Participants:
| Scene Title | One Small Thing |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Mother and daughter catch up on actions made in the present to help avert a dark future. |
| Date | July 24, 2011 |
A strange and yet familiar sound can be heard coming from Tasha's room: the chords of a bass guitar, live rather than from a recording, strummed a bit awkwardly and a bit slow. The opening chords to Green Day's "Brain Stew" are still recognizable. Joanna heard the song often enough coming from Tasha's stereo speakers in the teenager's younger years, even if the lawyer isn't able to name the band or the song title.
Tasha sits on her bed with the new instrument — one that looks rather like her father's relic, if a little less "loved." The sheet music with the chords is spread on the bed in front of her, and once she practices those first few bars a few times, she stops to peer at the next set, fingering out the chords and working on her transitions from one to the next before actually strumming once again.
Joanna;'s hands are behind her back as she comes to a lean in the doorway of the Condo, the music and other things drawing her near - namely the item in her hand that's unseen for now - and listens to the picking out of the music on the strings as only an amateur could do. Cotton skirt, tank tops that no teenager would be caught wearing because they don't show enough, Joanna watches Tasha plunk away at the guitar.
"He played for me. Quite a bit, before we divorced, your father and I" As if Tasha wouldn't have put two and two together with regards to who she meant. It's not like she's been dating anyone else, not since November 8th at least.
The teen looks up as she finishes the last chord and smiles. Setting the guitar gently aside, she uncrosses her legs and stretches them, bare feet swinging off the side of the bed. She's in her usual cut-off jeans and a Vandals t-shirt that used to hug her more tightly than it does now.
"He showed me how," she says quietly. "When I visited him in the winter." It feels so long ago. A lifetime ago.
Her brows knit together and she looks back up at her mother. "I saw this in a window and it reminded me of him, and…" She shrugs. She's not one to make spontaneous splurges — paints and mp3s and a few Hot Topic tshirts meet most of her needs.
"And you got it" Which is good. She doens't like how quiet her daughter's become, furtive, always off doing something. With no Colette, things have been different. "It's good, that you're learning again. Maybe once you see him again-" not if, when. "You can play something with him" The rolled up tube of something is brought out from behind her back, held aloft and out towards her nigh doppleganger. "Found something myself. Not in a shop window though"
"Yeah, it pretty much wiped out three years of unspent Grandma Christmas money…" Tasha says with a chuckle regarding her purchase. "I think she'd approve, though. Since, you know." It's Vincent's mother and all.
The tube is regarded with a curious tilt of her head, and Tasha reaches for it. Opening and unrolling it, she looks at the poster quietly, then back up at her mother. She lifts her brows and waits for Joanna to speak — she's not as prone to tears anymore, perhaps having cried so many in the past few months that she's run dry, and her dark gaze is much more like her father's than it once was.
"I'd like an explanation. If you would" Christmas money wiped out isn't so big a deal, and Joanna at least doesn't look like she's going to fly off into a rage. More calm, curious and questioning. With the potential for lawyerface to come into play.
Tasha takes a breath and considers her options. Lie, truth, plead the fifth. But she'd promised not to lie anymore some time ago, which leaves two options, and the third probably won't fly.
"There are robots in midtown," she finally says, tossing the poster onto the bed on top of the sheet music. "And I think people should know."
Her words sound a bit too clipped and short so she tosses in a joke. "Do you think the translators at your office would translate the words for me so I could make sure to warn people who don't speak English?"
Joanna says, “Not at the office, no, but I know other people. What did you want it translated into?" She enters into the room proper, easing down onto the bed after moving things to the side to make space for herself. "Your father put you up to this, or did you just decide to do this on your own and have you seen these robots or just word of mouth?"”
Tasha pulls her feet up again, crossing them and turning to face her mother. "I was kidding," she says with a slight smile at the offer. "I think the pictures of the robots do most of the work themselves, and most people I think can at least recognize the word /danger/ — I hope."
She stares at the poster before addressing the rest. "No, he wouldn't do that, even if he had thought of it. I did it on my own. I just felt… there's not a lot I can do… but it's something."
She stares at the poster as it curls up on its own. "I've seen one, and parts of the others. The little one, I've seen." Tasha looks up. "Don't worry, I'm being careful, and they don't want me, anyway."
"This isn't because you broke up with Colette" Or well, she thinks that Tasha broke up with Colette. Joanna reaches over, laying a hand on Tasha's knee, giving it a squeeze. Today is a good day it seems, in Joanna's world, pain at the low ebb and not the high. "I don't like that it means you've gone in through midtown too" You know, that place you are not supposed to go in, as a law abiding citizen of New York and America.
"I was on the outskirts when I saw the one," Tasha argues, unrolling the poster to point out the little fire-breathing-paparazzi bot. She doesn't say that she was at GCT when she saw the skulls of the others — the more her mother doesn't know, the better, and not just for the sake of peace between the two in close living quarters, but for her mother's own safety.
She doesn't say anything to dissuade her mother's belief that she left Colette — telling her that Colette's missing will only cause her mother unnecessary worry for Tasha, and her mother already spends half her days in pain. Stress won't help.
Tasha shakes her head, her dark hair falling across her eyes, still empty of tears. "I'm just trying to make a difference," she says in a small voice. "The government's corrupt — and I'm just one person against a huge entity, but if everyone does one small thing, it can make a difference, can't it?"
"There is plenty of history, proving that every little thing compounds till eventually it is able to topple injustice. David and Goliath is certainly one. Even in the annals of law, a small individual who wins an unwinnable suit, against a large company. Or when many individuals who on their own might not have succeeded, band together, against overwhelming odds, succeed." Joanna offers up, watching Tasha.
The younger woman nods, hands in her lap chipping away black nail polish on her thumbs. "It needs to happen … and faster than gradual. I… there were people who had visions of the future. Not like the June visions of November — these were of different times, and a lot further in the future than a few months," she begins, eyes downcast.
"Things are bad, Mom. Like, the Constitution was totally thrown out or something, from the looks of it. People in ghettos, people being told if they could have kids or not, kids being taken away from their parents… Those robots, the registration, it's all leading that way, and I can't just not do anything… even if it's dangerous."
Tasha nods to the new instrument. "It might not be my name anymore, but I'm still a Lazzaro," she murmurs, and then looks up. "And a Renard."
"Oh, without a doubt, you are a lazzaro" She nearly laughs at that, that Tasha could think of herself as being anything but. The confidence spoken to her, about vision, of future times when the constitution is no better than toilet paper and these robots, of being told whether one could have a child or not. These things make Joanna frown, make her look at her daughter.
"No, I can't imagine that you cannot and neither can your father. By the book he may be, by the book and fair he has always been. Even when it came to you in our divorce and doing right by you" Well, by as right as he thought was necessary.
"And you plan to change it. Does your father as well?"
Not so long ago, Tasha would have grimaced at being told she was like her father, but now there is a smile and flush of pride. Once again, Vincent is her hero.
"I'm not sure," she admits. "But I like our chances better if he does."
She leans forward to plant a kiss on Joanna's cheek. "Want me to make or pick up dinner?"
"Go, pick up dinner. ORder it in and get back to your guitar. I need to finish up getting these cases ready to pass on and closed off" SHe leans in to the kiss, returning one to Tasha's temple before easing up off the bed, leaving the poster behind. Later though, there will be translations, in a handful of langauges for Tasha to transcribe onto more posters.