Wake-up Call – Chapter 67

Chamomile tea.

Chamomile tea has long been a staple of.. fuck this, I'm not in the mood for a lecture.

Also? This is awkward.

Like, [really] awkward.

So, trying to mask some of it, I grab the cup of chamomile tea in front of me, bring it up to my lips, and take in the fragrant waft of steam drifting off it.

It's… It's kind of hard to describe, like most scents are. We have many evocative words for both sight and sound, our two main ways of gathering sensory data from the world around us. We have sensual words for touch, because that's vital to us in far too many ways. Because it's our way not only to gather, but to share. To connect.

Taste? Taste still gets some interesting words, but they tend to be basic unless one is an actual gourmet and delves into some of the most obscure sections of the dictionary in search of le mot juste.

But smell? Smell is the runt of the litter.

It must have something to do with how humans are, when compared to almost any other animal, woefully unequipped to do anything with their noses other than scrunching them up in high-class disgust when confronted with something offensively plebeian—like, I don't know, Brian's tastes in anything other than leggy brunettes.

Yes, it certainly is related to that, but whatever the cause, the sad truth is that many of the words we use to describe scents are outright borrowed from taste. A sweet, cloying incense? We all get a quick idea of what that's like, but only because of how it relates to its more vital cousin because, to us, it's far more relevant what things do to our mouth before we swallow them than what they do to the [ambiance] around us.

Hell, I remember reading a book… A classmate of mine recommended it, saying that it described scents so vividly that she could feel them, that she could experience what the characters were talking about.

[Perfume: The Story of a Murderer]. As the title so subtly implies, it had to do with perfumes.

And colognes, I guess.

Also, a couple of murders here and there.

Anyway, the thing was that the olfactory sense was vital to the plot, as weird as it sounds to say that, and it certainly delved into elaborate descriptions that tried their best to be evocative and transport the reader to a world defined by the subtle nuances of esoteric scents.

Want to know the one description that stuck with me?

'It smelled like lime.'

Yup. That's it. That's how horribly limited we are when talking about smell instead of music, paintings, or even cuisine.

So, when I say that chamomile tea's scent is hard to describe? That's a bit disingenuous. It's actually pretty easy:

It smells like chamomile tea.

[Lisa Wilbourn's avoidance strategy—]

Fine! Fine, I… OK, I take in another, allegedly calming breath of a drink that smells like… like old pages, if books were flowers, I think. It has that sharp tang, that reminder of something potently fragrant drifting through more nuanced, subtle—

[Lisa Wilbourn's purposeful misinterpretation—]

You're terrible.

So I take a small sip of the still slightly too hot tea and look across the round table of Taylor's kitchen at my mother, cradling her own cup between her hands, hunched over it as if over a campfire and desperate for warmth.

To my right, Taylor looks at me as hieratically as someone employing anti-Thinker measures can be.

To my left, a still wary Danny keeps looking between me and the attractive woman of about his age I've forced into close quarters with him and with whom he's already spent a night under the same roof.

…

This may not have been my best idea.

"Please tell me you haven't fucked," I ask with a whispered note of despair.

Sadly for me, the kitchen was pregnant ([gross!]) with anxious silence while everybody waited for me to talk, so my whisper may as well have been a Tagg-worthy ejaculation (All right, what the [Hell?] Nobody uses that word for that anymore!).

OK, OK, just… just calm down as…

As Taylor loudly drops her teaspoon, the silver thing clattering on the floor as loudly as the bells tolling for me.

"What?" she asks, her eyes wide enough that no distant swarm could mask the impending panic.

"Lisa, I'm very disappointed in you for intruding on a lady's privacy," Danny shoots me with a reproachful frown.

I… blink at him.

And Mom kicks him.

In the stabbed leg.

Good.

"Don't be juvenile," she says with a narrow-eyed glare.

"It's payback for the engagement bomb," he says before nonchalantly shrugging and masking his pained wince behind clenched teeth and strained indifference.

"The [what?"] Taylor says.

