Date sent:        Fri, 29 Aug 1997 23:34:13 -0500 (CDT)
From:             s_anders@ix.netcom.com
Subject:          NEW!  ATFP: Back Through The Window (1/1)


ATFP: Back Through the Window

by

S. Anderson

Rating: R (Bad Language)

Category: VAR

Summary: Catherine Mulder makes a difficult trip.

Disclaimer:  Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, and all things X-File belong to
the brilliant Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and Fox
Broadcasting.  Anything else is ours.  I have no intention of deriving
any material profit from this in part because I don't have the drive
or the connections.  I use the characters in admiration and for
recreational purposes only...LITERARY recreation that is.

Author's Notes:  This is the second companion piece to A Thimble for
Peter, a story written by myself and Cheryl De Luca.  It would make
sense if you've read that before this, otherwise some parts of this
could get cryptic.  ATFP is avaiable on Gossamer and various other
archives or I'll be glad to send it to you.

Thanks go to Cheryl De Luca who was the editor/beta reader.  She's
been a co-conspirator since we started this little franchise.  Thanks
again for your help and enthusiasm.

*****

"Thus Wendy and John and Michael found
the window open for them after all, which
of course was more than they deserved.
They alighted on the floor, quite
unashamed of themselves, and the
youngest one had already forgotten his home."

(Excerpt from "Peter and Wendy" by J.M. Barrie;
A Millennium Fulcrum Edition (c)1991 by Duncan Research)

*****

The bus is moaning and keening with the curves.  I still hear that
kid's discman buzzing behind me, the little fucker.  He's offering me
proof positive that rap is the true Satan spawn of the world.  I
am three miles from home.  I am Catherine Mulder.  But, if you're
going to refer to me, I use Cate.  A leftover of the man waiting
for me three miles away.

When one takes an appearance inventory, I think I turned out to be
more Scully than Mulder.  I gleen a brief one from the translucent
reflection hovering in the window I'm looking out of.  Brick
houses and kids and lawn mowers and all of those sublime suburban
props outside try, but they can't obscure my features completely.
Wavy brown hair bobbing at my shoulders and the slight tinge of
green in my eyes say that I am my father's child.  Yet the defiant
chin, slim nose, and defined plane of my cheeks asure Dana
Scully's involvement in my production.  Oh, by the way, they're
married.  Just, my mother's fully modern and independent.  Gotta
love her for it.  My father does, I'm sure.

You should know that I've been gone for nearly three years.  Gone
since I was seventeen and could pass for twenty-four according to
the bar guy who told me that in a scotch-filled haze.  They have
been busy years, spent trying to claim a life I can completely
call my own.  In my opinion, I got as close as I could have.  Now
I'm back to take responsibility for the cost of this life, to see
if I can forgive and to see if I can be forgiven.

The last two years found me sleeping in the former storage room of
a truck stop in Wyoming.  I swapped the owner my back for rent.  I
bussed his tables, mopped his floors, and ate with his family.  He
was a decent human being.  Don't ever let anyone tell you they
don't exist anymore.  They do and they make great pancakes.

My life has not been void.  I have a G.E.D. and soon I'll have
college.  Social security numbers obtained with the birth
certificates of several dead young women have helped me lie my way
into one hell of a shot at being someone.  I had this particular
penchant for picking girls who had died of unnatural means:
murders, car crashes, etc.  Somewhere in my head, I thought that
if they had to die so soon out of the gate, perhaps my little
games could in some way help carry them on.  Maybe it was some
form of spiritual justice.  My sense of drama probably alerts to
goal, to be a writer, or more precisely an author.  That little
truck stop I mentioned produced my first collection of short
stories, "Everyday Olympus" which accompanied my application to
Georgetown.  It was 24 ct. good luck.  I'm in and I'm up for the
challenge.

Shifting in the seat, the scene stretches further down a street
strung out to an uncertain front door, I pull my black leather
jacket more firmly across my breasts and shudder to think of the
most immediate battle.  My father, Fox Mulder, a more complex man
I've never known.  He is at once the most frank and the most
gaurded person you could face.  A minute in a room with him and
you know exactly what he expects even though he'll never tell you.
He is charasmatic without effort and desperate without a plea.  He
is a haunted man who has never been affraid to face his ghosts.  I
have known him intimately all my life.  I love him.  But
nonetheless, I left and no doubt, hurt him deeply.  Further, I
have no intentions of apologizing for leaving.

It will not surprise me if the holes we have torn in each other
and the walls we have built to cover them are too high to scale.
He has been waiting a long time according to the thirty second
phone calls with my mother.  The last one told me he requested she
leave him alone to welcome me home on his own.  Therefore, I am
terrified, but not surprised.  Today, the waiting comes to an end
and both of us take up journeys very different from the one's
we're used to.

If I've done my job as the author I'm trying to convince myself I
am, then you are asking yourself why I left.  Surprisingly, I have
discovered after three years, the answer is simple: I'm scared of
him.

There's an inexplicable rumble under the bus underscoring my
sudden panic to explain.  Fox Mulder has never struck me.  NEVER.
Although I've seen the frustrated desire in his eyes.  I don't
fault him for that.  As I recall, I had a high asshole potential.
I wouldn've probably smacked the shit out of me many times.

