#thread: terry 002 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

theodoranowak · 9 months ago

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Her hair reminds me of Cassie’s, before—

Theo’s lips purse as she steadies her hand on the brush — she’s just started applying the second coat on Terry’s right hand, the silver color coming to life. She doesn’t follow-up with the thought — she’d promised Terry she’d drop the subject altogether, if they’d let her paint their nails. And she’d meant it — she doesn’t think this counts, since the thought was fleeting and from Terry’s own lips, but she knows that trying to follow that thread will lead to Terry shutting down the way they usually do, when Theo tries to breach the subject of Cassie.

She listens as she works, as Terry describes both of their neighbors’ — hands? Theodora can’t help the amusement that courses through her as she listens. She’d expected the objectivity, of course, but it’s somehow funnier to listen to it manifest itself in this sort of strange, almost curative way. They turn the conversation to women, after only a second, and that’s even less surprising. Eventually, Terry seems to realize they’d not actually answered the question at hand, and they do their best to remedy the fact — though it’s just as quick and objective as the hands debacle.

“Maybe you should introduce me to one of them,” she jokes, finishing off the second coat. She blows softly on Terry’s hand, then raises her gaze to meet theirs. “Last time I had sex—” Oh. Maybe she shouldn’t talk about that, actually. Not because it’s not something she’s discussed with Terry before, mind you, but because it’s been such a pathetically long time. The last time she’d indulged in casual sex had been with Halide, and that had been over a year ago now. Fantastic sex, mind you, but still a considerably long time ago. She clears her throat and feels her cheeks warm some. “Never mind,” she sighs. “Maybe I’m just meant to be alone forever, hm?”

She starts on the first coat of the next hand. “I think I’d like that,” she replies honestly to Terry’s invitation. “I always love learning more about the birds you see.” She smiles up softly at Terry. “Some of my favorite memories of when I was younger are of you pointing them out to me in your yard. I still have that scrapbook you helped me start.”

“I just wouldn’t want you to feel obligated,” they rushed to say, their words sharp, but softened with concern. “It's not exactly the best seat in the house.” There was a pregnant pause before they added, "I've always preferred the row just before the front. Better balance.”

Theo’s answer was not satisfactory. Terry longed to draw her out, to break through the silence, but they’d never been adept at bridging gaps with words. Even now, they could only speak with confidence about the most menial of things—but they supposed that small things were their own comforts, in their own way.

For now, neighbors. When Theo pressed them about the doctor, Terry’s shoulders lifted in a familiar shrug. “They met at a bar. She’s a doctor, and remarkably beautiful. Her features are a bit more angular, but her hair reminds me of Cassie’s, before—” they trailed off, thinking about Cassie’s fire-red hair, muted and more complementary to the color of her eyes, “I just figured.”

Onward to lighter matters. “Jack, the gardener, is quiet. Which is good, because I didn’t come to his house to talk,” they added, recalling the occasion when they’d found themselves dripping wet from a freak summer storm and finding themselves in Jack’s quiet cottage, “Rory’s younger by a few years, and has a daughter.”

The question falls flat, trying to picture the pair. The thought wasn’t unpleasant. The quiet strength of both men seemed complementary, the kind only developed through years of working with their hands. Terry could imagine their forearms—blue veins raised, skin pale and taut, marked by time—that almost resembled their father’s and brothers’ own. “Pa always said you could tell a lot about someone by their hands. Jack and Rory’s work is labor-intensive—callouses are inevitable, natural.” They paused, their gaze distant for a moment. “That isn’t to say women’s hands can’t get calloused, too. It’s a slower process, but housework—washing dishes, doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning—all that causes friction and pressure, too.” They glanced downward; another self-examination. “And there are, of course, women who also do labor-intensive work for a living.” And here, they think of Sev, of hazel eyes—of sky, water, and land bleeding into each other.

They remember Theo’s question only moments later. “Sure, I suppose both of them are cute,” they hummed, “but their faces are quite lived-in. Does that make sense to you?” The quiet stretched between them again. “It’s comforting, isn’t it? The quiet.” They stared at their fingernails, the settling silver shade resembling concrete or cement—steady foundations that held up homes, paved roads. “You might want to go birdwatching with me, sometime. There are paths I haven’t explored just yet.”

#thread: terry 002

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theodoranowak · 9 months ago

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Frowning, Theodora doesn’t correct Terry’s understanding of her words — she hadn’t meant she hopes Micah chooses to stay for Terry, just that he finds a reason to stay for himself so that it might benefit Terry. She doesn’t think they’d understand this, though. Or, if anything, she’s not so sure they’d appreciate it. Terry’s made it clear to her before that they believe she shouldn’t be fussing over them; despite this, Theo continues to do so, whether to their face or otherwise. She understands that Terry is used to a certain control in their life, and if that’s the sort of illusion they need to maintain in order to get through the day, then Theodora’s not one to relish in destroying it. Still, she files the observation away for later, as she does most things.

Do you really mean it? Theo can’t help glance up again to meet Terry’s gaze, brows furrowed. “Of course I mean it,” she replies. There’s less confusion in her tone and more insistence. “Have you ever known me to lie to you?” She raises an eyebrow. “And if you say yes, you’re the one who’s lying,” she warns, but there’s a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She finishes with the base coat on both hands, then, and reaches over to grab the color Terry had chosen before as she listens to their instructions about where she should sit, should she show. “Sit in the front, got it,” she nods resolutely as she warms the bottle up between her hands. “Best seat in the house.”

She grabs Terry’s right hand gently, pulling it closer to her line of sight. As she starts on the color, she’s grateful to have an excuse to avoid their gaze when they start doubting her answer from before. “I’m sure,” she says, noting the irony of her omission when she’d just assured Terry she doesn’t lie to them. And she’ll stand by the statement — she doesn’t, not when it comes to important things. Things that don’t involve her feelings, or emotions, or whatever else is inherently wrong with her. After a moment’s hesitation, she adds, “Thank you, though.”

Listening closely to Terry talk about their neighbors. A carpenter, a gardener, a doctor — “What?” She snaps her gaze up again, only to find Terry’s expression neutral, like they’d just given Theo an update about the weather instead of informing her they live next door to one of Saul’s conquests. “How do you figure?” she asks, a tad bit incredulously. “Did you see them?” Maybe that’s not something she should be pushing, she thinks. She focuses her attention back to Terry’s nails. “A carpenter, a gardener, and an architect,” she grins, shaking her head in amusement. “You’ll have to introduce me to them some time. Are they cute?” she asks, though she expects the answer to be mostly objective. Reasons for believing so her own, and locked away somewhere in her brain. She figures she’ll get to them, one day, when Terry catches up, too.

Oh, of course it’s keeping her up until late. But it’d be unfair for her work to take all the blame. There’s all the other bullshit happening in her head too, when she lays in bed at night. Nothing she’d burden Terry with, anyway. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she replies nonchalantly as she finishes the first coat on her hand. “And it’s a lot quieter here at night. Makes for a better ambiance.”

I hope he sticks around. For your sake. Terry felt a sharp jolt, almost electric, against the tip of their fingers. It might have been Theo’s doing; it might not. The thought of Micah sticking around for their sake was tinged with a sadness that Terry rarely allowed themselves to acknowledge, let alone indulge in. “Theo, I wouldn’t want him to stay for my sake,” they explained, almost as if testing the truth of the words as they left their lips, “He should be free to do what he likes. If it’s time, it’s time.”

Beyond the old, weathered brick walls that guarded their thoughts laid a discarded reflection, reserved for only the most self-pitying of nights: Terry had tired of asking. That if they were worth staying for, they shouldn’t need to ask. Here, they thought, was the trouble of stillness, the problem with trees, the inherent loneliness of buildings that stood alone. They stood tall, unyielding, but lonely. Places where you rested your head, for a little while. A bird could perch on their branches, but only for a moment, before it took flight—to the next tree, the next patch of earth, the next mountain—

Architecture, as was often the case, was the thought that brought them back to the present. Even now, they couldn’t quite discern whether Theo’s sentiment was true. “Do you really mean it?” they began, a subtle tension in their voice. It was easy to get confused in the politesse. But there seemed no reason to doubt Theo’s words. No reason to doubt Theo, really. “Sure. I’ll send you my schedule. Just don’t sit at the end of the room; that’s where the TA usually is. It’s not as inconspicuous as you might think. Best you stay in front.”

Terry noted Theo’s lips tugging downward at their words which they had hoped were reassuring. Had they said the wrong thing? As Theo blew lightly on their fingers, moving from painting the nails of one hand to the other, they resisted the urge to reach out and touch the freshly painted surface, to feel the new texture different from the bare nails they were used to. Instead, they bit the inside of their cheek, a small, grounding gesture, and settled on stroking the tips of their fingers with the back of their thumb.

Their next words were met with a small smile. It stretched across Theo’s face, but—“And you’re sure?” They couldn’t help but ask a second time. “You know you can tell me anything. I’m not always good with… but I can listen.”

They glanced down at their nails, finding the base coat beginning to dry, slowly losing the luster of fresh paint. “There are a few neighbors whose company I enjoy,” they said, tone lightening, “one’s a carpenter and the other’s a gardener.” The thought of Jack and Rory brought a small smile to their lips. “There’s a doctor, too. I think she’s sleeping with my ex-husband.” This, they added, with the kind of detachment reserved for reading the morning news. “A carpenter, a gardener, and an architect walk into the woods—it sounds like the start of a funny joke. Or a boutique design firm…” They let the thought linger; absurd and amusing, but not altogether implausible.

“I mean what I asked in my text, by the way,” Terry pivoted the conversation back to Theo, concern edging back into their voice, “Your work… it’s not keeping you up until late, is it?”

#thread: terry 002

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theodoranowak · 9 months ago

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“Hm,” Theo hums thoughtfully. Yeah, she can see that. She thinks it might make her a bit restless, all things considered. But she’s got enough to keep her mind occupied now so that it may not be an issue, after everything. She continues working on Terry’s nails as she replies, “Well. I know how much you like having him close,” she glances up only for a second to offer them a small smile. “I hope he sticks around. For your sake.”

Terry once again launches into an impromptu lecture about architecture, which Theodora appreciates. It gives her time to simply listen and work on their nails without worrying too much about whether or not what she’s doing is making Terry uncomfortable. When they finish, she smiles, shaking her head. “The consequences of judgments of ugliness in architecture,” she repeats quietly, almost as if to herself. “You’ve certainly got a way of making me want to learn more about things I didn’t care about two minutes ago, I’ll give you that,” she teases. “I’m being serious about sitting in on your lecture, though. Be sure to send me your schedule. I want to see you in your element.”

That way, you don’t owe them anything. Theodora frowns as she finishes applying the base coat on Terry’s first hand — the words should mean more to her than they do, if only because they’re right. Theo doesn’t owe them anything. Not anymore. And perhaps she hasn’t for a long time. And yet — she can’t find it in herself to let them go completely. Maybe there’s a part of her, however small, however young, that believes there is still a chance that one day they’ll wake up and remember she’s their blood — and they’ll love her yet.

Not something she has to say to Terry, though. No, she’d rather not sound as pathetic as she feels, currently. She blows lightly on Terry’s fingers before leaning back, gently setting that hand aside to work on the base coat for the other hand. Easier to let it dry, as she works. “I think you might be right,” she agrees, when Terry points out the amount of people might have something to do with how lonely New York City can feel, at times. At their question, Theo feels herself frown slightly. She thinks of the friends that live here already — by crazy coincidence, at that. She thinks of Terry, and Saul, and Cassie, and Dylan, and Deacon — and then she thinks of Sam, and somehow the loneliness remains.

