LOYALTY AND SEDITION by tm
Part 46

Rating:

Summary: Melvin contemplates life. 'Nuff said.

Spoilers:
 

FROM THE BRAIN OF MELVIN FROHIKE

I pour myself three fingers of J&B.

Michael is tucked away in bed, and I believe he is asleep by now. Dreaming of what young men dream about.

First sip. It goes down hot, searing, medicinal.

My son as a young man. I'm still getting used to the idea.

I still find that I think of him as a baby. Perhaps this is because my memories of him cease when he is still in early childhood...I have no recollection of him as an older child, as a teenager, as a youth. I will never be able to stop regretting that I was not there during those times.

I would have been there. No matter what happened between Jan and me, I would have been there for my children.

I truly cannot blame Jan for doing what she did. I do blame her for lying to Leslie and Michael, but I also understand why she did it. And I have forgiven her.

I don't think she has forgiven me. I do believe she is trying.

Not that I deserve her forgiveness. I don't. And there will never be reconciliation between us. That was too long ago and too far away. Whatever was once there, in the napalm of broken dreams, has been incinerated.

All that is left for us is to come to terms with all that has happened.

The longest, most difficult, and strangest part of the journey.

Another sip. This one not as searing, but still warm, smoky. Bittersweet.

Like my memories.

I hear my son coughing. I wish he would take better care of himself. He was so ill as a baby...bronchitis three times in his first six months of life, endless ear infections, colds, asthma. I remember so many nights walking the floor with him, trying to comfort his crying, attempting everything I could to ease his pain.

I loved that little boy. And the best thing in my life has been that he was returned to me.

I almost didn't do it.

The night the three of us went to NJ to see him, I can't say how many times I nearly backed out. Sometimes I wonder if I stuck it out only because Langly and Byers would have killed me if I had.

I chuckle over this thought. Byers and Langly. They've been like my sons for the last 12 years, and forever after, they will be.

Which is ridiculous. They're grown men, and they were even when I met them. Physically, anyway.

But now I really see them becoming fully adult. I believe it vain to think along these lines, but I'd like to think I helped them get there.

No. I shouldn't. They're both intelligent and capable. They would have made it there with or without my help.

I can't help it. I'm proud of both of them. They've come so far since I met them. So much has happened...and they have synthesized their experiences, the good and the bad, and become, the both of them, good men. Still discovering all that they can be.

It's wonderful to watch. At times, they are infuriating and exasperating, but I would not have traded a moment with either of them. Even the long nights of angst and tears and puking and indecision...that's fathering.

And I've been given a second chance. I remember at Thanksgiving, Allison saying she was grateful for a second chance.

I, too, am grateful for this.

In spite of the worry and the anguish and the sleepless nights...or maybe because of them, I would not trade away this time.

I have my son again. A chance to do the fathering I missed with him.

Obviously, there is no way I will ever be able to compensate for all time lost. It just will not happen. And who knows. I'm probably doing all of it wrong.

But God, how I love that child.

When he was born, I was utterly taken aback with the intense, visceral love I had for my children. I expected to love them...but not as much as I did.

And seventeen years without him did not change that.

I need to stop thinking of him as a child. His 25th birthday is less than two months away. He's a man now, and I need to realize it.

But I can't. I cannot help but worry about him. Particularly in this stage of his life, where he is trying so hard to prove himself.

And he is so vulnerable. Michael can play a tough little smartass with the best of them, but he's my son, which means his heart can be wounded so easily.

He's only beginning to recover his spirit, and the thought that it could be torn apart so easily breaks my heart.

He's in love. I know this, even if he doesn't.

I look at the snapshots of Dee and myself. I see him as I was in those photographs.

Oh God, please don't let him suffer the same fate as I have. Please don't break his heart. Please let this girl love him back as much as he needs, and it's a lot. Please make her equal to the task.

Please don't let him make the same mistakes I did.

Please don't force him to make the same choices.

Once, I had a choice...to be in the world of my wife and children, to try and pretend that all was well as long as we were together...and I so wanted to make that choice.

