Canned Soup and Grilled Cheese (155)

PSI-3

She hadn’t been very much Ann back then. They were two people, they were comfortable with that, but she didn’t have all her things. Oh, she had a lot of Milo’s things that she’d taken, but not her things, like her friends and her job at the Black Orchid and all the dresses and shoes. She didn’t even have her job as a prostitute anymore. She’d barely put her dresses (all two of them) in the closet back when she got lost trying to use the kitchen.

Anyway, that was why she gasped and dropped the can of green beans when Mordecai came in. There was a lot more overlap back then.

“I’m sorry, Miss Rose. Are you trying to have lunch?”

“Miss Hyacinth said we could!”

He took a step back. He was always doing that and it made her feel huge and obnoxious. She hugged herself around the middle and dropped her head. Overlap.

“Um, she didn’t bother to show you around or tell you where anything was, though, did she?”

Ann winced and regarded the obvious disarray, with all the drawers pulled out and a heap of crockery on the table. “I-I-I can’t find your stove. There’s all these pots and pans and half of them have got holes in them and I can’t find your stove.” Her eyes brimmed over tears and she rubbed them with the stained edge of her sleeve. “Aren’t stoves… big? Great big metal things with a pipe?”

“They are and that’s why we don’t have one anymore,” he said, nodding. “You have managed to find what we’re using at the moment, but it’s completely mental, so you can’t be expected to figure it out on your own.” He bent and pulled out one of the lower drawers, pulled it out entirely and laid it on the countertop. “Hyacinth can’t be bothered to save things that we’re using. We’ve had some of those little camp stoves since the siege but they never go long. It’s pointless to shout at her, like bouncing croutons off a brick wall. When we don’t have a stove, we have these little guys.” In the drawer was an open cardboard box labeled Alco-Fine Canned Heat, and an assortment of cans with the labels peeled off and holes punched in them. “Have you used canned heat before?”

Ann nodded slowly. Not for food, it wasn’t worth using for food. For when it was cold and wet and there wasn’t anything else that would burn. For staying alive. Canned heat was very good for that.

“Matches are in here… usually.” He sighed and began examining the other drawers. “You know, you might as well have all the drawers out when you’re in here. Things in this house grow little legs. Here we go. Sometimes we get the auto-ignite kind, but these are usually cheaper. What would you like to heat up?”

Ann shook her head and turned away. She hadn’t the slightest idea. She didn’t even know where to begin. They’d never had to cook for themselves. It was either big industrial meals dished out for them at a soup kitchen or the workhouse, or things they’d scrounged or stolen that there was no point in being fancy with. Even if there had been a stove, her ability to use it was purely theoretical.

He touched her hand, just gingerly, and smiled at her. “It’s probably a good idea to look at what we’ve got for materials before we start dreaming of chicken pies and hot coffee, anyway. I think we can have as many burners as we need at the moment. If she’s been eating up all the pots and pans we might have to cook everything in its own can. Condensed soup is just awful that way, like aspic. It would be better to eat cereal.”

Ann conferred with Milo, frowning. They weren’t sure if cereal required a stove, or if it was okay to eat it out of the box like they usually did. I don’t think so, no… We’d have to put it on a plate or something, right? No, the kids on the box have a bowl… and a grapefruit half…

They had been very hopeful, when Hyacinth was not in the kitchen, that they might have a little space to figure this out on their own. Without being embarrassing. Without people.

Can’t we just say we’re not hungry anymore and go away, Ann?

Look, Milo, maybe if we leave him alone he’ll do the cereal and then we’ll know how to do that for sure!

“Aha!”

She shuddered and pressed a hand to her mouth. He held up a frying pan and spun it around to reveal the intact bottom. “What do you think about canned soup and grilled cheese, Miss Rose?”

He showed her how to do that, which in Hyacinth’s house required quite some lateral thinking. The steel cans with the holes in them were upended over the canned heat to make a cooking surface: two of them to get the soup hot enough, three to grill cheese. Butter was hiding in a little ceramic crock with an inch of water inside and a bell stuck to the lid. Hard cheese was in the pantry, slowly moldering but you could scrape that off. Bread in a paper bag — stale and better eaten fried or as toast. Metal things were either roughly made of tin or liable to have gone the way of the stove. The cheese-slicer was missing its wire and they had to carve bits off with a butter knife. He showed her how to butter the end of the bread before slicing so you didn’t tear holes in it.

“Can opener,” he muttered, pawing through drawers. “She can open cans all she likes so she never bothers about can openers. If you can’t find one there isn’t one and you’ll have to hunt her up to spring the lids off.”

