A Novel I Won't Write - The Children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have ideas. I write them down. And then I do nothing. Because it takes too much self-discipline and time to write a book. So here it is...

Maybe it's a story. Maybe it's part of a novel I won't write.

 

 

 

It was bizarre - they'd had the photograph at least two years before she saw them.  

 

It was taken just before Christmas, a charity thing at work where a colleague who dabbled in portrait photography set up a mini-studio and took donations for some local charity or other.  Her colleagues had looked askance at her because she had brought not only her husband, but her three dogs.  Well, they were her children, these little dachshunds, so there.

 

It turned out very well.  She and hubby were smiling, the dogs were all looking at the camera...

 

But now, as she looked at the picture, two actual children hovered there, pale and ghostlike, but clearly visible behind and between her husband and her.  

 

They were both blonde - which made no sense seeing as she and Mike were brunettes - and robust looking.  The boy seemed about eight or nine, and the girl about six.  They both had glasses.  Now that made sense.

 

Wait.

 

Made sense?

 

What the fuck?

 

None of this made sense, she chided herself, turning away from the wall where the framed photograph hung.  It's an illusion, it's a dream, it's the new anti-anxiety medication.  It's something.  Because it sure as hell isn't real.

 

But they were still there when she turned around again.  

 

And then she found herself vomiting on the dining room table.  They'd both waved at her.

 

 

--- " ---

  

  

It took a few minutes to run to the bathroom, vomit more, calm down, clean it all up, then calm down some more.  

 

So much for the new meds.

 

Then she slowly walked back to look at the photograph again.  

 

They were still there.  They seemed different... concerned.

 

"We're sorry, Mum," the girl said.  "That was mean of us."

 

She was self-possessed enough to pull at a dining room chair to plunk herself down.

 

"What the fuck is this?" she breathed at them.

 

"We're the children you chose not to have," the boy said.  He seemed slightly bitter, not kind, like the girl.

 

"I'm Sarah," said the girl.

 

"Oh, please," she said, laughing.  "I'd never call my daughter Sarah."

 

"You wouldn't have a choice, Mum.  I would have been born two weeks after grandma died.  Dad would have asked you and you wouldn't have been able to refuse."

 

"I still feel sick," she said, to noone in particular.

 

"I'm Declan," said the boy.  "Dad would've won that battle too."

 

"Why are you here?" She stared the boy down, not interested in dealing with his beligerence on top of everything else.

 

"We're here to ask you to release us," Sarah said.  You could tell it was hard for her to say, and that she'd practiced it in her head many times.  Maybe they'd discussed it.  Agreed on just the right wording.

 "There's a couple we found.  They can't have kids.  We want to go to them. You had a hysterectomy, anyway.  You chose to grow a fibroid instead of me."  The boy clearly wasn't in the same psychological place his sister was.

 "I didn't choose to grow anything!" she snapped.  "Why do I have to defend myself to you?"

"Ignore him," said Sarah.  "He doesn't get that women have a choice."

 

"And men," she said.  "Your father is part of this too, you know."

 

"Not if you really ask him, and really listen," Declan snapped back.

 

"Listen," said Sarah in a calm-the-waters voice.  "Please.  Let's just resolve this."

 

"Resolve what?"  She started to cry.

 

"Let us go," said Declan, his voice slightly softer now.  "Let us go to another family.  Let us live."

 

"Of course you can live," she said, her voice catching.  She was almost sobbing now.

 

"You have to ask for it to happen.  You have to pray," explained Sarah.

 

"Pray? To who?" 

 

"It doesn't matter what the name is.  None of us know the name.  Just ask."

 

"Where will you go?"  She struggled to control herself.

 

"I can't tell you that," said Sarah.  "Besides, we won't remember anything.  Fresh start, new genes and all that.  What you are giving away is the potential of us, not us as we are."

 

She got up and turned her back on them, going into the kitchen and letting the door swing closed behind her.  She could hear them whispering urgently to each other as she walked away.  

 

Of course she'd let them go.  Of course she'd pray.  But how to deal with this?

 

It was just all so ridiculous.  

 

She thought back to that silly game you played with a silver necklace as a teenager.  Your friend held it above your palm and you asked what your first child would be.  If it swung back and forth it was a boy, and if it swung in circle it was a girl.  She'd had line, circle, then nothing.  A boy and a girl.  Two kids.  

 

"Whatever," she'd said to her BFF.  "I'm not having kids."

 

Even at  13 years old, she knew.

 

But - fuck! - to actually be confronted with them?  She hadn't been ready for that.  

 

The sobbing was slowly subsiding now, into dry heaves.  She had to do it.  She knew she had to do it.  She just couldn't do it in front of them.

 

So she knelt down, there and then, on the kitchen floor, and prayed so hard she felt she might burst.  All the emotion poured out of her.  Regret for a life lost - a parallel universe where motherhood danced.  Guilt and rebellion, for and against the feeling embedded in her by society about what she should have done, what she was supposed to be.  Relief and gratitude for her life lived - her career, her freedom, her knowledge that she was never meant to be a mother, never wanted it, not the reality of it, not really.  She asked forgiveness but, she explained to whoever was listening, she had done the right thing for her, for her husband even, if they went to a home that wanted them, for Sarah and Declan.  

 

Her knees hurt and she was cold when she came to.  How long had she been on the floor?  And, another thing... where had her kids been all these years?  Why did they look the ages they would have been and not still potential babies?  Was limbo real?  Had they been in heaven?

 

Questions reeled through her head as she burst out of the kitchen, lurching back to the photograph.  She lost her footing on the slick wooden floor and began to fall, twisting her head frantically to see them, to ask them.

 

She saw Declan smile softly, and Sarah blow a kiss, as they faded away.

    

  

 

To read more in this series, click the tag below.

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Comments

[Honora]

Beautiful - especially this: "Regret for a life lost - a parallel universe where motherhood danced." You truly have a way with words, my friend. Someday, I hope you do write that novel.