Title: Buson Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ Rating: NC-17 but not especially gratuitous Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be writing scripts, not fic Summary: Going through Teena Mulder's possessions, Mulder considers questions, both old and new, and wonders whether he really wants to ask them Category: the three M's - Mytharc, MSR, and Mulderbation Archive: Sure Thanks: All Praise Due to The Honorable MaybeAmanda, or was that Elijah Mohammed? Anyway, she makes it possible for me to post these stories and not look like the brain- damaged illiterate I happen to actually be. If you can read this, it's due to her work; if you think it's the product of a sick, sick girl who should have her keyboard taken away, that would be me . Note: Buson is the writer of the poem in Question. The book is real and I did indeed buy it at my local Friends of The Library book sale. :~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~ Scully would never have found this. Why? Because Scully is efficient. She sorts through my mother's possessions with speed and accuracy, dividing everything nicely into one of four categories: throw away, give away, sell, and keep. She pauses frequently and appropriately to ask me about questionable items. I am not efficient. I stop and rub my mother's clothes across my face. I read all her books at least half way through before I decide whether they're going to my apartment or in a box for the Friends of the Library Spring book sale. That's how I found it. Makes me wonder what else she's missed. I won't say anything, though. Pregnant Scully makes PMS Scully seem peaceful and placid by comparison. I should calm down, really. It's just a book. And I haven't even decided whether or not I want to keep it. I haven't shown it to her, either. I think I'll just sit with it for a minute. We drove up here to do this because it needed to be done and because I'm not very good at "down time". I needed something to do that would keep me out of trouble. I don't know what led me to believe disposing of my mother's belongings would fit the bill. It's just a book. A small book, hard-bound but thin, with a terse inscription in the front flap. Nothing leading, but the date and signature. TO TEENA CGB 1/13/61 So, on or around the date of my conception, the bastard gave my mom a book of Japanese poetry. It proves nothing. It doesn't necessarily follow that he gave her anything else. Me, for instance. On the corner of the next page is a number in the same handwriting. I can only assume it's his. Could be a page number. It's probably a page number and nothing cryptic. Not a locker number or safe deposit number. A nice, innocuous page number. Maybe just a poem he thought she might like. Though it's disconcerting to imagine that sort of intimacy between them. I slip off the cover and scrutinize the spine. No more writing that I can find. No clues. The cover is bare inside, too. Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series Three Translations of Poems By Basho - Buson - Issa - Shiki - and Others $1.00 Copyright 1960 Peter Pauper Press Mount Vernon - New York Nothing too sinister, there. Each page has four poems and a woodcut. Might as well make sure it's a page number. Shit! Shit! Shit!! I read two poems and now, after the third, the world is spinning. Collapsing. Am I about to swoon like the heroine in a Victorian romance novel? Just more proof of my iron-clad manliness. Maybe a vigorous head shake will counteract the dizziness. That worked, but now I seem to have attracted an audience. An audience of one. Or one and a half. Or two, depending on how you count that kind of thing. "Mulder?" "Spender gave this to my mom...look at the date." I extend the book, wondering momentarily if I should be passing it points down like a knife or scissors, presenting only the dull edge. Both her eyebrows shoot upwards. It only takes her seconds to see the tiny page number and thumb carefully to it. Her voice is querulous as she reads aloud "Dancing: The Fox Treads Among The Pale Narcissi In Garden Moonlight" by Buson I wish we could do more than stare at each other. Finally she says half of what we've both been thinking. "You know this doesn't prove anything." "I know, Scully." Another long look pushes me to finish the thought. "But it suggests an awful lot." She nods. "Yes, it does." My hands can't seem to leave the crisp pages alone. "You know, I don't look anything like him." "What?" "I don't look anything like Bill Mulder." "That doesn't mean anything. You know that doesn't mean anything." "But it suggests some things." "Just like the book suggests some things?" I attempt to stare a challenge at her. "Mulder, do you really want to know? You might not like the answer, and none of them are alive to explain it. You're never going to know what happened between your mother and Spender. Just let it go." I nod again. She yawns, then. "I'm suddenly feeling very tired. Do you mind if I lay down?" Somehow we wind up on the bed together. I do my best to remain circumspect and keep Scully from noticing my hard-on. She's very pregnant and this is my dead mother's bed. I close my eyes and mouth the words twelve times: She's pregnant. This is Mom's bed. Mom. Why did she have this book? Why did she burn our pictures but save this on her shelf? What did it mean to her? I would like to imagine something ominous in it. That maybe he raped her. That he pushed her down during one of those infamous Tipsy Vineyard Barbeques while the others were out looking at the new car or some shit and took her between the snowdrops and the daffodils in the backyard. I'd like to imagine her too afraid to fight. Or struggling bravely, but to no avail. And that he gave her the book as a warning, as a reminder of what he'd done. To keep her silent. There were never any narcissi at the house in Chilmark and in January there wouldn't have been any snowdrops or daffodils, either. Or barbeques, for that matter. I'd like to believe the horror story, but it rings false. If he raped her, she would never have kept the book. I know my mother. No matter what else I am, I will always be her son. If he had raped her, I would know. I would feel it. When I was six years old I broke the tureen from her Dresden set, and