LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “You’re pretty good with that boy, Cuno.” She says it thoughtfully, as though she’s turning this fact over in her mind as she works at the tangled net in her lap. The sea is a soft roar over the horizon, and the world is tinged a dusky blue.
“Really? It doesn’t feel like I am. He still calls me anything but my name. Usually a slur.”
“It’s tough love, Lilienne, that’s all. A kid like that needs discipline.”
“He’s not that hard to deal with. He just wants somebody to play along with him. That’s all any kid wants.”
“He was good to me first.”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She arches an eyebrow. “Really now…”
DRAMA — She isn’t doubtful, sire. Just surprised.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “Well, I hope you’ll keep on being good to each other, then. The kid certainly needs it.”
EMPATHY — And so do you, she thinks.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “You seem good with the young people around here in general,” she muses. “Cuno, those kids at the church, Lily and the boys… You said you used to be a teacher, didn’t you? Maybe that’s why.”
PAIN THRESHOLD — A familiar ache squeezes your lungs. The same ache that drove you to become a teacher in the first place. An incalculable and long forgotten loss.
INLAND EMPIRE — Don’t follow this thread any further. Let it unravel.
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“No, there’s something else… Lost children, a lost Indotribe…” [Follow the thread.]
“I think I wanted to be a father, once.” [Change the subject.]
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She pauses her work, strands of the net wrapped loosely around her fingers, but does not look up. “…Oh?”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Hey, it’s never too late! Now’s your chance to give fatherhood a shot!
“Any chance *we* could make it happen?” [Give her the finger guns.]
“I wonder why I did…”
“It was a stupid thing to want.”
“I still do.”
“I guess it never worked out.”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “Hm…” She goes back to her work, slowly and carefully. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Can’t remember.”
“In *this* economy?”
“Things never lined up right, I guess.”
“I bet it was *her* fault. She ruined my chances forever.”
“Too poor and drunk and sad.”
“I’d never want to inflict myself on a child.”
“Just look at me.”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She does look at you. There is no pity or disgust or whatever other terrible thing you expected in her gaze. Just a quiet acknowledgment.
EMPATHY — To her, you look just like a father she once knew. This only makes her more inclined to agree with you.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “…When I first got pregnant with the boys,” she says quietly, returning to her work, “I was uneasy. Wondered if it was… right to bring them into this world. Into *our* arms…”
PAIN THRESHOLD — A rare pang wracks her. She does not like to think about these things.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “I never did decide one way or another. I just knew what I wanted, and so I went ahead with it. *We* went ahead with it. And then again with Lily, even though…”
EMPATHY — Even though at heart she knew, by then, how it would all end.
SHIVERS — Five years ago, a man stands on the boardwalk where the corpse of a different drunken husband will one day be discovered. Bottle still clutched tightly in his hand, he fights the urge to throw himself into the dark water. He wins the battle today, but he will ultimately lose the war.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “However things turned out for you, I’m sure you had your reasons.” She sighs, and cuts a strand of the net with the tip of her knife, then ties it back together. “Though that probably sounds shallow, coming from me.”
“A little, yeah.”
“Not at all.”
“Can I ask you something?”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “Go ahead.”
“Do you regret having kids?”
“Uh… never mind.”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She smiles, and there’s an uncharacteristic sadness in the lines around her eyes.
“No,” she says softly. “Never once.”
EMPATHY — She wonders if this is proof of her own selfishness.
It isn’t the children she regrets. It’s the world that she brought them into.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “Now that they’re here, all we can do is love them. And you’ve got plenty of love in you for the children, it seems. That’s more than a lot of fathers could say…” She sighs, her eyes shadowed and sunken. “Oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say anymore.”
DRAMA — But you know what *you* would like to say, sire. Go ahead. Now’s your moment!
REACTION SPEED — No, it really isn’t. Please don’t push your luck.
“Lilienne…”
Don’t push your luck.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She turns to you, expression inscrutable with the light of the setting sun behind her. “Yes?”
“Do you think *we* could ever… try again?”
“Do you think you could ever see *me* as… a father?”
“Do you think there’s any hope in this world for any of us?”
“Do you think the children will ever forgive us?”
“Do you think I’m… a good man?”
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — She looks at you, her chin no longer held high, a tired slump in her shoulders and something searching in her eye. Her hands are all tangled in webs of fragile knots.
“I think…” she says slowly, evenly, “you’re looking for something that I can’t give you.”
-1 MORALE
“Okay. Well. Khm. Right.”
“What the hell does *that* mean?”
“That’s not really what I asked…”
Say nothing.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — “I know what you’re asking,” Lilienne says frankly. “I’m just not so sure that *you* do…”
EMPATHY — For love.
RHETORIC — For vindication.
INLAND EMPIRE — For a lifeline.
VOLITION — For a future.
LILIENNE, THE NET-PICKER — Lilienne sighs, watching the twins in the distance, starting the long march home from the beach before dark. “At some point, Harry, you’re going to have to be okay with your life.”
SHIVERS — You have twenty two years left to reach that point.
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