“It’s OK, mom,” Tessa says again. “It’s all in the family.”
I’m horrified myself, though for different reasons.
“What are you saying?” I hiss.
George has many smiles. Most I have seen many times. But it’s not often I’ve seen the one she reserves for the revelation of wicked secrets. Still with one woolly sleeve around my daughter’s shoulders, my birth mother opens her other palm and her fingers splay open like a time-lapse flower in decline. There’s a spark and suddenly a hollow yellow flame erupts into being.
“I’m sorry, Joseph. For a long time I had to keep it secret. We were hiding.”
And she smiles – and there’s that look again.
“You would have known me as Catchfire.”
I put my fist to my face and consider stuffing it into my mouth. Screw the confessions of a teenage chick-licker. My mother was the hottest superheroine of the 1970s.
*
I WOULD BE lying if I said some time later we had all calmed down. Beth has to be sedated, eagerly sucking down three valium when Maxine offers. Moments previous they were trading verbal blows as fierce as me and Gigantor going for it. Now all Beth can do is find the hard wooden rest of a padded armchair and watch the scene in the kitchen like a traffic accident through the windows of a café.
I remove my jacket and simply fling it behind the door without any pretense to attention and hold up my hands.
“OK, let’s back it up a pace here.” I swallow with difficulty and do a quick headcount. “Are you telling me you two always knew I was Zephyr?”
Maxine clucks. “Oh, sorry dear.”
Georgia only gives a solemn nod. I don’t feel nearly lionized enough, nor groveled to, for me to just shrug off this earth-shattering announcement. I stare somewhere between the small blaze that has only just extinguished itself on my mother’s hand and the triumphant, I-can’t-believe-I’ve-done-it furrow of my daughter’s brow.
“Oh for God’s sake, Joseph,” Elisabeth snaps. “This isn’t about you.”
“For once, I have to agree,” Maxine says.
“Well hey, maybe you can just shrug off the twenty years we’ve been keeping it secret, but for me, it’s a lot to adjust to,” I say.
“If you think it was a long secret for you, you know nothing of what your mother’s been through,” Max says.
“No, I don’t know nothing, anything,” I growl, “because nobody ever fucking told me about it, did they?”
Because I finally can, I let the sparks leap off me. They find the closest metal points to rattle and George jolts back, exclamation in her eyes if nowhere else, the fear just strongly enough etched that I realize maybe it’s not the brightest idea to start cutting loose around my loved ones. Besides, my mum might kick my ass.
“You were young, Joe,” George says after a moment. “And it was complicated.”
“What isn’t? You try keeping your identity secret from your parents for twenty years while being one of the country’s better-known bloody . . . whatever I am.”
“We’ve always been very proud of you,” Max says weakly.
“Don’t you understand, this is why we never hounded you about college?” her partner in crime adds.
I shake my head, do a quick inventory of the room. The back door is open now and Tessa’s gone through it, followed by her mother.
“And you knew about her?” I ask, thumb in the indicative.
“Your daughter might take after you, Joseph, but she’s no fool. D’you not think if she had an inkling she might be queer that a word with her lesbian grandmothers might help?”
“Well fuck.”
“And stop that swearing in the house,” George adds.
I look around. Like a hard drive restoring after a power-out, slowly my brain fills with a catalogue of times and places where I was forced into ridiculous, Seinfeld-esque situations to preserve my precious secret. Now I find it was all for naught. That they knew makes me a laughing stock. As I eye the night-filled space of the open door, I can’t believe I have to add my daughter to the lengthening list of those not fooled by daddy’s tiresome charade. If anything could belittle my inexplicably limited sense of achievements in this life, this takes the cake.
“And what’s the deal with Catchfire?” I ask. “You’re, like, American History 101, mom.”
“It’s complicated.”
“We’ll tell you about it another time,” Maxine adds. “There’s things now we’ll have to talk about. Including your father.”
