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For Maria, the thing about grief is that it’s like being forced to play a game of Memory, except instead of flimsy cardboard squares, the world is the board, and sometimes she flips over a card and it just matches with a memory. Sometimes it doesn’t match and she turns it back over and waits; either way the cards keep flipping, because that’s the game, and she’s living in it.
When Monica was about four, they played for hours, trying to find where the second banana was, the two cars, and turning the cards back over to the blank side whenever she got it wrong.
This idea that sometimes she matches a memory and sometimes she doesn't, means that Maria finds herself bowled over by grief at the most random times. She’ll be making an omelet and fail to flip it, and she’ll remember.
“Goddammit, not again,” Maria said, staring down at the shattered remnants of their breakfast omelet smashed all over the stove top.
“Mmm,” Carol said, sneaking up behind Maria and nuzzling against the nape of her neck. “Why are you complaining? It’s modern art, put it in a gallery,” Carol gave her a squeeze, “I can say I knew you before you were famous.”
Maria leaned back against her. “Ok, that’s the long term plan, but what’s that going to do for my empty belly now?”
“Good point. Give me a fork.” And Carol scooped a bit of egg straight from the stove into her mouth. She scooped another, turned and said, “Open up.” When Maria just stared at her for a second, she looked mock stern. “You need your protein so you can get big and strong!” That got a chuckle. Carol shook the fork and Maria dutifully opened up. “It’s good, isn’t it?” Carol asked, half smiling.
“Sure is.”
“Shame that we’re decreasing the price tag on this masterpiece every time we take a bite, though.”
And suddenly she’s standing in the kitchen crying, unable to explain why while Monica hovers over her, worried, trying to fix the eggs, saying she can make it again, momma, don’t cry.
***
Maria resigns her commission. A very fancy way of saying she quits, but that’s the military for you: unnecessarily ornate and kind of pompous.
The program is over anyway. It would be hard to keep it going with a dead pilot and a missing chief scientist.
And once she signs all of the paperwork and becomes a private citizen again it’s suddenly unbearable to be there.
Not just the base, but the city, the state. As soon as she tells her mother she wants to quit, her mother wants her to come home. There’s a space for you here, she says. Who’s going to help you raise Monica, she asks. How are you going to support yourself?
Carol had been the answer to all of those questions. She’d been Maria’s home, her partner, her generator of madcap plans. Carol had a new idea every week for what they were going to do after they got out.
“I thought you wanted to go to space?”
“Well, sure, that’s step one.” The way Carol said it was so matter of fact, tossed over her shoulder like she tossed her hair. Of course Carol was going to space, you couldn’t go higher or faster than that. “But after, I’m thinking… we open a dirt bike racing course. I can teach the kids, you can run the front office.”
“Oh good, there’s a job for me.”
Carol looked her dead in the eye and said, “Always.”
Dirt biking isn’t going to happen, so she might as well move back to Louisiana; that’s a reasonable plan right? She’s stopped crying every day, which means she’s probably up to living in a place where she can pretend to be happy. She'll have to, because she isn't allowed to explain to anyone why she’s so sad.
Maybe that’ll beat living in a place where she can talk about the why and not the how, the details classified away. Here, people know she lost her partner. There, they won't. Living with Carol had always been an exercise in secret identities and split lives. They had their work life where they were both Captains and there were clear rules and hierarchies, codes of conduct that put them into separate professional boxes. Then they had their home life with all of their lesbian friends, what Carol called the ‘knitting circle.’
When Carol died, she didn’t tell them, not immediately. There were a lot of reasons, but also, she didn’t think she could take even one more rant from Roberta about the ‘Neoliberal-industrial complex and how it was, like, bringing hegemony and stuff.’
“I can’t believe none of you are out at work,” Roberta said.
Heather snorted. “I can. Not all of us get to work at the alternative record store, Roberta.”
Heather continued. “Besides,” she said, gesturing to Maria, “They’ll lose their jobs.”
Don’t bring me into this, Maria thought. She didn’t want a repeat of the great ‘Is Top Gun a tool of fascism’ debate and talking about the military would take them nowhere else, fast.
