Spider-Man 2

  Peter looked at that hand, and it wasn’t kind and slightly wrinkled and sandpaper rough. It wasn’t the hand that had rested gently on his shoulder when he was little and sobbing because bullies had picked on him. The hand that had ruffled his hair in approval every time he brought home another top grade in science.

  It was the hand of fate. Worse, it was a hand that had a stranglehold upon him, clutching his throat, cutting off his air, cutting off his life…

  Peter batted it away, and shouted, “No, Uncle Ben! I am Peter Parker! I am Spider-Man no more!” Ben lunged at Peter, but Peter kept him at bay, yanking at the car door, which refused to open, to let him out into a world that didn’t include the suffocating burden of martyrdom in it. “No more! No more!”

  Then he was out. He tumbled backwards from the car, rolled away, and ferociously kicked the door shut…

  The slam of the door was deafening, and as Peter snapped awake in bed, he realized why. It had coincided with a crash of thunder that sounded so close, it was practically there in the bedroom with him.

  Rain pounded against the window, shaking the building to its foundation. Peter stood up, watching the storm, and the lightning cracked again. When it did, it illuminated the Spider-Man costume, draped over a chair. More thunder and lightning, and in the eerie illumination, it was as if Spider-Man was sitting there in the chair, staring at him, laughing at him under the mask. On the dresser nearby, a framed photo of Aunt May and Uncle Ben watched him endlessly, looking curious as to what he would do next.

  Spider-Man no more! His own words echoed in his head.

  He dressed in no time and grabbed the costume, wadding it into a ball. On a night like this, no one was going to see it or know it for what it was. And in his state of mind, he didn’t give a damn if they saw it or not.

  Seconds later he was outside and running, his blood pumping, his heart hammering in his chest. He had no idea where he was going, but part of him was saying, You’ll know, you’ll know…

  His sneakered feet splashed through puddles, water soaking through to his socks. His shirt was plastered to his chest, his hair slicked, rain pouring over his face. Lightning crashed so near to him that he could practically smell ozone in the air. None of it mattered. The only thing of any importance was the bundle of cloth he was clutching tightly to his bosom like a child… a child to be loved, nurtured…

  … or abandoned.

  And then he was standing outside an alley.

  He recognized it instantly.

  An eternity ago, he had been hanging upside down in a storm that was almost as fierce as this one. Hanging upside down, his mask rolled partway down his face, and lips had pressed against his. Despite the rain, despite the fact he had barely been able to breathe, they tasted warm and promising and spoke without words of a future that he knew, in his heart, could never be his.

  Since then, Spider-Man had known triumph. He’d known frustration, relief, even exhilaration. But those moments in the alley were the only time that Spider-Man had known peace. Pure, undiluted peace. For a few seconds, the burning guilt that fueled his very existence had been quenched in the fountain of Mary Jane’s love.

  He had wanted it to last forever.

  Now it would.

  He walked up to a trash can in the alley, opened it, then dumped the costume in. He stood there for a moment, almost certain that somehow the costume would vault out of the can and leap upon him.

  Instead it just lay there, looking powerless. Even pathetic. It looked like… nothing. Just some blue-and-red cloth stitched together.

  The hold it had upon him, like strands of web, melted into the rain.

  Peter stared at it a moment longer. Then he wiped the water from his face, turned his back on Spider-Man without giving him a second thought, and walked away into the dark and stormy night.

  XVI

  It wasn’t the most comfortable seat Peter Parker had ever sat in. The cushion was threadbare, and there was a spring that seemed determined to lacerate his left thigh. But for all of that, it might as well have been a throne in Buckingham Palace for the sense of elation it gave him.

  Then again, a lot of things were making him feel that way lately.

  Over the past several days, he had been doing nothing except being normal. He had done the big things, such as cleaning up his apartment so it was actually inhabitable once again.

