Gaele!

Part 8 Armageddon

Mike stood still for a long time, as though he were a video game on pause,  and squinted at the slip of paper. "What... what is this?"
Gaele stirred. "Um, it's a summons," she managed to say.
Mike pulled off his overcoat and dropped it on the stairs, and rubbed his eyes with one hand a moment before looking at her again. "Geez, I just got off a friggin' plane, Gaele.  I'm still trying to remember what time zone I'm in, and you have to meet me with this. Couldn't it wait?"
"I'm sorry, Daddy, but it can't. I have to be in court tomorrow at eight a.m., and you need to be there to sign for the car."
"What car?"
"The one they im-impounded," Gaele said, swallowing in mid sentence.
"Which car?"
She tried to speak, but her throat was strangling her. She blinked at Mike, her mouth opening.
"Which car, Gaele?"
"The... the red-red one," she squeaked.
Mike frowned at her, then a wave of comprehension came over his tired face. He stared at her, round eyed, and then laughed a little. "You didn't take- You know better than..." His mouth clamped shut, and he turned and strode out the door and headed for the garage.
Gaele stood trembling uncontrollably, as she heard his voice clear from the interior of the garage.
"YOU TOOK THE TESTAROSSA!?"
She was already at the top of the stairs when he slammed the front door open. She looked at him glaring up at her, eyes bulging, his breathing coming in pants.
"I'm sorry-" she sobbed, backing down the hall. When he appeared at the top of the stairs, she turned and bolted toward her bedroom, shut the door and locked it. She stumbled backwards, and fell over the bed, then crawled into the closet, crying hysterically. "I'm sorry, Daddy, I didn't MEAN it!"
She could hear him breathing hard on the other side of her bedroom door, and the squeal of his sweating palms as he pushed against it. "Open this door, Gaele, NOW! OPENISSDOOR!"
She sat clumsily on her shoe rack, and clutched to her a coat that had fallen. Another bout of sobbing overwhelmed her, as she listened to her father cursing and pounding on the door. Then the pounding stopped, and it got quiet. Slowing her breathing, Gaele listened. She could hear another voice, her mother's, speaking calmly, talking to Mike. After a short, tense discussion, there was silence.
"Gaele?" Rahab's voice. "Come, open the door, it's all right."
"Not all right," Gaele muttered.
"Honey, when you are feeling better, come downstairs, and we'll talk. Okay?"
"Yep," Gaele said, sniffling.
After a long time, she climbed shakily out of the closet, and sat on the bed, staring into space. Pushing the hair out of her eyes, she got up and took several deep breaths to calm herself. So, I'm still alive after all, she thought. But she'd never seen her father look at her like that. At least not since the time she'd made copies of some music she'd found in her father's recording studio and had given the copied disks to her friends, not realizing it was from a master disk of a CD that was slated for distribution and sale... and her friends in turn, had made copies and had given them to their friends... and then Mike had gotten a phone call from an attorney representing the group that had made the original recording... Gaele had not known what the term "pirating" meant, until then. That had been quite a mess, and Mike was livid when he found out she'd gone into his studio without permission.
Though he'd never actually struck her, it was the look of hurt and rage on his face, and the shape of his voice, his body language... it was all too much for her to take.
She regretted meeting him at the door with such news, but she had to do it before she thought too long on it, otherwise, she would not have been able to face Mike at all. She eventually crept downstairs, and found her mother kneeling in the flower garden, calmly weeding around the irises.
"Hi," Gaele said in a small voice.
Rahab looked up at her a long moment, sympathy in her wide-set, golden eyes, and stood to give her daughter a hug.
"I'm really sorry..."
"I know, honey."
"Where's... where's Dad?"
"He's gone on a long walk to cool off. Might be better to leave him alone for tonight."
"Oh." Gaele went to a bench nearby and sat on it, sighing gustily.
Rahab settled beside her. "So much going on... your father's just horribly wound up, right now. He's taken this so well, brought me back to earth, and now I guess it's catching up with him. But there's little I can do, but just let him work it out in his own way."
"Mom, you know I'd never do anything to hurt Daddy..."
"I know. And I think he knows it, too."
"He must really hate me, now."
"Oh, heavens, no, sweetheart. He would never hate you, he loves you, no matter what you do. Once everything quiets down, you'll find out."
"I hope so," Gaele sighed shakily.

