Even Losing You, for wonderfulwrites

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Title: Even Losing You
Recipient: wonderfulwrites
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,183
Warnings: Canonical memory loss.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta, Ria, for looking this over for me. Title from Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art."

Summary: The art of losing isn't hard to master. Lisa's getting quite good at it.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~”One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

I

The worst feeling in the world is the sense you're forgetting something important. These days, Lisa feels it constantly: that something important always out of reach. 

No. No, the worst feeling is pressing the knife to Ben's throat, is that black pouring into her mouth, choking on it, and her body jerks on its strings.

Lisa doesn't remember. And she doesn't remember what she doesn't remember.

II

Ben shoots up faster than she can draw out the tape measure. Every week, he appears to add inches and multiply his food intake, and Ben smiles this sheepish, eyebrows-quirked grin that draws at that distant memory. Some sad smile on her doorstep. "Mom." He holds up his leg and his hem shows off his smooth ankle and the inches of pale shin. Lisa huffs a laugh. "I think I need pants again,” he tells her.

"We'll head to Goodwill. Okay? I'm not buying anything from Kohl's you won't be able to wear in a week." Lisa can only shake her head at her too-quickly growing boy.

This is their life now: something's missing.

She turns Ben loose on the thrift shop. Habitual visits mean he knows to buy a size or two too large, and he knows what he likes. It's okay that it's not cool to shop with his mom anymore. Lisa paces the women's racks, rainbows of color flashing by under her fingertips, and the fluorescents beat down her like an oppressive sun. Her touch stalls on the buttersoft leather. Lisa pulls the faded brown jacket off the rack. It's too big, she can tell just looking at it, it will hang on her frame, extend over her wrists, but Lisa pulls the leather to her nose.

It smells like leather, thrift, and dust. Wrong. It doesn't smell like she remembers. Her grip on the jacket tightens till her knuckles creak with passion. Lisa's breath is painful ripping through her as the toobright lights illuminate her for the eyes of passers-by. No one comes near, thankfully. It will pass. It always passes. Don't be scared.

Ben's hand on her shoulder startles her, makes her leap and drop the jacket, and she scrambles for the touch of leather again. So soft, so old, and so big. She gathers it into her arms like a small child. "Ready?" she rasps.

"Yeah." With a touch gone gentle in his age, he takes the coat from her. "This'll look good on you."

Lisa catches her composure with the swipe of her card. No returning the coat now. She stays up late that night, watching Chaplin's The Immigrant and wrapped up in the jacket. Outside, dawn lightens the horizon and birds start up singing, and she fists the leather in her hands.

III

Ben doesn't often leave the house beyond need. Her relief is acrid when he calls to say he'll be late: he's going to watch movies with some friends. Lisa curls up on the couch with a newspaper and doesn't watch the clock tick on by. She didn't buy the subscription to the paper. Like a bachelor, she eats cereal for dinner and watches the shadows climb over the edges of the table.

"Mom?" Ben's voice comes for the entryway, uplifted, bright like she remembers from a long time ago. He never seems to be that happy anymore. She can't remember why. This is why you don't invite strangers into your home. "Hey, I'm home."

Lisa abandons her cereal to soggy damnation. Their hug is tight with coiled emotion and she can’t recall when they become so desperate to return to each other, and Ben pulls back first with a bright, crooked grin that makes her cup his cheek. "Have a nice time, sweetie?”

"Yeah. We watched Twilight, which was sort of stupid. But whatever. They liked it. It wasn't awful, either. What did you do?" Ben peers over her shoulder at the lonely cereal and laughs at her like he means it. 

"Crosswords, mostly. You know: old people stuff." She tweaks his nose, then dumps her bowl.

Ben's laughter brightens the house even as the shadows crawl atop everything. He helps with the dishes, before heading up to bed. Soccer in the morning. She watches him climb the stairs, and considers teasing him tomorrow about having a crush. Lisa can't remember which friends he said he was watching with; it might have been Charles and Olivia.

She wakes sharply in the middle of the night with panic a hand around her throat. "Ben?" she calls, and the bed beside her shifts. Ben kneels on top of her comforters, his face is painted ashen even in the dark. "Hey, hey. What’s—?”

"Mom," his voice is a sob.

Lisa pulls Ben's face to her shoulder, startling at the wetness she finds. He shudders against her, fisting the fabric of her sleep shirt. Lisa knows what nightmares look like. "Bad dream, sweetie?" she asks, rocking him as if he is a small child. Like she rocked him, when Lucifer came calling with Sam’s smile.

"Vampires," he tells her, voice tight as he tries to rein his tears in. But he can't hide from her; he never has been able. They're all they have. Her head pressed into a strong shoulder. It'll be okay. "There was a vampire and he was going to—“

She holds him tighter. This is familiar. Can nearly taste it: sulphur and ash. "It's okay. Just a bad dream. Maybe no more Twilight before bed, okay?"

Big gulping breaths against her shirt. Ben tenses. "Can't believe I got nightmares from Twilight." He shudders against her. "What the shit. This is so stupid." He digs his fingers tighter into her shirt, and she pets his back, over and over, and is there some special mom spell that can make this go away? Something to exorcise his nightmares? Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus.

Lisa makes vague shushing noises, which are all she's got, really. No decent exorcism. When Ben stills, it is likely proximity, rather than any real talent on her part. Useless now as then. "Mom?" his voice is quiet. "What's wrong with me? It's like—it's like I know something. Something important but it's just totally gone. I can't remember. Like that dream, it's just... disappearing."

