RIZZOLI & ISLES

Conclusions

ainsleyaisling

Title: Conclusions

Author: ainsleyaisling

Rating: PG

Pairing: platonic or pre–Jane/Maura – you decide

Spoilers: A really minor one for “I Kissed a Girl”; less minor one for “I’m Your Boogie Man”

Summary: Jane’s family are disappointed in her.

Note: My first R&I story. Apologies to anyone in any other fandom who is waiting on a story there, but – you write what comes into your head …

Conclusions

ainsleyaisling

It was clearly a conspiracy. Only she had no idea what it was for.

One minute she was smiling up at the waitress, reminding her that medium rare really did mean medium – and the next minute her brother’s clunky cop shoe was practically embedded in her shin.

“What the hell, Frankie?” she whined, instantly and unwillingly flashing back to thirty years’ worth of footfights in Boston’s crappier “family” restaurants.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” her brother said.

He looked sincere, but that meant nothing. You were going to be the youngest in the Rizzoli family, you were going to get pretty good at your wounded face.

“Did what?” she asked, pulling her leg up under the table so she could rub it.

“Don’t act stupid,” he said, pulling his beer closer. “We all know. And we’re watching.”

“Watching what?” It was all she could do to keep from laughing, despite her sore shin, as he motioned with two fingers from his eyes to hers. His eyes were so wide he looked like he was having a bad trip.

“You,” he said. “I know you never been much for this stuff, but you’re not gonna be mean.”

“Mean?” Jane’s brow was so furrowed that she had to take a long drink of her beer to unfurrow it. “You a vegetarian now?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he retorted, a finger pointing at her across the table. “That waitress, Janie …”

“Wha – the waitress?” She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure this one isn’t a serial killer’s assistant. It’s probably okay to let her feed us.”

Frankie shook his head in apparent disgust. “I don’t care if you admit it – though actually, if you ask me, that sucks too. But you gotta shape up.”

“Shape …” After a moment of staring at his face, which was giving away nothing, Jane sighed. “Whatever. You hear about Fox?”

* * * * *

So that was weird. But it got a lot weirder on gnocchi night. Or, more specifically, on the morning of gnocchi night.

Jane wove through the produce section with her phone pressed to her ear. “Ma, I’m next to the potatoes, where are you?”

“I’m in tomatoes,” Angela Rizzoli’s tinny voice came through the phone.

“No, you’re not,” Jane insisted. “I can see tomatoes, and you’re not there.” Next thing she knew, she was smacking into another body and her breath was knocked out of her.

“I’m so sorry!” The woman who’d bumped into her was young, pretty, and making no effort to keep that a secret in her tight yoga gear. Her handbasket full of blueberries and asparagus had caught Jane in the stomach.

“No, it was my fault, I was talking to my mother …” Jane motioned with the phone at her ear and rolled her eyes. “You okay?”

The woman smiled, ducking her chin, and nodded as she used her free hand to rearrange the produce in her basket. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I was looking at the Smart Dogs?”

Jane shook her head. “Smart … dogs?”

The woman waved her hand. “They’re on sale?”

Jane followed her gaze to a shelf of fake–meat products. “Ah,” she said, fighting to keep the expression of disgust off her face. “Yeah, I can see where that would be – distracting.”

“Yeah, well – oh!” The woman smiled. “You’re a cop.”

“I’m a what?” Jane repeated stupidly, before looking down where the woman was looking, at her belt, where her badge was clipped. “Oh. Yes. I’m a cop.” She grinned. “Sorry, I was just – I thought you could tell just by …” She waved vaguely in the direction of her face and chest. “But yeah. Cop. Homicide!” she added in a tone that felt awkwardly perky.

“Homicide? Is somebody dead?”

The woman was looking around wide–eyed at the triangular piles of vegetables, as if expecting to see a previously unnoticed corpse sprawling there – but Jane had finally spotted her mother standing hands on hips between the onions and the little potted basil plants, looking pissed.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Me, if I don’t go help my mother with her gnocchi.” She carefully sidled around the woman, giving her arm a pat as she passed. “Have a good day.”

“You too … officer,” the woman said somewhat lamely.

“Jane Rizzoli!” her mother hissed as she came closer.

“I’m here, Ma, I’m here.” As she hurried across the produce department Jane suddenly realized that her phone was still connected to her mother’s. She clicked it off and shoved it in her pocket. “You get the olive oil? Remember you said remind you you were out.”

“Don’t change the subject, young lady!” Without even looking her mother seized an onion and shoved it into the plastic bag she was holding. “I cannot believe your behavior.”

“My … what did I do?”

“I saw you with that girl in the tramp pants!”

Jane blinked. “The – yoga pants, Ma. It’s not like – and what are you talking about?”