“Oh, Milo and I know lots of ways to open cans!” Ann said bravely. “Is there a brick we can use?”

He regarded her with a pained expression and took a step back.

Ann frowned and straightened her dress. A little piece of paisleyed handkerchief peeked out of the top and she tucked it back in. “We don’t smash them open, if that’s what you’re imagining, Mr. Eidel. If you rub the lids in a circle against a rough surface they become thin enough at the edges to pry open with a spoon. That is useful knowledge to have during a siege.”

He made a weak smile. “I suppose I got used to having people around who could do magic when I needed. I didn’t have to do things like that. If we got through the siege together, you’re really going to have to start calling me Mordecai.” He offered his hand for shaking.

“And you should call me Ann,” she said. She lifted her hand and did not close the distance between them.

They were evaluating each other, she knew that now. Well, she’d always known she was doing it. She kept a running tally of everything that might hurt Milo, and also things that wouldn’t hurt him that he was still scared of. She pushed him towards scary things when there wasn’t any danger, she still did that. But Mordecai had been trying to make sense of the crazy man who wore dresses and wanted to be called two different names too. Are you going to hurt Erik? Are you going to hurt me? Erik had not been in the kitchen that day, despite liking to follow his uncle around like a tail. In retrospect, she respected that. Back then, it made her suspicious: He doesn’t trust his child around me.

Hyacinth was just so tickled she had solved the Mystery of Milo that she never seemed to give a thought to safety, perhaps that and she had a much lower threshold for it. She only had herself to look after. Erik… Erik had been so little.

And Milo hadn’t been very much more resilient or capable, let’s face it. Maybe a little less.

She and Mordecai had both offered each other first names before, of course. Neither had quite accepted.

He leaned forward and clasped her hand, just briefly, then he gestured to the pantry. “Is there anything in particular you like for soup? Or even just to eat? Hyacinth hates shopping and I’m not really great at supply runs without… Well, without someone telling me what to do the whole time. If you don’t like boxed noodles, you’re in trouble.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I… Milo and I just like it when there’s food.” She watched him to see how that mention of Milo as a separate person landed. It seemed to do well enough, at least he did not shudder or step away. She managed a smile and a shrug. “We’re not really used to kitchens, I don’t know if you can tell.”

“What about at home when you were…” He trailed off, he debated with himself, he got annoyed with himself — and with her — and finally he said, “I’m sure you or the two of you must’ve been younger at some point, whatever you are.”

“Yes.” She walked past him and into the pantry to have a look at the cans. There weren’t all that many, and only two soups, tomato and vegetable beef. Both of which were not very nice bolted cold out of a can, but she selected the tomato. “Tomato soup is good, if you don’t mind showing us how to do it properly. I suppose we come off a bit backward.”

He laughed and put both hands over his face. “Oh, no. I’m sorry. I’m standing in a kitchen with no stove and no can opener and no doors on the cabinets, and my door doesn’t have hinges and there’s a hole in the roof… I don’t come off as functional, do I?”

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” Ann hedged. There were already burners set up and cheese sandwiches assembled and the necessary cookware and utensils (barring the can opener) had been discovered.

He glanced around and shook his head. “I had to learn it. You will too. I don’t mind helping you… You might be able to give me a hand with the shopping once you’re Hyacinth’s-house-literate.”

“Milo and I could always mind Erik for you,” Ann said, just on the very edge of coldness.

She watched him. He didn’t shut down and turn away or put on a happy mask and try to make excuses. He watched her back for a moment and then said cautiously, “Erik is a little afraid of Milo. Not you, he likes you. He was very impressed with you right away. But he doesn’t understand why Milo acts the way he does, and he doesn’t see Milo an awful lot. There’s just no chance to get used to him. He doesn’t have any problem buying that you’re two people, it’s not that…”

“Do you have a problem with it?”

He made a pained sound and closed his mouth, teeth first so there was an instant of grimacing before he looked away. “I… am having difficulty with it, but I don’t want you to think that’s the same as a problem. Anyway, it’s not your problem. I have seen two people in one body so many times I’m sick of it, but that’s not like you and Milo. And… And you’re just going to have to let me come around to it my own way. But I don’t want to be unkind to you. Or Milo.”

