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Title: Fog
Category: VA, questionable taste Post-mortem report: Three years after I wrote this beast, I grown with repentence, but this one stays because, unlike many of the other vignettes from that period, Karen Rasch liked it for some unbeknowest reason.
Fog She's got a house by sea now. A house with sagging red-shingle roof and white lintel posts that are peeling in the salt breeze and thin white muslin curtains that press themselves against the screened windows. It's on the high, fine edge above rolling endless waters, caught between land and water, with a crackling gravel driveway. A crooked picket fence across the front that's nearly buried in the soft beige sand. The floor is a raw honey, ocean pines soft and fragrant, varnish stripped by sand that slips through screened windows. Walls, white, smoothness unbroken by pictures, very cool, and the furnishings are very plain, very simple. A rough-hewn kitchen table. A four-legged stool. A goosenecked reading lamp. It is a cool, empty house, with sea breezes moving through unchecked; salt and sand and grey sky. And her. There are leavings of Scully: she has left her print here in the curtains tied back with a bit of string, there in the drape of a cardigan over a chair. There are worn newspapers with yesterday's date, the motley crockery hanging from a worn dishrack. A broken spined volume of something, a few fluttering scraps of paper held down by sea-smoothed stones. The memory of her prescence, hanging in the air, almost palpable. "Tom?" her voice calls, softly, out of the shadows as she steps into the kitchen, bare feet very quiet on the linoleum. Her face, though, is very sharp, very pointed over the cheekbones and chin, with these calm eyes the color of worn denim fluttering on the line. She looks at the big black block of me stuck in her doorway, and her mouth twitches. With what, I'm not exactly sure, but she says, politely enough, "Mulder." she says, this time, her voice sighing as white fingers press into the kitchen table. "Mulder." she repeats, her voice cool, almost cracking though she stands very straight and her eyes do not dampen. "Mulder, will you have some tea?" I nod, and she puts the dented steel kettle upon the stove, adding scoops of dark mulch from a cookie tin. No words, for a while, then, only the puffing of her kettle and the distant rush of icy green water upon a beach. Her bare feet make no noise on the linoleum, and her eyes are far away, lost ino the grey sky as small white teeth scrape over pale pink lip. She doesn't have any makeup on. The tea is dark and bitter, and it tastes like the sea and pines mixed together. She seems mygrimace and laughs, a breathy little sound as she peers over the chipped rim of her cup. Her fingers are even skinnier than I remember them as they trace patterns in some sand that's blown onto the kitchen table. First, she writes her initials -- DKSG -- then brushes them out and writes mine in solid block print. After a moment of consideration, she lets them sit on the table, and says to me, "I haven't retired from the Bureau. I just took a temporary leave of abscence, used some vacation time I had coming." I don't say anything, and she smiles a little, a crinkling of her eyes because she sees that I've learned how to listen, how to wait when the tale is not over, not to interrupt even when the words stop. She gives me a small grin, very tiny, as she sees that I am still sitting here, still waiting and watching and paying attention, that I have grown up just a little bit during all these years. Scullys never really been pretty, per se, and it really even less than in the past. When she smiles, these days, it's like this little flash of life into those lost-fairy eyes. I was just in the area, I tell her, and somebody in the field office mentioned that you were taking some time off, so I looked you up. She makes a face at me. "Was I that easy to find?" We both laugh. There's an Irish legend about Sidhe that came to live among the human folk. They're radiant things, glorious, full of beauty and power, marrying humans and walking among us to experience love and mourning, to learn how to grieve and all those sadnesses of human life. But they'd go back to mists and magic after twenty years, so one morning, the humans who loved them would be left in the dew-dropped meadow looking at the immortal figure fading into the theiving fog. Gawain married one; I didn't. He had a foul temper that got much worse after she left; mine has just mellowed with age and fatigue. He lost his forever, and I'm sitting here having tea with her, except I wonder what role I play in this whole thing. Tom gets to be Gawain, but not really, since he's the one who's divorcing her, so who am I? Arthur, who went out on the quest but got Gawain to sub in at the last minute and then half-regretted it for twenty years? Galahad? I look at her, thin and tough and glowing dimly in this grey sea-light, and I think that it must be very tough to be married to a fairy. "What do you do now that you're not dissecting stiffs?" I ask. She shrugs and looks at her tea. "Mostly, I think. I walk along the beach and I watch the birds. Sometimes, at night, I read. . . I've written some poems. Little bits of things. " She points to the little scraps of paper around the kitchen like pinned butterflies, twitching, trying to escape the weight of the sea-smoothed paperweights. I can see her writing, thick and slashing across the white surfaces, but she does not ask me to read them, so I do not ask to see them. Finally, she sets down her cup. A decisive little clink as the rim settles against the saucer, her eyes come to rest upon me, measuring me, calculating and gentle. "My son, Jack, is coming down from college today." I nod, and I rise, setting down my own cup, making noises about not disturbing their talk. And the solitary slamming of the car door is a loud, alien sound to the keening of seagulls and the steady rush of water upon sand. My coat flops into the empty seat beside me; something twists in my belly, a shame, an envy, a self-hatred as I remember the weariness in her voice, the loneliness, the slightly trembling fear. I remember the thinness of the neck disappearing into her loose dress, and I call myself a selfish little bastard for not reaching out, for not talking to her, for not reaching past the chill she has slipped into. It's is only as I round the bend and I look back to see the beach, to catch one last glimpse, see if she is standing at the window watching me leave, one last perk for my vanity. One last memory to carry away of her flame-and-silver hair behind mosquito netting and the blue of her sundress, the paleness of her hands. One last taste of Scully before she goes off into nothingness. And when I look, then I laugh a little, softly, amused at my own folly. The house is wreathed in fog, thick fog from the sea. . . Fog that grows around the columns on the porch and wraps around the grey shingle roof to slip into the ocean which is only a shade darker than it is and extends forever. Sidhe fog. .end Feedback to anasile@aol.com
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