She forces a smile onto her lips and meets Terry’s gaze bravely. “Yes,” she says, because it should be true. “Very much so.” She turns her attention back to applying the base coat on the next hand. “Have you gotten to know many of your neighbors yet?”

Terry observed as Theo made the customary task of cleaning their nails—the exercise, however routine, now transformed into a strange sort of self-examination. “I think that’s his decision to make, much as I’d like to suggest it,” Terry explained, a rare bout of honesty. It was a bit difficult, they supposed, to carry on their mask when a part of themselves had already been willfully surrendered. Their eyes remained fixed on their nails, feeling as Theo gently pushed the cuticles back, refining the contours. Fortifying the foundations. “I think small-town life would make him a bit restless.”

The clock ticked as it always had. They’d like no more than for Micah to settle down and find a soft place to land, only—as small as Blue Harbor was, it was brimming with memory. They were privileged to find a place in this town displaced from its affairs. It was easy to get lost in the excess of nature and to forget everything else. But it was only a matter of time before they’d have to reemerge under this wooden shelter. That Theo should call attention to their teaching stint served only a case in point.

“There’s an excellent book on that, actually.” With their free hand, they gestured towards the bookshelf on the opposite end of the living room, flanked by two large, arched windows. “The author reframes the question into not of aesthetic judgment, or cultural taste, but social construction. The question isn’t about which architecture is ugly, but what are the consequences of judgments of ugliness in architecture? It’s an interesting thesis underpinning how architecture is indeed a study in transformation—not just material, but social.” It’s only seconds later that Terry realizes that Theo might just have been jesting, so here, they tug their lips towards a smile and dispel a short chuckle, “But if you’re looking for a more in-depth discussion, well, I suppose you really do have to sit in in my lecture.”

They stilled momentarily, glancing away from the bookshelf, before finally reaching for the half-filled glass. “It’s an issue, yes,” they said, though their words faltered slightly, cognizant of just how they were dominating the conversation. Onward, then, to more pressing matters than birds, buildings, and birds colliding with said buildings.

Theo, evidently, had left out of her own accord—and moved to Blue Harbor as a consequence. “Striking out on your own, then. That’s very admirable. It’s not easy, leaving your comfort zone,” they said, a soft smile playing at the corners of their mouth. “It’s a smart move, removing yourself out of the equation like that. That way, you don’t owe them anything.” Their gaze fixed once more on her hand’s precise movement, watching as the base of their nail were coated with a transparent film, like paint thinner.

And here, Terry wished to share a memory of their own. How their father—however forthright, however hard he’d worked his way up, however he’d despised the world in which the Nowaks and the Weissbergs moved, however his newfound wealth rendered him among its emerging players—refused to call his butcher shop business as anything but Lowenstein & Sons. But it felt like a poor analogy. Not when Terry was convinced there was love in their family, even if it was rendered in a way that felt always a little out of reach—but there was love there.

“I think it’s always been easier to feel alone in a big city,” they let out a quiet hum, fingers twitching slightly as they moved from the next finger to the other. “I’m not sure why that is. It might be the presence of people moving en masse that amplifies it.” Terry took a small sip from their glass, waiting, almost impatiently, for the ivory of their fingernails to be painted gray, like steel. “And how has it been for you, living here?” Their gaze settled on Theo, watching for the subtle shifts in her expression, the way the corners of her mouth might lift or fall, “Has it been less lonely?”

#thread: terry 002 #neglect tw

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theodoranowak · 10 months ago

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Theodora can only shrug at Terry’s condolences — it’s not in her nature to complain. Or maybe it is, and she’s just locked it away like most other things that would label her unfavorable or difficult, like her mother liked to refer to her as. “It’s not so bad,” she tells them, though truthfully, it’s terribly exhausting and unfathomably droll. “Sometimes the photographers are nice.” And sometimes they’re pig-headed freaks, but nobody benefits from that particular bit of information, so she keeps it to herself as she finishes preparing the bar top with all the nail essentials.

She takes Terry’s hand gingerly in hers and begins cleaning her nails with the necessary supplies, glancing up to offer them a puzzled smile. “Why wouldn’t I really want to know?” She asks, the concept of lying to Terry about her interest in what they were doing in town somewhat silly. Though she supposes she can’t really blame anyone for second-guessing her intentions, at times; she’s a notorious people-pleaser, and would, probably, ask anyone in a position of authority about their day or their life or anything of the sort simply to be polite and make a good impression. But that’s not the case with Terry — they’re her friend. She enjoys their company, just as she enjoys their long-winded explanations when it comes to answering questions they’re passionate about. Like this one, for example.

And the birds, too.

Theodora listens intently as she finishes cleaning Terry’s first hand, inspecting their nails to decide whether or not they’d need to be filed. Concluding that they are fine as they are (and she isn’t really sure Terry would appreciate the filing down of their nails, anyway), she reaches for the cuticle stick next to her and begins working. “I thought Micah was only here for the summer?” She follows up as she works. “You think he’s thinking about staying longer?” She feels her brows furrow in concentration as she moves to shape the next cuticle. “Teaching, though, that’s exciting,” she glances up at Terry with a grin. “I bet you’ll do great. Do you think I could sit in on a lecture some time?” She asks, quite serious. “I enjoy hearing you talk about architecture. Makes me appreciate the ugly buildings more,” she jokes.

Bird collisions. God, she learned something new every day. “That sounds—” she makes a face as she finishes shaping the first hand’s cuticles. “Glum.” She reaches for the nail polish, starts rubbing it between her hands to warm it up. “The bird collision thing, I mean. Happy to know some things are being done about it,” she adds quickly. “I had no idea it was such a big issue.” To be fair, she’s not sure most people know it’s such a big issue, except for Terry and the people Terry clearly associates with. She doesn’t feel too bad for not knowing about it, though there’s still the smallest pang of guilt for not caring enough about birds to be aware of this, because it’s who she is as a person.

When she finishes rubbing the nail polish, she opens it gently and begins applying the base coat to Terry’s index finger. “Saul didn’t have to do much convincing,” she admits. “I kinda — asked him if I could join the firm,” she smiles up at them sheepishly. “I got tired of putting up with my dad. And my brothers. And Cory Monsen, the brand new partner at Nowak, Nowak, Nowak and Monsen,” she rolls her eyes. “God forbid we added a fourth Nowak to the door. That might’ve been overkill.” She notes the bitterness in her tone and feels a little embarrassed for it — she’s trying her best not to care. And yet, sometimes, it’s very clear to her she doesn’t know how to stop caring, that her family does not care for her at all. “New York was starting to feel — big,” she admits, moving on to the next finger. “And lonely.”

The cadence of Theo’s words had a subtle, dissonant rhythm about them that caught their attention. It’s soon followed by a smile that had very little mirth, at which point Terry’s brows furrowed in concern. “None of what you said sounds very appealing,” they said, if a bit candidly, “I’m sorry to hear it.” They couldn’t pretend to understand it, this strata of wealth where every decision one made was amplified and was continuously cast against public scrutiny. But they did understand the virtues of disappearing, when aimlessness itself became logical, legs bearing the weight and letting them carry you forward, without want or agenda—one that appeared to be virtually impossible in Theo’s context.

Terry deliberated for a moment before choosing the bourbon, now half-empty. “Sorry, I know it’s strong. I just want to get rid of the bottle,” they said, stretching out their arm to retrieve the bourbon and to fill their glasses. Once they were both half-filled, Terry rested their right arm on the countertop and waited as Theo busied themselves with further preparations. They watched her intently, finding it all a fascinating exercise, this act of yielding a part of yourself to the whims of the world, branching out.

“Oh, do you really want to know?” They said, biting the inside of their cheek to stifle their enthusiasm. “It’s a little bit of everything. Micah, for one.” Micah, for everything. “A teaching stint, for another. I’ve sat on some architectural juries for some time now, and my credentials are fair—” Terry pursed their lips, wondering if they ought to elaborate, but it had never been in their nature to boast, and anyway, their firm was inherently collaborative despite them being serving long as its head. The greatest thing about an architectural career was that, by nature, the buildings spoke and stood for themselves. “—but on the chances I’ll fully transition into teaching, I’d need to build experience.”

And, as for birds— “I don’t have an official membership for Illinois’s local Audubon chapter yet, but I do talk online with a few of their members. Some academics, too. I like talking with them, they understand what it’s like,” they replied, a smile breaking through their features. “I think they view me as an enemy—bird collisions with buildings is a real problem—and Chicago, in particular, has a lot of mass collisions.” They settled their left hand on her thigh, tapping their fingers rapidly against their thigh, against the grounding denim fabric of their jeans. “I usually temper their worries when I tell them of the work the firm does for bird conservation, from window treatments, designing buildings with fritted glass, to lights out legislations during the spring and fall migrations, to—anyway, that's not the point.” Their eyes darted around, drawing their attention back to something else, back to—

“Why did you move down here?” They narrowed their eyes, curious and concerned, watching for any microexpressions that might betray anything in her face. It was not always easy. “I can’t imagine it’s all for work—you can pick that up anywhere.” It was hard to imagine anyone of Theo’s stature or merit as wanting for any opportunity. “Was my ex-husband just that persuasive?”

#thread: terry 002 #i am! sorry this is bad #i'm rusty with her she's coming out of hiatus #please don't match length. laine. LAINE??? laine.#do not match this length laine

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theodoranowak · 11 months ago

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Theo can’t help but huff a laugh at Terry’s question about her still having to do photo shoots. Despite how tired Theodora is of them, they do offer a personal income she’ll have to have available to her, once her father’s dead. She doubts he’ll leave her anything; and if he does, she doubts her mom would let her see a cent of it. She’s been making her own money for a long, long time now — it hardly matters. It’s more the salt it would rub in the wound, truthfully. “Sponsorships and partnerships,” she reminds Terry. “Though I did recently turn down some influencer’s energy drink — that thing is definitely going to give someone a heart attack,” she mutters darkly as she starts putting the unnecessary nail polishes back inside the bag. She glances at Terry and smiles at them, a little ruefully. “And if I don’t say yes to at least one magazine every other month, the paparazzi makes my life a living hell,” she admits. “I’d rather not have run-ins with them here, of all places.”

When Terry asks for Theo’s choice of poison, she shakes her head. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she assures them, grabbing the nail polish remover and cotton swabs she’d stuffed in her purse before leaving her house. She places them on the counter, as well, and starts to evaluate the silver shades before her. “But I would urge you to consider that I'm painting your nails, so anything too strong and I might take your fingers, too,” she teases. She settles on the darker shade of silver — there’s no shimmer to this one, and it leans toward a more metallic sort of tone. She thinks it suits Terry — muted, understated, but still distinctive. Hopefully not too much of a burden on them.

She watches Terry for a second, smiling softly. She knows they’d probably hate hearing this, but seeing them always settles something in Theo that she usually finds it difficult to, on her own. There’s very little familiarity in her life, and Terry never had to be kind to her, the same way Saul never had to be, the same way Cassie never had to be, but they chose to be, anyway. There’s something to be said for the way this shaped Theo into the person she is now — the fondness she holds for Terry is one ingrained deep within her, and she’s happy, at least, to have her close by again.

Which reminds her—“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” she raises an eyebrow. “But why exactly did you move down here? Was it for Micah?” It would make sense, as she’d thought before, but she’d been led to believe by Saul that Micah was only here for the summer. Unless that plan had changed, recently. “Or did someone on the internet tell you this was the perfect town to find all your favorite birds?” she grins brightly. She’s hardly teasing when she suggests this — she always enjoys it, when Terry talks about their birds. Gives her something other than whatever self-pitying narrative is going on in her head to focus on, after all.

