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Pete doesn’t like to confront Myka. He tries to do it only when it seems absolutely necessary… but right now it does seem like that. Overwhelmingly like that.
So when they’re walking the aisles one December afternoon, taking inventory, he asks, “Are you okay?”
Myka turns to look at him—not even with the skeptical neck-thing. This is just a normal look. “Why?” she asks. “Don’t I seem okay?”
Pete nods. “You seem totally okay.”
Again with the normal look. “Then okay, right?”
“Wrong,” he declares. “Because that’s what’s not okay.”
“You’re great with clarification,” she mutters.
That sounded better… almost the right level of annoyed, because they’re heading to check up on a bunch of bells, then on the misfit toys from Rudolph, which are all things he might be tempted to touch, because: “It’s almost Christmas,” he reminds her.
“Also very reliable with a calendar,” she says. “Are we done now?”
“Not even close. Why aren’t you being all tense and shouty?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because you always are. Like, where’s your ‘Don’t touch anything, Pete!’ red alerts?”
Myka shrugs, like nothing has ever been a big deal. “Touch what you want.”
It’s a sentence that doesn’t make any sense, so Pete says the most sense-making thing he can think of: “You’ve been whammied.”
“Have not.”
Usually she’d say something like that sassy, like a challenge. Instead she’s laid-back. He thinks “whammied” again, but then another possibility occurs to him: maybe she’s just… happy? She’s swoony-moony in love, and H.G. seems to feel the same way, even though they both keep trying not to be obvious about it. It’s sweet and silly, and usually that’s great. But being happy with H.G. hasn’t ever meant she leans off the gas when it comes to being Ms. Hands-Off-The-Merchandise around artifacts.
At least, not until now. Pete realizes he himself is feeling kinda not-okay, so he shakes his head, shimmies his shoulders. The shake and shimmy tell him this is definitely not Myka being happy—this is a vibe. From her. There’s something strange about it though, even for a vibe, and he doesn’t get it. “Are you really okay?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks back.
Pete’s done plenty of interrogations in his time, and that was federal-criminal-level unresponsive. Now, with the vibe, he’s feeling like he needs real answers.
He considers going to Steve for truth-o-meter help, but that’s a last resort. So that evening he tries his second-to-last resort: H.G.
She’s in the kitchen eating something bready with icing… cinnamon roll. It smells fantastic, and for a second he forgets what he’s there for, wondering whether she’s got another one hidden somewhere and if he can talk her into giving it to him.
She and Myka have a little agreement about sweets—she doesn’t eat them when Myka’s around. It’s the reverse of how nobody drinks when he’s around because they’re worried about tempting him: it’s not like Myka would be tempted by sugar; instead, she’s grossed out. And weirdly, H.G. has a real sweet tooth. He isn’t sure what their signal is, like if H.G. has to put a sock on the kitchen door handle or what, but it seems to work.
Thinking about Myka, and how far away from this situation she’s likely to be, makes him think about the vibe. He asks, “Is Myka okay?”
H.G. chews her bite of cinnamon roll. She can be really slow when she feels like it… and she is obviously really feeling like it. He’s wondering if he should just give up by the time she swallows and says, “Define ‘okay.’”
Pete finds that surprisingly hard to do. As far as Myka’s concerned, anyway. “Well, not giving me a vibe, to start with. It’s all weird, a vibe but like she knows it and she’s trying to butter it. As a disguise.”
“What is the ‘all weird’ she is attempting to disguise with butter?” H.G. asks. She gets that sly look—and then she takes the butter out of the fridge, slathers some on her cinnamon roll, and puts it in the microwave. He sighs. She’s making fun of him, but also, this is another episode of H.G. and the Microwave: A Love Story. Not quite as epic as hers and Myka’s, but it was definitely love at first nuke. Then again he’s not sure there’s any kind of technology she wouldn’t fall for.
He ignores the butter. And how it’s melting as the carousel turns. And how the smell of buttered cinnamon and sugar and bread is filling the kitchen and—yep, he’s totally ignoring that. “I don’t know what the weird is,” he says. “What’s different?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” says H.G. She’s cheerful. Always dangerous. “We’ve been invited to visit her parents for Christmas.”
“Oh my god,” Pete says. No wonder she was hiding it. “She wants me to ruin Christmas. ‘Touch what you want,’ she said. She wants a disaster.”
