Fic Post: Sometimes a Day Goes By
Dec. 21st, 2007 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceTitle:Sometimes a Day Goes By
Author: Gwendolyn Grace (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace)
Genre: Gen, Wee!Chesters (angst)
Rating: PG
Summary: Mt. Pleasant, TX, April, 1988: Dean had told Sam that Dad had issued a gag order about Mom. No questions, no discussion: the topic of Mom was completely off-limits Because Dad Said So. But as with so much that Dean told Sam about their family, it was a lie.
Characters: Wee!Sam (age 4 going on 5), Wee!Dean (age 9)
Author’s Notes: Without contradicting either canon (AHBLII, AVSC) or Origins Issue 1, I’m trying to wrap my brain around how and when Sam learned anything about Mary. I don’t accept that Dean never ever talked about it, more that he invoked the “no talking about Mom” rule for a variety of reasons. Here’s my take on an instance when Sam broke through Dean’s barriers to get him to reveal a few tidbits about their mother. The title is from the Kander & Ebb song of the same name. Thanks of course to the invaluable betas,relli86, heidi8, and my beloved etakyma, who always make sure I'm not going to fall flat on my face.
Disclaimer: Not really mine, but damn if I can’t stop myself from writing and writing and writing….
Wordcount: 2,440
Sometimes a Day Goes By
Mt. Pleasant, Texas: April, 1988
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“C’n I ask you something…about Mom?”
It was warm for April, even at 6:00 PM, and they were on their way back from the playground, but the sweat Dean suddenly felt on the back of his neck was cold, not warm with exertion. He rounded on Sam with a tightening fist. Before he could shout Sam down, Sam held up his hands in capitulation. “I know: I’m not s’posed to ask about her.”
“Got that right.” Dean could feel his nails biting into his palm. He quickened his pace for the final block of their walk. When he reached the gate and the paved walkway to the house where they’d been staying, he turned to make sure Sam had followed. He kept his arms crossed, daring Sam to reintroduce the subject.
But Sam was right behind him. He stood close enough to block Dean’s path back to the gate, but not so close that Dean felt cornered between his brother and the porch. Sam looked at Dean with an expectant, open gaze that made Dean drop his eyes in shame. It was the look Sam used whenever Dean had just said something that the kid wasn’t equipped to handle, like six months ago when he accidentally yelled, at the end of his patience, that there was no (damn) Tooth Fairy. It was the look that made Dean want to buy Sam a perfect life, if it were for sale. “Sorry, Sammy,” he muttered. “It’s…it’s okay. I mean, not if Dad were…. Anyway.” He made himself relax his arms, getting ready to make up a story for whatever Sam was about to ask. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you miss her?”
The question, phrased so simply, knocked Dean’s breath out of him. He sat down heavily on the porch steps.
“How… Sammy, how can you even ask that?”
Sam dug his toe against a split in the wood riser of the bottom step. “M’sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean…I mean, I know you miss her, I just…I meant…alla time? Or just sometimes?”
Dean wasn’t sure at first how to approach Sam’s question. He wanted to say all the time, because not having Mom around, not being able to come home to her after school or see her first thing every morning, not being tucked in every night, that was like having a pinhole in his heart. Every day.
But until Sam had asked about it, he realized unhappily, he hadn’t thought about Mom—or more specifically, hadn’t thought to be sad about Mom—for a long time.
That wasn’t a very pleasant sensation.
“You can’t ask questions like that, Sam,” he snapped.
“Why?”
“Because…because you just can’t.”
“Because it makes you sad?”
Dean made a noise kind of like he was being strangled, cut off at the back of his throat.
“I know it makes Daddy sad to think about her,” Sam explained, as if knowing why made it any easier. “It’s b’cause he misses her. But you allus get angry, Dean. How come?”
“I don’t…I’m not angry when I think about Mom, butt-brain,” Dean said. “It’s ’cause you ask too many stupid questions.”
