Codes: J, Gretchen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Trek universe belongs to Paramount.
Summary: Gretchen Janeway writes a letter.
By Kelly
Four hours, Kathryn. In four hours, I'll be transported to Starfleet Headquarters, where I'll stand with Phoebe and dozens of others, all of us waiting for that moment when the Voyagers (as the press is calling you) are finally released from debriefings and dispatched into the arms of their eager relatives. There will be a fancy reception, of course. With vid crews. And reporters. Lots of reporters.
I've been asked to prepare a statement. For some news agency. Or maybe it was Starfleet. I'm not sure; I seem to have erased the message. It was somebody official, anyway. A statement explaining how I feel about Voyager being home. About seeing you again.
I hope you'll find that as funny as I do. Oh, not funny that you're back. But that they honestly seem to think I'll have anything to say that they couldn't just write themselves. "Of course I'm thrilled that she's home. . .I'm so proud of her. . .Her father would be proud of her. . .I'm so happy for the crew and for all of the families who've missed them. . ."
Not that any of those things is untrue. I am glad you're home. But even if I weren't, what else could I do but trot out the expected cliches? I mean, as far as Earth and the Fleet and the Federation are concerned, Voyager is risen from the dead. It's a divine resurrection, by god, and you're the god. And what. . . Captain Kathryn Janeway's mother is going to say something to tarnish that? Right.
A statement. Absurd. But then, so much of Starfleet is. Now there's something I'll bet you never expected to hear me say. Still, I find myself thinking that after eight years in the Delta Quadrant, you might just agree with me.
I have to confess, I almost gave into the temptation to write something that would just shock the hell out of everybody, including you.
You see, I actually thought about telling the truth.
It's a fantasy I've had for a long time, in fact. Whenever reporters come to interview me -- and you can't imagine how often they do -- I want to sit there and smile and tell them what I really think.
But I never have. Not yet. And it's not because of loyalty or fear of scandal or anything like that. It's because I know they wouldn't get it. They'd just end up turning me into some cute, eccentric, quotable old lady.
So if I can figure out who asked for it, I'll go ahead and send the gushy statement they want.
But the truth I'll try to write to you. I owe you that much, at least.
I can't guarantee it will be well-organized. Sorry -- I know how much organization means to you. But I'll do my best.
You might have wondered why I didn't write before, when Voyager discovered that alien communications link or whatever it was.
I could have. Starfleet called all the crew's families and invited us to send messages. Only one per crew member at first, they said, since they didn't know how many they would be able to transmit.
It was Owen Paris who contacted me. I told him to let Mark write your letter. He cleared his throat and hemmed and hinted that you could be exempted from the one-message rule, since you were the captain and all, but I said no and spouted some high-minded babble about how you wouldn't want special treatment in front of the crew.
Well, you know Owen. He bought it, of course. Told me I was being very noble. But what had really happened was that I had suddenly realized that I couldn't be the one to write. I didn't have any idea what I would say to you.
Now you're back and, well, I'm still not sure I know what to say to you. Whoever you are, now. I'm not naive enough think that you have survived eight years in the Delta Quadrant and come back the same person you were when you left.
I'm not sure I ever knew that person, though, Kathryn.
A lot of that is my fault, I know. That is, if blame has to be apportioned, and I suppose it does. If I don't do it, someone will. A mother who says she never knew her daughter? Of course somebody must be to blame.
It can be me, that's fine.
As you've probably guessed by now, you didn't know me, either. I'm not sure you ever really wanted to, and in any case, I never let you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Those reporters I mentioned, the ones who interview me? One of the things they always ask about is our "lifestyle." God, I hate that word. "You raised your family as traditionalists, Mrs. Janeway, isn't that right?" they say, knowing full well that it is. That piece of information has been in virtually every article ever written about us. But I gamely start the explanation all over again, the one they want to hear, like a comfortable fairy tale where you know the ending, and it's all so damned reassuring.
"Admiral Janeway and I felt it was important to give our girls a solid grounding," I say. That wording makes me laugh. As if you ever wanted to be on the ground. Oh, and I always make sure to include your father in every answer. Might as well give him his share of the credit. Blame. Whatever it is.
What would they think -- what would you think -- if I explained that I elected to be a "traditionalist" mainly because it was a life that came complete? I didn't have to create it, didn't have to make decisions about it or take responsibility for it. It's like those helpful menus that come with replicators. You can program the whole meal at once. If you're having some sort of pasta, then along comes bread and salad and a suitable sauce. Even the right wine. All ready for you. Nothing you need to debate about. It's done, and you know it's healthy, and you can go away again and not think about it.
