Unavoidable Tragedy

Robin Wright Full Manuscript: 72,000 words

Unavoidable Tragedy

Adult

Romance

Epigraph:

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."

Marcus Aurelius

“The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

Chapter 1

There are a thousand forms of cruelty, Rebecca thought, but the harshest, least defensible of them all was casual, unintended cruelty. As the nurse took her mother’s arm and led her gently back to her room from the common lounge, she could still hear the cackling, breathless laughter.

“Finally, I’ll be able to have some control,” her mother was still crowing, over her shoulder`. “Phoebe will be saved, and she will know it was me who saved her. Me, who she abandoned when I would not let her ruin herself with that slob. I have saved her.”

The late March evening sunshine blurred into a buttery smear, enhanced by a forsythia bush in magnificent golden flower directly outside the window, like a frozen, sunburst firework. Rebecca’s eyes prickled with incipient tears, right now, as she leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the common room window. Her mother Jacqueline, unaware of the dementia which was stealing her reason as fast as it bled away her memories, often believed she was still the wealthy, hospitable Santa Barbara maven who had occasionally entertained A-list celebrities at her cliffside home.

“Do you not remember why Phoebe does not speak to you, Mom?” Rebecca asked, when they were back in her mother’s room, amid the smell of mints and roses.

“Of course I remember, silly. It’s because I wouldn’t let her embarrass me when she married that slob, Drew. The home loan payment will clear the air.” Jacqueline had definitely forgotten the real reason Phoebe did not speak to her. She had forgotten that her wealth was gone, poured away to buy the annuity which allowed her to live here at St Theresa’s until the end. Rebecca did not let her see her bank statements, because they were dead and lifeless now.

“And you didn’t go to Amelia’s christening. Nor Talia’s.”

Jacqueline responded with venom. “Who’s Amelia? Is your sister shacking up with a woman now? God knows it’s all the rage these days, but I never thought Phoebe –”

“Amelia is Phoebe and Michael’s daughter. Talia is her younger sister.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Missy!” Jacqueline screamed. “Who’s Michael? Has she had children out of wedlock? No wonder she won’t come and see me – too ashamed, God knows.” This non-sequitur temporarily shocked Rebecca, though it was not that unusual an occurrence these days.

“She didn’t marry Drew, Mom. She married Michael. He’s a lawyer. In San Diego.”

“Well, that’s barely a hop and a skip from here. She could come round at the weekend.”

“It’s over five hundred kilometers, Mom.”

“To Oxnard? Don’t be so silly.”

“You don’t live in Oxnard any more, Mom. You used to live in Santa Barbara. You’re in Ocean Falls, now.”

“Well, I still say she could get that slob Drew to do the right thing for once and bring her to see me, couldn’t she? Especially as I’m offering to pay off her home loan.”

Jacqueline had never been able to name Drew, who was not married to Phoebe in any case, without preceding it with ‘that slob’. Drew had been dumped two years before Phoebe met her husband Michael. Rebecca sighed again, more quietly this time.

Phoebe’s life was squared away, and had been ever since she had cut off communication with Jacqueline on the day of the wedding. She saw Rebecca infrequently, but they were still very close.

“I see. That sounds important and very kind, Mom.” Rebecca hated this part. She hated the advice she had received from Dr Michaels early in the diagnosis: you didn’t persist to correct dementia patients, because it caused a huge cognitive dissonance which they were often unable to process. Instead, the rule was to keep them comfortable that everything was as they were saying, even if this could be diametrically opposite to what they had been saying a day, or even an hour, earlier. The other rules were no better: not to ask them to remember something, nor to tell them they had already said or done something. She had added her own rules, dealing with her mother’s rapid decline. Never show impatience at having to repeat yourself, that was one. But the rules were only for her, not for her mother. It was depressing, it was enervating and it hurt. Like a thousand papercuts, it hurt all the time.