I groan. Those three words turn my bowels to water, and while often enough I’ve daydreamed I might like a better explanation for my freak parentage than a family friend who was a sperm donor and later grew apart from them, now I cling to that cover story like a safety blanket clutched in the tight little guy fists of a child who’s just wet the bed.
“For fuck’s sake,” is the best pronouncement I can make.
“Enough of that, Joe,” Maxine scolds.
She clucks again and, truly chicken-like, indicates the doorway with a nudge of her head.
“Now’s not the time. Your daughter needs you. It’s like your wife said: this is about her now.”
Before I can ask anything about why it’s not allowed to be about me, even if for just a few seconds, it really does become about Tessa as Elisabeth appears breathless at the door.
“It’s Tessa,” she says shortly. “She’s gone. She can fly.”
Georgia lowers her serious gaze my way and nods her head once. If there’s a flicker of a flash in her eye, I’ve probably imagined it.
“You’re the flyer,” she says. “Better get after her.”
I swear again, inwardly, curbed by my Irish mum’s stern face. I have the mask in my back pocket, but the rest of the gear’s hidden in the garden shed. If she’s a flyer anywhere near my own capacity, inside of twenty seconds and she could be anywhere. With a flagrancy that would be exhilarating if it were for any other reason than to settle a domestic, I jog through the doorway and spring into the air.
Above, the night sky awaits.
Zephyr 2.13 “The Delegated Truth-Breaker”
THE INKY GLOOM is counter-point to my thoughts. Aside from glancing left and right once I’ve hit the thousand yard-high mark, I can’t see a single sign of Tessa. I’m as likely to catch a glimpse of her up here now as I am to win a Grammy. I can tell you I’ve contemplated the latter a lot more than the former in my life. I, we, they, all of us, simply didn’t see this situation coming. This is what I tell myself, lacking conviction even as I flip and swoop and swirl over the river, suspicion like a cowpat sorbet in the back of my throat.
At first I think my mood is worsening the weather. There’s a build-up to the east. It’s only when I catch the first cloud-muffled flash that I am sure I’m no longer hallucinating. And as I’ve been at pains to point out on numerous occasions throughout my life and in this narrative, my air-bending powers don’t extend to weather control, just the odd creative input on whatever’s brewing. I can conjure a rainstorm, but one thing that always remains the same is that I’m stuck at ground zero when it strikes. This little baby brewing in the direction of my destiny has got to have another source. And while I can’t put it into words for you, dear reader, or whatever the term was Stan Lee used to say before the Kirlians got him, my internal barometer tells me the air’s all wrong. There’s nothing natural about the astral whippoorwill fluttering a thousand wings out over the bay, and on a hunch I power in that direction hoping my little girl’s trumped her daddy and I’m not walking in on something completely unrelated. If I was Spider-Man, this would all be some malevolent plan by Doc Ock. In real life, it’s more likely I’m going to have to admit to my daughter that I’m no closer than she is to knowing the meaning of life or any other tricky metaphysical answers.
As I trash the ionosphere, my mind drifts on gossamer wings toward the various threads of my life that seem to be pulling me in separate directions, if not apart on this cool and blust
ery night. It’s just a few hours till my anointed appointment with arch-magus Twilight and my growling stomach reminds me we just skipped the wholesome family dinner for coffee and a punch-up. Like I’ve said elsewhere, burning the juice without enough fuel is a bad move for me, and I already feel stretched without all the fancy metaphors to describe my inner distress. Turmoil, frustration, angst – call it what you will, it seems like with so many things in life there is one day or one evening out of the ordinary that comes along every so often, and life-changing and significant events are clustered around them in statistical disarray as if drawn to the zeitgeist moment like lightning to a metal rod.
Speaking of which, again comes the flash from the purple thunderhead, vibrant with its pulsing electrical heart against the deeper gloom.
Now my daughter is conducting the orchestra. Is that metaphor too trite? While I momentarily push away the concern, forged over a career nearly two decades long, for the public exposure of her true identity, I’m able to marvel at the sight of my darling girl in full-blown euphoric catharsis suspended within the thunder’s heart. But I can only appreciate the imagery of wind-lashed hair and blazing barometric energies for so long. I swing in and dissolve the climactic scene, Tessa floating for all the world to see a mile up in the sky as I grab her by the upper arm.
