Chapter 19
January 8, 2005
I love her.
I love Buffy.
I’m in love with Buffy.
There, I said. To my journal, granted, but Fred suggested I try it. Look at it on paper; see how it makes me feel. She is right. There is a difference between thinking it and then saying it, or rather, writing it. I couldn’t exactly say it to her. It didn’t feel right, but she knew. She guessed. I always have worn my heart on my sleeve.
Looking at it, the words “I’m in love with Buffy” seems strange. Because it’s more real now that I can see it. Writing it down gives it proof, makes it real, makes it have substance. Gives it wings.
My heart is racing…I do feel guilt. I feel I’m betraying Joyce. Saying “I love Buffy” is much different than saying “I’m in love with my dead wife’s daughter.” Such a different connotation. One says, “How nice!” the other says, “Sick bastard!”
But how can it be sick? She’s only eight years younger than I am, she hadn’t been living with us or even remotely close and . . . yeah, that’s where the “It’s not sick” brigade ends. The fact of the matter is she’s still my dead wife’s daughter. The fact is we’re both still grieving…but in the same way? I do miss her; she was my wife after all, but… I’m not grieving our marriage the way I was at first. I think it’s moved into something else. I’m grieving that person I was with her.
God, I hate this. I hate thinking these things. But I suppose this is what Buffy would call “taking a journey with yourself”. So, let’s go on a journey, self.
Fact: I did love Joyce. She was what I needed at the time. She gave me love and direction and care. She was a wonderful woman that I will never forget and not because she led me to Buffy. But because of whom she was. She taught me a lot, but I had to go further.
And now I am.
Fact: I might have never let go of Joyce. I would have stayed married to her, most likely, but I know, at least I think I know that I would have wondered if there were more for me.
I have a secret: I already was starting to wonder. Was there more for more in the world? Was I just content or was I happy? How much longer would I stay content? I’m guessing when you start questioning your contentedness that means it’s on its way out. It’s much more comfortable to stay the person who never asks questions and is completely content with life than to be thrust back in the world and have to deal with not only the world, but yourself.
I wasn’t thinking of straying though I wondered if there was someone perhaps that I was meant for – if there was someone that shared more of my interests.
Joyce and I got along well enough, but…but it was more that she took care of me. She was more a mother to me than a wife. God, that sounds so sick, doesn’t it? But I didn’t realize it then. I didn’t know!
Buffy doesn’t take care of me like that, but she does take care of me, and I take care of her. We look out for each other, support one another. She’s my best friend. She challenges me in ways that Joyce never did.
Joyce was what I needed then, Buffy is what I need forever.
I think that’s all I can do for today.
Buffy was nervous to see her father. She had no reason to be, but she was nonetheless. He was, after all, the proverbial asshole in this scenario and he should feel as such, but she knew he wouldn’t. Buffy always had a hard time understanding the motives of complete and utter assholes. They acted almost like sociopaths with having no remorse. It was amazing to her and man, it was a skill she wished she could perfect. Instead, things ate at her like a flesh eating disease.
Walking down the hall to his penthouse, she began to shake a bit, and her heart began to race. What was the outcome of this visit going to be? She could guess, but…she was so hoping for the alternative. She didn’t think the alternative – him being happy to see her—would happen, but goddammit she hadn’t learned how to not get her hopes up.
Rapping on the door, she held her breath.
The door opened and there stood Hank’s new wife, Judith. The blonde woman’s gray eyes widened. “Buffy!”
“Hi,” Buffy said, still not breathing properly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area and figured I’d come and see everyone,” she jammed her hands in her pockets. This had to be the strangest conversation ever. Judith had to know about that late night phone call, not only that, the woman knew what a jackass her father was to her; she was just too chicken shit to say boo to him. Yet here she was, standing before her “stepmother” acting as if she’d been on vacation (well, she sorta had been), and was back to just say “Hi!”
“He’s not here…he had a check up…why don’t you come in?”
