by Rae Lynn
rae_lynn05@yahoo.com
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: story, angst
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST
SPOILERS: Through early season 8
SUMMARY: After "Detour" and then after
"Within/Without" (if you think you're experiencing
cognitive dissonance right now: you're right),
everything crystallizes in New York City over Yom Kippur
and matzoh balls. In short: it's hard to explain.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Are at the end of the story.
"Zichrona livracha [May their memory be for
blessing]." --Jewish words of mourning
* * *
Six days after their unscheduled detour in Florida,
Scully finds herself in New York City with a head
cold, undecided as to whether it's her sinuses or her
partner that's causing her headache. Mulder has been
exhausting these past few days, first chattering
nonstop about the potential enormity of their Florida
discovery, then hovering guiltily when it becomes
apparent that their night in the damp forest has
triggered a minor cold. It is so like Mulder, Scully
thinks with a mixture of fondness and weariness,
remembering that night in the woods when she had
allowed herself to speak honestly to her partner about
dying and he had responded with a crack about the
Ice Capades. Mulder has always been impossible to
scrutinize with any real hope of discovery, but since
her illness he has lapsed into total mystery, at times
impossibly remorseful and at others unusually tender.
Scully knows for a fact that there is a team seminar
taking place this very moment in Honolulu, Hawaii,
but there is only so far Skinner's generosity and guilt
following the remission of her cancer has been able to
take them. Mulder, for his part, is positively
exuberant about their trip to the city, although Scully
suspects that Skinner's rather descriptive threats
about the consequences of missing another seminar
play a significant role in her partner's exaggeratedly
good humor.
As they spill out of the Lincoln Tunnel into the crush
of midtown traffic, Mulder unexpectedly divulges a
childhood memory involving an overnight class trip
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the heaving
vastness of the city that had left him in awe.
"There's something single-minded about Manhattan,"
he observes, too preoccupied with jockeying for
position in a sea of trucks and taxis to notice Scully's
wry sidelong glance; single-mindedness, she observes,
is a trait with which she has become intimately
familiar. In this moment, for a thousand reasons she
cannot explain, Scully feels a startling surge of
closeness to her partner, impulsively grateful for the
small personal revelation that is not a painful relic
from Mulder's past.
Now, Scully sits in her hotel room in midtown
Manhattan, dutifully swallowing jelly-colored capsules
with orange juice and sourly contemplating the irony:
A month ago her concerns had been about dying with
dignity, about the trauma of gushing nosebleeds and
skull-shattering migraines, and now she finds herself
preoccupied with rough tissues and snot, with
whether the concealer she once used to mask the
deep bruises under her eyes will prove as effective on
the raw, reddened skin around her nose.
She is startled out of her reverie by a knock on the
door. She knows before she stretches up on tiptoes
to peer through the peephole that it is Mulder; there
is something jaunty in the sound of his knock that
complements his mood on this trip.
"The afternoon seminar's been canceled," he
announces without preamble, looking pleased with
himself as if he is the one responsible. For a moment
Scully fears the worst, as if she is a mother who has
just been called into the principal's office.
"Mulder," Scully responds with mock severity, "you
didn't break their slide projector, did you?"
He merely grins. Scully waits expectantly and after a
beat Mulder shakes his head, enjoying her sigh of
relief.
"Minor flood in the conference room. Come on, I'll
take you to lunch." He gives his a lopsided smile.
"Starve a fever, feed a cold, right?"
Her reply is a rapid-fire series of sneezes, the last one
muffled into a handkerchief Mulder has thrust under
her nose. Distantly Scully wonders whether Mulder
has purchased stock in handkerchiefs or has merely
taken to buying them in bulk; God knows all those
cloths soaked through with her blood can't be cleaned
in the laundry. She blows her nose, slightly
embarrassed -- cancerous nosebleeds are one thing,
phlegm is quite another -- and observes Mulder
inspecting her with concern.
"You okay, Scully?" he says, in that voice she knows
is masking the thousand wild alarms that have just
sprung up behind his eyes.
"I'm fine, Mulder," she says patiently, regretting it
when Mulder recoils, something darkening in his face.
