Day Twenty Seven

Bonnie drove without having a solid plan. She had missed her children but had been away for so long without a word that she knew they would be angry. They had every right to be. A good mother would have called by now and let her children know she was thinking of them. A good mother would have made sure a hot dinner was on the table every night. Bonnie was overwhelmed with the guilt of not being perfect.

Like Alfie, Lucy had not cared much for Bonnie. There was something about her that just missed likeability. She looked like she spent far too much time on herself or was trying to hide something and it made Lucy nervous. And certainly Bonnie wasn’t good enough for her son. Over the years they had been together, Lucy had quietly speculated they wouldn’t last and before she had fallen ill, had even hoped they would split up.

So when Lucy was dropped into Bonnie’s car, she was far from pleased. She had been nearly thankful for being dead so she didn‘t have to deal with her anymore.

And yet, Lucy could see herself in Bonnie. All the years of feeling guilty about not being able to look after the children because she had to work seemed far too recent for her liking. And weren’t they all screwed up? Nathan may have been experiencing long term effects from his accident but there was no excuse for Elliot and as for Beth, Lucy just didn’t know what to do. She had been dead before Julie was born and had only realised the extent of her problems a few years after she had been born. Of course Lucy knew there was not a whole lot she could do for that granddaughter but there was also Caroline.

Caroline. Lucy remembered the little girl who was so happy to see her. Thinking of Caroline made Lucy think of Alfie. How proud he had been when he was told he had a granddaughter. He had been proud to be grandfather to Marvin too but when they had one of each, he had just been over the moon with joy. After seeing her for the first time, they opened up a savings account just like they had done for Marvin. But Alfie could not pass children’s clothes shops without buying something for her. He had chosen the most girliest of outfits: pink, pink and more pink. Lace and satin dresses, fussy shoes and fiddly hats. Coats she would only be able to wear for a couple of months before she outgrew them. He wanted to buy her dollies too and would agonise over what kind of baby she would like.

But Caroline had been a tomboy, a real rough and tumble girl who wanted nothing more than to be free to move around as she liked and get dirty. Bonnie had also tried to get her to wear the clothes as she didn’t want Alfie’s feeling hurt but nothing could persuade Caroline into a dress. Once Alfie realised this, he started taking her to ball games instead where they’d watch game after game and share French fries every Saturday.

Marvin was a different story and had always been an odd boy who was very difficult to read. He didn’t seem to like sports, not even video games. It was clear he liked to eat and sleep but there was little else that caught his attention.

Once Lucy had been liberated of her body and had been free to come and go as she liked, she would often hang around with Marvin just to see what he got up to. Happily was spared from having to witness the nastiest of teenage boy habits but she had seen enough of him to know the boy needed a little more guidance from his father.

Elliot. That fool, thought Lucy. There was just hardly a point in trying to get him to see sense and take the lad under his wings. Like do father and son things. Marvin didn’t seem to even like Alfie or even his own mother and father. Independent from an early age, he was just content to mooch around the place, shoving everything edible into his mouth. It wasn’t that he was an unlikable kid but he needed direction and encouragement.

Lucy turned to watch Bonnie. She was crying and as much as she didn’t want to, Lucy began to feel sorry for her. Bonnie wasn’t too different from the way she had been at the same age. Ambitious, maybe a bit impatient but also in a difficult relationship. Alfie got a lot better as he got older but he had been a lot of work and it took a lot out of her to keep him on an even keel.

There was the time that Lucy had been feverishly working on a knitted sweater for Nathan who had a “thing” about British television. He would order videos from specialists shops and then spend all evening watching them. She and Alfie could hear him hooting and cackling at the jokes no one in the family understood. He even developed and cultivated a British accent and would painstakingly recreate certain scenes and then act them out for an ungrateful audience.

Nathan had been so interested in British television that Lucy had made a serious attempt to understand them too. So she would make some popcorn and join him. At first, Nathan had gotten his nose so out of joint over everyone’s lack of interest that he initially just ignored her but then he began to let her in on a few of the jokes.

“You see?” he had asked her. “It’s a dead parrot but the other guy doesn’t know it!”

Lucy did not get it but laughed anyway.

As if summoned, the three birds appeared in the car with her. They sat in the back cracking silly jokes and being obnoxious. Lucy kept watching them in the rear view mirror, wondering how things so small could be so loud.

Then she remembered where her thoughts had been: Alfie and the sweater.

Or should that be “jumper”? That was what Nathan would have called it. As she was trying to understand Nathan’s interest in all things British, she noticed one of the characters had a very unique sweater on. With a little bit of research she found out this particular sweater was called “Fair Isle”. It had a very fiddly pattern but she found all the right colours and planned to knit one for Christmas as a sort of peace offering to Nathan because he was still feeling a bit put out (as Nathan would have said) with her for not getting his jokes.

Lucy remembered each row of knitting was about 140 stitches of very thin yarn. On top of being difficult to work with, the colours had to be changed every few stitches so it all got very tangled as well. But she persevered and completed the two sleeves and the back and was half way through the front when she and Alfie had a row. She couldn’t remember what the row had been about but she had come home from work one day and found the back of the sweater completely unpicked and left as a pile of wool in the middle of the bed they shared. Lucy was so angry she did not know what to do. So she turned on her heel and walked out of the house. Beth had called out to her but she didn’t stop even though she heard the desperation in her daughter’s voice.

“Mom! Stop!” Beth had called.

But Lucy couldn’t stop. If she stopped she might kill somebody. It would have been so wrong of her to take her anger out on Beth. So she carried on walking. After about half an hour, she started to calm down and feel like the murderous rage she had felt had dissipated enough for her to return home to the family. Lucy knew what she had to do and she had resolved to do it: she was going to re-knit that damn sweater and give it to Nathan for Christmas. She wasn’t going to say a word to Alfie, she was just going to re-do it. If she complained, he would know he had gotten the better of her. With every stitch, she swore at her husband in her mind and when she had finally given it to Nathan on Christmas as planned, she had felt positively victorious. There was a slight disappointment that Alfie hadn’t noticed but that didn’t matter so much as him not defeating her.

The birds were getting noisy again in the back so Lucy turned to look at them. There were an odd trio. In real life, they would not have even met each other but in a zoo, they had seen each other enough to recognise one another in the afterlife.

Bonnie had pulled over the car to have a good cry and again, Lucy was overcome with pity for her. As she watched her cry, Lucy started to feel guilty for a very different reason: her own son had caused this sorrow and pain. He had been a part in causing the pain of children and Lucy knew she would have to do something to help bring the family back together again. What she had to do was a mystery to her.

As the birds flapped around in the back, she started to get an idea as to how they could help. Perhaps Maurice might be able to help too, she thought.