I feel like the flowers in this vase, he just brought em’ home one day, “Ain’t they beautiful” he said. They’ve been here in the kitchen and the water’s turnin’ grey. They’re sittin’ in the vase but now they’re dead.
Clatan 26th, 1513 – Merchant District, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion
“That’s brothers for you.” Mama said with a chuckle over the story that Lyssa had just finished telling about Julia’s brother Edmund. Edmund was a pest a lot of the time, still in the bratty boy stage. Julia sometimes said that all boys were always brats, but if her brother Brandon was a brat, he was at least nice enough to not be a brat when Lyssa was around.
“Was Uncle Christian like that?” Lyssa wondered aloud. Mama got a somewhat far away look on her face and smiled.
“Pretty much. He wasn’t as much of a pest as he could have been just because I think that Patron kept him away from us like Aunt Selene and I were contagious or something.” She shrugged. “But he could be when he put his mind to it.”
“…Mama?” Lyssa twisted her fingers around. Mama made a vague noise for her to continue. “Why do you call your father Patron?”
“It’s his name.” Mama told her. She always looked so closed off when Lyssa asked about her grandfather. Mama didn’t really talk a lot about Patron.
“Well, it’d be confusing if every father was named Father, wouldn’t it?” Lyssa giggled. “But my father’s name is Masen and I call him father.” Mama nodded in agreement.
“Lyssa, everybody’s got a different relationship with their father. And when I was your age, I called Patron father just like you do. But sometimes–with some fathers–something changes and you just can’t call him that anymore. Sometimes your relationship with your father changes–and it’s not applicable anymore.” Mama sighed deeply and looked off into the deepening gloom in the room.
“Applicable?” Lyssa sounded out the word.
“It means appropriate or relevant.” Mama explained.
“But why wouldn’t it be app–apple–why wouldn’t it be appropriate, Mama. He was still your father.”
“He was still the man who sired me, Lyssa, but there was one point at which he stopped being my father.” Mama told her. Lyssa looked at her mother blankly.
“I don’t understand.”
“And I really hope you never do.” Mama smiled again, but there was something in it that was sad. Sometimes when they talking about the Cassidy side of her family , it felt like trying read and make sense of a book that was missing half of it’s pages. Mama obviously loved Uncle Christian and Aunt Selene very much, but when it came to her grandparents, what she seemed to feel was–varied–at best.
Lyssa tried to think of a question or story that would put a smile back on Mama’s face. Not a fake smile or a sad one, but a real one. But she didn’t get a chance because the door swung open a half-heartbeat later.
“Lyssandra, please go to your room.” Father said in that impatient, almost grouchy tone he usually used with Lyssa when she was with Mama. She looked at Mama, who was staring into what she usually called the middle distance, an expression like she’d just bitten into a lemon on her face, her fingernails drumming on the arm of her chair.
When Mama noticed that Lyssa was watching her, her lips stretched into something that was almost but not quite a real smile. “Go on, Lyssie, your parents need to have a talk.” That word always sounded like a–what did the tutor call it–portend of doom? when Mama used it in reference to Lyssa’s father.
Lyssa slid out of the chair and padded across the floor, feeling small and very out of place as she did it. She–felt like when her grandfather turned his attention to her, in dislike as best as Lyssa could tell, simply because unlike her cousin, she wasn’t a boy. Mama had all sorts of things she said about that, but almost none of them when she knew Lyssa could hear her.
Her father watched her, not choosing to step away from the spot he’d stopped at when he opened the door until she was out of the door. She could hear his heavy footsteps against the marble of the floor even through the cushion of the rug.
She went to her room and sat down on her bed with an experimental bounce, looking at the wall that separated it from her mother’s. There was this funny little niche behind the fireplace in Mama’s room and Mama’d had the wonderful idea to set Lyssa’s desk into the niche with a tall cabinet for storing linens and things. It was wonderfully warm and cozy when it was winter. A whole year of the fireplace crackling and putting the warmth through the wall into the tile. It was one of the reasons that Lyssa loved wintertime.
Father preferred summer. And summer was fun, she could play outside. Splash in the frequent mud puddles. There were fresh things to steal out of the garden and less hours were dedicated to lessons. Mama preferred fall, and Lyssa liked to go on long walks with Mama to the orchards where all the leaves would get painted. Mama would tell her stories about sprites that only came out at night to paint each leaf just the perfect shade. And she liked that too, but there was something sad about fall.
