After Forever Ends

by Melodie Ramone

  “And holding doors open for old people!”

  “Oh, stop your lies!”

  “She doesn’t believe us, Oliver!”

  “No, Alex, I’m afraid she doesn’t trust us at all!”

  I sat there and giggled at the three of them.

  The truth was that I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life and I was relieved when they decided it was time to go. Oliver went down to the cafeteria to grab a bite while I took a long, hot shower. When I came back to my room, Ollie was sitting in a chair. “They took the baby down to the nursery,” He told me, standing to help me into the bed, “They had to do a couple of tests, nothing to worry about.”

  “Come lay with me,” I pushed to the side, “Hold me. I need to be close to you.”

  “Of course, Silvia,” He kicked off his shoes, “My pleasure.”

  We lay together for a long time in silence. After an hour or so, the nurse brought our new son, “I suppose you want this little guy?” She was an American girl with large teeth and a wonderful smile, “He’s a cutie patootie!”

  “Yes, please,” I reached for him and received him into my arms, “Thank you so much.”

  “If you need anything, just buzz!” She told us, “Congratulations, Doctor Dickinson! He really is beautiful.”

  “Thank you, Jeanne,” Oliver smiled down at our son, “I think so, too.”

  She gave me a wink and hurried out of the room.

  “Oliver,” I whispered, “It’s time to do our thing.”

  Oliver took our son from me and laid him between us. We sat for a long time and said nothing. We just admired that beautiful little boy.

  “He has no name,” I said finally.

  “I know. We hadn’t decided on what to call a boy.”

  “He doesn’t look like a Simon, does he?”

  “No, he does not. I know a Simon anyway and he’s a dick.”

  “We could give him a mighty, manly name. Like Spike.”

  Oliver laughed. Our little unnamed son squirmed a bit, but decided that sleep was more important than complaining. “No, Spike is a bit Spartan in my book.”

  “You think so, Sweetie? I mean, Spike Dickinson would command some respect at school. ‘Oh, look out, Mates! Here comes Spike Dickinson …oooooh, he’s very rough!’”

  “Yes, yes, it’s a very intimidating thing to be called Spike, but I am thinking something a bit more subtle as not to frighten the other children,” Oliver stared at his son for a long moment, “I am thinking that I’d like to name him after by grandpaddy if you have no objection.”

  “You never told me his name. Everyone calls him W.D.”

  “It was Warren.”

  “Now that’s a lovely name, isn’t it?” I looked at the baby, “Warren.”

  “It’s all right then?”

  “It’s better than that! I think it’s a brilliant name! He’ll have loads of friends with a name like Warren. ‘Look, Mates, here comes Warren Dickinson!’ No one will fear him and no one will make fun of him either, not like if we’d called him a sissy name like Patsy Dickinson.”

  Oliver laughed and kissed me on the head. We were quiet again for a time. He was thoughtful when he spoke again, “It’s not all up to us this time. Have you thought about that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not on our own anymore. It’s not just us. This one’s got a brother and a sister older than him. And cousins, too. And he’s got his Auntie and his Uncle and his grandparents. It’s not just up to you and me to teach him.”

  “But we will.”

  “We will. We’ll teach him all we know.”

  “There are things about the wood only you can show him. There are secrets there that only you know.”

  “Well, you, too, Love! You’ll show him your tree and how to be friends with it.”

  “I will. And you can teach him to skip rocks on the pond.”

  “And what the difference is between a lake and a pond, too,” He told me and I giggled. “Cause you can’t teach him that since you don’t know.”

  “We’ll teach him how to have fun. Oh, Warren, you have no idea how much fun we have and now we have you to chase, too!”

  “He has no idea how happy he’s going to be.”

  “He has no idea how much we love him.”

  “But one day he’ll know.”

  “Because we’ll show him.”

  “Each and every day, Warren,” Oliver’s hand looked positively huge as he caressed the baby’s head, “We’ll show you how much we love you.”

  “And we’ll love you always and forever…”

  “To bits…”

  “And that’s our promise, Little Muffin Man. That’s our very first and most unbreakable promise to you.”

  “It is…”

  I wanted to stay up and look at our new son for a while longer, but I was so tired my eyes were closing on their own.

  “Sil,” Oliver whispered, “Stop fighting sleep.. We’ll both be here when you wake up.”

  “Thank you, Oliver,” I nuzzled my head under his chin.

  “No, thank you, Sweetheart.” He kissed my hair.

  I closed my eyes and I fell asleep thinking about what a lonely child I had been growing up with a father who didn’t have enough love to pay me attention and then sent me off to boarding school where only my physical needs were met. None of my children would ever know that kind of life. They’d never know it because one happy day I ended up at a place called Bennington and a handsome, good natured, rebellious young man had hit me in the head with a rubber ball. He’d made all my dreams come true, that Oliver Dickinson had. Now I had him and his parents and his brother and my sister and seven fantastic children who had filled every inch of my life and every corner of my heart. My life was worth living because of all of them.

