Work Text:
From: [email protected]
Hey Cleo,
It’s been a while. I still live near town, if you’re still in the area. I know it’s a long shot, but I’d like to meet and catch up sometime over coffee, if it’s not too much to ask.
Just to clarify: no, I don’t want anything. I’m just looking to see how it’s going.
Hope this goes through.
Etho
From: [email protected]
Etho—
Yes, I am available for coffee sometime. I’m a 40-minute drive from the last house, so if you’re willing to drive we can meet at the Crooked Cafe near there.
My schedule is open two weeks from now, on Tuesday the 16th, and Friday the 19th—around noon both days. Do either of those work for you?
Cleo
From: [email protected]
I can do Friday.
If you need to reschedule, let me know. If not, I’ll see you then.
Etho
Cleo snorted lightly as she scrolled back through the correspondence.
It was classic Etho, of course, to send an email—Cleo knew he worked best when he was able to plan out all his words, and she was aware that texting had been a struggle for him. He had made it work, though, for a while at least; they both had. Nonetheless, his texting habits had disintegrated long before their marriage, and Cleo had become very familiar with these formal emails.
Still, it had been quite a shock to receive one after nine years of divorce.
She almost hadn’t responded. It wouldn’t have taken any strength at all to simply trash it and let it delete itself after thirty days; it probably would’ve even felt slightly cathartic, like dusting the top of the bookshelf until it no longer housed dustballs. But any thrill she would’ve gotten from the act had faded years ago, and besides, she wasn’t feeling particularly spiteful the day it arrived. It hadn’t hurt her at all to click it, once she got over her surprise at the sender’s name. The real agony had been looking at her schedule—with pursed lips and hands on hips, no less—and trying to figure out if she really wanted to send one of her days down the garbage disposal to sit and chat it up with her ex-husband.
What finally decided her mind, and let her go back about her day in peace, was the lack of address in Etho’s emails: no “sincerely,” “all the best,” “love,” “with deepest regards and dearly wishing to have a sappy conversation.” Nope—just Cleo and Etho. Simple, one-dimensional, non-confrontational. Etho had probably chosen every single word of that email after hours of deliberation, and so it almost made her believe him when he said he didn’t want anything. Certainly not a fight.
She might as well humor him.
So that left Cleo here, in front of the Crooked Cafe, at 12:19. Waiting, admiring the autumn leaves on the scrappy little saplings speckled around the town square. It was busy, of course—lots of people and couples and grandparents with kids walking around, visiting this store and that despite the threat of rain in the air. It had clouded over on the drive, just like the forecast had said it would, but that would be fine; after all, they didn’t have to use the outdoor seating.
And on a positive note, maybe the rain would make Etho pack up and leave sooner—although it wasn’t like he was ever going to take up hours of her time with a conversation, he was much too diffident. However, the sooner they continued on with their separate lives, the better. It was over, and Etho and her previous marriage barely came to mind at all these days. It wasn’t worth her time or money thinking about it.
They had encountered each other at a family friend’s funeral, briefly, three years after they separated. Even though it hadn’t been an ugly divorce—no fights over custody, no dredging up of old grudges, just businesslike and logical—that meeting had still been painful, more due to the silences than anything else. However, it had also done everything to cement Cleo’s decisions further—not that she had ever doubted, and not that Etho had put up a fight. It had been done, and that was that. Still, it was nice to have the reminder that it was, well and truly, the right choice for all involved.
If she were to be blunt with it, her only regret was that they hadn’t done it sooner, for the kids’ sake. As it was, they had been just of an age to remember enough to hurt. Scar had taken it well enough, but Bdubs—the poor kid had practically viewed the world from Etho’s shoulders, and once he was dropped, nothing looked the same for a long, long while. Cleo had…tried her best. It was heartbreaking to lead him through the feelings she herself had suffered when her relationship with Etho had first started cracking—anger, confusion, resentment, and most of all abandonment.
Anyway. That was a long time ago.
