“ -- only if the truth is optional. i ask the questions; i don’t give answers easily. “
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
"A pen --” a particular instrument, she thinks of; one that her father gave her as a quiet gift, “-- a journal, and a piece to write,” she answers, “Maybe a quiet place to write it. Nothing better than something worth writing itching at my fingers.” At this, as if illustrating the sensation, she flexes her fingers and then curls them again, tucking them into her soft palm. Her father had been the same. He had always carried something with which to jot down notes about the world about him. Always the observer, he had been.
Had been. Is.
“Just set me to work chasing something -- that’s when I’m happiest.”
Describe your view of Chicago in five words?
"Much darker than it seems.”
Her lips curl upwards. Though she deals in truth, there is always a place for theatrics. She shrugs, “Am I wrong?”
What is your most treasured possession?
At once, the fountain pen tucked into her breast pocket burns, as if set alight by the question. She can picture her father wielding it, hunched over the desk in his study, as if it was yesterday. It is, and always has been, an instrument of truth. She shivered when she first held it -- it is a quiet, solid sort of victory to know that she deserver it now.
“A pen that my father gave me years ago --” she smiles, nimble fingers darting to pat at her pocket, “-- he used it himself, and now it’s mine. I do all my best work with it.”
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
"The work is my greatest love,” she clips, “If you don’t understand, then you clearly have never done anything worth loving.”
Heart or Head?
Her immediate reaction is the former -- but she bites down upon the tip of her tongue and tempers her instinct. She has learned better. She knows better
“Head,” she nods, swallowing the logic attributed to the alternate answer, “The head is never wrong. It’s logical. The heart is irrational.” And she knew it to be true, all too well.
When and where were you the happiest?
A bitter voice at the back of her mind tells her that she was never happy, that she has always been just short of it, ever reaching, ever wanting. But she has determined otherwise, overriding intuition, convincing herself of this decided truth until it becomes fact.
It has yet to sink in.
“Well --” she holds out her hands, as if beholding a great spectacle, “I’m happiest now, here. I’ve never been happier, never been more at home. This is where I’m meant to be. How can you not be happy when you’re where you’ve always been meant to land?”
What is it that you most dislike?
She can think of a great number of things that she dislikes. Sweet tea, hymnals, chatter that is oh so specific to southern women; funerals, fire, the sound of gunshots. Her entire adolescence was an experiment in just how much she could manage to dislike -- and she was adept at it.
“What kind of question is that?” her nose turns upward, lips curled into a disquiet frown, “I dislike spiders and forest fires. I also dislike slow walkers and people who chew with their mouth open.”
She pauses.
“Liars --” she settles, “I fucking hate liars.”
What is your greatest fear?
She laughs -- it is an unexpected response to such a question, and yet she laughs. Buoyant and unafraid, she laughs and shrugs like a god, feeling utterly untouchable for the first time. She thinks of her name splashed in heroic light upon the television; she is a god. She is untouchable. She is the bringer of truth, and she has nothing to fear.
Of course she does -- but what is the point of being a harbinger of truth and justice if it doesn’t come with a little hubris to sweeten the deal?
“I’m only afraid of letting typos into my articles,” she snorts -- though there is much more she could rationally be afraid of, “You think I’m afraid of anything? I’m not. Danger is afraid of ME.”
Where do your loyalties lie?
Her face is set in hard determination, lips a pursed line and eyes ablaze with conviction. For a moment she thinks of her father -- perhaps this would be an appropriate answer to such a question. But she has learned that sentimentality is an Achilles heel. “The truth,” she says, “is always where my allegiance will lie. Not with any person, family, whatever. The truth.”
What is your best virtue?
She thinks of her mother, her mother’s Bible, her mother’s disdain for the Catholics -- for Winifred Adler, it was the Methodist way or no way at all. For a moment, her lips curl into a grimace of a smile, for her mother would have called her anything but virtuous, in the Catholic or the Methodist sense. But she answers anyway.
“My diligence,” she juts her chin upward, “without question.”
What is your worst vice?
And then her smile falls. Her mother would have adored the answer to this. Wesley had been nothing but vice, or so Winifred had maintained. Those who disliked her writings would agree. “They called it hubris in the scripture,” her lips twitched, “As did Aristotle. But what do they know?”
What is your greatest regret?
There is no hesitation in the rapid movement of her mind; it moves at once to her sister’s wedding, to an unanswered invitation, to a bitter laugh at the sight of it, which had rung hollow and antagonistic through an empty apartment. It had been clear that the invitation had been sent as a courtesy, and not as something genuine, something Wesley had been intended to respond to in earnest, and yet it stung. She could only hope that her absence would sting, too.
It wouldn’t -- she knew it.
And yet, her answer could only be a singular memory: “Not attending my sister’s wedding. Chasing a story -- there are things more important. Were.” She thinks of Honey’s grave; far too opulent. “Were. I hope she was happy while she still could be.”
What do you most value in your friends?
“Honesty, humility -- a good sense of humor,” morbid topic of moment before vanished; though Wesley was bereft of true friends, “It’s hard to have real friends in this line of work. And it’s understandable -- not many people can handle it. But those that stick around all have one thing in common: a penchant for transparency.”
She laughs; it’s a genuine thing. “Whether they like it or not.”
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
She snorts. “Off the record,” her hand flourishes through the air, as if practiced in gesture, “I never mean it. Fuck it -- ya’ know?”
Do you have a family? What do the members mean to you? Do you hate them or love them?
They inhabit her dreams, this faceless and nameless bunch. Her family, those who birthed her and left her to rot upon the orphanage steps. They loom over her like intrusive nightmare-spirits, only to be chased away by the warm and pensive visage of her father. He, all blonde hair and green eyes, has always been glaringly obviously not the man from which she came -- and yet there has never been a better father. His has been the only familial warmth that meant a thing.
Winifred, mother, the cold and cruel matriarch -- a source of disquietude.
Honey, sister, the arrogant sun, far too hot to burn for long -- a source of inadequacy.
But her father -- oh, her father -- had always believed in his little orphan.
“Yes,” she answers, something like emotion prickling at her eyes, though she is remiss to show emotion in moments like these, “I have family. I love him more than anything. But I’m my own goddamn family now. Don’t you forget it.”
It hurts to admit it. But it’s true. For why has he not come for her yet? Would he ever?
No -- no one ever did. She would make her own fucking luck.
For Everything A Reason - Carina Round | The Flowers - Regina Spektor | A Hole in the Earth - Daughter | Bad Dreams - Phantogram | Rosyln - Bon Iver | Short Skirt / Long Jacket - Cake | Butterflies and Hurricanes - Muse | Have You Got It in You? - Imogen Heap | Help I’m Alive - Metric | Lost It To Trying - Son Lux | Change is Everything - Son Lux | Huggin’ and Kissin’ - Big Black Delta | Blue Moon - Frank Sinatra | Hunger of the Pine - Alt J | Remain Nameless - Florence & the Machine |
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