Title: Bête Noire
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Sara Sidle, Det Vartan
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Nesting Dolls
Word Count: 6,948
Prompt: 28 Children
I’ve just finished a shift. I should be
tired, should be getting some sleep, or, if not sleep, I should at least be
doing something that would help me to unwind. I should go for a walk, or a run,
or head to the gym and cycle to
Of course, I know that’s the exact wrong thing to do, just like I know that it’s that impulse, and giving into it, that has me in this mood in the first place.
I knew today wasn’t going to be an easy day the second that Warrick and I got the call sheet. A nine-year-old kid drowned in the family pool is no-one’s idea of a nice case to work on, and if it sounded bad, it actually got worse when we got to the house. Father catatonic with grief, mother more than making up for it, with a sheen to her eyes and an odour to her breath that spoke strongly of self-medication. And just to make a bad scene worse, Detective Vartan stomping around like the proverbial bear with a sore paw.
I’d heard stories about Vartan’s temper, about how he can sometimes give Ecklie a run for his money in the personality stakes, but until last night, I’d never seen it for myself. By the end of the first five minutes at the scene, I’d changed my tune, and I sure as hell had had enough by the time we were leaving, which was when he suggested taking the mother, who was by this stage rocking backwards and forwards hugging her son’s Little League jersey, into the station to sober her up and find out what role she played in her kid’s death.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and judging from the look on Warrick’s face, neither could he. “You think that’s necessary?” was all he said, with classic Warrick understatement, and Vartan crossed his arms over his chest, nodding.
“She knows something,” was all he said.
At that stage, we hadn’t found anything to suggest that it was anything more than an accident, a kid playing where he wasn’t supposed to be – and we still haven’t – so I objected. “She’s a mother who’s lost her kid, Vartan,” I pointed out, even as her keening cries set the hairs rising on the back of my neck. “Give her a break.”
At which point, the scene left the realm of the really bad and veered at breakneck pace towards the truly horrendous.
Because that was when Vartan looked at me with a look of disdain that would put Hodges to shame, and sneered, “I should have known you’d say that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” was hardly my finest rejoinder, but a quick glance at Warrick assured me that he was as mystified, if a little more wary, than I was.
He was right to be. Because Vartan’s next salvo put me reeling.
“It means this isn’t some chapter of your local AA meeting Sidle. Try to be professional, huh?”
I felt like he’d just slapped me. I sure as hell wanted to slap him, and not just stop there. I settled for just getting out of there, going back to the car and waiting for Warrick to join me. He didn’t take long about it, because I heard him approaching, but he gave me some space, taking his time putting the field kits back into the trunk, stacking everything just so, before he came to stand beside me.
“You ok?” he asked, and I looked up at him, not quite able to manage a yes, just about able to nod. I don’t think he was convinced, because he looked back towards the house, then to me, tilting his head. “You sure? Because I can go back there and beat him up.”
From the look on his face, he was only half-joking, but I laughed anyway. “Thanks.”
I didn’t know what else to say, but I knew with Warrick, it didn’t matter. If it had been Greg or Nick, or even Catherine, they would have been trying to find out how I was feeling, trying their damnedest to make me feel better, or at least kick the crap out of Vartan. But none of that for Warrick who, for all the trouble we’ve had with one another, is the CSI who I feel most comfortable around. He understands the value of silence, and he’s never tried to push me into talking when I don’t want to.
Which is why I was mildly surprised when he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s just talk Sara. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah…I know that.”
Except for I didn’t know there had been talk about me. I know Brass was concerned, I know Grissom’s been keeping his eyes on me since the DUI. But I thought it stopped there. I evidently reckoned without the LVPD rumour mill, and all day, all I’ve been thinking about is what people are saying about me, what they think of me. I’ve worked hard to get to where I am today, both career-wise and sobriety wise, and the thought of losing that is almost more than I can take.
Ergo the urge for a beer. I can almost taste the cool liquid on my tongue, with a longing that’s more powerful than it’s been in quite some time, and I pace around my little living room, giving myself all the pep talks that I’ve covered in therapy with Doc Higgins.
I’ve just about talked myself out of the beer and into the walk around the block – after all, it’s nine o’clock in the morning, how dangerous can it be out there? – when I hear a knock at my door. Which is unusual, as I’m not usually one for entertaining visitors, particularly uninvited visitors. Of course, there’s a pretty short list of people it could be, and as I walk the couple of strides to the door, I consider with a smile who might be waiting on the other side.
