Story 243: "Lady Lazarus" by Suture

[wendelah1]

I admit it freely: no matter what fandom I'm in, I'm all about the female characters. I love Mulder but Dana Scully is why I came here and why I stay here. Though none received the screen time they deserved, The X-Files does have other interesting and complex female characters.

When writers beat up on Teena Mulder or turn her into a Consortium co-conspirator, I can't understand it. While the latter is an attempt to give her agency, it still turns my stomach. Told from Teena Mulder's POV, "Lady Lazarus" is insightful, well-written, and fair to the character while remaining canon-compliant. The fic is short, pre-series, genfic, PG-13, no warnings apply.

SUMMARY: "Fox answered my tentative questions about his final term at Oxford, and his two weeks in France with the impatience of a tennis pro determined to end the rally against an inept amateur. He had done well his final term. Paris was beautiful in the early summer. Yes, Chanel was making a comeback. When he looked at his watch and said he had to go, I couldn't bring myself to ask him to stay longer."

Read "Lady Lazarus" at: IOHO | OOcities. Also at Gossamer.

Please leave your suggestions at the nomination post and let us know what you thought of the story.

Comments

[dryadinthegrove]

Poor Teena. I always thought she got the rawest of raw deals in TXF, and this story shows that perfectly. Caught between the past and the present and the wishful 'what-could-have-been', it always seemed to me that there could never be a happy ending for her, no matter what she did or didn't do. She was, in effect, a victim of circumstance.

Albeit one she made choices in.

[wendelah1]

She did make choices, although I would argue that after getting pregnant by Spender and marrying Bill Mulder (in whatever order that occurred), her real choices were pretty restricted.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Suture is a beautiful writer, and although I used to exchange emails with her and knew her stuff pretty well this one eluded me. I'm glad to catch up to it.

Teena Mulder is a tragic figure. Hamlet tragic, maybe. Caught in a trap in which whatever she does will be a bad thing, and then stuck with the badness permanently. Should she have confided the history to her son? maybe not at that time, but certainly before 1013 suicided her.

Although Teena's memories slide into eerie dream-state, they suggests a discrepancy with the cobbled-together resolution of the Files. Teena is contemplating an affair with Charles while she is pregnant with Fox and probably sexually arousable. She is attracted to both men. I have always felt that Mulder was Bill Mulder's son, Suture probably assumed so too, but the menage a trois foreplay makes the interesting symbolic suggestion that he had (yes!) two fathers. Huh. So those titles meant something after all.

These descriptions always confuse my tenses.

The guilt about her terrible choice would make a Valium addict out of almost anyone. Her depression is extremely well described. Suture could really bring it. I think she went on to Buffy. Why did sophisticated writers do that? It seems such a step down. (And I liked Buffy!)

[wendelah1]

Although Teena's memories slide into eerie dream-state, they suggests a discrepancy with the cobbled-together resolution of the Files. Teena is contemplating an affair with Charles while she is pregnant with Fox and probably sexually arousable. She is attracted to both men. I have always felt that Mulder was Bill Mulder's son, Suture probably assumed so too, but the menage a trois foreplay makes the interesting symbolic suggestion that he had (yes!) two fathers. Huh. So those titles meant something after all.

I disagree with this. I don't think she's contemplating an affair, I think she's remembering one. Teena herself is convinced that Fox Mulder is Spender's son. That's why she keeps comparing her son to her former lover, seeing Spender's features blended with hers in Mulder's face. (This is rather silly since in actual fact Bill Mulder has brown eyes, Old Spender has blue eyes and Young Spender has brown eyes. And none of them much resemble Fox Mulder.)

I look at him and see his father's lush mouth and gray-green eyes framing my stubborn nose.

Fox smiles and, for a moment, I see Charles's slow, sinful smile spread across my son's face.

In my humble opinion, it's an unconsummated ménage à trois because she's not sleeping with Charles under her husband's roof, not because she hasn't already slept with Spender.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Your theory is a fine one. I think I just have a problem with Spender as Mulder's father, though it is absolutely canon. You proved it. Khyber accepted it. But I hate canon at times. I think it was dumb canon, and I think writers can change it if they want to.

"Lush mouth?" CSM? I think not.

[wendelah1]

But Young CSM is played by the same actor who does Jeffrey Spender. His mouth looks pretty lush to me, especially compared to the actor playing young Bill Mulder.

