InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I AM YOUR FATHER, LUKE."

Cate Denisof. (lastinglife) wrote in audeamus,
@ 2008-02-23 23:30:00

Who: Cate Denisof (the Water of Life), and the Denisof family.
What: Sunday dinner.
When: A week or so ago.
Status/Rating: PG-13 for a couple of swears/complete narrative.

Family dinner happened twice a month, more if Cate and Alex could pull themselves from their busy and important lives to visit the Denisof home. Mrs. Denisof insisted on it, and though her husband was more likely to pull exaggerated guilt trips on his children if they couldn't make it (Alex had received no less than three phone calls since the year began that ended in his father's mock blubbering, asking why he didn't want to make stout little Denisof babies), Elaine always made sure that two Sundays a month were devoted to the Denisofs coming together to break bread. She was a sensible sort of woman. The dinners had start five years previous, for no particular reason she had really named, or that anyone could really remember, though Cate was familiar with that time of year as having stopped her intensive chemotherapy. Either way, Elaine had the kind of cooking you only got when you came home after being a way for a while, so her older children were usually happy to oblige.

Cate got there late on Sunday. Her shift had pulled an extra hour from dinner rush into it, and since Jenna was out with the flu, there was no avoiding staying the full time. Nikolai and Elaine greeted their daughter with their usual hugs and kisses, how's work, sold any new pots; and Aleksey seized the first opportunity of her walking into the dining room to fling a pea at her head. Scott snorted out milk into his lap and had to be rushed out of the room, shrieking in pain and laughter, to change his trousers. It was pretty much the norm.

"You're a jackass," Cate said, settling into her chair. Another pea hit her in the eye.

"Language, Katya," her father said in his low Soviet rumble, lowering his spoon. He looked remarkably serious for having just launched a lentil at his daughter's face. Cate rolled her eyes. By the end of the night, her father would likely be halfway to blitzed and swearing up a Russian storm anyway. Alex stuck his tongue out at her from across the table, and she stuck hers out right back. The age gap was in her brother's favor for things like being able to legally drink first, or rent a car in certain states--he'd turned 27 recently, but she could swear he still acted younger than 18-year-old Scott. Then again, he had never really matured.

Elaine swatted at her husband vaguely, sat down in her chair as Scott came trundling out of his room in fresh jeans, all legs and arms too long to fit. "So was work very bad tonight, honey?" she asked Cate, passing Scott the potatoes. Scott hated potatoes; so, of course, he had to eat some.

"Eh, the usual," Cate said. "I mean, it's no cubicle--" sly look at Alex--"but it pays the bills."

"Hey, hey," Alex started right on top of her last words, "I'll have you know that cubicle's way stressful. I can only stare at kittens hanging from tree boughs, wishing for my perseverance, for so long. That shit's tough--sorry, Dad. That stuff." He shrugged helplessly. Alex had inherited his father's too-big shoulders and cheeky grin; his dark hair stuck up on one side of his head just like Nikolai's had before he'd gotten fed up and buzzed it. Cate remembered the fights Alex and his mother would get into when she was younger: no matter how you cut it, it was always a bird's nest the next day. Scott and Cate got their mother's skinny angles and soft brown pseudo-curls. Thank God. She was a little afraid of what her father's features would look like on a girl of her size.

They passed around the meat and her mother gave everyone but Scott a glass of wine, which Alex and Mr. Denisof promptly exchanged for tumblers of whiskey while Scott proceeded to launch into a tirade about his mother's oppression on his emotional maturity. "It's a glass of wine, Scott," she said shortly, refilling her own. "You need to stop listening to your father."

"Let the boy have a glass, Lenka." Mr. Denisof had never been able to pronounce Elaine's name properly. It was always Ilyena, or Lenka when he was teasing. She shot him a look, eyebrows arched and lips pursed. Cate knew that look. She'd damn near perfected it from having seen it so many times.

"We all know Scott's a closet drunk anyway, Dad," Alex said, waving his glass at his little brother. Scott glared from under his messy brown hair, and Alex grinned helplessly. "Nothing for Mom's denial."

"I hope you know I put arsenic in your food, dear," Elaine said cheerily.

"Aw, again, Mom? You really just like testing my tolerance for the stuff."

Cate inhaled sharply, shaking her head. "Yikes, Alex. One day she really will kill you, and we're just all going to have a big I-told-you-so laugh."

Alex shrugged. "Will there be hot ladies at my funeral?"

"You'll be dead."

"Ah, potato, po-tah-to."

Scott stared. "That doesn't even make sense."

Mr. Denisof harrumphed into his whiskey, glancing over at his wife over the top of the glass. Her face was smooth, and she was sipping her wine delicately. The Denisof children knew that meant she was trying not to laugh. Mr. Denisof grinned. It was the same toothy grin Cate and Alex had. "Nu, Katya!" he said, cutting the boys' argument off before it could devolve into something actually offensive. "Any prospects for my grandbabies?"

Cate dropped her fork in the middle of her sweet potatoes, and Scott started laughing again. "Oh my God, Dad, can we get through like, one meal where you don't ask about my marriage choices? You know I don't even date."

"Shto ti!" he said, shaking his head. "Do not date, what is this nonsense? When I was your age, back in Russia--"

"We know, Dad, we know," Alex sighed. "Car drive you."