I didn't ask for the revelations made to me to be so. But they were...and I decided long ago that Michael and Leslie deserved a world that was better. A country that respected and honored them. They did not need to grow up in a place where they would have no privacy, where they could be the subjects of experimentation without ever even knowing it, where their thoughts and beliefs and moral values would not be shaped by human experience, but by the machinations of a government that cared nothing for them.

I made my choice.

Do I regret this choice?

Most definitely. The price has been incalculably high.

But would I make it again?

I probably would, yes.

Talk about feeling like being in between a rock and a hard place.

I stopped trusting the country I live in when I was in Vietnam. A place I don't speak of much. Jo and I will talk about being in country from time to time-she is the only person I share this with. It's part of our friendship and our bond. And she lost the man she loved there. She may have survived, but she, too, paid the ultimate price. Her spirit is ill at ease, just as mine is. She is better at resolving her conflicts-supportive family, strong religious faith-and her demons lay quiet for longer periods than mine do, but they do wake up, and when they do, we will talk. No one who did not experience this would ever understand.

I am glad we are there for each other-as friends. There is a tacit understanding between Jo and myself that it will never be anything more. We want it that way. We are both people uncomfortable with intimacy in many ways. Both of us are products of structured, authoritarian upbringings, and for better or worse, we are comfortable when the lines are clearly drawn for
us.  This is one of the things I cherish in this friendship. There's no guesswork here. Our expectations are clear. The boundaries are not artificial ones; to the contrary, they feel very natural.

Just having a cohort member as a friend is an enormous relief, I think. I spend my life surrounded by those I regard as my children, which is a blessing, but also a curse. It leaves me with few opportunities for shared experiences with them.

A third sip. Warm, sweet, smoky, comforting. I drink to you, Joanna Gilfillan.

Among those who feel like my children is Mulder. I feel a strong paternal affection for him-and he exasperates and infuriates me just as Langly and Byers do. But Mulder has never accepted that part of my feelings for him, and I would not think to force them on him. Langly and Byers came to me craving approval and support and love. Mulder probably would like the same, but he has forced himself to withdraw from anything resembling fatherly attention.

I am grateful that, after so many years, he and Scully discovered what was so damn obvious to all of us. That they truly were one in soul. She is his salvation, and oddly enough, he is hers. I guess in pop psychology they would be termed co-dependent.

If that's true, then long live co-dependence. There would be no peace in the world for them without one another. And as parents, well, they'll never be accused of being negligent.

Unless, God forbid, he is ever forced to make a choice such as I did.

And it would be agony for him. To have to decide what would be best for his daughters. His precious little girls, Rebecca, who is an adorable toddler-willful, stubborn, and charming, truly her father's daughter; and Sarah, the one not yet born, the unknown subject. But guaranteed of her parents' unparalleled devotion.

My own daughter. I've only seen her once, and that was about a month ago.

My daughter, who cannot forgive me. Odd to think she was once the apple of my eye, my little princess, she whom the world revolved around. I adored her.

And abandoned her when she was nine years old. She's 27 now. She's a woman, fully grown. I looked at her when she and her mother were here to see Michael, and I can see both Jan and myself in her. She looks like a cross between the two of us, but having been left behind by her father at such a young and impressionable age, she has adopted her mother's stance towards the world.

Her mother has many good qualities, but her ability to forgive and forget is sorely lacking. Leslie has incorporated this into her own psyche.

I would love to approach her, try to make amends with her. She is more difficult than Michael in that regard. Michael is so blatantly needy, and was when I found him, and as resistant as he was to me, he was infinitely more approachable than his sister, who has become consummately competent, careful-and cold.

I walked Allison down the aisle when she married Langly last year-a day I never imagined would happen, but was immensely overjoyed when it did. And all I could think about was, I hope that someday I can do this with my own daughter.

I still cling to that hope.

I have no idea how I can ever make it happen. But I still hope that it will.

This sip is harsh, hot, sharp.

What would have become of Jan and me had things not transpired the way they did? Would we have been happy at this time in our lives?

