Rating: PG

Summary: Ally's mother is gone, and she talks about what led up to it...Michael might actually be getting used to his writing class.

Spoilers: Nope.
 

ALLY:

September 13, 2000

I wake up and I realize that my mother died two months ago today.

The sensation is a strange one.

At the age of 45, meaning I'm ass-deep in middle age, I shouldn't feel like an orphan.

I do, anyway.

My relationship with my mother was never particularly easy or affectionate. I don't think that would have changed had she been in the world another ten years or ten thousand.

But as long as she was in the world, I was somebody's daughter.

I remember getting the call. It was the day after we returned from camping at Chesapeake Bay.

It had been a fabulous trip. We didn't go to the spot that Langly and I hit when we need to be alone, clear our heads, and generally indulge in some fantastic sex-I'd insisted that we could only go camping if there were showers available.

I am, after all, a Jewish princess at heart. At least about some things.

So we hit one of the parks along the coastline. The trip was to celebrate Langly's 37th birthday on July 12. I'd asked him what he wanted to do, and he immediately responds, "Camping."

Now I don't think I've ever spoken the words "I want to go camping" with my own mouth. But I have gone, many times, and once I'm there, I always enjoy myself. It's the getting there that always makes me think this is a bad idea.

For one thing, we didn't have a suitable vehicle for packing all of the gear. I still had all of the camping gear that had been Eric's and mine, and with assurances from Miranda that Daddy would much rather it be used than gather mildew at Public Storage, we decided to break it out.

It wouldn't fit in the Neon, and it definitely was a no-go in the 'Stang.

Fortunately, we have good friends, and, even more importantly, we have friends with trucks. One of those friends is Sheridan, who is nominally Langly's supervisor. I say nominally because it appears that Sheridan is more or less anarchistic with his employees, meaning Langly doesn't have a problem with him. And Sheridan seems to like him.

Sheridan, a gay man in his 50s, lost his long-time partner to AIDS shortly after our wedding in May. Langly thought that he might like a chance to get out of Dodge and relax.

That, and we could use his truck.

And Langly could be assured of getting his birthday off, which fell inconveniently on a Tuesday this year.

Sheridan accepted his offer, and we packed up the gear, the two kids, and the dog, and headed for the shore.

We spent most of our time hanging on the beach, talking and drinking beer. It wasn't a particularly private vacation, but it was relaxing and fun. We'd jump in the waves and then go and dry off and drink some more, and Langly and Sheridan actually got work done on the trip.

You can take the boys away from the work, but you can't take the work away from the boys.

I'd go walking up the shoreline, trying to think about what I should do next.

I'm a deaf support services provider by trade. This involves a lot of heavy wrist action. And ever since I'd broken my arm the previous December, I'd been having a lot of difficulty with pain in my left arm, which is the arm that had been broken-and is also my dominant hand.

I loved the work, but physically, it was on its way to becoming undoable.

Thinking about a career change at 45 is not the same as thinking about one at 25. I had a lot more requirements to be met, for one thing. Like being able to contribute to the support of two children, a large mortgage, and numerous animals, just for starters. And while Langly and I do okay in terms of earning power, we've got a lot of expenses to match.

I'd started working with Dana Scully again at Georgetown. This meant doing two-3 hour seminars a week as an interpreter/captionist, which was about what I could physically handle these days. My days of doing 40 hours a week with my hands flying about were over.

Dana did need some help in her lab, though. She had two graduate assistants and one postdoc fellow, all of whom were heavily involved in bench work. I'd been a bio major as an undergrad, and while I'd been far removed from the world of science in any sort of direct fashion for over twenty years, I found myself getting hooked again.

And when Dana said she was having problems building her statistical models, I jumped in almost before I knew what I was saying, and offered to do the job for her. I'd always done well with statistics. She was a bit skeptical at first, asking me to build two models for her, and then she'd evaluate them and let me know.

Fortunately, I'd been practicing with various projects with the TMB staff. We were working on a number of biological and chemical warfare related issues, and they all involved reams of data and heavy number crunching. With a little help from Langly and Michael, I'd been able to get up and running. I built two models for Dana, and with some tweaking by Langly and Michael, I presented them to her. She received approval for a separate laboratory stipend for me, and I was working in the lab.