The rules were one way, because Jacqueline could often ‘remember’ a massive hurt in her past, but could not remember what caused it, or even who. So she was constantly coming up with ways of ‘getting back’ at imagined villains. Rebecca had had her turns as villain, and today it was Phoebe’s turn. Dr Michaels, the resident psychiatrist, told her it was just Jacqueline’s brain filling in the increasingly large gaps in her memory, without asking permission or bothering about consistency with surrounding information.

The result was an almost daily hour with someone who didn’t always know who Rebecca was or what she was doing there, who could not remember what they had had for lunch but could remember an eighteen year-old grudge like it had happened at that lunch, even though they might not remember who it was with. Rebecca couldn’t argue with her, so it became a litany of ugly, vicious diatribes against people who weren’t in the room, and often hadn’t been in the room at the time of the imagined slight. Rebecca had to nod along, and agree with whatever stupidity, whatever evil, whatever nonsense Jacqueline thought was today’s drama. It was soul-destroying, but Rebecca could not see a way to move past it. She loved her mother, but it had become close to hatred now, and it had leached every good moment from her own life.

As her mother droned on about Phoebe’s entirely imagined faults, Rebecca’s own mind drifted away. Even those good moments had been fewer and further between for the last two years. It was wonderful working at the florist on Main Street in Ocean Falls. Rebecca remembered Elspeth, the previous owner, fondly. Elspeth had died two years ago, after teaching Rebecca and the other regular florist, Marie, everything she knew, which was everything there was to know, it seemed. Elspeth had left the shop, but not its ethos, to her son, Donald.

Donald’s key always turned in the shop door with a sickening, unpredictable click. He did it even though the door was usually open, to make the point it was his shop, and they were his employees, and he could do as he wished. While he no longer cornered Marie since her huge boyfriend had appeared to terrify him, his attention had simply refocused. He made a habit of standing too close to Rebecca behind the counter, sometimes trailing a finger along her shoulder while criticising the morning’s floral arrangements. He knew nothing about flowers, and it showed every time he opened his mouth about them.

In addition to the soul-destroying visits here to the hospice, there were the soul-destroying days when Donald turned up at the shop, took whatever was in the till, complained about anything that took his fancy, imply everything would be so much better if Rebecca would go out with him, and leave. Marie or Rebecca would see what he had taken, calculate it and put it into the accounts as ‘owner drawings’, so it could never be laid at their door.

Rebecca had checked, and the nearest florist of any comparable quality was probably in Santa Barbara, so she could not even leave. Santa Barbara would be too far for her to be able to work and still get back to see her mother every time she needed to do so.

The routine meant she had few close friends locally, apart from Marie. No dates, no parties to attend, no time for herself, no hobbies, no family she could talk to. She had no one, and no money to speak of to change anything. Instead of all that, she had a mother she loved, but could not like, and a habit of draining any joy out of her day by trying to inject a little joy into a woman whose mind was atrophying beyond her ability to appreciate joy at all, other than through imagined victories at other people’s expense. That had been her life for ten years, since she had given up medicine the day after her graduation ceremony to look after Jacqueline. Now just thirty-five, she hadn’t had a boyfriend or even a date for…well, she didn’t know, but it was years.

As she vaguely listened to her mother now extolling how horrible Drew was, Rebecca considered the future. Jacqueline was not always horrible, but the experience often leaned that way. If she wasn’t planning inventive but improbable revenge on her mythical enemies, she was mystified as to who Rebecca was, or was frustrated she could not go home to Santa Barbara, or was convinced the staff were stealing from her, or watching her shower, or were aliens.

As Jacqueline moved on to an entirely imaginary list of faults that Phoebe apparently had, Rebecca remembered the Monday before last. That had been particularly distressing, from the moment she arrived.

“Ah, Rebecca, good. You can make these children go away, can’t you, please?”

“What children, Mom?” Rebecca had been completely mystified. Apart from her mother, there was no one in the room.

“Those three children, silly girl. Can’t you see them? Are you blind?” Jacqueline had pointed towards the end of the bed. “At least make them stop shouting and crying like that – they are making my life a misery.”

“There aren’t any children here, Mom. None.”

“Those three, there! Don’t be obtuse.” Again, the imperious wave towards the end of the bed.