She stuffed her phone back in her pocket, sighed, and scanned the plaza once more. Scar had a doctor’s appointment that they needed to review paperwork for, and she really didn’t want to do that after dinner, because she needed to go shopping before the store closed. The drive back was substantial, though, and at this rate she might need to rest when she got home. So really, the sooner she started back the better, and that meant that her time and the rest of her day was yet again hinging on whether or not Etho’s sorry self ever made an appearance—just like so many times before.
Some things never change.
Even as the thought dragged wryly through her mind, her eyes locked on a dark green, padded coat that she would recognize anywhere, for better or for worse. It was hustling through the crowd at a really very respectable speed—but as she stepped forward into better sight, she frowned at the white hair floating above the jacket’s shoulders. That was…different. New.
Then Etho’s wandering, searching gaze met her eyes, and he was there.
Cleo knew they had both aged since their last interaction—after all, six years worth of time didn’t exactly have a fine grit of sandpaper. She had felt her own jaw square up over the years, and her hair no longer kept its vibrant orange shade, not once she stopped coloring it; she had vaguely assumed that Etho had fared similarly. Yet even so, his appearance shocked her more than she would’ve liked to admit, stole her composure enough that she didn’t even say anything when he stopped in front of her.
His all-too-familiar jacket was pulled over his shoulders like it invariably was when there was even a slight chill in the air; but now it engulfed him in ways it never had before, swinging off his frame almost monstrously. It was open, which only emphasized how enormous it looked on him, and even the tight gray shirt underneath hung a little loose. He hadn’t shrunk, of course—his height had always been impressive—and yet Cleo almost wanted to shove him a cane because surely he didn’t have enough muscle left on his bones to keep himself upright.
The biggest change was his hair: bleached bright white, and falling around his face like it didn’t have the strength to perk back up. His skin appeared a kindred shade of pale—barring the bruise-like bags under his eyes—and again, that hollow, gaunt look was there making its home in his black eyes.
It was jarring, to say the least, and she was well and truly at a loss for words for a moment.
While she struggled, Etho visibly bounced in front of her, knees bending and unbending, until finally he took it upon himself to break the silence. He cleared his throat, the sound muffled by the black mask still loosely pulled above his nose; even that seemed to be big for his face. “Cleo. Good to see you. Thank you for coming.”
His voice was nearly identical, and maybe that helped her find her own. “Hi, Etho. You’re late.”
He bobbed his head, accepting the criticism. “Sorry. There was traffic. Uh, I think there was some sort of police action or something.”
“Right.” The word hung as heavy as the rain above them, and for a moment they slipped back into the old empty silence. Cleo stared at Etho, and Etho wisely confined his gaze to the horizon.
This was going to be the longest hour of her life, wasn’t it.
She gave the clouds a glance, and made an executive decision, helped along by a timely gust of wind that whispered rain into her ear. “Right, well, let’s get inside then. It’ll start raining any second now, and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not drink watered-down coffee.”
“Works for me. Crooked Cafe—good choice. Glad it’s still around.”
“Yeah.” It had been an old favorite, and they both knew it. She yanked the door open, choosing at the last second to hold it open for his weakened body instead of letting it close on him. “The food hasn’t changed much, I don’t think.”
“That’s a relief,” he commented, because he was a predictable man of habit. He let the door shut behind him without a sound.
The noise of the cafe was a welcome filler for their awkward small talk. It was reasonably busy for a rainy day, but Cleo saw with relief that the line was practically non-existent. With barely a glance behind her, she threaded her way between tables and chairs, avoiding the actual couples chatting over coffee. Etho joined her, and they both stared at the menu. One glance told her that it was the same as it had always been.
“Know what you’re gettin’?” The question was quiet, respecting the elderly man at the register in front of them whose mind was apparently wandering as much as his order.
It wasn’t a hard question. “Same old.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You?”
He shrugged. “Same old.”
Another minute of silence passed.
Having finally completed his order, the elderly man limped on, prompting Cleo and Etho to step up. The barista, a young woman with large hoop earrings, gave them a half-smile and recorded their orders—black coffee for Cleo, decaf with sugar and cream for Etho.
