Susan Takes Charge Pt 07

By Special Guest Author Susan Bailey and T. MaskedWriter

"And as you join the Good Ship Earth, and you mingle with the dust,

be sure to leave your underpants with someone you can trust.

And the hard-headed social worker who bathes his hands in blood

will welcome you with arms held high and cover you with mud.

And he'll say 'you really should make a deal' as he offers round the hat.

Well, you'd better lick your fingers clean. Well, I'll thank you all for that."

-Jethro Tull, "

Lick Your Fingers Clean

"

The next morning, Lucinda de San Finzione walked through the halls of the Business Wing of Castle Finzione to her office. Conversation ceased as she passed, and everyone turned to stare. None would dare utter a word or make eye contact as she strode amongst them. The ones who'd been present for her humiliation were too scared to utter a sound, and the ones who'd been smart enough not to attend knew better. Calling attention to oneself at this moment would be death. She didn't slam the door as she closed it behind her, but the relative quiet made it loud enough to seem like she had.

She sat at her desk, bowed her head, and produced a rosary from her purse. As she prayed, a maid entered carrying a tray with a cup of tea and a newspaper. She quietly set the tea before Lucinda on the desk and stood by while she finished her prayer, picked up the tea, and took a sip. In the middle of her second sip, the newspaper was dropped onto her desk.

The front-page photo was of her, covered in the corpses of multiple pies. It was an English-language paper instead of her usual Italian; and the headline above it read "Lucinda's Lock-In Lists Loony-Toons." She looked up at the maid. She saw me. Hi, my name's Susan Bailey. (Sorry for the unusual intro, but I think you see now that I was going for something.)

"The Italian paper's headline wasn't as funny." I explained to her in that language. "Before you say anything about the maid's uniform, Lucinda, I gave one a hundred euros to let me borrow it and told the assistant you make fetch your tea every morning that I'd take care of this for him. Don't hold it against him. I used my 'status' as a friend of La Familia Royale and said I had a private matter to discuss with you. I did all this to make two points.

"The first was that I could very well have put on a servant's outfit and helped Jeanne out if she'd needed it. That's La Contessa's maid's name, by the way, Jeanne. If Jeanne, Helen, Maria, or someone else I respect needed it of me. I have that skill set. You see, Lucinda, I've done this thing called 'work a day in my life,' and I'd have no problem doing it again. Work is a word that's in the Bible AND the Dictionary."

The look on Lucinda's face was one that I wish I'd readied a camera for. The "what the hell..." from my paper drop hadn't completely faded before the look of recognition and seething hatred of "how fucking DARE you" mingled with the confusion of "wait a minute, who the fuck does something like this" and the corpse of the quip about my wearing the maid's uniform that I'd taken down before it passed her lips was worth the hundred euros to set it up. This close, I could also see the bleariness of having had a couple herself when she got home last night. All of it combined into a visual that caused me to attain Total Spiritual Enlightenment with regards to the meaning of the word "flabbergasted."

She took another sip of tea to try to recover. The next word was still mine, so I took it.

"The second reason was to give weight to my suggestion that you tear up those plans for the twins. And to give you things to think about if you have any more plans for them. Because I don't know if you noticed, Lucinda, but something very curious happened just now. Do you know what that was? I put on a maid's costume and brought you your newspaper and morning tea.

"And do you know what you did, Lucinda? You picked up that tea and you DRANK it! Without even looking to see who I was. Like I knew you wouldn't. And if I'd just said nothing and walked away, you'd never have known it was me." I gave that a second to sink in, and when she was still shocked, I took something out of my pocket.

"Oh, this isn't 'the antidote' or anything, don't worry. I wouldn't do something like that, Lucinda. There's nothing in there but your Oolong with no cream or sugar. Just the way I know you like it now. That's a skill I learned from working too, Lucinda. Remembering what people you know you're going to see again like to eat and drink. No, this is something I need to return to Helen's office, I just decided to do this along the way to send you a message, Lucinda. So I hope you're listening or recording or whatever."