  He had done the little things, such as buying a hot dog on a street corner. It was overpriced and overcooked, but he had never tasted anything quite as good. He had just resolved to wash it down with an egg cream—which contained, paradoxically, neither egg nor cream—when he’d heard sirens pass by. So ingrained was his behavior that he had reflexively started to move toward them. But he’d only taken a step when he remembered that his costume was gone. He—the web-swinging “he”—was gone. But instead of feeling tense or guilty, all he did was sigh, relax, and eat his hot dog.

  Later he finished fixing his motorbike. Once he had done so, he rode it over to the campus, where he arrived in plenty of time for his science class. As Doctor Connors lectured, Peter felt more alert than ever before. At one point Connors asked a particularly challenging question, and there were bewildered looks from the other students. Not from Peter, though. His hand shot up as if spring-loaded, and a visibly surprised Connors called on him… and grinned broadly when Peter provided the answer.

  After class, Connors had passed Peter in the hallway and, without slowing down, had said briskly, “Excellent work today, Parker. Keep it up.”

  “Thanks,” Peter had said, but Connors was already gone, moving too fast to hear him. It didn’t matter, though.

  Now Peter was in the theater, in his somewhat uncomfortable chair, seated a row or two back from where he’d originally been supposed to sit the night when he’d let Mary Jane down. Again. But there would never be a recurrence.

  He felt like a recovering alcoholic, one who had seen his life swirling away, and had tossed aside his addiction so he could salvage it. But there had been no substance abuse in his life. His addiction instead had been guilt; its manifestation had been Spider-Man. It was over, though. The guilt was dealt with, the manifestation disposed of. Time to move on.

  Truth to tell, a mannered British drawing-room farce wasn’t his favorite way to spend the evening. But gazing at Mary Jane most certainly was. So he was willing to endure the former in order to spend time engaging in the latter. They were well into the second act when “Algernon” addressed Mary Jane’s “Cecily.”

  “Oh,” Algernon said dismissively, “I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am wicked.”

  “If you are not,” replied Mary Jane, “then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner.” She walked across the stage as if she owned it. “I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.” She leaned in toward the audience, delivering the line as a reproving aside. “That would be hypocrisy.”

  Something about the way she delivered the line—and, of course, the literal wording of it—couldn’t help but make Peter feel as if she were talking right to him.

  And then he realized that she almost was. Not intentionally at first, but from her vantage point upon the stage, she had suddenly realized that Peter was in the audience. He locked eyes with her and grinned ingratiatingly. Her eyes widened, and when Algernon declared, “Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless,” he looked to Mary Jane for response, and got nothing. She continued to stare at Peter.

  Uh… Mary Jane… your cue? Peter tried to give her silent signals, but she was just gaping at him.

  A bit louder, Algernon cleared his throat and said, “Are you… glad to hear it?”

  Hearing her own line coming out of someone else’s mouth snapped her back to attention. Quickly she said, “Oh… uh… I am glad to hear it.”

  She promptly got back into the swing of the play. But the object of her attention hadn’t gon
e unnoticed. A young “dude” sitting next to Peter nudged him, and when Peter turned to look at him, mouthed, “You and her?”

  Peter bobbed his head in an indefinite manner.

  That was enough for the dude, who mouthed, “Sweeeet,” and went back to watching the show.

  Peter grinned. He and Mary Jane.

  Why the hell not.

  He had been standing at the stage door waiting for her, and when she’d emerged she looked genuinely happy to see him. He was so relieved, especially since her spotting him had thrown her out of character for a moment. Peter had felt particularly guilty over that. Then again, feeling guilty had become second nature for him at this point in his life. That was exactly the mind-set he was trying to move beyond.

  As they strolled through Chinatown, Peter felt… taller. More confident. He walked with his shoulders squared, spoke in a more relaxed manner.

  “You were so wonderful,” he said. “That was such a great play.” Well, she’d been great in it, at any rate.

