Life as I Know It

by Melanie Rose

  I grinned back at Teddy, peeking through my folded fingertips at the rest of the congregation, who appeared to be silently conversing, eyes closed with God. Feeling like an outsider, I returned my gaze to Teddy, who had wriggled in next to me and rested his head against my shoulder. In a moment of spontaneity I kissed the top of his carroty curls and mouthed a silent thank-you toward the ceiling. It seemed that Teddy had accepted me for who I was, even though he appeared to know that I was not his mother, and this was certainly as much of an answer from on high as I could reasonably expect. After all, I told myself with an inward chuckle, He couldn’t be expected to send a lightning bolt every day.

  Prayers over, I slid back onto the hard wooden seat. Teddy climbed onto my lap and sat there quietly with his ball hugged to him. I thought of the letter in Lauren’s desk and vowed it wouldn’t happen. Teddy wasn’t going to any special home—I’d make sure of that.

  After the service we trooped through to the newly built redbrick church hall. The architects had obviously been tasked with making it match the church itself, which was a large Victorian monstrosity, but inside the hall it was spacious and airy, with a window into a small kitchen through which two middle-aged ladies were serving coffee and trays of orange squash.

  “Can I have a cookie, Mummy?” Toby asked, eyeing the selection on the plate.

  “Just one, or you’ll spoil your lunch.”

  I noticed Sophie slipping two cookies into her hand, and Nicole, who had been watching her older sister, followed suit. I was about to say something when I realized that in the scale of things one more cookie really didn’t matter. They hadn’t heard me say anything to Toby, so it wasn’t a case of making my point. I took another cookie off the plate for Toby, telling him that since he’d been a good boy he could have the extra one, then watched as he ran off to join his sisters at the activity table.

  Scanning the room through the mass of smartly dressed churchgoers, I spotted Teddy standing near the door and I squeezed apologetically past elbows and coffee cups to get to him.

  “Would you like a cookie?” I asked, holding out a custard cream.

  He shook his head. “A’ will spoil my lunch.”

  “I don’t think one or two cookies will hurt; it’s still a couple of hours before we eat.”

  He pulled at my skirt and I crouched down beside him so we were on eye level again.

  “Other Mummy dun’t let me,” he whispered conspiratorially.

  “I don’t think she’d mind you having one,” I whispered back. “But thank you for telling me, Teddy.”

  He took the cookie and I realized with a sigh that although he liked me and had accepted me for who I was, he was still loyal to his real mother, and that of course was how it should be. Lauren had brought the children up a certain way and, as I’d seen when talking to Karen a couple of days ago, by making too many changes it was indicating to Teddy that I didn’t approve of the way Lauren had done things. With the other children my deviation from their mother’s way of doing things didn’t matter—they thought their mother had lost her memory and was making the changes herself. I reminded myself I must be more careful in my dealings with Teddy.

  I stood up, still thinking things through as I pushed my way back to the serving window, where I was handed a cup of coffee. This parenting business was more complicated than I’d realized a week ago, I thought, taking a sip of the warm, bitter liquid. It required tact, diplomacy, finely honed organizational skills, and bucketloads of patience. Whatever decisions Lauren had been facing in the weeks or months before her death, I knew I was in no position to judge her.

  “Hello, Lauren. We heard you’ve been ill. Are you better now?”

  I turned to see a woman of indiscriminate age at my elbow. She was short and plump with dark wiry hair. Her somber blue skirt suit looked as if it had shrunk several sizes and was stretched across her broad frame.

  “Yes, thank you. I’m much better.”

  I searched the hall for a glimpse of Grant but couldn’t see him. He’d said on the way to the church that he would let me know who everyone was, but I could tell he was still in a bad mood from our encounter with Lauren’s boyfriend the evening before. He had lost himself in the crowd as soon as the service was over and left me to struggle on my own.

  “I notice you’ve allowed the children to have cookies today.”

  I stared at the woman in astonishment. She must have been scrutinizing my every move.

  “And,” she continued in a critical voice, “I hear from Nicole that you have allowed them to acquire pets.”

  “Yes,” I stammered, wondering who this opinionated woman was. “A rabbit and a guinea pig. The girls adore them.”

  The woman lowered her voice an octave. “They may adore them, Lauren, but you must be careful. The devil works in devious ways. I hear Nicole has named her pet Ginny after one of the Harry Potter characters?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought we’d discussed those books and decided they were dangerous. Witchcraft and wizardry are strictly banned by the Bible. They are the devil’s tools and as such should not be permitted to corrupt the innocent minds of children.”

  “They’re only harmless stories,” I protested. “Thousands of children have read them.”

  “Exactly!” she said. “The devil has entered the minds of thousands of innocents, laying them open to sin.”

  I turned away from her, hoping to bring the conversation to a close, but she rested a viselike hand on my arm, making my cup rattle in its saucer.

  “Come back to our prayer group, Lauren. I can see you are sorely in need of salvation.”

  “I’m sorry, I simply don’t have the time.”

