Warning: Spoilers for stories in the Caffrey Conversation AU, and for season 4 of White Collar.
I’d been thinking about Neal’s maternal relatives before I started writing fan fiction, and my first iteration of Meredith appeared in a story I posted outside of the Caffrey Conversation AU. It was titled Written in the Stars, and it portrayed Meredith and canon character Ellen Parker reminiscing about Neal’s father and their lives before WITSEC.
Like many fan fiction writers, I took Neal’s canon comment that his mother was, “there, but not there,” to mean she suffered from depression and/or addiction and therefore was neglectful of her son. As a fan of Neal, it’s hard to like a person who neglected him as a child. And yet… When I completed Written in the Stars, I realized that I felt sorry for her.
In my AU, I gave Meredith a twin sister which allows us to compare and contrast two women who look alike and started out with the same background and resources. They both married cops who were severely flawed men, and they each had a son. Of the two, Noelle had it easier. By luck of the draw, Meredith struggled to have a child and had to deal with the devastation of multiple miscarriages. Her husband’s crimes came to light much earlier in her marriage, and as a result she was placed in WITSEC, away from the support of her family.
Alone, Meredith floundered. She turned to alcohol and her drinking blinded her to the faults of her boyfriend. To her credit, when she finally realized he was hitting Neal, she did break up with the man. However, she became trapped in a sense of guilt when the boyfriend retaliated by abducting and almost killing Neal. She believes she doesn’t deserve happiness and thus started avoiding the child who was the greatest source of joy in her life. By the time she actually appears for a scene in Caffrey Disclosure, she has wrapped her emotions in ice to the extent that her own twin can’t connect with her anymore.
Each time I write about Meredith, I’m torn between thinking of her as someone who needs to atone for being a neglectful mother, and thinking of her as a victim who became overwhelmed by her circumstances. I don’t feel like I know enough about depression and addiction to judge her, so I simply leave her on the page as a character who is difficult to like.
It’s clear that her troubles run too deep for me to give her an easy fix. However - optimist that I am - I wanted Neal to have a positive maternal figure in his life now. Meredith’s sister Noelle stepped into that role, loving Neal unconditionally. She’s not perfect, but perfect would be boring. Noelle made an error in judgment thinking she could take Neal on as a patient, when in fact her emotions toward him are too strong for her to be an objective therapist. Still, I think Neal deserves someone whose love and maternal instincts outweigh her objectivity, even if that does lead to a few missteps along the way. In fact, I became so attached to the idea of Noelle replacing Meredith in Neal’s life that I added a plot twist in Caffrey Disclosure about the role Noelle played when Meredith wasn’t able to carry a child to term. (Thanks, Silbrith, for taking that twist in stride once you recovered from the shock of it!)
Meanwhile I like to think that behind the scenes, Noelle is pressuring the Marshals to have Meredith evaluated for clinical depression or other disorders that could be treated. A woman who’s worthy of being Neal’s mother-figure wouldn’t give up easily on her family.
Written in the Stars on FF.net
Written in the Stars an AO3
Identical twins Noelle and Meredith resemble Emma Thompson. Noelle went blonde, and Meredith remained a brunette.
Fascinating stuff on Meredith. I have to admit I'm not fond of her. I don't know, there's something about her character even in her backstory that just doesn't seem 'right' or likable, but then I think Noelle has a bit of an issue too - too much thinking and not enough feeling whereas Meredith is the opposite, and yet both are smart enough to fool themselves and other people into thinking they can handle it. Meredith stopped fighting for Neal before she got the abusive boyfriend I think, she stopped fighting for Neal almost from the moment she got him. She wanted a baby for the wrong reasons, but she was never going to be able to care for a baby without the family present and they, I suspect, would have ended up raising Neal if there had been no WITSEC. Meredith would have wandered off eventually, she just would have done it physically. Perhaps she always had mental heath issues, in such a creative family it's easily possible that such issues or warning signs would have been overlooked among the highs and lows that surround such larger than life individuals. I try to feel sorry for her, mental illnesses are the same as any other illness, it's not the sufferers fault but illness also doesn't automatically make a person a saint, it just makes them sick, it doesn't wash away all sins; and in Meredith's case there's just something about her I don't like. I wonder if her husband and his flaws was such a shock to her? There's just something about Meredith that reminds me of Kate and I suspect your Neal feels the same way. Or not, anyway it would be fascinating if she got some help to see if there is a change or not.