“Where, exactly? Here?” Rebecca had moved to where her mother had been pointing.

“Yes, those ones. Make them go away.”

“But Mom, if I can stand here, there can’t be any children here, can there?” She had swung her arms and legs, demonstrating, so she thought, her solitude in the indicated space. Jacqueline was having none of it.

“If you can’t do anything about them except swing your arms about like a mad woman, then what are you good for, eh?”

Just then a knock on the door had presaged the arrival of the nurse with Jacqueline’s supper tray, and suddenly the children were entirely, and permanently, forgotten.

She watched as Jacqueline’s vituperation about Phoebe drained itself of energy and ran down, and nodded along. She despised this evisceration of everything she, Rebecca, was, to assuage the damaged mind of her mother, without being able to do anything about it. There had been times when she had wanted to hold a pillow over her mother’s face, but she had never really considered doing it. But she could see years more of this. Her mother was seventy-two. She could go on for two more decades, although the frequencies of her pneumonias suggested it would not be so long.

Dr Michaels had explained that these could be a sign her motor centres were being affected, that Jacqueline was ‘forgetting’ how to eat, to swallow, to breathe, and particles were being inhaled that were not supposed to be inhaled. Her mother put it down to malevolence on the part of the astonishingly lovely carers, sometimes to their faces. This was the only point on which Rebecca could not accept the doctor’s advice. If Jacqueline was going to bite the hands that literally fed her, Rebecca was going to intervene. Assuage her damaged mind be damned, if it meant she would be allowed carte blanche to damage someone else’s mind.

It was her one Rubicon, in this damaged, soul-stealing relationship.

Chapter 2

She gathered up her things, and said goodbye. Her mother, naturally, had forgotten she was even there, and waved uninterestedly, without speaking. Her shoulders slumped, the dismissal absolutely normal these days but still hurtful in its meaninglessness.

In the corridor outside her mother’s room, a fast escape was impossible. A huge electric wheelchair blocked the narrow, dim hallway almost completely, trapping her in place.

“Mrs Marsden?” a weak voice asked, from the depths of the chair.

“Miss Marsden. Mrs Marsden is my mother, in there.” Rebecca’s automatic reply was made without even looking. The sudden drop in sound hung heavy in the air. Rebecca froze, dropping her gaze from the exit door beyond down to the woman swallowed by the scale of the electric wheelchair. “Sorry – it’s not been a good visit. Did you want me, or my mother?”

“You, please.” The chair held a slim, short woman, maybe thirty-five. The tell-tale short beanie covered her head, and no hair escaped from beneath it. This had to be one of the home’s palliative care clients. There were only two tribes in here, those whose minds were going, and those whose bodies were. There was a chair in the corridor, just beside the wheelchair, and Rebecca slid into it wearily.

“What can I do for you? I’m Rebecca, by the way. So much nicer than ‘Miss Marsden’.”

“Yvonne. It’s more what I can do for you, Rebecca.” A thin hand extended on a thin arm from the thin, dark emaciated form, the muscles vestigial. They shook hands, as Rebecca marvelled at the lightness of the arm.

“Really? Well, I’m all ears, Yvonne.”

The woman reached into a bag hung over the side of the chair, and produced a clear plastic package. Inside was some sort of clothing in a beautiful teal blue-green colour.

Yvonne extended the parcel with both hands, offering it as if it were a crystal goblet. Her trembling hands held the plastic as if it held something heavy.

“I think this would suit you very well.”

As Rebecca reached out, her fingers brushed again Yvonne’s cold, paper-thin skin. She looked up, and Rebecca saw the naked fear in Yvonne’s dark eyes, lurking far back behind the desire to be helpful.

“What is it, Yvonne? And why are you giving it to me?”

“It’s a sweater. It’s brand new, in case that matters.”

“You want to give me a brand new sweater? Why?” She looked into the plastic bag, and felt the incredible, electric softness of the fabric. “It’s absolutely gorgeous, too!”