Gaele dreaded facing the morning. She climbed out of bed after a sleepless night, showered and dressed automatically, and made her feet go, one in front of the other, down the rear stairs to the kitchen to pretend to have breakfast. Her stomach turned over at the sight of her father sitting at the table, staring at the folded newspaper in front of him, while he sipped at his coffee. He didn't look like his usual self, he was dressed so serious... he seemed more like Don, at the moment. She tried to think of something else, but couldn't, as she swallowed down her oatmeal. She nearly gagged when he looked up from the paper at her. She couldn't bring up the courage to return his gaze.
"We're leaving at seven," he said calmly.
She nodded in response, the food turning into a lump in her stomach.
He sat in silence beside her in the limo, all the way to the county courthouse, and said nothing more than what was necessary through the proceedings. He paid the fine, signed the papers, and then walked out to pick up his car, without even giving her a backward glance.
Gaele rode alone in the limo, staring blankly out the window, fighting the urge to throw up.
When she arrived at the house, Mike was already there, sitting on the rear deck, still in his overcoat.
"C'mere, Gaele," he said, gesturing to the chair beside him.
She approached reluctantly, then sat.
"You okay?"
She nodded, looking at her feet.
She heard him sigh. "It's been a lousy week for everybody, uh?"
She nodded again.
They sat in silence a while longer. The screech of a hawk echoed up from the valley, and the warm breeze rustled the grape leaves in the arbor overhead, and made the long, bronze chimes dance in a quietly pleasant, three-toned chorus.
"Why did you do it?"
She stole a look at him. He was leaning back, with his eyes closed. She started to say she didn't know, but she wasn't sure how well he'd take such a lame, canned answer like that. "I ... wanted to take my registration to the school. We just went over to Santa Cruz, and then we were coming right back. Honest."
"You could have taken the Jeep, or... something."
"Yes, Dad..."
He stirred out of his trance. "Aoh, wait a minute, you WEREN'T supposed to leave the property while we were gone, were you?"
Gaele flinched at the sharpness creeping into her father's voice. "I'm s-sorry."
"You're sorry..." Mike laughed derisively. "Doing one-forty on a busy freeway in a hundred n' eighty thousand dollar machine... One stupid little mistake... and you could have caused a really BAD accident. You could have been KILLED!" His voice seemed to echo off the facing mountain. "NOT  to mention endangering your brother's life, and everybody else's on that freeway. NOT to mention knocking my insurance premiums into permanent orbit. NOT to mention you got your license suspended for a year. NOT to mention what the papers have been saying. But you didn't THINK about any of that when you took off on your merry little adventure, DID you?"
Gaele couldn't answer. She watched Mike's hands clutch harder at the chair arms, making the weathered wood creak in protest.
After a long silence, Mike spoke again, calmer, now. "So you're planning to go to Santa Cruz, huh?"
"Uh, yes."
He turned and looked at her, his eyes turning the color of brass in the reflected noonday sun. He stared at her a long time. "Right. Well, you can FORGET that."
Gaele's mouth opened, then she swallowed down her protest, knowing that she was in no position to negotiate. She lowered her head.
"Once you get to know people over there, it's gonna be real hard to resist going to parties, and having people over every night, and then sleeping in, and goofing off because it's a 'perfect day to cut class and go to the beach and check out all the buff surfers'... Gaele, take my word for it, it isn't a good place for you. You need to go to a place that's less... distracting. Like upstate New York. Like Ithaca. Where it gets cold in the winter, and encourages you to stay inside and study..." He looked at her a moment, the ghost of a smile on his face. "And makes you wear more clothes."
"Yeah, like down parkas and big, ugly boots..." Gaele muttered under her breath.
"It's a damn good school, Gaele. Santa Cruz isn't bad either, but you are too high caliber for that place. Don't you know how much you're worth?"
"I guess so..." Gaele said, absently.
"You GUESS so?" Mike was sitting forward again, the expression on his face reminding her of her predicament. "You graduated with a perfect GPA, and then you got accepted by EVERY stinking college you applied for. I've never heard of that before. Ye gods! You know your mother had wanted to go to Cornell..."
"Maybe Mom should have applied, then."
"Don't be absurd, Gaele! She CAN'T," Mike shot back. "She has no connection to her former life in that way. That person is dead. She's lost her school records, degrees, everything... the only thing she has is you, Gaele, you and your sister and brothers." He got up suddenly, and stood by the railing on the deck, shoulders hunched. "Just go to Cornell, Gaele, please... it would be a bright spot in your mother's life, and  that would be one less thing hanging off the back of my head. Jeez, I don't need any more stuff on me, right now, you got that?"
"Okay..." Gaele whispered.
"You and Devon aren't the only ones in this family who's been pulling cute little stunts. Seth refused to come home with me, and stayed in Osaka. Don's taken him in, I guess, and uh... I didn't know what the hell else to do with him, he doesn't want to listen to me any more- I dunno, I must have just done it all wrong... sheltered you guys too much, or something... I just didn't want you guys to go through what I went through-"
Gaele waited, but Mike said nothing else. He folded his arms and then held up one hand to cover his eyes.
"Daddy..." Gaele got up and leaned against his back, closing her eyes against the pain welling up in her throat, as she felt him trembling from his pent up emotion. "I-I didn't mean to hurt you, or Mom. I'm really sorry... I'll pay you back for the fines and everything, and I'll go to Cornell. That was one of my top three choices, anyway."
Mike reached around and pulled her into his embrace. "Thanks babe. I know I could count on ya."

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