"It was like this.
When we got back from you with those terrible threats on us,
We swept up all the dust that covered the corpse up..."

"Antigone," Translation by Richard Emil Braun. Lines 494-496. Used without permission.
 

BYERS:

Langly and Ally show up...about four hours late. I've been worried, and I really need Langly's help in setting some things up.

I'm tempted to chide them for not phoning-our phone service is working and they do have the number-but when I see their faces, I back off.

It looks as if they've had a long morning.

"Are the kids okay?" That's the first thing that comes to my mind.

"Kids are fine. Miranda did squawk about watching Patrick, but by the time we left, I noticed they'd gotten involved in a game of backgammon," Ally says quietly.

"So whaddya need me to do, Byers?" Langly asks. "Oh yeah, sorry we're late. It's been...kinda rough."

I'll bet. I only have to take one look at him to know: he's hung over. Again.

He's been like this a lot lately. I wonder if they were fighting, and I wonder if it had anything to do with this.

"The usual."

Ally takes off to help Juliet put small stuff like dishes away. I feel a twinge of sympathy for Ally-Juliet's been torturing us with changing her mind about where she wants things, at least ten times for each item.

Langly and I start wiring for the computers that will go in the den. "Something on your mind?" I ask him. He's been so quiet, it's eerie. I'm used to Langly gabbing away to the point of where I want to stuff a sock in his mouth.

"Nah."

Oh, Langly, you're such a poor liar.

You forget how long I've known you.

"You're hung over."

He turns to me, face screwed up irritably. "Listen, you want me to help you, or you wanna hassle me? 'Cause if you wanna hassle me, forget it. I'm going."

"No, I don't feel like hassling you. You just look..."

"Depressed? No shit, Sherlock." He returns to the wire cutters.

I need to tread carefully here. I want him to talk to me. And that's tricky. Say the wrong thing, and Langly, in spite of his need for reassurance and companionship, will shut you out like a rusty gate.

"Feel like talking about it?"

"Not really."

I know him well enough to know that this translates out to: I'm scared to say anything, but if you prod me long enough and gently enough, I'll say something to you.

"You don't have to tell me, you know."

"Good. Because I don't wanna talk about it."

Translation: I'm looking for the words. Give me time.

We carry out the work in silence. We've done this together many times, wiring and setting up equipment. The silence is not an uneasy one at this point. And in spite of the fact that I noticed his hands shaking a little, he seems able to carry out the appointed task.

"Me and Ally got into it this morning."

Well, they do that from time to time, and it's not surprising. Two stubborn people are bound to lock horns.

Except that he seems far more anguished over it than usual. Generally, the two of them are well aware of their inherent stubbornness, and of their deep and undying affection for each other, and after a period of chilling out and thinking it through, affection wins.

"I'm sorry," I say gently. "Hand me the Philips head, would you?"

He hands me the flat head. "Philips head, please." He corrects the gesture and shakes his head as though disgusted with himself for screwing up so minor a request.

"Langly, relax."

We continue quietly working. I let him break the silence.

"I've been such an asshole."

"Nothing new there, Langly."

"Oh, thanks a lot!"

I chuckle gently, and place my hand on his arm-and for once, he doesn't jump back as though struck.

"I'm kidding." Although kidding on the square-he's right, he can be such an asshole. "So what happened?"

He's trying to word it carefully. Langly has a good vocabulary, until you get into the area of human emotion, at which point, he becomes shockingly illiterate.

As if I have room to talk!

"Know what I did?"

Confession mode. We're moving forward.

"I was talking at Ally and Patrick just like my dad used to talk to us."

He looks utterly miserable.

"I blew 'em off. They were trying to be nice, and I just blew 'em off."

"That happens."

"Ally says you can't do it with kids."

"Well, you probably shouldn't." Particularly since Patrick is still in a vulnerable state.

"And then I realized, I'm doing to him and Ally just what my dad used to do to my mom and me."

If I didn't know him better, I'd swear he was going to cry at this point.

"Byers, you think history just keeps repeating itself?"

Good question.

"Well...I think an awareness of what has happened can keep you from making the same mistakes."

For the first time in this entire exchange, he looks mildly hopeful.

"They say that those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." To quote an oft-used cliché.

"Byers, you ever worry you're gonna turn into your old man?"

All the time, Langly. All the time.

Particularly since...I have the sense that parenthood is in the offing for Juliet and myself.

I don't know why, and it's certainly too early to be able to determine.