She was too startled by the realization that, if I HAD chosen to poison her, it would now be too late to respond, so the floor was still mine.

"The twins already have a moral guardian, and you're who she's guarding them from. The Devil, too, but saying that feels redundant. I figured that part out, too. Why you needed to wait until you thought Helen might not be around. This wasn't to feel her out now that she's a mother. Or to see how Maria would handle things if you suspected Helen wasn't here to look out for her. They're both known quantities to you. The purpose of this exercise was to test the unknown quantity; to see that IF Helen had left the country and IF her dearest friends had gone after her, then who was this woman whom ALL of them entrusted with the children while it was going on? Well, Lucinda?"

I leaned in close for my big ending.

"Hi. My name's Susan Bailey. Got your answer?"

I didn't wait for her reply. I walked out.

* * *

Lucinda would need revenge. Troy watches the Godfather movies every Thanksgiving weekend. (He has this joke he never seems to get tired of about it being "time that should be spent with The Family.") So I'd seen them enough times to know that since I'd sent her a message, now she HAS to send me one back. Unless I'd pissed her off to the point of hiring a hitman overnight, though, it was too soon to worry about it. (And if she goes that far, I'll just have to trust that I've done enough favors for the Ultimados by now that they'll do what they do for Helen and "get rid of the problem" for me before I even find out one was ever there.) I'd have to start watching my back tomorrow or the next day, but for today, I could just enjoy the victory.

It was a few hours later, after returning the maid's uniform and going back to the Palace Wing, that I ran into Maria by the Nursery and we stopped in at the little conversation alcove there.

"I understand why you needed to do it." Maria said after I told her about my trip to the Business Wing. "But si, you have thrown down a gauntlet and ensured a next time, Susan."

"Then the Pastry Chef's going to need to hire some backup and I'm going to have to see if anyone in the Marketplace carries anvils and dynamite for my counterplan." We both laughed at that. I had another thought and shared it with her. "You were a step ahead of me the whole time, Maria. Which means that you probably figured out the other thing that I did long before, too: Who Lucinda was really testing."

"Oh, si." She replied. "Her plan would have had the same chance to succeed or fail with Great-Grandmama present. It would still have taken her some maneuvering to refuse graciously in a way that Lucinda could not gain from."

"So what would you have done if Rita hadn't agreed?"

"I would have made up some excuse for her. Something relating to the babies and perhaps gross enough that no one would question. That she was tired from nursing them all day or something, they would have gone for it."

"Then why didn't you just do that?" I asked. "Why let me go to all this?"

Maria smiled at that.

"Because I liked your plan, Susan. Because you had things under control and because there was something that I needed to learn, too."

"What was that?"

Maria put her hand on mine.

"I do not question your friendship or loyalty at all, Susan. There was something I needed to know about you, though: Would you stand up to me if I had a bad idea? I knew right away that it would simply add complications to a situation already full of them. I knew you were a good enough friend to do it, but were you a good enough friend to tell me why we shouldn't? I've learned that those friends are far more important. I would have 'come to my senses' and asked you to stop before you really did it. Now I know, Susan, that you will tell me if I have a bad idea in the future, when it truly matters. I need to know who I can count on for this on the day that I am not simply ruling in secret until Great-Grandmama returns."

While I looked questioningly at Maria, she gave a little laugh and continued.

"Did you truly think that I would panic like a debutante in a P.G. Wodehouse book over all of this?" She looked over at the Nursery door, smiled, then looked back to me. "I, too, now have future rulers of San Finzione to think of. And whom I can entrust with them."

I smiled at the future Contessa Maria Louisa Francesca de San Finzione.

"No." I told her as I stood. "I thought you handled it like a Contessa."

That got a smile back before she left to go meet Stavro and I went to go spend some time with the little people that everything the past couple days had been for.

* * *

Troy, Julie, and Helen got back Monday night. The three of us had a lovely reunion and Helen listened to Ramirez and Ortega give her lectures about responsibility while Maria alternated between slapping her upside the head and hugging her.