Terry chuckled as they led her towards the living room and the home bar, the butcher block countertop dark and polished, resembling everything else in the wooden cabin. They didn’t join her in the seating area just yet, instead making a sidestep towards the shelves where their admittedly sparse collection of alcohol lay. They took out three bottles—a half-empty bourbon, a red with earthy, spicy tones, and a Chardonnay—and laid them on the counter. A limited selection, on account of the cabin not entertaining very many visitors.

Briefly, they indulged at the thought that the last person she drank with had actually been with her ex-husband, now Theo’s employer. The past colliding with the present. “Oh, do you still have to do those?” Terry asked, absently, placing the assorted glassware on the countertop. With Theo’s life so marked by scrutiny, they figured that the move to Blue Harbor would’ve meant fewer prying eyes, fewer press shoots, fewer everything. “I just—well, I would’ve thought you moving here would make those less frequent.”

It did not take long to realize the error in their assumption. The flaw in their logic was the belief that in making a drastic move, one’s problems would immediately disappear. But in running away, one actually assigned meaning to the nothingness—transforming the nothing that was not there to the nothing that was.

Dismissing the thought, they settled at the seat next to Theo’s. Lined up in this way, the nail polishes almost resembled the small, squat jars of paint swatches. Of course, their nails hardly matched the scale of walls, slabs, and columns, but it was the only canvas in the human body that did not wither with age, as with hair, or skin. “Let me think,” they hummed, switching the positions of one nail polish and another such that the color gradation would be more coherent, before drawing their attention back towards the display.

Terry placed their left hand on the countertop, making the evaluation, surprised to find their chest constricting a little. They weren’t vain by any means, but casting judgment on their own self, with their own keen eye, felt strange. Sturdy and strong, their mother had commented, once, and befitting of a butcher’s daughter. But the deep lines and knots that had grown over the years only served to underscore just how old they’d felt against Micah’s and Theo’s youth, Cassie’s vitality, even Saul’s fire.

“Let’s go with silver,” they settled with the safer option—a choice decidedly familiar. “And you, what’s your poison? Red, white, or bourbon?”

#thread: terry 002

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theodoranowak · 11 months ago

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Terry extends her arm, and Theo takes the gesture for what it is — an act of trust, one she knows Terry reserves only for those they truly care for. With this in mind, she keeps their embrace short and sweet, not wanting to take advantage of the trust she’s placed in Theo, and pulls back with a soft, fond smile. “It’s great to see you too, Terry,” she replies gently. Terry’s face is remarkably the same, and yet somehow so very different — one could, perhaps, blame that on the passage of time, but Theo thinks there are less wrinkles seeped into their skin and more weariness. She doesn’t mention this, however; she can’t imagine how much Terry’s been through, as of late. Willingly moving here, for example, must have been quite a hard decision to make, with Saul so close. And now with Cassie back in the picture — well. Terry’s got several things to feel weary about, is all she means.

She raises an eyebrow at the other’s quip about the number of nail polishes in her bag and scoffs softly. “I’ll have you know options are important,” she reminds Terry, following them into the living room. “I just want to make sure you’ll be comfortable walking around with the color you choose for your nails,” she adds sincerely. “Though you are more than welcome to paint mine, as well, if you’re so inclined. I can’t promise they’ll stay that color, though,” she huffs. “Photo shoots, and all that.”

She drops the bag onto the makeshift bar she’s been led to, pulling out nail polish after nail polish gingerly. When she’s finished, she’s lined up about seven different shades, looking at all of them closely, eyes narrowed. It’s in her best interest, she thinks, to focus entirely on nails and colors and the like. This way, she avoids the burning curiosity about Terry’s run-in with Cassandra — avoids, too, spilling her guts about seeing Samuel outside of a sex shop just the other day, like she hadn’t thought him dead for the first couple of weeks after he’d abandoned her without a word. It’s easier, Theo thinks, to focus on such mundane things, lest she starts in on things that make her cry and would, she thinks, make Terry uncomfortable, by proxy.

She clears her throat of a slight knot, then looks back at Terry brightly. “Up to you,” she tells them, gesturing at the line-up. “I do enjoy the mint shades, but the silver ones might lean a little more neutral,” she hums.

Terry had entertained very—and possibly strikingly—few visitors in the home they had made for themselves. She supposed that could be said of any residences in which they’d lived, not that there were many: the Lowensteins’ tenement apartment in Harlem; their dorm room in Morningside Heights; their shared residence with Saul, in the four years of their marriage; their little house in White Plains; and, finally, this wooden dwelling-house, with its fine proportions nad simple decorative motifs. Theo was among the few people they’d invited into their home—and, by extension, their life, however unlikely their friendship had been.

Hearing the door knock, Terry left their seat on the couch and moved towards the red front door, almost glowing in the light. Another series of knocks followed, and Terry twisted the doorknob and opened it with a gentle push. She stood in the threshold, posture slightly stiff, but eyes reflecting the mirth of seeing a familiar face. “Oh, that might just be because I’m wearing slippers,” they said, drawing attention to their feet, clad in fuzzy capybara slip-ons—a tongue-in-cheek departing gift from their brother, though they begrudgingly acknowledged it was comfortable—“this is a no-heels household, now, I’m afraid.”

Terry eased the door shut, the latches clicking into place, before shifting their gaze back to their friend. “It’s great to see you, Theo,” they replied, before lifting their left arm slowly, extending it in a quiet, unspoken offer of a one-armed hug.

And, Terry conceded, there were even fewer people whom they would willingly let themselves be vulnerable with. Sure, the nail polishes bit had started off as a bit of a joke, a dismissal to any sort of confrontation vis à vis their mutual connection. A lawyer by practice, Theo might have recognized the settlement as being significantly disproportionate to the value of the gesture being traded. Still, she was not one to think of jokes on a whim, and Terry digressed that for someone as touch-averse as she had been, getting their nails done was its own, unique act of intimacy reserved for few people.

“You do realize that I have just the two hands, by the way,” they said, locking their gaze towards the bag that presumably held the nail polishes, almost intimidating in its volume. “Or did you want me to paint your nails too?” A slight tilt of their head, before leading them to the living room, where, at the corner, a makeshift bar lay—having made preparations of their own.

#thread: terry 002 #can't relate rip

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saulweissberg · 10 months ago

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it was practically movie-perfect. with a pithy line and his chin held high, he left terry’s table and exited the restaurant without allowing them any space to interject or call him back, if they even would have. he got into his lexus and drove the short way to oak gardens, pulled onto his street, and settled his car in his driveway, still riding that high of a perfect exit. he entered his cold, silent home, his two cats lazily meowing from their perch on the cat tree in his living room was his only greeting, and that welcomed high started to dissipate. it started to come back a little when he gave himself a heavy pour of johnnie walker blue, smoothing out the rougher edges of the night, but it couldn’t be entirely saved by the added scotch. by the time he was laying in bed, finished with the nightly routine of brushing his teeth and washing his face, the glow of the tv playing some late night talk show as it lit up the otherwise darkened room and his cats took their rightful places on the mattress, the high had faded entirely and the comedown had completed.

and that was when the guilt set in. like any typical night, after his nightcap had been consumed and the crushing loneliness of his quiet home weighted on the center of his chest like he was being pressed to death, every regret in his life passed through his mind. it was as if this fucked up nightly parade of mistakes was part of his bedtime routine, and he couldn’t fall asleep without it. anxieties and fears compounded into some terrifying beast that lived within his stomach and made him wake up feeling nauseous every morning, and every night when he was finally able to drift off to sleep, there was only one coherent thought still left as he eventually succumbed: he wished to fix things, but knew that he couldn’t.

there was not a sense of triumph that he had whenever he had a judge rule in his favor or he got a pretty settlement for his client when he woke up the next morning. only the unmistakable sorrow of a clear head that knew he had done something wrong the night before. that particular feeling, more of an emotional hangover than a physical one, had started when he was a teenager and followed him loyally throughout adulthood. it had lessened in its faithful pursuit in the last few years, much slower and older than he had been as a twenty-something so he had less opportunity to do wrong, but it felt stronger every time it came back. a stark reminder that he had not wisened up like he was supposed to, that he was still careless and cruel in moments where he just wanted to be loved and understood. he had acted shamefully last night, and he knew that, but it still felt justifiable, damn it! the bright light of the morning sun had not changed that. was he not warranted a little anger? was he not allowed to be hurt, too?

saul had been too harsh, though, much like he was any time he fought with terry. this was the mother of his child. his only child. in the heat of the moment, that would be hard to remember, while also being all he could remember. normally, it took a lot to get a rise out of him, but his anger was always white-hot and unforgiving. unyielding until he laid his head to rest for the night. guilt never happened in the moment, instead leaving a bitter aftertaste that could not be washed away with his first cup of coffee. that morning when he woke up to his alarm and smokey pawing at his nose, he was greeted not only by that familiar shame, but a voice message notification from his first ex-wife. his heart began to race. by the time he was out of bed, showered and dressed for the day, his heart rate had not decreased. he was usually a man that took off headfirst into confrontation, not one to cower at a fucking voicemail. why was he so hesitant to listen? by his account, he had won their argument last night. what exactly could terry say that hadn’t already been said last night? was their relationship not totally and completely irreparable?

saul could not open the message until long after he finished up at the office. he tried to push it out of his mind, focusing instead on his work with surprising ease for anyone that wasn’t saul weissberg. it was sort of astonishing how easily he could push aside his personal feelings for his career, and as long as he was focused on felicia wilson’s divorce settlement or matthew foster’s father’s estate, then he wasn’t curious or fearful about what terry had said in their message. it was only when he was back at home—forgoing his normal dinner out with a friend or client for some drive-thru fast food—that saul had the courage to finally listen. with a trembling hand, he opened up their message and pressed play.

it was the one thing he hadn’t expected: an apology. an angry reprise of how terrible of a father he was, how it was all his fault that micah was so distant from him, or that he was a piece of shit that didn’t deserve love because he had it three times and couldn’t keep it wouldn’t have shocked him. to hear them say i’m sorry after he had been so brutal in the restaurant…

i’m autistic. micah, he’s the only one in my family who knows.

well, make that two things he hadn’t expected.

saul had to stop the message after that, and took a few minutes to sit with the information before he could start the message over again. terry was autistic. they were neurodivergent, just like saul and micah, but in a different way. things that had never made sense to him suddenly clicked into place and things that he thought he understood were suddenly mystifying and foreign. saul barely processed anything else they said after that, though he played the message back four more times.

it took him another twelve hours before he responded. after puttering through another workday, he found it within himself to draft a text message, unable to voice what he wanted to say.

SAUL: Hey. I got your message. I’m still processing what you told me, but I wanted to thank you for being honest with me, and I appreciate the apology, I really do. I’m sorry for not understanding your perspective and always assuming the worst with you. SAUL: And if there’s anything I’m sure of in this world, it’s how much Micah loves you. SAUL: Please reach out if you need anything, Katie. I’ll see you around, maybe.

his fingers trembled again as he typed and pressed send before he could convince himself not to. he set his phone down, expecting them not to respond, and saul felt quite comfortable with that particular silence.

END SCENE.

— TIME SKIP.

This late into the night, with the familiar warmth of their bedside lamp absent, only the digital clock was alive in the dark. 1:17 A.M., read the neon-green display, the colon serving as its secondhand pulsing steadily with each passing moment. Time, as with memory, was beginning to slip away.

The room was still, the bed carefully made, though the sheets bore subtle evidence of restlessness, creases where they had been tossed and tugged. Leaning against the copper railing of their headboard, Terry curled up, knees drawn to their chest, wrapped in the comforting weight of a thick blanket. The night replayed itself, persisting alongside the vast, tense blackness of their world.

You’re right. I do pity myself, I pity the idiot that I was to think that I could be honest with you.