From bio to court work to academic interpreting to the FBI to academic interpreting again to biomathematics. Talk about a twisted career path.

Dana had been encouraging me to apply for a master's program in biomathematics. Georgetown had one that was excellent, but my undergrad average had only been 3.2, and I was rejected. I did, however, get a conditional acceptance from my now-former employer, Catholic University. The condition was that I pass four courses, at any institution, with a 90 percent or better. The courses were calculus, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics.

I was hesitant, mostly because I had no idea how I was going to pay for this gig. I needed the career change, but we needed the money. I thought I might go to Anniston CC, continue to work as long as I could at CU-I was still planning to come back for the next academic year-and just do whatever I could. I really wanted to do some bench work-I'd learned to do some Northern blots and some probes and some spec analysis in Dana's lab-but at my age, my chances of ever getting on a good project, let alone becoming a principal investigator, were pretty damn small. I mean, I was only on Dana's project because she knew me and I was her interpreter. It would take me years to get into another lab, meaning I'd be earning the current NIH
stipend of 19K for years to come. This was assuming I got into a lab getting NIH money-if it was university stipend, it would be even smaller, like in the 13K range.

Langly and I discussed this at length once I'd admitted I was having difficulties in continuing as an interpreter. He was less worried than I was, but it did mean dipping into whatever savings we had, and we didn't have much. It probably meant that Miranda would be forced to attend a state institution whether she wanted to or not when it came her time for college-and that was only three years off. And while we had some money for Shelby, it wasn't a lot, and much of it was going into her  thrice-weekly therapy appointments.

We'd made money at our wedding, but not as much as you'd think, and we were stowing it. At least, that was the plan. Langly, as a Pent worker, was subject to whatever political winds were blowing at that time, and while he wasn't likely to lose his position any time soon, it was always a possibility. Government jobs aren't as secure as people think they are. I have personal experience with this fact.

The summer kicked off well. Shelby's mother was scheduled to go to trial for the killing of her husband-but at the last minute, she pleaded and struck a deal. I was grateful for this; a trial would have been arduous for all of us. And Shelby had witnessed the act. Having her mother committed for 25 to life in the Virginia Psychiatric Correctional Facility was not
much of a break, but it was better than heavy public exposure-again. Shelby'd endured a lot of flack when the story broke. All things considered, she was coping. Of course, $375 worth of therapy a week was part of that coping. And her sister Mary had only been able to arrange a $150 a week allowance for her from her father's estate-apparently their parents had been in debt up to their eyeballs, judging from their financial statements. My mother made up the difference, but we were still paying for
her basic support.

And children are not cheap. Ask any parent.

Plus I have a supermarket bill that rivals the current deficit. We frequently have extra people beyond the four of us-make that usually. We eat a lot of pasta to keep the price tag down, but it's still a costly proposition.

And one I would never give up.

At least everyone kicks in for beer. There's a glass in the office, and every week, we all put in for beer. It's whatever you're willing and are able to contribute that week.

Good thing, too. We'd be bankrupt in a hurry.

And we'd just gone on our honeymoon in May. Five glorious days in Manzanillo. Byers had found us a fantastic deal-the man is the best damn travel agent anywhere-but Manzanillo is not inexpensive.

And it was worth every penny. It was the most wonderful trip I'd ever had.

And yes, we did get outside occasionally.

So while I came to no resolutions while at the Bay, I relaxed and mapped out things in my brain, and tied on a pretty good beer buzz in the process.

We had to get back to work the following day, and it was late when we arrived back at home, so we left all the stuff just sitting by the offices, figuring we'd deal with it later in the day tomorrow. I didn't have a heavy-duty long day ahead of me, for which I was grateful.

At least that's what I thought.

I was getting ready to truck off to Georgetown when I got the call from my brother Jason. This should have raised a few red flags-Jason is a professional musician and hacker, and seldom gets up before noon-and it's three hours earlier in San Francisco, where he lives with his fiancee, but I was simply delighted to hear from my baby brother, at least until I heard
his voice.

He was very direct-said that my mother had died that morning around 2:30 a.m. PDT. I did some mental math-she'd been dead about two and a half hours when he called.