Roberta flicked her dreads, offended, “None of it is going to get better if no one comes out.”
Heather narrowed her eyes. “They’ve got Monica to think about. She can’t eat your righteousness.”
With her uncanny sixth sense for when a rescue was required, Carol appeared with a tray, moving so fast the pitcher balanced on it was sloshing. “Who wants sangria!” she called out.
Everyone agreed that they did, probably because by this point in their friendships everyone was pretty sick of the endless fight about whether if was every lesbian’s duty to come out. When everyone was distracted filling up with alcoholic fruit, Carol made eye contact with Maria from across the crowd and mimed jerking off while rolling her eyes. Maria bit the inside of her cheek.
None of their friends could go to the funeral, anyway. It was a military affair, but the rigid structure there at least kept Maria upright and dry-eyed through it all.
Carol’s mom took the folded flag when it was presented to her. Hadn’t talked to Carol in five years, didn’t know Maria, didn’t want to know Monica, but according to the rules and regulations of the United States Air Force, she had all the rights and Maria deserved nothing. If Maria hadn't also been in the program, no one would have even told her Carol died.
That at least, meant it was over and Maria was free to engage in some serious and dedicated drinking at her apartment with the assembled lesbian population of the greater Bakersfield area.
Roberta puts a call out on some sort of phone tree, and Maria’s freezer is fully packed with casseroles. Maria won’t have to cook for the foreseeable future. Carol and Maria’s place isn’t big, just the two bedrooms and small living room, but right now it’s crammed with people in dark suits and dresses milling around quietly. Monica is just sitting on the couch with Heather and Heather’s daughter, kicking her feet absently. Monica’s been so quiet today, and Maria appreciates it even as she appreciates that it’s wrong. Monica should be tearing around, should be loud, and she vows to herself, tomorrow. Tomorrow, she’ll work on it, try to bring Monica back up to her usual levels of trouble. Today she needs the quiet.
Maria’s seen everyone in these same outfits before, at a dozen other funerals in the last couple years, all of the friends they’ve lost to AIDS. She’s the odd one out in her dress blues, the only real spot of colour in the room. Every time she looks down she’s half surprised that she’s not in her plain black dress. She looks around the room, at everyone in their well-worn outfits and well-trod condolences. They’re never too far from the next funeral but there’s a part of Maria that can’t get in the flow with the rest of them, a part that’s screaming in protest.
She feels like the tiniest most inconsolable child; her heart keeps saying, but not Carol! Carol was going to live forever!
She doesn’t know how to talk to them without Carol. Whenever they got the group together and anyone got to be too much, Maria and Carol would make eye contact from across the room, and then Carol would be there. Carol would get her all the best gossip, would get her home when she needed it. And now, nothing. She doesn’t know what to do when Roberta pulls her into a hug, when Heather offers to help her out, when friend after friend says, I’m sorry. All she can do is stand there and wait for someone to fill in the gaps for her.
So yeah, maybe Louisiana.
***
Louisiana is different. Obviously the job and the people and the hair is different, but it’s not just that. Maria starts stopping herself from remembering. Sometimes she’ll get a flash and just... shut it down. She knows what she’s doing -- she’s trying to hoard them.
The thing about Memory is that at some point, there is a limited number of cards. Once all the matches are made, that's it. The board is left empty.
If she can stop herself from flipping a couple now, then that’s a couple that might still come up later. Louisiana makes her feel like it’s possible to get that control. There’s less to remind her here, so there’s a better chance she’ll be able to hold some memories in reserve. If she’s lucky, maybe even forever. One day she’ll be eighty and see a woman with her scarf tied in a secure knot and be able to say, oh yeah, Carol did hers like that. But that won't happen if she wastes all of her memories now by dwelling on them.
There’s also nobody here to tell her she’s being unhealthy and needs to move on. It feels like New Age never made it out here and everyone acts like therapy is something that people only do in California.