ReplyDeleteWow. I'm astonished and flattered at the time you put into thinking about and responding to the post. You make some great points. I could easily see Meredith's family misinterpreting her issues as eccentricities, and it's equally easy to imagine that if she hadn't gone into WITSEC, her mother and siblings would have taken an increasingly important role in Neal's life. I like the comparison with Kate, and I'll pose a contrast with Elizabeth. I think Meredith would have used her own catering/event career as an excuse for jet-setting, satisfying her wanderlust and giving her family an excuse to keep Neal for longer and longer periods of time. She'd probably take Neal along on the occasional adventure and been more like an aunt than a mom, whereas I think El would make big adjustments for a child, as we started to see in the final season. Anyway, brainstorming Meredith's path in this AU with Silbrith has been part intriguing and part excruciating because she is such a difficult character (Meredith, that is, NOT Silbrith).
DeleteShe is a tough cookie. It's easy to see that Noelle is the dominant twin, Meredith seems to mimic her - law enforcement husband (with many of the same traits); having to have a baby (but why? she doesn't seem child oriented)- in fact the only thing Meredith seemed to have that was hers was her catering everything else seemed to be following along in the Caffrey footsteps. Maybe that's how I can feel sympathy for her, I agree she would have made a wonderful aunt, the perfect aunt as a matter of fact lol, but instead she was pushed into paths borne of the assumption that that's where she wanted to go and every failure just chipped away more and more at her public persona until finally the 'Meredith mask' was gone. I suspect she has a fair amount of anger at her family and herself for being pushed and prodded into her life. Now mind you, some of that pushing was in her own mind, like the marriage, I can't see a healthy Meredith getting married, maybe a very long term love affair as she's wandering the world and a healthy Meredith never would have had a child, she would have had more sense but Noelle had a child so Meredith had to have one too. I would even go so far as to say that Meredith never really bonded with Neal as a mom because she suspected she wasn't his 'mom'. I think Meredith, even if she were to get help, would have a lot of trouble even coming 'home' because home carried a lot of pressure for the odd girl out she felt herself to be. In a way, to borrow a phrase from The Big Bang Theory and an idea from many a comic book origin lol - Meredith is one lab accident away from become a super villain. That's why she reminds me of Kate and why I wonder if she wasn't so shocked by her husband being a 'bad guy'. She's not stupid, she just may have reached the point of not caring far sooner than her family ever realized. I wonder if she knew exactly what type of person Robert was and kept her mouth shut except for the occasional slightly bitter smile at family dinners, while she watched 'perfect' Noelle and her 'perfect' family; a silent revenge because Noelle was always so much 'better' why shouldn't she be better at screwing up as well? I've now made her Machiavellian and a noir character lol.
DeleteFascinating. Often when writing there are ideas that hop into my mind but don't fit in the story. Either I fit them into another story, or I have to let them go. You've reminded me of one of those ideas that roams only in the depths of my mind. It had occurred to me that perhaps Meredith dated Robert before he met Noelle. They were never serious, and when he realized Noelle was perfect for his career goals, he chased after her. Maybe some of what he learned from Meredith helped him win her over? Did Meredith suspect Robert's flaws, and even think Noelle needed an infusion of pain in her life to make her more relatable? Your image of Meredith's bitter smile at family dinners works perfectly in a scenario like that.
DeleteI like that, I like the the idea of a shadowy, not quite realized collusion between Meredith and Robert, one with a fully realized agenda, the other with a more passive desire; every family has its shadow side, at least to some of its members whether it's deliberate or not. A boisterous, outgoing group would be a type of hell for a shy introvert for instance or a boisterous extrovert in a home full of quiet scholars; loneliness is much worse when one is alone in a group. Meredith and Robert, I could see her suspecting, strongly suspecting his flaws, waiting for the family to notice what seemed rather obvious to her, and nothing, no one says a word and so she 'convinces' herself there's no reason to put a bug in her sister's ear, after all Noelle always knows best? And perhaps Robert had his own suspicions, especially when it came to Meredith's stability, but it would work best for him of course if she were gone, a natural ally for Noelle far out of reach. One can't count on sisters, especially twins being out of sync forever and with Caffreys as with most Winslows and Winstons, blood will out in the end and that would be a danger Robert would and did try to minimize. They would be much darker stories if "Meredith's bitter smile" was the guiding force. I like the direction you and Silbrith took with creations, your touches of darkness to create your world rather than painting only with a darker pallet.
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