“I need someone who isn’t a resident, and I see you here a lot. You don’t seem to enjoy your visits much, and I wondered if this would cheer you up.” She nodded at the sweater, which Rebecca had taken out of the bag and was admiring.

“Yvonne, I can’t accept this! It’s gorgeous! What is it, cashmere or something?”

“Of course you can accept it. It’s just a sweater. And it’s no use to me. Too big, now.”

Rebecca looked at the size – small. The woman in the electric wheelchair might once have been a small, but she was very petite now. Whatever disease she was suffering from had seen to that. The flesh hung from her arms like obscene pelmets.

“Pancreatic cancer, with liver metastases. Since you were wondering.” Yvonne offered a small, knowing smirk, having read the movement of her eyes with alarming precision.

Rebecca started, aware her guilt would show. “I’m very sorry. Is there anything they can do?”

“I doubt it. The weight goes through cachexia, for a lot of people with my kind of cancer. Body just doesn’t take in nutrients properly anymore.”

“That’s horrible.” It was, too. Never mind the killer tumours spreading their evil through the body, but they were also preventing the body getting enough sustenance to fight back properly.

“It’s truly frightening what you get used to, Rebecca. With cancer, I mean.”

“You’re very brave about it, Yvonne.”

“You get used to that, too. My chucklehead partner says ‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.’ He didn’t invent it, of course. But I like the attitude.”

“Me too. It’s a good way to live life. But why give me a gift at all?”

“You come here every day, Rebecca. I see you arrive, as my window looks out on the entrance. When you arrive, you pause and square your shoulders, before you come through the door. So whatever you do here must be an ordeal, for you. But you still do it, every day. Seven days a week. I have been known to set my watch by you.”

“But…don’t a lot of people come every day?”

“Not that I see. But every time you come, despite bracing yourself for the ordeal, you leave sad. Your shoulders are slumped, and you slouch. That, I said to myself, is someone who needs this sweater more than I do.”

“How did you come by it?” Rebecca asked. She was not going to refuse – it would be the most beautiful thing in her wardrobe, if she kept it, and it would be rude to refuse, anyway.

“My partner, bless him, brings me presents, every month. He brought me this one yesterday, but it would look like a marquee on me these days. I can’t refuse the gifts – he’d be devastated. So I must re-gift, or eventually drown in a sea of unsuitable presents.”

“Does he not know your size?” Rebecca asked, taking the sweater out of the bag and holding it up to her own body. It was perfect.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you, Rebecca?” The sharp eyes were doing their thing again, Rebecca could see. “If you ever accept a particular size item, that is the only size a man will ever buy you until you actually hit them over the head with something and demand a different size.”

Rebecca laughed. “I get it. No, I don’t have a boyfriend. I do have a couple of possibles, on a dating site.”

“Well, good luck. If you hook one, get them to take you to Le Palais, on Main.”

“I can’t afford that!”

“If they don’t want to spring, dump them. You don’t need cheap in your life.”

“Ouch – that’s harsh. Still, you’re probably right.”

“Can’t help it, I’m afraid. Diplomacy is always the first thing to go, when you get a terminal diagnosis. You don’t have anything to lose, not anymore, you see?”

“I can see how that would happen.” Rebecca suddenly thought of something. “Do you get a lot of visitors, Yvonne?”

“None, really, apart from my partner. My boys too, sometimes.”

“And do you eat cake?”

“Only if it is made with real ingredients. The skinny versions just go straight through me, if that’s not too graphic.”

Rebecca smiled. “Not too graphic. Best flavour?”

“Can’t go wrong with chocolate. Or Red Velvet.”

“Then I shall come and see you on Saturday. With a cake. Made with proper ingredients.”

As Rebecca walked back to the company van she had arrived in that evening, clutching the plastic bag, she didn’t need to slouch.

Chapter 3

Fridays were Rebecca’s current favourite day of the week. Donald almost never came on Fridays, so she was spared the usual unsubtle hints about how she and he would be perfect together. Marie would be on a promise with Woody, her boyfriend, and so she would be buzzing. And her favourite customer always came on Fridays.