It was prettier, but sad. And Lyssa couldn’t help but think that there was something awfully sad about the fact that Mama liked fall best.
But that wasn’t really why she was looking at the niche. Without the fire crackling, you could sometimes hear if people were talking in the next room. She knew she wasn’t supposed to listen, but she was curious sometimes.
“It is my house, Annette.”
“Oh, aye, as you always remind me when your father comes for a visit. Your house, your money, your wife, your daughter.” Lyssa could practically see Mama ticking off the points on her fingers.
“Do not make this about my father!” Father snarled.
“How the fuck am I not supposed to, Masen?” Lyssa blushed even if there was no one around to see her. She knew that “fuck” was a bad word, although from what she knew about what it meant, it had something to do with sex. She and Julia had pooled everything they’d ever heard about what it was, but they still didn’t know what it was. Still, she’d bet every copper of her pocket money for the whole month that sex, whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. Mama joked about it sometimes, and you just didn’t joke about something that was bad.
So maybe it was just a bad way of saying something that wasn’t bad?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Father growled.
“The fact that you become an autocratic jackass every time your father comes for a visit. We can go months staying out of each other’s way and then your father comes for a visit and suddenly you have to become a de Ganis male again. That’s not going to work with me, Masen, and you know it. You know better.” Mama told him. “I don’t come in your room and order you around, it’s only common courtesy that you reciprocate. Especially considering what I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Oh?” Father wasn’t nearly as good at saying Oh? as Mama was. Mama could say whole sentences with one word, Father just sounded annoyed.
“Yeah, I imagine that you’re up here to tell me that your father has noticed you’ve been sleeping in Lyssa’s room. I’m not getting any younger, et cetera, et cetera. We need to get to work on that son we haven’t got yet.” Mama told him.
Lyssa rocked herself back and forth. Almost everyone else she knew had a sibling and sometimes Lyssa wondered what it’d be like to have a sister or a brother–a little–she knew that Mama had a lot of fun with Aunt Selene. But she liked having Mama to herself too. Julia didn’t get a lot of attention from her mama and papa and she had brothers and sisters.
And given that Father barely noticed her at all, that’d only be worse with a brother, wouldn’t it?
“Is it so wrong for an old man to want to see his line carried on?” Father had asked.
“He’s got your nephew, Julio recently got remarried, and Warner hasn’t even gotten married yet. He’ll see his line carried on without you having to climb into my bed leaving us both to close our eyes and pretend that we’re with somebody else. Especially as it sure as hell better be false hope we’d be feeding him.” Mama spat.
“False hope? What are you going on about, Annie?”
“Do not call me that.” Mama’s voice had gone so icy that even through the wall, Lyssa shivered. “We are not having any more children, Masen. We talked about that and bloody agreed. It’s false hope to make him think we’re even trying for another child. We aren’t. He’s never going to get his boy out of you and you just need to get that through his fat skull.”
“Annette.” Maybe it wasn’t nice to think, but Father couldn’t be as clever as he thought he was because even Lyssa knew that you wouldn’t get anywhere with Mama by snapping at her like that.
“No, Masen, let’s be honest. I thought that was the agreement. We could leave whatever we wanted to alone, but what we said to each other would be the truth. I am not bedding you for your father to get off on.” Mama practically snarled the last part.
“My father does not get off on us sleeping together, Annette. I overlooked the sheep-fucking jokes, because they were implied, but I will not let you slander my father by saying he–he gets off on us making–.” Father growled out.
“Truth, Masen.” Mama interrupted. “What we do is not lovemaking–that requires love. Not just barely tolerance that when it tips over the line lands on it’s face in disdain.” Mama sounded tired and Lyssa sighed. Maybe this was why you weren’t supposed to listen to other people’s conversations. Wasn’t being married supposed to be about love?
Why didn’t Mama and father love each other? Why did they have to have agreements and arrangements and stuff that sounded more like what Father talked about with Lord Jayson than what the story books said mothers and fathers were supposed to have with each other.
Lyssa slipped off her bed and went over to her dollhouse, pulling her dolls out and trying to shut out her parents now. She found that a murmur of conversation between the dolls covered most of the murmur of conversation from Mama’s room. In her world mamas and papas would never have agreements. And when she grew up and got married she didn’t want to have an agreement with her husband. She wanted to be loved by him. She wanted, when she was dead and gone and up in heaven with Lord Wright and the Llamas, when somebody told her story, for them to say “And they lived happily ever after.” Not “and they came to an agreement.”