Nikolai stared. Elaine stared.

"Sorry, Papa, no grandkids on the horizon," Cate said, shooting her brother a what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you look. Alex scratched at his five o'clock shadow as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Nikolai sighed and slumped in his chair.

"I had such high hopes."

If she were in a less jovial mood, Cate would have pointed out that she couldn't have grandkids, but she let it lie. She glanced her mother's way--Help?--but Elaine just shrugged uselessly. Elaine always kept silent on this particular subject.

Well, almost always. "So tell me about this Cal," Elaine said, once her husband had stopped his overexaggerated sulking. Everyone suddenly sat up a little straighter, and Alex's eyebrows rose up and up into his hairline. Cate? Actually dating? Alert the presses. "You mention him every so often, sweetheart, but we never really hear about him."

Cate stared daggers at her mother. "There's not really much to say, Mom," she said shortly.

"Come now, of course there is, if he keeps coming up in conversation."

"No, seriously. I mean. Yeah, we're friends or whatever--"

"Or whatever?" Scott said, leaning forward conspiratorially. Great. This was going to be a family effort.

"Yeah," she said, glaring at him as her ears turned pink. "And unless you want me to bring up Allison from the movie store, you'll shut up about it, Scott."

Scott shut up. His ears turned redder than hers. It was Alex's turn to almost snort something out his nose.

Elaine threw up her hands, defeated, and stood up to take the empty wine bottle and potato dish into the kitchen. Most everyone was done eating but Cate, and she steadily worked her way through the tiny portion she'd allotted herself while the three men cleared their pallettes with alcohol and sat back to enjoy the drowsy pleasure of sated appetite. The sound of the sink running in the other room drifted in, along with vague clatters as Elaine scraped off food and set dirty dishes to soak in the sink.

"Have some more meat, Katya," her father said quietly, as she eyed the last bite of the single slice she'd put on her plate.

Cate shook her head. "I'm not really hungry."

The sink turned off immediately in the other room, and Nikolai sat up straighter. Alex and Scott exchanged looks. Half a moment and Cate knew what was going through their heads. It was hard to be hungry when tumors were making you throw up. "I'm fine," she said, smiling reassuringly. "Really." Mostly.

After a moment, the sink turned back on again, and Cate finished off what was on her plate. It was difficult; she was tired, and the new medicine the oncologist had given her took away most of her appetite. But after that remark, the three men were watching her like a hawk while trying not to be noticed doing so, and forcing down a few mouthfuls was better than the inevitable string of worry that would follow otherwise.

"So--Alex, Cate," her mother said after a considerable silence, poking her head out from the kitchen. "What's new with you two?"

Alex looked at Cate. Cate looked at Alex. This was a ritual battle: who would have to make up more shit to feed to their mother so their lives sounded as busy and important as they pretended? Alex, the bastard, took the easy route and vacated the table to find something to put on tv. Cate wanted to punch him, and not only because she didn't have much to say.

Well. She had the one thing.

"Cate?" her mother called expectantly, and stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

Cate shrugged. "Not much, really," she said, taking a sip of wine. "Um. I, uh. I went to see Dr. Hirschfeld on Wednesday."

The scuffle in the living room behind them stopped, and Elaine's hands froze in her dishtowel. Nikolai, sittingly contentedly lazy in his chair, looked much more alert than he had a second ago. Even Scott stopped drumming vaguely against the edge of the table.

"And?" Elaine prompted. Her voice sounded like it was coming from very far away.

"I'm, um. I'm back on meds and radiation," Cate said, shrugging. It was her way to toss things off nonchalantly like that, the family knew. Cate was nothing if not indomitable; she didn't cry, she didn't whine, she didn't let the little things get to her. She wanted this to be a little thing. To say it, have them acknowledge it, and move on. She'd been agonizing over the decision for weeks; she wanted this to be a little thing, so she didn't have to worry it might go wrong. But it had been two years since she'd decided to stop chemo and decrease her radiation, no one knew better than her. Two long years. "Thought I'd...give it another go."

Her father stared at her. Alex had come back silently from the living room, the remote still held uselessly in his hands. No one spoke for a long moment.

"Yeah?" Alex said finally. Something in the air seemed to crack and break. Cate wasn't sure what it was, but as soon as Alex's mouth opened, her mother was sweeping across the room in her long-legged stride. Cate watched her come, confused, trying to speak, and then Elaine had grabbed Cate up in her arms and crushed her to her chest. The room was impenetrably silent. Elaine wasn't even crying. She simply stooped over Cate's chair, her daughter suspended awkwardly between seat and mother's arms, while the men stared, unable to speak. After a very long moment, Nikolai rumbled to his feet and, passing by both his sons, came around Cate's other side and wrapped up both his wife and daughter in his rough, bulky embrace. Cate felt her eyes grow hot and itchy, and then there was more pressure as Scott and Alex came to add their weight to the huddle. She simply sat, immobile, the corners of her eyes pricking.

Elaine's face was closest, Cate's head cradled against her like she'd done when her daughter was still an infant. She spoke quietly, her voice firm and unshakeable. A rock. That was how the Denisof worked; Cate had learned it from her. "I love you very much, Catherine," she said, and a moment later, Cate began sobbing.