“And can I have a name for the order?” she finished, giving the kiosk a concluding tap. Etho moved to speak, but Cleo interrupted before a word left his mouth.
“Mine’s Cleo, his is Etho. We’ll be paying separately.”
The barista gave her a glance, and then hit the screen a few more times. “Mmkay. That’ll be…$3.32 for you, $3.87 for him. We’ll call when it’s ready.”
While Etho paid for his, Cleo scanned the place for available seating; it was a rather spacious cafe, with tall windows at the front and a small, second-floor balcony section overlooking the main area. Spotting an unoccupied table up by a window on the balcony, Cleo jerked her head at Etho as he stuffed his wallet back in the pocket of his canvas pants. “There’s seats up there. Is that good, or would you like somewhere else better?”
Etho nodded, eyes assessing her selection. “No, that’s fine. I like the window seat.”
“Alright.”
They climbed a set of nicely painted stairs, with hand-painted vines swirling up the handrail and guiding them to the second floor where only a single student with an open laptop had taken a seat. Cleo gave him a look as they passed; he looked almost as tired as she felt.
Cleo had barely dropped her bag over her chair before they heard a faint call from below, indicating hot drinks at the ready. Etho murmured something and slipped back downstairs to retrieve the—or at least her—much needed coffee, leaving Cleo to slump thankfully into her seat and stare out the window next to the table, overlooking the plaza.
It had started to rain.
Droplets knocked on the window, asking to be let in; she contemplated the soft noises on the other side of the glass, steeling herself even as her mind drifted. For a moment, she indulged herself by wondering if she had set out all of her plants in time to catch the rainfall, or if one of the pea plants had been left behind. Poor thing if it had, goodness knew it needed the watering.
Then Etho was back, bearing two small coffees and a pained smile, and Cleo was forced to bring her focus to bear on the issue at hand. As he placed her paper mug in front of her, the steam enveloped her face and warned that it was too hot to use for stalling—more’s the pity. She made do with encircling both hands around its warmth, feeling absurdly like a dragon guarding its horde. Dragon—well, she’d been called worse.
“So,” she said authoritatively, and took a breath. “Let’s get this over with, for both of our sakes. You wanted to talk?”
Etho made a familiar noncommittal jerk of the head—oh, she really hadn’t missed much over the years, had she?—and evidently came to the same unfortunate conclusion she had about using the coffee for dithering. He awkwardly mirrored her position, save for the assertive “elbows on the table” move. It made him look even thinner, and somehow diminutive. “Well, yes, although really just to catch up. Nothing so formal as a talk.”
“Right. What on?”
“Oh—anything, really. I guess I want to hear about how it’s going for you, uh, you guys. Changes, news, happenings…uh, whatever you want or…feel like sharing.”
The obvious hesitance in his voice, the fumbling for the next word, only built up her generous assumption that he wasn’t out looking for a favor or anything premeditated on. He had never had to struggle to present himself as harmless, and now he had declawed himself practically to the point of pity—if Cleo bothered to. Which, frankly, she had not come equipped to hand out. Still, her shoulders loosened, allowing her an easier grip on her coffee cup.
“Well, then. Let’s see.”
Where to start? She could never recap nine years worth of, well, life for him, and certainly didn’t want to go deeper than skin-level. He wasn’t privy to much of it now, he didn’t deserve to be. But for something shallow to start with?
She gave the clouds outside a glance, asking for some sort of assistance. There was a flash of inspiration, a memory of an old friend clothed in mud puddles.
“You remember Juno? The dog?”
Etho leaned forward marginally, grasping the single thread she offered him like a lifeline. “Of, course. Good old Juno.”
“Yeah.” Cleo dipped her chin in recognition of the words. “Well, we had to put her down a while back. Arthritis wore her down, poor thing. But Scar got us a new cat, name of Oliver…”
—
For almost three quarters of an hour, they conversed; much of the heavy lifting was provided by her, although he pitched in every so often. Mostly, he just asked questions. The way he questioned her was odd—he was wistful, almost hungry, for any details she dropped. Scrabbling around in the dirt for even a speck of gold. It didn’t serve to improve her opinion of him. She sighed, inwardly, and obliged.