Warrick, just checking to see if I’m really ok.
Greg and/or Nick, who will have heard all about the incident with Vartan from Warrick, and who are just dropping by to hear my side of the story. Also, possibly, to offer their services in teaching him a lesson, though I’m pretty sure Vartan could take Greg with one hand tied behind his back.
Grissom – though that might be a longer shot – who will have likewise heard through the office grapevine, and who is wondering if I’m going off the deep end again.
Ecklie, coming by to fire me in person.
I will admit, that last one is pretty unlikely, but the sudden image of slamming the door in that smug face of his makes me smile, and I’m still smiling when I open the door.
Which is also when I see that I was wrong in every single one of my guesses.
My uninvited visitor appears to be a rather large bunch of cut flowers of varying shapes and sizes and colours, sunflowers being the most obvious. My jaw drops open, because it’s the last thing that I was expecting, and it drops even further when the flowers move, tilting to the side, to reveal the slightly worried face of Detective Vartan.
My jaw closes with a snap, my eyes narrowing into the glare that has caused better men than he to duck and run. Vartan does neither, but he does swallow hard, and I cross my arms over my chest, assuming my best defensive posture as I ask, “Is this an apology?”
He shifts on his feet, extending the bunch of flowers towards me. “The beginnings of one… I hope,” he says, and even though his voice sounds mightily unsure, he still looks right into my eyes, holds my gaze. I find myself grudgingly admiring that, and I take the flowers off him, looking down at them, studying them closely. They really are a spectacular bunch of flowers, and, not that I know much about these things, they don’t look like he just picked them up at the nearest convenience store. “Mind if I come in?” I hear him say. “Or should I be grovelling in the hallway?”
I lift one eyebrow, pretending to consider it, even though I know that I’m already going to let him in. He doesn’t know that though, and when he shifts on his feet again, I step back, extending one arm in invitation, though I still keep my eyes narrowed, letting him know that he’s not nearly forgiven. The flowers are laid on the coffee table, and I cross my arms again, looking him up and down. “Well?” I say, when no apology is forthcoming. “You were going to give me reasons why I shouldn’t tell you to go to hell.”
Vartan shrugs, jamming his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’m not so sure I can do that,” he says, sounding almost apologetic, and I throw my hands up in the air.
“Go to hell, Vartan,” I tell him, all ready to walk past him, open the front door, and sling his ass out onto the street.
He stops me, not by what he says, but the way he says it, as if his life depends on it. “I was wrong, Sara, ok? I was wrong. Inexcusably wrong… and I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to work with me again.” He pauses, rubs his forehead with one hand, the other one resting on his hip, but I can’t help but notice that instead of lessening the furrows on his brow, they only seem to get deeper with each passing moment. “I just… I hope that won’t happen,” he continues. “You’re a hell of a CSI, Sara… and I’ve always enjoyed working with you.”
I haven’t taken my eyes off him the entire time he’s been talking, and I’ve used every trick I know, every tell I’ve ever learned, to see if he’s lying, and I’ve come up with nothing. His whole demeanour screams sincerity, and I’m amazed at how much I actually want to believe him. Because what he said goes to the very core of how people on the job see me, which in turn goes to the very core of who I am, and I don’t want to believe that that’s how people think of me.
Which leaves me with the mystery of why he said it in the first place. “So you like working with me… think I’m a good CSI… so you want to explain why you talked to me like that?”
He sighs again, rubbing his forehead, as if he’s wrestling with some big decision. Then he takes a deep breath and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his wallet. He flips it open, reaches into it, and pulls out a picture, which he looks at for a long moment before handing it across to me. “Here,” is all he says, and my fingers close around the edges, frayed to softness, as if it’s an old picture, well worn, looked at often.
Then I look at it, and I blink in surprise. The picture is of Vartan, which isn’t really a shock, as it was in his wallet. What’s more of a shock is that he’s smiling, a broad grin the like of which I’ve never seen on his face before – I mean seriously, if you’d have asked me a couple of minutes ago, I would have sworn that the man didn’t have that many teeth.