“Tessa, you can’t expose yourself like this,” I growl.
The rain breaks around us. For one ungodly moment we are lit by another arc that reverberates across the city, residents undoubtedly scratching their heads at the unexpected change in the weather, and Tessa is a stranger, face prematurely adult, lips full, sensuous and surprised.
“Can’t you see?” she yells. “This is one of the only times I’m really able to be me.”
I shake my head. There’s water in my ears.
“That’s not my worry, honey. Out like this, you’re vulnerable.”
“I just want to be free, dad.”
“Tessa, I have enemies. Don’t you understand?”
In the movie of this moment I hope I am played by Harrison Ford, though I don’t know what they can do about him being such an old guy. Tessa resembles a young, tawny-haired Beverly d’Angelo, though the association this has with the National Lampoon movies is not something I really want to promote so I’ll say Jennifer Garner minus a few inches and without the starvation diet.
I realize I am retreating into this cynical/remote/childish mode because the impending confrontation is more than I can really stand. One thing is for sure, though: whatever Twilight has on offer, I’m firm now. I’ve got too much going on to go running away. Certainly this is without knowing Elisabeth will file for divorce in fourteen hours, throwing the private life I bemoaned so wantonly into a repute so severe I’ll eventually wonder what the fuck I was ever complaining about in the first place. Nonetheless, as events pan out and prove to show, in my heart I feel this is the right choice. This one illuminating moment with Tessa is like a lifetime of life lessons and I am desperate not to fail this spot test.
I take her wrist.
“I’m happy for you,” I say with rain clattering against my chest and into my mouth. “I didn’t think that was something I would ever say, seeing you up here with me, and you know, considering everything else that’s happened this week . . . but I am.”
“It’s not about Astrid, dad,” Tessa says.
Her hand goes to my shoulder. I’m aware we are slowly turning about on some centrifugal vector caused by the dissipating weather system.
“It’s me. Who I am. And who we are. I’m Zephyr’s daughter. I think I’ve always known that.”
“For real?”
She blushes invisibly and nods and laughs and wet hair plasters itself across her face and tickles mine.
“Ever since I first watched cartoons. I thought Zephyr was from the television, come to life. I don’t know why I knew I couldn’t tell. For years, it was like a dream. Then there were things you said, this hopeless thing you call your attempt at a normal life, and things mom would always say. . . .”
“She knew you knew?”
“I think so. We never . . . talked. Much. About anything.”
She looks away, eyes downwind.
“You know how it is.”
“Come home with me now, honey,” I say. “There’s just one more thing I’ve got to do tonight and then tomorrow, now, it’ll be a beautiful day. We can talk until the well runs dry. You know? But now, if a camera catches you, or some passing mask, we’re both in danger.”
“Alright,” she says and nods. “But one thing?”
“Name it.”
“You call me Windsong.”
Tessa laughs, spiraling on the spot as she gathers momentum and then shoots like a pellet from the world’s biggest spud gun over and across the rain-dappled towers below us. I check my mask is in place and survey the ground before gently accelerating behind her, my dearest target.
*
I’M REDISCOVERING MYSELF as a hero.
This is the thought that occurs to me as I narrowly avoid crash-landing behind my childhood home on confirmation my daughter Tessa did as instructed and has got herself inside.
Rediscovering my inner hero. It sounds like something Dr Phil might say if he ever did a show specializing in therapy for burn-out masks.
It takes a moment for the lemonade bubbles of my memory to press themselves through the cerebral cortex and then I remember it actually was something from a Dr Phil special – so not my over-fertile imagination after all.
