chapter fourteen
mother vs daughter

        How does the vicious cycle of working and traveling and guilty bank transactions start?  How do Laura and Joeseph Harrington become so caught up in their work that when they look up, it seems as if their children have aged years?

It's simple, really.  It starts with Steve.  But it's not Steve's fault, not really.  His only crime in this instance is existing.  They do care for their children, in their own neglectful way.  They work because they want their kids to be well-off.  Everything they do is for them.  After all, that's how their parents were—mostly absent, but when confronted, they remind them that everything was done for them.  Laura stays and works from home and takes care of the kids while Joesph goes out on a business trip.  And then Joeseph gets bored—or something like that—he gets bored and the next business trip he goes on, he has an illicit affair.

No secrets last forever, of course, and Laura finds out (Steve does too because he's listening with his ear against the door as his parents argue).  This should be where their marriage falls apart and a rift forms between the family.  But it isn't (and a part of Alex wishes that maybe, it had.  Things would've been better that way) and they work through it together, but from then on, she's with him for every business trip.

And now suddenly, Alex is angry.  Alex is acting out and Steve's grades are dropping and they realize that they don't know their own children.  They've done everything for them, and yet they've missed out on so much from them.  So maybe burying themselves in their work and never showing their faces is easier than building a bridge across the chasm that they have formed between them and their own children.  Their children can learn to manage, after all, Laura and Joeseph had to learn to manage too.  And, after all, they're doing all of this for them.

It's sickening to Alex to think that she looks at her parents and knows that she wants to be nothing like them and that her parents looked at their parents the same way and their parents looked at their own the same.  This is the kind of generational cycle that Alex wants to fix because genes aren't the only things that mothers and fathers pass down to their children.  (But the cycle never actually breaks, because in the end, don't we all just become our parents?).

But Alex knows that her parents love them.  Even if she doesn't feel particularly loved.  Their way of loving is from a distance, and Alex knows that it's healthier to be loved up close, but being loved from afar is better than not being loved at all.

Some women are not made to be mothers, and some women are not made to be daughters. Alex thinks that maybe under different circumstances (in which she's less angry, in which she blooms into the prodigy she was supposed to be), in one of the infinite universes that inhabit the spiderweb, they would be Mother & Daughter and not Mother vs. Daughter. Instead, her mother's love chokes her because she tries to mold Alex into something that she is not. Mother tries to make Daughter more like herself because that's how it's supposed to be; Mother & Daughter, Father & Son.  Like Mother, Like Daughter—and Daughter looks so much like Mother, so should Daughter also be more like Mother?  But Laura is all that Alex could have been—pretty, respected, smart—and all that she is not.

But the thing is: Alex would douse the world in kerosene and strike a match and set it ablaze if her mother asked her to. Because fundamentally, daughter is like mother. And Alex would do anything for her mother's love. Because when you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off of knives. And no matter how much Alex tries to hate her mother, she always circles back to forgiving her. Because sometimes when mom is home, she braids Alex's hair and asks about her life, and she takes them out, just the two of them for the day and they have fun. But then there's the times when they fight when they scream until their throats are raw and torn apart because why can't you just be more like your brother? It's a vicious circle of hatred and heartbreak and forgiveness and Alex can't seem to break out of it.

"There," says Laura with a complacent smile, securing the top half of Alex's hair behind her head. "Pretty as a picture."

But Alex doesn't want to be pretty.  She shouldn't need to be pretty because this is a funeral for a dead boy.  But instead of biting back, Alex only smiles (it doesn't reach her eyes). 

"Yeah, I guess."

She stares at herself in the full-length mirror of her bedroom and she feels anything but pretty.  She feels wrong.  She clutches Will's book to her chest because if she can't return it to Will, she can at least return it to Joyce.  Her hair falls past her shoulders and down her back in neat curls while the top section is pulled back and secured (the pins dig into her skull, but she doesn't complain).  Her cheeks are rosy and her lips are red.  She's wearing a black dress that falls just below her knees, far enough to conceal the matrix of scars. 

This is not her.  Alex is scars and scrapes and visceral anger.  What stands before her in the reflection of the mirror is what her mother would've wanted her to become.  But Alex isn't pretty and Alex doesn't feel right in dresses.  There's nothing that feels more wrong with her than when she wears a dress and she's desperate to break free because the feeling doesn't go away and she wants to cry.  She doesn't remember when this queasy feeling started, she supposes that she's always felt this way about herself. 

Takeitofftakeitofftakeitoff.

Alex takes a breath and turns away from the mirror.  The queasy feeling doesn't go away, but it's less visceral now.

"You cared about Will a lot, didn't you?" Laura asks gently as she steers Alex out of the room.

"Um, yeah, I guess," Alex answers.  She doesn't think it's right to leave the sentence there, so she adds, "He is—he was—probably the nicest person I knew."

Laura nods.  "He was always a nice boy."

Alex wants to say more, but she doesn't know what to say because the fact remains that she doesn't know her mother how she wants to.  Times like these are supposed to bring families together, but Alex has never felt farther from hers. 