Nor is he alone in the picture. There is a woman beside him, likewise smiling, and both are kneeling, in the middle of them a boy who looks to be about four years old. The kid has dark hair and dark eyes, and he looks like he could be Vartan’s son – and then I mentally kick myself as I realise that that’s exactly who he is. Which means that the happy family in this snapshot didn’t stay that way, because I know Vartan’s not married, and I’ve never heard him mention a kid.
Looks like I’m not the only one keeping family secrets.
“Who is this?” I hear myself saying, and he clears his throat before he replies.
“That’s Diana… my ex-wife.” Another clearing of the throat. “And my boy… Richie.”
For some reason, my legs suddenly feel distinctly rubbery, and I sit down on the couch. Between the fact that this is the first I’ve heard of it, and that strange, solemn tone of his voice, I know that this is a tale that can’t end well. “What happened to them?” I ask, my voice every bit as shaky as my legs, and he shoots me a curious look before sitting down heavily beside me.
“He died,” he says simply, but I’m looking into his eyes when he speaks, and this close, it would be impossible to miss the searing pain there. “Leukaemia… one minute, he was this happy, healthy kid, running around, playing ball… the next, he’s lying in a hospital bed… tubes everywhere…” He stops talking abruptly, and I pretend not to notice how choked up he got. To cover the awkward silence, I hand the photograph back to him, watch him taking his time putting it back into his wallet, see how his eyes linger on his son’s face. “He was five years old when he died… and if he’d lived… tomorrow would have been his ninth birthday.”
He doesn’t need to remind me that that’s the same age that Jamie Richardson was, and suddenly his behaviour over the last couple of days makes perfect sense. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, and I mean it, because I, of all people, know what it’s like to have your personal life and professional life collide with an unmerciful crash.
“Diana and I… we tried… but we had
different ways of dealing with it. I buried myself in work.” Which is something
that I understand very well, and I nod my head. “Diana… well, let’s just say I
could have been a better husband to her. And when I wasn’t… she found someone
else. I don’t blame her,” he adds hurriedly, as if I’m going to take exception
to his wife cheating on him. “I mean, they say half of all marriages don’t
survive the death of a child… and we tried… but we couldn’t make it work. The
divorce came through eighteen months ago.”
I nod again, because the maths is making sense to me now. “Which is when you
moved to Vegas.”
“I couldn’t stand being there… ghosts of my old life every time I walked down the street. I wanted to make a fresh start…”
“You didn’t realise that the ghosts of your old life were going to come with you,” I murmur, because that’s something that I’ve got a great deal of personal experience with.
Vartan doesn’t know that though, or at least he’s not going to call me on it. “Something like that,” he says. “I don’t tell many people… though the Captain knows… which is why I don’t work many kid cases… brings it all back.” I am surprised at that, and it must show on my face, because his lips turn up in a crooked, faintly sheepish, smile. “What, you’ve never noticed that I’ve never worked a case with a dead kid?”
I shake my head slowly, cataloguing the times we’ve worked together, and sure enough, they’ve all been adult victims, no kids involved. It’s the exact opposite to my experience; I never minded taking rape cases, abuse cases, would have considered it cowardly, unprofessional even, to walk away from one. The only time in my life I’ve ever not taken a rape victim interview on a case was the Linley Parker case last year, and that only because I was in the middle of one of the worst times of my life, undiagnosed PTSD in full bloom, aggravated by the fact that it was twenty years since my life fell apart around me. “No,” I say softly, trying to drag myself out of my past, back into the present. “I didn’t.”
He greets this with an easy shrug; what some might see as a weakness, he takes in his stride. “What can I say?” he says. “They’re my bête noire.” He sighs, rubs a hand over his face. “This case… there was literally no-one else to take it… and it just came along at exactly the wrong time to push all my buttons… and I took it out on everyone around me.” He meets my gaze then, holds it steadily. “Especially you. And I’m sorry, Sara. Truly.”
I try to smile, but it’s hard. Which is unsettling; because I’ve always been able to smile when I don’t really mean it, smile through the pain. It’s a talent that’s stood me in good stead for years, but one I’ve lost the knack of over the last year. “It’s ok,” I manage, and he shakes his head in obvious disapproval.
“No it’s not,” he says empathically. “I should have tried harder… counted to ten or something…” The trite suggestion makes me smile, and he rolls his eyes. “I know… it’s just… I mean, people say that it gets easier… with time… but I don’t know about that… it’s been over three years… and I’m still waiting.”
