Razor Ch. 05

As a parent, constant worrying about your children was part of the job description; were they happy, doing okay in school, did they have friends and on and on. But knowing that something was wrong, really wrong, in their lives created a new sort of worry. It made working and sleeping difficult and it made thinking about other people's problems almost impossible.

And then, the revelations about my sister, sweet Wendy, and the uncorking of that particular bottle of repressed feelings made the simple acts of living and thinking absolutely and utterly painful. Since a therapist who was completely consumed by his own painful past and worrisome present wasn't a very good one, I decided to cut my days short. Annoying, all-seeing Mary's appointments were the first to be cancelled. I wasn't proud of that decision, but in the end I felt I had to. She'd already caused too much of a disruption in my everyday life, and I needed normality, stability, calm... and... world peace!

The twins were both of them bored out of their minds after a week at home, and I reluctantly let them go back to school after a long monologue with quickly spoken words from Zelena's side. She'd apparently rather have every single class with Ms Roberts than stay at home one more day. And Alanna had nodded and told me that if they didn't go back to school Zelena would probably start disassembling the furniture using kitchen knives and forks, and for my information, she would have done it already if she'd managed to find any tools.

So, I let them go back to school and nervously watched them in the afternoons and evenings to see if they were okay. According to Alanna my attempts to learn if something was wrong and my questions about school was borderline obsessive. Zelena just looked at me, smiled a crooked smile and said "daaad" most of the time.

I didn't like their pale silence and too serious expressions, so different from their usual quirky cheekiness and at the end of their first week back in school I waited for them to get home, anxious to see if they were ok. I had decided I wouldn't let them go back again, I just wouldn't. If I had to worry about them one more day I would die standing by the door, waiting for them to come home, more stressed out than on those previously too long mornings.

I wasn't prepared to greet the two happy girls who came tumbling in through the door and I stared at them, mouth probably wide open. I blinked and stared, stared and blinked, and saw my daughters fall to the floor, laughing at their poor soon gray-haired father. I was lost for words. What could have possibly created that change in them?

A few minutes of giggling later, Alanna sat up and wiped her eyes.

"You looked just like Ms Roberts did about half an hour before lunch!" she said still gasping for air "When the headmaster came to get her in the middle of our science class. You both looked like some sort of owl and frog combination..."

"I'm still sorry I missed that," Zelena said with a frown "she looked more like a deer when she passed me on her way to the headmaster's office..."

"Not as much as that shell-shocked assistant who had to step in after the headmaster came back and told us that Ms Roberts wasn't coming back" Alanna said with a sigh.

"What, wait, how?" I said "Where were you then, Zed? And she's not coming back, Al? Details, please?"

"They didn't give us any details," Alanna said "but they were going to contact all parents as soon as possible."

"And, are you both okay?" I asked, thoughts whirling.

"Just as long as they find us a good science teacher this time around, I'll be fine." Zelena said.

Alanna nodded and I hugged them close and kissed the tops of their heads. My darling girls, safe from harm, or at least as safe as my worried papa heart would ever consider them to be. I wondered what had made the headmaster and school board reconsider? Perhaps my desperate attempts at getting the school to listen had been successful after all?

The phone call from school came the day after but the information I was given was frustratingly non-informative. Ms Roberts had to be let go because her and the school's opinions about teaching were too far apart, and a couple of other sentences that really didn't say anything at all. I tried to get a straight answer to my question if her treatment of my girls was the reason they decided to get rid of her, but I only got a repetition of the official reasons once more.

Weeks passed and the girls grew happier and I grew much less worried. I still kept my eyes and ears open and I suspected that my overprotective ways would continue for some time, to the annoyance of my kids.

