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Every Friday since the divorce, everyone minus Dad was made to sit down to eat dinner together—though Mom wouldn’t have said they were forced, merely encouraged. Summer spent this Friday’s dinner doing what she always did, texting Stacey and purposefully ignoring the way Morty was squirming in his seat. Though she did notice he was fidgeting more than usual.
Partway through dinner—spaghetti again, why was she not surprised—he shot her a pleading look and then another to Grandpa Rick, which she took to mean he wanted to be rescued from an impending adventure until he finally spoke up, but not to Summer.
“Um, Mom? There’s something that m-me and Rick need to tell you.”
Before he could continue Rick cut in, pointing at Morty accusingly with his fork. “Hey, y-y-you’re the one who wanted to spuh-spill the beans. Don’t drag me into your s-stupid idea, Morty.”
Morty furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to argue back but Mom, clearly as sick of their constant arguing as Summer was, said, “Morty, what is it?”
“O-Okay, um. Do you remember a while ago when me and Rick s-suh-sort of mutated everyone on earth into Cronenberg people? But then Rick found a cure and so it all—everything was fine.”
“Except for the damage to the house,” Mom grumbled, but Summer could hardly hear her over the realization striking her, thoughts running through her head a mile a minute about how badly Mom was going to freak over this.
Summer glared at Morty across the table. Shut up, she was thinking over and over at him. You know how this goes, Morty. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
Morty didn’t shut up. “I’m from a dimension where we didn’t find the cure.”
Mom’s mouth twitched into a disbelieving smile. “What?”
Her tone said this was still salvageable, that Morty could still say Just kidding, Mom! We sure got you good! and pretend none of this had ever happened. Morty’d never had strong enough survival instincts, though. If he did he’d never have attached himself so thoroughly to Grandpa Rick in the first place.
“Rick and I—e-everything we tried just made it worse. So we—we found a dimension where things were back to normal and we just s-slipped right in.”
“If that were true there’d be two of you,” Mom said. She squinted her eyes suspiciously. “Are there two of you?”
“Not, um—n-not exactly?”
“Cut it out, Morty,” Summer finally said. He ignored her.
“The other Morty—that is, um the first one, you know, y-your son—he’s dead. So’s your original Rick.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom said, any trace of humor left on her face gone. She looked expectantly at Rick. “Dad?” she prompted.
Rick shrugged. “Whadd’you want me to say, suh-sweetie? That’s pretty much how it went down.”
“You’re kidding. That couldn’t happen.”
“Hey, anything’s possible, Beth,” Rick said unhelpfully, taking another bite of spaghetti. “Big universe.”
“Okay, but this —this can’t happen!” Mom said, growing more frantic by the second. “You can’t just kill your alternate selves—”
“To be fair, they were already dead—”
“—And take their place!”
“Mom, you need to like, calm down,” Summer said. Mom turned to her with a bewildered expression.
“Calm down? My father and my son are dead and you want me to calm down?” Mom’s brow furrowed in anger. “In case you’re forgetting, Summer, that’s your family they replaced! Why aren’t you more upset about this?”
“I already knew,” Summer admitted.
“You what?”
“D-Don’t be mad at Summer,” Morty said, redirecting Mom’s anger back towards him. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Right, how could I forget that you killed my son?”
Summer waited for Morty to refute Mom. He had, after all, not killed their original Morty. He and Grandpa Rick had only taken advantage of the situation, not caused it.
But Morty didn’t deny what Mom had said. “I’m sorry. I-I know sorry isn’t good enough—n-not for something like this, but I am sorry. Really.”
“You’re sorry. Well, I’m sure if Ted Bundy said he was sorry everyone would forgive him, then, right?”
“Seriously, Mom?” Summer scoffed. “Ted Bundy? What’s next—Mussolini?”
“What did you do with him?” Mom demanded. Morty looked queasy.
“They’re in the—um, i-in the yard. Over by the—”
“You buried them in the backyard?”
“I know, I’m sor—”
“Save it,” Mom interrupted, forcing out every word past clenched teeth. “Sorry isn’t ever going to be good enough. You said it yourself.”
With that she stood up, grabbed the half empty bottle of wine on the table and left for her bedroom. Morty flinched at the sound of her door slamming upstairs. In the ensuing silence Rick took a drink from his flask.
“I told you this would happen,” he said plainly, in that way he did where you were made to feel small and angry even though he wasn’t really gloating—just stating the facts.
“Don’t be an asshole, Grandpa,” she said, but he ignored her and continued to eat his spaghetti.
Morty took his and Mom’s dishes to the kitchen without a word, looking like a kicked puppy all the while. Summer stared at his retreating back and then at Rick, gesturing for him to do something. He pretended he hadn’t seen her. So, it was gonna be like that.
She shoved her chair back and snatched up his plate mid-bite—“W-What the hell, Summer!”—to take it into the kitchen, where she paused briefly at the entrance, watching the stiff line of Morty's shoulders as he scrubbed the dishes. She couldn't see his face from here, but she was almost afraid to step closer. She did anyway.
“Mom doesn’t hate you,” Summer said as she approached, her voice echoing loudly in the quiet kitchen. She could hear Rick grumbling as he made his way towards the garage and rummaged through the clutter on his workbench. Seemed even the smartest man in the universe wasn’t above avoiding his problems with mindless busywork.
“Sure she does,” Morty replied with a false calm. “Who wouldn’t? I buried her r-real son in the backyard. Anyone w-would—would hate someone who did that.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a complete downer?” Rhetorical question. Summer had, many times.
“I didn’t ask you to come in here a-and—”
“I’m cheering you up,” she interrupted. Morty’s brow furrowed and he scrubbed the plate in his hand harder.
“You don’t have to be nice to me just because nuh-no one else bothers.”
“Jeez, self-pitying much? That’s not what this is about, anyway.”
“Everything she said was true,” Morty said, and now she could hear the dejection. “I as good as killed your brother. I-I’m probably a shitty substitute for the r-ruh-real thing.”
Summer put a hand on his shoulder and he went still. “You’re my brother, too,” she said quietly, surprised to find she meant it. When Morty first told her he was from a different dimension she’d only been able to think of him as her brother when she didn’t focus too much on the fact that her original brother—her real brother, as she’d thought vehemently at the time—was rotting in the yard under a slowly spreading patch of red clover that Dad wasn’t home to mow over. She hadn’t been able to help noticing the differences between them, however subtle.
Like how Morty’s face went eerily still sometimes, like it was now, when he felt overwhelmed in some way. Not like her first brother whose lip would start to wobble like a baby on the verge of tears. She wondered if this Morty used to cry like a baby, too, and when he stopped. Maybe it was after he came here.
Summer pulled him towards her and maneuvered his stiff body into hugging position. That was one thing that hadn’t changed. Morty had always been stiff and slow on the uptake with physical affection. It took him a few seconds to relax into her hold and reach his soapy hands up to clutch at the back of her shirt.
“Don’t worry about Mom, okay? She just needs some time.” To grieve, she didn’t say, but she was sure Morty heard the unspoken words. He nodded slowly against her and then pulled back, noticeably less miserable than before. He didn’t quite meet her eyes as he turned back toward the sink full of dirty dishes.
“Thanks, Summer,” he said just loud enough to be heard over the running sink. “Y-You’re a pretty good sister.”
“Only pretty good?” she asked with a raised brow, nudging his side as she picked up a dish towel and began drying a plate.
Morty finally gave a tentative smile and nudged her back. “Okay, okay—you’re the best. Happy now?”
Summer grinned. Close enough.