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Alex
It’s been almost 24 hours since…the incident. Alex grits his teeth and grasps his SUV’s steering wheel a little harder when he thinks about the horrible event that had transpired at the Bates Motel the previous night, and he’s wishing all over again that he’d been able to stay at the hospital with Norma for just a little longer. But alas, the medical staff had all stubbornly stuck with the hospital visiting hour policy, and as it turns out, his position as sheriff had little influence in swaying their decision; so along with the awareness that Norma won’t heal faster with him hovering over her, he’d stopped arguing with them and now heads home to his bed where he knows he’ll spend a restless night.
The image of Norma laying motionless on the second floor of her enormous house, pale from the light of the moon and lack of oxygen, shoots through Alex’s head. When he remembers the feeling of the limp weightlessness of her body in his arms, the sensation of alarmingly cold skin that belonged to the most vivacious woman he’d met under his fingers, it’s suddenly too much to think about. Without taking a minute to fully contemplate his next action, Alex finds himself veering off the road and onto a side street, and it’s not until he’s reaches his destination that he realizes that it’s his muscle memory which has led him to White Pine Bay’s one and only cemetery.
He eases up on the pedal – he hasn’t noticed that he’s been practicing his habit of driving at least fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit as a mindless reaction to stress – and lets his police vehicle idle softly in the graveyard’s main driveway for a few heartbeats before killing the engine, sighing and stepping out onto the gravel. He’s manually set his car’s headlights to stay on so he can navigate among the tombstones to find the one of interest, but it’s unnecessary, for he can find her resting place blindfolded if he had to.
“Hi, mom.”
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
Dylan
Dylan Massett is on his way back to the Bates Motel when he something catches his eye.
When he’d heard word out of the blue that his mother had nearly died in her home due to carbon monoxide poisoning, he’d immediately driven from Portland back to the little sleepy town he didn’t think he’d see again so soon. Sure, he and Norma don’t have the best mother-son relationship, but they had parted last on speaking terms – which was much more than how one could describe the beginning of their reconciliation – so there had been a pull at his conscience to make sure for himself that she was on the road to recovery. Additionally, hearing the authoritarian voice of Sheriff Romero had made it clear to him that his presence was not an option.
But there was also something in the sheriff’s voice that had caught Dylan’s attention. He couldn’t place his finger on what exactly it was – perhaps a clue to what is could be had been lost in translation over the phone – but whatever it had been unnerved him into the decision of house sitting his mother’s house until she was well enough to return home.
Now he turns attention to the random spot of light in the far distance to his left, squinting in confusion at what the source of its origin can be since there are no stores or houses this far from the main part of town. It then hits him that he’s nearing the town cemetery, and while normally Dylan keeps his nose out of other people’s business (for that’s how you learn to be successful in the weed industry), the fact that it’s pitch black out and someone is clearly at the gravesite at almost 9:00 at night in the December frost sparks his curiosity. Then a thought enters his head that makes his blood run cold:
What if it’s Norman?
Dylan knows about his brother’s past obsession with his old, dead high school teacher – what was her name? Oh, yes, Blair Watson – and though he’d seen his sibling just hours earlier in the hospital, he’s also aware of how he used to visit her grave every day in some sort of delusional, mourning state that wasn’t normal for a teenage boy to display for a woman he barely knew. What if, Dylan thinks as he slows to a stop, the lack of oxygen finally got to Norman, made him snap and finally completely lose it, and he somehow escaped the hospital and is now digging up her grave?
If this theory wasn’t so plausible, Dylan would have laughed and been on his way, but because there is close to no question of what Norman is capable of, he now purses his lips and prays while slinking towards the site of interest that he’s wrong. He has debated on simply walking up to whoever is prowling around in the cemetery, but on the large chance that it isn’t Norman, he doesn’t want to embarrass himself. He’s already had enough trouble in this town than he would’ve ever wished for.
I’ll just look quick to make sure it’s not my nutso brother giving himself another reason to go back to the mental hospital.
Dylan creeps along the line of shrubbery that makes a half-hearted wall around one side of the cemetery, thanking heaven that the absence of light makes his task easier since it’s now been months since the last of the leaves have fallen off even the fullest of vine maples, and blinks hard against the softly falling Oregon rain as he leans against the bark of the closest tree he dares to venture to.
The 21 year-old has angled himself so he’s hidden in the shadows but can use the light coming from what are indisputably headlights to his advantage. And when the figure he’s been questioning the identity of shifts into focus, he’s taken aback.
It is not Norman. Norman doesn’t wear dark blue jeans or a brown leather jacket. He doesn’t have a five o’clock shadow or such dark, bushy eyebrows.