Even now, against the dark hour, Saul’s words rang in their head, stark and electric. Walking home had done little to dilute the wretchedness against their chest, as it often did. Instead, there was only numbness. Their breathing grew shallow and imperceptible, unwilling to disturb the stillness of the world, and the ends of their fingertips stubbornly remained cold.

With a sigh, they reached for their phone on the bedside table. Drawing a long breath, Terry picked it up with their left hand, scrolling to find Saul’s caller ID. Their thumb hovered over the “record” button before they began speaking.

Saul. I’ve been replaying what you said in my head—and look, you don’t have to pick up. I understand if you don’t want to call me back, but—I’m sorry. I am.

Their eyes focused on a single spot by the window. Here, at this vantage point, they could see only the faint outline of the moon sitting atop the sky, disrupted only by the crown of an oak tree that had stood taller than others, further made translucent by the linen curtains. They blinked, trying to clear their vision, but it was no use.

I didn’t mean to shut you down or make you feel like you couldn’t be honest with me. It’s just—it’s always so hard with you. With us. It’s clouded with so much hurt and pain and we say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing and then go into defense mode and once that happens, when we’re both trying to win the argument, we’ve already lost. We just end up having conversations where we try to get each other to apologize, and it’s so fucking unproductive.

Their movements were deliberate, almost ritualistic, as they crossed the room to the arched window. The curtains were drawn back, and with a slow, careful push, they opened the window as wide as it would go. The hinges creaked in protest, the harsh sound cutting through the stillness, captured by the microphone as Terry resumed speaking.

I don’t want to see you either. I really don’t. But not for the reasons you might assume. I see you—and—I get overwhelmed and lash out, and I know that’s not fair to you, Micah, or whatever is left between us.

Their gaze remained on the giant oak, its leaves swaying in the summer breeze. A common nighthawk perched on one of its branches, shaking its dark feathers. They leaned against the windowsill, a free hand resting on the side for support, just enough to maintain balance as they hovered above the shrubbery two floors below. Here but not quite, the ledge was its own sort of limbo.

I’m autistic. Micah, he’s the only one in my family who knows. I only found out two years ago. And I keep coming back to how difficult it might’ve been, for him to live with me all those decades, for him to take care of me while I was still reeling.

Against the gravity of the words, Terry stifled the tears that threatened to break free, the clearing of their throat faint though still audible.

I didn’t have anyone to talk to, to figure it out. I still don’t. I was supposed to be the one caring for him, Saul. Not the other way around. He didn’t deserve someone so broken as a mother—

—and it’s a different kind of pain with him. Different from yours. Saul, you were displaced from our lives. So I bore that resentment, sour looks, tantrums, and arguments, every time I came home. And sometimes, I don’t know how to live with myself. Because I look back and I realize that I’ve hurt him without knowing, without meaning to. All that fucking time. And I know it’s easier if I were just to pull myself out of the equation, but I can’t. I don’t know who I am without him.

But—nothing had changed between them, hadn’t it? The world would not stop at all, for that matter. It was almost comforting, that smallness of their existence. Beneath the earth’s crust, the red-hot magma would continue to churn and flow and rupture the plates overhead, even if the violence appeared to be frozen.

But this isn’t about me. I just want you to know that it’s hard for me to process things the way you do. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I just need time. To process things. To try and see them from a different angle. When you ask me how I feel, I don’t always know how to respond. When you ask what I want from you, I’m not sure how to answer that. But I think that we want the same thing, and that’s to be good parents to him. I don’t expect to be on the same page with you about everything. We each provide for him how we know best, and we have two different strategies for accomplishing that.

They shut away any other regret threatening to resurface. Even now, as they moved back towards their bed, Terry felt their quiet resolve returning. Their measured cadence returned, drained of emotion, of sorrow. They were never too comfortable for too long in this act of vulnerability, this act of sinking unto themselves and making their pain tangible to someone else.

I’m trying my best to understand—there may be some compromise here, but I can’t do it on my own. If you don’t want me around, that’s easy. I can leave you alone—but I’m asking for your patience. That’s all I ask.

The wooden floor of the cabin creaked softly as they returned to their bed, satisfied. The moment had passed. All that was left was the quiet exhale.

Good night.

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#* narrative / finished.#this really wasn't meant to be so longggggggggg it was supposed to be like three paragraphs max!!!#i just unfortunately cannot shut up #death mention tw #torture mention tw #emetophobia mention tw

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saulweissberg · 10 months ago

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saul was attempting to be cordial, and perhaps he believed he deserved a fucking medal for that. each time he argued with terry over the past twenty-nine years, saul thought he was an exemplar of self-control. how quick he was to think of a rebuttal, how quick he was to craft an insult that would cut them just as theirs cut him, how quick he reminded himself to keep some sort of restraint. to hold back before he said something he regretted for the rest of his life. with every mean word he had ever thrown at terry, there were a million more harsher things that swirled in his mind that never escaped it and a million more words that terry volleyed right back at him. it was futile. somehow, in the years after micah reached adulthood, he had forgotten how futile it all was. he would always be terry’s—and micah’s—villain. the antagonist of their story. a fitting title some days, on others it felt melodramatic and unearned. he hated the idea that terry was somehow innocent, that they never made him cry—in private, nonetheless, but still it affected him enough to produce tears—or that they never said anything they regretted in the heat of the moment. futile, futile, futile.

the restaurant had turned into a theater of war. saul could feel the eyes of other patrons on him as he sat slumped like a ragdoll in the chair opposite, but he didn’t meet their gazes. though saul and terry had perfected the art of stage whisper fights, clearly he had been out of practice. he could go for hours in a courtroom or boardroom or opposing counsel’s office, but this conversation had left him depleted of all his energy. it was the comedown, he knew. that awful period where the coke wore completely off and the sun was starting to rise and he had an hour to nap before heading into the wlrk office. his adrenaline had spiked in a way that a simple courtroom spar hadn’t done to him in decades, back when he was fresh and still had a sense of hunger. then the adrenaline left him there, silent at their fusillade.

but he loves you. he loves cassie, too. i couldn’t understand it. not until—

not until what? he had wanted to ask, but had no room before terry was off again. anyway, again, it was futile. he never said the right thing. he never made anything better. he had tried to get them to understand him, to finally tell them the truth, but they bristled at his honesty. they rejected his honesty. saul could charm any party guest or potential client, but when it came to the people he loved, he only pushed them further away when all he wanted was to hold them close.

saul stared at them. long and hard, crystal blue eyes trailing downward from their hairline to their nails. why not turn an analytical gaze upon them? how often did he feel their eyes cataloging every wrinkle, every gray hair, divining his mood by every microexpression? he saw the anger in their face more than he heard the anger in their voice, but both were glaringly apparent. in the brief lull between the server collecting and coming back with terry’s card, he finally responded in a tired tone. “my fucking god, terry. you beg me to understand things from your perspective and then shut me down when i try to explain mine. i was honest with you and you threw it back in my face. i can’t stand that.”

he had resigned himself to this truth: he would never understand terry, and they thought they understood him. this was clearly going to end in more tragedy, so saul was going to do what he did best and leave them to their disparagement.

but then they said that.

hang onto your self-pity, if that’s what you want, it’s the one thing that’s yours.

“my self-pity?” saul spat, anger renewed as he sat up from his relaxed position, spine going straight. his lauded self-restraint was snapping. “what the fuck is that you want from me, exactly? i’m an asshole if i fail to show up for micah and i’m an asshole when i regret not being there. do you not want me to feel guilty for the choices i’ve made? do you not want me to try and fix things while i still can? seriously, ketziya, would you truly rather prefer that i just completely disappear from micah’s life, as if he’s not my fucking child?” yes, saul knew he had made a litany of mistakes since micah’s birth, but hadn’t terry, too? did they ever make a choice that they later regretted, or inadvertently hurt their son by furthering their own future? “you’re right. i do pity myself, i pity the idiot that i was to think that i could be honest with you.”

saul stood up abruptly from his chair, “so if you would please refrain from following me around town or showing up at my practice, that would be greatly appreciated. and i doubt you’ll ever need to, but please only contact me in regards to our son. anything else can go through my secretary.” he spared a glance at the patrons to the left, who were obviously pretending that they weren’t eavesdropping, then returned his gaze to terry. “enjoy the rest of your night.”

First times were always so uncomplicated. In the absence of any precedent, the emotion provoked after bearing first witness was that inevitable sense of wonder. Their first visit to Opus 40, for one, was originally intended to be a detour as the Lowensteins went hiking in the Catskills. Only their father’s one-sided conversations of his early stints at the Borsch Belt had been quickly forgotten by Terry, aged nine, in favor of running their hands through the several thousand pieces of jagged bluestone, of the ramps, walkways, and stairs that had been carved only through the means of the sculptor’s hands. ‘Being an architect is always the act of building something—and transforming something into something else, don’t you think?’ he’d said, then.

So what would their shochet father make, then, of these failures? When Terry’s precision was no longer motivated by the business of building anything but in destroying what was left? Their Papa, who was always so deliberate with his own medium of choice, wouldn’t appreciate this act of chipping through skin, muscle, and bone, slowly enacted over the past few decades.

Terry had said their part. Nothing else to do but to bear witness now. They watched as Saul pressed his palms against his eyes—a gesture made, a hundred, a thousand times over—and bore witness to those veins and tendons more pronounced against his skin, gnarled by time, yet still so inexplicably elegant.

You just couldn’t let me have him. The laugh that cut across the air between them was cold and sharp, like a knife. Always like a knife.

“Is that what you think I’m doing? That I won’t let you have him?” What use was there to repeat this exercise, over and over, if it was only going to produce the same tragedy? “Micah’s not someone you own, Saul. You earn that love. You take your time and you let it grow. I did my part—just us—for twenty-nine years, and you’re annoyed that I’m the person he runs to?”

And, Saul? What light he had, the first time they’d seen him. But it was impossible to unlearn an architect’s critical sensibilities, especially when his figure had begun embedding itself into the everyday. Only then did one see the flaws. The cracks in the slabs and columns. The holes against the plaster. The exposed wiring. The mold, the rot, the rust.

“You make it sound like it was so easy. Micah didn’t make it easy. I couldn’t bring anyone home. And when I did, God, he hated everyone. He hated Sev,” they took a deep breath, fingers stilling for a moment. “You had your wives and girlfriends and your boyfriends and your dinners and for the longest time I only had him. And without—” Without whom? Without Sev, without their father? Without Saul? What was the point of invoking this litany of ghosts? The gravity of the pain could be obscured if it was unrecognizable. “Without anyone, of course I want to be where Micah is.”

Amid the weight of the confession, the clatter of the silverware swelled, the lights became harsher, the chatter overwhelming. “But he loves you. He loves Cassie, too. I couldn’t understand it. Not until—” But they couldn’t quite bring themselves to continue, finding themselves again uncertain where to start. What was there to say, then? That they’d detested Cassie in her effortlessness of assuming the role of a mother, recognizing the absence of their instinct only when struck by its presence? How that detestment soon grew into affection for a woman they should not be caring for, a woman not theirs to love? And that in Cassie’s absence, there was again a hole to fill in Micah’s life that Terry could not fill with such practiced ease? All reasonable explanations, however Saul might detest it, but not quite fitting the gravity of their loneliness.

At once, the waitress returned with the bill, and Terry opened their messenger bag, fumbling for their wallet, hands twitching as they handed over their credit card and mouthed a silent ‘thank you’.