She does think about whether she is being unhealthy, because she can't only think about herself. Monica keeps seeing Carol in the backs of other women. Always just a few steps ahead, always out of the corner of her eye. She’ll see a ponytail swing and her breath will catch. At first, when it happened, Monica would grab Maria’s hand and say, ‘Auntie Carol!’ or ‘Look!’ And then Monica would remember. And her eyes would drop to the ground. Maria could see the realisation land all over again: it isn't Auntie Carol. Because Auntie Carol is dead. Monica keeps learning that, over and over. Every time it happens, all Maria can do is grab her back and hold on.
Now Monica doesn’t say anything, but she still stops breathing, sometimes, when she sees the right profile.
Here, in Louisiana, it’s like Monica wouldn’t be surprised to see Carol just walk up to the door and knock one day. Maria’s not like that. She knows that Carol won’t come back. Even though Maria knows that, she can't let go, can't move on. She doesn’t know which one of them is doing worse, grief-wise.
Even knowing it’s not great, she can’t bring herself to try to get Monica to stop. Maybe she should. Maybe it’s her motherly duty to help Monica get past it, to stop wanting Carol back, but it would make her the worst hypocrite.
She can’t bring herself to stop Monica because she’s dreading the day she’ll have nothing of Carol left, just an empty space where the shape of Carol’s smile used to be.
***
She gets a job flying crop dusters, she gets some new friends, she spends time with her family, and she never lets on that she’s living a whole other life inside of her, in fits and starts. Never lets on that she's living in her memories.
One night, she’s at her mom’s and Melissa Etheridge is singing on TV.
Maria finally pressed her way through the crowd with her beers to fall into the seat next to Carol, who was already flushed and gesturing wildly.
“Maria! Tell them.”
Maria grabbed Carol's closest hand and held it. Carol gave her a sappy, wide-toothed look, but hand-holding was really a self-preservation move that Maria had honed over many nights so drinks wouldn’t get knocked over.
She smiled back at Carol, humouring her. “Tell them what, Carol?”
“About my superpower!” Carol leaned in like she was telling a secret, and just like always, Maria’s breath caught a little, an involuntary reaction to having Carol so close. Carol reared back quickly, waving around her. Maria squinted and Carol said, “The music!” Maria listened, trying to pick it out. “I’m telling them that Melissa Etheridge is a lesbian and they don’t believe me.” Carol grabbed her glass.
Maria leaned back, amused. “You think every woman is a lesbian.”
Carol sloshed her glass at Maria. “And I’m always right!”
“You’re never right.”
“I was right about you! I knew you were a lesbian first thing.”
Carol was giving her the puppy dog eyes, but they were a little bleary, so the effect was diluted, which was good because Carol's puppy dog were pretty devastating.
“You met me in a gay bar --” Carol opened her mouth, but Maria talked over her, “in fact this very gay bar, where I was buying a copy of the Joy of Lesbian Sex.”
Carol snapped her mouth shut, pouting a little.
"I’m still right about Ellen Degeneres,” she muttered.
And Maria couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing, and barely stopped to press those laughs onto Carol’s lips.
Back on her mom’s saggy couch, she realises her mom’s been trying to get her to pass the remote for a full minute. With fingers that feel alien, she hands it over. Her body isn’t always hers. She gets up, splashes water on her face. One more down, she thinks.
***
It’s their anniversary, their fifth since Carol died. As of today, Carol’s been dead longer than they were together. Maria rolls that one around in her brain for a bit. It feels wrong, feels like Carol has always been a part of her life, but that isn’t true. She lived before Carol, grew up without Carol, became a woman without Carol. Those years feel less important, somehow, than the years they spent together. Her time with Carol felt like the time of her life.
On the flip side, it also feels like Carol’s been gone forever. All of Carol's possessions are in keepsake boxes. The spaces she occupied have been long hollowed out and left to get weathered by time, monuments to their life together with the details fuzzed off. Look upon my works, ye mighty might as well be written on the inside of her spine.
She wonders when it’s going to feel like the amount of time it’s actually been, or if she’s always going to have this distortion. Carol: never and always gone.
***
And then one day, one day just like any other day, she gets Carol back.