  My last thought before I fell asleep was that it was Oliver who had made it all possible.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  With the addition of our Warren, or “Little Renny” as he was soon to be called, since neither Gryffin nor Natalie could say his name, it seemed that our family was complete. Oliver and I brought him home as naturally as if he’d always been part of us and set about doing what we did each day with his welcome addition. In a way that the other children hadn’t seemed, Warren wasn’t new to us. We were experienced by then. We knew his sounds, we could discern the motions he made with his head and his little hands. Warren was a communicator, too, a noise maker from the moment go. He’d sit in his chair and smile, clicking his tongue and cooing. Or he’d bang his toys on plastic bowls like it was the greatest thing on Earth. Warren was a pretty baby, too. Long limbed and strong at birth, he had gorgeous brown eyes, but they weren’t like his dad’s. They were large and round, a polished topaz colour with odd flecks of green and gold. They were the kind of eyes that caught you when you least expected them to and kept you there, waiting, staring into them. Like his brother and sister before him, he was a happy little chap, except unlike either of them, he wasn’t the independent sort. Warren needed to be close, he needed touch. He was so glued to anybody who seemed to want to hold on to him that it was difficult to get anything done when I didn‘t have a willing volunteer available to relieve me of him. It was only a few weeks after he was born that Oliver bought me a sling contraption to wrap him in and I spent most of our first six months together with Ren strapped to my belly as I went about my business in the wood. I thought that Gryffin might be jealous about this, but if he was he never expressed it. His only concern was that his little brother wasn’t big enough to play with yet and that he wanted to know when he would be.

  “He’s very boring, Mummy,” Gryff told me one day peering at his brother in the pram as we were strolling down the sidewalk in Newtown. “He can’t walk and he can’t talk. He’s not good for much.”

  I didn’t stifle my laugh, “He’s just a wee bairn, Gryff! He’ll be on his feet in no time!”

  “That’s your best friend there in that pram!” Ol
iver told him, “Honestly, he’s the one who’s going to have your back for the rest of your life!”

  “Like you and Uncle Xan?”

  “Just like me and Uncle Xan,” Ollie rubbed his son’s head, “When the chips are down, I’ll tell you, your brother’s the only one who’ll be there for you!”

  “What about Carolena?” Gryff asked quite seriously.

  “Oh, her, too,” I assured him, “Count on that as well.”

  We raised them like that. Not just our three, but the seven of them. We raised them all with the belief that in the end it was only the seven of them and that they had a duty to take care of each other. There really was no differentiation between who was brother and sister and who was cousin. All of them were Dickinson’s. All of us were Dickinson’s. We were, in a very real sense, an army.

  “Dickinson’s take care of Dickinson’s,” Alexander used to say, “Family is a holy obligation.”

  Having not come from a true and right family, it was amazing to me how much to heart the children took that sentiment. With Carolena in school, it was just me and my two boys most of the time in the wood, except for the days when Lucy would come by with her three girls. Annie and Bess were still babies and spent most of their time toddling about and having kips, but Natalie was growing by leaps and bounds. She was small for her age, but her mind was keen, and she was curious about everything everyone did. Natalie was not afraid of anything large or small and she was full of a million questions. She had this special way of caring about the people she loved as well, almost an over-caring where she noticed little things and set about fixing them.

  “Teach me to cook!” She told Lucy and I one afternoon when she was four, “The children all want eggs!“ and then there was the day she came in with the little ones after playing in the snow. She plopped down beside me on the sofa and said quite seriously, “Auntie Sil, show me how to make mittens! I want to knit so my sisters never have cold hands! They‘re freezing!” She was quite the little nanny, taking on responsibility with them that worried Lucy a bit.

  “I want her to be a child, but she acts like she’s twenty!” Lucy shook her head, watching Nattie pass out dry cereal in handfuls to the children, “I can’t get her to sit and play a game!”

  “It’s just her way,” I told her, “She’s a bit serious minded, but she still giggles.”

  And she did giggle, especially when she was with her dad and Oliver. Oh, she adored them both and they loved her back with gorgeous abandon. Oliver would pick her up and swing her around like she was nothing. Toss her up over his shoulder, catch her, swing her around his back, catch her, then send her flying at Alex, who would do the same. They’d hold her by her arms and let her walk upside down across the ceiling until her little face would turn bright red. Having been so betrayed as a child, it amazed me the trust she had in them. There was no question in her mind that they’d never hurt her, no thought that they could just let her go and she might come crashing to the floor. It was perfect trust, never let down.

  Alex had said the first time he held her that she was the girl who would teach him what love was all about and it had been the truth. Natalie brought out gentleness in him that I don’t think he ever knew he had. I never saw Alexander become cross with Nattie, not cross enough to ever say more than something like, “Not now, Nattie! Quiet down!" and he certainly never raised a hand to her. Alexander was a wonderful, patient father and he adored all of his children, but Natalie was his little angel.

  “Nattie, my love," He’d say, “You’re so pretty. Pretty like your Mummy, but you’re mine through and through, yeah?" He’d hold her close, “I don’t know what I did to deserve a daughter like you, but I got you and I love you so much!"

  She adored him as well and she took any opportunity she could find to steal a moment with him, especially if it was away from the older children. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, Natalie at five years old, sitting with Alexander in the garden, yellow balls of yarn lying in the grass, instructing him on how to knit.