…That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it…?
“Time to get ready for bed, Lyssandra.” Father said from the door to her room. She looked up to protest, but the dim light outside the windows told her that it wasn’t as early as she thought it was.
“Aye, father.” She climbed to her feet and walked to the dresser behind the new screen that Mama had gotten for her. That had caused an argument when it was delivered too. She really wished Grandfather would just go home, all he did was make Mama and Father fight. “You can see right through the top of it, Annette, what good does it do?”
“She’s seven, Masen,” Mama had rolled her eyes right in Father’s face. “Just who do you think is going to be in her room watching her get dressed?”
“Then why did you buy it for her?”
“Because she asked nicely and paid for half of it with her own pocket money.” Mama had said. “We’ll worry about getting her a full coverage screen when she’s got something that we need to worry about getting covered. And when there might possibly be someone who wants to watch her getting dressed.” Lyssa hadn’t understood the look that Mama had shot at Father and some deep shiver inside said that she didn’t want to know either.
She looked up at the mirror that hung over the dresser to see Father still standing in the doorway. She started to turn to ask if something was wrong, her nightie clutched in one hand when Father turned abruptly and left with a slammed door.
Once dressed for bed, she slipped from the room and tapped on Mama’s door. “Yes?” Mama herself was getting ready for bed, maybe it was later, even, than Lyssa had thought it was.
“It’s me, mama. Father didn’t say if I was supposed to sleep in your room tonight or in my room.” Lyssa told her.
“Oh. In here, I guess, I don’t know if he’ll be sleeping here tonight–but better not to wake you up if he decides he’s going to.” Every time they had company that stayed at the house and not in the inn, Lyssa slept in Mama’s room. The one time someone had jokingly suggested that Lyssa sleep in Father’s room, Mama had turned around eyes blazing like full summer sunlight hitting an emerald and told them that Lyssa’d sleep in her father’s room over her dead body.
“Mama, can I ask you a question?” Lyssa hovered in front of the door for a long moment.
“Anything, I just reserve the right not to answer it.” Mama joked folding her petticoats.
“Mama–why does Grandfather want you to have a son?” Mama sighed so deeply it looked like she had deflated slightly. Leaving her stay on and hair still back, she walked around the screen and slid onto the bed, patting the mattress beside her.
“Sweetie, your grandfather has this idea–it’s wrong, but it’s one that a lot of people have clung to for a long time, that boys are better than girls. You see, unless you actually put it into law, like they did up in Avilion, boys inherit everything when a father dies. So it’s important, in some places–and some houses like the one that your great-grandfather was born into…”
“The de Ganises?” Lyssa asked clamboring up onto the bed and pulling Mama’s coverlet up like a fort.
“Yep. It’s important to have a son to leave everything to for them.”
“What do you think?”
“I think if fathers cared a little more about not marrying their daughters off to jerks maybe they wouldn’t have to worry so much about what happened to their estates when they died if they didn’t have a son.” Mama shrugged.
Lyssa glanced down at the stitching on the coverlet. “Mama?”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t met Father?” Lyssa asked, blinking back tears.
“No.” Mama said it with no hesitation. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because maybe you’d be happier if you didn’t have to be with him.” Lyssa said.
“Nope. Cause if I hadn’t met and married your father, I wouldn’t have you.” Mama said, stroking her hair. “And all the maybes that come out of having not met Masen would never make up for not having you in my life.”
“Really?”
“You can bet on it.” Mama smiled and kissed her hair and maybe it wasn’t happily ever after, but it was pretty happy right now.
Why does it seems like I always end up getting lost down paths I hadn’t intended to go down and never get to some that might be important? Thankfully the brothers Cox are going home after this post, though there’s another two posts after this one before the visit is over.
I never feel like I do kids right, they always seem too adult. >_<’ But hopefully we can just write that off on being that Lyssa, like Elizabet, has some weird dynamics to deal with that force her to be a little more grown up… right? (As bad as I think I am with kids, climbing into Masen’s head woulda been worse…)
Awwww. That ending was so sweet. I’m pretty sure that Annette means every word, and she wouldn’t trade Lyssa for anything. Even a life without Masen.
However, that being said, if there was a way for her to quietly push him off a cliff and walk away whistling, I somehow think she’d go for that. It would be a net boon to Simkind!