“There is a simple solution,” H.G. says, still cheerful. Still dangerous. Pete waits for the hammer to fall, and it does: “Don’t give her one.”
“See, but I have this Christmas problem,” he tells her. This won’t go well.
“Don’t have it.” That sounded a little less cheerful.
“But if I don’t… does that mean you want to visit her parents? I’d’ve figured you’d go for Myka being happy on Christmas.”
“Happiness is often relative.”
“I see what you did there! Relative! Relatives!”
She gives him a snooty look. “I did not intend to do that there.” That wasn’t cheerful at all.
“So is your Christmas plan some compare-and-contrast deal, to make her understand how good she’s got it with you? Happiness-wise?”
Now she squints. “I always hope, ‘happiness-wise,’ she believes that to be true. Separate and apart from whatever her relationship with her parents is, or might otherwise be.”
“Might otherwise… oh, I get it. You think you’re the special sauce. Trust me, you’re not. I’ve met that family.”
H.G. doesn’t say anything. She’s looking at him like she doesn’t understand what he said, but wasn’t that pretty clear? Then he gets it: she’s caught on “special sauce.”
He helps her out: “What I mean is, you won’t make a difference.”
Her face clears, and she recovers enough to say, “I always make a difference.”
“Right. I’m not sure if I should give Myka the disaster she wants or let you be the disaster.”
“Perhaps I’m the disaster she wants.”
Pete snorts. “If that was it, she’d be dragging you into that Bering bookstore by your pretty, pretty hair.”
“Thank you for the compliment. I confess to being somewhat vain about my hair.”
“It’ll be on fire when you realize how fast you gotta get out of Colorado to save Myka from her family.”
“You’re failing to consider one as-yet-unknown quantity.”
Well, no real surprise there. “And that’s?”
“Perhaps I am the special sauce.”
Yeah, disaster. Pete sighs again. This Christmas is gonna be difficult. “I’ll try to keep my hands in my pockets.”
H.G. nods a serious nod. Then she gets out another plate, cuts a large chunk off her cinnamon roll, plops it over, and hands him the result.
Bribery. Pete respects that. “I’ll try really hard,” he tells her, which is about the best he can do, this time of year.
She looks at her plate. She dumps what’s left on it onto Pete’s, then looks up at him.
“Super hard,” he offers.
She nods. “I believe everyone will appreciate that,” she says, “but, I hope, Myka most of all. And with that, I leave you to your sugar high.” She H.G.s her way out of the kitchen, like there’s some invention he was keeping her from finishing, like he hadn’t interrupted her chasing her own sugar high.
Pete considers it might be a good idea to have a cinnamon roll, a plate of Christmas cookies, and/or an entire candy store ready to hand to H.G. when she and Myka roll back in from Colorado, because she’ll probably have to be satisfied with non-Myka sugar for a good long time. Plus Myka’s likely to be avoiding her completely, if things go like Pete thinks they will, so she’ll have lots of free sugar-eating time on her hands.
In the meantime, he focuses on what’s most important: eating a cinnamon roll.
****
Claudia loves the Warehouse database. It’s an amazing record, an infinitude of records, and the wonder of it really truly is endless. The looking and then the finding: being rewarded, surprised, overcome.
But there’s always a downside, and with the database, that’s the updating. Which is also endless. And if there’s one thing Claudia finds more boring even than a lecture from Artie about whatever offensive thing young people are doing today (or, usually, months and months ago that he’s just heard of), it’s data entry. It’s just typing stuff, not even thinking about it. She tries to find any excuse she can not to do it, so she’s thrilled when, as she’s sitting in the Warehouse office trying to figure out a good one for getting out of this day’s tappity-tap-tap, Myka walks up behind her and says, “I need your help.”
Unusual. Kinda cool. Best of all, Myka’s a pretty good typist, so it won’t be that. “I’m Claudia and I’ll be your server today,” she says. “What can I get you started with? Some jalapeño poppers? Mozzarella sticks?”
“I need a crisis.”
“Blooming onion it is.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“An artifact crisis.”
“Maybe still works.”
“Come on,” Myka groans. “Humor me, okay?”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.” Myka can sometimes be… less fun than Claudia wishes she would be. She’s always awesome, but sometimes Claudia thinks they’re just playing, and then it turns out that’s wrong, so—
“Look,” Myka says, short and sharp, and she is not playing. “I would like you to find something artifacty that really really needs to be taken care of. By me.”
