12 May, 1984

It was still May 12th, and Alice would hardly have minded the world staying on May 12th for a million years more. Outside it was probably dark, but she wasn’t looking. Her attention was fixed on the hospital’s bassinette near her bed, and for as long as she lived, she would never find anything more interesting than the little boy inside it.

The room was quiet. The rush of initial visits had long ago come to an end when she started to feel too drowsy to appreciate the friends and family gathering around. Even Robert was asleep now.

Gently, mindful of the aches and pains and the searing discomfort that would hopefully not last too much longer, Alice sat up and eased out of bed. She paused at the rails for a moment to stretch her back, then took a step closer and picked Fabian up. That was his name. Fabian Ferris Fitzwilliam. Cruel but sweet and chosen by Robert.

Fabian was sound asleep and so tiny that Alice wondered whether or not there was another baby still yet to be born—she had grown so big and he weighed only five pounds. Healthy five pounds, of course. With black waves that shocked her when she saw them but enchanted her now. He was so beautiful. Every mother thinks the world of their child but Fabian was so beautiful.

Alice was already crying before she had climbed back into bed. Pregnancy had made her so emotional that the tiniest gust of wind could make her break down, and it seemed that motherhood wasn’t going to ease the drama. If anything, the infant was enhancing it. She had wanted a child for so long that to have one, to be holding one that wasn’t a niece or a nephew, was almost alien. She could barely reconcile that this was her son and his life was now a part of hers.

She couldn’t wait to go home. To buy clothes that were small enough to fit him (everything was much too big). To spend her days not alone in the kitchen but showing off her baby and taking care of him the way she had practiced for. Making him smile and laugh and helping him sit up and strengthen his unfocused eyes and fall in love with him in a way she had fallen in love with no one before.

Alice sniffed, almost laughing at herself, and rubbed her eyes before gently smoothing the back of her index finger against Fabian’s cheek.

Some point in 1957

It was eleven--no, it was closer to midnight than to eleven--and Alice was so furious she couldn't see straight. Her finger shook in the rotary dial and her mind was so scattered that she chose the wrong number twice before remembering that she was dialing America and needed a few extra numbers to have it go through.

She was dialing America (and sniffing hard--sniffing with fury) because Allen Carey was an insufferable prick with a horrible upbringing and a stupid face and he had ruined her day, ruined her year, ruined her life, and she would never ever forgive him. She would total all of his cars for as long as he chose to have them. She would chase him with whatever cars she owned next. She would haunt him like a ghost. He was the worst person in existence and if he knew any of her school friends well, she'd have started spreading rumors already.

Violet and Mallory had endured hours of ranting already, but not yet today. Mallory was busy. Violet was busier. They had good boyfriends who weren't twats.

Alice sat down on the far side of her bed and stared at the wall as the phone rang.

February 10th, 1933. Cape Town, South Africa.

February 10th. In four days, though you couldn't really count the fourth, Isabella was going to be married. For a week, guests had slowly arrived from around the world, most of them strangers to her, invited by her future mother-in-law. Royalty, aristocracy, tweed and lace. Hands she was happy to shake, cheeks she was happy to kiss, but intimidation she couldn't shake. Almost nine years of consistent presence in the spotlight had given Isabella near immunity from shyness and nervousness and second guessing. Her reputation was no longer as questionable as her behavior; she was considered witty, charismatic, and professional.

But Betsy Fitzwilliam and her plans had reduced Isabella to a state of paranoia that she was powerless to understand. Weddings were beyond her, both in function and operation. She had been to a few now, and learned the stereotypes, but her ignorance meant that she had not been the one in charge of planning. While she picked the dress and was given some input on decor and allowed to invite everyone she wished (as she tended to know celebrities, and Betsy was not discouraging about celebrity), the rest of it was out of her hands.

As the date grew nearer, she grew more confused, wondering what would be expected of her. There was a rehearsal in three days (or two, if the fourth wasn't to be counted). Isabella could dance and sing for crowds as large as a thousand or more; could walk nude in front of complete strangers. She could even be photographed in the midst of sexual acts. But what she couldn't do was predict what a wedding would require, and it was overwhelming.

Betsy, though about nine inches shorter than Isabella, managed to be frightening. She was a hard woman to please, and highly critical of her son's choice in women. Isabella's American nature and career on the stage did not impress her, no matter how rich Isabella supposedly was.

