Thursday's Child

Moira read to her daughter nightly from a tome shelved low near Chloe's bedroom door. The dustcover always fell off when she opened it; no amount of tape kept it in place. When she was old enough, Chloe held one side open as her mother spoke, take care not to wrinkle the round-edged pages further. She knew every line of "Macavity the Mystery Cat" by the time she entered the first grade.

Chloe's bookshelf at the Watchtower contains the following: a biography of Nelly Bly and a volume of her most memorable articles, a photojournalistic book of the coffee industry, a copy of "Tales of the Weird & Unexplained" given by Clark on her twenty-second birthday, the most current emergency first aid guide, and Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" from the library discard bin. She dusts them every third Sunday, her assigned Watchtower-clean-up day.

Gabe Sullivan's home in Smallville had one Apple Macintosh desktop computer and one television, both in the living room. After dinner, Chloe would sit at the computer, Gabe, in front of the television, yet conversation flowed smoothly. The Sullivan household buzzed with twenty-dollar words.

The Watchtower has twelve monitors. Nine of them run on independent but networked towers. The largest is a touch-screen table-top with two slave monitors. Several dozen terabyte harddrives run off five servers which access the internet at both legal and illegal lines. The passwords are time sensitive and set to melt after four failed attempts. She has backups on site and in encrypted servers on each coast of the United States. The fans maintain a constant buzz that lulls her to sleep.

Lois used to complain about Chloe's decorative tastes. The more colour and pattern, the better. In high school, she papered her walls with movie posters and cut-out quotes. Turquoise side tables held sari-cloth lamp-shades. Beads, blinds and curtains hung on her windows. The bed belched pillows of in every pattern created by the Smallville Ladies' Quilting Circle. She had a hot pink shag rug because it made Clark laugh and a bright yellow hope chest because it was bright yellow.

Three brown couches and a brown coffee table sit under the patterned shadow Watchtower's main rose window. A pinball machine stands behind one of the couches; a foozball table lies behind the other. There's always at least once box of playing cards around; poker nights are a good way to unwind. Chloe keeps these in the shelf under the coffee table along with various forgotten or misplaced articles: Bart's shades, Vic's tools, AC's chapstick, Dinah's yo-yo. The staircase hides her dusty brown bookshelf.

Single-parenthood meant the Sullivans lived on take-out and church-lady casseroles. A white-washed cabinet with beveled glass enshrined Moira's family plates and their wedding china. Gabe often ate from a Dr Who collectable plate from the eighties; Chloe claimed a square plate with a Greek geometrical border. Their coffee mugs matched: white, with their names painted on one side. They'd bought it on their very first country fair in Smallville.

Chloe now owns seven ceramic and two travel mugs. She only drinks decaffeinated tea, resentfully. She hasn't had sushi in five months. She didn't like it much before but now she salivates for them when Lois takes her out for dinner. She lost weight since her last check-up. She craves everything in the turnip family; the full-sized fridge has containers of them sliced like chips. It's not a weird craving and she's glad.

People would call the Sullivan's old home a mess but Chloe knew where everything was. She and her father had an order to their disaster. They removed half of the cabinet doors so they could grab things and go. Clothes went straight to the washing machine instead of laundry hampers at least until Chloe started high school and became self conscious about her father putting away her underwear. Tacitly, the left side of any furniture was Gabe's because he was left-handed; they always re-arranged the table to for each other's things.

In the Watchtower, Chloe has no room for a crib.