“I wouldn’t have to ask if you’d just tell me.” Sam stood in front of Dean, one arm held behind his back, catching his other elbow. Waiting. When Dean glared at him, he continued. “I know, you said I’m not s’posed to ask Dad. An’ I know you said he said I’m not even s’posed to ask you. But I wanna know. I hafta know. An’ I promise, I won’t tell anyone if you tell me.”
Clearly, he was not going to be intimidated or put off this time. Something made him want to know what Dean thought. What he felt. Whether it was okay not to miss her, because Sam never even really knew her.
“Please?” Sam said into Dean’s sullen silence.
Dean had told Sam that Dad had issued a gag order about Mom. No questions, no discussion: the topic of Mom was completely off-limits Because Dad Said So. But as with so much that Dean told Sam about their family, it was a lie. Dad had never said one way or the other. Not to Dean, anyway.
Once, when Dean was about six, he had woken up at Pastor Jim’s and gone to look for his father. As he crept down the hallway to the couch where Dad always slept when he was staying, Dean had overheard him and Pastor Jim talking. Mostly, Dad was talking to Pastor Jim. He talked about how deeply he wished Sam would never have to know about what really happened—in the fire, and how Mom had died, and especially about the monsters—and how upset he was by the fact that Dean would always know everything. Dean had decided then and there to keep the truth from Sam. It was easy at the time, because of course, Sam wasn’t talking yet.
Almost as soon as he could start, though, so did the questions. Once Sam realized that other kids didn’t move constantly, that they didn’t live in motels and cabins and with old men, that they had something called a mother, his overactive mind demanded answers. And Dean had been lying, concealing, and deflecting the truth ever since. Eventually, he made up a new rule: Dad says No.
It had won him at least a year of peace. But apparently, using Dad to stave off questions wasn’t going to work much longer.
Sam was still waiting. And for once, Dean didn’t feel like lying.
She’d been Sam’s Mom, too.
“I miss her,” Dean said slowly, feeling his way toward the truth of his answer. “I miss her all the time, Sammy. But…not…. I don’t think about it every second.”
Sam bobbed his head solemnly. “I don’t get it,” he said, changing midstream to shaking his head.
“It’s complicated,” Dean agreed. He tapped the wooden slats of the porch next to him. Sam came and sat. “You know how you left your bunny at that motel a year ago?”
“Yeah,” Sam said glumly. Then he gasped. “Oh! I remember that bunny! Is that what happened to it?”
“That’s what happened to it,” Dean confirmed.
“I remember now,” Sam continued. “We just stayed the one night, an’ we were four hunnerd miles away before I realized I din’t have Bunny.”
“Right. And Dad said you didn’t need him if it took you that long to miss him, an’ he was too far away to do anything about it. You screamed and cried until Dad had to stop the car.”
“Yeah, an’ he made us stay at that rest area until I wasn’t crying no more.”
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, you were upset like that, for maybe a day or two. But then we got to the new town, and, I dunno, you just didn’t think about that dumb doll anymore.”
“Bunny wasn’t a doll. Dolls are for girls.”
“My point,” Dean said sardonically. “Anyway…. You still miss him, but only when you think about him, not any other time. Right?” He put his arm around Sam’s shoulder when his brother sniffed in agreement. “I miss Mom all the time, Sam. But I don’t think about how much I miss her as often as I used to.”
Sam leaned his head against Dean’s neck. “I don’t remember her at all.”
Dean sighed. “I know.”
“I wish I remembered her….”
“I know.”
“Can I see her picture again?”
Dean stiffened. “Dad keeps her pictures in his bag. He’ll be home before dark, he said.”
“Not all of them.” Sam sat up to call Dean on his statement. “The one of Mom and Dad, from back when he was inna Marines, that’s not in his bag.”
“How do you know?” Dean’s tone was defensive.
“I saw you, Dean. I saw you put it in your backpack.”
Dean’s arm convulsed and he withdrew it. “You…I….Don’t spy on me!” He stood and strode away a few steps. Sam’s voice stopped him.
“I wasn’t, Dean! I just saw you, s’all. I thought maybe…maybe you wanted her picture. To keep with you. B’cause you missed her, so having the picture would be….” He trailed off into an eloquent shrug.
