The End of Forever
Chapter Three: Playing The Blame Game"It just doesn't make any sense," Penelope confided in her mother as she stood at the kitchen counter, helping cut vegetables for a soup they were having for dinner. She took her time, making sure to exercise extreme caution. Mostly, she didn't want the moment to end, she wanted everything to stop, for time to stand still. She needed things to fit back into place they way they had been before. "He seemed fine when I called him on his birthday."
Penelope had been back home for over a week, and the more time she was there, the more time she had to think. One thing she could not get out of her head was the phone call she'd had with Taylor only a little more than a week before she'd gotten the call from her mother saying he was sick. He'd seemed fine. Maybe a little tired, or depressed if she wanted to admit even that much. But he hadn't sounded like someone who was dying, his voice didn't betray any signs that he had cancer.
"Most of what you're seeing with him now," Natalie explained with a deep frown etched onto her face, "is his way of dealing with the news."
Penelope cut into a green pepper and sighed, distracted.
"He wasn't this bad before he found out. He was tired a lot of the time and having some pains, but he's getting older and he's lived a hard life, you know?" She continued and Penelope nodded. That all made sense in her head, but her heart refused to catch up. How could she have talked to her father a couple of weeks ago healthy and alive, and now, seeing him the way he moped around the house and stayed in his bedroom most of the time, he barely had any life left in him?
"I guess I still don't understand why he'd want to spend his…" Penelope trailed off, tears springing to her eyes as her nose burned red. She sniffled a little softly, trying to hide it from her mother, but she saw from her peripheral vision, her mother eyeing her sympathetically. "Why would he want to spend his last little time like this? Holed away like he's al-- already gone?"
Next to her daughter, Natalie sighed. "I don't know, Penny."
"Well," Penelope stated determined, abusing the green pepper in her hand with the knife, caustically chopping it into little pieces. "I wish he wouldn't. I wish he'd do something. I wish he'd play again. Even if only one more time, you know?"
Inconspicuously, Natalie rubbed at her eyes and nodded. "I know," she said, her words clear but strained. "I know. The house has been so quiet lately. It's like we're all…."
Penelope licked her lips and swallowed around her heart threatening to beat its way up through her esophagus. She didn't need her mother to finish that sentence for her to know exactly what the next word was going to be. Just another nasty, four letter word. It was like the house, the family, was already dead. Penelope had never seen it before, but she was suddenly seeing it with fresh eyes, the way it had been her father all along, who'd held their family together. It was her father who'd been the glue when things started unraveling. She had no idea what they were going to do without him.
"My two favorite ladies!"
The voice that wafted into the kitchen was bright and exuberant, full of life and optimism. Penelope wasn't sure how her older brother did it, how he found the strength to keep going every day. He was more like their father than she'd ever realized, she figured, as he leaned over her shoulder from behind and placed a sloppy kiss on her cheek before turning his head to the other side and placed the same kiss on their mother's cheek.
"You've been spending time at Uncle Isaac's again, haven't you?" Natalie teased, her voice wavering, obvious that she'd either been just crying, or currently fighting tears.
Penelope giggled as Ezra let out an appalled gasp and smacked the palm of his hand over his chest. "I don't even know why you would assume that," he said, but Penelope could hear the smile in her brother's voice even as she directed all of her attention on cutting the vegetables in front of her and sliding them from the cutting board into the pot on the stove.
"Because that is so one of his lines."
"It's totally not," Ezra denied, and Penelope felt a little deprived as her brother stepped away from the two of them. She could hear him shuffling around the kitchen as he continued to talk. "I made that one up all by myself."
"Shut up, Ezra." Penelope twisted her torso around to see Ezra sitting at the kitchen table and River, having just appeared in the kitchen, putting his jacket on the back of a chair next to him and dropping down into the seat. "Whatever you're talking about, you're probably lying."
"We don't say shut up in this house," Natalie scorned softly, and Penelope giggled. Some things never change, and the familiarity was comforting. The bickering brothers, the reprimanding mother. The sideline instigating father, however, was holed away in his room, keeping his last breaths to himself.
Penny's heart clenched and she sucked in a deep breath as, behind her, her brothers kept bickering and her mother kept, fruitlessly, trying to shush them. She could see, from the corner of her eye, however, that her mother was wearing a faint smile.