“If it’s a crisis, the mission might end up taking more than a couple days, and remember, Christmas is sneaking up on us all, so if you—”
More short and sharp: “That’s fine.” She stops and slows down. “I’m more than happy to be your server.”
Myka is very, very bad at pretending to be less serious than she actually is. “That wasn’t funny,” Claudia informs her. “But look at me still humoring you.”
“Thank you. Probably. But again: crisis.”
“One problem with that though.”
“Fine. I bet I can solve one problem.”
“I can’t actually make a blooming onion.”
Myka crosses her arms and frowns. “You’re not humoring me anymore.”
“Not really, no,” Claudia admits. Because why, honestly, would anyone manufacture a crisis? Even to get out of data entry.
Myka makes a strangled noise that she’s clearly trying to keep from being a growl. Then she stalks off.
Claudia would be worried and/or scared, but she’s learned that H.G. is amazingly good at taking this particular sort of Myka-configuration and defusing her… so she puts that higher on the priority list than boring typing (formulating her case to Artie in her head) and goes looking for H.G. She finds her in her room—it isn’t her bedroom anymore; the bed got moved out to make space for a workbench, because she doesn’t sleep in there except when she falls asleep at the bench. Right now, she seems to be taking apart a space heater, or maybe she’s putting it back together? Sometimes with H.G. it’s hard to tell the difference. “Okay, give,” she says. “What’s up with Myka?”
“Define ‘up.’” H.G. doesn’t look at Claudia as she says this.
“She wants a crisis. Why does she want a crisis?”
H.G. sighs a little, like she really does know why—but of course she knows; she’s H.G. She knows everything. Everything in general, but particularly when it comes to Myka. Now she does look. It’s her pointy-focus look. “I suspect she subscribes to the belief that every crisis is an opportunity.”
“An opportunity to what? Save the world? Bank karma points? Show off?”
“Admirable guesses all,” H.G. says, “and most likely all more or less accurate. But overriding them all, I fear, is the opportunity to avoid visiting her parents for Christmas. With me in tow.”
Claudia gasps. “This is the big ‘here’s the lady of my life’ reveal? Making your whole thingy-thing that much more official?”
“Not if Myka has her way.”
“Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll put a stop to… wait.”
H.G.’s face hardens, and she blows out a sharp breath. “I’m quite practiced at that.”
Which brings Claudia to a screeching halt. She cringes and says a heartfelt “sorry,” trying to make clear she’s cringing for the right reason: I should have known better. Not very long ago, Myka had, in a rare moment of what seemed like real honesty about what being with H.G. was like, said the word “minefield.” Claudia told her that was real for all of them, but Myka had said the number and placement of mines was probably a bit different for her than for everyone else. As was the blast radius.
Moments like now, Claudia’s not so sure that’s true, and so she’s relieved, outsize relieved, when H.G. says, “No, no. You did nothing wrong. The apology is mine—my response was oversensitive. Vestigial. You were saying?”
“I was… I was! You want to meet the parents?”
“Now seems as reasonable a time as any.”
“But you could put it off. Maybe forever. Like Myka wants?” Why does H.G. not want that?
“I suspect Myka also subscribes to the belief that every opportunity, particularly in this context, is a crisis. But must that be so?”
“I kind of see your point,” Claudia says, because opportunity. “I kind of don’t,” she follows, because crisis, but H.G. seems to have some plan, so: “Anyway I won’t crisis her up. Not intentionally.”
“Thank you,” H.G. says. “Now, help me with this surveillance device.”
Claudia squints. The view doesn’t change. “That’s a space heater.”
“It may have departed a factory as a space heater, but you of all people should know that one’s origins do not determine one’s destiny.”
She turns back to the former heater, leaving Claudia to contemplate origins and destiny… and to begin to realize why H.G. might want to meet Myka’s parents after all.
****
Steve is gulping a cup of coffee before heading back to the Warehouse. He sets his mug in the sink and turns around to find Myka leaning against the kitchen doorway, contemplating him. It’s a Mrs. Frederic move. Disconcerting.
“You look like you need a vacation,” she says.
He probably does look like that. They probably all look like that. But vacations are hard to come by, and he’s probably had more than his share. “I’m supposed to be holding the fort over Christmas,” he reminds her.
