five

I WAS DOWNSTAIRS WATCHING A MOVIE with Janet and Leo. Hud, the story of these cowboys on a ranch in Texas who . . . uh . . . have some cows or something. I wasn’t really following it, to tell you the truth. Well, except for all the innuendo-y stuff between Paul Newman and Patricia Neal. Talk about UST—Mulder and Scully had nothing on those two. But, really, the fact of it was, I didn’t want to sit in my room alone.

“So, what does your friend Jane study?” Janet asked me.

“Jay. Like the bird. Psychology, but she’s also an artist.”

“Oh, really? What kind of art? Painting, sculpture?”

“Painting and drawing, mostly. Although she has one of those pot-throwing things, out on her back porch.”

“Oh, I always wanted to try that,” Janet exclaimed. “What do you call those pot-throwing things? Leo, honey? Do you know?”

“You know,” Leo growled. “Somebody in this room is actually watching this movie.”

“Tsk.” Janet patted Leo’s arm. “Well, whatever it’s called, it’s nice that you’ve made friends at your new school. You should invite her over for dinner. I bet she doesn’t get much home cooking.”

“I’ll ask her. Thanks.” My attention was back on the TV. Leo was right; the movie was getting kind of interesting. How the strict grandfather wouldn’t tell the boy, Lonnie, why he was so mad at Hud. And Hud seemed like such a cool guy, even if he was a total womanizer. Wonder what his big secret was. The silvery Texas clouds moved across the hi-def TV screen, and I thought about Santa Fe.

“It’s called a potter’s wheel,” Leo muttered as the scene ended, fading to black.

After all those years of endlessly typing her name into every Internet search engine ever invented, finally, all I had to do was take a cab from the train station to my mother’s address, written on the back of a Dick Cheney flyer. As the cab bumped along, I took in my new surroundings. I couldn’t get over how everything in Santa Fe actually looked like all those cheapo art prints of the southwest that you see at Bed Bath & Beyond. With the blue windows and chiles hanging up on strings and everything.

It was weird how suddenly not-nervous I was, walking out to my mother’s house. My. Mother’s. House. This was huge. I hadn’t even seen her since I was three.

There was a long driveway that went up a hill, fenced on either side. There were horses in the fields. The air smelled like woodsmoke and some kind of sweet, piney flower. I knocked like they were expecting me. Some old guy answered the door, and I felt a flash of panic—did I have the wrong address somehow? I mean, my mother was forty-three now. But this guy was practically Leo’s age. His hair was totally gray and his face was tanned and creased. He looked like the Marlboro Man.

“You must be the daughter.” He didn’t even say hello.

“Um. Yeah. Lula.”

“Lula. I’m Walter. The husband.” His voice sounded like a growl. “Well, come on inside. Your mother’ll be home late.”

I walked into my mother’s house, closing the door behind me. It was clean and cool. It smelled like bread baking. I followed Walter into the kitchen.

“You hungry?” Walter opened the oven door and grabbed a frayed blue dishtowel. He slid the top rack out and, sure enough, there was a loaf of bread sitting there. He folded the dishtowel in his hand and took the bread out of the oven, sat it on a painted tile on the kitchen counter. Before I could answer, he gave me a stern look.

“Now, right off the bat, I ought to tell you.” He slapped the dishtowel against the counter. “I’m not your father. I met him once. But I’m not him. Maybe you already knew that. But . . . in case you didn’t.”

“No, I, uh—” Okay, pause, please. My brain was already exploding. First of all, who was this guy? Second of all, this guy knew my father? “I don’t know anything about him.”

“He was an actor. Friend of your mom’s. I reckon she can, ah. Tell you more about him than I can.”

“But, um—” Work, brain, work! “He’s an actor? My father?”

“Not anymore. Last I heard, he’s a teacher. Lives in Nashville, Tennessee.”

“Oh.” Huh?

“That’s how your mother and I met, you know. Movies. I train picture horses. She was a set PA.” He waved his hand. “These things, uh. Things happen.”

“Oh,” I said again. What was I supposed to say to all this? I was so completely floored, I was practically lightheaded.

“But it wasn’t my idea for her to leave you.” Walter looked me square in the eye. I was suddenly afraid to move. “Let’s get that out of the way up front. I told her she could move you out here any old time she wanted. I still tell her, every year at Christmas, why don’t you invite that little girl of yours to come on out here? But she’s got her ways and I’ve got mine and we both learned a long time ago when to push and when to pull. You understand?”

“I . . .” I felt myself nodding, but I don’t think I understood anything anymore.

“Well, I figured I’d . . . clear up any confusion you may have. Your mom could tell you more about him. Your father, I mean. Anyway.” Walter coughed. “Go on ahead and make yourself at home. I’ve got a sick filly I gotta check on before it gets too dark. You can take that spare room down at the end of the hall, on the right. Bathroom’s on the left, if you want to wash up before dinner.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Walter nodded at me, like if he’d been wearing a cowboy hat he would’ve tipped it. Was this guy for real?

