Dirty Life's Dirty History

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.

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. )

End of February. 1962.

"All I'm saying," Alice was saying, "is that a bit of ketamine in a glass of water wouldn't really hurt anyone and it would be bloody hilarious! You could bring a video recorder, even. Daddy's got one I could lend you!"

(It was a very warm day for so late in February. Temperatures had jumped quite randomly out of nowhere and suddenly felt like spring, though the stuffy man on television said they were due for cold weather again in a day or so. To take advantage of the situation, Alice, as well as Robert, Dawn, Mikey, and, of course, Sully, were out in one of the fields by Alice's house, where it was warmest, and a bit off their heads.)

"Isn't ketamine for animals?" was Sully's take, looking thoughtfully between Alice and Dawn, who was, in fact, a chemist.

( Robert was looking thoughtfully between them... )