  “You had plenty of time four years ago when you needed help,” she hissed. “God isn’t only there for when you’re in trouble, you know. You should thank him every day of the twins’ lives for His guidance and intervention there.”

  I stared at her, shocked, slowly registering what she must mean. That’s what Grant had meant when he had said that the boys hadn’t been his idea, I thought, appalled. Karen had been right when she’d said she’d thought Grant and Lauren must have decided to end the pregnancy, but someone from the church—this woman—had intervened. Maybe it hadn’t taken much persuasion for Lauren to keep the babies: It was no small thing to even consider getting rid of them, and if this woman had threatened her with God’s displeasure she might easily have capitulated.

  Much as I had grown fond of the twins, and was heartily glad of Lauren’s decision to keep them, I felt a sudden anger toward this meddling stranger who seemed to think she had a right to inflict her ideals onto others. She had forced something upon Lauren when she was at her most vulnerable, and the family had suffered because of it.

  I must have looked as angry as I felt because the woman wrenched her hand away as if my proximity were suddenly abhorrent to her, and the sudden movement sent my cup slipping from the saucer and crashing to the floor.

  The hall fell instantly quiet and I felt every eye upon us.

  “What happened to ‘judge not lest you be judged’?” I said into the silence. “You knew nothing about this family and what it could cope with and what it couldn’t, but you pressured her with your opinions, didn’t you?”

  The woman’s eyes shot open. She looked appalled by my outburst and shrank from me as if Satan himself were staring at her. “Her? Who are you referring to, Lauren?”

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that she might not have been able to take care of them?” I continued angrily. “That her whole family would suffer because of the decision you forced her into? She had a right to choose for herself, not to be bullied and threatened by someone professing to know what God intended for her! Who gave you the right to be her judge and jury?”

  “Lauren!”

  Grant had rushed over and was taking the empty saucer out of my hand, pulling at my elbow, trying to draw me toward the doorway. His normally pale face was suffused with red, and I saw
now that the whole hall was staring wide-eyed at me.

  “I helped you,” the woman spat out suddenly. “Your soul was in jeopardy and I saved you.”

  Grant was beckoning the children over and nudging me toward the door. “Lauren isn’t well yet, Dora. She’s lost her memory, and this really isn’t helping,” he said as calmly as he could.

  “She’s got the devil inside her,” the old woman muttered viciously.

  “You’re qualified to tell, are you?” I flung back. “Do you think you have a direct line to God or something?”

  “I know evil when I see it!”

  “You should, you must see it in the mirror every morning!”

  “Lauren!” Grant hissed. “Stop it. Come on, children, we’re going.”

  I turned and let Grant hustle me out the door, the children following with confused looks on their faces. As soon as we’d rounded the corner of the church hall, Grant burst out with great guffaws of laughter. I looked at him askance, my hands shaking as I pulled up short to face him.

  “How can you laugh?”

  “That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in years,” he said between gasps for breath. “Every Sunday you come home fuming and upset after Dora gets her hooks into you, and at last you’ve put the horrible old bag in her place.”

  “We’ll never be able to go back,” I said as we walked toward the car, all the fight draining out of me. “I’ll never live it down.”

  “Most of the congregation have been dying to pluck up the courage to tell her where to go for years,” he went on as he unlocked the car. “She tells everyone what they should or shouldn’t do, frightens the youngsters with her fire-and-brimstone stories. You’ll be a hero, Lauren. You just wait and see.”

  I sat in silence on the way home from church, wondering just what damage my outburst might have done to the children. I knew my reaction to Dora had been rather hotheaded but I believed everyone had the right to make their own decisions, not be beaten about the head by Bible thumpers who made no effort to understand other people’s frailties.

  Staring out of the car window at the passing scenery, I attempted to justify my outburst. Every circumstance was different, I could see. Having lived Lauren’s life for a whole week now, I was coming to understand that every parent possessed different capabilities. I shouldn’t for a moment condemn Lauren for thinking of terminating her pregnancy, or for having an affair, or even for thinking of putting Teddy in a home, just because I wouldn’t have contemplated doing any of those things myself. The power that ruled the universe might do the judging one day, but it certainly wasn’t my place to do so, nor was it Dora’s.

  The car had stopped and the children were bundling out talking excitedly now that the tension had eased. I followed them into the house more slowly, furious with myself for my appalling lack of control.

  Delicious smells of roast pork filled the air and I sniffed appreciatively. It seemed Karen had been doing my job for me remarkably well. How I was going to manage when she went home I didn’t know. The kitchen was cluttered with pans and potato peels, the sink full of vegetables and the counter covered with flour where she was working on producing pastry for an apple pie. Karen glanced up at me with the rolling pin in her hand and grinned.

  “I hear you’ve been making trouble again.”

  “How could you possibly know that already?”

  “The vicar rang. She said she’s coming around this afternoon for a chat.” Karen attacked the pastry again. “She said you had angry words with one of the other parishioners.”

