~~~~ October 13, 1994 ~~~~

It was dark but still warm when he got home, as the 
remnants of Indian summer had baked his apartment all day.  
Mulder had already removed his tie, and he tossed it over 
the back of a chair on his way into the living room.  He 
turned on the TV to generate some noise, but he left the 
lights off.    

He sat back in his desk chair and turned the fan on so it 
blew directly into his face.   With the windows backlit 
from the outside, he could make out the ghost of a taped X 
on one pane, delineated only by its sticky remains.

Bending down, he rustled around in a shadowed desk drawer 
until his fingers connected with the desired object: a 
half-empty bottle of gin.  He twisted off the cap and took 
a liberal sip from the bottle, the alcohol scalding his 
veins as he rubbed one hand over his eyes.  Pills didnšt 
touch his headache; only booze quieted the pounding for a 
few short hours, just enough to make it through the night.

He startled when the phone rang, groping so slowly across 
the desk for the receiver that his machine picked up an 
instant before he did.  "This is Fox Mulder," said his 
recorded self as Mulder tried to talk over the tape.

"Hello?" he said, and then repeated it again when the 
message had stopped.  "Hello?"

"Fox?"

He leaned back in his chair with a sigh.  "Yeah, Mom."

"I didnšt know if you would be there, given your odd work 
hours."

"Well, apparently I am in fact here."

He picked up the desk clock to check the time: nearly ten.  
She was probably calling him from bed, the covers pulled up 
over her lap and her little bottle of pills next to her on 
the nightstand.

"I wanted to wish you a happy birthday."

The phrasing suited her, Mulder thought.  I wanted to wish 
you a happy birthday, but I canšt.  This last part was 
implied, of course.  Nearly everything of import in their 
relationship was implied.

"One more year around the sun, hurtling through space on a 
giant rock," he said.  

"That's an especially unromantic way to view it," she 
answered.

"You know us government stiffs -- we just want the cold 
hard facts."

He heard the blankets rustling as she tried to figure out 
what to say next.  Since he'd started the X-files, they 
couldn't talk about work, and family was an even bigger 
taboo.  That left sports and the weather.

"We've got a storm coming tomorrow," she said.  "They say 
it might rain right through the weekend."

Mulder lurched forward in his chair.  His headache had 
turned into a stabbing pain right between the eyes.  "Tell 
me about when I was born," he said.

"Wha-what?"

"The day I was born," he said.  "You never told me."

"What do you want to know?" 

"I don't know.  Anything."

For a minute, he thought she wasn't going to comply.  He 
thought she'd wish him good night and hang up the phone.  

"It was a Friday," she said at last.

Mulder sat back with an arm across his eyes.  Figures, he 
thought.  I was born on Friday the thirteenth.

"I'd been staying with your grandmother and grandfather in 
Connecticut for several weeks.  Your father had to travel a 
lot for his work and he didn't want me to be alone on the 
island, so he had his parents looking after me during that 
last month."

"I never knew that."

"It was brutally hot the last part of September and they 
didn't have air conditioning.  I slept on a roll away bed 
in the sewing room.  I had to keep the windows open for any 
breeze, and the cricket noise outside sounded like a live 
wire.  Those nights dawn seemed endless hours away."

He imagined her as she looked back then, a woman he knew 
only from old photographs.  She had a beehive hairdo and 
pale, unwrinkled skin.

"I started having the contractions the night before but I 
didn't tell Bill's parents.  They would have whisked me to 
the hospital straight away."

"Dad wasn't there?"

"No," she said, and there was an odd catch in her voice.  
"I'd hoped he would make it back in time, but he didn't."  
She took a deep breath.  "Anyway, by morning, it was clear 
that you intended to come out and see the world.  There was 
a fierce rainstorm and the winds were blowing.  I remember 
our umbrella turned inside out as we went to the car.  We 
got to the hospital about noontime, but suddenly you 
weren't in such a hurry any more.  I waited around for 
nearly twelve more hours before you decided to make your 
appearance.  It was eleven fifty-seven on the dot when I 
first heard you screaming.

"You weighed seven and half pounds and had a head full of 
dark hair."

"What did you think when you saw me?"

"I thought..."

"What?"

"I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever 
seen."

She sounded like she was going to cry, and Mulder felt his 
eyes well up.  "Thank you," he said hoarsely, "for telling 
me."

"Why did you ask?"

"I don't know.  You never told me before, and I was 
curious.  Maybe I just wanted to hear about a time when 
things were simpler."

She gave a short, humorless laugh.  "Things were never 
simple, Fox.  Not now and certainly not then."

He leaned forward, his head bent nearly between his knees.  
"So we were never happy, that's what you're saying.  Not 
even then, before everything fell apart."

"Happiness doesn't enter into it.  Don't you see?  
Everything that came later had already begun."

The words sent a chill down his back and he clutched the 
phone tighter against his ear.  "Mom, are you saying you 
knew?  You knew about Samantha?"

"God, of course not," she said.  "I couldn't have foreseen 
that, no one could."

"Then I don't understand.  What do you mean by 'everything 
had already begun'?"

She sighed impatiently and he could almost feel her 
twirling the telephone cord in her fingers.  "We all walk 
our own paths in life.  Sometimes there's a fork and we can 
choose a different sort of scenery, but ultimately the 
direction is not up to us.  Where I am, where you are, we 
started down those roads a long time ago, from the moment 
of your birth and even before."

Apparently his mother did not believe in free will.  He 
wondered if this was true of the girl in the long-ago 
family pictures or whether this was a philosophy knit 
together after her daughter disappeared.  

"I refuse to believe that," he told her.  "I believe that 
what we do makes a difference."

"Yes," she answered sadly.  "I know you do."

He wiped at his eyes with the heel of one hand.  "I have to 
go now, Mom."

"I've been watching the news," she said suddenly, "for any 
mention of that FBI agent who was kidnapped.  You knew her, 
didn't you?"

"I knew her."  God help him, if she even suggested that 
fate had commanded Scully's abduction...

"I saw on the news what had happened to her, and I thought 
I remembered you mentioning her name."  She paused for a 
long moment.  "I hope they find her.  I hope her family can 
have some peace."

He squeezed his eyes shut so hard it hurt.

"I've got to go," he repeated.

"Of course," she said automatically.  "I'll talk to you 
again soon.  Happy birthday, Fox."

He punched off the connection but kept the phone clutched 
in his hand.  With sudden ferocity he raised it over his 
head, prepared to smash it into the desk.  But he stopped, 
his arm trembling with the restrained force.

He let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob.  Then he 
placed the receiver very gently back in its cradle.

"Happy birthday," he whispered.

~~~~~

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