Dean rubbed his face in his hand. He didn’t want Sam thinking he had stolen from their own father, any more than he wanted Sam to think he had taken the picture to be selfish. He especially didn’t want Sam to ever consider digging through their dad’s things. Dad had too many secrets, and Sam was too nosy to stay out if he thought he could get away with snooping. He turned back toward Sam. “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell Dad—and don’t you dare go looking in his stuff.”
Sam shook his head. “Not ever. S’dangerous,” Sam assured him. “I know. I swear, Dean. I won’t tell him if you’re sad. If that’s why you took it.”
“It’s not like that…. I took it to school.”
“Why?”
“I had to.” Dean’s voice was a little tight, as if Sam had been torturing the information out of him and he’d broken under the strain. “I’ll get it back.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Miss Templeton made us bring in pictures of our parents. It’s for a project. We’re s’posed to be making family trees.” Dean’s tone made his misery—and his disdain—about the prospect quite clear. He sat on the step wearily.
“How’re you coming up with anything to say?” Sam drew an excited, nervous breath. “Did you make something up?”
“I tried. Miss Templeton didn’t believe it.”
“Did you…ask Daddy about it?” Sam held his breath for the answer.
“Sorta,” Dean said with a single raised shoulder. “I asked him about our Grandpa and Gramma, y’know, his parents.”
“Daddy’s got parents?”
Dean snorted. “Everybody’s got parents, Sammy, you doofus.”
“Mom too?”
“She did,” Dean answered, chewing his bottom lip with his front teeth. “They died when she was little. Older than you, but not as old as me.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I kinda remember…or maybe someone said something, I dunno. Uh…Mom had an uncle. Our great-uncle, Jacob. He took care of her when her folks died. But that’s all I know about it.”
“Did we ever meet him?”
Dean shrugged. “I don’t remember him.”
Sam squirmed a little closer, hugging his knees. One sneaker was untied and Dean leaned over to tie it for him. “How ’bout Daddy’s parents?”
“Dad says they’re gone, too. Our Grandpa died when Dad was in the Marines, and our Gramma died right after I was born, I guess.”
“Was there a fire?” Dean’s fingers fumbled on the laces. Then he remembered: Sam knew they’d had a house fire, but so far, Dean had been able to keep Sam from connecting that to their mother’s death. Dad never said anything about it, either, except that they’d had to leave Lawrence because of the fire, because the house had burned down. So Sam wasn’t really asking about Mom; he was just fishing for information. Anything Dean was willing to give.
Dean patted Sam’s shoe before releasing it and poking him in the stomach. “Naw, Sammy. Don’t worry, fires don’t run in the family. Grandpa died of a heart attack, Dad says, and Gramma had…um…empanada. No: empizema.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s from smoking,” Dean explained the way Dad had done for him. “So don’t smoke.”
“I won’t.”
Dean wrapped his arms around his knees, lips pinched between his teeth. “Mom’s parents were in a plane crash.”
“Oh.”
Dean put his head down on his knees. Along the block, the sounds of car doors slamming and bicycle bells ringing mingled with the faint smell of someone firing up the first barbeque of the season.
“I’ll get the picture back, Sammy. As soon as the project is over. I wouldn’t give it to Miss Templeton until she promised.”
“It’s okay, Dean.” Sam leaned back on the porch, looking up at the peaked roof and the little lamp in the center.
“Dean?”
“Mm.”
“Did Mom sing us lullabies?”
“Course she did.”
“Do you remember any?”
Dean lay back to join Sam in his inspection of the porch ceiling. He closed his eyes in concentration. It was hard to think back before that night; all his memories were hazy and tinged black around the edges. “There was one song…. She’d rock you in the rocking chair in the nursery and she’d sorta hum, under her breath…. I remember her doing it, but I don’t remember how it goes.”
“Does it…hurt to think about her?”
“Sometimes. When I’m not expecting to. It kinda slams into my head, and my chest gets tight. And I want her back.”
“But not all the time?”
Dean sighed. His chest felt tight now. “No, not all the time.”