When Terry was fifteen, their father had taken them to a northern suburb in Philadelphia, past the railroad tracks and intersections until they finally arrived at a curious synagogue in Old York Road, which resembled nothing of the blocks of a suburban commercial center. Instead, the building had twelve sides, and formed like a pyramid before tapering towards the top. An ancient ziggurat, perhaps, or the mountains of Sinai. A modernist take on an old faith, the tour guide explained, and the only synagogue that Frank Lloyd Wright had ever built. ‘You’ll be a fine architect, Ketzi,’ their father would say, then, ‘you’ve always seen the world a little bit differently. Being different—it will help you.’

But the trouble with their father’s unconditional love towards their difference—the way through which they saw the world—was not many would notice it, let alone appreciate it, the same way as he had. All that difference had done was to create a wall, no longer making the attempt to make themselves understandable, but to simply render the world in the way it should’ve been felt. To wear a mask and to disappear into it was easy. To discard it, to be rendered vulnerable against his judgment and the weight of his stare, was the harder feat.

Their knuckles whitened at the effort of holding back, before clutching again at their arms. “Micah hasn’t needed me for a long time,” they blinked rapidly, casting their gaze above him, towards the excess warmth of the light, willing away the tears welling up in their eyes, “I know why he still needs you. You have to figure that out for yourself.”

They felt, rather than saw, his surrender as he leaned back against the seat, no longer willing to fight.

‘It's just... sometimes I don't think he’ll really care, is all. And we'll end up looking like idiots, as usual,’ Terry recalled Micah saying, at the twilight hour in the forest, and how they’d come dangerously close to Saul’s defense, ‘this kinda stuff just doesn't work when the other person doesn't give a shit.’

Micah was right, then. They sat there, feeling no small amount of shame at the ridiculousness of the scene. Like talking to a wall where the plaster had fallen off, or whispering into the hollow of a tree, and expecting it to answer, to give something—anything—back.

Arms still crossed, they uncurled the fingers of their left hand, seeking out the familiar texture of their sleeve, rubbing against the fine lines of cotton to ward off the hurt. “I am asking you to see things from my perspective and you’ve shut down again. I can’t stand it.” Another wave of anger, then, as they waited for the waitress to come back with their card. They bit the inside of their cheek, restraining the shock at his apathy.

They cast their gaze back unto him—at this marvel of a man, in this little life, in this little town, conceding the fight and folding back into the wooden chair. “Get up and leave then. Hang onto your self-pity, if that’s what you want,” they bit their lip, attempting to stifle the cruel punchline, to no avail. Better hate than indifference. Better to drown against the blinding light than be shut out again and to be left alone in the dark. “It’s the one thing that’s yours.”

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#i put off writing this bc it makes me anxious lol #the ball is in ur court if we wanna close this up here or try to salvage it and end it a little more hopeful note?? up to you laine!!!#drugs mention tw

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saulweissberg · 10 months ago

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it was a dance they’d done hundreds of times before. he didn’t understand them, they didn’t understand him, they both hurt their son in the end. it was some endless ouroboros that saul had mistakenly thought had ended. with micah entering adulthood, leaving his mother’s home for college and then college for the world, their daily lives intersected only a few times a year from then on. their infrequent meetings were for their son’s sake, or the occasional holiday party that had their professional worlds colliding, so it was easy to forget just how tiring it all was.

he was much older now, he couldn’t spend hours trading invective with them anymore, and he hadn’t much of a fight in him anymore. their bouts had been legendary, a feud they could barely suppress in front of micah but tried their hardest with tight-lipped smiles and taught, clipped tones. saul had thought maybe they would reach a civil peace someday, with their son now all grown up. that was the problem. saul didn’t want to fight with terry. there would never be a love like their first year of marriage together, or even a temporary friendship like the one that formed the random nights throughout the past twenty-five years where they could share a joint behind their son’s high school gym, but he didn’t want to be angry with them. unfortunately, terry knew exactly how to infuriate him. saul knew how to do the same to them.

he had only been half-serious about calling the police, though he could still see himself looking out the window at three in the morning and finding them across the street, staring up at his house with their birding binoculars. what else was he supposed to think? everywhere he turned that day, terry was close behind. they had spent almost thirty years reacting to his presence as if he was pestilential, was it so unbelievable to them that he didn’t understand why they suddenly followed him like a pall? their anger came fast, reminiscent of their younger years when saul could say just one word and suddenly an evening of barely concealed passive aggression turned into full on aggression on both sides. “yeah, yeah, fuck me.” he’d heard it before, from her mouth and many others.

saul pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. country club stories. they could throw his wealth back at him all they wanted, but he’d never tried to deny or apologize for it. there would be no point, and from how terry lived now, it wasn’t as if their bank account was bone dry. saul grunted as they dismissed him, finally dropping his hands from his face. letting them leave with the last word had never been in his nature, but it felt like a door was closing on him and he had to at least attempt to be cordial with the mother of his only son.

saul remained seated and spoke before he could stop himself: “you just couldn’t let me have him.” there, that was the truth of it. the stony pit of why he was so bothered by their presence. he held out a palm to stop any rebuttals before he could continue, “i know what you’re going to say. i’ve had twenty-nine years to be a better father, and that’s true, but this is the first time in a long time i’ve had any time with micah, just me and him. no wife, no mom, no cousins or aunts or uncles or anyone. just us.” saul inhaled when his lungs began to tighten, “he’s always been your boy and i know that’s majorly my fault for not being there enough, but this was my chance and now any time he’s upset or pissed off or even having a good fucking day, you’re the one he’s going to run to, and he’s going to leave at the end of the summer, katie. he has no intention to stay any longer than that and then he’s going to be gone, you understand? he won’t need us anymore. either of us. so, yeah, i’m fucking annoyed that you’re here, and i don't understand anything that you do, and you’re just going to have to deal with that, i guess.” of course, this wasn’t the venue where he wanted such a conversation to happen, but saul didn’t have a choice in that now. he sat back in his chair, deflating.

There was that fucking tone of disbelief, again, like Terry had once more said the wrong thing—an explanation neither favored nor satisfying. Their lips pressed into a thin line, suppressing any outward display of emotion, displeasure betrayed only be the muscle of their cheek and how it twitched involuntarily against the light. “I have my own reasons for being here,” they placed a retort, if a bit absently, as they took a final sip of their wine, bitter and earth-like, a familiar sensation against their tongue.

They placed their wineglass down, angered by the insinuation that they’d been everywhere, when for the past month Terry had avoided him in the way she knew best, and the way he was most comfortable with. Saul could be so self-absorbed. So obsessed with the image of himself in his head that everything else took second place, so much that their presence was reduced to a nuisance, a figure that only served to obtrude. Their fingers began to drum against the silk cloth in the dining table, focusing on the smoothness that laid there; absent of friction, against the weight of Saul’s stare, and the cold against the tips of their fingertips, the silk almost resembled the tactile sensation of a knife’s blade.

Whatever affection was lurking underneath had been yanked out, hard and fast, the next time he’d opened his mouth. “You don’t… understand,” they echoed, maintaining the steadiness of their voice, only to falter, and to land instead as a chuckle, unexpected and hoarse, like a knife being sharpened against whetstone. A sharp edge meeting another sharp edge; a diamond cutting against another diamond. It was only through this intense struggle, this forceful collision of carbon atoms pushing against the others, that made way for something more delicate. “I have no interest in you. And this isn’t even about you, it’s—” But in the absence of a byproduct, in the absence of transformation, the process was just that. A means to hurt the other.

“Our son works for you, lives in the same town as you, spends more time with you, and you don’t understand why I care now.” It was the closest thing Terry would arrive to the truth, even vulnerability. This sore admission that Micah’s presence was always like a third limb—and losing it, losing him—was never going to be easy. They’d like to explain it—this strange, intangible loss, this profound pain of parenthood, their lack of trust in him—in some understandable way. But Micah’s father would, almost definitively, be its worst audience. Terry would like to give him some credit as a man desperate to right his wrongs, however overdue, but they could almost picture the conversation. Terry would share their own reservations, and then Saul would begin his own round of self-pity, muttering about his decades-long regrets and his own failures, and they’d have to trade a sympathetic word or two but feel nothing, as if he could be exonerated of his absence in their lives through this simple act of self-reflection.

If that conversation were to happen to all. Twenty-five years, and they’d grown exhausted of the exercise, not when it only left their resolve and whatever affection she had left for him so paper-thin. Their right hand twitches involuntarily; clenching it into a fist, Terry dug their nails into their palm, the sensation sharp and biting. And that’s the thing about pain: in giving it a name, one could no longer see it as anything but, a macabre sort of self-discovery.

And, Saul? He was nothing, now, but a great pain. There might have been memories, still, if they learned to quiet their mind. Another frantic recalling: a dance floor; a hand settling against his waist, while the other enclosed his own, a mockery of old-world chivalry; a staccato of laughter, before she began to lead, swaying them to the three-fourth time signature of a vaguely familiar waltz. A recalibration of their roles. A slow dance might have passed. A silence. A shared joint. A soft chuckle, undercut by something like a morbid promise: Do you know why this moment is special, Saul? Because it will never happen again.

Images of images of a past that no longer warranted recalling, because to do so would obscure the complications of the present. What was a memory of a memory but a lie?

His gaze remained hard, unyielding. The next words hit her, hard and fast, and their breath caught in their throat in shock. “The cops… you’d call the cops.” They echoed, letting him sit in the ridiculousness of his plan, a perversion of a deus ex machina. A hoarse chuckle escaped their lips, rough and unexpected like gravel crunching underfoot, as they attempted to push his insensitive remark aside. “You asked me why, and I answered. The building caught my interest, then you arrived, and I lost focus. Why is that so hard to understand?” they reiterated, forcefully, before pushing the chair back, its four legs scraping against the hardwood floor, signaling their desire to leave. The gesture was accompanied by a harsh, grating sound, not quite audible against the snippets of conversation and the ambient noise, but enough for the pair beside them to look concernedly. A physical recoil.

Had it really been so difficult to understand? That they’d wanted to know him, again—if only for the sake of Micah, in this new chapter of his life, in his pursuit of a career he didn’t want for a morsel of his father’s attention, in finally becoming his father’s son—and to arrive at something that resembled coexistence. The difference between an old wound about to heal and about to bleed was the pressure cast against it; any more and it would cause the tissue to break, to bleed.

Another social blunder, then. All at once, the world began tilting off its axis. ‘Boss, just listen to Ketziya,’ Luke might have said in defense during these moments at the firm when the threat of being misunderstood loomed over them, ‘you might not like what you hear, but they’re usually right.’ The trouble with these retrospections, years after the fact, was the undefinable ache that followed finally had a name. But naming it did not obscure the shame of not understanding, the embarrassment of accidentally saying the wrong thing, and the fear of being written off as strange or off-putting—and now, as a threat, by their own ex-husband, the father of their child.

“Fuck you, Saul,” they snapped, compressing decades of anger and hurt in those three syllables and against the twitch of their knuckles. Their voice cracked, briefly; a column, breaking, no longer able to bear the weight of the load. They willed their left hand to unclench and raised a single finger to the waitress, who hurried to fetch the check. They made no move to look at him; the sheer shape of him was blinding, amid the noise, the lights, the chatter, the sudden attention, the fury inside themselves.

“No, I’ll show myself out,” they said, retrieving the messenger bag from the corner of the table and placing the strap across their body. As the seconds stretched mercilessly on, Terry glided the thumb of their left hand against each finger pad, easing the strain of that vicious feeling against their gut. They cast their gaze back at him, face again rendered into a mask, giving back nothing at all. “Leave, then,” their arms folded tightly, shrinking inward, wanting no more than to fold into the earth, “don’t let me keep you from your celebratory dinner and your country club stories.”

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#police mention tw #sorry it's so short and mostly dialogue i'm running out of time to write before i'm going on hiatus!! not proofreading this either lol oops #disarm by smashing pumpkins came on while writing this rip #* queued.