“I’d be happy to take your place.”
“In exchange for…”
“Nothing. I don’t need a vacation.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Completely.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Oh come on. Just say yes.”
“Not until I think through the repercussions,” he insists.
“I just said, in exchange for nothing. What repercussions?”
“Around here, there are always repercussions.”
“Repercussions!” she barks out, then exhales like he’s being unreasonably frustrating. “Honestly, I had legitimately hoped to do this in one of what I thought were several easy ways.”
“Do ‘this’? What’s ‘this’?”
“Never mind. Harder ways, here I come.” She stalks off, heavy-footed and rigid, in a way that doesn’t at all resemble a Mrs. Frederic move.
The exchange leaves Steve completely, unsettlingly baffled. He goes to see H.G., who’s putting together… a space heater? Or taking it apart? Best not to ask questions. About that, anyway. “Does Myka need a vacation?”
“Define ‘vacation.’”
“Um. Time away from here?”
“I might ask you to define ‘need’ as well.”
“This was the problem I had talking to her. I think she was holding her definitions hazy, so truth versus lies couldn’t come into focus.”
“I am not surprised. Myka’s definitions can be self-serving.”
“So what’s this about?”
“The dryly factual, and most legibly truthful, answer is that she is attempting to avoid seeing her parents, and showing me to them, this Christmas.”
“Wow. Big step. Is there another answer?”
“‘This’ is also ‘about’ whatever is motivating her attempted avoidance. But I’ve yet to determine where that truth lies.”
Steve enjoys talking to H.G.—and more specifically, he enjoys listening to her talk. The timbre of her voice soothes him, and he’s able to relax into it doubly, because she never lies. And on top of that, what she says often carries an extra layer of truth, or maybe he means an insight into truth? Like what she’s just said, which he comments on: “It’s weird how we say ‘truth lies.’
She smiles. “I don’t disagree.”
“So what are you putting together here?”
“Truth and lies,” she tells him.
“On the bench.”
“Oh. I’m dismantling a surveillance device. It didn’t work as intended.”
“I thought it was a space heater,” Steve admits.
“So does it, apparently. Sometimes origins do seem to be destiny… or rather, sometimes recognizing and accepting origins seems to be the better part of valor.”
“Are you talking about the space heater or Myka?”
She smiles again, this time mysteriously. “We’ll see,” she says, and it’s the truth.
****
Leena is regretting having taken Pete up on his offer, last January, to pack up the Christmas lights for her… she’s opened the first box to find wires snarled in a way that she finds hard to believe could have happened accidentally. Not that Pete sat and tangled them all up together, but Leena wonders if there might be some knotting artifact with which he, in his inimitable Pete fashion, got himself entwined.
She sits down next to the box and pulls experimentally on a twisted green strand. The entire clump of lights, vaguely cube-shaped, emerges, and she wonders whether there might be decorative Christmas value in setting a blinking green block in a corner somewhere… but she shakes her head and starts poking through the jumble, trying to find at least one beginning or end.
A throat-clear makes her raise her head. Myka’s standing there, looming, a little fidgety, shifting from foot to foot. “I really apologize for bothering you,” she says, “but could you give me a quick aura check?
“You hate it when I say anything about your aura. I’m pretty sure you hate that I can even see it, so I try to ignore it as much as I can.”
Myka blinks. “That’s… considerate. I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I focus on other people’s, and yours fades out.” Leena shrugs. “Cocktail party effect.”
“Thank you. As a general rule, I appreciate it. But right now, I need some data.”
“Reading your aura has nothing to do with data,” Leena objects.
“I need a data point.”
“Why?”
“Because if nothing else works, I need to make a case. And I think it would help to have data points.”
Data points. About her aura. Absurd; not even a thinkable thing… but that’s quintessential Myka: trying to make the mysteries that surround her fit her paradigm, rather than the other way around. “Your aura right now is a mess,” Leena tells her truthfully.
“That helps. Thank you. ‘Leena says my aura’s a mess.’ I can work with that.”
“It’s hard to read at all. Kaleidoscopic?”
“That might be a little less helpful. Somebody might think it was artful.”
Leena has no idea what to make of that. “Seriously. How many planes do you exist on? Or how many are you trying to exist on?”
Myka gestures into the air. “Uncountable.”