“I know what you mean.”
The words are out before I can stop them, and in the long moment of silence that follows, I pray for the ground to open up and swallow me; either that, or to have just imagined speaking. No such luck though, not if the look that Vartan is giving me is any indication. He’s got that whole tilted-head, furrowed-brow look that he gets when someone’s just tripped themselves up in the interrogation room, and he’s leaning forward ever so slightly, just enough to let me know that he’s not going to let this go. The thought that if this is how the criminals feel, it’s no wonder they confess, occurs to me, and as it does, he speaks. Just one word, my name, and it’s a long, long time since someone said it with that much concern, that much gentleness. Even Grissom, when he came here, was almost confrontational – well, as confrontational as Grissom gets, anyway – ready to drag my sorry tale out of me by any means necessary. I wonder how he’s going to feel if he ever finds out that he only got half of the story, if even that?
Then Vartan says my name again, and I’m not thinking about Grissom any more.
I’m thinking about how Doc Higgins has been telling me for months that I should talk about my past, confide in someone. Looks like she’s going to get her wish, because I can feel the words bubbling up in my throat, and I couldn’t keep them back if I tried.
“I didn’t lose my daughter,” I tell him, and I almost smile at the surprise that even a seasoned detective can’t quite keep back; the man had no idea what he was letting himself in for when he came over here. “I gave her up.” I pause then, to let him ask anything that might be going through his mind, but he just keeps looking at me, expression a little more sanguine, if curious, waiting for me to continue. “I was young… I was very young… and…” This is the hard part, and I have to swallow hard against the sudden lump in my throat. “It wasn’t my choice… not the giving her up part… the other part.”
It’s as close as I’ve ever come to saying the words, and bless him, he doesn’t make me go any further. “Your father?” he asks, which I suppose would be the most logical guess, and I nod, closing my eyes against the image of my bedroom door opening, his dark shadow backlit by the hall light pooling in, lighting the path to my bed. I can almost feel the draught of cool air as the bed clothes were lifted up, feel him climbing in beside me, and with more of a struggle than it used to take, I push the thoughts away. If I go down that road, I’m more than likely going to throw up, and though it appears that I’m going to bear my soul to Vartan, I’m damn well going to retain some semblance of dignity while I do it.
“My family… were never close,” I say, thinking back to how the walls used to ring to shouts and screams and slamming doors, wondering how, even now, after all these years, I can understate things so completely. “My father… was abusive. My mother… she would alternately either fight back, or sit and take it… and my brother… he was older than I was… he left home the day after he graduated from high school… no letter, no note, no word of where he was going… I never saw him again… not even…” Not that I blame Mark for his choice; on the contrary, I strongly suspect that, had things turned out differently, I’d have done the same thing. I don’t blame him for leaving, and I don’t blame him for wanting to start a new life. But I don’t think I’ve ever really got over him not coming back during the trial. Because he must have heard about it, had some friend, some link to home that would have told him what happened. I used to wait for him to come back, to take me with him and tell me that everything was going to all right. So many days I waited, but he never came. Not my first betrayal by a man, nor my last, but possibly the one that hurts the most.
“I thought everyone’s family was like that,” I continue. “My mother used to tell me that that was the way things were… that we couldn’t change them… and I believed her. And my father… he never hit me. He used to tell me how special I was… how smart I was…” I glance up at Vartan there, and if I wasn’t kinda falling apart over here, that furrowed brow would be almost comical. “He never hit me,” I say again, though I’m not sure why that matters so much. Maybe things would have been better if he had.
“I know.” Vartan speaks slowly, nodding as if he really does, though he couldn’t look more disconcerted. He’s speaking in that tone that people use when they know they should say something, but have no idea what to actually say, and I take a deep breath, knowing that, since I’ve started, I have to finish this story.
“She knew what he was doing… I know she did. But she didn’t say anything… not until she figured out that I was pregnant.” I can see her now, the look of horror on her face as the line turned blue, the tears that welled up in her eyes, fell down her cheeks. All the times I’d watched her patch herself up, all those trips to the emergency room, that was the first time I ever saw her cry, and I remember me, twelve years old, hardly about to understand what was happening, putting my arms around her and telling her everything was going to be all right.