I think writers can change anything they please--I just don't think Suture did.

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

Suture is great, and I'm glad to have been reminded of that by this story. I got to go back and re-read some of her other stuff too and enjoy it again.

A couple of lines really kicked me in the gut.
The opening line, which is just perfect in light of Teena's pill-popping here and in light of her actual suicide much later: My stay of execution comes via the telephone.
This line when Mulder sees his childhood bedroom: "You don't have to keep the room exactly the way I left it." It's a definite reminder of Sam without even saying her name, since it's what the parents of a lost/dead child are typically portrayed as doing. But, here, it's Mulder's room, the child that wasn't lost, at least not in the conventional sense. Except he kind of was lost, in the sense that the remaining members of the family were lost to each other after Sam's abduction (and maybe it started unraveling even before that).

This younger version of Mulder is very recognizable, with his "customary uninflected mumble" and his "studiously blank expression." Good job winding back a few years on the character we know.

It seems like even at this point in time, Mulder fears his mother may take her own life -- there is the bit about him telling her fairly forcefully not to just leave the door unlocked for him (he's worried what state he might find her in), and then the exchange where Mulder demands to know what pills she has taken and Teena responds almost hysterically. This story makes me feel for Teena, but it also makes me feel for Mulder, in that it it helps get inside his relationship with his mom. (I think my brain took this Teena story and focused more on the Mulder parts of it.)

I am not sure how to even begin on the dream/hallucination sequence, even after reading the Plath poems. I've got nothing, beyond the suicide connection and the possible connection to Teena's affair with Spender.

On a (sort of) lighter note, Teena mentions vampires and ghosts - kind of a nod to the as-yet-to-come X-Files.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

"You don't have to keep the room exactly the way I left it." could, as well as a callback to grief, be a reference to depression. In the story she mentions it takes her two hours to get out of bed; changing the room, like changing a lot of things about her life, probably looked like an insurmountable problem. Easier to just try to forget; to sleep.

I don't have anything on the dream sequence either, except I interpret it to mean the Smoking Man used to wear mascara.

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

excellent point.

[wendelah1]

"You should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb your hair," Fox says. Mascara-rimmed green eyes glitter at me. "You should wear tiger pants. You should have an affair. Don't you know, baby? Gee, you're rare."

I think the mascara goes better with the punk rock style of the late seventies-eighties. I can possibly see Mulder wearing mascara and earrings and torn black jeans. But it's a dream so anything goes, really.

I'm going to give the dream sequence a try. Wish me luck.

[wendelah1]

I love this story so much.

My stay of execution comes via the telephone.

The opening line is brilliant. It sets the tone, it foreshadows Teena's eventual successful suicide, and ties in with the title, "Lady Lazarus," which even without the author's notes to confirm, is an unambiguous allusion to Plath's poem by the same name, and to Plath herself.

In "Sein und Zeit," Teena Mulder kills herself, by taking valium, just as she does in this story, and by taping the doors closed and turning on the gas oven, as Plath does when she succeeds in killing herself her third try. I can see why Suture liked that poem, liked the comparison to Plath. Her poetry is full of death, and like The X-Files, it's full of imagery taken from the holocaust.

The dream imagery is mostly taken directly from "Lady Lazurus," the poem about Plath's suicide attempts. Like Plath, Teena is profoundly depressed, and has been ever since her daughter was taken. In her dream, Samantha is returned to her, washes up from the sea, but she's not breathing. Teena tries and fails to save her. Suddenly Teena as an eight-year-old girl is lying in her own lap.The loss of her daughter is the loss of her own innocence. She blames herself for all of it. She wants to die. She began die the day they told her that her daughter was going to be taken.

"You should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb your hair," Fox says. Mascara-rimmed green eyes glitter at me. "You should wear tiger pants. You should have an affair. Don't you know, baby? Gee, you're rare."

The lines in bold are from "Lesbos," a cryptic, angry poem Plath wrote four months before her death, after she'd kicked her husband Ted Hughes out for having an affair with her friend, Assia Wevill. In the dream, her son is speaking but the words are Spender's, spoken directly to Teena. He made her feel special, that much is clear.

He holds his hand out to me and I see a wedding ring and a cake of soap. He closes his hand and opens it again. Presto. Nothing in the palm of his hand.