It hits Dylan that it’s none other than Sheriff Romero huddled by a gravestone, hunched over from his posture of crouching down into a squat while balancing on his feet.
I should leave.
But something stops him. He’s not sure what, but even the knowledge that it’s none of his business why the sheriff is here can’t stop him from continuing to watch the scene just yards away. It’s odd seeing the usually gruff Alex look so beaten down and worn out, seemingly exhausted from some unexplained emotion that lay underneath a bands of thick eyelashes, so Dylan’s curiosity is only raised when he watches Alex sigh and tentatively reach out to rest a hand on the top of the smooth grey marble stone.
“Hey, uh, sorry I haven’t visited in a while,” Dylan hears Alex say. “Had some crazy stuff going on – you know how it is in this town – and to be honest, this isn’t the circumstance that I wanted to come to you under at all. But you’ve always been there for me when things got rough, been a good listener, even when you had your own plate full – you were a great mom like that – so here I am, I guess.”
Oh shit; that’s his mom? Dylan shifts in place uncomfortably. He’s about to hightail it out of there, not wanting to hear an earful about the cop’s mommy issues, but then he hears, “I guess I’ll cut to the chase: I got married,” and turns back around.
Norma and Alex’s marriage. That’s certainly an interest to Dylan, for after he’d learned about it just shy of two weeks ago, the aspect and properties of it had puzzled him immensely. Norma is always surprising him in the most wild ways, and Dylan realizes that he now has the opportunity to see if their binding contract to each other really is all for Norman’s sake. A sinking feeling starts to crawl into his gut that maybe he was right about Romero marrying his mother for another reason, but perhaps it isn’t a good reason. Sure, Alex seems like a great guy, but Dylan knows that Norma also has had a long record of getting involved with men who do little other than take advantage of her.
Alex breathes out shakily, which Dylan doesn’t expect, but there’s an undeniable smile in his voice with his next words.
“Where in the world do I even start with her? She’s crazy, that’s for sure, but in the good way, you know? I met her on the porch of her motel in the rain, and she was ripping up carpet at two in the morning. Crazy, right?” Alex laughs. “And I honestly didn’t think she was anyone important, just another new Bay resident that I’d see around town occasionally, but then she smiled and I was, uh–”
He rubs the back of his neck, and Dylan can just make out that he’s fighting a losing battle to keep a bashful grin off his face. “I was a goner. Her name’s Norma, by the way – probably should have started with that – and she’s stubborn as hell. And lively and clever and an amazing cook and a million other things that make me want to forget work and stay with her all day; and she has these big blue eyes that make it really hard to say no to her. Oh, listen to me, babbling on about some girl as if I’m some lovesick kid who’s never experienced a crush before. It’s pathetic, really. But she’s kinda become my world.”
Well...that was not what Dylan had been expecting. It’s clear that the sheriff is obviously in love with Norma, and when Dylan finds himself breathing out a sigh of relief, it dawns on him that yes, he does care about his mother’s welfare more than he thinks he did. Yeah, of course she hasn’t been the definition of a picture-perfect mom (at least not to him in the sense that she was to Norman), but that doesn’t mean she deserves a terrible marriage. She deserves a shot at happiness, Dylan thinks, after the horrible life she’s had to endure, and if Romero can, and is willing, to give that to her, then who am I to interfere?
He’s so lost in his revelation that it takes the sound of an abrupt, sad sigh to bring him back to the present.
Alex’s smile is gone, replaced by that same worn out look from before, but there’s a new addition in his countenance as well. It’s sadness. And if Dylan had looked a little harder as the rain keeps beating away at what little snow is on the ground, he would have seen a flicker of fear there as well.
“And then...I almost blew it.”
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
Alex and Dylan
Alex hadn’t planned on telling his deceased mother about Norma’s brush with death, but the confession tumbles out before he can stop it. It feels good to get the words out. Verbalizing them helps lift the load of guilt off his chest, but it’s a fleeting feeling, the calm before the storm of realization that Norma had almost died. And suddenly Alex is overcome with emotion, and while Dylan watches his face crumple in anguish, he experiences a tightening sensation in his chest that somehow hurts more than the aftermath pain of being shot in nearly that same spot in a grocery store parking lot.
“I– She–” he sputters, throat thick with unshed tears. “She was so scared to stay in that big house alone with Norman, even if she denied it” – Dylan can hear how Alex says Norman’s name with resentment – “And I should have never...I should have never left her by herself after he came back. Or I should have stayed at the motel or driven over faster or sooner or something, anything, that would have prevented–” The anger towards Norman has become scathing blame towards himself, and it causes Alex to fumble with his ability to finish that last sentence.