She gets up in the morning, works on the plane, and Carol just walks right up to the goddamn door, expecting to be let in, like it’s no big deal. Like it’s not a literal defiance of God and nature. Maria is torn between screaming and crying and sonofabitch but if Monica didn’t have it totally right. Maria’s going to pieces -- just a little, she is a Rambeau after all -- but Monica’s been expecting this and it doesn’t phase her.
***
She gets Carol back, but she doesn’t get Carol back, and not just 'cause she has to go off to space. Carol is different. She’s got her alien suit and her alien powers and Maria doesn't know her. Should be that no one knows Carol better than Maria. But this Carol, Maria doesn't know at all. It's a nightmare Maria never thought to have, a forgetting that goes beyond death.
It doesn’t slow Carol down. She’s sliding right back in to Maria's life, easy as honey. Carol is sitting with Monica, joking, like she never left. Carol’s basic attitude is ‘we saved some Skrulls, I say we party!’ and Maria just looks at Carol, looks at her and doesn’t know what to say.
Monica is saying something to Carol that Maria can’t hear and Carol says, “Hell yes, I’ll take you up! Once I get Talos dropped off I’ll come right back for you.” She looks up at Maria and crooks a smile.
“Carol, you can’t just give her everything she wants.” They’d had this fight before. Monica stopped herself from slamming the cabinet door, hard push on the laminate at the beginning, gentle touch at the end, like performing an aileron roll.
“She wants to look at the stars! It’s science, it’s good for her.” Carol was being stubborn, as always.
“It’ll mess up her sleep and she’ll spend tomorrow throwing tantrums and you won’t be here to deal with it.” Carol had a test flight tomorrow, and Maria didn’t begrudge her, but it put them in different positions. Carol was the star pilot, Carol had the missions. Maria didn’t get to do all the stuff Carol did, but she did get to decide how Monica gets raised.
Carol crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want Monica to grow up thinking she can’t have things. Monica needs to know she can be whoever she wants to be.”
“You’re making this about you. This is about Monica. She needs to grow up knowing she was loved enough to be protected. We’re not just going to let her do whatever she likes because we don’t care about what she’s doing.” Maria hurled the words out without thinking, regretted them immediately, even before she saw the way that Carol hunched up, shoulders pulling forward into her chest. Maria knew Carol wanted to be better for Monica than her parents were for her and it wasn’t fair to imply that Carol was being just like them. On top of it being cruel, Maria had betrayed her confidence. Carol told her about the secret hurts in her childhood and Maria just used them against her.
There was a terrible moment of silence before Maria said, tentatively, “I was wrong --”
Carol cut her off, a sharp gesture with her hand that shook her ponytail. “You’re not.” She tried to smile but it was tight.
Maria thought for a second and said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Carol shrugged. “You’re still right, though.”
Maria’s heart flowed out to Carol and her voice came out too gentle. “Both of us were right.”
Carol studied her for a second, considering. “Yes.” She chewed her lip for a second. “So what now?”
Maria feels herself come back to her body, the memory of Carol fading into the reality of Carol in front of her. Her first thought is there goes another one. Which, shouldn’t she be past trying not to remember, now? There’s a real Carol in front of her. But is she really Carol? Maria can barely look at her.
Monica is normal and Carol is normal and Maria feels like she's watching this all from behind thick glass. She's been pushing her memories of Carol down for so long, pushing every sadness and memory away, and now she doesn't know how to feel anything. Maria has this awful creeping feeling that it’s Maria who’s the alien in the house, the one who got abducted and came back wrong. Carol’s still somehow exactly the same, but Maria’s five years on and wearied by it. There’s a gap there that Maria doesn’t know how to cross.
Carols smile is fading and she’s frowning at her now, concerned, and Maria just can’t. She flees to her bedroom.
***
Of course Carol follows her. Maria shouldn’t have expected anything else.
She hates it, hates this feeling that the Carol in her memories is the real one. When Maria remembers, she’s there, with Carol, and she can feel her, smell her. There’s layers of emotions and context that give her memories a depth that she can sink into. She can’t connect them to this Carol, which feels like looking at a photograph instead of the real thing.