She keeps neglecting to remind herself of the
rewritten rules of her remission: "I'm fine" is no
longer code for "I'm dying," and Mulder's interest in
her health is no longer a brutal reminder of her
impending demise.
Scully would prefer to use their free afternoon to soak
in a bath and stock up on tissues, but after their
uncomfortable exchange, she cannot deny Mulder's
invitation. Something in his eyes haunts her as they
walk out the door; she knows what he is seeing when
he looks at her, and a thousand tumor-free brain
scans aren't enough to make the images go away.
* * *
There are dozens of restaurants within blocks of their
hotel, but Mulder heads straight for the nearest
subway. After being treated to a sermon on the
platform that vaguely reminds her of childhood Mass
in San Diego, Scully finds herself crushed between a
young couple transporting a large dresser and a rowdy
group of teenagers trading insults with each other.
Above her, a rainbow-colored sign with a round-faced
man on it encourages her to visit the dermatology
office of Dr. Zizmor to clear her embarrassing acne.
Across the car, lounging against a pole as if he rides
the subway every day of his life, Mulder grins at her.
"This is much more authentic than a taxi," he assures
her as the train skids to a stop and the sound of
pounding drums floods into the car when the doors
open. Her ears ringing, she fixes him with a withering
stare.
"As long as it was authentic," she says dryly.
They emerge into the crisp fall air on Houston Street,
and Scully blinks as Mulder purposefully leads her to
a large windowfront proclaiming KATZ'S
DELICATESSEN -- SINCE 1888.
"It's a deli," she says uncomprehendingly. Mulder
only shakes his head as if he has anticipated her
inadequately enthusiastic reaction.
"You sit," he says. "I'll take care of the food."
She considers protesting -- in their four years together
she has never willingly let Mulder choose her meal --
but thinks the better of it when she sneezes on one of
the customers waiting in the long line. Carefully she
makes her way through the crowd to a table near the
back of the restaurant, while behind the counter
orders for Dr. Brown's root beer and beef tongue
with a side of kugel fly rapid-fire through the air.
When Mulder finally joins her, he is balancing a tray
of enormous sandwiches and a bowl of steaming
soup he triumphantly places in front of her. In the
middle of it is a massive lump, the size of a baseball,
soft-looking and vaguely yellowish in color.
"For your cold," Mulder explains. Scully glances
from his face to the soup and experimentally pokes at
the object with her spoon.
"What is this, Mulder?"
Mulder looks momentarily surprised, then fixes her
with an expression so exaggeratedly wounded that
Scully knows she is in for a ribbing.
"That's a matzoh ball, Scully. You've never had a
matzoh ball?"
She eyes them both skeptically, first the spongy ball
and then Mulder. "I've been deprived, I take it?" she
observes wryly.
He shakes his head mournfully. "You have no idea,"
he says, his expression almost wistful. "My
grandmother used to make them."
She sets her spoon down in surprise; it is the first
time Mulder has ever mentioned a family member
apart from what Scully has privately begun to think of
as the unholy Mulder trinity: the abusive father, the
distant mother, the missing sister. All three have had
an immeasurable impact on Mulder's psyche, and
Scully wonders what a grandmother might have added
to the volatile mix.
"She grew up around here," he continues. "On the
Lower East Side. My mother's mother. She and my
father never liked each other." He takes a large bite
of his sandwich.
"And this time of year," he finishes, "she made
matzoh balls."
Scully scoops a tiny bite of the matzoh ball onto her
spoon and takes a cautious nibble. Fluffy and warm,
it dissolves on her tongue.
"This time of year?" she asks.
"It's Yom Kippur, Scully," he says. "The Day of
Atonement." He pauses and Scully watches
something in his eyes click into place, like a tape
recorder switching on as he prepares to recite an
ancient memory.
"This is the Day of Judgment," he quotes, his face set
in concentration, "for even the hosts of heaven are
judged, as all who dwell on Earth stand arrayed
before You. Who shall live and who shall die, who
shall see ripe age and who shall not, who shall perish
by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by
beast."
Scully shudders. Who by cancer and who by his own hand, she
thinks involuntarily.