I thought about Mary, what she had told me about herself and what she had said about my sister more often than I would like to admit. When the acute pain of remembering had passed and I'd been able to process my memories and feelings some, I realized I'd been unfair to cancel her appointments. But I couldn't stand the thought of seeing her just yet, there was something about her that pulled me apart and put me back together again all in a jumble, with some pieces missing. I had picked up the phone a couple of times to call her and tell her I was sorry for not being able to keep my promise, but I only ended up with the phone in my hand staring unseeingly in front of me, with images of my sister swimming in the tears that collected in my eyes.

My father and sister had never agreed on anything. Where one thought religion was the answer to everything the other one believed it was what caused all the bad things in the modern world. Where one person accepted only two types of love, the heterosexual love of married couples and the love of and for God, the other person stated that all forms of love must be respected and cherished.

The discussions and arguments were plenty until that final day where Wendy told father that she loved girls and as a result got excluded from the family. I had always thought she'd really just said it to provoke, not because she actually was a homosexual, but after Mary's words I had to face the fact that it was true. It really didn't bother me as much as the niggling thought that Mary probably was a girl-loving-girl too.

The fact that I still had thoughts about Mary, niggling or not, bothered me even more. I kept seeing her in my mind, the way she had looked when she stood by the window with sunshine caressing her hair, her eyes wide and sad. Her colors had been so strong, so vivid and her song had been so full of love and sorrow. In that moment I had seen, heard and felt her in a way I had never seen, heard or felt anyone before. Right there and then she'd seemed like an angel, and I had wanted to reach out and touch her. I had wanted to tell her she didn't need to be sad, that she wasn't alone anymore...

My strangely upsetting thoughts about Mary was interrupted by the creaking sound of a floorboard in the hallway outside my room and then a tousled-haired Zelena walked in.

"Hey," I said "why aren't you sleeping?"

"I woke up from a dream with a question that needed answering." Zelena answered with a yawn.

I was used to the almost too grown-up way my daughter had of speaking, and I had to constantly remind myself that she wasn't even a teenager yet. She threw herself down beside me where I was sitting on my bed with an unread book in my hands.

"Is our mother alive," she bluntly asked "and if so, why haven't we met her?"

I had been dreading the day they'd start asking about their mother for years, and I was frankly surprised it hadn't been sooner. I had decided to tell them everything when I thought it was time for them to know, constantly pushing that time to the future, at a much later date.

"I suppose I should tell you about your mother, but Alanna should be told at the same time, don't you think?" I answered hoping for a few more hours.

"S'ok... I'm coming," a tired and grumpy voice from the hallway signaled Alanna's arrival.

She walked in with sleepy eyes, her hair in simple braids, preventing the tousled look of her sister's, and threw herself down on her stomach on the foot of the bed. Zelena threw her a pillow and she settled in on her side looking at me with her wide blue eyes, so similar to my own.

"First of all, there are several reasons why I haven't told you about your mother, but the main one is that the story is a pretty sad one, and it might make you upset, okay?" I said whilst trying to organize my thoughts and words, hoping that I could tell them the story without hurting them.

"Just get on with it," Alanna grumbled "need to sleep."

I smiled at her and nodded slowly, still sorting the facts from my feelings.

"Your mother, Helen, and I got married when we were pretty young, I was nineteen and she was eighteen." I started "We met in church where both of our families gathered every Sunday and I liked her quiet beauty and her calm ways."

"So she was just like me then...?" Zelena said with a laugh.

"Just let him finish so we can go to sleep..." Alanna grumbled.

"After we got married we moved into a small house that her parents gave us, right next to their own house, a really stupid idea but since money was short, we were both still in school after all, we complied with her mother's wish to 'keep us close'..." I continued.

"Keeping us close really meant keeping a close watch, keeping us company and keeping us occupied with her thoughts about how we should run our household." I said hearing the bitter tone in my voice "There's a lesson there if you care to listen? Never live close to any of your parents, it'll never go well, trust me!"

Since there were no interruptions from either of them I kept going.

"Of course Helen was the one who was told off for doing things wrong more often than me, but it seemed she took it all pretty well, she was always the same calm woman that I'd married, always perfectly put together, never a hair out of place..."