( The mansion, however, was crawling with people.Collapse )

8 January 2008. An update of the original reunion from last year.

Alice was undecided. Undecided and, as it was developing into over the course of the week, uncomfortable.

So she was sitting by the window and staring at a cup of milky tea. Her stomach was in too many knots to appreciate the smell or even the sight of it, but she was hungry in a sick sort of way—she hadn’t eaten today, and barely touched supper the night before. As the week wore on, and the undecided and uncomfortable swelled and swelled and swelled, she was quickly and efficiently being robbed of her ability to ignore them.

And that reason alone was what brought her to her feet.

She dumped out the cup and turned the kettle upside down in the sink, casting occasional glances over her shoulder, as though she was being watched.

( This whole week she had felt similarly.Collapse )

14 July, 1925. Circus has been touring since the start of April and has been in Edinburgh for a week.

July meant rain or sun, and the week had been spotty. The week had also been spent outside Edinburgh, in an area of green that some called a field but Hank called the worst landscape he ever had to set a tent upon. Indeed, most of the roustabouts had agreed with him, swearing so much and so vociferously that the youngest performers had to be ushered away to tour the city while the work was done.

It was the first time the Brooks Spectacular had gone out of England. Isabel, who now found herself responding to two versions of her name and billed as Isabella, was fascinated by the crooked architecture and the towering castles. They toured as much as they dared, at least until the three terrors, and John in particular, attempted to break into a tomb and got everyone in trouble.

The week was doubly interesting due to the amount of times Isabel heard mention of a birthday. Her birthday was today, in fact—a thing she had never cared about or noticed in the years before now. Birthdays were a measure of age, and not so extraordinary as to warrant a day of delights. After all, it was not so special and unique to have a birthday, if you managed to be born.

( So Isabel was of a certain opinion about her birthday and it was that the 14th of July couldn’t possibly be any more exciting now than it had been thirteen years before...Collapse )

[Just before Robert's final coma, while he's already becoming largely catatonic. 2002.]

Robert's handwriting (dried tears underneath it, not above it) was almost entirely unintelligible, words barely pressed into the page, ink spilled everywhere as it seemed his hands had been shaking so he was unable to make anything but a mess – a mess of his mind spilled everywhere as much as the ink.

( Tuesday, 26 March, Volume MMII: I fear this may be the last thing I ever write.Collapse )

Sunday, 21st August, 1983. Andy had died on the 19th.

Grief, it turned out, provided options, though all tended to provide what felt like a bat to the face. In some cases, the pain was angry. In some, the pain was crippling. In others, the pain created hallucinations that turned the world into a dream.

Alice wasn’t sure how it was attacking her, as three days earlier she had never been happier in all of her life. It was far to fall, and she was still falling. Maybe it would hit her soon, and maybe then everything would make sense. Why her father had to die the day she discovered she was pregnant. Why her mother wouldn’t wake up. Why Charlie had to split his time between watching his mother commit a slow suicide and visiting his youngest child in a hospital three hours away.

( She was in her room, now, though there were no answers to be found in the dusty toys and clothes that were organized as though Alice had only just moved out.Collapse )

May 2002

Alice was sitting in traffic. Heavy traffic, stocked with holidaymakers and elderly women dragging their husbands out for the first real month of stately home tours. Heavy traffic over the first sunny weekend since the previous autumn. And Alice was stuck behind four rows of cars jammed behind a red light, inhaling exhaust and exhaling frustration, on her way to work, sick from the chemotherapy. Her hands were shaking on the wheel, though after a half hour of trying to complete what should have been a ten minute drive, she couldn’t be sure if it was effects of the treatment or the onset of a breakdown. Either would have been welcome, just to have the excuse of ringing an ambulance and getting out of the maze.

If an ambulance could get into the maze to begin with.

Another minute ticked by. The green light came and went. One row of cars was knocked off. Alice was feeling dizzy from the sun shining into her eyes. She hadn’t brought sunglasses, and there was a lingering shadow of a headache that had plagued her all weekend now threatening to fall across her eyes and blind her.

She sighed, elbow grinding into the window sill, airconditioning blasting as much as it could at the lowest setting. Direct sunlight and black, leather seats were cooking her where she sat, melting her legs, confined in trousers, to the fabric.

( Flicking grey hair out of her eyes, she sighed again and contemplated blasting her horn until the road expanded or the cars parted.Collapse )