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saulweissberg · 10 months ago

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sitting so close, just two feet of wood and tablecloth between them, saul could look directly into the eyes that had captivated him so greatly on march 18th, 1993. it might’ve been a thursday night, but saul couldn’t remember that particular detail, just that it was the end of his final year of undergrad and he was a few months away from being able to call himself a columbia university alumnus. he could remember a smoky house on w. 114th street, with drunken college students spilling out onto the stoop and even some out into the street. the living room wall had a poster for some movie called reservoir dogs, though saul had never heard of it, and there were christmas lights strung along the ceiling. it smelled like weed and cheap beer and the vague trace of coty’s exclamation. he thought he could recall madonna’s rescue me playing the moment he saw terry for the first time, but it was probably more likely to be some single off alice in chains’s second album—saul wanted to dance and have a good time at parties, not listen to downbeat flannel-clad guys with dirty hair whine about roosters or whatever—or that stupid spin doctors song he hated back then. it was a rather boring, typical cross-campus college party, if he remembered correctly.

it didn’t turn out to be a typical night, because that was where saul met his first wife. that was the party where he fell in love, instantly and intensely. tucked into the corner of the room, he had noticed the boy first. sharp-jawed with even sharper cheekbones, pretty lips, square shoulders. a clark kent-type, all corn-fed and from the accent he was able to briefly hear from across the room, an all-american country boy. grade a beef was what saul had commented to his friends as they observed him; jeremiah, sung-min, kenny, and dina either laughed behind their hands or rolled their eyes at his ribaldry as they always did.

they had all known saul for years; jeremiah had been his freshman year roommate and the rest he accumulated through various classes and parties he had attended throughout the previous semesters, so they were used to his bullshit. they found his antics funny, if they didn’t participate themselves, and when they didn’t, saul had a whole pantheon of other friends and acquaintances to flit to, suiting whichever need he had for the night. saul had been a restless man. when he found someone in a crowd that caught his eye, he had to meet them, and even if they hadn’t returned the attraction, he never left an interaction with a stranger upset or downtrodden.

that was why, when luke (as he later found out the name of him) moved to the side and revealed a smaller body behind him, his friends all exchanged looks and laughter. that lowenstein girl. dina told him how they were practically a barnard campus legend. unattainable, incredibly beautiful and even more aloof. anyone that tried to get close either got scared off by their calculating stare or their laconic responses. they had looked out of place in the environment, and dina remarked she was surprised they had even come to a party at all—allegedly, her sophomore year roommate’s boyfriend’s roommate tried to ask them to a sigma phi epsilon party and they gave him a blank look, mumbled something about zaha hadid, and took off in the other direction. again, though, allegedly.

well, there were plenty of rumors about saul around columbia, and only half of them were true.

okay, most of them.

so, yeah, he dated a lot. hooked up was a more accurate term, but not as polite. he basically got off the train from bridgeport and set off to enjoy everything he didn’t have access to in his little rich boy hometown. there were drugs and alcohol in connecticut, but it was different there. his peers snorted coke to get through country club clam bakes with their parents and stole their mom’s xanax pills to sell to public school kids. they brazenly drank from flasks on the golf course or ordered a scotch and soda at the charity gala bar, a dare in their eyes to the bartender to even think about telling their daddy because that would just get them fired, instead of filling up water bottles with vodka or hiding bottles of zima under their beds, deathly afraid to get caught. the rich kids saul grew up with were begging for their parents to catch them, but even when they did get caught, their parents didn't care as long as they didn't embarrass the family.

new york city and bridgeport might as well have been worlds away instead of just an hour. saul had to get a fake id to enter clubs in manhattan instead of just telling the doorman his last name and having them unclip the rope with an apology for the holdup. it was a foreign land where it wasn’t completely lawless, but the societal laws they had were the opposite of new england’s. his name wouldn’t open doors (often) anymore, but he could do ecstasy in a bathroom with a total stranger and make out with another guy in public without fear of something bad happening to him, as long as he stayed in the right neighborhood and didn’t enter the wrong sort of bar.

his name didn’t open doors, and he didn’t have to worry about tarnishing his family name. there was no worry that mrs. garvey down the street would tell his grandfather that she saw saul and his little friend aharon kissing on the porch. there was no fear that he’d get too drunk at the country club’s casino night and cause the other members to groan about they should’ve never let those weissbergs join the club. he could do whatever he pleased, as long as he kept his grades up. take some girl on a date, take some guy in an alleyway behind palladium, take some mystery pill and see what happened. then sleep between classes, spend hours in the library to catch up on days worth of studying, write up a paper on eisenstadt v. baird, then head back to the dorm for a nap, an episode of the phil donahue show, and then take another girl out…

it was a routine that he followed rather faithfully, and so what, he got bored easily! the world was his fucking oyster and he didn’t want to be tied down for more than a few weeks at a time. he wanted to sample everything in college because adulthood was looming darkly over him, a summit he was supposed to reach some day soon and finally be regarded as a man in the gentiles’ society. that meant a career, a wife, a family. no more fun. no more experimenting. a time to think about bringing shame on his family’s name again, but this time it would be his own family. his children, his wife, his fuckin’ dog and white picket fence or whatever bullshit he was supposed to get once he stepped over the threshold of maturity. all that boring stuff he heard his older cousins complain about, advising him to fuck as much as he could before he had some old ball-and-chain stuck at home.

he had to enjoy it while he could, so he did what he wanted and didn’t mind a slap across the face from an angry ex-girlfriend or a wistful look of longing from some beta zeta tau boy that didn’t want his brothers to know he was gay. he thought he fell in love often, then fell out of it just as easily, but that was a boyish notion. he didn’t know truly what love was until that snowy spring night.

the corn-fed guy moved to reveal the lowenstein girl, and suddenly it was like the lights in the theater dimmed and there was a spotlight shining down from nowhere on her. just like the movies, all the noise faded out—not the typical swell of classical music like in a film, he recalled it was horrifyingly hey ladies by the beastie boys—and everyone else in the room disappeared. her face was doll-like underneath her pall of soft, black hair and her stark paleness made her eyes shine all the more. she was short, made even smaller by the taller men around her and the little corner she tucked herself into might as well have stolen her away. her face wore an impassable expression, but their nails tapping against their cup indicated some anxiety.

well, if there was anything saul was good at, it was coaxing a wallflower out of their shell!

it hadn’t been a challenge or a dare by his friends, in fact sung-min told him to forget all about her and end the night with an easier target, but there was nothing that could’ve stopped him then. he bid his friends adieu with an overconfident raise of his brows and crossed the room, dodging college students making out on couches and trash littered on the floor as he made his way towards his fate. like with everyone and everything, especially since he arrived to columbia, he greeted her with an easy, self-assured smile and some opening line he couldn’t remember anymore.

he had grown into his body within the last few years, no longer one of the shortest kids in class and skinny as a rail; his shoulders had broadened, his chest sturdier, and he was finally an inch taller than levi—something his fraternal twin lorded over him since the fifth grade when he hit puberty and saul didn’t, but levi would forever remind him that he’d always be four minutes older and a last minute growth spurt could never change that. his body now matched his ego, so even if this beautiful, aloof student gave him the brush off, it wouldn’t crush his confidence. or maybe it would have, since he thought he had never seen such a beautiful person before, and he wanted to make her laugh more than he wanted his law degree.

and somehow, in his burberry sweater and gucci loafers, he got the girl that didn’t talk to anyone to talk to him. he was the envy of every man on the cu campus, and probably the envy of most women on the barnard campus, too. she smiled because he struggled to hear her over the crowd noise and rolled her eyes at him in a way that suggested she was entertained, not offended, when he kept calling her by the wrong name.

“it’s ketziya.”

“okay, katie, i’m saul. saul weissberg.”

“no, ketziya. ket-zi-ya.”

“yeah, katie. that’s what i said.”

even after she corrected him for the final time and he understood he was mishearing her name, he called her katie because it was their own private joke now and it felt special to call her by a sobriquet that no one else used before. like he had made a claim, in that smoky house on w. 114th street: you’re my katie, and fuck anyone that tries to take you away from me now.

they weren’t his katie now, though. they weren’t even terry. they were ketziya, looking at him with some unreadable expression, acting as if he had intruded upon their dinner.

“uh-huh.” saul replied, unconvinced. he doubted the building simply caught their eye, the exact restaurant where saul chose to dine that night, and just pulled them in by some unstoppable, invisible force. again, terry was a purposeful person. this wasn’t running into each other at the bank or passing by each other in the aisles of the grocery store. terry had followed him for some reason, seemingly spending their whole day just observing saul. “well, once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is…” he trailed off with a shrug, brows raising expectantly.

my attention bothers you, why?

his temper flared. “because you haven’t given a shit about what i do with my life for the last twenty-five years and now you’re suddenly everywhere?” his composure slipped, his fist flexing on top of the table. he breathed deeply and pressed his lips together in order to calm himself—the last thing he needed was it getting around town that saul e. weissberg, esquire yelled at women in public. deacon edwards would surely have a field day with that one. he unfurled his fist and laid his hand flat on the tablecloth. “i just don’t understand why you care now.” besides their shared son, they had lived completely separate for twenty-five years. their lives had seldom intersected beyond micah’s school events or birthday parties or an occasional high holiday spent together for their son's sake. terry had no interest in what saul did with his time back in manhattan, so why were they so enthralled with his daily itinerary today?

any tenuous grasp he held on his composure snapped once again. what a talent they had for turning it all on saul! everything was always his fault, wasn’t it? never could say the right thing, never could make up for his shortcomings. it was a wonder why they were bothering with him at all, following him around like an amateur spy. “don’t you do that.” he warned, nostrils flaring. “don’t act like i’m being crazy or unreasonable.” if anything, he thought his reaction to his ex-wife stalking him was quite understated.

bringing his hands up to his head, he massaged his temples and screwed his eyes shut before he spoke again and snapped his eyes back open, “what is it exactly that you want, ketziya?” because he couldn’t believe there wasn’t some ulterior motive with them, or that this was all some happy accident. if not for their earlier encounter at the courthouse, if this had been the first time he saw terry all day, he might’ve sent over a drink or stopped by to say hello. he would’ve played polite like he had been bred to do, wished terry a nice night, and gone home without a raging fucking headache. “because i’m going to be leaving soon and if i see you outside of my house at one am tonight, i’m calling the cops.”

Terry hadn’t been startled. They’d sensed him sensing them, and, anyway, it was not as if they had made any concentrated effort to obscure their presence, no more than they were used to. He sat on the chair opposite her, drawing the attention of an aging couple sitting next to them as he did, and her fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass as she contemplated his form, closer, now.

Ketziya. Their real name, typically reserved for close friends and family, had always sounded so strange in his tongue. For a moment, Terry had contemplated using the same moniker they’d reserved for him when he was being obtuse—Saul Wiseguy—but decided against it. “Weissberg,” they said instead, taking a sip of their drink, allowing themselves to meet his gaze. They leaned back in their seat, cradling the drink in their hand, but found themselves perturbed by the question.

“You make it sounds like I have a nefarious agenda, Saul. I didn’t plan it,” they began, but only as a half-defense, not quite making a formal denial. “There hasn’t been a lot to do while I’m waiting for the fall semester to start anyway.” A lift of their shoulders, projecting nonchalance. “The building caught my interest, then you arrived, and I lost focus.”

