Something of a Kind

chapter 24 | NOAH

Sarah stood behind the counter, transferring ketchup between bottles before filing the emptied containers. She was humming a song to herself, and from the sound of it, it had been stuck in her head all morning. In spite of her good-natured agreement not to pry, Noah could barely look at his sister. Even more than his own bafflement, he was filled with guilt for not being able to tell her what he’d discovered just yet.

This is part of her too.

Overwhelmed, Noah stood, walking back and forth across the diner.

Maybe there’s a reason we’ve always been different.

Glancing up, she frowned. “No’, you’re pacing. Why are you pacing?”

I don’t even know if it’s true.

He blurted, “Any clue if Lee was drunk yesterday?”

Sarah raised her brow, clearly trying to evaluate wheth er he’d broken their pact. Too curious not to encourage more details, she replied, “I didn’t see him. I mean, it didn’t seem like it to me. I think they’re broke this week. I was surprised they forked it over for your meds, but I, ah, made the case. Even if he had some stashed, I think he was scared sober.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he mumbled, sprinting to the door and leaving without another word.

Speed walking to the docks, he headed straight for his father’s junky vessel. Clutching his arm to cushion the pressure of jogging up the ramp, he stood, half-crouched and breathing hard, at the center of attention. His brothers, amongst the few hired help, dropped what they were doing, pulling their heads out of buckets or pausing as they wound rope around a forearm.

Raising his voice in spite of strained gasps, Noah demanded, “Everybody off.”

They stared, unmoving. When the shock began to wear off, some of them laughed, most nervously. John looked between Mark and Andrew, glancing at Isaac and the part-time navigator, Clark Thomas, before settling on Noah. His face twisted into a sneer as he crossed his arms, stepping forward until he was close enough to breathe on him. Noticing that he nearly met John’s height while slouched, he wondered if the aggressive tactics his brothers used on each other was really what they sought.

They’re not my brothers.

“Cousin,” Noah warned, “You have about ten seconds to get out my face.”

He deadpanned, backing up a step in shock, as though Noah had smacked the bear in the nose. As John’s face warped into a homely snigger, Lee climbed from below deck, commanding his crew to get off his boat. Looking perplexed, sharing glances that said they’d be talking about it, they left in silence, John backing away and following with reluctance.

Unexpectedly, Lee grumbled, “Your mind, boy. Say what’s on it.”

Unsure how to even approach the subject, Noah demanded, “What don’t you like about Alyson?”

Glaring, Lee replied, “I’m disgusted with your priorities.”

“Well, she is. She’s what I’m concerned with at the moment,” Noah admitted, unashamed. “She’s the only thing that’s changed in the past eighteen years. At least, enough for you to say a thing like that.”

“You mean, to tell you the truth about your mother,” Lee paraphrased, his voice dropping an octave below irritation. “Your brothers played a prank and sabotaged his little Squatcher-group, or whatever they call it, and the Glass man raised holy hell. The people look after their own. He is not one of us.”

“What does that have to do with Aly?”

Lee flinched, the subject changing in a sudden burst of anger, “Your biological ‘father’ and your mother…. The Rob boy, he comes in and gets her hooked on more drugs than you have fingers. Things no one should mess with. Overnight, my sister’s on Jupiter, no idea who anyone or what anything is. She ran away with him. One day she shows up with you, says she can’t take care of you, your father left her again. She says you need to grow up in a house with parents, and tells us to name you. She never went to no hospital, so we say my wife didn’t know she was pregnant. Three years later, and she does the same, has a little baby she names Sarah Maria Grace, and we do the same, and I told her, ‘No more babies. You need to come home.’ I don’t hear from her again until her body’s identified in some hotel in a dirty part of Seattle. She overdosed, and she was dead. Her desire to leave, to be unappreciative… She had no love for our culture, no respect for her family. She wanted to live in the big city, and forget her people.”

Noah listened intently, a hand subconsciously probing his wounded shoulder. It was too much information for a drunken spiel. It fit too well into empty stories, making sense in ways it shouldn’t. It should feel alien, a wild headline under weird-news tags or a television talk-show story, nothing that belonged to him.

He’d seen Aunt Maria, this woman he should call mother. From her photographs, she didn’t look like a drug addict – young and lively, she was beautiful, long hair and bangs, wearing a colorful scarf and a dimpled smile. It was more put together than he’d ever seen Lee or Mary-Agnes.

He couldn’t imagine the woman sprawled across the bathroom floor of a motel, though he’d heard the tale a thousand times. He certainly couldn’t picture her as his mother, although her resemblance to Sarah had always been noticeable.

“You drink, hard,” Noah noted. Lee grunted, “Not like that, boy! She’d been arrested twice by fifteen, ran through that very street, bare assed”

“As a babe,” Noah finished, adding grimly, “With milady’s sour bastard.”

“Yeah,” Lee snorted, astonished. “How-”

“An old lyric.” Noah sighed, chewing his cheek.

Tony’s my freaking grandfather.

Noah busted an awkward silence, assuring Lee, “I cherish this culture, my culture, our culture– and I’m telling you, Alyson’s different. You should hear how she talks about the dancers from the troupe, the legends in the tunnels, even the foliage has that girl amazed. You should see the art she’s capable of, the love she has for this. No one said it was all pretty, but she sees it. She gets it.”

Looking hesitant, like a kid going to get teeth pulled, Lee agreed, “If you feel this way, and she does not act like a Glass daughter, I will not fight this unless there is something to be concerned with.”

“Lee -” Noah paused, taking an uncomfortable leap of faith. “Dad, I am not Aunt Maria, and neither is Sarah. Alyson is not Rob Gabriel.”

“She thought you deserved better than a disowned mother, addicted to drugs and moving through the cities in the lower fifty. A better life.”

“What about my license? School papers?”

“It’s all paperwork,” Lee mumbled. “You have any idea how many a child is born each year? You don’t need a test to say it’s mine or hers.”

“And Sarah? Saying Maria showed up for her birth?”

“Sarah Maria Grace,” Lee began, “was an incident at the age where you are too old to hide it from, too young to know how to keep it a secret. You, boy, were a little child. You wrote her story.”

Noah whispered, “That’s not right.”

Hesitant, Lee put a hand out for a shake. When Noah took it, the old man pulled him into a hug, somehow managing to avoid harming his shoulder wound, bursting open a thousand others.

“No,” Lee rumbled. “I don’t suppose it was.”