“And eat that bread while it’s hot. There’s butter and jam in the fridge,” he called out as he walked outside, the door banging behind him.

I sat down for a minute on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. Feeling dazed. Feeling totally knocked out by this new idea of a parallel life, completely away from not only the real one I’d been leading with Janet and Leo, but the one I’d always imagined, living in New York City with my mom, hanging out backstage at her plays, riding the subways together. Now here was a third option, a new existence in Santa Fe. And Walter was the one who wanted me there. This wasn’t going to be like the kids I knew who hated their step-dads and had big fights all the time, threatening to move out. We could be a happy family.

Or a family, at least. I was still nervous about the happy part. Because, well, let’s face it. My mother had never taken Walter up on his offer. What if she walked in the door, took one look at me, and walked right back out?

I MEAN, IT WAS STILL JUST weird. Leo sitting there in silence, swirling his scotch on the rocks around in its glass, while Janet chatted away. When I first came back to Hawthorne, I probably spent a solid month apologizing to them. Feeling genuinely sorry for how much I made them worry about me. I did every chore I could think to do: the laundry, the ironing, washing the dishes by hand. But Leo still wasn’t talking to me. And Janet couldn’t stop talking. Heaping pierogies onto my plate and asking me about my new college classes. Making this painfully obvious attempt at pretending that everything was totally normal when it wasn’t, not quite. Normally I loved Janet’s pierogies, but that night, they were just gumming up in my mouth like those wax lips you get on Halloween. The whole night had this melancholy in the air. It was getting cool and it would be autumn soon. I was missing someone or something or someplace, but I didn’t know who or what or where. I felt a million miles away from Santa Fe. A million miles away from Janet and Leo, too, even though they were sitting on either side of me. Then I realized what it was. It had snuck up on me completely. It was Friday. The night Rory and I used to get together and watch The X-Files.

Rory. Rory. Rory. I’d started writing him a letter, but I could never work up the nerve to print it out and put it in the mail. Did he have any idea how much I missed him? How sorry I was? Did he care?

“Do you guys mind if I turn in early?” I swallowed my mouthful of pierogi mush. “Been kind of a long week.”

“Are you sure you don’t want dessert?” Janet asked. “I got Neapolitan and Magic Shell. Your favorite.”

“I know.” God, I felt awful. Magic Shell was my favorite when I was, like, four. Janet killed me sometimes. “Maybe I’ll come down later and have some.”

“You know we’re always open for midnight snacks. Come here, you.” I bent down and Janet smooched my cheek. I patted Leo’s arm as I passed. He didn’t say a word.

It was ten to nine. Back in the day, Rory would be making his place on the floor, propping himself up on pillows, and I’d be setting up the DVD player. The room was so quiet now. I could hear the train far off outside, a low, ghostly whistle. I looked at my solid row of X-Files DVDs and I turned on the computer instead. Maybe my fellow Philes at the Friday Night Live Chat would make the melancholy go away.

But first, a quick check of the email. And, I’m not kidding—right then, a split second after I’d opened my inbox, a new email popped up. And it was from Rory. The subject heading was Season Five, Episode 20: The End. The body of the email was just one line: wrote this last spring. just rewrote the ending now.

There was a file attached. This was weird. If he was sending me his latest entry for the Guide, he was a good season ahead.

I opened the file. Good gravy, it was almost five pages long. Rory started his review by explaining how “The End” was the final, cliffhanger episode of the fifth season, the last episode before the summer when the first X-Files movie came out. Then, the usual plot summary—after a six-year-old chess prodigy narrowly escapes assassination, Mulder and Scully get involved and find out that the boy’s a psychic. And he’s psychic because he has alien DNA. So of course the Cigarette-Smoking Man and the rest of the Syndicate are after him. But, worst of all, Mulder and Scully are joined on the case by the mysterious Agent Diana Fowley. As the episode goes on, things get botched, the assassin gets assassinated, Mulder gets blamed and almost creates an international incident, and the whole X-Files might end up getting shut down. But that’s nothing compared to how Fowley wedges herself between our beloved Mulder and Scully. Or, as Rory put it:

But of all the sickening kicks in the gut in this episode, the absolute worst, by far, is the introduction of Diana Fowley, one of the most sinister villains yet. Fowley’s very presence threatens to sever the delicate bond of trust forged these past five years between Mulder and Scully. Throughout the episode, she quietly attempts to usurp Scully as Mulder’s partner, and Scully is unable to do anything but stand by and watch.