Heroes Who Removed Their Masks, I think it was called. I remember now, watching it with Red Monolith, Mastodon and the Evolutionary, wherever he is these days, passing the crack pipe between us and bemoaning the lack of effects. If I recall correctly, the show was notable for an appearance by septuagenarian 1960s badass the Tungsten Terror. It was a sobering moment for us all watching that depleted old chrome-dome motherfucker blubbering into the equally bald shrink’s Hugo Boss shoulder-pads and wishing his mother had seen the work he did with disaffected youth in Chicago before the cancer took her.
Oh boy. Depression. Settling in.
As I smoke another contraband cigarette, ankles crossed as I lean against the gardenias in the greenhouse, I’m reflecting yet again on why I do this. The fact I can do a four-second mile and flick lightning from my palms is a pretty compelling reason, and for years, that was enough for me. I have been tempted by the Devil’s offer (that should read Twilight), mysterious as it may have been, to shed my second life like a bad taste snakeskin and morph into a purer, less complicated form of myself. A new Zephyr for a new life – though I remain uncomfortably vague about what this really means except Twilight’s eldritch forces are involved. The news my daughter has not only inherited my family’s predilection for eating pussy, but can whip up a mean-ass thunderstorm to boot should give me pause, throwing a celestial spanner into the works somehow and letting me either reconfirm my commitment to disappointing Twilight in about an hour’s time, or give this hanging thread dilemma another round of crystalline introspection.
Instead, I’m a blank. The most significant thought I can conjure is that even stale cigarette smoke is pretty good when you need five minutes to think and work on taking that leak that the adrenaline sucked back up into your bladder about an hour before. My stomach rumbles. I’m hungry and all that subliminal advertising and enculturation is starting to have the desired effect as I unconsciously plot routes to Twilight’s manse that take in fried chicken outlets. And there’s an uncomfortable pressure somewhere above my perineum, if men have those, me being more familiar with it only because of the recommended massage for my wife I dutifully gave her during “our” pregnancy with Tessa, about a million years ago, back when I was a devoted twenty-year-old husband and I was yet to ever sink my dick into any other person on Earth but my dear Beth.
Speaking of the devil, in the cooling night air I watch the porch light flare behind the nimbus of my wife’s wild hair as she steps out the back door and cas
ts around for privacy, finding only its surrogate as she remains unknowingly surveilled extracting a cigarette from the sleeve of her crofter’s pullover as she wends her way into my parents’ copious back yard with its ridiculously compact exotic jungle of hand-reared, multi-grafted plants. I guess back when Max realized she was shacked up with a reformed and on-the-run superhero, she channeled a lot of that rage into her exquisite shrubberies.
Yeah OK, so I’m taking the piss – literally, as well as . . . you know.
The temperature has dropped significantly, though I’m confident Frost has well and truly quit the scene. Pity for her. A hell of a night for updating your Zephyr dossier, with all these family revelations flying thick and fast.
My wife resembles an angel in the subtle light, though the languid motions of her cigarette would be familiar to doormen and freezing office workers the world over, a series of quick jabs and snatched drags, just enough to fend off the nicotine monster before the inviting warmth of inside calls. There’s only a small patch of open ground in the yard otherwise dominated by the tiered garden, the greenhouse, the back neighbor’s enormous Irish strawberry that looms over all, and a small disused garage that probably contains Catchfire’s secret laboratory or her jet-powered motorcycle or whatever kitsch baggage remains from the groovy heyday of afro-clad crime-fighters and kitten-costumed kid-friendly crims. Standing in front of the dilapidated green doors, if it weren’t for the darkness, Elisabeth might pass for an overenthusiastic model come hours too early to a photo shoot for some crossover gardening/high fashion/metropolitan living mage. Instead, she looks tired and harassed despite the years being kind, if that’s not too sexist and fucked for me to say about a 34-year-old woman who also happens to be my wife, keeping in mind I have strayed about fifteen times in the past five years if you include the TV reporters, who I’m still not really sure should count.
I step from the greenhouse with a deliberate throat-clearing, jettisoning the butt into the gently burbling frog pool. To that truculent hiss I add a wry smile, arms folded as I step, masked still, across the crunchy gravel to where Beth’s grappling with her addiction.
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