Chapter 17

Blair's own expression quickly changed from expectation to one of disdain as she found Tea, not Todd, standing unexpectedly in the doorway of the Penthouse.

Tea, in turn, shrugged off her emotion, masking all the hope that it was Todd who would be at the door, a hope that she feared was written on her face. Blair was one of those people on "The List", one of those in this world who she wouldn't let see her ‘falter’ in any way that could be used against her if she had anything to say about it. To let her see any of the feelings she hid so well otherwise would have been the ultimate in vulnerability, and she knew that Blair would pick up on it and go right for her weak spot, pecking like a scavenger who dropped in to get a head start before the last breath had been taken. Unconsciously, she squared her shoulders, a glint of defiance finding its way into her eyes to cover the more exposed emotions that she was struggling with.

Instantly, the air was charged, a dangerous tense energy crackling between them; Tea’s mask was stone while Blair’s was ice.

Just as the initial tension threatened to boil over, Tea was tackled by a low striking "enemy"; Starr had burst out from behind Blair and grabbed her in a flash, giving her a tight hug around the waist that nearly took her off of her feet in surprise.

"Teeee! You're back! I knew you would be back today!" Starr looked from her mother to her stepmother with child-like delight, oblivious in her innocence to the increasing and ever present strained vibes between the two women she adored. Quickly she jumped in to fill the hanging silence.

"I was gonna play a trick on Daddy and pretend that I'd---" she paused, and flourished dramatically for effect "vanished into thin air. I saw that on David Copperfield last night…think I could disappear like him, Tee, you know, like magic?" She snapped her fingers, her eyes bright with child-like wonder at the thought.

"Disappearing acts—those are Tea's game, sweetie" Blair volleyed in an innocent tone for Starr's sake, but her eyes narrowed into a direct hard stare to drive her point home. Glancing behind Tea into the Penthouse in a very deliberate manner, a smirk settled onto her face. "Or is it Todd's turn this week? Flip a coin, did we?" she whispered through a tight lipped smile as she roughly brushed past her and followed her daughter inside.

Starr was already peering up the stairs, tentatively calling for her father.

"Please…do come in, Blair?" Tea rolled her eyes at the ceiling and then slowly closed the door too late, sighing inwardly as she wished that she had snuck Starr in and closed Blair out on the other side of it when she'd had the chance.

"Why today?" she consulted the heavens through clenched teeth before turning around to face the fire. With purpose filled strides, she moved past Blair as if s he were invisible and approached Starr.

"Hey kiddo, your Dad's not home today. He had to leave…" She paused as Blair's sudden yet not unexpected cackle rang out, and it was all she could do to not sharpen some claws and take her on right there. "Your Dad had to go out of town for a business meeting today…"

"But we were supposed to spend the day together! I have the day off from school and everything, and that almost never happens! How could he just forget?" Starr flopped down on the steps in a disappointed heap. “It was supposed to be a special day. See, I had it all thought out in my head and everything! You, Daddy, and Mommy and me, we were all going to go do all of this family stuff together, you know…connecting all the branches on the family tree? Make it…I dunno…so that no one ever wants to leave, or so that no one is ever angry or fighting and all that stuff, making it so that we get along really good and make a real go at it. Connecting the beads, stacking the oreos…” She rambled on and Tea had to smile a little at how much she sounded like Todd in that moment.

“Starr…what on earth are you talking about? Sweetie, you know I don’t have time for this today. Your dad left town and didn’t bother to tell lil’ ole me, even though this means that I’ve got to keep the home office at The Sun on its toes…that’s what is on the agenda for my ‘special day.’ And I’ve also got to get you back to Aunt Dorian’s now since, once again, Todd has shirked his parental duties.”

“Blair…” Tea jumped in on her last point with a deliberate look at Starr and a frown to make her point. There was that part of her that, knowing how important Starr was to Todd, wouldn’t let Blair bad mouth him to his daughter without interceding for him in his absence. It wasn’t fair to Starr…or to Todd. Old habits?

“Teeeeaaaa…” Blair mimicked Tea’s tone back to her, followed by a look that said ‘you have no part in this.’

“Oh that’s good…let’s start acting like twelve year olds.” Tea folded her arms defensively, yet took a step forward. “Tell me something…did you miss what your daughter was trying to say before? Did her point just go over your…(she struggled not to use the colorful adjectives that came to mind, since she felt Starr watching them) head?”

