Receiving roses was unexpected. Lois stared at the huge bouquet on the table in her room, and she found an unexpected smile blossoming on her face. She hadn’t had much experience getting flowers; as a teenager, she hadn’t had many opportunities for dating in the midst of her determination to succeed. Spending nights memorizing maps wasn’t conducive to dating and relationships.
After she’d had her child, opportunities were even fewer. Lois couldn’t recall ever actually receiving flowers and she was surprised at the unexpected jolt of joy she felt as she leaned forward to enjoy the unexpected smell.
There was something odd about the smell, and as the morning light filtered through the window, she could almost imagine that she saw the roses glowing.
He was really making an effort to keep them there. Lois felt a small sense of satisfaction. The balance of power in their relationship was terribly skewed. He had all the money, he had powers that no human being could match, and he was the only one who could even remember their first night together.
Even after all these years all she could recall was flashes of memory, of skin touching skin, of hot flesh and passion and awkward fumbling.
It should have been an important moment, and in the context of her life, it was life defining. Not being able to remember was a frustration.
She felt a little odd, her head feeling light and dizzy.
He didn’t leave a card, Lois noted, but he didn’t have to. Leaving flowers was gesture enough.
Perhaps she’d been wrong in pushing him away. She’d been attracted to him from the moment she’d seen him all those years ago. In many ways he was the perfect man; he was rich, he was powerful, and he was devoted to helping people. He was strong enough to protect both Lois and her child from just about anything the world had to throw at them. His treatment of Lana showed that he could be stubbornly loyal to those he cared about, even if that loyalty was misguided.
Yet there were complications. He was closed off and secretive. He lied easily and as glibly as a lawyer. He didn’t yet know how to be a father, no matter how much he tried.
Everything was weighted in his direction. He had all the power; he had the money, he was her employer and he had a legal right to her child. Once he made the claim legal it would be even truer.
He had an education and he was used to running all over people. If she wasn’t careful, he would do the same with her. It would be easy just to drift into a relationship with him just because he’d made it so easy.
Glancing at the roses wistfully, she realized that her lips were burning. Perhaps it was time to have a discussion with Clark about just where exactly he expected the relationship to go, not in the long term, but more immediately.
As she left the room, she noticed Lisa’s door open. Lisa was coming down the hall, presumably from the bathroom. Lois smiled at her daughter and kissed her on the forehead.
She didn’t notice Lisa stagger, or the glazed expression on her daughters face in the aftermath of the kiss.
*************
Clark was speaking into the telephone in a rapid melodic language that Lois didn’t even recognize. She’d studied Gaelic in preparation for the exchange program to Ireland that had been cancelled due to her pregnancy, and she knew enough of German, French, Italian, Russian and Chinese to at least recognize the sounds of the language.
This was something she hadn’t experienced before and she took a seat as he spoke. He noticed her and smiled.
A moment later the conversation seemed to be done to his satisfaction. He set the receiver in its cradle and said “What can I do for you?”
At her expression he said, “Some of the local officials were trying to throw up roadblocks to the food shipment Superman is making later today.”
“And you happen to speak their language.”
“I speak three hundred and forty seven languages,” Clark said. “Unfortunately, I only speak the main three in Nigeria, and the country has more than five hundred languages.”
“Three hundred forty seven?” Lois asked.
Clark shrugged. “I’ve always had an easy time picking up languages.”
Lois wondered if Lisa would share that skill, and whether there were any other abilities coming that Clark had forgotten to mention to them.
“You don’t think it’s unwise for Clark Kent to know all the languages Superman does?” Clark was usually so careful about separating the two halves of his lives. Lois suspected that it was part of what kept him so distant from the household staff. He didn’t want anyone to have a clue that he and the man from another planet were one and the same.
Of course, it was possible that he just didn’t want to get hurt again.
“I didn’t identify myself,” Clark said. He leaned forward in his chair. “What brings you here?”
“I wanted to thank you,” Lois said. Thinking of the roses, she said “For everything.”
Leaning forward slightly, he said sniffed and said, “Have you done something different with your perfume?”
Lois shook her head. She’d almost think that his eyes were glazing over.
“Why don’t you let me take you out for dinner?”
“This evening?” Lois asked. She’d been pushing him away for so long that the thought of getting to know him was a little frightening.
“Now,” he said.
“It’s eight in the morning.”
“It’s ten tomorrow night in Shanghai,” Clark said. “We can be there in ten minutes.”
He’d be there faster if h didn’t have to carry her, Lois knew.
She bit her lip, and Clark said, “Lisa will be fine here with Joshua.”
Finally, she nodded.
They deserved a chance to see if they even liked each other.
*************
“I’d kind of given up on the idea of love,” Lois admitted as she stared out the window. They were on the eighty seventh floor of the Jin Mao tower, and the view of the city below was mesmerizing. “When you’re in your early twenties, most people aren’t ready for pre-made families.”
“I would have been ok with it,” Clark said. “What I had with my parents…it was something special. It was something I wanted for myself…especially after everything I went through in foster care.”
“People were abusive?” Lois asked. She’d had experience with people who’d had abusive pasts, if only through her sister Lucy’s boyfriends and she tended to be a little leery of them.
Clark shook his head. “It wasn’t that. It’s just…I was going through all the things Lisa is going through, and I didn’t have any idea what was happening to me. It’s hard to explain to a family you’ve only known for a week why you burned a hole in their living room floor.”
“You must have been angry,” Lois said. “At your parents for leaving you, at your foster parents…at everyone.”