  “You could have told me you were coming.”

  A dozen excuses came to mind, but he shrugged them off and said the simple truth: “I was afraid you’d say don’t come.”

  She nodded, indicating to Peter that she might well have done so, seeing it as a desperate “too little, too late” gesture to make things up to her. “You look… different,” she said, sounding a bit guarded.

  “I shined my shoes,” he said lightly, “pressed my pants, did my homework. I do my homework now.” He paused, then asked, “Would you like to get some chow mein?”

  She shook her head and sighed. “Peter, I’m getting married.”

  I know. I was there, he thought. But some part of him refused to accept it. “I always imagined you getting married on a hilltop.”

  “And who’s the groom?”

  He stopped and turned to face her, speaking as if he could reshape reality just by force of will. “You haven’t decided yet.”

  Slowly she began to understand. “You think because you saw my play, you can talk me out of getting married?” She sounded… incredulous?

  That was more or less accurate. It did sound rather hopeless, though, the way she said it. The old Peter Parker would have crawled away… literally. But instead he said forcefully, “You once told me you loved me. I let… things… get in the way before. There was something I…” He hated speaking in vague terms, but he was trying to leave that part of his life behind. Delving into it chapter and verse would only bring it forcefully to the forefront. “Something I thought I had to do. I don’t have to now.”

  “You’re too late.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  Her blue eyes stared at him in disbelief. She probably thought he was beginning to sound like a stalker. “Think about what?”

  “Picking up where we left off?”

  Her arms akimbo, Mary Jane peered at him challengingly. “Where was that? We never got on. You can’t get off if you don’t get on, Peter!”

  They both blinked at that. Clearly it hadn’t come out quite right. “That sounded a lot less suggestive in my head, before I actually said it,” Mary Jane admitted. “But you know what I meant.”

  Softly, Peter said, “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “Of course you don’t, because you complicate things.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not an empty seat anymore!” When she smiled slightly, Peter was convinced that he was making some headway. He angled a shoulder toward her and said, “I’m different. Punch me. I bleed.” As far as pleas for empathy went, it wasn’t exactly the “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, but it was the best he was going to be able to do under the circumstances.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t appear to be enough. “I’ve got to go,” Mary Jane said after a long pause. She backed up, flagging an approaching cab. As it glided toward her, she continued to face Peter. “I’m getting married in a church.”

  He shrugged in his most noncommittal, “we’ll see” manner.

  The cab came to a stop. She opened the door and, just before she stepped in, studied him a few moments more. “You are different,” she decided. She got in and closed the door behind her.

  The cab pulled away. Peter stood there, watching it go. He ran the conversation back through his mind, studied it with a strangely detached, clinical air. What he kept coming back to was that in between all her protests about getting married and it being too late… she seemed to be pausing an awful long time, as if the answers weren’t coming easily to her. As if she had to think about them real hard.

  Which meant…

  … something.

  He smiled, and the smile spread into a grin.

  It was a start.

  The euphoric mood of his encounter with Mary Jane carried him all the way through to the following morning at the university. Eschewing the bike, which despite his repairs had stalled out several times on his last sojourn with it, he decided to take the subway. His backpack slung over his shoulder, he emerged from the station along with a stream of students. He realized that’s all he was: just one of the students. Nothing special, nothing to see here, just keep moving.

  He passed by one of the dorms and stopped, noticing movement down an alleyway, between two of the buildings. There were three extremely unsavory types lurking there. They were unshaven, their clothes dirty from being slept in, their hair scraggly and matted. If he got close enough, he was sure they’d stink.

  The larger two guys were ganging up on the third. The third was cowering as they rifled his pockets and grabbed at a bag—it appeared to be a rumpled Bloomingdale’s bag—that he was clutching.

  Drugs. Probably drugs, he assured himself. Or booze. Or…

  … or a battered teddy bear that once belonged to his dead daughter, who died young and that’s why he started drinking, or…

  He took a deep breath, let it out, and kept walking. Move along. Nothing to see here.