"What do you have to atone for, Mulder?" she asks
softly. The words are out of her mouth before she
can stop herself, and Mulder flinches almost audibly
as though she has slapped him. He sets his can down
on the table with such force that it sloshes over,
soaking his hand with fizzing soda.
"I'm sorry," Scully amends, stricken, as she hastily
reaches for a napkin. "I didn't mean..."
Mulder looks at her, hard, his chair scraping back
against the floor. "You have every right to," he says
darkly. "There aren't enough prayers in the world to
atone for my sins."
Scully knows that to remain silent in response is
tantamount to acquiescence, but any denial she gives
will be utterly futile.
"You are not responsible for what happened to me,"
she says finally.
"And the men who are?" he asks sharply.
She swallows a sigh; this is not a conversation she
expected to have this week -- not in New York -
perhaps not ever -- certainly not over sour pickles and pastrami.
"They have their own sins to atone for," she says.
Mulder studies her for so long that Scully looks away,
uncomfortable, wondering if for the rest of her life
Mulder will see her as a ghost, the tumor pulsating in
her brain as though he can see it if he looks closely
enough.
They finish eating in silence. As they get up from the
table, Mulder reaches to touch her -- maybe to brush
his fingers against her shoulder as he is so accustomed
to doing, she thinks, maybe just to reassure himself
that she is real -- and abruptly pulls his hand back,
reaching instead for her empty bowl. Scully takes a
deep breath.
"Thank you," she says, looking up at him. "For the
matzoh ball."
For a moment his expression is grim, lost, and Scully
is reminded that by all rights she should not be here,
should not be eating matzoh balls or attending team
seminars or anything at all. Then he smiles, grateful.
"It isn't New York without matzoh balls," he says.
They take a cab back to the hotel. The next morning,
Scully awakens to find her sinuses almost cleared, her
throat less scratchy; according to Mulder, the healing
powers of the matzoh ball soup have worked wonders.
Privately, Scully prefers to think of it as a
different kind of rebirth; without the specter of illness
lurking around her, she becomes a reminder that they are
not in mourning. Perhaps, she thinks, they have both
atoned for their sins.
* * *
These are the things Scully remembers when she finds
herself in New York again, this time swallowing pre-
natal vitamins instead of cold capsules and with John
Doggett by her side instead of Mulder. But Mulder *is*
with her, she reminds herself, for lately she has been
seeing Mulder everywhere -- in the grocery store, on
the firing range; everywhere.
During idle moments she finds herself wondering
how Mulder would react to her burgeoning stomach,
picturing him reaching out for her belly with hesitant
longing and buying her gifts of tiny Yankees
uniforms. Skinner and Doggett, stone-faced, don't
behave like this at all, and for that Scully is
profoundly grateful.
They are in New York, ostensibly, to investigate a
murder with ritualistic overtones, but Scully knows
that her heart is not in the case. Doggett tackles the
evidence seriously, with none of Mulder's gallows
humor and gusto, and Scully misses the small
exhilaration of disagreement until she admits to
herself that what she really misses is Mulder.
Late in the afternoon, while Doggett and a local
police officer re-interview their potential witnesses,
Scully walks through the teeming streets and
remembers Mulder's account of his childhood trip to
the Upper East Side, when the city had awed rather
than overwhelmed him.
These days, everything is overwhelming to Scully, and
sometimes she wonders whether the second heart
beating within her belongs to her child or to Mulder.
The autumn air is just starting to feel chilly, and Scully
hugs her arms to her stomach. It had been spring
when Mulder went to Bellefleur and never returned;
the warm whisper of May had melted into a hot,
sticky summer, and the brisk fall air feels like a
betrayal of Mulder's memory, an ominous signal that
the seasons have changed without him. She
remembers the way Mulder looked at her that fall, his
eyes holding hers as if he feared she might yet
disappear. She wonders whether she will look at him
the same way, when he returns to her.
Scully has never allowed himself to wonder what it
had been like for Mulder during the months when she
was missing, but she remembers Melissa's surprise
after Mulder visited her in the hospital, and her grave
evaluation of the dark aura she claimed to have seen
lifted from him like a shroud. Scully wonders what
color aura she is projecting now into the October sky.