“No, you haven’t been that,” she allowed. “To me or to him. I’m sorry… We’re sorry for the way he behaves sometimes. He is very aware that he can be… off-putting. That’s part of the problem. He’s doing his best, but Erik doesn’t have to see him if that’s too much right now. He’s very young… Erik is.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all,” he said. “I think if Erik could sit down with him and… Well, I don’t know. Something Milo is comfortable doing that’s fun. For both of them. Erik doesn’t see Milo enough, that’s the problem. He doesn’t have enough information so he’s filling in the blanks with scary stuff. Milo isn’t… Well, I’ve got an idea he’s painfully shy. Maybe that’s not all of it, but a lot of it…?” he asked gently, and he leaned in a little like he might catch Milo peeking out from behind the Ann-mask to check.

It was a test, to see if she was some purely defensive object that Milo might abandon when the situation became less stressful. She wasn’t sure how well she had passed it, even now. What did he see? Two people? One? Milo squinching up her face to see with no glasses and then fading like when they talked in the mirror, or just Ann?

“Perhaps a jigsaw puzzle,” she said. “Mr. Eidel, we’d really prefer it if you spoke to whichever of us is in front of you. Milo doesn’t like people poking at him that way.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to understand… But I’m doing it a bit like Hyacinth, I think. Knocking things over to see what spills out. I’ve picked up some bad habits living here. I used to be subtle, you know.” He flung a gesture towards the basement, where Hyacinth was making a new window for Room 103. “She’s worn me away like a sand blaster. There’s an intellect in here somewhere, I promise you. I just keep having to use it as a bludgeon. And even then it doesn’t work. Please give me the can, Miss Rose. If I annoy her enough with cans, maybe next time she’s about to destroy the opener a little flag will go up and she’ll hesitate.”

“I can open it, Mr. Eidel.”

“I believe you and I’d like you to show me sometime but Hyacinth is faster and this is ridiculous. I won’t tell her it was anything to do with you, if you’re worried about that. She can be annoyed with me. She always is, anyway.” He smiled.

Now he was poking her. Are you shy like Milo is?

She was not. There was a lot more overlap back then, but her entire purpose was to not be shy like Milo was. Even if she didn’t feel brave and would rather spend half an hour scraping a can on a brick, she had to be brave, or else what was she?

“I’ll take it to her,” she said, over Milo’s protest. She smiled. She did that very well. “If this is how the house works, I shall have to learn how to do it!”

When she came back from the basement with her heart hammering in her chest after seeing how Hyacinth blasted open cans for the first time, he was doing a sandwich in a frying pan over three steel cans. “Butter side down,” he told her. “I’ll do this one and you can do the next one. Did she flash-blind you? Are you okay?” He abandoned the sandwich and sat her in one of the kitchen chairs. She was still holding the can and he took it from her.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she managed finally.

“Something entirely more reasonable, I should think,” he said. “You’ll probably get used to it. But if you want to leave right now and go live someplace normal, I wouldn’t blame you. It’d be the sensible thing.”

“I don’t think Milo and I would fit in very well someplace normal, do you?”

“Ah, that’s how she traps you,” he said. “After a few weeks not having ordinary people rustling around and banging all your weird corners off, you get to like having weird corners. You become this bizarre object that can’t live anywhere but a curio cabinet with more bizarre objects. Then you’re stuck.”

“Is that really how it works here?” Ann said hopefully. Milo had been enchanted with the idea of mere physical space. But there was more here than that. There might even be room enough for them to… to first figure out who they were and then be that. Without a whole lot of gray, colorless people fencing them in and saying, No, don’t, all the time.

Mordecai’s, I don’t understand but I’m trying, was so much better. There was so much more living space under a statement like that.

“It does if you’re doing it right,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got to flip the sandwich. Do you think you can scrape the tomato soup out of the gunshot wound?”

She laughed. It did look a lot like that. “I’ll do my best, dear. Does Erik like to draw, do you think?”

He nodded. “We go through more crayons than can openers in this house.”

“Milo likes to use a pencil,” she said. “But that’s something they could do together, if you don’t mind.”

“No, I think it’s a great idea. Is Milo going to mind me hanging around at the start? I’ve found Erik doesn’t swim very well if I just throw him in. I’ll have to make some excuse and sneak out.”

“He won’t mind at all if he knows that’s why.” He might a little, just because it was another pair of eyes looking at him, but at least he’d know the brain behind them wasn’t thinking, I don’t like that person, he’s not safe.

And even if Mordecai was thinking that a little, he’d given her a very nice plausible excuse to give to Milo.

“Ah! Ann, grab me a fork! I’m making hash out of this sandwich. The damn cheese won’t stick but the bread is! How can I possibly have the heat too high and too low at the same time?”

