The moment dragged on for what seemed like forever as Anneza waited with bated breath at the door of her parents' house, hovering mere inches above the ground. Would they believe that she was their son? Would they reject her as an impostor? Would they recoil at the thought, find her change repulsive? Would they...would they like it? (She shuddered at the thought.) Would they still resent her for...detaching them from her life? Would they even want to speak to her, if they believed that she was who she said she was? Maybe they'd just shut the door and go back inside...
And...and...how should she act? Anneza was already beginning to have second thoughts about the utter contrition she'd gone into this with. Sure, maybe she hadn't been...quite as filial as she ought to have been, maybe she should've called more often, or gone to visit on any kind of semi-regular basis...but then, it wasn't like they were perfect, either. They were the ones who'd driven her to that, after all, with their tacit disapproval of the course she'd chosen in life-
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the one you didn't really want?-
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and if she went in showing too much regret, they might think she'd changed her mind, they might expect her to be the one making the concessions, expect her to change! It would be an affront to her dignity-
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as if you have any left to preserve...-
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and it'd weaken her bargaining position. All the same, she couldn't afford to alienate them. She'd have to show mature regret but display her own adult strength, make it clear that although she was rethinking having gone to such extremes, she was still her own person and not a little child to be directed by grown-ups. She would be respectable, but approachable and affectionate. She would make them see that she was a grown man capable of handling her own affairs and making her own decisions, and it was only sheer bad luck that had put her in a position where she'd have to ask for their help, and she wouldn't be doing it if she had any other alternatives. ...because she didn't want to be a burden, that was, not because she found it uncomfortable to spend time with them.
By the time the door opened, Anneza had, she thought, fully convinced herself of this, and completely intended to follow through on it. What actually happened was that she was confronted with the face of her mother - older and greyer than she last remembered, but gentle and pleasant nonetheless - and collapsed, bawling like a little girl, into her arms. Mostly her reaction came from the simple, sudden realization that she had missed these people after all, and the sudden onrush of years of repressed loneliness and homesickness, but part of it was what she'd seen in that face. In her mother's expression, the space-girl saw the simple, unjudging expression of confusion with which a nice person greets an unexpected stranger, and she didn't see (or rather, was struck by the absence of) a certain weary sadness that she had been unaware was not simply part of her mother's expression. Did...did that mean that...that she was the cause of it? That the only reason her mother didn't feel that way now was because she didn't know who the space-girl was? Anneza began to wonder if she even should tell her.
Her mother, though startled and confused by this reaction, put her arms around her and gently patted her back, not understanding who the strange girl was or what she wanted, but figuring that she could probably use the comfort anyway. After something like two minutes, when Anneza had more or less cried herself out for the moment, her mother drew back and studied her face. "Who are you?" she asked, frowning slightly.
Anneza didn't understand the words, but she could tell what was being asked. Blinking back her tears, she began to fish the photo out of her pants pocket. Ellen, whom she'd removed from her belt and placed on her shoulder, but who had fallen off in the sudden embrace and caught herself on the hem of Anneza's blouse, clambered back up onto her shoulder, smoothing her little dress out and assuming, as best as a doll can, the manner of a professional translator. Choking back the lump in her throat, Anneza handed her mother the photo and reached up to pull Ellen's string.
"This is your son, Mrs. Collins," she said. "She's lost her knowledge of-"
Anneza pulled the string again. "-English, so I'll be translating to and from sign language for her. I'm afraid I have a-"
And again. "-speech impediment of my own, so I apologize in advance for any miscommunication. Let's have a party!" Ellen winced at that; sometimes her outbursts managed to be vaguely appropriate...and other times they could add to an already awkward situation. But fortunately, Mrs. Collins only appeared to be half paying attention to her to begin with. She was staring at Anneza, a mix of anxiety, relief, confusion, irritation, and astonishment on her face.
"Anderson!?" she gasped. "Oh...oh my God, it is you, isn't it? We heard about your court case, we heard you'd changed, but we never heard anything after that...my God, honey, we were so worried! Why didn't you cal-" She caught herself, recalling what the doll-girl had just told her. "But why didn't you at least visit, Anderson! Just to let us know you were all right..." The older woman cycled through a number of different moods as she said this, but by the time she trailed off she was visibly trembling. She flung her arms around the space-girl and hugged her tightly.
Anneza stood there, not really certain how to react. She realized that she'd made her plans as some sort of extended lecture from herself, never really considering how her parents' responses might fit into things - and anyway, she'd gone so far off the rails with her breakdown that she couldn't have gone through with her plans anyway, if she'd even still wanted to. This was all so confusing...why couldn't it be more like work!? In a business environment you could predict how people would act and plan your own actions accordingly to get the outcome you wanted, and if you knew what you were doing you'd stand a decent chance of being right, but family just...just...didn't behave in any rational way at all! For all that had happened between them, for as long as Anneza had been gone and visited only occasionally, the moment she showed back up and showed vulnerability, her mother was embracing her...
After a long moment, her mother drew back again and looked her in the eye. Anneza tried to figure out what kind of a look it was, but she really wasn't sure. "Oh, Anderson, why don't we get you inside," her mother said. "I was just about to put dinner in the oven. Come on, honey." She motioned for the space-girl to follow her. Anneza did; while she drifted after her mother, she held Ellen where she could see her and watched her explain what all her mother had just said. She cringed when she realized that they'd heard about her court case, that they knew what she'd done...
It was so strange; for all that she hadn't been that bothered by it, for all that the most she'd felt was a bit of remorse at lashing out at Toby, and a whole lot of mental self-abuse for the hubris that had been her downfall, it was the idea that her parents knew that really got to her. They must be so ashamed... Part of her brain made a weak attempt to point out that she wasn't actually convicted, but it didn't last a moment. Reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury was hardly the same thing as an actual doubt in the mind of a person who knew her - was it at all implausible that she would have done exactly what she did? And there was a childish little conviction in part of her brain that of course her parents knew, they knew everything, because she couldn't hide the truth from them.
As a matter of fact, there were a lot of childlike feelings surfacing within her; as she drifted through the hallway towards the kitchen, sights, sounds, and smells she hadn't experienced in so long came upon her, and she felt herself tugged in a hundred different directions all at once, re-sparked memories rushing through her brain like a flooded river, eating away the banks of her self-assured grown-up-ness. She hated it. She was an adult, damn it! She was supposed to be done with all this, she was supposed to be a serious, respectable businessperson that everybody took seriously and nobody laughed at, but here she was, being laughed at by passersby and unable to be truly serious even in her own brain because she kept feeling all these little childlike things, all these memories of a life gone by that kept bubbling up and popping in a burst of nostalgia and longing...and...oh...she hated it. Or did she love it? She was so confused...
Her mother led her into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her. Anneza came as close to sitting as was convenient and hunched forward, resting her folded arms on the table and fighting back the urge to break into tears again. Why did she feel this way? How could she have missed this so much when she'd spent so much of her adolescence and young adulthood planning to leave it all behind?
Her mother brought her cocoa, and sat down just across from her. Anneza realized that now was going to be the really hard part, the part where she had to explain everything, and yet somehow keep from revealing what she was really feeling, and decide what it was that she even wanted...