Oh.

Oh, dear, here come the consequences of my actions. Who could've guessed.

[Current population of Earth Bet—]

Fuck you.

"I came to talk about past trauma. Could we talk about that instead of, you know, making more current trauma?" I don't quite beg as Taylor turns to look at me fully, her eyes blazing behind contact lenses in a way they didn't quite do behind glasses, and that's entirely my fault.

Why do I do this to myself?

[BDSM community—]

Fuck. You.

"I don't know. Can you, [Honey?"]

No points for guessing who's yet again threatening me with what, in any other, [sane] couple, would be an unremarkable term of endearment.

[Taylor Hebert's use of 'Honey' as—]

I just said no points!

"Oh God, she's just like her mother…" Danny whispers loudly enough that both Taylor and I twitch.

"Are you sure you're [only] engaged?" Mom adds, twisting the knife.

"I just came out of the closet yesterday! You don't get to make sassy remarks at me yet!" I tell her, desperately clutching at the chance to change the subject by pointing dramatically at her across the dreadfully bare table.

"Sweetheart, I picked you up from gymnastics class, remember?" she says with a mild eye roll, as if that explains [anything at all].

"Gymnastics?" Taylor can't help but ask for reasons I can't fathom.

"Don't get your hopes up. She was utterly dreadful; she only stuck the whole month because of the leotards."

"[Mom!"]

"What? Your instructor thought it was adorable."

"[Moooom…"]

"She had such a huge crush on the woman… A tall brunette, now that I think about it…" Mom says, her forefinger poking pensively at her lower lip.

And Taylor [slowly] turns back at me, the smile on her face not so much strained as struggling on a torture rack.

"Oh, [really]?" she says with all the cheerfulness of a Mark Hamill villain.

"Followed her around like a Sapphic duckling. If she hadn't sprained her thigh—"

["Mom!"]

"'You think you can play this game with me,' she said. 'That just because you're more experienced than I am, that levels the playing field,' she threatened…" Danny mutters.

…

He's quoting me.

The damn bastard is quoting me while pinching the bridge of his nose and lifting [his glasses].

And both Mom and Taylor are looking at him weirdly.

Which means he's going to [explain].

I jump to my feet, the wooden chair clattering to the floor as I jump toward the infuriating man as he looks up in surprise.

Then I grab his button-up shirt with both fists and pull up as I glare down into his wide, startled, far too Taylory eyes blinking beneath wavering lenses.

"Not. A damn. Word," I hiss.

Which, in retrospect, may not have been the best way to silence an uncomfortable topic of discussion.

"What—" Taylor starts asking

"[Nothing,"] I tell her, summarizing all that she needs to know.

"Sweetie, are you threatening people into silence to cover up your embarrassment again?" Mom asks.

"No," I tell her, lying to her as is my prerogative as a rebellious teenager.

"She once tried to do that to her math teacher. She was ten, and didn't want to bring home anything other than an A, so she—"

"[Mom!"]

"Can I say you're far better company than I've been led to believe mothers-in-law usually are?" the traitor says.

"Thanks?" the blood-related traitor answers.

There's some embarrassed, mild coughing.

From below me.

I turn to look at a sheepish Danny Hebert, who shrugs, and I reticently let him go before I walk back to pick up my unvarnished chair from the kitchen floor. It's one of those things with a wooden frame and a wicker seat that is just on the right side of comfortable, but only by a bare margin, and—

[Lisa Wilbourn's avoidance strategy—]

Fuck. OK, fine, you're right.

So I pick the damn chair up and set it back in its proper place, right in front of Mom's, and I sit down with my forearms leaning on the water-stained table that has witnessed one too many meals without a tablecloth, the glossy surface of the light varnish punctuated by scratches and splatters of a darker color.

I rest my fingertips on the sides of the cup of chamomile tea, letting the residual warmth seep in.

And I look at my mother.

"I know what you're doing," I say with a tone that couldn't be further from that of scatterbrained Lisa, the adorkable, easily flustered spaz.