“That night… I was in the kitchen, getting a glass of milk… and they were fighting… and then there was a scream. I dropped the glass, so I was cleaning it up… and then I heard another scream…” I narrow my eyes, trying to keep the images in some kind of order, because it’s so hazy in places, yet so clear in others. “I cut my palm on the glass…” I can see the blood mingling with the milk all across the kitchen floor, and I remember seeing the cut on my skin, the exact same place where I would be cut by other glass years later, when the window blew out in the DNA lab. My “trigger event” Doc Higgins told me, right before she uttered the letters PTSD and I told her that she was insane, that my past was in the past and I was fine.
She just smiled and scheduled another appointment for me.
“I remember the quiet… our house was never quiet… and I can’t remember going upstairs… but there I was… and there was blood on the walls… my father, lying on the floor… and my mother, sitting beside the body with the knife in her hand… and she looked at me, and she looked at all the blood, and she said, ‘Clean-up’s gonna be something… we should get started.’ I don’t remember which one of us called the police…”
“Jesus…” His muttered oath pulls me back from memory lane, brings me back to reality, and I don’t think he’ll ever know how grateful I am for that. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.” Another sharp intake of breath from him, and the look of naked sympathy on his face is so strong that I have to look away. “I was taken into foster care… and once they found out about my… condition…that it was too late for a termination… I was moved again, to a different town… where no-one knew me.” Which is when I took to staring out of windows, waiting for Mark to come and save me, and also when I realised that if I wanted anyone to save me, I’d have to do it for myself. “They tried to show her to me… when she was born… I took one look at her and freaked out…” Because all I could see were my father’s eyes, staring back at me, moving above me, and I screamed until I’d no voice left. “I never saw her again.”
“You were just a kid.” Vartan’s voice seems to come from very far away, and I think I nod my head.
“I was moved back to
“Maybe she wanted to protect you,” Vartan suggests, echoing my own thoughts, my own hopes, on the reasons why. I guess it’s just one more thing I’ll never know.
“Sometimes… I look back, and it’s like it all happened to someone else. I never talked about it… not once. Not to the social workers, not to the shrinks they made me see… I just buried it. Locked it all away.” I meet his gaze then, give him a sardonic smile. “I’m very, very good at compartmentalising.”
His smile is a mirror of my own. “I’d noticed.”
“My blessing and my curse. Because it allowed me to get this far in life without cracking up. But then the lab blew up… and it all started coming back to me. Slowly at first… I’ve had nightmares off and on for years, trained myself to just not sleep much… but these dreams…” I shudder at the Technicolor nightmares that began to plague me. “I couldn’t stop remembering… though God knows, I tried. The alcohol… it helped.”
“For a while. Then it just made things worse.” He sounds like the voice of experience, and I nod slowly.
“The more I tried to block things out… the worse things got. The dreams, the anger, the DUI… then I got suspended.” I shrug, remembering Grissom appearing at my door, how sure I was that he was going to fire me. I’d been expecting it, was trying to figure out how the hell I was going to deal with that, being left alone with my thoughts all day, so being told that my job was safe, but that I had to have counselling – proper counselling, he’d said, stressing the first word – was almost a relief.
“Wake up call?”
Another nod from me. “I found a good therapist… who’s going to be thrilled that I finally told someone all this,” I tell him, and this time, the small smile he gives me is genuine, reaches all the way up to his eyes. “Stopped clocking up so much overtime… began hill walking…” I shrug. “I’m ok.” I stop, because after so much honesty, he doesn’t deserve a lie, and besides, he’s doing that tilted head thing again, has that look he gets when he’s going to call a suspect on an inconsistency. “I’m going to be ok,” I amend, and he looks down, so quickly that I almost miss his smile.
“Somehow,” he says, rummaging in his trouser pocket, “I believe that.” To my consternation, he produces a pocket handkerchief, neatly folded, and offers it to me. “Here,” he says, and when I don’t take it straight away, he gestures in the general direction of my face. “You look like you might need it.”
When I touch my face, I realise that it’s wet with tears; I didn’t even know I was crying. I take the handkerchief, which smells faintly of washing powder and cologne, and wipe my eyes, stopping just short of blowing my nose, instead choosing to sniffle loudly. It makes him chuckle, a sound he hastily cuts off, and I’m surprised at how easy it was to tell him all this. I’d been so sure that the first time I told anyone the whole story, it would come out in fits and starts, with pauses for long bouts of sobbing, if not vomiting, so I guess the therapy must be doing some good. For the first time in nearly two years, there’s no knot of tension in my stomach; for the first time in even longer than that, it feels like I can breathe properly.