This was day one, and Jewish burials are supposed to take place within 24 hours.

Langly had already headed out for work, hangover and all-he'd done a little extra for his birthday the day before, and the kids were sound asleep. Neither Byers, Frohike, nor Michael was in the offices yet. Jo would be en route to work, and Joan was already at her summer job, doing camp counseling. Juliet would probably have been at her desk for the last hour,
unless she and Byers were still fucking like bunnies at this time of the morning, which could explain Byers's absence from the offices at 8 a.m.

So I took the chance of getting Byers out of bed, and found he'd already left; that meant he'd probably be here shortly. At least I could get a plane ticket. I left Langly a voice mail, and left Sheridan one as well, in case Langly decided that voice mail was going to be nothing but a nuisance to be ignored that day-which he frequently did.

Then I called Maggie Scully, and explained my situation-and before I got the full sentence out of my mouth, she said she'd pick up the girls at noon. Mrs. Scully can be a little scary, but she's always there when you need her. God bless her domineering heart.

I received the echo phone calls from my other two brothers-actually from their wives. I thought my sister-in-law Cheryl sounded far too excited to be appropriate for the occasion, but then again, my mother's death meant that my brother, and all of us, were about to get richer quicker. That's about the only thing that gets Cheryl's juices flowing.

I didn't particularly care about the cash at that moment. I didn't know what I cared about. I loved my mother, after a fashion, and I was terribly sorry she was gone. I should have seen it coming-she'd been unusually quiet at our wedding, and afterwards, instead of going out on the tournament circuit and partying up a storm with her friends, she'd gone back to her
house in Sausalito.

She never did go back on tour. And that made me sad.

She'd called my brother Dan the night before complaining about chest pains-she'd had one heart attack about ten years prior-and she thought it might be happening again. My brother lives across the bay, which admittedly is a long drive, but he could have at least headed over to see her. He told her to call 911 and get to the closest hospital.

Sound medical advice, but he wasn't even there when she died. And the dude's a fucking vascular surgeon. Rob and Jason were with her, though.

I felt guilty that I wasn't, even if I do live on the other side of the country. I doubt that Dan, living twenty miles away, felt as guilty as I did.

Langly arrived home about two hours after I'd received the call from Jason. He hadn't called me, but he showed up, mouthed 'I'm sorry' and pulled me into him.

And that's when the tears came.

Byers arranged for us to travel to the Bay Area, and once again, our Visa card got a workout. I told Langly he didn't have to come.

But he did. He could only stay for the funeral, not for reading of the will and such, but he did come. He and my mother had had a bizarre sort of affection for one another. And he'd been to enough Jewish funerals now that he knew the words to the prayers in Hebrew.

God, what a skill to acquire.

And it meant everything to me that he came. He stood right behind me at the burial, holding my shoulders.

"This sort of reminds me of the wedding," he commented to me.

"That's because a lot of the same people are here."

"I think they had more fun at our gig."

"God, I hope so." He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans, and his Baltimore Orioles cap, which is the closest thing he owns to a yarmulke and funeral attire. I'd had to scrounge to find something I could wear in my closet, as usual, but I refused to buy anything that could be even remotely construed as a funeral uniform.

I'd been to enough funerals. I didn't want to attend any more. Ever.
 

Of course, my brother Dan contested the will. My mother's estate was to be divided into four equal portions, but Dan, to no one's surprise, tried to justify his getting more by arguing that having three children and an unemployed wife made him eligible for a bigger slice.

Jason and Rob could argue the rest of their lives with him if they wanted, but I didn't want to deal with it. I agreed to give him 75 percent of my share, and told him I wanted nothing to do with him ever again.

He seemed to think that was a fair trade.

My other brothers were furious with me, but I didn't want to have to go through a long court procedure and any more bitterness than already existed. Langly also felt I gave into him too easily-and I don't think it was the cash that mattered. I still had 2.1 million in my trust, and that was more money than he'd ever seen in his life. He was angry at my brother's manipulations. I assured him we wouldn't be hearing from Dan again; he'd gotten what he wanted.

I wish I had. What I'd given up was the chance to know my nephews, whom I barely knew anyway. That made me sad.