What scared me out of childhood petulance and into my now form-
fitting rebellion was the truth.  This truth literally rose from
the floor of our home and stole my illusions.  I had only been
looking to kick the surge protector back on at Dad's computer.
But the fuckin floor board had to rock under my hands as I crawled
beneath his desk.  I had to catch the acid tang of fresh sealant
in my nose.  Pulling the oak slats away I was immediately infected
by Pandora's itch at the sight of the taped boxes.  They would
turn out to be files of me, about me, my life.  Hell, they *were*
me, every school I attended, every friend who slept over, every
thing I ever was outside of their sight.  There were notes from
ghosts with initials like F. and L. and B.  The pages and photos
and folders smelled like a library after it rains, like a
grandmother's attic except far more unholy, musty like secrets
always do.  Even secrets kept in the light.  I immediately knew I
had to run.

I left virginity far before I left home and still I felt
penetrated.  Molested.  I had to run not just for my life, but in
order to own my life.  Stupid little dope that I was, I thought I
could get away with it.  And there was some success.  Still,
there's my own private pain that is floating hard and hollow in my
stomach, my chest, my heart.  It still shakes me in my sleep and
calls me home with promises of safety and resolution.  The
whispering becomes a coo in Dad's lullaby voice, the one that
offered tales of Peter and Wendy.  I'm coming closer as this
haphazard band makes the final turn before my stop.

I remember my father's voice like you remember a touch.  You can
remember how hard or soft.  How warm or how cold.  Where it graced
your skin.  But you can never recreate it, hum it, or look at it
in a photo.  Because it requires that the one who offered it must
offer it again.  My eyes close at the question begged here.  Will
he offer it again?

Fox Mulder was not a cold parent.  Now "cautious"?  "Cautious" is
a word I would use.  Our laughs, wrestles, tickles, silly
whisperings were private treasures, my mother the only privileged
outsider allowed to share them.  My father, out of sight,
possessed a beautifully goofy side I think I gave him an excuse to
unchain.

If he was Peter Pan, I was Never Never Land.  I gave him flying
lessons.  Did you know that crisp white dress shirts make the most
wonderful slapping sounds when you wave your arms?  They do,
especially if you have long arms a little girl can get lost in
when she's just hit herself in the head with a basketball or lost
yet another lead in a school play to Avery Goldstein.

My father loved me beyond reason.  Not the reason of thought and
discrimination, but the reason of right and wrong.  And I came to
both ache and hate him for it, for making me leave him, making me
leave my mother.

My thoughts turn to her now.  No one, not my father nor a lover
has ever embraced me as she did and will again, without pretense
or demand.  The emotion rises hot and prickling in my throat as I
open my memories of her fully for this.  I have missed her.  I
know she has missed me as well.  If she knew what Fox Mulder did
in the name of fatherhood, she never told me.  It is a question I
plan to pose.  Until my decision to return, I decided to ignore
the goddamn possibility.  My soul may be cautious, but it isn't
stone.  How could I bear turning them both out?

My moments along the wire with her tell me she remains the same
reserved, empirical act of class she has always been.  But the art
of loving my mother is finding the truth within the lines.  Just
ask my Dad.

I have no proof, but I believe Dana Scully was Fox Mulder's
savior.  Even as a younger, selfish little snot I could sense the
moments in our lives when my parents realized what they had
managed to capture and hang onto with bloody emotional finger-
nails.  It was a quick bottomless glance or the liquid timbre in
their voices when they spoke in hushed tones.  I know from both of
them that they almost failed.  They both speak of "The Bad Time."
At first they refused to elaborate because I was a child.  Later,
when I could have understood, I saw first that it was their own
hearts they were protecting by keeping this particular scar in the
mist.

I remember funny stirrings in my "tummy" as a four year-old when I
could lay squashed between them in their bed on a Sunday morning,
my hair an early morning tangle of sleep and mischief.  What I
discovered buried in their warm, twisted blankets and sheets was
the pleasant weight the remnants of passion made in your lungs,
even if it was days old.  I've been looking for that ever since I
could name it.  I want what my parents have always had.  They are
my love-heroes.

The bus is coming to a halt and I am faced with the final leg of
my journey.  The walk is only a couple of blocks to their...our
house and I am so bold to think I feel like Christ as he trod the
stations of the cross.  Although this profane crucifiction I
suffer is of my own making I know.  Even though it didn't feel
that way during my time out in the world.  I get up from the cheap
upholestry, silently curse the frigin "gangsta" of buzz and exit
into my neighborhood.

I hike in sunshine with only my knapsack to make me look like a
traveler.  It carries my tools: the mirrors, the picks, the laptop.
I may be softened by remorse, but not blinded by naivete.  When
his madness begins again, my father will have to discover an
opponent as well as rediscover his child.  I have vowed to myself
he will be surprised.

The house is there, still more brick than white.  I hear the
random cry of a child being chased in a nearby yard.  That was my
voice not so long ago.  The house is clearer as I am closer.  My
swallows sting with the force necessary to get past the pulse in
my throat.  The door is open, as is my hope, as is the man
standing just inside of it.  Let whatever will be...begin.

The End

"I made this!"

All comments welcomed and even wished for.
s_anders@ix.netcom.com

Series: A Thimble for Peter
        ATFP 2: Tiny Arrow
        ATFP 3: Back Through the Window