Sure looks like Carol, but.
Maria can’t explain that to Carol, wouldn’t know how. But she wants Carol to be real, wants Carol to feel like she’s real. “Maria, are you --” Carol starts, but Maria kisses her.
Carol tastes the same, like clear water mixed with whatever’s around, which right now means she tastes sweet, like the apple cobbler they had for snack. Maria thought she might not, given that her blood is different now, thought maybe she’d burn where she used to be soft. But she’s exactly the same.
When Maria presses her lips against Carol’s, Carol immediately kisses her back, passion and warmth and just a little desperation. The glass shatters. And with it, everything that was keeping Maria's feelings tamped down.
It’s like doors are opening inside of Maria’s brain, everything she was locking down and tucking away: this one hiding the feel of Carol’s hair, this one the hitching way she grabs breath, this one the way she smiles when she pulls away, this one the way Carol blinks and shakes her fingers when she can’t reach out to hold Maria’s hand even though she wants to. It’s an explosion of colour and sound, pulling Maria in but tying her to the present all at the same time. They’re all there for her, all at once.
It’s not Carol in pieces, it’s all of Carol all at once, overwhelming in a way Maria doesn’t want to ever give up.
After a while, Carol pulls back, reluctantly, peppering kisses to Maria’s lips as she disconnects them. Maria has her fingers wound into Carol’s hair. Detaching them is as pure an act of will as any Maria’s ever had to do.
“Wow,” Carol says, and gives her that smile, that same exact smile, with its combination of cockiness and true wonder like she’s just gotten a gift she thought she’d never be allowed but knew she deserved. On a lesser woman it would be infuriating; on Carol, it just makes Maria’s heart melt, makes her want to give Carol every Christmas and Birthday and fast motorcycle ride that she had to claw out of the hands of those who didn’t think she was worthy. And that longing comes from knowing that Carol wants to do the exact same thing for Maria.
A cloud comes over Carol’s eyes and she reaches out to touch Maria’s face. “Are you all right? You can talk to me.”
Maria leans into the warmth of Carol’s hands. She thinks about everything she wants to say. She wants to tell Carol about her loneliness and having to lie and building a new life. Carol missed so much, and Maria wants her to know all of it. Yes, she lost so much when Carol was gone, but look at what she has now, Carol, look at this space Maria’s built with Monica. She wants to offer it up and say there’s room for the three of them in it.
What Maria finds herself saying is, “Melissa Etheridge is a lesbian.”
For a second Carol just stares at her, lips parted, eyes blank, and Maria’s heart sinks. She thinks: Carol doesn’t have it all back, she doesn’t really remember me, there is this alien staying in my house, hugging my daughter, wearing the skin suit of the woman I love, but she’s a stranger, really, and my Carol is still dead.
But then the light goes on, and Maria knows she remembers.
“I told you... I have superpowers.” She sounds incredulous, barely holding back a laugh. She looks at Maria dead on, eyes saying, Isn’t life ridiculous?
It’s an invitation for Maria to agree, and boy, does she ever. She raises an eyebrow in return, and suddenly they’re both doubled over laughing.
That’s how Agent Fury finds them a full minute later, crying laughing and hanging on each other for support.
He raises an eyebrow and Carol straightens up, pulling Maria with her. They both try to sober up, wiping each other’s faces dry.
Carol brushes her thumb under Maria’s eye one last time, lingering. “Okay,” she says. “I gotta go.” Carol pulls her hand away.
Maria nods, trying to project love and certainty even as her eyes prick with tears, but she’s not going to lose Carol this time. She’s just not.
She pulls Carol into a fierce hug. “You better come back.” She takes the chance to breathe Carol in, just a little bit more. “You owe me so many more memories.”
Maria means to get so many they won’t fit in a box, so many that it’ll make a mockery of the idea of them ever running out. She’ll pile them up everywhere, card after card that can’t be contained.
Maria watches Carol walk away, keeps her eyes on her til Carol can’t be seen anymore.
Then she closes her eyes, and holds on to the echo of Carol chanting I will, I will.