I can't answer that. And at this point, it's strictly an academic question.

Of course, had Jan and I not split up, there never would have been Dee. And the idea that there would not have been Dee...I'm not certain I could bear that.

I've as much admitted to Michael that she truly was the love of my life. I think he finds this disturbing, but he asks for the truth, and he needs to learn to hear it. Maybe it will, in some convoluted fashion, help him find his way.

I loved Jan very much. But there was no one to compare with Dee. And there never will be.

She was strong and caring. She made me go into parts of myself I had no desire to explore, but she forced me to go there, and I hope I came back better for the experience. I die a little bit each day, knowing that I let so much time go by, when she was waiting for me to realize what it was I wanted.

She knew long before I did, but she forced me to realize it for myself.

We'd only begun the long day's journey back from night when she was struck down. I'd like to think had she lived, we'd have gone the whole way, not simply avoiding pain, but finding joy at every step.

She was a lovely woman. She never succumbed to the artificial image that supermodels impose on women-she was buxom, curvaceous, substantial, both physically and intellectually. She had quick, intelligent eyes that looked deep and hard inside you. A laugh that rang out like bells from a cathedral. Nothing trite about her. She had well-formed, thoughtful opinions. Unbelievable intelligence. I learned a lot technologically from her, as well as in many other areas.

I ache for her. The ache is still visceral after all these years.

When I flip on a video for some sort of release, I have to imagine it's her there with me, or it doesn't work.

Maybe that could explain some of my attraction to the lovely Dana Scully. Dee was what could be considered a redhead-more like dark auburn, but still definitely on the side of red. And the lovely Dana Scully is a woman of substance as well. She doesn't have Dee's ripe, round beauty, but her mind is fully endowed. And there are traces of Dee's acerbic wit in there as well.

I drink another sip. Sweet, strong, and very long. More of a gulp than a sip.

But so many wasted years. So many years I didn't fight for what I should have.

For my kids. For Dee.

I was such a coward.

I never realized that had I fought for Dee sooner, I'd have not had to count eight years wasted.

Had I not taken Jan at her word, I would not have had so many years and so much alienation between the kids and me.

I no longer feel alienated from Michael much of the time, but it's still a struggle. He wants my attention and he doesn't, frequently at the same time. He's trying so hard to achieve independence while being so painfully dependent while he's going through the process.

He is becoming more affectionate. I remember him as an affectionate child. That was a quality he was devoid of when I found him again, but I cannot blame him for that. I left him to fend for himself. How horribly confused a little six-year-old boy must be to learn that the dad he loved is going away, for good. The same dad that told him he loved him and cared about him and played with him and read to him and held him.

Gone.

Whether he has forgiven me, I don't know. I would like to think so. He seems to accept me now as his father, albeit at times grudgingly. I think it began as a need-based condition, but that's not a criticism. All children start out needing. I just had to start over, and so did he.

And he's coming along.

Another sip, sweet, heavy, warm.

I tiptoe down the hall so not as to wake him, and I quietly open his door.

He's snoring lightly, probably the result of having a cold, and I hear a light cough come out of him, but otherwise, he looks like the peaceful child I remember, the corner of his pillow stuffed in his mouth, one hand clutching at the covers. He stirs a little, but lapses back into dreams.

I love you so much, my son.

Believe me, I never wanted to cause you pain.

The words of a Paul Simon song drift over me..."And I know a father who had a son...who longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done...he came a long way just to explain...he kissed his boy as he lay sleeping, then he turned around and hurried home again..." These words come back to me many nights when he's asleep.

The young lady he has chosen for himself-he thinks I don't like her.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I think she is a marvelous girl, strong, capable, and buried down under all her layers of asbestos and steel, vulnerable and soft and gentle.

And she can rip my son's heart out, and I fear it constantly.

I hope she does not look casually upon his affections. For Michael to have even opened himself up to somebody is a step of titanic proportions. In equal measure, though, I fear that she is becoming equally attached to him. They are both so terribly needy. I keep praying to whatever or whoever that they will be equal to the task of carrying one another.