“Is that why you get mad?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Dad, too?”
Dean grunted. He wasn’t sure; he just knew in his bones that it was only ever okay to talk about Mom if Dad brought her up first. Which Dad never did. Sam didn’t remember seeing Dad right after it happened, or those first few months when it was just the three of them, but Dean knew. If he felt the shock and guilt and shame of forgetting to be sad about Mom, how must it make Dad feel? He wasn’t about to let himself—or Sam—be the source of any of those feelings in their father.
Sam felt for Dean’s hand. “Dean?”
“Still here, Sammy.”
“Hum something.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Like what?”
He felt Sam shrug beside him. “Anything. Doesn’t have to be a lullaby. Whatever you think of.”
Dean sighed heavily. “We should go inside and clean up. Dad’ll be home soon.”
“Please? Just hum something. Like Mom used to.” Sam repositioned his head onto Dean’s shoulder, forcing him to hook his arm around his brother.
After a few seconds, a bass riff crept into Dean’s head and he let it make its way out between his closed lips.
“Hm-hm hm hm hm. Hm. Hm-hm hm hm hm-hm hm hm hm. Hm. Hm-hm hm hm,” he ascended in the ragged scale, paused, then descended in reverse to repeat. He went into the verse, see-sawing up and down between the same two notes.
“Dean, that’s Devo!” Sam giggled. “Mom didn’t hum Devo!”
“How do you know, squirt?” Dean teased imperiously. “Mom was cool. She totally would’ve hummed Devo.”
“Dean, you’re so weird.”
“Look who’s talking, freakazoid.” Dean pushed up and brought them both back to sitting position. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
~Fin~
Sometimes a Day Goes By
Sometimes a day goes by,
One whole entire day,
When I don’t think of her.
Twenty-four hours pass.
I look around and find
That I haven’t thought of her.
Not even when that’s somewhere we used to go.
Not even if that’s someone we used to know.
It’s hardly every day,
It’s most unusual,
In fact, I can’t remember when.
But…
Sometimes a day goes by,
When I don’t think of her
’Til morning comes
And then…
There she is…again.
Author: Gwendolyn Grace (
gwendolyngrace)Genre: Gen, Wee!Chesters (angst)
Rating: PG
Summary: Mt. Pleasant, TX, April, 1988: Dean had told Sam that Dad had issued a gag order about Mom. No questions, no discussion: the topic of Mom was completely off-limits Because Dad Said So. But as with so much that Dean told Sam about their family, it was a lie.
Characters: Wee!Sam (age 4 going on 5), Wee!Dean (age 9)
Author’s Notes: Without contradicting either canon (AHBLII, AVSC) or Origins Issue 1, I’m trying to wrap my brain around how and when Sam learned anything about Mary. I don’t accept that Dean never ever talked about it, more that he invoked the “no talking about Mom” rule for a variety of reasons. Here’s my take on an instance when Sam broke through Dean’s barriers to get him to reveal a few tidbits about their mother. The title is from the Kander & Ebb song of the same name. Thanks of course to the invaluable betas,
relli86, heidi8, and my beloved etakyma, who always make sure I'm not going to fall flat on my face.Disclaimer: Not really mine, but damn if I can’t stop myself from writing and writing and writing….
Wordcount: 2,440
Sometimes a Day Goes By
Mt. Pleasant, Texas: April, 1988
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“C’n I ask you something…about Mom?”
It was warm for April, even at 6:00 PM, and they were on their way back from the playground, but the sweat Dean suddenly felt on the back of his neck was cold, not warm with exertion. He rounded on Sam with a tightening fist. Before he could shout Sam down, Sam held up his hands in capitulation. “I know: I’m not s’posed to ask about her.”
“Got that right.” Dean could feel his nails biting into his palm. He quickened his pace for the final block of their walk. When he reached the gate and the paved walkway to the house where they’d been staying, he turned to make sure Sam had followed. He kept his arms crossed, daring Sam to reintroduce the subject.