"Well, guess what? I turned into Ian Langly last night."

"I was under the impression you got along all right with your father."

He shakes his head sadly. "Well...you know. Sometimes he was okay. A lot of times, he was just drunk and nasty. And I got drunk and nasty. I suck, Byers."

Well, he does sometimes...but I don't think this is one of them.

I think he's in pain and screaming for something, someone, anything, to take it away.

I don't think in this case he's going to be easily anesthetized.

"Langly, how much are you drinking again?"

He narrows his almost-colorless eyes at me. We're both blue-eyed, but there's a world of difference in pigmentation. His are so pale that they're nearly transparent.

"I guess a fair bit."

"Define 'a fair bit.'"

He winces, he doesn't want to say this to me...he knows that I know his history. "I pretty much killed off a fifth of Jose last night."

"Ouch." No wonder he's feeling so lousy. "When did this start getting like this?"

Translation: when did you lose your social drinking skills and revert to your addictive ones?

He's quiet again for a while as he installs a new hard drive, interrupting the silence only to mutter a few curses at the machinery. Which, by the way, it richly deserves.

"Byers, I'm dying in this job."

He hasn't said much to me about what he's doing, only that he's been moved to Langley, Virginia (and yes, there is a delightful irony in that, but I'm not going to drive it home right now), and that he's working for the king of all jerks.

"Why?"

"I've...I've got this boss, like I told you, he's an el supremo asshole."

"Langly, bad bosses are a fact of life." I remind myself that he hasn't had a lot of real-life work experience.

"Not like this guy."

"What...makes him different?"

He looks truly anguished now. "Everything I do...I mean, everything, even stuff I do perfectly...he's always on my case about how I don't ever do it right, how I don't measure up, about how like my feet are too big and my hair's falling out-"

Okay, that explains a lot right there.

Basically, this guy has found all Langly's hot buttons and keeps pushing on them relentlessly.

And some people handle this sort of antagonism with some aplomb.

Langly isn't one of them. In addition to not having a lot of experience with bosses, he's also thin-skinned and easily humiliated. He demonstrates a lot of outward bravado, but I know him well enough to know that it's not difficult to undercut him.

And he married a woman that in spite of her silences, is equally sensitive to criticism. When the two of them are good, they're very, very good. And when they're depressed...

It's a minefield.

They're so good for each other in so many ways. And they also play into each other's weaknesses to the point where they threaten to implode. Ally is cooler, less quick to anger, more even in her judgments...but she subtly demonstrates her vulnerability and volatility, mostly through her misuse of alcohol.

She's basically functional, so we've let it go...but it's obvious to all of us that there is a problem there.

"Ally and me had to get rid of all the booze in the house," he says, sadly.

Well, that's a start...but what's to keep them from getting more.

"We gotta not do it for a while, I guess."

"That...would probably be helpful."

"Thought I was doing okay there."

"You were. But things get tough sometimes, and it's probably better you don't drink right now. Both of you. A lot's happened, Langly."

"Yeah." He rubs his eyes.

Through all this, he's continued to work.

He looks exhausted. And we're really doing well here...

"Langly, when we finish this, why don't you and Ally take off? We're doing fine here. Might as well make the movers we hired work for their money."

He looks at me. "Thanks. Ally wants to go out to...where we go."

Wherever that is.

"That'd be good." He tosses back what once were rich blonde locks, now thinning and streaked with gray.

"I'm just...I'm like, you know, I could like this job okay if I could like figure out what was really going on. But like I do part of it, and it gets handed off to a bunch of different people-"

"Langly. Copy the file. Remember that?"

He blinks the tired eyes. "Oh yeah."

"And take it home."

"We get searched on our way out, backpacks and stuff."

"Didn't you ever hear of stuffing it in your jeans? And besides, you've probably got plenty of room down there." I know, I'm being nasty...

But I get the desired result.

"Fuck you, Byers." But he laughs as he says it.

He's going to be all right. I hope.
 

LANGLY:

It's cooler than it's been, it's in the 80s, and compared to summertime, that's like the ice age.

Feels nice, particularly when we get close to the water.

Ally's been quiet on the trip, which is normal for her. She's not a real talkative traveler, anyway.

But we start getting near the water, and I feel her slip her tiny hand over to my leg.

I put mine over hers-God, I just about obliterate it. And just hold it there.

I love her so much.

She's crying a little. Silently, and trying not to, you can tell by how much air she sucks down, but she's got tears in those pretty blue eyes. And her mascara's running.