And suddenly it – the hurt and pain and fear –becomes too much for him to fight anymore. The desperate need to release and declare the scared, vulnerable, and helpless emotions he’d felt the previous night finally makes its debut; and a strangled sob, potentially the ugliest yet most expressive sound Alex has made in years, pushes its way up his trachea and into the surrounding air.
“Prevented her, Norma, my wife, from nearly dying.”
Dylan watches, frozen, in a mix of horror and fascination as the tough, no funny business sheriff of White Pine Bay gives up on sitting and all but collapses on the spot, his shoulders shaking in anguish as he cries. But even as the grieving sounds of agony are continuously being ripped from the center of Alex’s soul, overlapping in such a way that a person can’t tell where one ends and the next begins, his next words are surprising comprehensible:
“Because every time I think about Norma laying there, unmoving and cold and unresponsive as I cried and prayed to a god I don’t believe in that she would make it, the light of my life suddenly gone out, all I can feel is déjà vu. For all I can see is the image of coming home when I was nine and finding you laying on your bed, pale as a ghost from overdosing, and all I can remember is that I should have come home earlier because maybe that could have prevented your death.
“And I remember clear as day that the only thing I could think of, all those years ago, was that I hadn’t been able to save you. Which is stupid because I was just a kid, but then I’d vowed to save as many people as I could, either from losing someone or from death, which is partially why I became a cop. Yeah, most of it was to spite Dad, but still, I have a job that’s all about protecting people and yet I almost lost Norma like I lost you.
“I didn’t think I’d ever have to face that kind of pain again in my life, and for the longest time I didn’t have to even worry about the chance because I-”
Alex has composed himself enough to pull his torso back into an upright position once more. He takes a breath. “I never let myself become attached to anyone after your death. I never loved anything or anyone as much as I did you. Not my job, not the people here, certainly not Rebecca...but then Norma came along. She stripped away every last barrier I had up, and just as I was getting comfortable, she got hurt. She got hurt on my watch, and I just don’t know if I’m even fit to take care of her now, but I want to.”
The crying has sucked all the energy out of Alex, but he’s able to say, “Because I love her — I really do — but I’m scared that I’m not going to be enough. She’s really tough on the outside but also incredibly fragile, and I almost let her die only two weeks into our marriage. I don’t think I could ever fully recover if she had. So what the hell am I supposed to do?” before he falls into silence, as if awaiting a reassuring response of advice he knows he’ll never hear.
And Dylan doesn’t realize at first that the streams of wetness flowing down his own face aren’t just from the rain, but when he does, he makes no attempt to wipe them away. For it clicks in Dylan all of a sudden of why he had been weirdly unnerved by Alex’s message over the phone: there had been genuine fear and concern for Norma weighted in the sheriff’s voice that he hadn’t expected to hear. Nobody had ever cared so deeply, so unselfishly, for her before, and that realization makes Dylan feel sad for Norma.
And then something else dawns on him: If Romero hadn’t gotten to Norma when he had, it would be him who would be crying over his mother’s grave, and Dylan shoves that thought to the back of his head as soon as it forms.
No, he does love Norma. He knew that deep in his heart beforehand, and in the wake of the near-tragedy, this knowledge because more clear and accepted. He wants to tell Romero that no, he didn’t “almost let her die”; he saved her less than 24 hours ago...and also loved her when no one else would, too. However, based on the fact that he’s not supposed to be there peeping on grieving people in the cemetery, Dylan opts to roll away from the scene, back now fully pressed against the tree trunk, and shut his eyes to take in what he’s learned and witnessed.
Alex says a few departing words to his mother – something about being sorry she had to hear all that; something else about how he’ll bring her flowers next time – and with a parting sigh, gets back into his SUV to head home. He feels much better after that release of emotion he’s been carrying around for the past day, and when he crawls into bed and his earlier prediction that he’d have a restless sleep begins to come true, he puts aside his worry for night and focuses on looking forward to telling Norma how much he loves her in the morning.
Dylan has much to think about now, but he heads to his original destination as well, pondering how in the world he’ll tell Norma again that he’s thankful she’s alive and well without coming off as suspiciously odd and uncharacteristically concerned.
And then he thinks, Well maybe life’s just too short to hold back on telling people you care about them. It’s been a long time since I told Norma that I love her. I think she could use that support right about now.
So it becomes the statement he’ll say the next day. A day that Alex and Dylan are both grateful that Norma’s a part of, and while it will bring more December rain with it, it is finally not taken for granted by two more people in the world. For tomorrow isn’t promised. It’s not guaranteed to be happy or exciting or sympathetic to anyone’s feelings, but it always holds the potential to give those who are willing a shot at love — whether it’s giving or receiving or both — and that’s the most beautiful thing about it.