But Sam was right behind him. He stood close enough to block Dean’s path back to the gate, but not so close that Dean felt cornered between his brother and the porch. Sam looked at Dean with an expectant, open gaze that made Dean drop his eyes in shame. It was the look Sam used whenever Dean had just said something that the kid wasn’t equipped to handle, like six months ago when he accidentally yelled, at the end of his patience, that there was no (damn) Tooth Fairy. It was the look that made Dean want to buy Sam a perfect life, if it were for sale. “Sorry, Sammy,” he muttered. “It’s…it’s okay. I mean, not if Dad were…. Anyway.” He made himself relax his arms, getting ready to make up a story for whatever Sam was about to ask. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you miss her?”
The question, phrased so simply, knocked Dean’s breath out of him. He sat down heavily on the porch steps.
“How… Sammy, how can you even ask that?”
Sam dug his toe against a split in the wood riser of the bottom step. “M’sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean…I mean, I know you miss her, I just…I meant…alla time? Or just sometimes?”
Dean wasn’t sure at first how to approach Sam’s question. He wanted to say all the time, because not having Mom around, not being able to come home to her after school or see her first thing every morning, not being tucked in every night, that was like having a pinhole in his heart. Every day.
But until Sam had asked about it, he realized unhappily, he hadn’t thought about Mom—or more specifically, hadn’t thought to be sad about Mom—for a long time.
That wasn’t a very pleasant sensation.
“You can’t ask questions like that, Sam,” he snapped.
“Why?”
“Because…because you just can’t.”
“Because it makes you sad?”
Dean made a noise kind of like he was being strangled, cut off at the back of his throat.
“I know it makes Daddy sad to think about her,” Sam explained, as if knowing why made it any easier. “It’s b’cause he misses her. But you allus get angry, Dean. How come?”
“I don’t…I’m not angry when I think about Mom, butt-brain,” Dean said. “It’s ’cause you ask too many stupid questions.”
“I wouldn’t have to ask if you’d just tell me.” Sam stood in front of Dean, one arm held behind his back, catching his other elbow. Waiting. When Dean glared at him, he continued. “I know, you said I’m not s’posed to ask Dad. An’ I know you said he said I’m not even s’posed to ask you. But I wanna know. I hafta know. An’ I promise, I won’t tell anyone if you tell me.”
Clearly, he was not going to be intimidated or put off this time. Something made him want to know what Dean thought. What he felt. Whether it was okay not to miss her, because Sam never even really knew her.
“Please?” Sam said into Dean’s sullen silence.
Dean had told Sam that Dad had issued a gag order about Mom. No questions, no discussion: the topic of Mom was completely off-limits Because Dad Said So. But as with so much that Dean told Sam about their family, it was a lie. Dad had never said one way or the other. Not to Dean, anyway.
Once, when Dean was about six, he had woken up at Pastor Jim’s and gone to look for his father. As he crept down the hallway to the couch where Dad always slept when he was staying, Dean had overheard him and Pastor Jim talking. Mostly, Dad was talking to Pastor Jim. He talked about how deeply he wished Sam would never have to know about what really happened—in the fire, and how Mom had died, and especially about the monsters—and how upset he was by the fact that Dean would always know everything. Dean had decided then and there to keep the truth from Sam. It was easy at the time, because of course, Sam wasn’t talking yet.
Almost as soon as he could start, though, so did the questions. Once Sam realized that other kids didn’t move constantly, that they didn’t live in motels and cabins and with old men, that they had something called a mother, his overactive mind demanded answers. And Dean had been lying, concealing, and deflecting the truth ever since. Eventually, he made up a new rule: Dad says No.
It had won him at least a year of peace. But apparently, using Dad to stave off questions wasn’t going to work much longer.
Sam was still waiting. And for once, Dean didn’t feel like lying.
She’d been Sam’s Mom, too.
“I miss her,” Dean said slowly, feeling his way toward the truth of his answer. “I miss her all the time, Sammy. But…not…. I don’t think about it every second.”
Sam bobbed his head solemnly. “I don’t get it,” he said, changing midstream to shaking his head.