I stopped to draw a breath and let go of the old frustrated anger I always felt when I thought about those days.

"Nothing seemed to shake Helen's calm until the day my mother-in-law started talking about grandchildren. A year after we'd gotten married and there was still no sign of a baby. I can only imagine what she said when I wasn't around, but the result was fierce activity in the baby factory, until I one day found Helen sitting on the floor of the bathroom, crying, with a pregnancy test in her hands, still not pregnant despite everything. I couldn't stand to see her cry so I suggested that we go to the doctors and run a few tests to see if there was something we could do about it. I didn't realize what would happen if the tests showed that there was actually something wrong..."

I looked at my girls, worried about the next part of the story.

"The tests showed that your mother had a severe case of tubular blockage, and that she would never be able to have children." I said, my quickly spoken words turning into a whisper in the end.

"But how?" Alanna whispered before turning silent.

"A couple of rough years followed where Helen grew depressed and things started to more or less fall to pieces. I tried my best to be supportive, whilst struggling with my studies and trying to come to terms with my sister Wendy's death." I continued, struggling to tell them what had happened as simple facts, as stripped from all of my mixed emotions as I possibly could.

"I just couldn't stand all of the darkness and despair around me, so I tried to fix things by 'solving the problem at hand'. I found information about Helen's condition and different types of fertility treatments, I looked into adoption, I did basically anything to try to help her out of her depression, the only way I knew how to, very hands-on, by trying to fix what I thought was the cause of her sadness." I said, my voice now bitter from remembering the inept way I had tried to help her "I didn't hold her in my arms, I didn't tell her it was okay, I didn't say I loved her, I just... tried to sort things out."

I shut my eyes and shook my head, I didn't know if I should blame the stupidity of youth or the fact that I was still preoccupied with my own sorrow after my sister's death, but I hadn't handled that situation good at all. But, since the result of my "fixing things" efforts were lying and sitting beside me at that moment, the final result hadn't been a complete disaster.

"Long story short, after concluding that a child was a priority for my wife we agreed on a fertility treatment using eggs from a donor, because there weren't just tubular problems but also hormonal ones... but that's perhaps more information than you need." I added "The first attempt was successful and Helen was so happy to know that she was expecting not one but two children."

"But you're still our dad aren't you?" Zelena asked with a worried frown.

"I did donate the other stuff needed for your conception, yes..." I added with a dry voice "And even if I hadn't, I still would have been your dad. See, I believe that it's the loving connection and the efforts and responsibility you feel that makes you a father, not the genetic material..."

"But studies of our closest relatives, the apes, show..." Zelena started.

"Nope, no apes, Zed, not tonight," Alanna said with a laugh "let him finish, please!"

"I started working to make money for my growing family, a strange 'need to provide' thing growing inside of me as you two grew inside of Helen." I continued, getting to the real hard bits of the story "But one day when I got home from work I found Helen crying on the floor of the bathroom again after she'd had a discussion with her mother. Finding out that another person's eggs had been used to create the babies inside her daughter had been a shock for my mother-in-law, and she'd told Helen that she wouldn't consider them her grandchildren, because frankly they weren't..."

"Like one of them apes then..." Zelena muttered before getting shushed by her sister once more.

"The happiness that Helen had been feeling instantly turned to sadness and anger. And in her anger she turned against me... and you two." I whispered and looked at them "And when you were born she didn't want to know you, she didn't want to take care of you, and I had to care for you from day one. And I truly loved you from day one, I want you to know that."

I hugged Zelena close then leaned over and put my hand on top of Alanna's head.

"I love you so, so much!" I whispered to the both of them "And no matter what happens I always will! In a few years you'll probably hate me for it, when you start inviting boys over that will be instantly thrown out of the house, but still..."

"Yeah, yeah..." Zelena muttered after Alanna had said that she loved me too "but what happened to our so called mother then?"