“I’ve got one, Em! Let me see it!” She leaned past him to rescue the crumpled sandwich and he took the soup pot — which was starting to spill! — from her at the same time, like some kind of avant garde choreography.

“Em?” he said, blinking.

She blushed beneath her makeup. “Well, it’s shorter, isn’t it, dear? It was an emergency. Do you mind?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Oh, that’s never mattered before. Why start now?”

But she was near enough that she detected smiling under the exasperation.

———

He knew, she thought, contemplating a can of tomato soup in the dim pantry. He knew how important that was to me. Even if he didn’t mean to call me my name in the first place — and I’m not sure he didn’t sneak it in on purpose — he saw how happy it made me. He was watching me, like I was watching him. He prodded me until I coughed up enough information on how I wanted to be treated and then he treated me that way. He didn’t want to be unkind to me, or to Milo.

Oh, but he figured out how important it was to treat us like two people and he filed that away and every once in a while, when it suits him, he pulls it out and beats me over the head with it.

“You’re not a real person! You’re a psychosis! You’re a mental defect! You’re not asking me to help you. You’re asking me to reinforce you! I appreciate that Milo is too damn broken to do things for himself, but I’m not going to risk screwing him up worse just so he can… just so you can… No, damn it, just so he can be in a show!”

She could still hear it, that and a lot of smaller things just like it. They still stung, every one. He knew it made me happy, so he knew it could hurt me too.

Somehow, the worst part was she didn’t even think he was trying to hurt her. It was like Calliope said, he was just trying to push her away — so she wouldn’t hurt him. He cut her to the deepest part of her just because he wanted her to go away.

She’d asked him to come back to the kitchen and talk to her after he’d gotten Erik settled and if he could sneak away without upsetting the poor boy any more. She was waiting and she didn’t even know if he was coming.

Part of her wanted to drag him up to the cupola roof and fling him off — break the rest of him to go with the arm — and then walk away, humming. But she’d asked him to come talk to her. In the same kitchen where he’d so kindly taught her the ins and outs of grilled cheese and canned soup. Where he’d shown her considered acceptance of an entirely different species from Hyacinth’s instant ‘okay, whatever.’ She cherished both and she needed both, but she had always valued his more, because it seemed like he worked a lot harder on it. Like he was groping through a dark room, maybe the same one where she’d tried to put together her own identity, trying to put together an understanding. And occasionally he’d show it to her, embarrassed, and ask if it was okay.

Is it okay? Was it ever okay?

The kitchen of grilled cheese and canned soup was the kitchen of You’re not a real person! The man who held her and talked her and Milo through an impending nervous breakdown with gentle aplomb had lied to her about things she needed to know to keep Milo safe just as easily. And now what was she going to do about that?

Milo stirred at the back of her mind. He wasn’t talking much. He had his own matters to deal with. Ann? Is it still the same day I found out that boy with the green broom stole sex from me?

Yes, Milo. I’m afraid it is. At least a little while longer. I guess it was… What do you call that? A ‘cascade failure?’

Can we please wait until the toaster stops eating my hand before we worry about what brand it is?

Yes, Milo. I’m sorry.

Ann? Are we still going to be friends with Mordecai?

I don’t know, Milo. Can we wait until he stops eating my brain?

…I’m still mad at you.

I know.

I know you called Calliope ‘mentally deficient,’ Ann. I don’t ever want to hear you do that again. Not out loud like you did to Mordecai. If you do that again, we’re not friends anymore. Understand?

She blinked. She didn’t know he’d been thinking about that. Or even that he’d been listening when she said it. Milo, I didn’t mean…

I know what you meant. You said it to hurt her because you knew it hurt me when they said it about me. Don’t do it again, Ann. I don’t know what happens if we stop being friends, but I don’t think either of us would like it.

He checked out on her like a dissatisfied hotel guest. She put the tomato soup back on the shelf, then she took it off again.

“Ann?” he said softly, behind her.

She did not drop the soup. This time. “Mordecai, I… I…” I can’t find your stove. She swallowed the thought and began again, “I am trying very hard to decide if I even want to like you. Do you know that?”

“I suspected.” He was in his nightshirt — and argyle socks, like when she had to take him apart and put him to bed after Erik got hurt. There was some kind of shiny sticker on the cast, it kept catching the light and winking like a piece of jewelry.

“Is there anything you want to say?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything left you don’t know. I don’t think it helps me any to say it over. I value your friendship and I don’t want to lose it again, but at this point I don’t think I have any right to ask you to forgive me. I’d be grateful if you did, that’s all.”