That thought in mind, I breathe a deep breath, let it out slowly, relaxing my shoulders as I look up at the ceiling. Then I look over at Vartan, whose face is completely blank, almost Grissom-like. “Thank you,” I say quietly, and I’m not just talking about the handkerchief which is now balled up in my fists. “I’ll wash this…”
“Don’t worry about it.” He moves his hand towards me, and it hovers over my shoulder for a long moment as I see something that’s very like surprise flicker in his eyes. Suddenly unsure of himself, I can tell the exact moment he makes the decision to touch my shoulder, feel the momentary warmth of his palm through my shirt, and then it’s gone again, so quickly I almost think I’ve imagined it.
But then the warmth lingers on my shoulder, and seems to travel up his arm, settling in his cheeks, and I know I didn’t.
Looking very awkward, he stands up, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “I should go,” he says. “Let you get some rest…”
I don’t usually sleep much, don’t usually feel tired, but right now, I feel like I’ve done three back to back therapy sessions, and that sounds like a very good idea. “OK,” I say, standing as well, falling into step beside him as he makes for the door. We don’t speak, and I watch him step outside, take a couple of steps away. Then, and I don’t know what possesses me to do it, I hear myself calling him. “Vartan!” He turns, expression curious, and I tell him, “Thank you for the flowers… they’re… they’re really nice.”
The shoulder nearest me rises and falls in a shrug as his lips turn up in an embarrassed smile. “Sara… after this… I think you can call me Tony.”
Which is a fair point, and I tilt my head in acknowledgement, leaning against the doorframe. “Tony,” I say, and it’s worth it for the full megawatt smile he gives me, the same smile he was wearing in that picture with his wife and kid.
“Bye Sara,” he says, turning and walking away. I watch him go until he’s out of sight, then I go back into my apartment, taking a few minutes to arrange the flowers – which really are beautiful, by the way – in some water. Dump might actually be nearer to the mark, because I’m suddenly so tired I can hardly see straight, and I figure there’ll be time enough to arrange them properly later. I leave them on the coffee table, where I can’t miss them, my own version of a reminder to fix them after my shift, and then I drag myself to my bedroom, only kicking off my boots before I drop down onto the bed.
Sleep comes quickly, and the next thing I know, the alarm is going off, Steve Tyler singing something about pink getting him high as a kite, and I’m staring at the clock radio in complete shock. Because the alarm is going off, and it’s the right time, and there’s nothing really out of the ordinary about it. Except that this is the first time in months that I’ve slept through with no dreams, and I’m almost afraid to believe that it’s really happened.
Doc Higgins is going to be thrilled.
For that matter, I’m pretty damn thrilled myself, and as the song changes and Lindsey Buckingham starts to tell Stevie Nicks that loving her isn’t the right thing to do, I roll out of bed, heading for the shower, ready to start my day. I’m feeling so good that I even have breakfast before heading out, if breakfast can be described as a toasted bagel – toasted because it’s just past its prime – and orange juice that’s just on the verge of turning. I mentally resolve to do some shopping after my shift as I flick through the free newspaper that was pushed through my door a couple of days ago. An advertisement for a free concert in the park next week catches my eye, and I’m mentally running through the off-duty roster to see if I can make it when my doorbell rings.
Once again, I make my way towards it, entertaining the same suspects as I did last time, and just like last time, I’m wrong on every single one of them. Because, just like last time, Vartan is standing in front of me. No flowers this time, but he looks every bit as uncomfortable as he did a few hours ago.
“Don’t tell me,” I hear my own voice saying. “You got home and discovered you really wanted your handkerchief back.” He blinks in surprise, a smile transforming his worried face, and if I’m honest, I’m hard pressed to keep my own surprise off my face. How long as it been since I’ve spoken to anyone so blithely, as if I hadn’t a care in the world?
“No,” he says, but there’s nothing negative about the word; a smile remains on his face. “There is no handkerchief emergency. I was just…well, I was wondering…” But he seems lost for words all of a sudden, and I lean against the doorway, narrowing my eyes.
“Tony?”
My use of his name appears to give him the jolt he needs, because he takes a step back, tilts his head in the direction of the stairwell. “You got time before your shift?”