Question, answer: no, they were not still in the same house. Cleo and Scar were in a rental now, although they were on such good terms with the landlord that it might as well be permanent.
Question, answer: Yes, Scar was still living at home; yes, his condition had progressed; no, they still didn’t know how long. He had his good days and his bad days, and all Cleo could do was hold on sometimes (she didn’t tell Etho that.)
Question, answer: Yes, Bdubs had decided to go to Boatem University, and no, they would not be discussing it further. Bdubs would not want to be a subject of conversation between her and Etho.
“I left my job at the hospital,” she said randomly, fishing for other tidbits to tide him over with. “That was about…four years ago, maybe. My old boss was fired, and the new one was an ass. Besides, they stopped covering our insurance company.”
Etho made a noise—surprise, she thought. “You love helping people, though.”
She shook her head. “Oh, I didn’t stop. I’m at a children’s hospital now. And you? Do you have a job?”
He sighed, a long noise, and made a face. “Here and there. I’ve been bouncing around.”
She—barely—refrained from rolling her eyes. “Well. That certainly sounds like you. Steady enough to pay rent, I hope?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I got it covered,” he hastened to assure her. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yeah.”
Her mug was almost empty so she withheld from finishing it off just yet, instead contenting herself with swishing the lukewarm liquid around. The rain hadn’t abated yet. She watched it.
Etho cleared his throat, drawing her attention back.
“I, uh, I quit smoking.” He said it casually, in the same voice he used to use when telling her about a dog that caught his eye at the park. It brought her back to their first house and that awful, tiny kitchen, her bent over a pan and him straddling a chair while they unloaded the burdens of their days onto someone else’s shoulders. The memory was too old to be anything but bittersweet.
But the words were something else—the words were wreathed in the smoke he said he had given up, they were the burning stubs of cigarettes Cleo had spent years of her life throwing out and hiding from inquisitive, childish hands. Years of pretending, persuading, fighting, grinding her teeth, and finally standing back; those last few years, she had watched his trembling, desperate hands and learned disgust.
“Oh, really,” was the only thing that came to her blank mind, and she wrestled for the appropriate response while he sipped his drink. “I’m…” Proud of you? The words would’ve been handy two decades ago, maybe, but they were too overgrown with bitterness and spite to mean anything now.
“When?” she finally managed to ask.
“About two and a half years since my last one.” And gosh, if he didn’t have the audacity to actually sound pleased with himself. Cleo clamped down on the mouthful of hasty words that were sure to come if she let herself off the tether. Really, what could she say?
I told you so? More like, I told you so for eight painful, godforsaken years and you never did a thing about it. And now that I’m out of your life—
The irony wasn’t lost on her, but its edge was softened by time. And distance.
“Was it hard?”
“...Yes. This, um, wasn’t the first time I’ve tried, you know. Since everything. But it’s the first time it's, y’know—lasted.” He tried for a feeble chuckle, then realized she was having none of it and let his face fall back into its bland resting position. “But yeah, I struggled. Even now—” he swallowed, breaking off.
Well, that certainly explained the weight loss. And the frailty. She didn’t fill the gap, just observed him.
After another second he continued, rushing as though his speech was on a timer ticking down. “Cleo, I never meant to in the first place, honestly, it just happened—I was just stressed at the time, we both were, and I never meant for it to stick around, I just couldn’t find the time to stop—and then everything started snowballing, and I’m genuinely sorry, I know it put you through hell—”
“Don’t!” Cleo fired back, holding up a hand. She glared at Etho, knowing full well how scary her face looked. “Don’t. One, it wasn’t it that put us through hell, it was you that put us through hell. So don’t use more wordy excuses, we are past those. Two, we aren’t going there today. Period. I didn’t come here to squabble with you, Etho. Don’t test my patience.”
