Calliope Corvin (sweetsandtarts) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-05-09 19:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, * jeanne, * terri, c: calliope corvin |
WHO: Calliope Corvin & Elisabeth Corvin (NPC)
WHEN: Friday May 3
WHERE: Video Call - Dunhaven to St Louis
SUMMARY: Calliope seeks out some maternal comfort
WARNINGS: Some unfriendly language and not-body-positivity.
They talked to Thomas's parents several times a week. That wasn't unusual. Usually it was a phone call. Sometimes it was a video chat instead. Most of the time they were joyously on speaker phone, the four of them chatting interchangeably, sharing the ins and outs of their days. It was unlike anything she had ever known before meeting Thomas. Her own parents had expected her to be quiet and obedient. They cared little for her opinions or anecdotes and were rather annoyed that she had any to add, in fact. Now with these strange dreams in her head, she had been given yet another maternal figure to wither against. The matriarch of Rock Turtle Cove was just as formidable as her own mother had been and more and more often, for the first time in a long time, she was plagued by those insidious little voices. Honestly, Catherine, you're beginning to resemble a walrus. No dessert tonight. You're busting from your corsets. Nearly like a sausage, really! You should pay more mind to what you're eating, Calliope. Don't you want a husband? I don't care if you're hungry. You've had more than enough. She bit her lip, her foot bouncing and her stomach in knots even as she pulled up the app to request a video call. She needed a familiar, friendly face. She needed a mother. Calliope hesitated just a moment and then hit dial over a smiling photo of Elisabeth Corvin. -- Elisabeth Corvin had been joyously accepting of Calliope from the first moment she'd known of her, all those years ago. Thomas was her only child, and she'd always hoped that he would find a love of his own- though she'd been certain not to push that particular agenda, and certainly not more than Thomas' own then-priorities of academia. If Calliope had been a surprise to Thomas, she had been doubly so to Elisabeth and her husband Robert- but neither had batted an eye before embracing her wholeheartedly into their family. She wasn't quite retired yet, though she worked fewer hours now than she used to while Thomas was growing up. Still, Elisabeth rather imagined that she'd one day grow into one of those blue-haired old librarians that had been fixtures of those places for generations upon generations. Luckily, at least, she wasn't at the library when Calliope's face showed up on her phone's screen. Sitting down on the sofa in their living room and drawing one foot up underneath her as she hit accept video call, Elisabeth wore a bright smile at the sight of her daughter. "Hello, sweetheart!" -- She had thought herself poised enough to make this call, but the moment that she saw Elisabeth's smiling face and heard her cheery greeting, it took everything in her not to crack. Calliope smiled, but it felt strained and faltering, her greeting a small, high thrown breath, "Hi, mama." This woman, who had loved her from the moment she knew about her with no question or condition - the way that a mother should - was the only person she had ever called by the sweet, endearing term. She sucked in a small, suppressed breath and tried to even her emotions, "Tell me about your day?" -- If Elisabeth was aware that something was off about Calliope in that moment, she didn't forecast this on her features. If Calliope just wanted to hear about her day, that was what Elisabeth would provide. A bit of midwestern normalcy could go a long way, right? "I've just gotten back from the library- we had story hour this morning, you know. We read Make Way For Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal- both ones we've read before, but I just couldn't help it. I love McCloskey's illustrations so much." So much so that Thomas and Calliope had once bought her an original hardback copy of one of his books for Christmas. Elisabeth had wept openly over it. "And then we made blueberry shortcakes out on the front patio of the library- all of them piling the berries tall on those little pastry cups and using more whipped cream than their parents would have ever allowed!" -- She focused on Elisabeth’s words and the soothing flow of her voice. She tried to imagine patrons of the library gathered around to hear those stories. Most of the crowd would be young, but their parents were probably lingering nearby, and perhaps they were nostalgic for those tales as well. It had long been one of Calliope’s dreams that one day, when she and Thomas had children, Elisabeth would get to read them those very books for all that they meant to her. When she smiled as she thought of those children being released to their parents on a bit of a sugar high, the tug of her lips came easier, though something still pinched in her chest, uncomfortable and sharp, “As far as snacks go, that’s still more likely to get parental approval than the rice krispies and nutella, remember? With the strawberries?” Unbidden, her mind tallied the potential grams of fat and sugar, racking up the calories, and the flicker of a flinch crossed her features. Calliope shut down that thought process that had been ingrained in her by her mother as quickly as she could manage. “I’m creating a new cupcake for Thomas’s