“It’s complicated,” Dean agreed. He tapped the wooden slats of the porch next to him. Sam came and sat. “You know how you left your bunny at that motel a year ago?”
“Yeah,” Sam said glumly. Then he gasped. “Oh! I remember that bunny! Is that what happened to it?”
“That’s what happened to it,” Dean confirmed.
“I remember now,” Sam continued. “We just stayed the one night, an’ we were four hunnerd miles away before I realized I din’t have Bunny.”
“Right. And Dad said you didn’t need him if it took you that long to miss him, an’ he was too far away to do anything about it. You screamed and cried until Dad had to stop the car.”
“Yeah, an’ he made us stay at that rest area until I wasn’t crying no more.”
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, you were upset like that, for maybe a day or two. But then we got to the new town, and, I dunno, you just didn’t think about that dumb doll anymore.”
“Bunny wasn’t a doll. Dolls are for girls.”
“My point,” Dean said sardonically. “Anyway…. You still miss him, but only when you think about him, not any other time. Right?” He put his arm around Sam’s shoulder when his brother sniffed in agreement. “I miss Mom all the time, Sam. But I don’t think about how much I miss her as often as I used to.”
Sam leaned his head against Dean’s neck. “I don’t remember her at all.”
Dean sighed. “I know.”
“I wish I remembered her….”
“I know.”
“Can I see her picture again?”
Dean stiffened. “Dad keeps her pictures in his bag. He’ll be home before dark, he said.”
“Not all of them.” Sam sat up to call Dean on his statement. “The one of Mom and Dad, from back when he was inna Marines, that’s not in his bag.”
“How do you know?” Dean’s tone was defensive.
“I saw you, Dean. I saw you put it in your backpack.”
Dean’s arm convulsed and he withdrew it. “You…I….Don’t spy on me!” He stood and strode away a few steps. Sam’s voice stopped him.
“I wasn’t, Dean! I just saw you, s’all. I thought maybe…maybe you wanted her picture. To keep with you. B’cause you missed her, so having the picture would be….” He trailed off into an eloquent shrug.
Dean rubbed his face in his hand. He didn’t want Sam thinking he had stolen from their own father, any more than he wanted Sam to think he had taken the picture to be selfish. He especially didn’t want Sam to ever consider digging through their dad’s things. Dad had too many secrets, and Sam was too nosy to stay out if he thought he could get away with snooping. He turned back toward Sam. “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell Dad—and don’t you dare go looking in his stuff.”
Sam shook his head. “Not ever. S’dangerous,” Sam assured him. “I know. I swear, Dean. I won’t tell him if you’re sad. If that’s why you took it.”
“It’s not like that…. I took it to school.”
“Why?”
“I had to.” Dean’s voice was a little tight, as if Sam had been torturing the information out of him and he’d broken under the strain. “I’ll get it back.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Miss Templeton made us bring in pictures of our parents. It’s for a project. We’re s’posed to be making family trees.” Dean’s tone made his misery—and his disdain—about the prospect quite clear. He sat on the step wearily.
“How’re you coming up with anything to say?” Sam drew an excited, nervous breath. “Did you make something up?”
“I tried. Miss Templeton didn’t believe it.”
“Did you…ask Daddy about it?” Sam held his breath for the answer.
“Sorta,” Dean said with a single raised shoulder. “I asked him about our Grandpa and Gramma, y’know, his parents.”
“Daddy’s got parents?”
Dean snorted. “Everybody’s got parents, Sammy, you doofus.”
“Mom too?”
“She did,” Dean answered, chewing his bottom lip with his front teeth. “They died when she was little. Older than you, but not as old as me.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I kinda remember…or maybe someone said something, I dunno. Uh…Mom had an uncle. Our great-uncle, Jacob. He took care of her when her folks died. But that’s all I know about it.”
“Did we ever meet him?”
Dean shrugged. “I don’t remember him.”
Sam squirmed a little closer, hugging his knees. One sneaker was untied and Dean leaned over to tie it for him. “How ’bout Daddy’s parents?”
“Dad says they’re gone, too. Our Grandpa died when Dad was in the Marines, and our Gramma died right after I was born, I guess.”