Traditionalism is the same way. When you choose that menu, all the side dishes come with it, so to speak. Your family gets what it needs, and you don't have to worry. You know what lessons to teach your children, what foods to cook to nourish them, what words to say when they need your advice. There's always some homey metaphor you can offer, some cornfield comfort. Something.
So that's why you had to take tennis and piano, Kathryn. You might not have liked them, not at first, but I knew they couldn't do you any harm. They were part of the traditionalist program. Tested. Approved. Like the recipes in the traditionalist databases. I put those to good use, too. The recipes, I mean. I let food do my talking. Frankly, baking caramel brownies was a hell of a lot easier than trying to tell you girls the truth.
I don't think there were any truths I had to tell that you would have believed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Did you consider yourself a role model for your daughter, Mrs. Janeway?" That's another common question, one that I've become very adept at answering. "Of course I wanted to give her strong values," I say, and sometimes, if I think I can keep a straight face, I offer the reporters some brownies. "But her father and I wanted Kathryn to be herself."
Oh, god, "be herself."
There was a book I read once, an old Terran novel that I found one lazy afternoon when I was browsing through a file of nearly-forgotten writers. A phrase caught my eye -- "mother-woman." I stopped and read. In the story, a beautiful, lush, pregnant "mother-woman" has a conversation with another woman, and the other woman says, "I would give up my life for my children, but I wouldn't give myself." The mother-woman doesn't understand, just laughs and says, "a woman who would give up her life for her children could do no more than that."
"Oh, yes, you could," says the other woman.
And of course, the other woman does die, has to die. A woman like that couldn't live, not in that time. She commits suicide, and it's all very poetic. I think she kills herself because she couldn't have an affair. Or maybe because she could have an affair, and it wasn't enough. I don't remember. What I do remember is the line about not giving up her self.
It was something I was determined not to do, you see. I'd chosen to marry, chosen to have children. But I did not choose to give up my self.
And as far as you were concerned, I didn't have to worry. You didn't want my self, Kathryn. You didn't want my life.
You wanted your father's. And you took it.
No, I don't mean that. All right, I do. In a way. But I don't blame you for his death. I don't, although I know you blamed yourself. I don't know whether it will make you feel better or worse if I say that it was even a relief. You know too well how difficult it was to be an admiral's daughter. Believe me, it was no easier being his wife.
I am not blaming you. You did all you could, I know that, and you know it, too. It's just that in the end, he died and you lived and you seemed determined to take up where he left off, to be him as much as you could be. And so the Captain Kathryn Janeway I saw was just as committed and fierce and alone and brave and impressive and unknowable as Admiral Edward Janeway had ever been.
I hope you've gotten your self back, Kathryn, whatever that is. Even if it took being lost in the Delta Quadrant to make you find it.
Don't think I'm blind to the irony -- that I'm telling you to "be true to yourself" when I've lived a lie for so long. But it was the only way I knew to keep my own truth. It's a paradox, I know. Or a justification. But there it is.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They ask about my marriage, of course. The reporters. Ask about what it was like to be the wife of such a distinguished Starfleet admiral. I talk about sacrifice and commitment to larger ideals; I acknowledge loneliness, but say that it was in service of something more important than ourselves.
You can imagine how accurate a response that is.
My marriage was. . .fine. It was fine. Edward and I both got what we needed out of it.
Well, all right, as long as I'm being so honest, I might as well confess that I didn't get quite everything I needed. I had lovers. Have one now, had a few while your father was alive. Not out of boredom or any desire to hurt Edward; he never even knew. But because I wanted to, and they were fun.
Do you remember Bhola Singh, that diplomat who served on the board of some Federation trade bureau? Who had that little yellow house down past the ridge? You know, it occurs to me now that I don't even know why Bhola chose to live in Indiana when he wasn't travelling. I don't think I ever asked him.
Anyway, I would go to his place in the afternoons when you and Phoebe were at school and lessons, and we would have sex and talk and have sex again, and there weren't any expectations, and I loved it. He would cook -- wonderful dishes, vegetable biryani or something vindaloo, and we'd eat out of the pot, sitting on the bed, scooping up the food with pieces of nan and laughing.
After he left, transferred off-planet, that's when I started to make the vegetable biryani at home. It was a way to remind myself. As my little joke, I told you all it was Grandmother's special recipe.
But the real joke was that none of you ever seemed to find that strange.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Of course, this brings us to sex. Another thing I never talked to you about. Did you think it was because I was embarrassed or something? It wasn't that at all -- it's just that I knew there was nothing I could tell you about sex. We would have used the same word, but we would have been talking about completely different things. For me, sex is not complicated. It's fun and comforting and oh, it feels so good.