(I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she itches to say.  I should've tried harder.  I should've been a better daughter.  And maybe her mother will say back, I'm sorry too.  I should've been a better mother).

But this interaction is all just a sweet fantasy in her head.  They're worlds apart, so how would Alex's message ever reach her mother.  Bridging the gap is easier said than done, and maybe if their circumstances were different, Alex would be the one to reach out.  But right now, Alex is tired and angry.

Steve and her father are already waiting for them downstairs.  They're almost mirrors of each other, standing there in their matching black suits.  Everything that Steve has belongs to his father, right down to their DNA.  Fundamentally, Steve will always be like his father, no matter how hard he tries not to be.

Steve does a doubletake when his eyes land on her because he doesn't recognize her either, but he recognizes her as soon as she shoots him a withering glare and he diverts his gaze.  She meets Steve halfway to the door.  Their parents file in behind them and it's how it's always been.  Mother & Father.  Daughter & Son.

. . .

"Alex, stop fidgeting," Laura whispers, almost drowned out by the sound of the pastor's voice.  Alex bites back a retort and stops tugging at her sleeves which feel as though they've cut into her wrists like knives.

Alex stands next to Steve and behind them, their parents; outwardly, a picture-perfect family.  Her father's hand on her shoulder feels more like a burden than comfort and Alex wants nothing more than to shake it off.  Alex likes to think that he tries, but he's never been good at understanding anybody's emotions other than his own—and that's what sets them apart the most; Alex feels too much, and he feels not enough. 

Their relationship isn't much better, he's more distant and more dedicated to his work than their mother, but Alex supposes that it is just his way of loving them (because after all, everything he does is for her and her brother, and what greater love is there than this?).  But there's always been a gap between them, even before the illicit affairs, and maybe that's because Alex always knew that everything goes to Steve (because everything that belongs to Steve belongs to their father).  So when all is said and done, despite the fact that everything her parents do is for both of them, what is Alex left with?

"Be not dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you.  Yes, I will help you.  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.  It's times like these that our faith is challenged.  How, if He is truly benevolent, could God take from us someone so young, so innocent?  It would be easy to turn away from God, but we must remember that nothing, not even tragedy, can separate us from His love."

Everything that the preaches says goes in one ear and out the other.  She's too busy trying not to snap. 

Her eyes travel to Lucas, Dustin, and Mike who stand together in a line and she stares longingly at them as they whisper to each other and laugh.  She desperately wishes to join them because right now, anywhere is better than being with her family.  She meets them by the graves before the service begins and they stare at her, bug-eyed and slack-jawed because what stands before them is not the Alex they knew.  Alex kicks Dustin in the shin and tells them to stop staring at her before she is whisked from them away by her mother's hand on her shoulder.

Then her gaze travels to Jennifer Hayes who practically glows in the rays of the sunlight despite the tears that roll down her cheeks.  Alex has to look away before the heat rushes up to her face.  There are a lot of things that Alex doesn't believe in, Heaven and Hell among them, but she thinks that if angels did exist, Jennifer Hayes might just be one of them.  She's easily the prettiest girl in seventh grade with her pale complexion and rosy cheeks and silvery hair that tumbles down her back.  She's pretty and kind and smart, and Alex wishes that she could have known her before.  Maybe she wouldn't be so angry.

Her eyes find Joyce Byers who looks everywhere but Will's casket, and Alex almost wishes that she hadn't looked.  She's hunched over in her seat, angled away from her older son and ex-husband.  Her hands are clasped tightly in her lap and Alex can see the small movement of her knee bouncing up and down.  Joyce doesn't deserve this.  No parent deserves this.  It's another kind of pain having to bury your child, and even though this casket is empty, Alex still feels sympathy for the woman.

Her parents go to embrace and shake hands with Joyce and her ex-husband with whispered assurances of if you need anything...because they feel the need to uphold their image.  Image is very important in the business world, her father had taught her one day when she was younger, and her parents can't seem to separate themselves from their work for one fucking day.  So, maybe, she is a little too forceful when she drops her rose into the dirt where it will only decay in its permanent home six feet underground.

Alex Harrington is fucking angry, but she is not going to crack.

author's note: and the absent parents return.  the thing is they genuinely do believe that what they're doing is good because in the end, everything that they do is to make sure that alex & steve have a good life, but in doing so, they are neglectful.  they're not necessarily bad people, but they aren't completely good people either (but neither is alex and neither is steve) and it is also a generational type of loop as well; this is how they grew up so they see it as normal that their children grew up this way too.  i am planning for development though but that's not gonna fix past wounds.

& i guess this is my turn to introduce my non-binary alex headcanon.  i do strongly believe that later in life down the road when the lgbt community is more liberated and there's more awareness that alex does identify as non-binary (she/her or they/them pronouns) but also simultaneously identifies as a woman because she's still very connected to her womanhood if that makes any sense????  so like, i'm probably going to start talking about that and her dysphoria a little more, and again you are totally fine to continue using she/her pronouns to refer to them.