Etho deflated and sank back. “Sorry, Cleo, you’re right. Yeah. I shouldn’t’ve brought it up—sorry.”
Cleo practically scraped her eyes out with the palms of her hands, holding back a low groan. “And don’t apologize, please. It gets on my nerves.”
“Oh. Right.”
Whatever tentative cordiality had held them in place for the past forty-five minutes had snapped, leaving them like two boats drifting further and further away on ocean waves. Cleo sighed and lowered her hands, letting white flecks and spots replace Etho’s chin. It was an improvement.
She offered one more ambivalent olive branch, holding it at arm’s length. “Are you—happy?”
Etho’s long fingers fiddled with his empty mask on the table. He shrugged, and she heard him swallow again. “I’m getting stronger, believe it or not. Still having trouble sleeping though. But the symptoms have faded a little.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
His white eyebrows furrowed—he had bleached them too—as he tried to unknot whatever feelings or words or memories were welling up in his head; she could practically see them bleeding out through his hair. That brooding expression had been a familiar one, in their arguments—although not just when they fought. Cleo had seen it when he had tried to teach the kids math, or tried to cook (tried being the imperative word in both those instances). But now, with how thin his face had become, it looked stretched and see-through. Weary.
“Alright, it wasn’t. Sorry.” The window drew his gaze again as if it was a magnet and he the weak, helpless scrap of metal.
“Etho.”
“Cleo.”
“Etho.”
And sure, maybe she wasn’t being fair with him, but Cleo wished that for once Etho would stand his ground, that he would draw an unpassable line in the sand that she could respect, even if she had lost her respect for him a long time ago. But he didn’t—he broke first, like he always did.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Cleo,” he finally answered, quiet, and they both knew this wasn’t about his smoking addiction anymore. “Do you want me to say that I’m stable?—‘cause I’m not. I don’t want to lie to you again and say I’m happy when I can’t even lie to myself that I am.”
“I don’t know, Etho,” she said after too long, once the pressure of both their gazes converging outside the window became too much. “I don’t know what I want you to say except—” She exhaled roughly, accepting that maybe, the perfect words would never come. Not with Etho. “I guess I just want to hear you say that you’re better off.”
His confession was as painful as picking at a barely healed scab, and the only thing she could do was return honesty with honesty, like she always had. Blunt and to the point, skipping over any polite meandering—she had never learned to speak any other way to the people she knew. Or used to know. Maybe he appreciated her straightforwardness—goodness knows he never could deal with ambiguity.
Etho tipped his head back and drained the rest of his drink in one, long movement. When he set it down, she caught one glimpse of his face before he dexterously looped his mask back on. His eyes looked sad.
“Alright. I am,” he admitted softly. “I am better off.”
“Yeah.” Cleo had to swallow the sudden, inexplicable lump in her throat. “Me too.”
There was never going to be a better time to down the rest of her coffee. She needed the caffeine, lukewarm or not.
Etho watched her empty her cup, then stacked it in his. “I guess we’re done here, then.”
“I guess we are,” she said neutrally, and pushed back her chair.
It was still pouring when they exited the cafe—Etho held the door for Cleo, this time—and they both subconsciously shrunk back under the small awning that was thoughtfully suspended over the door for just such a case.
“This was a bad idea, huh,” Etho remarked ruefully as he stared at the taut fabric shivering with raindrops above them, and a part of Cleo was glad that he wasn’t a sulker—just an avoider, and a runner, and who knew which of the three was worse.
“Yeah, well, just don’t do it again and we’ll be fine,” she responded, and if he had ever known her at all then he heard the subtle warning in the sentence. He nodded, but it wasn’t cold. Just final.
“I’ll be going, then.”
“Great. Where’d you park?”
He shrugged uncomfortably, edging sideways so that part of his sleeve slid into the rain. “Don’t have a car, I took the bus.”
Cleo felt her eyebrows raise at that. “Right. So when you were late…”
“…Yeah, I missed the first one.” He had the wherewithal to look sheepish.