Terry swirled the red in their glass, watching the dark liquid catch the light from the fixtures above them. Hadn’t that been where everything began? Of Ketziya Lowenstein turning up in some strange place, finding Saul Weissberg there, and then leaving with him? They let themselves sit in the memory—they did that more often these days, they found—for a little while. To drown in the sensory overwhelm, of garishly decorated red cups, bright lights, loud 90s music, stilted laughter, and overbearing young men and women grazing their arm and professing something about them being their first love, first heartbreak, and first regret, and whatnot, but all Ketziya was doing was standing in a corner with Luke, tapping their fingers rapidly against their cup, and counting down the days until their parents would watch them graduate.

Beloved Ketziya, first to attend college, first to graduate, first to leave home.

In truth, they’d wanted to leave. To ditch the party. To walk back to the residential halls with their only friend. To begin packing up what little they’d brought from their dorm room in preparation for moving out day. And, finally, to return to their second-floor apartment in Harlem, flanked between two other units of their tenement building, and which had sat just below their father’s butcher shop, the only place in the world where chaos made sense.

Then there Saul was, sauntering across the room, tall and lanky and carrying a smile that was purported by the CU-Barnard gossip mill to have launched a thousand heartbreaks. They’d held the sleeve of Luke’s shirt but he’d walked away, instead, leaving Ketziya alone with this marvelous idiot of a man who’d called her by the wrong name and pushed a stray curl back into place as a stand in for an apology. His touch came abruptly and he’d stood too close, and the world was reduced to his blue eyes—solid and piercing—to his honeyed words, to the gap between them. That was one of the first few things they’d been taught: that it was not the light that created the space but the shadows cast against it. Only then did the space begin to transform, to move, to bring the objects comprising the space into focus. Everything existed in relation to everything else.

Even now, or especially now, she couldn’t remember who closed the gap first. Only that against the dark, there was movement, of a body orienting itself to the presence of another, colliding into each other. It was especially powerful to understand the world like this dialogue of contrasts: his thousand-times-over rehearsed movements against her tentative touches, his lightness against her severity, his evening stubble against her delicate skin, his practiced ease and her intense determination to make it work. That first kiss, too, had been a curious permutation of friction, heat, and light. Electric. An energy that she could control.

They wanted to remember something else, some other memory to better paint the picture of them in those early years. Maybe snippets of early conversation where their interests might have collided, where their worlds might have intersected. If they tried hard enough, they could picture vignettes. A memory of a memory. Swaying together as the train rattled into their station on 116th and Broadway. Kissing in library bathrooms scrawled with bad poetry and housing advertisements and political testimonies. Standing in the footsteps of Barnard Hall and watching his figure make the quick, hundred-foot trek from his building to hers. Taking a carriage ride through Central Park past midnight. Of crossing the boundary of 96th Street, past the elegant East Side of Manhattan, and towards the older tenements and storefronts with their loud signs, and introducing a Weissberg to their butcher father, who’d held the tightest of smiles and bid them some nice words before sharpening his chalef knife against the whetstone.

They were petty comforts. Not even memories, really, but disparate pieces of images pulled out to assign meaning to the decades of resentment and pain and hurt and anger that came next. Because the truth of it was the next clear thing had been Micah, whose presence redefined their world, and the invocation of which promptly put an end to their recollections.

Reality pulled itself back—to the restaurant, their pasta dish, the silverware, the wine, the presence of him. “My attention bothers you,” Terry said, simply, bringing again the glass to their lips. The weight of the memories slowly lifted with each sip, replaced by the coldness brought by the stern gaze of this man in front of her, whom they could not read at all, or maybe always could. “Why?” And after all this time? They asked, curious, but also in challenge.

In truth, it was almost compelling to see Saul like this, with his fire contained, so at odds with the demeanor by which he’d moved through the world. Throughout the day he’d appear to almost enjoy wearing that mask of courtesy and professionalism and being the most agreeable person in the room. Yet here he was, jaw set, muscles taut, lips pressed in a thin, downward line, and a voice dripping with displeasure.

Another study in contrasts, then, because how was this man the Saul they knew, thirty decades ago—hell, three minutes ago?

A muscle in their cheek twitched, intermittently, almost betraying the chuckle threatening to puncture through their lips. The false nostalgia of their encounter a month ago was gone. Now laid only him, older, more gaunt, and with buttons decidedly easier to press. “I’ve largely kept to myself. Fuck, Saul, I’m not trying to intimidate you.” With their free hand, they gestured towards him, the whole of him, the shape of him, and sighed. “You’re the one who keeps announcing their presence today.” A mild accusation, though not an entirely false one, threatening again to touch an indelicate truth. Terry was very much content to slither through the shadows. Only Saul had been daring—perhaps foolish—enough to bring them into the light.

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#😮‍💨 boy howdy......... almost 2.4k words #safe to say if you even ATTEMPT to match length on this one i will be swiftly blocking you laine #my google search history is such a mess lmfao. full of shit like popular perfumes early 1990s and what night did march 18th 1993 fall on #i picked that date for their first meeting bc it's my mommy's birthday 🤗#also you cast their friend so i wanted to cast saul's besties too!!!!#drugs mention tw #antisemitism mention tw #homophobia mention tw #police mention tw #long post cw #i'm truly sorry for anyone who has to scroll past this #greek life tw

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saulweissberg · 11 months ago

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saul, i’m trying here,

and what, he wasn’t? saul was trying so hard that he felt like his teeth might crumble in his mouth from how hard he was clenching his jaw. any other time of day, or any other venue, he’d be more willing to play along. any other time or venue, he might’ve been more prone to tell them to straight up fuck off. the publicness of the courthouse and the fact that it was, several times a week, his place of business kept his mouth shut. instead, he closed his eyes and inhaled noisily.

what i’m saying is that you might take the darkness for granted until you catch wind of the light.

his eyes snapped open, then stared down at them vacantly. he wanted to understand. he couldn’t understand. every word of that sentence was as foreign to him as quantum physics and he didn’t have the time, nor the inclination, to decipher any of it now. time was running short and while it wasn’t a large courthouse to walk through, he needed time to prepare for the next hearing. leaving the topic of chiaroscuro unanswered, saul tried not to feel annoyed at how they commented on how he should’ve gone with his client instead of her, and nodded his thanks on breaking a leg. he never needed luck, and probably could’ve dominated the next hearing in his sleep, but he was just thankful to leave terry’s presence and get back to where he felt most at home.

saul had the urge to tell them to go literally anywhere else, but terry, like their son, made a point to always do the exact opposite of what he wanted, so he just waved limply as he turned on his loafer and started towards the front doors.

FAST-FORWARD…

the rest of the work day proceeded like any other, except for the haunting specter of terry in the pews and the returning possessive feeling of their eyes on his back. he ignored them the best that he could, keenly aware of their presence with every movement he made. saul performed expertly, careful not to balk again, and the day passed by adequately.

eventually, it passed into night and saul found himself at la galleria. despite living in his oak gardens home for three years now, he never became familiar with its state-of-the-art kitchen. ever since he moved out of his mother’s home in the late eighties, saul either ordered dinner out from a number of places in manhattan to enjoy alone in his office or had a friend and/or client accompany him out to a restaurant. the kitchen in every home or apartment he inhabited throughout his adult life was only used by whichever wife he had at the time, and that had been mainly cassie. it was a spoil of the rich. he never had to scrounge up a meal with few ingredients and make it last for a few more days because there was forever money in his bank account to make someone else cook for him. the only reason he hadn’t hired a personal chef was that he hated to be alone in his own home, cold and dark without the presence of a wife (or son) to warm it, and eating by himself inside of it just added insult to injury. anywhere else in the world, saul was not afraid to be alone.

he was not a stranger to patronizing any given restaurant by himself, but he maintained it was better with company and that night, he took his second client out to celebrate. it was a regular, if not nightly, occurrence back in manhattan. things worked slower in blue harbor, but he could never shake that particular habit and most of his clients were pleased with the idea of him paying for their time instead of the other way around as normal. halfway through the repast and an entertaining story of the time saul spent a weekend in the hamptons with a certain athlete without actually realizing they were a famous athlete because he could never give a fuck about sports, he felt it again.

like a bloodhound that caught a scent on the wind, every muscle in his back tensed and his head tilted up in the air. his client was none the wiser, telling him about what they planned to do with their settlement as they dug into their pasta, but saul knew terry was there. he whipped his head around, eyes darting around until his searching gaze fell upon an obstructed view of his first wife. sitting against the wall on the far end of the restaurant, it was unmistakably terry. even with a handful of tables and other patrons in the way, he knew it was them from the curve of their nose and the curtain of black hair. just some of the same features they gave to micah, as if saul’s genes hadn’t contributed in the slightest. the irritation he felt earlier returned, though he tried to rationalize that maybe terry just had the same idea to dine out at la galleria that night. there were only so many restaurants in blue harbor, after all.

knowing terry, though, nothing was ever a coincidence. every move they made was intentional and purposeful. terry didn’t make mistakes. terry didn’t balk. terry didn’t sacrifice their son for their career and leave micah with abandonment issues three times over (though he doubted micah felt all that abandoned by thalia, already a grown man by the time saul made her his second step-mother). the perfect parent, balancing a career with motherhood while saul could barely manage to make it home in time for dinner or read him a fucking bedtime story like cassie could. even across a whole damn restaurant, terry was suffocating him with the reminder that saul was a deadbeat father and an unworthy partner and g-d fucking damn it, she should’ve picked someone else to marry and get impregnated by straight out of college. it was ruining his mood and putting him off his meal.

saul tried to keep playing the part of gracious host for a party of two, but just knowing terry was there, watching him with their hawk eyes… it was hard to stomach any more, so he let the server take his plate and didn’t order another drink as he usually did with his clients. he could admit he enjoyed the praise after negotiating a settlement or finalizing a custody agreement, so he’d normally stick around for another drink or a dessert. now, however, he just wanted to leave.

would terry follow him home, though? if he tried to stop by o’shea’s for a nightcap, would he find her among the barstools awaiting his arrival or would they sneak into some broom closet to secretly observe him from a distance? phoebe didn’t believe him when he said terry had an analytical gaze by nature, positing that maybe terry had reserved it just for him, but she hadn’t been on the receiving end of terry’s fascination like saul had for the last thirty years. in senior year of undergrad, he felt flattered by the attention, like terry was cataloging the cut of his cheekbones in case he somehow evaporated into thin air and she never wanted to forget what he looked like. he wished he could fucking evaporate into thin air.

saul tried not to be rude in his parting with his client, so he feigned an emergency phone call and told them to order any dessert off the menu that they wanted. suitably excused, he left the table with a polite smile and then wound his way through the restaurant. it didn’t take long to reach terry, his stride more hurried than usual. he didn’t give them a chance to speak, sitting down in the empty opposite chair with a noticeable thud.

“hey, ketziya.” he only evoked their rarely used first name in instances of true displeasure with them, so he hoped they understood just how fed up he was. “lovely evening. are you dining by yourself?” he asked sarcastically; the empty chair opposite them and lack of a second plate proved his theory. yes, there were only so many places to eat in the area unlike new york with its bustling restaurant scene, but blue harbor wasn’t a one horse town, and with their appearance at the courthouse that morning, saul was disinclined to believe in this all happening by chance. he dropped any pretenses, frowning deeply, “i’m seriously starting to think you’re stalking me.”

I’ll take your criticism under advisement—Terry recognized his inward frustration and the way he’d concealed it, expertly, through legal jargon and gritted teeth. However Saul Weissberg had made a career on arguing, a public argument simply would not do. Frustrated as Terry was, the thought of their words piercing through him—and provoking a reaction that they could only describe as the legal equivalent of some upper-crust socialite clutching at her pearls—after all these decades almost provoked a smile.

“Mhm, sure.” Instead, they settled on something like gruff contentment, almost resembling their father’s microexpressions, the knowing cadence of a man who knew better than to argue with a blue blood.