  “Oh, blimey!” Alexander held his work out in front of him, “Is it knit one, purl two? Or the other way around?”

  “It’s knit one, purl one for three rows, Daddy. You’re working on a ribbing.”

  “Oh, bugger it all to hell!” He dropped his project to his lap, “I’m doing it all wrong!”

  “Don’t give up! You can do this!”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so!”

  “OK, if you say so! Let me start over then. Knit one, purl one…for three rows…”

  They were fascinating, every single one of them. Nigel, the oldest, was always the first and usually the best at everything. He had the restless nature and good looks of his father as well as Alex‘s zeal for having a good time. He was a bit more sociable than his dad, however, and found himself from an early age the centre of attention most everywhere he went. I have to admit that it did go to his head at times, but the other Dickinson’s made it a point to bring him back to Earth. Nigel, through all his hot headedness and tantrums, in the core of his being, was a good soul. He was clever and needed occupied, however, or he could be borderline evil. He did stupid things as well, though, like trying to take his bicycle down a slide at the city park and breaking his leg in three places. He drove Lucy up the wall with his antics, but I realized early on that Nigel was as easily entertained as he was bored. The trick with him was to keep him busy. Clever as he was, if left to his own devices all he could usually come up with to do was to make something explode or beat up his mates. Thus, we were always looking for something to keep him busy and over the years we found many, many things.

  Nigel lacked his father’s artistic genius, so paints and modelling were out, but he had a knack for athletics. Ollie and Alex coached him in football and rugby, but he was too much a roughneck for the junior rugby teams. Perhaps the twins shouldn’t have shown him so young how to tackle, I suggested, but both of them looked at me like I was mad and said, “You can’t play properly if you don’t tackle!”

  “He’s only eight! Does he need to be slamming his mates down so hard?”

  “Bunch of pansies!” Oliver huffed.

  “They need to grow a pair,” Alex looked away, “Babies!”

  I just shook my head.

  For his birthday when he turned ten, we bought him a weight bag and had Oliver hang it from a tree. Alexander did the same in his own yard. What we ended up with was a more relaxed lad who discovered that, aside from punching things and slamming other boys to the ground, he enjoyed reading books. It connected him with his father, this love of reading, and the two, who had been at odds more than not, were suddenly trading stories between them and, as Nigel grew, discussing philosophy and literature.

  The physical and mental exercise didn’t stop him completely from having outbursts, mind you. Nigel had a temper that wouldn’t yield. I’d be tempted to say that it was even worse that Alexander’s. Like his father before him, Nigel wouldn’t say a word as he grew angrier and angrier with somebody. He’d remain quiet; perhaps begin the argument, but not usually. No, usually he’d just stand there with a blank expression on his face and when his opponent least expected it, he’d blast him square in the face. Needless to say, he didn’t lose often. Punching people was a bit of a hobby for him, but he loved to tease and torment Carolena more than anything. I’m sure that it was his favourite pastime, but it certainly was not his most productive. Caro was by far his most even match.

  I understood the rivalry between them. Nigel and Carolena were so close in age that they were always nose to nose. They shared the same form at school, sometimes even the same classroom. Caro was intensely competitive by nature, something she inherited from me, no doubt, especially when it came to her marks. After they were eight or so years old, she couldn’t fight with Nigel physically as he was much larger and stronger than her, but she gave him a run for his money with everything else. Carolena was an excellent footballer, although she didn’t take to rugby,
and she’d show him up at matches. He’d retaliate by tripping her as often as he was able. She’d usually respond by punching him, at which he would laugh, and the two of them would be expelled from the game and sit on the side, arsing off. But by both of them striving to outdo the other, both managed to achieve excellence in academics, at athletics…at everything really. They drove each other mad, but they made each other better, too. And no one…and I mean NO ONE…messed with either of them without having to deal with the other.

  As Carolena matured into her teenage years, she took on more physical traits of her father. Facially, she looked like me, except I always thought that she was prettier. But, like Oliver she was unusually tall and slender with long arms and legs. Her hair was the colour of shiny copper, hanging in curls to the middle of her back and her eyes were glittery dark chocolate. Llike her dad, too, everyone for miles around seemed to know who Carolena Dickinson was. Still, being so popular didn’t make her interested in many of the boys. Carolena had a serious mind and dreams of leaving Wales for a posh life in London. My daughter had her eyes on the stars and paid little attention to the comings and goings of people who were not like minded. Thus, she had adopted a reputation for being a snob.

  She wasn’t. Caro was kind and considerate. She always took time for people. She’d learned it from her father, how to listen and care. It was only the ones that were jealous that called her names. When she was fifteen, she was pursued by the star of the local rugby team. Caro found him boorish and brainless and it was only three dates before she put an end to his courtship. It didn’t sit well with him and within a week he gone on a mission of slander, making claims against her virginity.

  Oliver and I were doing our best to comfort her.

  “Carolena,” I told her gently, “You can’t control what anyone says about you. The people who know you know you. They know it’s all lies. And the others who choose to believe it without knowing you…well, who cares? They don’t matter.”