A/N: The make up of the team, the roster etc.. has changed considerably since I started this story in April of 2002. Nevertheless I am continuing the story as I set it in the 2002-2003 season and any future changes I might make on the roster will be only for plot purposes and will not reflect any real life changes on the Avs lineup.
The Fruits of the Spirit can be found in the Bible book of Galations.
Chapter 261: Cecile XXV—The Strength of Anger
Danny’s game was an afternoon one and Cecile did not go. She had been to the church first to talk with Father Mallory. She had frightened him with her talk of dreams and purpose; she had supposed that that shouldn’t surprise her. She wasn’t quite sure if she believed what she was saying to him herself, but she was compelled to say it. She needed to hear herself say it.
It had felt unnatural; the words leaving her lips. She knew they weren’t right, they were sacrilege and presumption and she knew that now. She didn’t belong in those words, she belonged somewhere else. She looked at the ring on her finger, she felt the crucifix on her breast, and her decision was made. She was beginning to feel who she was.
Cecile drove to the Sakic house. The whole family was at the game, only her mother and the other workers were there. It was now, it had to be now, she had to do it to be fair to the ones who loved her and depended on her. She pressed her hand over her crucifix but she refused to pray on this one. She had to stand on her own.
“Cecile!” Pauline said with a smile when she walked into the living room where an assortment of curtain fabrics was spread out; “Here early aren’t you?”
Cecile nodded. She peeled off her coat but not her gloves. “Momma I need to speak to you in private please?”
Pauline raised her perfectly plucked black eyebrows and frowned. “Cecile, darling you haven’t called me Momma in years. Oh and look at you, there’s going to be a large scar, that nurse lied to me! We are going to make an appointment with the plastic surgeon as soon as…”
“Momma please!” Cecile exclaimed, she could feel her will and nerve wilting already, she needed strength, desperately.
Pauline stopped talking and her frown remained. Her eyes were bright green and piercing. Cecile knew that look, it always began with the awareness that her mother’s eyes were a deeper color than her own, and that sometimes it seemed as if they trembled and the green expanded and you could only stay silent and obey.
Pauline walked out of the room, and Cecile followed her. “What is it darling?” she whispered. “Did you have a bad night? I knew staying in that awful house was a bad idea.”
Cecile looked away from her and gripping her coat in her hands she began to go upstairs to her bedroom. She could sense her mother following her. She had to do it now. The Sakic’s were not home, there was some measure of privacy.
“Mom,” Cecile said, feeling the weakness in her voice as soon as they got into her room. “I have something really important to tell you.” Cecile looked at her mother’s face. Porcelain perfect, only lined at the corners of her mouth, some gray in her hair, and her eyes commanding as ever. “And first I want to apologize to you. I never meant any disrespect. I love you, you’re my mother…”
“But?” Pauline said with a lifted eyebrow. Cecile could already see the hardening in the line of her mouth.
I cannot pray for strength. She pressed her hands together and then slid off her gloves. Pauline saw immediately the ring on her finger and Cecile yelped when she snatched her hand tightly and peered at it.
“What is this?” Pauline snapped. “Cecile?”
Cecile closed her eyes. “I am engaged to be married.”
Cecile gasped at the brutal force in which Pauline squeezed her hand and then let it go. “What?” she said in a deadly hiss. “What?”
Cecile opened her eyes. She saw her mother’s eyes, almost no whites to them, she knew she imagined that but they seemed pulsing all through with green, threatening to take her will from her.
“That Daniel?” Pauline said. “Is that it? Has he proposed to you?”
“Yes,” Cecile whispered. Danny I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t fight. She will have her way any minute, I can feel this. Please forgive me.
“You are not a simpleton,” Pauline said. “Cecile you are not an idiot.”
Cecile swallowed. “Momma?”
“So why are you acting like one!” Pauline shouted and Cecile cringed and refused to cover her ears. She was a ten year old again, sniveling on the carpet. “You’re acting like a deprived teenager in heat! How disgusting!”
“Mother NO!” Cecile gasped in horror, to be described by her own mother in such degraded terms. “It’s not like that at all, how could you think that of me?”
Pauline’s eyes narrowed and Cecile felt stabbed through with the ferocity of them. “Of course it’s like that. That’s what marriage is. And you’re marching straight into it, disregarding my word, my wishes and everything else that’s holy. Just so you can marry an ignorant, oafish, stupid…”
Cecile felt enraged at Danny being insulted like that. “Marriage is HOLY! MOTHER! It is holy!” She yelled, her heart was beating. She had never before yelled at her mother, ever. “The bible plainly tells us that it is how it is done, it is what God ordained, it is HOLY! How could you say that it isn’t?”
“Marriage is for rutting peasants and money, to produce children for women who are without means. That is not who you are Cecile,” Pauline said in an icy monotone, “You have no need to want for money, you never will. You are not a lust inflamed peasant, who is what this Daniel no doubt is, and you have no need to produce children, which is something this world does not need. You have no reason to want more in your life, child, you are only listening to your body’s natural urges to mate and…”
“Mother really!” Cecile snapped. “That is the last thing on my mind and now you’re being disgusting. I LOVE Danny, I love him! And Love is holy too, Jesus tell us that. Yes we will have children and…”
“We are going home today, stop with this nonsense,” Pauline said and she turned around, she was going to leave it at that, she was not going to hear anymore.