Leena finds this an insufficient answer. So once Myka has long-legged herself away, she abandons the light-tangle block and finds H.G., who’s straightening out some wires of her own (smaller, no lightbulbs, attached at various points to a small ceramic heater). “Why does Myka needs data points to make a case?” she asks.
“I would ask you to define one or more of the words you’ve uttered, but I suspect I still wouldn’t understand what you’ve said.”
“I don’t either,” Leena admits. “What’s going on?”
“Myka is attempting to stave off an inevitability,” Helena intones.
Leena ignores the portentous intent. “Which is?”
At that, Helena drops the grandiose pose. She says, like a genuinely normal, if somewhat befuddled, person, “I’ve had to explain the situation several times. Does no one gossip in this Warehouse?”
As if this bunch could manage to do something as conventional as that. “There isn’t even a group text.”
“Again, I’d ask you to define, but this time I gather your meaning. If it existed, that ‘group text’ would no doubt have informed you that Myka and I are visiting her parents for Christmas.”
“Are you?”
“Unless Myka’s efforts to the contrary prevail.”
“How serious is she about those efforts? She’s really not acting like herself.”
“Pete said the same thing,” Helena tells her. “She was willing to let him touch artifacts. Eager for it, in fact.”
Leena gasps, exaggeratedly, but there’s more truth to her dramatic inhalation than she’s happy about. “Oh please no. I’m struggling right now with what I’m really afraid are the results of that.”
“Struggling? I’ll assist if you like.”
“See, this is what I mean. Myka didn’t even notice… didn’t offer to help. That’s not like her at all.”
“She’s a bit preoccupied. And I must admit that my own reasons are partially selfish: a shift to a different problem may encourage the emergence of a solution to my current one.”
“You mean Myka’s efforts to the contrary about visiting the parents?”
H.G. looks down at her crossed wires. “In a way,” she says.
****
Artie doesn’t enjoy being ambushed, particularly not in his own office—but that’s the sense he gets from the way Myka approaches him, as if she’s trying to be cagey, trying to catch him out somehow.
Then she says, “Help me, Artie—you’re my only hope.”
“That sounds like something I’ve heard Pete say. And Claudia. Is it some reference?”
“Maybe. But right now, it’s a serious request. I need you to help me.”
He also doesn’t enjoy being suspicious of Myka’s motives. “How?”
“I need more work. And I need it right now. Now, and extending through the holidays.”
All suspicions flee his mind—instead, he would send up a prayer of thanksgiving, if he believed that that were the right direction to send it. “I… am more than happy to accommodate that request.”
“At last,” Myka says.
She’s speaking for them both, Artie feels.
He feels also, now, an obligation, and he seeks out H.G. Wells to discharge it. His trek takes him to the B&B’s upstairs, which disturbs him. He traditionally avoids calling on any of the agents in their own spaces; there’s too much overlap between personal and professional lives in the Warehouse as it is, and he has no interest in worsening that off-putting intimacy. Yet here he is, regarding H.G.’s… workroom? When did this cease to be a bedroom? He consoles himself with the thought that at least that function should be restored soon.
“I just want to… thank you,” he says. These are words unfamiliar in his mouth—particularly as said to H.G. Wells. He knows he has several reasons to thank her. But distinct discomfort accompanies even the thought of articulating them… well, in any case, just one today.
“Words fail me,” she says. Clearly, she understands how strange the circumstance is. “Thank me for…?”
He doesn’t bother trying to keep a gleeful, satisfied note out of his voice as he says, “For lifting whatever spell you put on Myka. She’s herself again—wanting more work. Right now, during the holidays. I can only assume that the two of you have given up your… association.”
H.G. raises her hands—fast, like the weapons Artie knows they are—then lowers them slowly. “I have withstood as much as a human could,” she says, low and heartfelt.
Her words surprise Artie. “That seems overly disparaging. Even if you and Myka didn’t make a success of your… endeavor, and I do thank heaven for that, I find it hard to believe that you had to withstand much of—”
Now she makes a strangled noise, her hands rising again, this time to be clenched into fists of… what? Rage? She says, in that same low and heartfelt way, “Anything disparaging I might say has to do with Myka’s failure to be direct. With me. And your assumption, alas—that is, alas for you but not for me—is invalid. Our association, endeavor, liaison, relationship”—the emphasis on that contemporary word is a needle, an “I have made progress in terminology for a reason that you despise” dig—“is ongoing.” The wicked smile that follows is yet another dig.