“Don’t you dare pretend like I don’t know what my daughter needs! You’ve got no place here; You’ve never had a place here, and the sooner you cut the bull and let my daughter in on the whys and the hows of why you entered her life and why to think you have any place in it from here on out is just plain ridiculous, the better off we’ll all be. The rest of us can get back to our lives. OUR life. Do you want to talk about self-involved? Let’s talk about money, Tea. Hmmm…how bout that check? What kind of amount should we make the check in question out for, hmmm? Just how much was your ‘going rate’ then, and let’s talk about the price Todd pays now? The price my little girl pays when she finds out allll about it! For someone so cheap, I’ve heard your dollar amount back then was…shall we say…awfully expensive.”

Starr stood off to the side in wide-eyed confusion during the words that her mother was saying, trying to grapple with this adult world where so much of the time, people seemed to speak in riddles. Angry riddles. She looked to the door, willing it to open with her Daddy on the other side, and he would come in and put a stop to all of this. And then everything would work out like she just knew it could…there would be Daddy and Tee who would always love each other and her no matter what. Then there would be she and Mommy, ditto that part about the love and the forever, and Mommy would find a way to get along with Daddy again, and Mommy and Tee wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and Mommy would find someone to love again, and things wouldn’t have to be so…complicated. She knew all about divorce and what it meant to have two parents who couldn’t be married, two families…but families who didn’t always act like they could hardly stand to be in the same room with each other. Some of her friends had those, and it looked like it worked out pretty good for everybody.

Before Blair’s dramatic tirade had ended, Starr had gone over to the answering machine and started to rewind the full tape of messages, hoping that one of them was a message from her father about today in which he’d promised to be home any minute, or a number where she could send out an SOS and call for back up.

Tea took a step towards Blair before catching herself, where she froze in mid-step, took a breath, and pulled a hand through her hair in an agitated motion. Looking past Blair, she noticed Starr fiddling with the machine.

“What are you doing, Starr?”

“Looking for Daddy.”

You and me, both…

“Starr, you know what, I haven’t had time to check for my phone messages in days. Do you think you could do something really important for me?”

Starr nodded.

“Could you take the tape upstairs and listen to it in the machine for the upstairs line, and just write down the names of the people who called for me?”

“Like Daddy? I bet Daddy called you.”

Tea swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yeah…yeah, like Daddy.”

“Okay!” Starr walked to the stairs and turned at the bottom as if to assess the situation one last time before agreeing to leave it behind.

“Go ahead Starr, I’ll be up to get you in a few minutes.” Blair added, wanting to be sure that she retained control over everything in the situation.

When Starr was out of earshot, Tea unleashed her anger. “How dare you!”

“How dare I…how dare I what? Speak the truth? Tea, if you don’t see it by now then the little credit I have given you is too much. Are you trying to tell me that I’m wrong, that you don’t see it every time Todd has looked at you? Don’t you know what you become when you’re bought and paid for? What you'd have to be to even do what you did? He sees you as property…something he owns…something he can toy with. You think you’re worth more than that? That you could ever be more than that? If you do, then, honey, you haven’t heard him. And you haven’t really seen him. Holding out any hope would mean that you failed to notice that every time that he didn’t want you it was because he was busy realizing that you weren’t me, or if that's too specific, at the very least, you're not someone 'like me'. You’re not ‘real’ to him, and you never have been. With me, it was all real…and it was all there for the taking. Don't you wonder, Tea? I mean, come on, you'd have to. Did you think about it that time when you had to walk through the blizzard wearing next to nothing because he didn't want you? Did you think about it when you found out that he told me all about it as if it was something that came with bragging rights? Damn, Tea…I must have mistaken you for someone with some self-respect! But then, you know, I've got to stop and reconsider that…why would you have any? You can't respect what doesn't exist.”

Blair paused to look her up and down very deliberately, and in that moment, something broke through the mix of rage and confusion that the onslaught of words had brought to Tea. Blair stood before her, claiming some sort of special level of perfection, claiming that she already possessed everything that Tea had ever wanted, and that she could never have it. Though Blair too had repeatedly proven a flawed nature, and her argument was full of things twisted for her own spin, still she claimed this 'chosen' status for herself. Tea knew she'd been hit in a vulnerable place, Blair's attitude triggering powerful old ghosts. Taken back in time, it didn't matter that the lawyer in her had the resources to go at each argument with logical rebuttals, it didn't matter that deep down, she thought for sure that Blair's arguments were conjured because the spell had gotten to her nonetheless. Emotions of the past had been tapped, and in that, in this showdown, it was akin to being mortally wounded. It was as if every step of ground gained since those days was lost, days when she was made to feel worthless and ashamed, reduced to hold only the view of someone on the outside looking in rather than trusting what she knew to be so on the inside, within herself.