"There's nothing wrong with you, Ben." Her voice is knife-to-the-throat sharp. Feels him wince even as she holds him tighter. "Nothing. That's normal. Just a bad dream. Better to be forgotten anyway, right?"

Sometimes, it's necessary to lie. Ben relaxes against her.

IV

Lisa finds a half-empty bottle of whiskey in her liquor cabinet. She pulls out the dusty bottle to examine in the light. Wracks her memory for the bottle: she can't stand whiskey, especially not cheap whiskey. Thick fingers wrapped around the neck, lush mouth wet with drink. Like hell she'll kiss those lips. Smeary fingerprints lay beneath the dust, large prints that are foreign as the drink.

Must have been something from before moving, then. Some party or something she forgot about. Lisa brings the whiskey to the couch. Sinatra plays in the background, her cleaning music, and oh, how classy she is. Lisa rubs the dust off and leaves her own fingerprints over the relics on the bottle.

Takes a swig. Grimaces.

Ben is not Ben. Some dead-eyed impostor with “Mommy” on its lips that is not her child. Where is Ben? Where is he—? Fear coils hot and that sad smile isn’t a smile anymore. Instead, an explanation: monsters are—

The whiskey tastes like whiskey, bitter and awful, and age hasn't made it better. She rubs her mouth, wiping away the last. Her stomach seizes like she might expel what she drank. Lisa shuts her eyes, and the taste is thick in her throat. Sitting heavy. As if it might be waiting. Waiting for what, exactly? She sniffs the liquor this time and—

He keeps some under the bed. With the rosary and gun. All things to banish demons, in their own way. Lisa can feel him tremble in bed, feels him wake with Sam's name in his throat, the name he washes down with drink like that will keep the grief at bay. Lisa lets him, because her own comfort is hollow as his faith.

her stomach heaves. Lisa barely reaches the bathroom before everything comes up, a stinking hot mess, and she is crying with it. Something out of reach that brings her to hands and knees. She keeps going until all that comes is snot and yellow bile.

Lisa tosses out the whiskey, and feels lighter for it. Obviously a bad memory. Monsters are real.

V

She pulls the rental into the driveway with just enough time to make lunch before the tow-truck arrives. What a week for her car to break down, honestly. Lisa drops her purse in the entryway, and frowns at the sight of Ben's backpack. "Ben?" she calls into the house. "Ben!"

If he's skipping school... When has he ever skipped school? Her stomach flips over, and she darts up the stairs to his room to find it empty. "Ben! Are you here?" Did he just forget his backpack? She could run that to him, if need be. Why hadn't he called? Could be a demon, a shifter, a vampire, a djinn, the list goes on and on.

"Mom?" The door to the garage creaks open, and Ben stands in the doorway, slicked up with grease. "I... um. I fixed your car? I think?"

"You what?" Lisa stops at the top of the stairs.

Ben half-shrugs, and grabs one of the dish towels from the kitchen to wipe off his hands. White tight shirt, stained with grease and sweat and the shiny black car hidden under the tarp. "Mom, why doesn't he drive it anymore?" "I don't know. It starts now, though. So it might be fixed, but I don't know what I did. I just fixed it."

His shoulders hunch as he throws the stained towel into the sink. Lisa opens her mouth to remind him they wash dishes there, but she reaches for his wrist instead and finds him shaking. "Ben..."

"Is this normal, too?" Ben demands, eyes shining wet.

Normal is an illusion. She pulls him grease and all into a hug, resting her hair in his sweaty hair. "Sure it is," she tells him, hardly a murmur, comforting, or something like it. What kind of mother is she, that she is a pathological liar. But does she know whose lies she's telling? "It's all right, Ben. How about I go look at the car, okay? See how you did."

Ben nods into her shoulder. When she pulls back, she is smeared with his grease and sweat. Lisa can't bring herself to care. The garage is strewn with tools she can't recall buying. This is why she doesn't come in here, if she can help it. She approaches the car with dread curling like black smoke in her throat. When she turns the key, the car growls to life.

Lisa pulls out the keys, then turns to her son. "You fixed this?"

"Mom, what's wrong with me?" he asks, picking up the tools with hands that are trembling. "I know... I know you're hiding something from me. Come on, I'm old enough! What's happening?"

Sometimes it's safer not to know. She crosses to him, relieving him of the tool. Wishes she had answers for him, rather than more questions. Wishes she knew what was held out of reach. Where these tools came from. Where the whiskey and leather came from. Lisa puts her hand on his head. "Ben, sweetie. If I knew, I would tell you. I know you want me to have all the answers, ”

"Why don't I remember learning this?" his voice is quiet, without accepting her own ignorance.

Lisa can't just leave him here without an answer. So she offers the comfort of a lie. "Maybe Grandma taught you a long time ago. Don't you remember always listening to Car Talk with her?" She pauses for effect. "Well, if you don't... you were pretty young. Guess it must have stuck."

If Ben doesn't believe her, he doesn't say. Ben absorbs the lie with a wet smile.

VI

The worst feeling in the world is smelling sulphur when nobody else can. Lisa smells it sometimes: at work, at home, in the car. Her throat will work like she's going to heave, and she will stop to search for the source. Nothing ever comes up, but she can swear she feels eyes on her. 

Dark, shiny black eyes that swallow her whole. She has to get Ben. She has to get out of here.

Wherever this paranoia came from, it does her no favors. People at work and in the neighborhood begin to regard her with those careful, breaking smiles; those smiles that say they know something she doesn’t. The looks settle under her skin like ash. With nothing there, she eventually stops looking for the sulphur.

Some things are better forgotten.