Curious, I nod my head. “I’ll get my jacket.”
There’s not much idle chatter between us as
we drive; Vartan’s eyes are firmly on the road ahead, brow furrowed either in
thought or concentration, I’m not sure which. I split my focus between him and
the window, trying to figure out where he’s taking me. It’s not a route I’m
overly familiar with, and I’m more than a little surprised when we pull up at
Vartan gets out and I follow suit, and it’s only as we make our way inside, past the kids enjoying their late afternoon playtime, their parents keeping a watchful eye on them, that he begins to speak. “There used to be a park like this…near to where we lived before. Richie loved it there… he used to beg me and Di to take him there. He’d play with his friends… fly his kite… he’d get this smile on his face where he’d just light up.” Even as he talks, there are kids doing all those things, and I wonder why, given the day, Vartan felt he wanted to be here. After all, wouldn’t that make it hurt more? “Even when he got sick… he still loved it there. And after he died… for a while… I couldn’t go near that park any more. It just… it hurt too much. You know?”
He stops walking to ask the question, looking deep into my eyes, and I nod slowly, because I still can’t bear to think of the house where I grew up. Of course, it’s not mine any more; I sold it years ago, for just that reason. But when I was going through boxes that had been put in storage, I came across a picture of me – just me, no-one else – standing in front of it. I was six years old, missing both front teeth, curly hair tamed into pigtails, your stereotypical happy child.
I took one look at that picture and threw up, and even now, the memory makes my stomach turn.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I know.”
He nods too. “I figured.” He looks around him then, eyes falling on a kid with dark hair and a huge smile, and he looks suddenly wistful. “Then, one day, just before his birthday, I was out running – I ran a lot, for a while there – and I ended up in that park. Not intentionally, just took a turn, and that’s where I finished up. And the kids were still playing, and the kites were still flying… and for a minute, I felt like Richie was still there.”
We’re walking again, and I’m just letting him talk. I don’t think he needs a reply anyway. “So, on Richie’s birthday, Di and I came to the park. We sat on a bench, and we remembered our boy… and we found a balloon seller.”
I smile, because it seems to be some kind of law that every park like this should have a balloon vendor; there’s one here now, right in front of us. To my surprise, I realise that Vartan’s making a bee-line right towards him. “Richie used to love balloons… always used to beg us to buy him one. So that day, we bought one for him…and we released it, right there in the park. And the next year, we did the same thing. Even after we split… we kept up that tradition.” He sighs, stops just short of the balloon seller. “This is the first year we’re not together on Richie’s birthday… and I didn’t want to do this alone.”
He looks worried again, as if he’s afraid I’m going to object to his bringing me here. Or maybe it’s the tears in my eyes that worry him, the fact that there’s a lump in my throat that needs to be swallowed hard before I can speak. “I’m glad,” I tell him.
He nods, his expression caught somewhere between pleasure and embarrassment, and steps towards the balloon vendor. “Two please,” he says, and I correct him before I can stop myself.
“Three.”
Vartan looks surprised, then curious, and then his expression clears as he nods again. “Three,” he agrees, paying the man. He hands me two balloons, looks up towards the sky in invitation. “Ladies first.”
I can only remember a vague outline of a baby shape, but I fix the picture in my mind’s eye as I release the balloon, picturing then the happy, smiling face of Jamie Richardson before I let the second one go. The balloons float upwards into the sky and away, joined rapidly by the third, and we stand there, Vartan and I, watching them get smaller and smaller, thinking of those three children, wondering what might have been.
It’s only when the balloons have vanished, when I’m looking at Vartan again, that I release that his hand is in mine. I don’t remember who initiated the contact, but I’m glad of it, even if I am a little shocked at it. I can see by the look in his eyes that he’s surprised by it too, but he doesn’t let go of my hand, instead squeezes it tighter.
“There’s a nice coffee shop nearby,” he offers. “You hungry?”
I ate before we left my place, and I’m not usually a big eater, but suddenly, I’m starving. “I’d like that,” I tell him, and he smiles. It’s a real, genuine grin, the kind that his son had in the picture he showed me, the kind that he had in the same picture, the kind that makes me want to smile back at him, so I do.
We walk from the park hand in hand, and for the first time in years, I feel as light as one of those balloons we just set free.
It’s a feeling I could get used to.