  XVII

  Shouldn’t anniversaries be for celebrating things? Shouldn’t we just set those aside for that specific reason?

  Those thoughts floated through Peter’s mind as he stood next to his aunt near the grave of Uncle Ben. It was a sunny day, but unseasonably cool and crisp. Aunt May, clutching a small bunch of violets, stared at the grave for some time without saying a word. Peter’s hand rested just below her head. He didn’t say a word.

  Two years. Two years to the day that his uncle Ben had been gone. There had never been any doubt in Peter’s mind that he would join Aunt May for this private little ceremony… and yet, until he was actually there, he’d wondered if he would have the strength to go through with it. Contradictory. But then, he was a study in contradictions.

  As he drew his coat closer around himself, he watched as Aunt May stepped away from him and approached the grave. She set the violets upon the ground, then stepped back and shook her head slowly.

  “It wasn’t fair to have gone that way,” she said softly. “He was a peaceful man.” She took a deep breath and exhaled three words that Peter couldn’t quite believe she was saying:

  “It’s my fault.”

  He shook his head, wanting to tell her how wrong she was, but the words froze in his throat. She didn’t notice the look of conflict that played across his face. Her attention was intent upon the grave, and when she turned and headed back to the waiting taxi, Peter simply followed without saying a thing.

  They didn’t speak all the way to the house, and as Aunt May busied herself in the kitchen, Peter sat at the table and stared at the place where Uncle Ben had always sat.

  Once upon a time, he would have been able to imagine Ben sitting there. Perhaps Ben would even start scolding him, as his “ghost” had been wont to do lately. Now, though, there was nothing. Just an empty space and an empty chair. He had banished Ben Parker’s hauntings from his mind…

  … and, apparently, Ben had set up shop in Aunt May’s.

  Peter had been feeling so good about himself lately. Having
made the deliberate decision to leave behind him that symbol of ongoing guilt, Spider-Man, he was happier and more at peace than he’d been in months. He had achieved closure, finally. His aunt, though, not only hadn’t achieved that state of mind, but she appeared to be backsliding.

  She blamed herself? The more Peter dwelled on it, the more incredulous he became. How could she possibly blame herself? She’d been sitting at home, uninvolved in any of it.

  By the time he heard the teakettle issuing its high-pitched summons, he knew he had to do something. He couldn’t let it fester this way. He had to find some means to put her mind at rest.

  He entered the kitchen and Aunt May gestured for him to sit at the table. He did so and watched as she brought over the steeping tea. Tentatively he told her, “You don’t have to punish yourself, Aunt May.”

  She looked up at him with a brief display of confusion, but then she understood. As she sat opposite him, she spoke in a very calm and distant manner, with no trace of emotion or mourning in her voice. “Oh, I know I shouldn’t, but if I had kept out of it…” When she saw his puzzled expression, she said, “You wanted to take the subway, and I told him to drive you.”

  So that was it. When they had left the house that night, Peter had been certain he’d seen Uncle Ben—after insisting on driving Peter into the city—winking at Aunt May. He hadn’t known the significance of it then but now he did. She’d told Ben what to do, and he was winking at her in satisfaction that he had accomplished it.

  May was shaking her head now. “If I’d just kept my mouth shut, we’d all be having tea together.”

  Well, that was that, wasn’t it. Thanks to Peter’s ignoble actions, not only had this poor woman lost her husband, she was going to spend the rest of her life beating herself up over it.

  “I want to thank you very, very much for coming today,” she said.

  But Peter barely heard her, because his mind was racing toward a conclusion that he at once found to be both untenable and yet inevitable. She couldn’t go through the rest of her years thinking this way. It wasn’t right or fair that Aunt May, who had done nothing to Peter except be the best mother figure she could manage, should have to suffer like this, all because of him.