Today was even more special, as she had progressed to one of the two guys she had been chatting with on her dating website asking her out. She had suggested the Palais, Yvonne’s advice still echoing in her ears. The cake had gone down well, and she always went to see Yvonne these days, after she had had enough of her mother.

She had told Jacqueline last night she had a date this evening, to be met with a storm of complaint about how the prospective boyfriend, who went by the inauspicious name of ‘Buddy’ because he did not like his given name, Mitchell, was bound to let her down. Rebecca had diagnosed selfishness that Jacqueline would not get a visit, and initially let this opinion pass over her like a startled wasp.

“Besides, you’re never going to get a man looking like you do, Rebecca.”

It was so rare that her mother ever addressed her by name that the casual cruelty went entirely past her for a moment.

“How do you mean, Mom?” she replied, caution lowering her voice a tone or two.

“Look at you. No make up. Dressed like a bag lady. What are you now, fifty pounds overweight? No chance. Men want attractive, not frumpy.”

“I am not frumpy! And I’m hardly going to the date dressed like this, am I?”

“You’re always the same, dear. You think I don’t notice you only ever wear the same two cardigans, and both have seen better days. The green one has two holes in it, too.”

It was probably the most lucid Jacqueline had been for three months, and on such a subject. The hurt of realisation pushed tears prickling into Rebecca’s eyes.

“Is that what you think, Mom? I am fifty pounds overweight? I’m just over nine stone. That’s the low end of healthy, for my height.”

“Maybe if you’re six feet, but you’re not, are you?” Jacqueline doubled down.

“I’m five feet nine inches. Without shoes.” She was too, she knew. Marie had measured her, when they had been making her dating profile.

“Huh. Well, you’re wasting your time. Men don’t want clever women, Rebecca. They want someone sexy, someone who will make their friends jealous.”

“I can be sexy!” Rebecca had protested.

“Hardly. You’ll always just look like a librarian who forgot her barrettes.”

She had cried, on the way home. She had not been to see Yvonne, because Yvonne’s door was closed and the staff had said she had someone with her. Instead, she had gone home with her own mother’s disparagement ringing in her ears, like witch-induced tinnitus.

*

The worst of it was, she could not fight off the idea her mother might have been right. Rebecca had not had a stellar dating history, even before her mother got ill. She remembered being a shy nerd at high school, when her hormones had turned up too late for her to get enthusiastic about any of the boys. Again at college, when her tardy hormones had finally been raging, she had only ever had dates with shy male nerds, and their mutual fumblings after a dozen virtually platonic dates could not be reconciled with the ‘sea dashing on the rocks’ image she had been led to expect by assiduous reading and movie-watching. She was still a virgin, as a result - technically, if not for want of trying, anyway.

When she had moved on to the hospital training, her treacherous hormones had pushed her into making a real effort, and she had been in demand for a few brief months, until her mother’s diagnosis had brought that to a crashing halt. None of the brief relationships had been meaningful, or physical, and she would be the first to admit she was hopelessly sexually inexperienced. Like anyone, man or woman, in that position, her defence mechanism was to declare she was picky, and just hadn’t found the right partner. She had even had a date with a girl, once, but it was too awkward for words, and they hadn’t even made it out of the restaurant as a potential couple. Her date had given her own number to the barman, as a last act of confirmation.

She would make an effort tonight, though. Buddy’s picture and his profile showed he was a fit, fairly handsome man of thirty-five, a part-time actor and part-time barista at the Starbucks which had opened on Main, but which was struggling. He had had parts in two movies, apparently, although she had not been able to find him on the cast lists. She preferred the Flour Shop, a great café further along Main Street where the atmosphere was much friendlier and the pastries and cakes to die for. She had considered going along to Starbucks to see if he was there, but had chickened out on the basis she didn’t know what she would do if he was.

So tonight, she would make an effort. Buddy would not think she was an ounce overweight, and he would confirm her sexiness. Not to the point of sleeping with him, of course – she wasn’t a fool. But a nice meal with a nice man would do a lot for her state of mind.