For you. . .Sometimes I imagine somebody -- a person you've spurned, maybe, or some earnest scholarly biographer -- asking me this question, about what sex is for you. Asking seriously, I mean, not in that puff-piece, Starfleet public-relations way, but really asking. I've thought about how I would answer.
I think I'd have say, "For Kathryn. . .sex is another challenge, another obstacle, something to be climbed, conquered, fought against, stared down. And when she yields, she'll see it as a personal failure. I expect she has to be tied up to enjoy it."
Oh, I know. Here's another thing no "mother-woman" would do. Speculate this way about her child's sexual proclivities. It's not a judgment, though. Just an observation. Well, maybe it is a judgment, a little. Not about the tying-up. If you like it, do it. Whatever works. But about the rest. I don't want sex to be like that for you, Kathryn. Not just another endurance test.
Of course, I could so easily be wrong about you. I hope I am. You've had some good instincts, you know. That theoretical physicist from your doctoral days -- what was her name? You never said much about her; you had become very private by then. But you seemed good for each other.
And Justin. I believe you would have gotten what you wanted from Justin. He was dark and intense, and I confess I was rather surprised when I met him, when I saw who you'd chosen. Surprised that you seemed to recognize your own potential.
But he might have come too early for you. I suspect that Justin scared you, or maybe your own desires scared you. That has to be why, after Justin died, you picked Mark. Mark was steady and dependable and predictable. Safe. What you probably thought you needed at the time.
Come on, now, admit it. He bored you silly in bed, didn't he?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
That reminds me, I heard from Mark's mother a couple of times. Not since he got married, though. You might not have known this, but she never liked me.
And I certainly didn't like her. It wasn't that she was one of those "mother-women"; I don't object to them. It was that she was so sanctimonious about it. I don't think she ever understood that producing children is not a sufficient justification for one's existence.
She only ever called me when the news was bad. She was one of the first to offer her "condolences" when Voyager was officially declared lost.
Then there was the time she wanted to tell me that Mark was marrying someone else. Mark had already talked to me himself, but that didn't stop Louise.
She said, "He waited as long as he could, Gretchen. Longer than anyone else would have. He loved her, you know." I don't know if you ever noticed, but she always made that statement with just a touch of incredulity. "He really loved your Kathryn." That was another typical comment -- "your" Kathryn, as if you were some odd species I had created on my own. Louise never liked you, either.
That day, she just kept talking. "But he finally had to face facts, didn't he? He had to accept the truth. Kathryn is dead, Gretchen. Kathryn is dead." You can imagine how sad she looked while she said this. And said it twice.
Later, after we learned that you were not dead after all, I never heard a word from Louise Johnson.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I cried harder when I heard you were still alive than I had when they told me you were dead.
I'm sure that sounds dreadful, as if I was sorry you weren't dead. Of course I wasn't sorry. It's just that I had already mended my life, had reknit the tear your death had left in the fabric of my world. Okay, the color was definitely off, and the stitch was pretty loose. But at least everything had been in one piece. When I found you were alive, it all ripped apart again, and I wasn't sure how to repair it.
That's when I realized that your being dead had been a luxury of sorts. It had freed me -- it meant there was nothing more I could do, nothing I had to try to fix. I'd done what I had done, for better or worse. It was out of my hands. It was over.
I'm not sure why I'm telling you this. I don't say it to hurt you. And I don't mean that I don't love you. No, I certainly don't mean that.
Oh, god, Kathryn, sometimes I've loved you so ferociously that I've been too scared to breathe.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I just looked at the chronometer, and I realize there's only half an hour left until I beam to Starfleet. Half an hour. I didn't know this letter was going to take so long to write.
At least now I won't have to prepare that gushy statement.
I read over what I've written, and I wonder -- is this an outrageous thing to do, for a mother to tell her daughter the things I've told you here?
I suppose I could just delete the whole file. But the fact is that ever since Voyager got home, I've been wanting to talk to you. Not as mother to daughter; it's too late for that, and I obviously never knew how to do it, anyway. But as one woman to another. As one non-mother-woman to, I think, another.
It's funny. I intended to tell you the truth, but I don't seem to have managed it yet. Earlier, I said I never knew you, but I was wrong. I realize that I do know you, Kathryn, the core of you. And I know that no matter what you became in the Delta Quadrant, you aren't going to lose that core. You're so much stronger than that.
I suspect you know me, too. I always thought we were so different, but we aren't, not in anything that matters. In what matters, we're exactly alike.
We decide what to do. We do it. We don't look back. And we're not unhappy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Well. It's time to go.
The End.