Title: nothing ever happened
Author: aphrodite_mine
Info: Mad Men, Anna Draper, Peggy Olson, Betty Francis. Halfway (about) through season 4. Don’s women. (Or the other way around.)
On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom
- Sufjan Stevens, “Casimir Pulaski Day”
1.
She forgets.
Preparing dinner one night, she layers a casserole with all of Don’s favorite combinations, hums as she puts it in the oven even though Carla really could do this. It cooks, and it’s the smell that gets her.
Sally interrupts her, two cigarettes and three glasses in, eyes the upturned dish somehow not broken on the linoleum. “I hope that’s not dinner,” she lisps, and Betty hates her. Hates all of them, this.
“Your room,” she manages. Points, shakily.
When Henry gets home she cries into his chest and lets him believe it’s over the mess.
2.
It’s patently untrue, she thinks. He believes this… mystery about himself, thinks that he lives in a bubble, practically. Look, but don’t touch!
Peggy wonders if there are other parts of her that speak when she says something like “This slogan’s no good. We’ve got to start over.” If something deep down in the pit of her slips out with every word, every look.
And maybe, she’s communicating with the way she smooths her hand over the front of her dress, how she tucks a hair back in place, how she sinks against the wall in the bathroom and just breathes, sometimes.
She knows him. He’s a lot easier to know than he thinks.
3.
She’ll never tell anyone how much it hurts. How it hasn’t ever not hurt and this is just some strange culmination of years, uneven.
And even Don, who always seems to turn things right-side up again (not including that initial tilt, when she thought she would fall off if not for her grip, if not for his eyes) can’t make this right. He’s far too infrequent, far too far.
She’ll die alone.
She’s always known that.