"I blame myself for not seeing, for not understanding that your mother was seriously ill, that she was suffering from some sort of postpartum psychosis. But then again, I hadn't been told about the bipolar disorder she suffered from, or that the reasons behind her calm, perfect appearance actually was carefully balanced medications. Medication that she stopped using when she was told she was pregnant, because she didn't want to hurt her babies."

"So, hurray for her," Zelena muttered "and where is she now?"

"She's in a private clinic far away from here," I answered "that her parents are paying for and will keep paying for if I promise to keep myself and my kids away from there."

"But you're still married?" Alanna asked, her eyes growing even bigger when I nodded in answer "Why are you still married?"

"Getting divorced is especially complicated when one of the spouses is considered mentally ill. And I'd rather spend my time and money on you than on useless battles with laws and lawyers." I answered, my voice as tired as my mind.

"But what if you meet someone and want to get married again?" Alanna asked, the deep compassion she always felt when someone was being mistreated shining out through her sad eyes "What if you fall in love?"

I laughed and shook my head. I wasn't planning on falling in love and I made sure I wasn't in that particular type of harm's way.

"I really don't think that's going to happen," I answered "but if it happens I'll have to try to make the best of that situation don't I?"

We sat and lay in silence for a long while, all of us probably thinking about different aspects of my story. It wasn't a bad kind of silence, just contemplative and strangely restful at the same time. I kept my own mind away from memories of Helen's last days at home and her strange erratic anger and general mood swings. I tried to think about later memories, about moving away from the house and my mother stepping in to take care of the kids so I could go back to work. And of course, all the memories of my daughters growing up. Twelve years had gone by so fast, and I suspected the years ahead would pass even faster.

"Dad," Zelena interrupted my thoughts "You know that Alanna looks like you, right?"

I nodded and looked at her, certain that I already knew where she was going with her questions.

"And that must mean that I look like my mother, my real mother that is?" she continued "And I wanted to know if there's any way I can find out who she is?"

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Zed," I answered "the egg donation was made anonymously, and there's no really good way to learn who she is. There are sealed donor registers I suppose, but I haven't ever looked into it. Like I said, the genetic material isn't the important aspect of parenthood."

"You always tell us that nothing is impossible dad." Alanna added with a yawn.

"A father always appreciates being reminded of the things he's said to keep his girls going in times of great 'ohh, it's too difficult'-ness..." I muttered with a smile and a pretend-frown.

"I'm off to bed..." Alanna said with a raspy voice "Zelena, come on, you can investigate donor registers tomorrow..."

I stared after them as they left my room and for a while I wondered if I should get up and tuck them in, but I'd been told they were way past the tucking-in-age and I decided against it. But then again, something had made Zelena start thinking about her mother, and I wondered what that was. I stood up and walked after them into the big bedroom that they still happily shared.

"Zed, what made you start thinking about your mother all of a sudden?" I asked Zelena as she settled back down in her own bed.

"It was just a thought," Zelena answered with a yawn "I couldn't quite figure out why a completely unrelated woman would come to our school with a bunch of lawyers and make sure that Ms Roberts was fired, that's all. I dreamt that she was our mother, woke up and thought I should ask..."

I nodded, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

"Zed, this unrelated woman, what did she look like?" I asked in a whisper.

"That's the thing dad, I don't understand why I dreamt about her, she didn't look like me either," Zelena answered softly just before she fell asleep "her hair was just beautiful, gold and red..."

I kissed her and Alanna's foreheads on the way out before I returned to my own room and my own bed, the book I was supposed to read completely forgotten. A woman, with gold and red hair, had come to my children's school and made sure that Ms Roberts was fired. A woman who knew too much about too many things perhaps? A woman whose name was Mary?

Insufferably arrogant and annoying Mary, what the hell was I supposed to do with her? The way she had dug herself into my mind and into my life, helping out where no help was asked for. Who did she think she was? I didn't need her help, I wanted her as far away from me as possible and I sure as hell didn't want her anywhere near my daughters.