It was harder to contain their exasperation at the dismissal of their insight, though. His tone was flat, and rigid, and the sigh stabbing through the air echoed a vague memory, like he’d already conceded the fight. “Saul, I’m trying here,” they frowned, “what I’m saying is that you might take the darkness for granted until you catch wind of the light.�� It was easier to speak in tongues with him, to relegate the task of asking Saul to parse through those metaphors themselves when the truth felt a bit too invasive.

Of course, the exercise did not always translate to effective communication—and it was precisely the reason why they’d been married for only four years, and barely grew a friendship in the subsequent twenty-five.

Terry supposed she could find some appreciation in his attempt, and as he handed the journal back, they’d begun contemplating their answer. In truth, neither of the options were appealing to her. While they hadn’t retired completely, proposing a courthouse development was quite below their skillset, though she admitted to feeling satisfaction in successfully rerouting federal funds or negotiating with appropriations committees. The highs of navigating bureaucracy, it seemed, was a shared interest. But how could Terry say this particular exercise was simply the way they’d relaxed, a grounding mechanism of sorts, a means to articulate how they’d viewed the world—as a continuous transformation of space, scale, light, and movement? Of the people whom they wished to disclose their neurodivergence, Saul was firmly last on that list.

In the end, though, Saul had made the decision himself, pulling them both back into the past by virtue of an old nickname and his intent to walk away. “Sure. Later,” they said, licking their lips, “you probably should’ve gone with your client instead of talking to me, but—” But what? That they’d appreciated it? It was odd, how Saul could still catch wind of their presence, however distant, even as they were intent on making themselves invisible. She struggles to understand what it means. “—sure, break a leg in there.”

And break he did, Terry realized, as they’d caught the next hearing and found the fever of youthful confidence burned off and rekindled, instead, with a more established air. Aging had always been different for men, she found, and different for the Weissbergs, too. The way they clad themselves in it, the armor of privilege transformed—or perhaps metastasized—into a tailored suit. The Lowenstein household were very famously comprised of recluses, their shochet father being the worst of them, preferring instead for his work to speak for himself. A practice Terry themselves had imitated in their profession: in setting the design for great works, never becoming overly famous, yet still orchestrating control. Still, it did not always come easy, for their name had neither come with a birthright nor a crown.

And t took Terry a while to understand how invisibility worked within themselves—how the compliments on their beauty had eased out as the lines became more pronounced on their face, how the vague flirtations struck up became fewer and farther between. What they say and do for other women and not you—and they’d almost missed it, really, that feeling of being seen.

But to be seen was to be rendered vulnerable, and it was not a practice they were so eager to trade.

It was difficult to rationalize why they’d stayed in the courthouse. It was even more difficult to rationalize why, precisely, they’d followed him and a client—or a date? with Saul, one could never quite tell—into La Galleria. Here, at least, the picture of Saul Weissberg did not feel entirely displaced. From its plush velvet chairs, the dark wood paneling, the light fixtures set to a subtle, elegant warmth that cast a soft glow across the hardwood floors, the restaurant was rendered familiar.

Terry took their seat close to the back of the establishment, correcting the alignment of the silverware and tracing the intricate patterns of the tablecloth, as they awaited their order. They’d delegated their choices to the waiter: some truffle pasta, and a pinot noir with dark fruit and earthy tones to match. She wasn’t unaccustomed or particularly averse to fine dining, but the only menu they knew close to heart was the Ostrea’s, and everything else paled in comparison.

Their focus flitted inconsistently between their plated dish—fine, sure, and serviceably luxurious—and his figure across the room, animated and engaged, but only served to bely his internal vulnerabilities. They traced the rim of the glass before lifting it to their lips, welcoming the sensation of the earth against their tongue, and watched.

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#i truly didn't mean to write this much i'm just unable to be brief 😰#it astounds me how i can write this much and say so little lmfao #neglect mention tw

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saulweissberg · 11 months ago

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saul dropped his suitcase back down by his side once they both began walking, no longer forcing terry to move along. it was distressing to have them in the courthouse—though most of his job required meetings in board rooms or in his office, the courthouse felt like his domain. his arena. his home. a sacred place where he got to do what he loved and was rarely ever distracted by anything substantial. having terry there felt unnatural, like a home invasion. he was growing a migraine right behind his brow bone and right now, at ten in the morning, he just wanted a fucking drink.

now out in the courtyard, saul had his arms akimbo while he looked expectantly at terry for an explanation. the more they spoke, the sicker he felt. he couldn’t handle the thought of terry haunting the courthouse any further. normally, he welcomed an audience. it was his one regret of not being a trial lawyer like his father or various cousins, making speeches to the jury like an impassioned southern attorney and hearing gasps from the gallery when he made a particularly damning point. (of course, he knew actual trials weren’t like the movies, but sometimes, he liked to imagine himself as an atticus finch-type, patron saint of lawyers.) it felt like an invitation for more balking, as terry had put it. only she could undercut him in such a way, from across a courtroom where he couldn’t even see her.

“i’ll take your criticism under advisement.” which, of course, meant: fuck you. like any lawyer, he could say that many different ways without actually saying those exact words. the meaning was still the same, though. besides, he had been doing this for twenty-six years. saul knew what he was doing; it was all routine to the point of boredom, yet he pressed on and could never truly hate the job. the satisfaction of winning in the only place where he could win—always losing in his personal life—felt better than any drug he’d ever taken in his long life, and simply rivaled sex for an adequate release. sure, he didn’t always get the outcome he wanted, but saul had never left a courtroom or meeting with absolutely nothing. small victories were victories just the same… when it came to his career, at least.

the non-sequitur made him want to tear his hair out in frustration, but he looked up at the building anyway. he acquiesced that it wasn’t a particularly attractive building, and it differed from the limestone and stainless steel of the manhattan civil courthouse in a way that made him yearn for new york, but he hadn’t cared what it looked like. he didn’t have that architect’s brain that terry had. when he looked at a building, all he saw was its façade, and he rarely had any comments to make about them. just another way in which he couldn’t understand his first ex-wife.

sometimes, though, the history between them made it so it was like they were the only person that could understand him—they just never saw him in a flattering light.

his sight lowered from the building towards the trees terry was referencing. again: to him, they were just trees. the windows were just windows. he thought nothing of how light worked in a space, he was one to delegate the decoration to whichever wife he had at the time or an interior designer when he didn’t. “that's very interesting, terry.” saul said flatly, exhaling forcefully. the minutes were ticking down to his next hearing and he had hoped she’d find some other building to examine instead of playing witness to his profession all day.

saul only took the journal because terry handed it to him, no choice but to take a look. once again: to him, it looked like scribbles on the page. he had never been an artist. the weissbergs put the sciences over humanities (though law counted as a humanity in some circles), expecting each and every member to join a white-collar profession. and if they hadn’t, like young gideon with his published book or levi’s tenured teaching literature to college students, then they had to be the best at what they did. they had to make themselves worthy of the weissberg name. they valued deft minds over hands, sharp wit over paint on a canvas. basically, the exact opposite of the lowensteins.

he wasn’t sure what he was looking at exactly. a building of some sort, clearly, but was it meant to be a redo of the building behind them or something new? saul analyzed them best as he could before he handed the journal back to terry. “are you planning on building something here, or do you want to propose to the town council that you redesign the courthouse?” he asked without an ounce of mocking or disinterest. he was truly, genuinely asking. he wanted to understand terry. that was the crux of it all. the closer he got to someone, the less he could see them clearly, and terry might as well have been underneath a permanent haze since the clinton administration.

saul took a look at the watch on his wrist. shit. eighteen minutes until his next hearing. he needed to confer with his client before they went before the judge. “listen, katie,” he was back to using his preferred, exclusive sobriquet, “i’ve got to go. maybe i’ll see you later, okay?” much, much later. like after the sun went down and saul didn’t have to worry about balking underneath terry’s gaze.

“Oy!” Terry said, almost by instinct, as Saul nudged them to move forward, their working-class roots betrayed by the unusually sharp inflection from their clipped demeanor. They closed their journal where they’d been absentmindedly sketching halfway, keeping their finger between the pages to mark its place, and began following him. “I get the hint just fine, thanks.”

They matched his stride, measured and purposeful, as they moved through the hallway and towards the courtyard. It did not take long for Saul to question her presence inside: a valid question, in retrospect, though the events that lead to them hanging back at the gallery, however their ex-husband might want to dispute it, were all quite circumstantial. Their morning routine walk was always dampened by this decidedly plain courthouse—and when they recognized Saul’s sauntering walk about ten, twenty yards away, they were met with an impulse to follow him.

The truth was Saul Weissberg, typically so larger-than-life, arguing in such a modest setting, piqued their curiosity in no small way. They’d quietly settled in the back, their brown and decidedly unsummerlike ensemble camouflaging with the the courthouse pews. Inside, they played the role of a silent witness, a predator hunting its prey, or a zoo patron watching an animal in an enclosed habitat that had only imitated the conditions of the real thing.

Saul might not appreciate the comparisons, though, and Terry knew better than to strike in one’s natural environment. “I’ve run out of things to do in town. The weather isn’t conducive for walking and I’m not a big fan of humidity,” they lied, journal still clutched in their left hand. They raised a single digit towards the sky, deceptively calm, and made a vague motion to the air to indicate the mugginess the summer had brought about.

Terry leaned back against the wall of the courthouse, an imitation of their earlier position—only instead of leaning against the wainscot wood paneling—veneered, even!?—the surface was a blank stone, remarkable in its remarkableness. “I’m not here to meet with you. But I might catch the next hearing again.” It wasn’t that they’d liked to treat the airing out of grievances and failed intimacies as if it were their morning news. The divorcing couples were simply the victims of circumstance of Terry’s dragged-out impulse. “I thought the other counsel had you cornered when he brought up commingling of funds as a defense, but you shot it down very quickly in your redirect examination.” It was almost a compliment. “You did balk at the end, though.” Almost.

Unsure what else to say next, Terry tilted their head slightly, towards the nondescript doors, then the pallid gray of the stone. “It’s not a particularly attractive building, is it?” The county courthouse seemed to have preceded the Moynihanian rhetoric that governed federal architecture by the 1970s, crafted instead in an earlier art deco style, with its facade polished with limestone and its windows narrow and recessed. It had done the job of communicating its basic purpose just fine, but it did little to abate the anxieties of people who might wind up inside its galleries, in one way or another.

“These trees must be transplanted.” With their free hand, they pointed towards the two large American elm trees, obscuring the daylight that could have pored through the windows. “The windows are narrow enough as they are, and the elms block out the light entirely. How space is organized with respect to light is always critical, especially for public buildings like this one. Oy vey…”

A sigh punctured the air, emphasizing their disappointment. It was difficult to turn off an architect’s keen eye; doubly more so when she herself had been part of the design team responsible for the Staten Island courthouse that had overlooked the New York Harbor and cut an imposing figure amid the St. George skyline, whose facade was polished with a denser composition of precast, copper, and glass that had made way for the power of afternoon light.

“Anyway, I’ve got some ideas,” they lifted their shoulders into a shrug, handing the journal over to him, on the page where their draft sketches lay. It felt only appropriate for Saul to bear witness to their own practice just as they’d bear witness to his—not that their more conceptual freehand done in about ten minutes’ time might have made sense to a non-architect, and, in truth, to anyone but Terry themselves. Still, it was almost an apology, an olive branch to their ambivalent reunion weeks earlier. “I got bored when you were discussing the infidelity allegations.” Almost.

#* narrative / thread.#* narrative / terry.#* terry / 002.#i was thinking we could do a lil time skippy skip to either after the next hearing or maybe the end of the work day? at a restaurant #or something? i'm letting you pick!!!#drugs mention tw

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