In the distance, Penny heard the front door open and close. Ezra and River, and even her mother, seemed oblivious, though, as their conversation continued. The blonde girl continued at her task, but kept her ears open. She was fairly certain who it would be coming into the house. Viggo was the only one gone and, though he'd hardly said two words to her since she'd arrived, she was still holding out hope that they could mend whatever fences she'd managed to destroy between them.
Only seconds passed before there was the sound of an extra set of feet shuffling into the kitchen, the commotion around her never faltering. Next to her, the door of the fridge opened, and she sucked in a deep breath in preparation. Turning her gaze to the side, she saw the back of her brother's head, bent down just behind the open door of the fridge. He was sliding things around, maybe looking for something specific, she wasn't sure.
"Hey, Viggo," she greeted lightly, not wanting to cause an interruption in her other brothers.
Viggo stood up straight and caught her gaze. When their eyes locked, Penelope felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, just at the fire she could see in his eyes. "Oh," he said, dryly, slamming the door of the fridge closed without retrieving whatever it was he'd been looking for. He snarled at her as she continued to stare, dumbfounded at the anger radiating off of her. "You're still here."
Penelope opened her mouth to respond, but came up empty. What could she say? She was stunned. Viggo didn't even give her time to come up with a response before he was retreating out the back door that was on the other end of the kitchen. Penelope flinched as the door slammed, and the rest of the house went back to silent.
Around the lump in her throat and the tears in her eyes, Penny swallowed all of her emotion and ducked her head down, dropping the knife to the counter. She couldn't let them see what kind of effect those harsh words had just had on her. She had to get out.
As quickly as she could, she scurried through the kitchen. As she walked past the table, River reached out and grabbed her wrist consolingly, but she pulled it away and retreated just as quickly as she'd begun.
She hated the unrest that she felt in the house, the way everything felt so strained and unnatural. She hated that her baby brother was mad at her, that she could hardly hold a conversation with her mother without both of them trying to hide their tears. She hated that her father was locked away in his room dying, the persistent presence of time stealing one more minute of him from their lives with each tick of the clock.
Though the tears started to well up as she entered the living room, she willed them away, swiping at her eyes until she was sure they were dry. She headed down the dark hallway, back to her room. She just needed time, she thought, and then it was like the wind was knocked out of her again. She had time, but how much time did she have with her father? How much time was she going to allow slip by without first fighting for it?
She paused as she passed by the room of her parents. From the hallway, the room on the other side of the door seemed even more deathly quiet than the rest of the house. She couldn't just let him do this to himself, couldn't let him go without a chance to say goodbye. With her nose starting to burn with impending tears again, Penelope forced her hand to raise and knock softly on the door. When there was no response, she almost let herself walk away, almost let herself take it as a sign, but something inside of her told her not to. Instead of walking away, she turned the knob slowly and peaked her head inside of the bedroom where her father was.
He was sitting in an office chair, placed strategically in front of the window that it over looked the backyard as well as the door through which Penelope was inviting herself in. When the door clicked closed behind her, Taylor dragged his eyes up to her face, and for the millionth time in only a few minutes, Penelope felt like she couldn't breathe. He watched her suck in a breath, watched her fiddle with her fingers and rock on her toes. And then he smiled, and Penelope let out her breath, and her nose stopped burning, and everything felt right for once. Everything felt like it was going to be okay, because he'd smiled at her, and it was the first time she'd seen him smile since she left for Los Angeles nearly two years before.
Penelope watched as her father's mouth opened and he licked his dry lips before holding a hand out to her in invitation. "Baby," he greeted softly as she crossed the room with minimal hesitation. He scooted over in the chair -- he was so much skinnier than he'd been a couple of years ago -- and Penelope took the spot next to him, crowding into his side. He smelled like himself, of musk, and cigarettes, and sweets. With a gentle squeeze, Taylor pulled Penelope closer into him and she buried her face into his shoulder, taking in every feeling, every smell, every thought running rampant through her mind.
He held her in silence for several minutes, much like he had when he'd been sitting at the piano the first time she'd stepped through the door in two years. He'd held her and rocked her in silence, and he'd let her cry all over him until she had nothing left in her to cry. She thought it was going to be much of the same this time, except she was doing a good job of not crying, but he surprised her by breaking the silence with the most unexpectedly painful words she could have ever heard.