"Love you," she says it real quietly.

I feel like crying myself.
 

There's lots of wind when we get to the shore. I need my hair up. I ask her for an elastic, and she digs one out of that black hole of Calcutta she calls a purse, but instead of handing it to me, she pushes me gently down on my knees and fixes the ponytail for me.

She's got real tender hands.

I take her and pull her up against me, I kiss a stray red curl. Cheeks are still damp.

"You got smudgies," I tell her, brushing away the pools of mascara that are streaked under her eyes.

"I know." She leans her head into my chest-God, she's small-and I just cuddle her. Hang on to her for dear life.

"Ally. Don't want it to be like this." I put my face in her hair as I say it. I just wanna lose myself there, forget all this shit happened.

"I don't, either."

"I'm scared." And I am.

"Me too." She turns her chin up and looks at me. "Langly?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm kind of nervous...at the prospect of no liquid courage." She giggles. "Sounds stupid, doesn't it?"

"No." It sounds pretty reasonable to me.

"I've never gone without. Not for very long."

"Did it when you were pregnant."

"It sucked."

"Yeah, it does." Oh baby, you have no idea.

So tell her, you fuckrag!

"Ally...it's this, or drying out...you don't wanna go through that."

"No, I don't. I'd like to be able to drink again...and just enjoy it, like we used to."

"Think right now that's not gonna happen."

"No."

We're quiet again. Long spell, just watching the waves.

She's all shaky for a while, but longer I hold her, more she calms. Pretty soon, she's relaxed in my arms, like she hasn't been for a long time, and I can feel myself start to unwind.

"Work sucks, Ally."

"I gathered that."

"It's just...not only do I have the boss from hell, but you know I can't leave...unless they let me."

"I know."

"I don't know how I'm gonna deal with this."

She squints for a minute or two, like she's thinking. Then this smile like I haven't seen in a while spreads over her mouth.

"Don't get mad, babe. Get even."

Okay. But how?

Then I think about what Byers said...

I have a plan.
 

We watch the water for a long time. After a while, I take her hand, she takes mine, we walk out to the waves. She's got on one of her long billowy skirts and it gets all wet, and the legs of my jeans get soaked while we make contact.

"Ally? You okay like with Patrick and all?" I finally ask her. I've just assumed she is...

But I shouldn't do that. I think.

She smiles. "Langly, I couldn't love him more if I carried him myself. He's a pain in the ass...and I adore him. But yeah, it's hard. I'm glad I'm doing a little bit for Dana again. It's hard for me to be home all the time."

That one's something of a mystery to me, but I'll let it go.

But she doesn't. "I'm not used to this, babe. I'm not used to not using my brain in some form."

"You use your brain."

"Try to. But it's...I feel like...I don't know. It's as if I've politically complied, and I hate myself for it."

"You didn't do that. Thought it was us that made the decision."

"It was. But I'm not always comfortable with it."

Well, honey, I'm not always comfortable where I'm at.

"I know, I'm such a princess. I'm telling you, Langly, getting my admission rescinded...it was like, I felt attacked at a really primal level." She kicks her one leg in the water, stirring it around. "I'm kind of used to getting what I want, just in case you haven't noticed."

"I noticed." I did. She is used to getting what she wants. She's had a lifetime of it.

And then somebody went and changed all the rules on her.

Tell me about it.

I'm staring into the sun, which even with sunglasses I shouldn't do, I know, but I do it anyway.

"Y'know, I got real scared last night...I sounded just like my dad."

"Well, I've been acting a lot more like my mother than I'd like lately."

"Nah, you're a lot nicer than Eleanor."

"My mother...had a kind heart, Langly. She just wasn't very good about showing it sometimes."

She almost never talks about her mom. I pulled it out of her one time, that was it. She's never said a word since.

"You think it's like we're always gonna repeat the mistakes our folks made?"

She shakes her head. "I try not to, baby. I really do." Little catch in her voice. I think she might cry again.

I put my hands on her little shoulders.

"I think we can make it different." She's looking out over the sparkles on the water as she says it. "I think we have to."

"Not sure quite how to do it." This is an understatement.

Truth is, I don't have a clue.

"I don't, either. There is something we have to do, though."

"What's that?"

"We need to go through Joan's and Scott's things."

Oh man. I am not ready for that.

"Starting tonight."

"Ally, I-"

"No, babe. We put it off long enough. It's time. Time we stopped running away from everything."

I know she's right.

Doesn't make me like it any better.

END OF PART 45