In practical terms, I do not know where they are in terms of sexuality. But with Kelly's recent experiences, I suspect it's very much on both of their minds, and probably a source of great confusion for both of them. I hope that she did not contract anything from her unfortunate encounter; I know that at some point she will require testing for STDs, and I'm frightened.
For both of them.

And I'm not sure they're emotionally ready for such intimacy. For both of them to make that jump will take a great deal on both of their parts. I'm not just talking about sexual relations-biology is a fierce drive, to be sure, and it will happen, of that I'm certain. But what it will awaken in both of them is both terrifying and wonderful.

I'm not ready for this.

This is still my little boy.

Who will never, thank God, know the horror of being in country, in the land of whispers and cries, where the source is never defined. Where friendly fire is as great a danger as anything the enemy can impose on one.

I hope in some small way, I saved him from that fate.

What in the world will this child do in his life? I worry over his seeming lack of direction. For me, it was simple. I chose engineering for its structure, its order, its control over at least a miniscule portion of the universe.

Little did I know that the world it would lead me to is one so totally amorphous. Another world of shadows and whispers and sources unseen and unlocatable.

He is a talented boy, and a bright one-he has so much to offer. I pray he won't squander the very gifts he barely seems aware that he possesses. He still has so much damage to undo. I am trying to do everything I can to help him here, but I'm not certain it's enough. In fact, I'm almost certain it's not.

The work that I do with Langly and Byers and Mulder, I pray for a time when it will not be necessary. I would like to see that time come in my lifetime, but that hope seems futile. In this time, the battle has barely begun. And he will be one of the foot soldiers.

What kind of world have we left for our kids? What will they do with it?

I think about the kids I know. None of them are without scars. Even Allison's daughter, perhaps the luckiest of the bunch, has had her share of anguish in her young life. To not have another chance with her own father, this is her fate. She is fortunate that Langly adores her and has assumed responsibility for her. But he will never be her own father.

Byers and Juliet. It's only a matter of time before they begin to bring their own children into the world. They will be wonderful parents. But it does not change the fact that the world they will enter into is a disaster.

And what of my own children? Will I ever be able to enjoy grandfatherhood with my own blood kin?

I cling to that hope.

It will not be soon-at least I hope it won't. I pray that Kelly and Michael will not be in any situations such as that that they will be utterly unprepared for. At this point in my life, as much as I would enjoy grandchildren, for these two, it would be children having children.

I have to talk to my son about this. For my peace of mind as well at least as much for his information.

What would my life have been like had Dee not miscarried?

I did not even know she was pregnant. I wish she'd told me.

There would have been another Frohike child in the world. One more chance for me to either fuck it up or do it right.

I could say that it's for the better that that child did not have a chance
to come into the world.

But I don't believe that.

I believe every child is a chance. Not just for the parents to have one last best shot at growing up, but for the world to be a better, more humane place.

I have mentioned this to Allison but once. She was drinking, and spoke of her experiences working in the juvenile justice system. An occupation that nearly drove her into the alcoholic abyss that at times she teeters uncomfortably close to the edge on. Her own version of in country.

And yet she still believes the same thing.

I wish she would tell her stories to her husband. He wants to hear them all-the good, the bad, the ugly. Like Dee, she is an emotional recluse.

But she is fortunate in having a husband that will, by any means possible, get her to open up. He angers her tremendously at times-and let's face it, that boy will push anybody's buttons just to get a rise out of them. For her, though, whether she knows it or not, this is her lifeline.

I wish Dee and I had realized this so much sooner.

So many things I wish I had realized so much sooner.

Another gulp of scotch. It burns my throat like a liquid torch.

I find my eyes stinging. From the scotch, of course.

We can't live vicariously through our children.

But they are our last best hope.

I know mine is.

I watch him stir a little, another cough emerges from him, then snuggling back into the fluffy cocoon he's made for himself.

There's so much I need to tell him.

I kiss him on the forehead and softly close the door.
 

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

"Dad, what're you doing? Go to bed! You're not supposed to be here!"

END OF PART 46