birthday. Something with oreos, I think,” she offered the information almost quietly instead of with her usual fanfare, though keeping herself even took just as much effort. -- "Even if I'd tried to forget those, your father would hardly let me. He asks for them at least once a week!" Elisabeth laughed, genially. "Of course, we both know that I say yes at least half of those times, too." She knew that Thomas' birthday was coming up at the end of the month, but Calliope's apparent lack of excitement over that occasion finally drew the concern past Elisabeth's lips. "Are you feeling alright, dear?" -- The familial terms, at this point, had a different meaning to her than they had in her youth. Though her father had always been a little less menacing than her mother, she’d been no less wary of his expectations of her. Now, the only father she had was Robert Corvin. He was the man who had walked her down the aisle to marry his son, and who had wrapped her up in a bear hug every time he’d seen her since the very first. The thought of him asking over sweets wasn’t a surprising one - like father, like son, but Calliope still asked, “Just half?” It wasn’t that Calliope was feeling a lack of excitement over her husband’s birthday. She loved celebrating with him, especially when they would have a long weekend just prior to the actual day to do so. It was more...the persistent and vitriolic voices of two mother’s in her head that scorned her for her every attempt at baking recently. It hadn’t made her creations any less decadent, and it hadn’t stopped her from taking orders, but it had leached some of her joy from those moments. She found herself hesitating to lick a spoon before she put it in the sink, or staring at herself in the mirror a little too long, pinching at non-existent pudge around her hip bones. The question slammed into Calliope like a freight train, instead of the innocent concern that it was intended to be, and her lower lip quivered. A strangled sob passed her throat, and she hung her head, her hand clasping the phone a little too tightly in her hand as though maybe by doing so she’d magically transport Elisabeth here to her for the motherly hug that she so desperately needed. She shook her head, but reached up to wipe at the tears on her cheeks, taking a rattling breath, “I’m fine. I’m fi--” the hitch in her chest cut off her words, and she pressed her lips together a moment. Compose yourself. Honestly, Calliope. Tears aren’t attractive, dear. They’re a weakness and it’s beneath you. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you,” she swiped roughly across her cheek and squared her shoulders, not daring a sniffle, “I just...wanted to see your face. But now I have, so...it’s all just fine.” -- "Maybe slightly more than half," Elisabeth replied with an easy smile. She wasn't ashamed. Though Elisabeth had suspected that perhaps something was off, she hadn't thought she'd see such a quick and drastic change come over her daughter. (She was briefly relieved that this was a video call, at least, so Calliope couldn't hide this or pretend all was well.) "You've never once bothered me, Calliope sweetheart, and I hardly think you'd start any time soon." She paused, but then offered, "If you want to talk, I'm here to listen. It's just you and me here, my darling girl." -- Maybe she was so quick to backtrack because all other maternal figures had always been disinterested in her problems, especially if it involved emotions of any kind. Her opinions had always been erroneous; her emotions bothersome and unappealing. There was a space of a moment in which Calliope thought it would be best just to hang up the call, turn off her phone, and scream into a pillow until her throat was raw. But she knew Elisabeth Corvin. If she did that, Thomas would be called promptly and he’d be sent home from work to check on her, and then...then she’d have to admit these things to him. He was already on edge over something that he wasn’t telling her and she didn’t want to add to whatever stress that might have been. “I’ve been having bad dreams,” the words crackled past her lips in a bit of a rush, and she drew her legs up onto the couch, wrapping her arms around her knees while she clutched her phone in her other hand. For a moment, she said nothing else, and then she admitted, “My mother was...overly critical of me. About everything. What I did or said or thought or looked like or ate...she had an opinion about my every move, and few of them were flattering. Recently, most nights when I sleep, there’s another woman - another mother figure - who is just like her. They’re both so deeply disappointed in...everything that I am, everything that I do, and everything that I love. It’s resurfacing these...thoughts and habits that I thought I’d buried years ago.” It was the most that she had ever confessed about her own mother’s treatment of her, never having wanted to point out her own flaws in case Elisabeth began to see them just as clearly as Isolda Pemberton always had. -- Not really knowing what to expect, but truly willing to listen, Elisabeth was quiet as Calliope spoke. She'd known that Calliope's parents were no longer in her life, and that this was a deliberate decision, but it had never been her place to ask for further details than that. To hear such things now about the woman who had raised this girl, who had shaped her young life for better or for worse… "I have never more dearly wished