Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 38

“Troy is my father?”

Jackie perched uneasily in her chair. Lucinda sighed.

“Depends on what you mean by father, dear. He contributed some genetics to you, yes. Never was much good for anything else.”

“But Troy was with Diane. He’s Josh’s father.”

“Yes, he went on to her some time after me. He was still so young then. He’s a strange one, and I’m not sure that time works for him either.”

Jackie leaned forward. Her mother leaned back. There was nothing aggressive or defensive about the movements, but they happened in response to each other.

“Josh is my half-brother.”

“I think you’ll find, dear, that relationships like that don’t come in halves. He’s not at all your brother now, but if you wanted I suppose he could be entirely your brother. It would depend on how you related to him.”

“And Diane is sort of my stepmom?”

“She is the mother of the person who could be your brother, if you both wanted. It sounds like maybe she’s also a friend. But that’s it.”

Jackie opened her mouth, but Lucinda cut her off.

“Dear, please don’t ask me why I didn’t tell you this earlier. You always do that. I’ve told you this so many times, and every time you are stunned and swear you won’t forget. But then the memory recedes for you and you don’t know me again. You can’t remember me making you lunch when you were five, or tying your shoes for you, or helping you through the awkward lessons of puberty, or even where I keep the silverware.”

“Where is the silverware drawer?”

“I don’t have one, dear. You knew that once. I have a silverware trapdoor. It’s under one of the hot milk drawers.”

“Under the hot milk drawer.” Jackie tried to say this as though it were something she was finally remembering, and not something she had just learned.

She thought about Diane and she thought about Josh, and Diane’s face when she found out that Josh was missing.

Good for him, she had thought, even as she had sympathized with Diane’s pain.

[bottomless chasm of regret and pain], she thought now, thinking back on it. Jackie loved Diane for missing Josh. She loved Diane for living her life in spite of Troy.

She also felt more uneasy about Diane now. Was she a mother, a friend, a sister, a stranger? Jackie didn’t know how to proceed with this new knowledge.

Diane experienced time in a normal progression. Her memories were immediate and consistent. Her actions begat reactions and consequences. She could feel the terror of loss or the fear of pain or develop complicated and loving relationships with those around her. Jackie could not. Even things that had happened moments ago would start to fade away into long-ago distance for her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she took her mom in her arms. She held her tight, as though this would keep their experience of time from diverging. “I’m sorry I don’t remember, Mom.”

Lucinda smiled.

“You will age someday, dear. We all age. Some of us take longer than others. You are always nineteen now. Someday you will never be nineteen.”

Jackie moved over to the couch to sit next to her mom. The couch was spotless. Her mother just really liked things clean.

“I’ll remember for as long as I can,” she said.

She hugged her mom tight, and, after a moment, her mom reciprocated.

“I’m sorry that it was this way, Mom. Not I’m sorry like an apology. I’m sorry as in sorrow.”

“Me too, dear. Me too so very much. Oh, I suppose you should have this.”

She opened a drawer in the coffee table and rummaged around. Finally she pulled out an old photo. An extremely old photo, yellowing and cracked, and bending at the edges. In it, there was a man who was definitely Troy. He had his arm around a little girl.

“That’s you and your father.”

She handed it to Jackie, who made a strangled sound.

“I took that when you were quite little. Before he left both of our lives.”

“But, Mom, this photo. This photo had to have been taken at least a hundred years ago. That’s City Hall downtown, but there are dirt roads and wood cabins instead of stores, and instead of cars there are horses with huge wings. People haven’t flown wild horses in, well, in I literally don’t know how long.”

“Well, dear, you’ve been stuck the age you are for so many decades. I took this photo just fourteen or fifteen years ago. It was a regular Polaroid then. Now look at it. It has changed to match your years, and I still remember it as it was. It’s very much like you. You should have it.”

Jackie put the photo in her pocket. Lucinda smiled weakly.

“It will be different from now on,” Jackie said.

She looked earnestly at her mother.

“I promise.”

She looked waveringly at her mother.

“It will.”

She looked away.

“The effort is what counts, dear. That’s certainly what we tell ourselves.”

“Mom, I have to go.” Jackie grunted through the strain of lifting her injured body from the seat. “I’ll see you again soon.”

“He’s not a bad man, your father. He’s just not a very good man either.”

Jackie walked to the door. She felt the firm flatness of the photo in her pocket and the sharp crumpled edges of the paper in her cast.

Lucinda sat where she had been left, but soon she would move on to other things. She would clean and read and work on the car in the garage and all the other things she did to fill her days. She had a life of her own, after all.