“The fruitages of the spirit,” Cecile said and she looked at her mother’s emaciated form, her sharp shoulders as she stopped walking. “Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness and faith.”
Pauline turned around slowly, “What?”
Cecile lifted her chin, she felt strength, and the scriptures were on her side, not on her mother’s for once. “Everything Danny and I have together embodies each one of those qualities and against that, there is no law. You cannot speak against what is holy mother, you cannot! God will judge you for it.”
Pauline pressed her hands into her hips. “You are stupid. God will judge me? You are no one to speak that way, you are not a nun or a priest but it might do you some good to study as one, it would do you a world of good. I should have put you in a convent the moment you developed breasts.”
“You cannot come between Danny and I!” Cecile screamed and she clenched her fists. “We have too much together!”
“How much could you have had?” Pauline said. “You have only known him for what? A few months since you’ve been here?”
Cecile
narrowed her eyes. “I have been in love with him; we’ve known each other, for
three years mother.” She almost felt satisfied with the horrified look on her
mother’s face. “He was going to
The blood drained from Pauline’s face and Cecile stood her ground as she approached her, and without warning, Cecile felt her mother’s hand crack into her cheek with a loud SLAP! She cried out as she fell back and her hand went to her cheek, she stared up at her mother, stunned, speechless.
“You deceitful little harlot!” Pauline yelled and she leaned over Cecile. She felt her fingers dig into her chin, she was holding her still. “You have been deceiving me for three years? You disrespectful, ungrateful, lustful little brat?”
“I’m a liar?” Cecile cried out, remembering the bathtub, the water, the power of watching a man die as he fell from her body. “I’m a liar? Mother is that the pot calling the kettle black??”
“What have I lied to you about?” Pauline asked her face impassive suddenly and she let Cecile go. She stood back and crossed her arms. “Tell me?”
Cecile pressed her hand to her stinging cheek and she was filled with rage, with indignation, with the strength of anger. “You raised me with a man you called my father, with little girls you called my sisters, and I rarely saw them because I was in boarding school while they got to stay home. You tell me that my real dad died in a car accident, but you say we have no other family than the Darcy’s whom you married into.”
Pauline shook her head. “And?”
“You had me shelved in a library every free moment of my life!” Cecile cried. “I went through every archive in the building, my father never died in a car accident he shot himself, I found that out when I was sixteen. Why did you never tell me? Why did he do it? What are you protecting me from?”
“That is none of your business,” Pauline said, her lip trembling a little. “It was too much for you to know.”
“And the rest of my family, my REAL family?” Cecile said.
“You have none,” Pauline said, not as stoically.
Cecile shook her head, feeling her mother’s grip slipping and her power over her fading. “Then why is there a young woman here, who has your face, and your eyes? She could be my sister or a twin.”
Pauline closed her eyes. “Sweet heavens above I am going to lose you.”
“Mother you have fought so hard to form into me religion and ideals and morals and you have done it,” Cecile said, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “You have done it, and I thank you for that. But at the same time you have taken such great care at cutting me off from everything that does not interest you and making any reach I have for an identity shameful in my eyes. I am a human, I am your daughter whom you should love and nurture not smother and stab through with fear. Instead of condemning me why not support me? Please, don’t I deserve at least that?”
Pauline’s eyes opened again brilliant with green rage. “You deserve? YOU? Cecile I bore you when your father was still twitching from that bullet, I did everything I could do erase the shame of it, to marry another to distract you from questions about your past, so you wouldn’t be lonely. I have done so much for you I…”
“No!” Cecile cut in, “You want me to be a nun is that it? You are frightened of marriage of me getting married and you don’t understand that this could be such a beautiful thing.”
Pauline slowly shook her head. “I was just like you at your age. Do you realize this? I understand everything you are telling me because I felt that way before. But girl, there is a harsh reality out there, and marriage under God’s eyes will make no difference.”
Cecile lifted her eyebrows, “And what is that?”
Pauline nodded. “Our breed, cannot marry, and cannot have children, we’re tainted all of us.”
Cecile shook her head. “Mother that’s insane.”
“I said the same to my mother,” Pauline said. “She warned me. We cannot marry. Our line needs to die out, we cannot bear children, and I did not listen to her. Once you lose your innocence, an evil tempers in our heart, in our loins, and it’s like a poison that affects everyone, even if that innocence is lost in the holiness of a wedding bed. There is no difference.”
Cecile closed her eyes. Her mother was insane, all these years, her mother was deluded and bereft of sense. All these years….
“You’re married now,” Cecile said. “There hardly seems to be any “taint”. How do you explain that?”
Pauline sighed. “I have never had relations with Mr. Darcy, he lost the ability to and I have no need for it. The marriage was purely a pooling of wealth and security for our children. It is a safe match. Cecile you know we do not even share the same rooms.”
“I am going to marry Danny,” Cecile said. “I have no fear of losing wealth. I don’t need your money or your help. But Momma I want you to understand that I want you with us, to be there for your first grandchild.”
“I’ve lost you,” Pauline said. She took a step back. “I’ve lost you.”
“No!” Cecile cried. “Mother talk sense!”
“I am leaving today,” Pauline said icily. “As I am a woman of my word, my assistants will finish the job here at this house but I am leaving you.”
“I will marry him.” Cecile said. “You won’t stop me.”
Pauline nodded. “I know, and not even God can save you now.”
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