“No right?” she said. She brushed past him and sat down at the kitchen table. “Mordecai… Do you know you’re just about the closest thing Milo and I have to a father? Ah!” She put a hand up and preempted his evident dismay. “And I know you did not offer to do that for us and if we’d asked you about it you would’ve said no. We are quite used to stealing whatever it is we need to get by, I assure you. We’ve been doing it for some time now and it’s a hard habit to break.”

“Oh, my gods, Ann,” he said finally. “Of all people.” He sat down at the table across from her and dropped his head into his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. You and Milo never talk about your circumstances — but I’ve got an idea they must be pretty damn screwed up to have led you to this point!”

“Mordecai, I honestly cannot tell if you are a good person…”

“I’m not!”

“…but at this point I am afraid, I really am afraid, that doesn’t matter. Milo and I are also quite used to having shoes that fit so badly we can barely walk and clothing that doesn’t keep us warm or dry, and bad food or water that makes us sick, and bad people who are supposed to love us and take care of us who hurt us when we need help and don’t care at all. I am afraid, Mordecai, that we need you so badly it doesn’t matter how many times you hurt us. I am afraid I can’t keep Milo safe from you even if I should. I am literally afraid. Do you understand?”

“You’re not exactly giving me a lot of space for it!” he cried.

She nodded and leaned back. She was quiet.

“You’re not asking if it’s okay or if I want to do this or even if I like it, you’re telling me, is that it?”

She nodded again.

He sighed and put up his hand, the one he could. “Then there’s not anything I can do. I’m already trying as hard as I can and I can’t be… the kind of person you need for that. But you’re going to make it work anyway, like that damn spoon with the chunk out of it for the spaghetti?”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said softly. “There just aren’t any other spoons.”

Mordecai flashed an image of Ann trying to eat soup with a fork and winced. “I… It was never my intention to be anything less than kind to you and Milo. That isn’t going to change. And… And I think what you’re saying is nothing changes at all, it’s already been like this and my latest stupidity has made you realize we’re stuck with it. Right?”

“I wish you were better,” she said. “I wish you really understood me and you always treated me like a person instead of just when you remember you want to be kind.” She frowned. “And I wish you didn’t forget that as often as you seem to. And I wish Milo and I could eel our way a little closer into that magic circle where Erik is and always be safe from you trying to hurt us. But I know that isn’t where we belong. We have stolen this from you and we’re not giving it back. We’re just… We’re going to have to try to be happy with what it is.”

“I don’t think you should be relying on me to make you happy, Ann.”

“We’re not, but you’re very important for making this home a safe place for us to exist so we can do the things that do make us happy.”

He hung his head. “I’m sorry… I’m probably going to keep disappointing you.”

Ann reached across the table and touched his hand. “Not as much as you think. Never as much as you think, dear.”

He sat back, beyond her reach, and put his hand on the sling. “I should tell you… No. I shouldn’t. Not after today. But I am so sick of keeping secrets from you and I don’t want this to become another one. That kid who scraped me off the street and ran and got Hyacinth, you know him?”

“John?” said Ann, blinking.

“Yes. Did you know he was one of those two I found kicking Erik, when… when he was hurt? When Erik was hurt. Hyacinth fixed him and she’s been seeing him and Erik’s been seeing him and they’re friends now. And he found me my violin in a bookshop too. Did you know any of that?”

“What?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You would’ve told me if you knew. You’re better than me that way.”

Ann slammed her fist on the table and stood up. “Does no one in this house trust me to make decisions?” she cried, and she didn’t particularly care who heard her.

“I don’t know, but they don’t seem to trust me either, and Erik’s one of them.”

“Hyacinth put Milo on a bus next to that person!”

“He seems nice,” Mordecai said weakly. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Ann. I would’ve killed that kid, and he saved my life and took me home and let me pass out on his couch. I hit him in the head with a ‘cello.”

“He was hurting Erik!”

“I hurt him.” He sighed. “I’ve hurt you.”

“I’ve hurt you,” Ann said weakly. She sighed and thumped back into her chair. “Calliope hurt Milo. Milo hurt Calliope. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing either.”

Mordecai made a pained smile. “I’m a terrible role model.”

Ann waved an imperious hand. “I’ve been like this, dear. All you do is encourage me.”

“Don’t you get that from other people, Ann?” he asked, though not with much hope. “You have so many friends. Better friends.”

“I do,” she said. “And I love them all, but sometimes what I need is a broken spoon that knows how to open tomato soup.”