Buffy nodded slowly, feeling strange about the whole thing, but figuring, hell, she’d come this far… why the hell not go further?
“I’m so sorry about your Mom, Buffy,” Judith said softly.
Buffy took a deep breath and nodded, smiling, “Thanks.”
“And I’m sorry that we weren’t…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Buffy said, shrugging it off. It wasn’t exactly a shrug-offable thing and yet she was doing it. Stepping inside, Buffy prepared herself to enter a world that she never belonged to and wasn’t sure anymore that she necessarily wanted to belong to anymore.
*******
The thing that always struck Buffy about Judith was her perpetual positive spin on everything. She was like a 50’s housewife that never said a word against her husband, even if she happened to disagree with his actions, and raised her kids –two preteen girls –to be the same way. They were bouncy and happy—full of sugary sweetness.
She marveled that her father had managed to elbow his way into such a family. She figured that Judith had already been strong-armed by one husband and so didn’t manage to see that she was being strong-armed in the next one. She was used to it and just accepted things the way they were.
She flitted around the apartment while Buffy waited for her father to arrive home, chirping like a bird about this and that, and when her stepsisters came home (Eveline and Madeline), they chirped around her as well – sharing success stories from their classes in middle school, their outlook on attending the high school in the fall and their hope to maybe take a college course or two while there as well. They were honor students naturally, incredibly smart and unnaturally progressive for their age. At least Buffy thought they were unnaturally progressive. It could be that she was just jealous. She’d done well in school, but she was never ahead of her class—she wasn’t naturallysmart, she had to work at her education, it didn’t come to her like it did to Eveline and Madeline– the bookworms with matching glasses, gangly limbs and stringy long brown hair. They might as well have been twins. She remembered often feeling like Debbie Downer when she’d arrive on the scene with them.
“We saved you the Sour Patch Kids from trick-or-treating!” Eveline burst out with much excitement and tore off to her bedroom to get them apparently.
Madeline wrinkled her nose. “Why do you like them?” she asked.
Buffy smiled. “Because they’re just like me.”
“How?”
“Sugary on the outside, and sour on the inside,” and Buffy fought the urge to giggle at both Madeline’s bewildered look and Judith’s disapproving one.
*********
“So, what happened when you saw him, pet?” Spike asked later that evening while he relaxed in his favorite lounger and Buffy relaxed in her hotel bed.
“First, let me tell you that Judith, my father’s new wife, has to be a pod person. No one can be that perpetually happy all the time. It’s nauseating! She’s like a Stepford Wife. I used to think that something was wrong with me when I hung around her. I mean, she has a positive spin on everything and I thought ‘Damn, I’m just a Negative Nilly’, but you know what? I’m not Negative Nilly, I’m just realistic. And she is not. I’m telling you Spike; she’s like Ted Kazinski in the making. She’s got notebooks somewhere of intrinsically plotted murders of those around her. She has to be a fucking loon underneath that saccharine sweet exterior. Either that, or someone is just gonna take her out one day. I’m convinced of this.”
Spike couldn’t stop laughing. “Oh, kitten, you do make me laugh.”
“Thanks,” and she smiled into the phone.
“So, how’d it go with your Dad?”
“Nothing big at all. I kind of guessed that. He didn’t really talk much…just sort of nodded at me acknowledging my existence and asked how I was. Judith invited me for dinner and I got the sense he didn’t really like that. I amused myself by swearing every once in a while and getting a death glare from her and my dad and giggles from Eveline and Madeline.”
“Such a bad girl,” Spike said fondly.
“Well, I figure if I don’t make myself laugh, I’ll cry. Tragedy and comedy are linked closely, that’s what you told me, right?”
“Right.”
“So, I can look at this as a tragedy if I wanted to, but why bother? I’ll just dig in my heels and make him talk to me. I’ll see if I can gain amusement from it and make him crack. I figure my sense of humor about it is what’s going to save my life.”
Spike sighed heavily. “Pet, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
Famous last words, they both thought.