Two more onions followed the first, and Angela tied the bag off with deft gestures and a huffing noise through her nose. “I did not think you were that kind of girl, Janie. You were not raised that way.”

“What way?” Jane begged as they finally moved out of the produce section.

“You know what I mean,” Angela muttered, her eyes and fake smile of greeting turned on the other shoppers they passed. “Acting like that, with that girl. Like you were at some kind of meat market.”

“Oh my – Ma!” Jane’s fingers went automatically to her forehead, where she could already feel the headache starting. “What are you – I’m not – I have no idea what you’re talking about. And what the hell do you know about meat markets?”

“Hey, I was a swinger,” her mother said defensively.

“Oh my God, Ma, no you were not. That word does not mean what you think it means.”

“Look, you are not fooling anybody here, Janie. I’m just …” Angela shook her head, pushing her cart around the corner. “I’m just disappointed. I did not think my only daughter was that kind of girl. You know, I bet it’s your father’s influence. All those times I let him take you down the bar –”

“Ma,” Jane interrupted, grabbing a bag of semolina as she passed the shelf, “You’re seriously off your rocker. I’m not –”

“If you’re going to keep lying to me we’re not going to talk about it anymore,” Angela sniffed.

“What –”

“Get the Moretti, that organic stuff has a smell.”

* * * * *

“So,” Jane reported to Maura over an autopsy table the next morning, “my mother’s tactics to get me to go out with some guy from her church have taken a really weird turn.”

“Weird how?” Maura asked. She paused, scalpel in hand, and looked up at Jane with her nose wrinkled. “Not the priest?”

“Ew!” Jane said, pushing herself away from the table. “Ew, ew, ew. Maura – just, no. Don’t even say stuff like that. Gross.”

“Priests are just men, Jane,” Maura said calmly.

“No, they’re not. They’re – like – Jesus in polyester. That is not okay.”

Maura shrugged. “Okay. So?”

“So all of a sudden in the middle of the supermarket she accuses me of being gay, and starts going on about how disappointed she is and how she didn’t raise me like that. Like what the hell?”

“That doesn’t sound like your mother,” Maura said, her eyes troubled beneath her safety glasses. “Stay back.”

Jane, by now used to the goings–on in the autopsy suite, backed away and leaned against the counter as Maura fired up a skull saw. “I’m telling you, I was there. Some woman in yoga clothes bumps into me and all of a sudden I’m like the lesbian lothario of the produce section – what?”

Maura paused the saw and glanced up at Jane, her tiny smile widening. “Well –”

“What?”

“You are pretty butch. In a hot kind of way.” Maura stopped to consider. “Or hot, in a butch kind of way.”

“Maura –”

“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if some woman found you a little more interesting than the alfalfa.”

“How is that the point?”

Maura shrugged and restarted the saw. “Anyway I wouldn’t have thought your mother would be the homophobic type,” she yelled over its noise. “She seems so open to letting people be themselves.”

“See, I was almost flattered a minute ago when you said I was hot,” Jane yelled back. “But now I’m just questioning your judgment.”

Maura stopped the saw and laid it aside. “All clear. Are you absolutely sure that was what she said? She said, ‘Jane, you’re a lesbian and that disappoints me?’”

“Yes!” Jane rolled her eyes. “Well, no, okay. Just a bunch of crap about how she didn’t raise me to behave ‘like that’ with girls. But it’s not like it was ambiguous.”

“I’m sorry,” Maura said softly.

“For what?”

“It’s not easy to find out that your parents can be disappointed in you for who you are,” Maura said, never taking her eyes off the corpse on her table.

“Or in this case for who I’m not?” Jane frowned. “What was that look?”

Maura shook her head. “Nothing, just – you do protest an awful lot.”

“So now saying I’m not gay makes me gay?”

Maura looked up, her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I don’t actually think most people are or aren’t, you know. It’s always possible there could be that one person –”

Jane held up a hand. “Okay, I don’t know if that’s adorably romantic, or kind of weird. So you’re telling me you’ve – what – had feelings for a woman or –”

“I didn’t say that,” Maura said, turning back to the corpse. “So what did you tell her?”

“Well, anything I said she accused me of lying, so …” Jane sighed. “Mothers.”

Maura gave her a sympathetic smile.

* * * * *

But uncomfortable as all that had been, things didn’t really come together until Frank, Sr. got involved.

“Janie,” was what he said after she’d handed him a seat wrench, “your mom’s been talking, and – well, you know how she is, but when your brother agrees with her – look, all I’m gonna say is, I know we understand each other, you and me.”

“Couldn’t prove that by this conversation …” Jane said, feeling an Angela headache coming on.