Artie wishes he could wave a magic wand and keep the two of them apart. Life was simpler when Myka was dedicated, particularly when she was rededicated, and H.G. was… gone. The idea that he’d been transported to that simpler time once again, via some sort of seasonal miracle, had been a comfort. He was hardly surprised that H.G. would be the one to yank that comfort away. He knows it was his own fault, for jumping to a conclusion…
…but he’d based that jump on evidence. What, then, had Myka’s request for more work actually been evidence of? He’s sufficiently perplexed that he asks that very question of H.G., who says, “I’ve recently been educated regarding the concept and functions of the ‘group text.’ I believe I should start one and issue periodic updates.”
Nonsensical. “Updates on what?”
H.G. smiles. “The ongoing relationship that pains you so. And mark my words, if you give Myka more work for the holidays, those updates will include information on your foibles.”
“What do you know about my foibles?”
“Less than I might. But I may yet prove that origins are not destiny. Isn’t your office in the Warehouse rather chilly?”
Artie tries to formulate something to say to that, other than “yes?” But H.G. Wells talks a lot of non-sequitur nonsense, so he persuades himself a response isn’t necessary. He hopes that keeps being true.
****
The day after Christmas is when Myka and H.G. are supposed to get home from Colorado. Pete’s been expecting them to stalk back into the B&B since, honestly, a couple hours after they left, late on Christmas Eve, because things had seemed pret-ty frosty then, never mind the weather… but they actually stick to the schedule.
They walk in and don’t say anything. They shake snow off. Set their bags down.
Things might still be frosty. Or worse. Pete glances around at everybody—Claudia, Steve, Leena—with raised eyebrows. They shrug at him.
Leena, the brave one, says, “Myka! H.G.! Did you eat yet? I just put the dinner remnants away.”
“I’m not hungry,” H.G. says, walking into the living room. “Myka?”
Myka follows her in, looking weirdly smug, though also massively strung out. “I’m fine,” she starts with. Then: “And what is it you need to tell Pete?” she says to H.G.
H.G. sighs, like she’s in pain. “Pete, you were correct. I am not the special sauce.” She raises an eyebrow at Myka, though, which makes Pete pretty sure they’ve been talking about somebody being special, and saucy, in hey-hey situations too. Then H.G. drops the eyebrow and says, “However: Myka, what is it you need to tell everyone?”
Now Myka sighs. She says, “Happiness is relative, I shouldn’t seek out crises, I sometimes need a vacation, and data points don’t help if the overall argument is invalid. And Artie isn’t here, but I guess part of what I should say out loud is that I really don’t need more work.” She turns to H.G. and says, “Are you happy now?” It’s fake-annoyed. And it’s a huge relief to Pete, because there’s no vibe at all.
“Relatively,” H.G. says. Not a purr, but close.
Pete points at her. “I see what you did there. Again!”
“I again did not intend to do that there. And I assure you I am not happy in that sense. They hate me.” Like she’s almost proud of that.
Myka smirks, like she’s proud of it too.
“Even your pretty, pretty hair?” Pete asks.
“My hair was not a topic of attention. Alas. Had they focused on that… but here we are.”
Myka says, “It’s true that it might have gone better if I’d taken just your hair with me.”
Steve laughs at that. “Leaving her with my cut?”
H.G.’s clearly trying to hide something like horror at the idea as she says, “No thank you. It’s charming on you, but I don’t have the necessary bone structure.”
“Please,” Claudia says with a snort, “the rest of us are jellyfish compared to you. Besides, nobody hates you.”
“I invite you to take that up with Artie.” H.G. says. “And if you do so in his office, you might consider first remarking on the draftiness of that cavern.”
****
As a child, Helena consistently failed to heed her parents when they admonished her about speaking only when spoken to. As an adult, however, Helena had become quite practiced at meeting silence with silence—or rather, at recognizing when silence was a meet response, to silence or any other proffer.
Myka had initially said, with a conspicuous lack of affect, “My parents want us to come to Colorado Springs for Christmas. They want to meet you. On Christmas.”
“All right,” Helena agreed.
But then Myka said nothing more, leaving Helena to infer the contours of the situation, and to tread exceptionally lightly while doing so.