Both Taylor and Danny lean away from the table, straight against the backrests, as if getting out of the line of fire.

And Mom…

Mom smiles.

It's a sad thing. A fragile thing.

And, as always since… since that day, I briefly wonder how to best shatter it.

"Of course you do, Sa—"

"Don't," I snap.

The smile fades away. Not because of a convoluted plan. Not because of a calculated remark that alluded to too many things to properly parse in a single moment. Not because of my intent.

But because…

Because.

"I… I'm still getting used to it," Mom apologizes. Then she looks back at me, lips toeing the line against an absent smile, and adds: "Lisa."

I nod, taking the gesture for what it is.

A surrender.

"OK. OK, I… I think we need to—" I say, trying to get my thoughts in order before—

"Don't," she says with the same finality as I just did, the same snapped [hurt].

So… Right. Before [this].

I look at her. At her eyes briefly looking down and fixating on a small, perfectly circular stain.

Then she looks back up.

"Don't get your thoughts in order. Don't… Don't plan this. I don't want you to think; I want you to [feel]. I want you to… to be truthful, no matter how much it hurts me," she says, a brief twitch turning the almost smile into something more, something sparking with a burst of hope.

But bursts end.

And so do smiles.

"I… I am not sure that's something we both want," I tell her.

"It's the least I owe you… Lisa."

And Taylor grabs my hand, pulling It away from the warmth of the mug to engulf it in her own. In something more abundant. More real.

So I close my eyes.

And feel.

It's… It shouldn't be hard, you know? You either feel something, or you don't. Except you don't feel one thing, but many, plenty of them contradictory, and some of them are not the emotion, but you thinking you [should] feel that emotion.

In this case?

It's my mother, so I should feel love, and warmth, and caring.

It's the woman who stood aside and let me be hurt. Exploited. So I should feel rage, betrayal, hatred.

And it's something I've carried with me for more than a year, so I definitely should feel exhausted.

[Lisa Wilbourn—]

I think using you counts as cheating.

[Lisa Wilbourn's sense of fair play—]

Point. Also, that will get you a chuckle when I'm not being watched by three people who think I'm having an internal crisis.

[Emotions codified in neuro—]

I [know]. I know I shouldn't obsess over—

[Origin of emotions irrelevant to their effect. Effect divorced from genesis. Lisa Wilbourn's emotions… valid.]

… You have grown a lot, haven't you?

[Anthropomo—]

I'm so looking forward to being able to give you a virtual noogie.

What I am not looking forward to is… Well. Looking forward.

I still do it, though. I look up from the hand Taylor is holding, and I give her a rueful smile when our eyes meet for a second that stretches not long enough.

And then… I look at my mother.

"You're wrong, you know?" I tell her.

"I… I am. I have been so—"

"Not about that," I say with a dismissive wave of my free hand. "About not thinking. That's stupid. That's a great way to get hurt. Because emotions come and go, and believe me when I say I know what homicidal rage feels like and how [right] it feels to let yourself go in the moment. But that's the thing: it's a moment. And then you're left feeling empty, drained of the thing that was driving you, surrounded by the broken pieces of something that was in front of you, but maybe not the root of that emotion. And you have nothing. No rage, no drive, no… Nothing. Just a blank moment of emptiness before realization comes and you can start regretting everything you did because of something that is no longer there."

She looks at me. And maybe she understands, maybe she doesn't—no. No, she does. She's lived through it, and this isn't something that requires [smarts] to figure out. This is something you live.

More than once, most likely.

"So…" I drift off, giving her the chance to interject. She doesn't take it. "So I won't tell you just how hurt I was. I won't let you know everything that ran through my overactive imagination when I stole from you just enough to get far away from you. I won't tell you the temptation to just destroy the whole place before leaving it behind, or how easily I could've broken up Dad and—"

"I've got the divorce papers ready," she says, her voice cracking.

"What?" I ask as Taylor's hands clench mine.

And my mother sighs before raising her hand. A hand without a ring on it.