“Was there a fire?” Dean’s fingers fumbled on the laces. Then he remembered: Sam knew they’d had a house fire, but so far, Dean had been able to keep Sam from connecting that to their mother’s death. Dad never said anything about it, either, except that they’d had to leave Lawrence because of the fire, because the house had burned down. So Sam wasn’t really asking about Mom; he was just fishing for information. Anything Dean was willing to give.
Dean patted Sam’s shoe before releasing it and poking him in the stomach. “Naw, Sammy. Don’t worry, fires don’t run in the family. Grandpa died of a heart attack, Dad says, and Gramma had…um…empanada. No: empizema.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s from smoking,” Dean explained the way Dad had done for him. “So don’t smoke.”
“I won’t.”
Dean wrapped his arms around his knees, lips pinched between his teeth. “Mom’s parents were in a plane crash.”
“Oh.”
Dean put his head down on his knees. Along the block, the sounds of car doors slamming and bicycle bells ringing mingled with the faint smell of someone firing up the first barbeque of the season.
“I’ll get the picture back, Sammy. As soon as the project is over. I wouldn’t give it to Miss Templeton until she promised.”
“It’s okay, Dean.” Sam leaned back on the porch, looking up at the peaked roof and the little lamp in the center.
“Dean?”
“Mm.”
“Did Mom sing us lullabies?”
“Course she did.”
“Do you remember any?”
Dean lay back to join Sam in his inspection of the porch ceiling. He closed his eyes in concentration. It was hard to think back before that night; all his memories were hazy and tinged black around the edges. “There was one song…. She’d rock you in the rocking chair in the nursery and she’d sorta hum, under her breath…. I remember her doing it, but I don’t remember how it goes.”
“Does it…hurt to think about her?”
“Sometimes. When I’m not expecting to. It kinda slams into my head, and my chest gets tight. And I want her back.”
“But not all the time?”
Dean sighed. His chest felt tight now. “No, not all the time.”
“Is that why you get mad?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Dad, too?”
Dean grunted. He wasn’t sure; he just knew in his bones that it was only ever okay to talk about Mom if Dad brought her up first. Which Dad never did. Sam didn’t remember seeing Dad right after it happened, or those first few months when it was just the three of them, but Dean knew. If he felt the shock and guilt and shame of forgetting to be sad about Mom, how must it make Dad feel? He wasn’t about to let himself—or Sam—be the source of any of those feelings in their father.
Sam felt for Dean’s hand. “Dean?”
“Still here, Sammy.”
“Hum something.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Like what?”
He felt Sam shrug beside him. “Anything. Doesn’t have to be a lullaby. Whatever you think of.”
Dean sighed heavily. “We should go inside and clean up. Dad’ll be home soon.”
“Please? Just hum something. Like Mom used to.” Sam repositioned his head onto Dean’s shoulder, forcing him to hook his arm around his brother.
After a few seconds, a bass riff crept into Dean’s head and he let it make its way out between his closed lips.
“Hm-hm hm hm hm. Hm. Hm-hm hm hm hm-hm hm hm hm. Hm. Hm-hm hm hm,” he ascended in the ragged scale, paused, then descended in reverse to repeat. He went into the verse, see-sawing up and down between the same two notes.
“Dean, that’s Devo!” Sam giggled. “Mom didn’t hum Devo!”
“How do you know, squirt?” Dean teased imperiously. “Mom was cool. She totally would’ve hummed Devo.”
“Dean, you’re so weird.”
“Look who’s talking, freakazoid.” Dean pushed up and brought them both back to sitting position. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
~Fin~
Sometimes a Day Goes By
Sometimes a day goes by,
One whole entire day,
When I don’t think of her.
Twenty-four hours pass.
I look around and find
That I haven’t thought of her.
Not even when that’s somewhere we used to go.
Not even if that’s someone we used to know.
It’s hardly every day,
It’s most unusual,
In fact, I can’t remember when.
But…
Sometimes a day goes by,
When I don’t think of her
’Til morning comes
And then…
There she is…again.