“I was mostly angry at myself,” Clark said. “If I’d just been a little faster, a little stronger…if I’d heard the truck coming a little sooner I could have done something.”
“You were ten,” Lois said.
“I was already different,” Clark said. “I knew even then that I could do things.”
There was a stubborn tone to his voice that warned Lois to back off. Although it was clear to her that the accident wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t at all clear to him.
“They wouldn’t have even been on the road that night if I hadn’t begged to spend the night with Pete…I nagged them to do it, even though my father said the roads were too icy.” Clark stared at his hands for a moment. “If I’d been a little more worried about what they were telling me, and a little less worried about what I’d wanted…my whole life would be different today.”
“You were ten.” Lois repeated. She reached out and touched his hand.
Regret was a toxic thing. The mind went over and over and over things it could not change, as though somehow if it worked long enough, it could find a way to make things different.
She’d felt the bitter pangs of regret for long months before she’d come to peace with her pregnancy and what it meant for her life. She’d asked herself over and over again what might have happened if she hadn’t stumbled onto that bar on that evening. If she’d drank a little less or if she’d had a little more self control. If she hadn’t been such a slut.
“I never wanted to be a mother,” Lois said.
Clark looked up, startled.
“I think if we’d never met I’d have found my dream career, and I’d have been a big success.” Lois went on. “I’d have earned trophies and awards, and I’d have had the professional acclaim I deserved.”
She had enough ribbons and trophies and awards at home from her teenage years to make her think things wouldn’t have been any different as an adult. Lois knew what she was capable of.
“I might have won a Kerth or maybe even a Pulitzer prize.”
Clark’s fingers tightened on hers and he said, “I’m sorry…”
“At the end of the day, I’d have been alone,” Lois said. “Work would have been my life, and I’d end up watching sappy soap operas while eating chocolate ice cream.”
“You don’t know that,” Clark said. “You might have met someone.”
“I’m an intense person, Clark,” Lois said. “Whatever I do, I throw myself into one hundred percent. I couldn’t have children and the sort of success I craved. There wouldn’t have been room in my life for both. Most likely I wouldn’t even have had time to date.”
She certainly hadn’t had time in high school. There wasn’t any reason to believe things would have changed much. No matter how much money or success you had in life, the one thing you could never escape was yourself.
It was why unhappy lottery winners didn’t suddenly become happy overnight. Why rock stars and famous people weren’t all living the life of riley.
“A woman like you wouldn’t have any problem finding someone,” Clark said.
“It would have been the life I wanted,” Lois said, “But it wasn’t the life I chose.”
Clark sat still in his chair and said nothing.
“I had other options. I could have had Lisa and adopted her. I could have had an abortion.”
His sudden wince wasn’t unexpected. For a man who’d wanted children his entire life, the thought of aborting his one chance at ever having someone with who to share his legacy would have been difficult.
“I had the choice,” Lois said. It had been important to her that she be the one to make the decision that was going to affect the rest of her life. “And I made it.”
“Lois…”
“This is the life I chose,” Lois said, “And you know…on the whole, I’m pretty happy with it. Part of the reason I never wanted children was because all I’d ever see in my own childhood was arguing and strife. My parents weren’t any kind of role models. They weren’t any kind of example at all.”
Clark pulled away from her. Releasing her hand as the waitress arrived with their order. He smiled and spoke to her in rapid Mandarin. The woman glanced at Lois and smiled demurely.
After she left, Lois said, “But overall, I’ve done a good job with Lisa. I haven’t been the kind of mother my mother was, and I haven’t been the sort of father my father was. Were there times I could have used some help? Yes. But overall, I’ve felt more rewarded doing this that I would have with a closet full of Kerths.”
“You’ve done a wonderful job with Lisa,” Clark admitted.
“So have you,” Lois said. She tasted the strange looking concoction on her plate and closed her eyes for a moment. Delicious.
“Sometimes I get a little jealous,” she admitted. “There are things the two of you share that I’m never going to be able to understand. I’m never going to know what it’s like to be able to see the sunset on Jupiter, or hear an ant fart.”
“We can’t actually…well, not Jupiter anyway.”
Apparently he could hear ants farting. Lois grinned at him, and he smiled slowly.
“It wouldn’t matter if I was here every day for the rest of her life,” Clark said. “I wasn’t there for her first steps. I didn’t hear her first words. I didn’t hug her and kiss her when things hurt. There were so many things I imagined myself doing if I ever had a child…I’ve missed so much.”
Lois reached out and touched his hand again. “You’ve got the rest of your lives to make it up to her.”
“It’s already so late…she’s already pretty much the person she’s going to be. You were the one who showed her how to be the person she is today. I didn’t have any part of it.”
“So show her who she is going to be.”
***************
It was disconcerting, going from morning to night and back to noon. Clark was in his costume, as he always was when flying near the mansion.
Lois sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. Despite everything, Clark would be an easy person to love. She could see the hurt little boy inside him, but she was attracted to the man he’d become.
Lisa would probably do cartwheels if they were to start some sort of relationship. To a child’s mind it was the best of all solutions, and it was getting harder for Lois’s adult mind to remember her reasons for avoiding him.
It had a feeling of the inevitable.
She noticed Clark stiffen beside her. “You didn’t send Lisa anywhere did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t see her anywhere.”
From the way his eyes were frantically flickering from place to place on the mansion and grounds below, Lois had a sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong.
Her child was missing.
Interesting….