The bell on the front door announced a customer, and she and Marie looked up. It was two old ladies, occasional buyers of sunflowers. There was no mistaking them for the Silver Fox, as Marie had nicknamed their nicest customer. Probably not yet fifty, Mr Morris had prematurely silvered temples, making his hair drift from blond to salt-and-pepper. He always looked very distinguished, but what really made him stand out were his manners. The vast majority of their customers would remember an occasional ‘please’, but that was as far as it went. Mr Morris had impeccable Boston manners, according to Marie, who had attended college in that city. He would always say please, and ‘thank you’, and he would always tip. He would buy an expensive bouquet every Friday morning, coming in solely to be told what was good that day, so he got the freshest options. He rarely spent less than a hundred dollars, excluding his tip, which he claimed was fair payment for their labour.

His generosity was not what made them remember him, though. He was objectively handsome, fit and strong. He could have walked into any of the romantic movies she and Marie watched, as the male lead. Before Woody, Marie had openly lusted after Mr Morris. Rebecca liked to pretend she herself had been more aloof, but she hadn’t, really.

He had never made even the slightest advance towards either of them. They swooned again when he sent his bouquets to the St Theresa Care Hospice, where Jacqueline also resided. He must love his mother, they decided, though neither had ever asked him. Or perhaps it was his father, but flowers suggested a woman. Today, however, he had a surprise for them, both touching and unwelcome.

“Ladies, good morning. You are both looking magnificent, as usual. I have given up hoping that I will come in one day to find you have made a special effort.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr Morris,” Marie responded, always the braver of the two.

“Will it? How gratifying. In that case, I hope I do not presume too much upon our five years of acquaintanceship with each other in asking you both for your advice?”

“Our advice, Mr Morris?” Marie had asked.

“I need to choose between two items, for a young lady of around your ages. Could you let me know which you would recommend?” As he spoke, he was pulling two small boxes from his pockets.

They were very obviously jewellery boxes for rings, they could see. Marie took one and Rebecca the other, too eager to see what was inside to respond to his actual question.

“Wow!” Marie turned her box towards Rebecca. “That is absolutely gorgeous, Mr Morris. She is one lucky lady.” The box held a good-size clear twist-set pale sapphire, held in a swirl of what looked like white gold which was studded with more than a dozen shoulder stones on each side, all diamonds by the look of it.

“This one is equally gorgeous, Mr Morris.” Rebecca turned the box she was holding towards Marie. This one was a halo set diamond about as large as the sapphire in the first one, with a circle of small diamonds around it and sapphire side-stones down either side of the shank.

“You think the sapphires look all right? It’s her birthstone, you see. September.” His rich, melodic voice washed over them like warm sea waves.

“Either would be a highly-desirable gift, sir. You do realise both of these are engagement rings?” Rebecca said, after receiving a nod from Marie to the first part.

Marie’s mouth snapped shut, on whatever she had been planning to say. Instead she pouted slightly. “Are you getting married, Mr Morris? The neighbourhood will be in tears, if you are.”

“I doubt I will actually get married, Miss Devine. But certainly I might get engaged. It’s complicated.”

“If you do get married, can we do the flowers, please?” Marie asked, and Rebecca just froze at her friend’s boldness.

“I wouldn’t consider asking anybody but you and Miss Marsden here, Miss Devine. You may nail that certainty on, when the time is right. But I need to pick one, of course.”

Marie and Rebecca reconsidered the two options, and eventually plumped for the twist set ring. “It is just that bit classier, sir” Marie declared.

“Thank you very much, ladies.” Morris slid the boxes back into his pocket, and turned to the myriad buckets of flowers around the shop. “Now, what should I be choosing for today’s bouquet?”

The decision made, Rebecca took the flowers out to the back room worktable to tie the bouquet, while Marie took the details and payment as usual. She returned with the bouquet looking stupendous, and Morris said so.

“I tell anyone who will listen that you two are artists, ladies. I send them all here.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr Morris, and we appreciate it, truly.” Marie even curtsied slightly as she opened the door for him.

Rebecca stared at her after the door closed. “You’ve...