She stops walking suddenly; it is exhausting, these
thoughts of Mulder surrounding her all the time like a
second skin. She looks up and sees a man standing in
the doorway of a building smiling at her encouragingly.
"Shana tovah," he says.
Scully is momentarily thrown. "Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry," he replies politely. "It means 'happy new
year.' I thought you were on your way into the
service."
For the first time Scully notices the sign in front of
the building: YOM KIPPU MEMO IAL SE VICE 5:00 PM.
The missing letters strike her as strangely sad, and the
man follows her gaze and gives her an apologetic smile.
"Guess they ran out of Rs," he says.
She hesitates, willing herself to keep walking, but she
is transfixed by the letters as Mulder's words crash
like cymbals in her brain.
The Day of Atonement, she thinks, wondering whom
she can possibly ask for forgiveness.
"Memorial for what?" she asks finally.
"It's called a Yizkor service," he replies. "On the
holiest day of the year, Jews gather to mourn the
loved ones they have lost and recite Kaddish over their
memory."
Unexpectedly, embarrassingly, Scully feels tears flood
her eyes, and the man looks suddenly stricken.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to upset you."
She shakes her head. "No, it's not you," she says.
"I...I recently lost someone...someone close to me,
and..." She trails off looks away. Across the street, a
vendor is loading a small mountain of sauerkraut onto
a hot dog with one hand and making change with the
other.
"I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she
murmurs.
He looks at her kindly.
"That's all right," he says.
"I..." She hesitates. "I was under the impression
that the holiday was about atoning for one's sins."
He nods. "The dead need forgiveness, too," he says
gently. "Would you like to come inside?"
Scully takes a step back. She has mourned for so
much in the past seven years; she cannot bring herself
to mourn for Mulder, too.
The man notices her reluctance and shakes his head
hastily. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to convert you. I
just thought...you said you had lost someone
recently," he explains, "and I thought this...might
help bring you some closure."
In her mind she sees a flash of screaming light and
the headstone carved with Mulder's name: 1961-2000.
She swallows thickly, unwilling to explain to a
stranger that the person she has lost is not dead, that
closure is impossible, that at night she buries her face
in Mulder's dress shirt as if she is afraid she will forget
to dream about him.
"I'm not in mourning," she says softly.
Her heart aches as she walks away, and she wishes it
were true.
* * *
END.
rae_lynn05@yahoo.com
AUTHOR'S NOTES (or, Fun Facts About New York and Judaism):
I don't know if I believe Mulder is Jewish. But I fell
in love with The X-Files at the same time I started
preparing for my Bat Mitzvah, and when I read David
Duchovny's remark that he would consider Mulder
Jewish until explicitly proven otherwise, it was nice to
have a Jewish character on TV I could admire (i.e.,
not Fran Drescher).
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom
Kippur, the Day of Judgment (also known as the Day
of Atonement), take place ten days apart in
September or October (depending on the Jewish
calendar), a period of time that is known collectively
as the "High Holidays" and the "Days of Awe."
The passage Mulder quotes comes from an English
translation of the U'n'taneh Tokef prayer in Gates of
Repentance, the book used in most Reform Jewish
synagogues during the High Holidays.
The Mourner's Kaddish, or the mourner's prayer, is
traditionally recited on Yom Kippur only by those
who have lost a parent (those who have not
customarily step outside during the Yizkor service),
but many Reform temples have expanded this to
include others close to you, the six million Jews who
died in the Holocaust and "those who have no one
left to say Kaddish for them."
Katz's Delicatessen on 2nd and Houston (Mulder and
Scully took the F train) is where Meg Ryan fakes the
orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. It also makes the
best sandwiches in New York City.
Anyone who has ever been a regular rider of the New
York subway will recognize Dr. Zizmor the
dermatologist. More and more subway cars are being
bought up by huge corporations who plaster the
entire car with the same ad, so I consider seeing Dr.
Zizmor on the subway these days a real treat, like
running into an old friend.
I deeply appreciate all kinds of feedback:
raelynn_05@yahoo.com.