She inferred that Myka did not want to go to Colorado Springs. That she did not share her parents’ desire that they and Helena meet. That she did not want this to happen on Christmas—or on any other day, apparently, but particularly not on Christmas.
But Myka’s increasingly ridiculous machinations notwithstanding, to Colorado Springs they went, utilizing airplane tickets that Helena had bought, staying in a hotel room Helena had reserved. Helena half expected Myka to refuse to exit the plane or, once in the hotel, to reject Helena’s suggestion that she pilot their rented car to wherever it was her parents lived… yet she did everything that “visiting her parents” required, including introducing Helena to her parents and several other relatives, papering over her parents’ and those other relatives’ strangely smooth hostility, making conversation that included reminiscences about her own childhood—“yes, that was when I was going through my gloomy poetry phase,” she said at one point—and Helena wanted further details but did not want to bring even that small bit of pressure to bear.
Myka even covered for Helena’s momentary dudgeon in response to her father’s statement that H.G. Wells’s work suffered due to the shadow of Verne. “And of course parts of both hold up poorly,” he said, in response to which Helena could not properly school her face. But she did not leap to strangle him.
That was the smallest of victories in this impossible circumstance, one in which Helena tried to be charming, volunteered to help in the kitchen, made every effort to engage, to be respectful, to show them why. Nothing connected. Nothing worked.
Through it all, Myka was not herself, not even noticeably sparking at the Verne-Wells conflict. The only hint Helena received that her Myka had not been replaced by a passively pleasant stranger was her facial expression when her mother brought to the table several pies as the conclusion to the day’s celebratory meal: pumpkin, pecan, cherry, and apple. Myka’s extended family expressed pleasure at them all, their presence and appearance, and Helena agreed, privately, with them. The apple in particular looked delectable.
Before the pie consumption began, however, Helena said, “I think Myka and I should take our leave. While this day has been lovely, we’ll be traveling early tomorrow.” She could certainly spare Myka any further discomfort, and she could take on the burden of departure-impetus as well—the Berings would not be sad to see her leave, and they could blame her for spiriting Myka away.
Silence ensued on the drive back to the hotel, and Helena now felt it right to wait until they reached the room, until Myka might feel the “visit” was truly complete, to attempt to speak. When the door closed behind them, Myka took the few steps to the bed and sat, slumping. She closed her eyes.
Helena opened her mouth to say… something, but Myka preempted her. “Thank you for diving on the pie to save me from it.” She grimaced, then opened her eyes. “The whole thing. Not my finest hour.”
Helena offered, gently, “You could have simply said ‘I don’t want to introduce you to my family.’ And refused to go.”
“You would have taken that the wrong way.”
Joining her on the bed’s edge, Helena said, “Would there have been a right way to take it?”
“Yes. I would have explained, but I didn’t have the words then.”
“And do you have them now?”
“Not really, but something like, ‘I don’t want to introduce you to my family because my family has no idea who I am and you will complicate that to a truly unimaginable degree.’”
To a truly unimaginable degree. Helena bowed her head. “It’s been some time since I dealt with a family. I was nonchalant, and I apologize for allowing myself to exaggerate the power I might have had to alter the situation. The situation upon which I did not and still do not have purchase.”
“I wish you really did have that power.” Myka shrugged once, then again with exaggeration. “I recognize that I let myself pretend I was finding an adult way out of it when really it was just a kid way in an untailored adult suit. ‘Find me an excuse!’ To everybody.”
“I remain unsure as to why there had to be some excuse. Why you didn’t simply decline.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I won’t pretend to understand.”
“Better that way. It’s not your fight.”
“Must it be anyone’s?”
“Yes and no.”
“I couldn’t present as smooth a surface as you, but I did try not to fight… they do hate me.”
“They don’t hate you. They don’t know you. They aren’t bothering to know you, because what they really hate is that you make me happy. I mean, not that I was demonstrating that, and I’m sorry I couldn’t. But the fact that I brought you at all.”
“I’m fairly certain I brought you. But I find their stance more than a bit perverse.”
“Not totally,” Myka said, a touch defensive. “To break it down some more, they hate that what makes me happy isn’t what they think should make me happy.”
“And what is to be done about that? Anything?”
Myka shook her head. She smoothed the bed’s coverlet.