At first, all Scully knows is that Mulder and Fowley worked together back in the day, before Fowley was reassigned overseas. But then Scully consults the Lone Gunmen, and Frohike (in bulletproof pajamas, no less) tells her that Fowley used to be “Mulder’s chickadee” when he first got out of the Academy. Scully takes this new information in her usual good stride. So Mulder has an ex he never told Scully about. And why should he? They’re co-workers, not fiancées. Even if she is an ex who, according to Byers, was there when Mulder discovered the X-Files, and supported his wild paranormal theories instead of constantly debunking him with actual scientific facts.

Scully goes back to the institution where they’re holding the psychic kid for observation. She’s got big news for Mulder—the Lone Gunmen found an anomaly in the MRI that may explain the kid’s psychic abilities. Scully walks down the hall toward the kid’s observation room where Mulder’s waiting. . . and keeps walking. She takes a few steps down the hall, then turns, pauses, and walks back out. As she leaves, the camera angle reverses, and we see what she saw, through the window to the observation room. We see Mulder, not observing anything except for Fowley, who is holding Mulder’s hand and gazing lovingly into his eyes!

Cut to the parking garage. This is where it all happens. It’s the briefest of scenes. Unlike climactic scenes in other season finales, nothing blows up. Nobody jumps onto the top of a moving train. What happens is this: Scully gets into her car. Her face is half-hidden in shadow. And she just . . . sits there. Taking a moment. We take that moment with her. We comprehend what she’s just seen. We comprehend everything. After this series of simple motions—passing by the door, that moment of decision in the hallway when she chooses to walk away—we are brought to an unnerving stillness.

In the book An Actor Prepares, there’s a scene where Stanislavski talks about physical immobility. He says that just because an actor is sitting on the stage, not moving, it doesn’t mean they’re passive. An actor who isn’t moving might still have a sort of inner intensity, and inner intensity is more artistic, anyway. While one could argue that Gillian Anderson (as Scully) is “just sitting in the car,” what is, in fact, occurring in this scene is a fairly dramatic series of internal realizations and negotiations.

Everything that’s happened—the abduction, Melissa, the cancer, even the Pomeranian, for Pete’s sake—all of it happened to Scully because of her dedication to Mulder’s crazy quest. In that silent moment in the car, Scully tries to convince herself that it doesn’t matter if he holds some other woman’s hand, if he’s had some whole other relationship that he never told her about. Just because she and Mulder trust each other with their lives, it’s not like they’re married. Nothing’s been promised. They’re partners on an assignment, and that’s all. Two people who were randomly paired up by a bunch of suits at the FBI. This connection between them, maybe it never really existed. Maybe it was no connection at all. Maybe it was just dedication to the job, all along. Dedication she mistook for love.

Maybe she’s silently cursing herself. She’s a scientist and an FBI agent, not one to get carried away by girly love stuff. Still, it’s a kick in the slacks. And what’s worse, she’s the last to know, when she should have been the first. That Fowley knows Mulder in a way that Scully doesn’t, even though Scully’s closer to him than anyone else, is bad enough. But Scully has to hear it from the Lone Gunmen, not from Mulder himself. She has to sneak up on it in the hall, happening right under her nose. It’s not that there’s no relationship between Mulder and Fowley anymore, or that it’s too minor to mention. It’s that Mulder thinks it’s none of Scully’s business.

So, the typically pragmatic, reliable Agent Scully can be forgiven for turning and walking away from Mulder and Fowley. For deciding, on her own, to act. After that moment in the car, when she is finally able to pick up her phone and call Mulder, she can be forgiven for lying to him, for telling him to meet her back at the office, for not telling him she was just downstairs in the parking garage. She can be forgiven for not knowing how to do her usual job with this new, unusual third party involved. And that’s what they should’ve been doing, Mulder and Scully. Their usual job of finding the truth amidst cover-ups and lies. Except that Mulder allowed himself to become distracted, distant, losing sight of all the work he and Scully had done together, the alliance they’d forged.

Maybe it was easier for Scully to turn around and walk away and let Mulder think that she was nowhere near him. Maybe she needed more time to figure out her next move. Because, after all those years of being together, but not really together, Scully finally knew the answer for certain. In that brief, still moment, she knew for certain that she loved this man, and that he did not belong to her.

And it’s crushing. It’s awful to feel alone in the world. Everyone wants to belong to someone.

Even someone as kickass as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully.

I saved the file and closed it. I got online. I sent Rory an IM.

BloomOrphan: just read 5×20. it’s beautiful.

I waited there, chewing at the edge of my thumbnail. He was still online. But the cursor was just blinking in white space. I logged in to the Phorum, but he wasn’t in the chat room. I logged out, came back to the IM. Still blinking. Still blank.

BloomOrphan: really, it might be your best work.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

BloomOrphan: rory. thank you.

Almost a half an hour later, I turned off the computer. I turned off the light. I stumbled over to the bed and cried for a while until I fell into a deep, empty dream.