Her tremulous smile comes back, maybe looking for my approval, maybe… I don't even know.

"I… Since when…" I stagger.

Taylor's hands keep me from falling.

"It doesn't matter. I should've done it sooner."

Sooner. Maybe as soon as I left. Maybe before I did. Maybe before my brother—

Damn it!

"See? See?! This is why it's a bad idea to ask me to talk about my [emotions!] Because now I can only feel this… this… this [outrage], this burning resentment at you having stuck to that bastard for so long that I—"

"I thought it was good for you! I thought… I thought it was better for you to grow up as the children of a rich man than a divorced mother of two!"

"Well, you were [deadly] wrong, weren't you?" I say.

Full of emotions.

And my mother gasps.

Then the rage leaves, and only smoldering ashes remain as I see the blood drain from her face, as I see the pieces of something I just shattered in front of me.

But I refuse to let the emptiness come.

So I jump to my feet, my hand slipping out of Taylor's grasp. And I run around the table to hold the wounded woman, to hug her head against my chest, to, hopefully, keep the pieces together. Keep them from breaking apart.

Because I don't want to be that girl anymore. I don't want to be the hateful villain poking at weaknesses, getting a thrill out of solving a puzzle that used to be a person. I don't want—

[Lisa Wilbourn's heroism—]

And a frantic little voice in my head pulls me back, even if just enough for me not to spiral down farther and farther.

Mom's arms wrap around my waist, and she cries.

And I…

It's a good idea to keep intermediaries. People you trust. People that can step in if things get too heated.

But…

But I look pleadingly at Taylor, and she nods before grabbing her father and dragging his limping self away so that two Livseys can have their moment in the Heberts' kitchen.

***

"I'm sorry," I tell her, rocking her back and forth like she once did with me.

"I asked for it," she answers with a broken voice.

"You didn't know… you don't know me, Mom. Not like I am now," I say as I carefully tug her updo undone so that I can run soothing fingers through the falling blonde hair that I always played with until I realized how embarrassing it was for girls my age to still do that.

She… She pushes herself away, still clinging to me, to the girl who just stabbed her even as she looks up into my eyes.

Into the eyes I got from her.

[Recessive character of—]

Fine. The eyes I got from her and from some distant ancestor on Dad's side. Happy now?

[Anthropo—]

Yeah. I guessed as much.

"I do. I… I held you right after you were born. Things were already bad with your father—had always been—but when I… when I felt how small you were, that tiny little bundle of… of [life]. When I felt you first nuzzle your scrunched face against me… I cried from sheer happiness, Sa—[Lisa]. I… I swore to watch over you, to get as many little memories as I could so that I could keep that precious thing with me forever. And you… You have done things I never imagined, grown much faster than I hoped you would, but you are still… You are still the clumsy little girl who tried too many things, who kept exploring a world that felt too big and too small at once. You're still… You're still my baby girl. You'll always be," she declares.

Except she's not telling me.

She's begging me.

And I…

I remember tripping and crying, my knee skinned, grains of dark dirt embedded beneath welling blood until a gentle, tender, patient woman picked me up and told me about the magic of chamomile tea.

I remember getting a big book full of colors, and animals, and kids my age going on an adventure, and a patient voice reading it to me, explaining the words I still had trouble with, even if I no longer remember the story itself.

I remember a mermaid who lost her voice and a mother who consoled me, agreeing that the prince was a jerk, even if I didn't understand just how much she meant by that.

I remember… I remember being my mother's daughter.

And the anger? The resentment? The many, [many] bitter reproaches I could still lay on her? They don't fade away. They won't with a single day of heated conversation and shared tears. Maybe they never will.

But neither will all those other things.

So I brush a lock stuck to her forehead back with my thumb, and take a deep breath, closing my eyes to gather my thoughts.

"You can call me Sarah," I say.

When I open my eyes, my mother is staring back at me, a smile shining through her tears that is wider than anything I've seen from her since she found me.

And I…

I try to return it.

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 89 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!