  “You could say that,” I sighed, tying an apron over Lauren’s designer outfit and taking a peeler and knife from the cutlery drawer. “I made a complete spectacle of myself.”

  “Grant seems amused by it. He came in chuckling to himself, which is an improvement on the mood he left in earlier.”

  I smiled as I pulled a bag of cooking apples toward me. “I thought he’d be really angry with me. I mean, the family have been going to that church for years, and I only went once and look what happened!”

  Karen went over to the kettle and flicked the on switch with floury hands. “I’ll make us both a drink and you can tell me all about it. What would you prefer—coffee or tea?”

  “Either will do. I don’t mind which.”

  By the time I’d finished talking about what had happened that morning, I had a pile of peeled, sliced apple in front of me and Karen was smiling.

  “Lauren told me… sorry, you told me a couple of years ago, that Dora was the one who persuaded you to go ahead with the pregnancy. I thought at the time that Lauren should have made her own mind up, but she never listened to me.”

  I glanced over my shoulder in case the children were nearby. “We’ll have to try to stop referring to Lauren in the third party,” I said quietly. “I keep doing it—I even did it in the church hall and the whole village must have noticed. Grant actually covered for me, telling them I’d lost my memory, but I don’t want the children to hear us talking about her as if it’s not me.”

  “Sorry… it’s so difficult now that I know.”

  “Tell me about it. The entire congregation of St. Martin’s has seen me in a different light after today.”

  We giggled together like the sisters we were supposed to be.

  “I’d like to know the real you,” she said as she pressed down the fluted edges of the pie.

  “This is the real me. That’s why Lauren keeps getting into trouble.”

  “No, I mean you in your own body, your own surroundings. Is there any way I can meet Jessica?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, thinking hard about all the possibilities. “When I went last time Jessica was asleep. The time changed during my journey. If you were with me and went through the time change, too, wouldn’t that make us time travelers? I’m not sure that was ever intended.”

  “Was any of this intended?” she asked, opening the oven and sliding the finished pie inside. “You becoming Lauren and everything? Couldn’t it have just been a mistake after all?”

  “I hope not. I prefer to think of this experience as a journey. I’m following a predestined path, as the pawn in a grand universal plan.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  I giggled again, but then sobered as a thought entered my head.

  “If I didn’t go with you and you went on your own, then time might not change for you—after all, it doesn’t seem to be your destiny that’s being altered, it’s mine. What if the time only changed for me because I couldn’t exist in two places at the same time?”

  She stared at me. “You mean I could drive over there now and you could be there as Jessica?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, suddenly weary of trying to work out stuff that was way beyond a mere human’s understanding.

  “Why don’t you try it and see? After all, Jessica has Sunday, too; it’s just that I experience Sunday twice as the two different people.”

  “I wasn’t going to go today,” she said hastily. “I want to go and I don’t. I mean, I do believe you aren’t Lauren, and I do want to meet Jessica.” She broke off, not really knowing what she meant. “I’m just not ready to go today.”

  “Just as well, because I’ve remembered I’m spending the day with a friend. I wouldn’t be in.”

  We started laughing again at the weirdness of what we were saying. She came over and encompassed me in a great bear hug.

  “You’re bearing up very well. Not everyone could cope with something as phenomenal as this without going nuts. Aw!” she added with a sudden look of horror. “I hope I’m not being stupid by believing you, I don’t want to find myself on ‘hidden camera TV!’”

  “You have no idea what a relief it is that you do believe me,” I said, meaning every word. “And that you’ve so readily accepted me for who I am.”

  We listened to the sounds of the children playing in the next room. Sophie and Nicole were giggling about something and Toby was brrming his truck.

  “Withou
t you this family would be in mourning now, but instead the children are the happiest I’ve seen for a long time. Who you are is all right.”

  “Grant isn’t happy, though,” I said, rubbing my hands over the bruises on my arms. “I can’t make him happy, Karen, because I don’t love him.”

  “At least you’re not leaving him. If that young man last night was telling the truth, Lauren would have been gone soon anyway.”

  “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I began, lowering my voice another octave. “I found a letter in the desk upstairs. It seems… I… was going to put Teddy in a home before I left.”

  “No!” Karen went white. “She… you… wouldn’t have done that. I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. I can show you the letter if you like.”

  “Shit, Lauren. Shit, shit, shit.”

  “I have asked you to mind your language in front of the children,” Grant said from behind us.

  We both started guiltily. I wondered how long he’d been standing there.

  “The children are all in the playroom,” Karen said hastily, turning away to check the roast, presumably so she wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. “They won’t have heard me.”

  “It’s just as well,” he said smoothly. “We don’t want the boys to come out with words like that when they go back to nursery school tomorrow.”

  “Speaking of school,” I said, watching him carefully for any sign that he’d overheard me telling Karen about finding the letter, “what are we doing about their next school? Did we have any particular plans for them?”

  “They have until next July where they are now,” Grant said guardedly. “You were looking into various possibilities for next year. I think we have their names down for one or two places.”