my mother never stopped mentioning it. Somewhere around 1990 I searched out and found an exact replacement for the one I'd broken. Her response? "This is lovely, Fox dear. You know, if you hadn't broken the other one, I'd have two." But I was her favorite. Before Samantha was taken, I was her undisputed favorite and I never would have been if she had some horrific recollection of my conception. It would have been beyond her power to love me. Dammit. Why can't she just be innocent? Why aren't any of us innocent? Me, least of all, for wishing she had been brutalized rather than seduced. I can't stay out of profiler mode. I can't stop picturing the most likely scenario. Romance far less palatable than violence. I know that, snide remarks that echoed back and forth across the island aside, Mom was not a gold-digger. Still, I doubt she would have married dad if he'd been a garbage man. Nothing in our family life was black or white. She wasn't like some Fifties B-movie ingenue out to marry a millionaire. Instead, she sought to raise her social status using the only avenue open to women at that time. She didn't misrepresent herself, but she went to college and began to cultivate certain tastes and certain attitudes. She remade herself into the sort of woman a certain sort of man would want. I always knew Bill Mulder loved her, was impressed by her and the way she did things. Even drunk, something in him brightened when she came near and when he was angry, that same thing burned. And most of the time, I believe she genuinely liked Old Bill. Before we lost Samantha, they seemed to share an easy camaraderie, at least when he was sober. And when he was drunk, she was stoic. She was never so explicit with her feelings. Her self was always hidden from us, and her love was subtle. I remember her kneeling beside my bed at night, stroking my hair and whispering my name. But she was rarely affectionate in the light of day. I can imagine what it was like for her in those early years, before she had a chance to prove she could do the uptight-WASP dance with the best of them. Work frequently took my father away from home, even in the beginning. In her own way, my mother was something of a party girl, and it must have been lonely in the days when the only people she entertained were my father's friends from work. It's easy to imagine one of Bill's friends being mesmerized by her cool charm and long legs. I find myself stroking Scully's thick hair. It's almost too easy to imagine. Just like some half-forgotten Audrey Hepburn movie where the sophisticated young bride from the less- than-affluent family is saddled with an adoring but angry drunk. Cary Grant as CGB to the rescue. In the end of course, she chose her less-than-perfect husband. Okay, maybe it's more Tennessee Williams. Or Casablanca, if Humphrey Bogart and Victor Lazlo had both worked for the Nazis. I find my sick, traitorous dick even stiffer than before, and I try to rub myself against Scully's hip hard enough to get a little friction, but not hard enough to wake her. I try to concentrate on Scully, on the memory of making love to Scully, and not the image of my young mother in the backyard with Satan, her long dark hair mussed, her skirt pushed up around her hips. Try as I might, the images mix in my mind, blinding flashes one after the other, as if projected by an internal strobe light: Scully's perfect white ass reflected in the mirror above my bed, lips not my father's on the soft skin of my mother's throat, the first time I sank into Scully all sweaty and nervous, the rich, black dirt from the flower bed on the back of Teena's long, tanned legs and naked shoulders, the drunken sensation of sucking in my partner's breath. I don't know when I pulled my cock out of my pants, but there it is, straining against my hand. I need therapy. I need a lobotomy. I need to fuck Scully. I need a cold shower. Did she love him? Did he love her? He gave up his own wife but pushed my father into handing over an 8 year old girl. What does that mean? Where do I fit into their story? Where do I fit into any story? This morning I was looking for Scully's car keys when I found a picture in her purse. A picture of me. She must have taken it out of the album in my apartment, back when I was still dead. The numbers stand out, black against the thin white border - 04/06/63. Me, standing on the back patio, dwarfed by the basketball I held with both arms. The ball was brand new that day, a gift from one of my father's visiting friends. I don't remember which one, and I don't want to pause to consider the possibilities. The first snowdrops of the year are thin green shoots in the corner of the picture. What does it mean? Was it just in remembrance of the dead, or a hope for her unborn child? Does this mean that her child is my child and not the simply the result of some strange union of donor sperm and ovum growing inside her? The fact that she's got it in her purse at all is intriguing, but like the book, it proves nothing, suggests much. She asked if I really wanted to know the truth about my mother, but the question could apply to this as well. Do I really want to know who the father of this child is if the answer isn't me? Did Bill Mulder ever ask himself this question? Did Spender? I have reached the strange point in my masturbation where I have to decide whether to give up entirely or focus on something more palatable than the idea of Scully carrying another man's child. Well, never let it be said I'm not persistent. I ease myself off the mattress as carefully as possible and stand over her at the foot of the bed. Things are different now. I think I can do this. I don't think it would upset her. I hope it won't upset her, With any luck, she'll never know. So I stroke my cock roughly, taking in her milky skin and newly-heavy breasts, the swell of her hips, and the sweet curve of my spot at the small of her back, until I feel the familiar sensation grip me. This is good, this is distracting. If I can just keep this up, maybe I can hold off asking her until after the baby is born. Until after she has to fill in that other blank on the birth certificate. Otherwise, I might be tempted to buy a pack of cigarettes. :~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/