Langly, Jason and Rob all felt I'd contributed to a further fracturing of family relations by giving in to Dan. I disagreed, and I held firm.

Besides, how much money does a person need, anyway?
 

And I had enough. I could make the switch. Langly and I decided what we needed to send me to school and fix up the offices, and we stowed the rest in long-term investments.

You say, why with 2 million bucks at my disposal am I worried over a career change?

Because I have to. My father always said that Rausches pay full fare.

And in the last year and a half, I'd begun to understand the implications of that phrase more and more.

I think I was happier without that knowledge.

So I wake up, and I realize that I have no mother left in the world.

And I was happier without that knowledge as well.
 

MICHAEL:

Ally and I are sharing the calc book. My dad was gonna give me the money, but his ancient T-bird needed some transmission work, so I was sort of out of luck for a while.

I have class this morning and I realize I don't know where the damn book is. I hope she didn't take it with her to work. I scour the office, because that's where she does her homework usually-easier to get one of us to help her if she needs it, which she usually doesn't now as much-but also, I think she just likes being near Langly.

Weirdness.

I can't find the book. Maybe it's in her bedroom. Fortunately, the house is empty-kids at school, she and Langly gone to work, and I can tear the place apart if I need to.

As long as I make the bus on time.

Their room's a mess, as usual. They didn't even make the bed this morning-Langly must've gotten up last. The usual mess of laundry and papers and books and videos.

At least Princess Miranda comes by her messiness honestly.

I sift through the covers-no book there. I knock down a pile of papers, looks like one of Ally's stat models, and it's not there.

I finally see it on the desk, buried under a stack of folded laundry.

And I discover that Ally has really nice underwear. Looks like quality stuff. I check one of the tags. Victoria's Secret. Figures. Satin and lace.

Langly is so fucking lucky.

If I hurry, I can make the bus.
 

I make the bus, but barely. I also haven't done my homework for writing class, but I've taken to doing that on the bus, anyway. Casey doesn't seem to care-she's been giving me lots of good comments about my stuff, both my assignments and the journal.

I think she's full of shit, but if she wants to give me an A, I'll take it.

I don't mind Casey as much now. I still think she's too hyper and WAY too happy at 9 in the morning, but she does read everything we write, which shocked the shit out of me. She has to. She just about writes her own book about what you've written on EVERYTHING.

And she's got decent legs and wears short skirts. If I get bored, I can zero in on her legs. It's her best feature. Otherwise, she's pretty ordinary looking. She's got straight gingery hair and she wears it in a ponytail most of the time and real pale green eyes that have the weirdest expression in them.

And yes, she admits to the class, she's got ADHD. I look this up when I get home. It's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Somebody else must've gotten pissed at her bouncing off the walls one day and asked her if she had ADHD or something. And she just says yeah, I do, like she's talking about the weather or something, and moves on to the next topic.

The first assignment was to make up a 2 to 4 page piece based on a TV show or movie we liked. It had to include only the characters in the show, and it had to be an original story, a continuation of an actual episode, or a
backstory. She gave us some readings in the course reader-which I could actually afford, since it's only 6 bucks-and a couple of them were pretty funny. There was this one based on the X-files movie called "Visiting Hours Are Now Over." I thought the movie sort of sucked, but the piece was real funny. And the author did a good job with it.

I don't get to watch much TV these days. I like ER, mostly because of Kellie Martin. Kellie's my dream girl. But you can't have original characters in the story this time, and if anybody's gonna fuck the lovely Lucy Knight, which is Kellie's character, it's gonna be yours truly. So ER is out.

About the only other thing I see, besides Jay Leno or Nightline, which don't really count, is cartoons. I love Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. If Ally's home, we get to watch them. Otherwise, the princesses take over the living room and watch The Newlywed Game and the Dating Game, both of which suck big time.

I ask her when I'm leaving class if cartoons are okay. She says sure, she likes the Kids WB in particular, that's fine.

Maybe she's not such a loser after all. She at least has taste in cartoons.

And all through calc, I'm thinking about what sort of nasty things Buttons could do to Mindy.

I'm actually sort of enjoying this assingment.

Weirdness.

END OF PART 3