"Don't be scared," he said, and she sobbed, the dam of tears she'd been holding back broken. In the small space of the chair they shared, he rocked her back and forth. He was the one dying, and he was the one comforting her. She thought it was very backwards and unfair, but she couldn't pull herself from his embrace, couldn't remove her tear stained face from the cottony material of his shirt.
"Daddy," she sobbed and, with a weak arm, he somehow managed to hold her tighter. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "So sorry."
"Don't," he said firmly, his grip loosening, albeit slightly. "Don't blame yourself for this or for anything else."
Penelope pulled away and wiped at her eyes. She wanted to look her father in the eyes, but she couldn't. She couldn't bear to see the dull grey where a vibrant blue had once been. She didn't want to remember his eyes being so lifeless. Instead, she stared down at her hands, at his stomach moving up and down beneath his baggy t-shirt. "I should have been here," she said. "I shouldn't have--"
Before she could finish, Taylor cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her head up so that she had no choice but to look him in the eyes. They were soft, gentle, unafraid. Penelope wanted to sob all over again, but she fought it, managing to only let out a hiccup instead.
"I wanted to see you go find what made you happy," Taylor told her. "Are you happy out there?"
Penelope thought about her punch in-punch out job at the diner, about her falling apart hole-in-the-wall apartment, about Tony, and her empty tampon box of money, and the fights, and the nights spent up late waiting for him, waiting for something to change. Biting her bottom lip to keep another wave of tears at bay, she shook her head. She didn't want her father to be burdened with her unhappiness, but she knew that he'd already seen it written all over her face, and she couldn't bring herself to lie to him, either. "I thought it'd be different," she told him, falling easily back into his embrace.
"You thought it would be easy," he added at the end of her thought process, but she immediately shook her head, dispelling that statement as false.
"I just didn't realize it would be so hard." She took a fist of his shirt in her hand and squeezed, letting it release some of her tension while he continued to hold her and gently rock her back and forth.
The world seemed to stop for a few minutes, allowing Taylor and Penelope their time to reconnect, to say goodbye, to do whatever it was they were doing. Penny sniffled against her father's shoulder, and Taylor rocked his daughter back and forth with just as much care and gentleness as he'd used the very first time she'd been placed in his arms.
Penelope was sure she was close to out of tears again, her heart beating regularly once more, and then Taylor spoke. His voice was deep and rumbling, weak, tainted through years of smoking and singing. "And how are things with Tony?"
Penny stilled. She couldn't actually tell him about the things with Tony. Why worry him over something like that? Something he had no control over? She bit her lip as Taylor lifted her chin up again. "I saw…" Taylor stated, carefully touching the tip of his index finger to the soft patch of skin under her eye. She'd been in Tulsa for over a week, and the bruise that Tony had left on her face had already disappeared, but it was too late for her to hide it from her family. They'd all already seen it. "Did he do that?"
Penelope licked her lips and considered lying, but she knew she didn't have it in her to lie to him. Not here, not now. She couldn't verbalize it, either, because that would make it all the more real to her. Instead, she nodded in response and closed her eyes, unwilling to see the anger or pain flash through her father's eyes.
"Don't worry about it, though," she said as an afterthought. She reopened her eyes to see her father watching her with a seriousness she hadn't seen in years. He was the jokester, the easy going dad, the one to go to when everything was going wrong. "Ezra and River already offered to go take care of him for me."
That admission garnered a smile from her father. The kind so genuine that it pulled up his cheeks and crinkled his eyes. "You'd better let them," he said, and Penelope laughed, nodding as she sniffled.
Releasing the handful of her father's shirt, Penelope shifted sideways a little more and wrapped her free arm over her father's shoulder, her hand cupping the back of his warm head. She pressed her nose to the dip just below his ear and placed a kiss on his neck. "Sing for me," she requested, her words soft but pleading.
Instead of the soothing notes of a familiar song that she'd been hoping for, she felt her father shake his head, heard him swallow harshly. "I can't," he said, and he sounded almost as regretful as Penelope felt. "I'm sorry, but I can't."