Blair saw her victory, maybe not the specifics of it all, but at the very least, that she'd struck some desired targets. Tea knew that she was seeing beyond her armor even before the slow smile began to play at her lips. Her mind reeled as she took a step back, trying to slow her breathing, take back what was hers, regain what was lost. In Blair's face, in her stance, in her sick confidence, in her self-imposed power, and in her coldness, Tea saw a myriad of faces, years of experiences that had made her who she was, and the strengthening of a self-hatred that had merely been reduced to smaller place within her, rather than beaten as she'd hoped.

She saw the closest thing to her kind of fairy tale drifting away like rose petals in the wind, those that she'd tried so hard to hold onto, a storm rising as her monster awoke and claimed her fully once again.

*****

Todd stood across from the small woman, staring intently into the cup of coffee that she'd just handed to him…wondering….

"Don't think that I didn't consider it, Mr. Manning."

He usually didn't have what it took to blush, but for whatever reason, he felt the heat dance across his cheeks at that moment.

"Huh?"

"Poison. That's what you were thinking, weren't you? I didn't, of course, but…what do you say…was that a mistake? Surely an opportunity that you would never make me live to regret?"

Her eyes twinkled. He looked at the door and tried to calculate the distance.

She gestured stiffly to the old overstuffed couch. "Sit," she instructed.

He hesitated, attempting to gauge his power and realizing how much was lost once he'd sank five feet into some fluffy flowered cushions. Right now, he towered over her small frame bent by the effects of arthritis. His best advantage…

She reached over with her cane and rapped him softly at the knees with it.

He sank down into the cushions as if someone had pressed a button and he'd just collapsed in response.

She smiled in victory.

He listened for back-up, any additional signs of life in the NY apartment, but found the house too quiet.

"Damn!" he cursed in a whisper just above the sound level of a breath.

She raised her eyebrows.

Shit! His thoughts cursed.

She squinted an eye.

He attempted to fidget.

"Nice plastic," he commented, hating with a passion the plastic slip cover upon which he'd sat and almost instantaneously adhered to.

She sized him up, and he studied her in return. A clock ticked loudly on the wall, and the eyes of various Catholic saints bored into him from strategic positions around the room. One in particular seemed to have it in for him. But it was nothing compared to the eyes of Tea's grandmother. He felt as if he were in the cross-hairs of a rifle.

All at once he exploded from his place among the plastic coated blue roses.

"Look, I'm not doing…whatever this is. I intimidate, I don't DO intimidation…" He paced wildly, hair flying behind him in emphasis, but he was sure to pace out of range of her cane.

"You intimidate, do you?"

She had cut in boldly, her few words overpowering him for a split second.

"Yeah, that's right, I do! So this little game you've got going on here…"

"Do you intimidate my Teaita? Do you play nothing but games with her?"

Her tone wasn't completely unkind, and it wasn't loud, but it was fiercely strong. It was…challenging.

He stopped pacing instantly, frozen in place and turned to face her, their eyes connecting in a no-holds barred lock of two strong-willed adversaries. Again, he noticed a strong similarity to Tea's eyes…and in them he found the same look that she wore when there was a Tigress behind them.

"Don't do that…"

"Do what?"

"That thing…that thing with your eyes. Don't…look like…her. You…You're creeping me out."

"Then we're even." Her face didn't yield, but her eyes sparkled, again.

"You…you did this, so why don't you let me know what the fu…what the hell you want?"

He felt a saint mentally smack him down. The one who had it in for him, anyway.

Her silence unnerved him. There was a power in the way she used words.

"Are you trying to break me? Is that what this is? 'Cause let me clue you in on something; I grew up with a master…the master, and I know this game. And I'm not going to play. Screw this! No, no…fuck this!" He nodded in emphasis, grinning triumphantly. He thought this was the time he would turn on his heel and boldly stride out, but to his own surprise, he didn't. Todd stood in place and waited.

Methodically, she straightened the lace runner on the table in front of her, before she looked up in her own time to meet his gaze.