She sighed through her nose. “It’s raining cats and dogs, Etho. Don’t you want to wait here until it stops and you can catch the next bus—since you obviously don’t mind being less than prompt?”
“No, no,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “The rain will do me good. And don’t bother waiting with me,” he tacked on, leaving her stumped with the offer unsaid on her lips—because really, the fact that he could still clock her after all this time was enough to shut her up.
“Right then,” she said lamely instead.
Another rest between sentences, as carefully inserted as if their conversation had been composed as a piece of music. Cleo watched the puddles forming out on the pavement, and hoped that tomorrow morning there wouldn’t be any earthworms sprawled on the concrete, baking themselves to death.
Etho huffed. “Well. I’ll be see—Uh, goodbye, I guess.”
She nodded in return, just on the line between curt and warm. “Bye, Etho. A disaster as always. Stay safe.”
“Likewise.”
He dismissed himself with a mock salute and slipped out from under the awning, shoulders instinctively hunching that massive coat up around his ears as the cold rain began its first attack. His jacket didn’t have a hood, of course—too restricting—and he refused to pull the body of it over his head, so he was left with no other option but to endure. He managed.
The strength and noise of the rain covered his footsteps with no effort at all.
Cleo stared after him, tracking him until the gray mist enveloped even his bleached, wet head. He headed off at a different angle from where she had parked, thankfully—none of those awkward, fake goodbyes for them. When she was certain he was gone and not about to come back, she braved the rain herself.
As she forged her own path through thousands of falling droplets, shivering by the time she finally reached her car and rattled the handle, she thought of Etho waiting patiently at the bus stop. Just another pawn to forces outside his control, unable to seize initiative.
The ride home was long, of course, even with the caffeine boost. Driving through rain didn’t quite make it to the top fifty of her favorite activities, and all told she was glad to make it home; better yet was the fact that she had a respectable hour before her obligations could force her to do anything except rest. She decided to make tea as a companion for her spare time.
While she was searching for milk—or even cream if they had it—she heard a noise from the other room.
“Hey, Mom!” Scar entered the kitchen slowly, maneuvering his mobility aids around the open fridge door to lean in beside her. After a second of deliberation, he snagged a carton of orange juice—only a quarter full, by the sound of it—and slid it onto the counter. “Where were you all morning?”
She found a quart of half-and-half and closed the fridge, taking a second to stare at the pictures stuck to the front before answering. One especially caught her eye: it was the caving trip her, Bdubs, and Scar had splurged on last summer, and they were all huddled together and smiling wide. Her two young men, still boys in her eyes. “Well, I met up with Etho at a cafe.”
“Huh.” She felt, rather than saw, Scar raise his eyebrows. “Why’d you do that?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, I have no idea. He asked me if we could catch up, and I just wanted to humor him, I suppose.”
“Well, how’d it go?”
“Just as well as could’ve been expected.”
Scar hummed understandingly. She knew he was watching her as she poured the cream in her tea, and sure enough, when she pivoted their eyes met. He was leaning against the counter and taking small sips of orange juice straight from the carton.
She made a face. “Honestly, Scar.”
“What?” He spread out his free hand defensively. “You don’t like orange juice!”
She snorted. “But I do like manners, oh my spawn out of the underworld. Use a cup like a normal person.”
He sighed, self-pity practically washing out his face. “To be misunderstood in one’s own home is a sad, sad thing.”
“You’ll get over it,” was Cleo's unsympathetic answer. With one hand wrapped around her mug—a comforting, misshapen thing shaped like what she could only assume was an alien, courtesy of Bdubs—and her other already pulling her phone from her pocket, she made for the kitchen door.
Scar’s voice stopped her before she made it through the doorway. “Has he changed at all?”
Did he mean physically? Emotionally? Mentally? Or in some other factor, one of the ones that had unfailingly come up as “lacking” every other time Etho had been assessed?
It didn’t matter. Cleo didn’t ask for clarification, anyway.
She exhaled, the sound probably not even making it back to Scar’s ears.
“No. No, not really.”