Helena said, “My intention is to continue attempting to make you happy. Do with that what you will.”
The smoothing continued as Myka said, “It’s a relief.”
“Is it?”
“This’ll sound weird, but: that I have to factor you in. I can start to do that now.”
“Would that we could reverse the situation. I would love to show you to Charles, to shock him: see this woman, how she shines. How he never envisioned a woman might. I can picture it so, so easily.”
“Imaginary, though,” Myka noted.
A valuable corrective, and Helena nodded. “While your family’s response is real. I know. They do hate me, or whatever happiness I bring you. Does that color your response to me? Be honest.”
“Yes,” Myka said, with no hesitation.
Helena had asked the question; she had to accept the answer. “All right,” she said.
But then Myka went on: “It increases my distance from them. They hate you—or the idea of you—and I don’t.” She paused, and her mouth formed something not quite a smile. “So it makes me love you more.”
This twisted Helena’s heart in a way she had not expected. She should have expected Myka to twist her heart, but she always anticipated poorly when and how the wrench would come. “And in turn,” she said, knowing it was too formal, yet that was her response to being caught so severely off guard, “I suppose it colors my response to you. For I must love anything that makes you love me more.”
Myka offered in response to that a full, yet quiet, smile.
“Your origins do matter,” Helena said.
“I know.” Myka sighed. “It’s not going to get any easier, though. And I can’t promise to quit being a kid about it.”
“Well. In future we can keep these conflicts from the others, can’t we?”
“That, I’m not sure about. I heard we’re starting a group text.”
“Oh, now there’s gossip.”
“What there is, is everyone coming back at me, being concerned about what going to Colorado Springs would mean—more for you than for me. Leena said you were frustrated that nobody knew anything about anything, and she seemed to think some kind of chat might be helpful. Just as a time-saver. Going forward.”
“Going forward, everyone could simply gather around the Warehouse office space heater.”
Myka laughed, an easy, restful sound. “You don’t make any sense,” she said, and there she was at last, fully herself, dry and affectionate and the shining, shining sun.
“But I do,” Helena told her. “Or I will. In time.”
“In time,” Myka said. “That’s when everything happens, isn’t it.”
“I hope so.” Helena hoped also that she would be welcomed if she leaned to kiss Myka—kiss her for the first time in some days, and did Myka know, had she intended, to provoke a period of anticipation, and then to end it as a reward?
Initially seeming to lean in as well, Myka suddenly stood up, leaving Helena to very nearly pitch sideways onto the bed. “Hold that thought,” she said, “just for a second. I got you a present. Kind of impromptu, but I think you’ll like it.”
“More than kissing you?” Helena asked, and she felt comfortable enough, now, to pout. Felt immensely glad to feel comfortable enough to pout.
“Differently than kissing me,” Myka said, rummaging in the satchel she’d taken to her parents’ house—she’d delivered to her father a first edition of O. Henry’s Cabbages and Kings, which he had accepted somewhat grudgingly—and produced an item swaddled in plastic film.
Helena took it into her hands: a slice of apple pie.
“Saw you eying it,” Myka said. “And I should point out that it actually does come with a special sauce.”
“Pete told you,” Helena said, heavily.
“Of course he did. You having a high opinion of yourself? Particularly when it’s likely to be proved wrong? He lives to spread that around. Anyway, this special sauce is butter rum. The recipe’s been in the family for generations. I’d tell you how to make it, but I don’t actually know… that distance thing. I tried really hard not to learn.”
“I suppose it does involve sugar.” Helena stood up herself, now, to put the pie somewhere safe. Even through plastic, it still looked delectable. “I’ll save this for later.”
“No, go ahead. I’m told it’s best right after it’s made,” Myka said. To Helena’s skeptical eyebrow, she said, “I need a shower. You eat the pie, I’ll wash everything off, and we’ll start fresh.”
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Helena informed her. “You unwashed, myself unsugared.”
She did that. An affirmation: slow and sure, sweet and clean.
They shared the shower.
****
Helena gives the slice of pie, which has traveled back to South Dakota with her, to Pete. “Special sauce,” she tells him, conspiratorially.
He regards the crushed package in his hand. “Want to split it?” he asks, and Helena considers saying yes. Even mangled, it continues to look delectable.
But she declines, because: “Myka and I have plans. We are extremely happy to be home.”
END