Troy & Julie decided that it was time to leave Helen with the boys, go back to Federal Way, and resume their lives. Not permanently, we're going to be coming back and forth all the time to see the kids and everyone; and La Contessa's doctor also happens to be part of our Ultimados protection across the street, so they'll be coming to see us, too. (And, now that Troy's the father of the Royal Twins, we're not getting out of having that protection any time soon.) We're looking into getting vehicles of our own to keep here so we don't have to keep borrowing Helen's or the castle's.

I know that we often talk about moving to San Finzione as if it's some kind of horrible emergency last resort; like if the world learns our secret, our Plan B is "Oh no, we have to go move into a palace with Helen and be waited on hand and foot for the rest of our lives!" It's not that we're the world's biggest ingrates, or maybe it's one of those "hard to grasp if you can't control minds yourself" deals. It's that... remember how when you were a kid, people told you that you could do anything, you could change the world? And then you got older and found out that really, it comes down to one or two things that you can do better than most and beyond those things, there's a whole lot of stuff that you really can't do or change? These three never got the second memo. Well, Helen did, but their third memo, letting her know the second one was bullshit, came early enough that she eventually forgot it.

The life that Troy and Julie want to make for themselves is in King County, Washington; where Troy helps people make their worlds a little better, and Julie shows them the world she sees, that the one we all share could be. And the life that Helen might not want but needs to have is here, trying to carry on the work of one great old man who was, quite frankly, an impossible act to follow, because of the guidance of another. As much as they all need each other, they also need to do those things. (Every semester, the University of San Finzione offers Troy an honorary doctorate in Economics. And every semester, he politely declines and reminds Helen that he wants to earn it on his own.)

Troy & Julie liked my solution to the Lucinda problem as well. It turned out that they'd known what was going on the whole time.

"You felt like you needed to do this without our help, Susan." Julie told me in bed that evening. "You forgot that there's a part of you that knows better than that." She kissed me. "When was the last time you and Suzy-Q did that?"

Ok, you know how I've said that Suzy-Q can go off and visit Helen's mind when one of us is in trouble? Well, the first couple times it happened was without my knowledge. In fact, I didn't even learn until after the second time that there'd been a first. She doesn't require my permission to go see Helen. When she comes back, we have one of those meetings in my head, she kisses me, and all of her memories and experiences while off with Helen get 'uploaded' to me. (We're still working on names for all of this.) I even got to meet Propappou and the Count in a round-about way through Suzy-Q coming to Helen in a dream once. At least, Helen's dream versions of them.

"I'll have to get caught up on that soon, then." I told her back. Again, I can't be mad at her, because I'd have done it too if it weren't for, you know, what Julie was saying.

"Didn't you wonder why none of us called to see how you and the kids were doing during all of that?" Troy asked on the other side of me. "Suzy-Q said you wanted to take care of it on your own, so we respected that. Or did you think we'd be too busy having constant sex to turn on the news and see what was going on in San Finzione? I think it was the hardest I've seen Helen laugh without drugs."

"You know we've met La Familia too, right?" Julie said with a smooch. "If any of us didn't think you could handle a snotty bitch like Lucinda, we'd have come up with a reason to come back early."

"Or we'd be like the parents in every movie and TV show where the kids throw a party and 'decide to come home from our vacation early and surprise you.'" Troy said.

Julie cut him off and put a "mom" tone in her voice.

"There we were, enjoying Paris, and we thought 'let's cancel all the shit we had planned for the rest of the trip, go through the hassle of checking out days ahead of schedule, return the rental car, deal with the fucking airline and changing our tickets at the last second to squeeze into whatever seats are left; and with no ride home from the airport arranged, bring our son or daughter's experiment with independence to a screeching halt.'"

We giggled at that. Troy decided to go "dad," too.

"And don't think this means you're getting out of our next trip there, young lady."

"Ok," I told them. "The Mom & Dad thing gets creepy quick when we're all naked."

We looked at each other and agreed to stop.

"I think I need one more day with the boys." Julie said as she rolled over and turned off the lamp before rolling back. "Then back to Seattle. You coming with us?"