I’m glad that Annette stands up to the jerkass, though. And I hope that Ellan heard that argument. Maybe if Annette was the one who looked Ellan in the eye — or really, spit in his eye — and told him that she and Masen had decided that there would be one kid and he’d just have to deal with it, he’d get off her back. … Or not really. This is a de Ganis male. I doubt Bors would have listened to any daughter-in-law who dared to tell him that she’d made her own reproductive choices and he’d just have to live with it.
… Come to think about it, a de Ganis male’s brain might explode at the thought, so maybe Annette ought to try it … I’m just sayin’ …
Still, I hope that this visit ends soon, and Annette and Masen can go back to ignoring each other and Annette and Lyssa can have their adorable relationship without all the … fraughtness and weirdness. Though something tells me that won’t ever go away.
And something also tells me that when Lyssa is talking about her childhood to her own kids, she won’t be calling Masen “father,” either. *sigh*
I don’t know if she would actually push him off a cliff. I think she would feel a lot of guilt about killing Lyssa’s father even if she doesn’t like him. She tries very hard to stay out of Lyssa’s head when it comes to how she feels about her father. Just because Annette doesn’t love Masen and just because we know he’s a jerkass who isn’t worth loving doesn’t mean that Lyssa cannot or does not love her father.
And she also knows what it’s like to know your mother killed your father. It was mentioned in this post that Annette’s mother, Rochelle, had killed Patron. (I’m not sure if anyone read that paragraph that way, but it is true.)
Ellan, unfortunately, did not hear the conversation. He was having a smoke with his brother out in the garden and they weren’t being that loud and Ellan wouldn’t have processed what Annette was telling Masen anyway. She can tell him she wants him out of her uterus until she’s worn her teeth away and his ears are bleeding and it won’t sink through, because of course a woman wants to provide her husband with a son, even a woman like Annette. It does not compute…
The visit does end very soon, there’s still some fallout in the next two posts or rather there’s two posts about how Annette and Masen each unwind after the visit, but the readers won’t see Ellan or Luis again until the next Darid, so almost a year.
I think as long as Masen is alive, there’s going to be a little weirdness between Annette and Lyssa. But as Van pointed out, Masen is mortal, so who knows when he could have a random anvil dropped on him. *shrugs*
I don’t know, there’s having a crappy dad and there’s having a dad that you just can’t call your father… He’s cold and distant, but there’s nothing to say that he will ever actually tip the line…
Thanks, Morgaine!
Lyssa is adorable and I love the relationship she has with her mother.
I wonder if whoever suggested that Lyssa sleep in Cox’s room really read into Annette’s reaction. I’d certainly hope it was someone who didn’t know/suspect anything off about Cox–otherwise, there’d have to be something pretty off about them as well, and Annette and Lyssa don’t need to put up with that sort of company.
I doubt Ellan really knew what he was getting when he made Masen marry Annette, and damn it, I’m glad she holds her own, even though all these years later he still doesn’t get it (damn, natural selection sure failed with those Bors brains!). I kind of hope he overheard this. I’m sure Annette would tell him what’s what to his face if it came up, just like she does with Masen–who is probably the bigger “threat” in Annette’s mind, since she has to see him all the time, even if she can handle him without a problem.
Judging by a few friends of mine who never had siblings, I think you captured Lyssa’s conflicting thoughts about the possibility very well. I’m glad that she’s not going to pressure her mother about it, though, even if some of that is rooted in the sad knowledge that her father would care more for a son.
And hey, who knows? Masen, as far as we know, is 100% mortal. All it would take is one sufficiently pissed off parent and he’d be out of Annette’s hair for good. And then, if she chooses, she could find someone actually worth being with and maybe Lyssa could have some siblings after all, Masen-free.
I’m glad that Lyssa’s cute with at least one parent.
Most people don’t actually know about Masen’s proclivities. Why would a grown man with a relatively attractive wife need to do that? (If you don’t know what “that” is, it’ll be crystal clear in tomorrow’s update.) They know that Annette and Masen aren’t warm and cuddly with each other, but for the most part people just think that they have a slightly chilly arranged marriage like dozens of other couples in town.
Yes, yes, the Darwin awards really do need to catch up with some of these Bors-brain carriers. If Ellan came right out and said something to Annette about getting pregnant, she would tell him to go take a long walk off a short pier, but he’s not going to say anything “It’s not his place.” He’s just going to nag his son about it, because it’s Masen’s job to educate his wife and put her in her place.