“All I’m saying is – you know, guys. They don’t always act the way they should. God knows I don’t. But I got your mother to tell me when I screwed up. Some women –” He sighed. “Look. You don’t, you know, you don’t really worry about teaching your daughter how to treat women. You hope she’ll grow up and some guy’ll treat her right. But you’re different – that’s okay.”

“Dad,” Jane said fervently, “all I want is for someone – anyone – to tell me what the hell this is all about.”

Her father nodded, flipping the wrench from hand to hand nervously. “Look, I wasn’t supposed to say. But I don’t like not talking straight to people. Well – not talking ‘straight,’ I guess, but –”

“Dad!”

“Maura’s a nice girl, Janie,” her father finally said, waving the wrench for emphasis. “She deserves to be treated right. You get a girl like that, you don’t mess around. No other women, no –”

“Oh my God,” Jane said as the last piece finally fell into place.

“Not to mention lying to your family about her, you know.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” She reached for the waving seat wrench and grabbed it from him. “You, and Ma, and Frankie, are all mad at me because you think I’m running around on Maura?”

Her father spread his hands. “Not necessarily. Hey, I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you, I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything you thought was wrong. But it’s not just about whether you have sex with somebody else –”

“Oh God, please do not talk about sex –”

“You just gotta be aware, you go around getting cute with other girls, it’s gonna hurt her. Whether you do anything with them or not –”

“Dad, Dad.” Jane waved the wrench until she had his attention. “Maura and I? Are not a couple. Nobody is lying to the family. Nobody is cheating on anybody else. She’s just my friend, and a coworker – that’s all.”

Her father frowned. “You sure?”

“You ever have a girlfriend you didn’t know about?”

A moment passed, then he grinned. “Giana DiAngelo.”

“Were you twelve at the time?”

He clapped her on the shoulder. “Maura’s a nice girl. That’s all.”

Jane burst back into the kitchen, where her mother was soaking marinara out of her saucepot, and said, “This? Is why people should talk. With words.”

Angela looked up with a sponge in her hand. “What’s that, Janie?”

“I thought you were going on and on about how you didn’t raise me to be gay and you were disappointed in me for – liking girls, or –”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother dropped the sponge and wiped her hands on the front of her olive oil and sauce–stained apron. “I would never – I mean, sure, it’s not what I had in mind, but – I’ve come to terms with all my children being who they are. Not that I can’t still hope –”

“And ‘hope’ comes in the form of setting me up with former altar boys from Holy Cross?”

“Hey, I do not do that anymore, do I?” Her mother smiled tremulously. “I wish you’d be honest with us so I could actually be happy about you finding somebody –”

“Ma,” Jane interrupted. “That’s what I was talking about. If you had just said – look. Maura and I – we’re not together. I don’t know how you got the idea we were.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not even –” In the time it took for her to think about what Maura had said, and to stop herself from arguing that she wasn’t a lesbian, Jane noticed her mother’s expression. “Are you disappointed?”

Angela grabbed the hem of her apron with both hands and flapped it for emphasis. “Of course I’m disappointed!”

“But –” Jane shook her head, mouth hanging open. “Ma, she’s – she’s not Italian, she’s not Catholic, you don’t know her parents, she’s not from the neighborhood – nevermind she’s a woman! You actually wanted us to be together?”

“She’s a nice girl,” Angela said wistfully. “And she’s a doctor.”

“You understand she’s not the kind of doctor most people are impressed by, right?”

Her mother sighed. “Jane. I just wish – you know, you meet somebody like Maura, you gotta go for it. If I hadn’t’ve done that, your father would still be with Giana DiAngelo, of all people.”

* * * * *

“So my mother did think I was a lesbian, but she didn’t care about that,” Jane reported the next morning. “Turned out, somehow they all got the idea I had a girlfriend, and was cheating on her by flirting with other women.”

Maura scrutinized her for a moment over the file folders she was holding before she said, “Your family has a lot of imagination.”

“My family has a lot of crazy, you mean.” Jane raked a hand through her hair. “So they could have avoided putting me through all this by just –”

“Waiting to verify all the evidence before jumping to conclusions?” Maura’s smile was no less smug for being rather small.

“Why do I have this feeling that you and my family are conspiring against me?”

Maura’s smile grew, and she tossed the folders onto a counter and wrapped an arm around Jane’s shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go get you a donut.”

“I haven’t had coffee yet,” Jane admitted.

“I guessed.” Maura dropped her arm from Jane’s shoulders to pull shut the door of the autopsy suite. “You know,” she added, “I can admit that I would be jealous if you had a girlfriend.”

Jane threw her a skeptical look. “You would.”

“Yeah!” Maura shrugged. “You know, it would be like – I’m right here, what was wrong with me?”

“You told me I wasn’t your type.”

“Jane, you’re every girl’s type.”

~ ~ ~