"You are your opus, your valuable, your pure gold baby," Fox bends down and kisses me on the forehead in benediction and farewell.

There's your Lady Lazurus-holocaust imagery. She walked into the burning ring of fire with him--and came out--but with all sense of self obliterated.

There's a shriek and a burst of flame and I'm rising and rising into the air.

Plath allows herself some agency in her version:

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Before Teena Mulder kills herself, she makes a phone call to her son.

MULDER: (on phone) Mulder.

WOMAN: (on phone) Fox? It's me.

(MULDER is surprised.)

MULDER: (on phone) Mom? Hi.

(In her house, MRS. MULDER is watching the same news story.)

MRS. MULDER: (on phone) I'm watching the news. That little girl in California-- you're out there, aren't you?

MULDER: (on phone) Yes. I am. Are you okay, Mom?

MRS. MULDER: (on phone) When are you coming back here?

MULDER: (on phone) Well, I'm not sure. I... You know, I... I don't know.

MRS. MULDER: (on phone) Call when you get back, Fox.

MULDER: (on phone) Okay, I will. Um, you take care, Mom, okay?

(He hears a dial tone and hangs up. Clinton is now on the news.)

(MRS MULDER looks at the framed picture of YOUNG MULDER and YOUNG SAMANTHA standing next to a tree.)

Perhaps she'd planned to tell him the truth before she died. Perhaps, as in this story, she decided that it would a kindness not to.

For a moment, I want to tell him the truth. I want to tell him that there are days I'm so tired I can't get out of bed. I simply lie in my room and watch the sun make its way across the sky. When it's dark, I shut my eyes, but I don't go to sleep. I needed two hours today to shower and put my clothes on. My thoughts never leave me alone. As I look at my son, so young and already so haunted, I know that telling him would be the most selfish thing I could do. I've been a selfish mother. I've wronged my son in so many ways. But this last, I cannot do.

As someone who has suffered from depression for most of my life, I would never judge the actions of anyone in that much pain.

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

Your comment helps crystallize (for me) the parallels between Suture's story of Teena's suicidal thoughts / interactions with Mulder and her season 7 suicide / preceding phone call with Mulder (definitely useful to re-read the transcript of that phone call).

And, I think you untangled the dream/hallucination sequence, especially this: Suddenly Teena as an eight-year-old girl is lying in her own lap.The loss of her daughter is the loss of her own innocence.
and
In the dream, her son is speaking but the words are Spender's, spoken directly to Teena. He made her feel special, that much is clear.
This makes more sense to me, now, with Spender being Mulder's father (or at least with Teena believing that to be the case). I cannot remember if I was ever 100% sure on Mulder's paternity or on what canon was telling us, but this makes a lot of sense to me.

[wendelah1]

Sadly, in canon Spender is Mulder's father--Mulder and Jeffrey are half brothers.

I wrote fix-it fic for that one. Did you know that Teena Mulder was only 20 or 21 when she gave birth to her son?

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

I would like to (re)read it - title? or link? (pretty please)

I admit it, I am terrible with many parts of canon. It mostly doesn't bother me. Strange, huh? I'm glad you know/remember and remind me what's what, especially for stories like this one where it matters.

I guess Teena being 20 or 21 when Mulder was born is not terribly surprising, but it's a pretty tender age to already have had an affair with Spender and a marriage to Bill in whatever order and to basically already be set down a path of tragedy.

[wendelah1]

It is. It does explain some things about her situation for me.

I wrote this a little over a year ago for Purim Gifts. I doubt you would have read it. I don't think I cross-posted it anywhere, not even my journal. Hostage Situation.

I love the idea--and if I'd thought anyone would read it, I might have tried expanding it into a longer story but there isn't much of a market now for this type of fic. There probably never was.

I'm obsessed with the TXF canon, in case you couldn't tell...

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I just read all 4 parts of the series. I like your Teena backstory and her on-the-surface matter-of-fact approach to the pregnancy and Bill's solution to the issue while underneath that there is a definite sense of foreboding, both for Teena and for the reader.

And, the Mulder-Scully interactions in the other parts are great. Perfect for this point in time for them. Poor Scully. And poor, clueless Mulder.

I think they work well as a series of vignettes, but I would happily continue reading if there was more.