that I wasn't so far away from you, Calliope. To be put through such things, in life or in dreams…" Elisabeth shook her head. "They aren't mothers." And she wouldn't ask forgiveness for that assessment, either. "One of them may have carried you, but you surely never resided in her heart the way you do in mine and your father's both." But that didn't take away all the hurts of the past or of the subconscious, and Elisabeth knew it. "You are such a joy and a delight, a blessing to our whole family. You always have been. I would take all that hurt away if I could. I know Thomas would, too. Does… does he know?" -- Though Elisabeth’s assessment might have seemed harsh to others, it wasn’t to Calliope. She had long-since come to the same conclusion. She did get a sense that, in some way, both mothers had carried her...in one life or another. That, however, seemed to be a confession she would hold onto for now. It was...too telling. To worrisome, “For a long time...I desperately wanted my parents to be proud of me. I craved their approval...their love. I did so many stupid things in an attempt to make them happy, and it took me too long to realize that nothing I did would ever be enough.” She let Elisabeth’s assurances soothe her, and after a moment, she nodded, “About my parents? Yeah. He...God, Thomas is the only one that’s known for so long. Mama, he’s the one that got me away from them...figuratively and literally,” Calliope managed a small, apologetic smile, “When I moved in with him that fall...they’d taken away all of my privileges. They broke my phone, took my car, and turned my friends against me. I...got the message across to Thomas on campus. He showed up that same night, and he got me out. I never looked back.” Calliope bit her lip, knowing there were still things that she was omitting from that...things that painted her in a poor light. She looked down at her knees a moment, “I...haven’t told him about the dreams, though. Or that...the things Mother used to tell me are bothering me again.” She leaned back a little, running a hand through her hair, “Something is bothering him right now, too. I can tell...but I don’t know what it is, and I know he would shelf his own problem to worry about me. You can’t tell me that he wouldn’t. I haven’t wanted to push him to tell me if he isn’t ready. We tell each other pretty much everything, you know? So this...it’s not territory that I know how to navigate.” -- Elisabeth remembered when Calliope had moved in with Thomas, the fall before they'd married. How her phone number had changed, with little explanation as to why. She'd never pressed for more details, but the ones given now still surprised her. Thomas didn't necessarily seem the type for such drastic action as Calliope described, but then… it had been for her. Thomas would have done anything for Calliope… and it seemed, perhaps, that he already had. Still, she managed a faint laugh at Calliope's insistence that Thomas would ignore his own problems in favor of fixing hers. "He gets that from me, I'm afraid. But I do wish you would talk with him, sweetheart. Not because I don't want to talk with you, too, but… If he's there, I like to hope that he can make himself useful." -- Calliope managed a small smile and assured her, “My worries are...quieter when he’s around. I don’t think about it nearly so much. That’s part of the reason I haven’t said anything, too. But when he’s not here and I have all this time to myself to think...when I bake...” she trailed off a moment, shaking her head once more, “I’ve started half a dozen times to come up with this new recipe for his birthday cupcakes, and every time I begin, I...doubt myself and I start overthinking everything. I almost bought grapefruit at the store this morning. I hate grapefruit.” She was rambling a little again, but Calliope frowned and sighed, trying to organize her thoughts, “Maybe if I talk to him about this, he’ll be able to tell me what’s putting him on edge, too.” -- That was, perhaps, the most alarming thing Calliope had said yet- because Elisabeth had never known of anything that could take away her joy in baking. "Grapefruit is rather terrible, I agree. And it would make awful cupcakes." Not that she really thought Calliope was considering that. "I imagine that we're all guilty of overthinking, from time to time, my dear. But we can't be afraid to take risks and make mistakes. Especially when we know that those we love will be at our sides, no matter the outcome. You are most assuredly a Corvin, sweetheart. No dreams or insecurities will change that. We love you for all of you." -- Calliope managed a small laugh when Elisabeth said that grapefruit would make awful cupcakes, “You’re not wrong. I’ve never been tempted to try that particular concoction.” Other citrus zest could actually make rather delicious cupcakes - lemon and orange cream, particularly - but she had to draw a line somewhere. She held onto those kind words, and she hoped that she would be able to call back on them when her thoughts were otherwise unkind, “That’s good advice...and thank you, mama. That helps. I love you...and you were just the right person to talk to.” -- The laugh was a good start, and Elisabeth wouldn't push for more- not yet. But she would be texting her son after this call and directing him to give Calliope several tight hugs as soon as he got home. "You're so very welcome, Calliope. I love you very much, and you can call me anytime." |