"I'll be home in a few days." I told her as I turned to snuggle into Troy. Julie spooned up behind me and I closed my eyes, the two people I love most in the world holding me as I faded to sleep. "There's some stuff I want to take care of before I go."

* * *

The "one more day" became two. Seriously, they are great little guys. On the third day, Troy reminded Julie that he wanted to stay with them too, but he still had classes and they needed to give Helen time with them. Helen said she felt ready now.

You might have noticed that when we make decisions in this family, we tend to have more than one reason for them. The others get that, too. One of us still being here for her in case Helen wasn't quite as ready as she thought had been one we all understood was on my list.

The night after they left, I was walking back to our room when I noticed Helen's cigarette case sitting in the basket outside the Nursery. I stopped and peeked in.

Contessa Helena de San Finzione sat in a rocking chair next to the crib, holding Lord Vincenzo Ramon de San Finzione II and Lord Byroni Troilus de San Finzione in her arms.

"Once upon a time," she told them. "There was a boy and a girl whose love was so written in the stars that they were born a week apart, to families who were already friends and lived right next to each other. Around the same time, a second girl was born down the street from the two of them. She's who this story is really going to be about, but she doesn't show up for a little bit. These two will also be important to the story, and it's nicer to start things with them.

"The boy and girl got older and learned to crawl, walk, and speak together, like you two are going to do! They became best friends forever, also like you two are gonna be." Helen thought a second. "Except, well, different. The adults knew that there would one day be more to their feelings, but the boy and girl had practically been raised as brother and sister, and it would be many years before either of them got smart enough to realize 'you mean we're not and this would've been OK the whole time?' One of the adults, the boy's great-grandfather, was a great old wizard who knew that their destiny had always been written, though. The wizard's also going to be a really important part of this story."

I stepped in and closed the door quietly and let her continue. The twins burbled as she spoke, and Vincenzo made the cutest little yawn.

"Then the second girl, the one the story's really about, came into things. Her home was not a nice place, like where the boy and girl lived and where you two live. You'll have a lot of time to stare at each other's shirts to learn where that is. No, this girl had been born in a dragon's lair, to a mean, horrible dragon; feared by all the countryside. The dragon had taken a maiden years ago, and they had two daughters. The first flew far away from the lair, never to be seen again. But THIS girl, the dragon's SECOND daughter, was only half-dragon." She stopped the story and looked at them both and smiled. "Don't worry, your daddy's so NOT a dragon that Mommy knows any dragon blood you got from her is going to be voted down by his."

The burbling slowed as she rocked them. She acknowledged me and resumed.

"The Half-Dragon Girl looked human and could not fly or breathe fire, but everyone in the town still knew that she was the daughter of a dragon. They knew that living in that place, she would one day learn their ways and become a dragon herself. They didn't DO anything about it, they just talked about it. So, all of the other children's parents feared her, and they told their children not to play with the Half-Dragon Girl. Except, do you remember the boy and girl I was talking about earlier whose parents lived next to each other? Well, their parents were nice people and let the Half-Dragon Girl play with their children! She loved play time with them and she loved them, too. But it would always end. The dragon was really mean and hurt the maiden, who was now her mommy, all the time. She drank bad, dangerous potions that didn't make the hurt go away, but made her feel like they did. It wasn't the same thing. And when the Half-Dragon Girl would see her mommy come stumbling to bring her back to the lair, it always made her sad. Because she knew the dragon would punish her for any happiness she'd had while away from him." Helen looked down at the now-sleeping boys.

"And maybe she remembered years later how that always felt; because Mommy coming to get her meant that happiness and fun were over. And she was scared that she might make you feel that. But again, your daddy's no dragon; he likes fighting dragons. And yes, sometimes, that includes Mommy. Who doesn't drink those kinds of potions. So you should be ok there."

I stepped up and took Byroni, so she could get up with Vincenzo. We put them back in the crib and covered them up, then quietly made our way back out to the hall.

Once we were out, Helen grabbed her cigarettes out of the basket and pulled one out. She looked over at the alcove.

"We took the ash trays out of this one, Helen." I told her. "That was deliberate."