I can say, though, that Ellan had no idea what he signed on for daughter-in-law. Ellan’s idea of how you handle a stubborn woman is you break the stubborn out of her. Unfortunately for Masen, (if you want to call it unfortunate) Patron makes him look like he’s still in short pants on all fronts, and if Annette came out of having Patron for a father strong and with most of her sanity intact, there’s almost nada that Masen can do to get past Annette’s barriers.
After all, Annette at one point loved her father and did want his approval. She doesn’t give a shit what Masen thinks of her.
Lyssa is conflicted about siblings, but I think she and Annette could work it out if Annette ever chose to have more children. It’s just not happening with Masen.
Lyssa’s seen her friends with their siblings and she’s not sure the upsides would really outweigh the downsides. Until she could be sure she really wanted them, she wouldn’t even bring it up to her mom, cause she knows when Annette’s being stubborn. And she’s never more stubborn than when it comes to the whole one kid only thing.
But yes, Masen is totally mortal and there are a lot of things that could take him out. Annette might totally be on board with more kids as long as it doesn’t mean climbing into bed with Masen.
Thanks, Van!
Lyssa is remarkably good-natured considering what must overhear now and again. And she does understand that what is going on between her parents isn’t desirable. While I’d guess she favors (probably strongly favors) her mother, Lyssa doesn’t seem to hate her father either. Perhaps it’s maturity rather than nature – she had a very logical thought about her mother being happier elsewhere (even if she failed to see how she outweighs the bad for Annette.)
Just how much Ellan wants a son for Masen would be an interesting question. If the existence of a son was that damn important, I’d guess he would try to get rid of the biggest problem – Annette. Annette probably isn’t far off saying Ellan gets off on it. Getting a son out of Annette would be like breaking a horse, and seeing his son be a man and do it would not be unsatisfying to him. It’s like a dog marking a tree, getting a son out of one’s wife. (Unfortunately for Masen & Co., the Annette tree is of the Whomping Willow variety.)
Well, she occasionally hears things that she wishes she wouldn’t. (Though I imagine a lot of kids do, curiosity kinda trumps manners for a long while there.) But in her life, her parents doing this is what is normal. It’s what’s expected. All of her life, all their married lives, Masen and Annette have plodded along down the same road as far away from each other as they can and pretty much ignoring each other whenever they can, and when some sort of disagreement comes up they have a “talk”. It’s usually icily correct and filled with annoyance and vague disdain.
On the flip side, that’s not how it is in her story books and somewhat like young Tawny, her view of reality is shaped by the types of books that she reads. She may not truly understand what love is, but it is what is in her books where everything turns out alright in the end, so obviously that’s what would be the best course. She wants things to turn out like in her books.
Annette is walking a tightrope as regards Lyssa’s relationship with Masen. Annette does not want to influence Lyssa’s opinion of Masen. She obviously doesn’t really like Masen, but she also knows that how she, personally, feels about her husband is a whole different universe of something else altogether from how her daughter should feel about her father. They’re two completely different relationships and I think that Annette would feel terrible if she thought her dislike of Masen was coloring Lyssa’s view of him. She really does want Lyssa to decide what she feels about her father for herself.
On the flipside, given Masen’s proclivities and the fact that Lyssa is the single most important thing in her life, Annette wants to protect and shelter Lyssa as much as she can. Which means that sometimes she does come down like a wall between the two of them because it’s the only way she can see to protect her.
But this mostly manifests in not putting Masen and Lyssandra in the same bed together. And Masen’s coldness and disinterest in his daughter does a lot of the rest.
But you’re right, Lyssa doesn’t hate her father. She’s never really had a reason to. Masen’s cold and distant and disinterested, but there is a long, long, long way between not being treated well by her father and actively hating him. She’s only seven after all. Hate at that point in your life usually requires a fire of passion and she doesn’t have that.
After all, she’s surrounded by people who are terribly busy most of the time and don’t have a lot of time for their kids, so again, it’s relatively normal from where Lyssa’s standing.
Very good points about Ellan! (And I love the mental image of Masen as a dog trying to mark the Whomping Willow.) But Ellan doesn’t have the brains to give up, so he’ll probably continue to try for as long as he, Masen, and Annette are all alive.
Thanks, Winter!