all now but she’s fond of and comfortable with his style of writing.
She normally skips over the stuff about monsters and aliens anyway. It’s all too much for her. Too fantastical to think of when there’s better things to talk about.
Her middle child thinks she should move from the city if that’s the case. Christine isn’t moving for anyone.
It’s not like a car can be trusted in the suburbs anymore than it can in the city, and there’s no aliens blocking traffic out there.
She might not get out much, but she’s not stupid. She may not speak to her neighbours and she may not care for inserting herself into their lives, but she knows about them.
She knows far too much about the new boy across from her and the bangs he makes at all hours of the day.
“Peter,” He’d introduced himself to her once when they’d passed in the hall. “Parker.” He added on a moment later, sounding almost unsure of it like the name wasn’t all his.
She’d watched him move in from her window. Just a couple of boxes and that was that. She knows these apartments don’t come furnished and never sees anymore delivery men arrive. She does see him haul, with great ease, an old couch up the stairs; sees him drag up a fridge that he’d probably pulled off from a nearby skip.
It takes weeks for him to get even just the very basics.
Christine might not get out much now, but three kids and four grandchildren has taught her this much – she knows what a runaway looks like.
She remembers what Pat looked like when he was barely eighteen. Lanky and tall just like his father, got away with too much because people mistook him for older. There was always just this look about him though, one she can see on the boy from across the way – a youthful confusion. She saw it in all her kids. Pat bore it with pure arrogance, taking it every new thing as a challenge for him to conquer. Gabby hungered for answers, squirreling herself away to get them and Leanne was like this Peter boy. Afraid. Scared.
This kid isn’t old enough to rent an apartment and yet he’s here.
Christine tries to ignore him for a while because he has his own life, and she has hers. There is no good that will come from overstepping the boundaries of his life.
She won’t be able to send him on his way home so what point is there?
This is what she tells herself at least.
However, she cannot stop herself from watching him walk up to the building from her window. She cannot help but try to assess if the bags in his hand contain any groceries. They’re never too full so she suspects it’s unlikely.
She cannot help the quiet tuts that escape her lips when she hears him cluttering around far too early in the morning. She’s always been an early riser so it doesn’t bother her, but she knows better than to think that a teenage boy is up to anything good at 5am.
There are some days where she hears him leave, but doesn’t see him return. There are some days when she sees a red blur swing by their building and shortly after she hears the boy in his apartment despite it being quiet all day.
Christine might not get out much, but she’s not stupid.
She stops skipping over those pages in the Bugle. Her opinion on superheroes doesn’t change, but she finds herself looking out for Peter Parker or Spider-Man more.
She doesn’t know what she can do for them. He clearly has his own life, and she has hers. They are separate entities with no need to cross that boundary, but whenever she sees word of him hurt or sees him swinging through the snow or no bags filled with food her lips purse.
It comes to a head one wet afternoon. Perhaps the worst they’ve had in a while. She’s making a cup of tea and watching the raindrops when he mind drifts elsewhere, wondering if the boy is out in his silly suit.
She throws the teabag away and listens. There’s silence around her, but he could be at school or work. She doesn’t know what else he does with his time.
She reads her paper, she does her crossword. She picks at her knitting, but every so often she will stop and listen. She listens and listens but no sound comes until it is finally evening.
A bright blur passes her kitchen window, looking more sodden and dull than usual followed shortly by footsteps across the hall.
Peter is home.
That should be enough to settle her, as that had been her question all day long, hadn’t it?
It doesn’t. Her head now picking a new worry – he definitely hasn’t been eating right, and she knows kids, they have no sense of financial responsibility he probably hasn’t factored his heating into the bills. How will his suit dry? How will he dry? He’ll catch a cold. He’ll catch the flu.
Pat always got it so much worse than her girls.
Christine didn’t bother much with other people. Her neighbours were just that – her neighbours. They were people that lived next to her and made noise. They had their own lives and she had hers.
But. Perhaps that needn’t be the end of it.
They were people who all shared the same space. They were neighbours and years ago that had meant a whole lot more. She’d sent her children out to play with others on the block. She’d known their names and known their families.
She has kept to herself, and knows she could continue this way. She won’t pretend herself to be a good person, she’s a woman of routine. She doesn’t agree with half the things said in her daily paper but reads it anyway because it is the one that she’s always bought.
But.
That doesn’t need to be what’s always true.
She could take a step.
She could do something for Peter Parker.
Christine may not get out much, but she’s not stupid. She knows just offering her help to the boy will not result in him taking it. Instead, she appeals to his heroic senses, knocking on his door to ask for help with a few things in the apartment.
Her heating is high, she lays out biscuits and fruit for him to pick at while he works ‘moving her arm chair’ and ‘fixing the mechanics on the recliner’. None of which he comments about, but comes over any. His hair barely drying and goosebumps visible on his arms as he walks across the hall to her apartment.
He takes a visible sigh of relief when she shuts the door, closing his eyes and relishing in the warmth.
She sends him on his way a little later, once she’s sure that he’s warmed through with plenty of tea and his hair is dry, demanding that he take a box of leftovers with him too. Its nothing special. Just some soup that Gabby dropped off and will be back with again tomorrow, but it will keep him warm.
It becomes something of a routine.
Soon the pretence of him fixing something in her apartment is long dropped and he comes by for a conversation. Her apartment not filled with so much silence in between the visits of her children.
Christine doesn’t know if this is a kindness the world offered to Pat when he moved without a word. She doesn’t know how many people outside of his wife mourned him when he died. She doesn’t know much about the struggle he faced in those years of silence.
However, she does know that she can grant a little bit of peace to this boy’s mother. Whatever may have separated them. The woman can rest a little easier knowing someone’s watching over him, and when they are ready maybe they’ll be able to meet again.