"I want to know what your intentions are. Mr. Manning, if there's a chance that you're just 'fucking' with my grand-baby, it is you who will be 'fucked' in the end, tu comprende? Do I make myself clear?"

Todd stared at her in stunned silence.

She cleared her throat, dusted the statue of a saint, and then straightened her skirt before looking up very deliberately to direct her gaze fully into his eyes which didn't back down from hers in return.

"But I don't think you are…are you? At least…that's never been your intention…has it?"

Todd sank down onto the couch.

"Okay…waaaait a minute. You're sitting here---might as well be your own one woman geriatric firing squad---and now you're going to turn things around, like what…you're trying to figure me out, pull things outta me, shoot me down when you don't like what I say…going so far as to answer your own question…really nice language for a grandma, by the way,…by giving me the benefit of the doubt…what is this?"

"I'm extending to you the opening to prove me right, or show me to be a fool, but one way or another, I want to know what you're about. I want your cards on the table, the hand that affects my Tea being the one I'm concerned with above all else. If my sense of things is wrong, I'll give you a running start and an order to stay away from mi ciela once and for all, because I will not see you destroy her. But if I'm right…Mr. Manning, if I'm right then I think we have some things to talk about, you and I, before I'll let this go on any further."

"So this is like one of those movie moments when I've got to pass some kind of test, and you've named yourself the entire squad of romance police, is that what you're trying to say? And that's what this is really all about?"

"No. Worse…I'm a grandmother." She nodded raised an eyebrow for emphasis, a small smile breaking through. "But…you're not completely off the mark either. Love and the happiness of my family is very important to me, especially when it comes to my only granddaughter. She's always been special to me…and so it's important to me now to know that she's okay. Time has been good to me, but its fleeting, you know, and each day reminds me. Teaita, she's never felt like she's had too many places to turn in this life, too many safe people and safe places outside of herself, if even 'herself' counts, as sometimes she can be her own greatest enemy." She looked at him pointedly. "She doesn't reveal all that she is to too many people…she'll keep them at a certain distance even while she longs for love…" she paused, gauging how much more she wanted to say, and tilted her head a little to the side as she realized that he wasn't reaching for her words as if he didn't know her enough to easily fit what she was saying into place, and at the same time, she knew that she was seeing an understanding of his own in his eyes. She relaxed a little more before she continued. "But there's something different about you in her eyes; there's something she sees, and I wanted to see for myself what that something is." She stopped in the midst of her thoughts, pulled herself up from her chair, and disappeared into the kitchen while he sat there looking after her, trying to process his thoughts.

Moments later she returned with a plate of freshly baked muffins and set it down in front of him. It gave him the sense that he could breathe a little easier, that he'd passed through some initial gateway if he was even still sitting here much less being offered homemade breakfast, though his natural guard was still in place, nonetheless. He reached for a muffin and a knife, sank the knife into some jelly, and smeared it all over the top before placing the knife in his mouth and cleaning off what was left.

He looked up and met her amused expression.

"What? Oh…I bet maybe you wanted to use that. It's still good, you know. And that little maneuver impresses the he…heck out of Tea."

"Mmmm-hmmmm…"

He half shrugged his shoulders and couldn't hold back the shadows of a smile.

"Tell me, Todd Manning…do you love my granddaughter?"

Taken by surprise by how she slipped in the direct question , Todd Manning choked on the first bite of muffin.

*****

Starr couldn't figure out which was the better sign as she perched precariously on the top step of the Penthouse where she'd been attempting to make sense of the onslaught of words coming from down below. First there were the angry words, and now there was this silence. A silence that somehow felt so full. She'd started down several times to put her oar into this, but in the end, she turned and headed to her Daddy's room to do the task that Tea had asked her to do earlier, her hope being that in some way, it might help. Mommy's words had been so angry…finally it felt as though there really was something that she was too young to understand. Usually, that just sounded like an excuse not to tell her the good stuff.

Popping the tape into the answering machine in his room, it seemed to rewind endlessly before one message after another from The Sun began to play. Bored, Starr tapped her fingers on the night stand and looked around her father's bedroom. It didn't fit the Daddy she knew…it always seemed so cold and empty…lonely.

Suddenly, on the tape with all the messages from days ago, the message that she'd been waiting for cut in.

"Tea, are you there? Please….please be there…there's so much that I need to say to you."

Starr's eyes opened wide and a slow smile spread across her face.

To Be Continued....