After Forever Ends

by Melodie Ramone

  “She’s not trying to hurt her,” Alexander promised, but he poised himself on to the edge of his chair to see better, “If she wanted to hurt her, she’d be punching her in the face-like.”

  “Bessie’s not even crying,” Ollie added, “She’s just screaming her head off, yeah.”

  “Stop it, you two!” Lucy jumped to her feet and headed to the girls, but Alex caught her by the elbow. “Let me go, Xander!”

  “No!” Alex told her in a firm, gentle voice, “They have to do this! You don’t understand! Oliver and I do! They have to settle this!”

  Lucy looked disgusted.

  “It’s a twin thing,” Oliver explained, “You don’t understand. We do. Let them sort it.”

  So we did. We sat in our chairs, Lucy and I biting our lips, and we watched the two youngest girls slap and punch the hell out of each other. When they were done, they sat with their backs to each other and they cried. When they were done crying, they checked to make sure the other was all right and they went inside and both had a kip. They fought again from time to time, but each spar became less violent until it was mostly just arguing that went on. They were never as tight as Oliver and Alexander. It wasn’t until there was an advantage or some hint of trouble that they suddenly united or, as they were coached by their father and his brother, conveniently attempted to switch identities. It worked often. Even on me.

  Neither of the twins took much after their mother or their father in looks. They were both medium height with long strawberry hair and big green eyes. Those were Cotton traits for sure. The thing that struck me odd about them was that both their faces were sprayed with beautiful, pale freckles all across their noses and cheeks. No one on either side of the family that I knew of was freckled. That was until Ana showed me a photo of herself at about fourteen, “Those are mine!” She laughed and pointed at her young face, “I hate my freckles! I’ve covered them with powder for years!”

  Annie had a head for science like I did, so she and I got on quite well. Annie reminded me in many ways of her grandmother, Ana. It was her properness, her organization, the way she made sure that everything had a place and was in its place at all times. But just when you’d begin to think she was no fun at all, she’d come out with the most outrageous and hilarious statements that would leave you standing with your mouth hanging open. Annie loved to shock people and she was very good at it.

  “Annie! I told you to get out of that tree!” Alexander shouted angrily at her from the porch when she was about four years old.

  She replied in Welsh.

  Alexander stiffened and locked his jaw. He looked at Oliver, “What did she just say?”

  Oliver sniggered, “She told you to go put your finger up your arse and whistle.”

  Alexander blinked, “I thought that was it. I should really go and beat her now, yeah?”

  “I don’t know, Brawd. She’s quite small.”

  “I can’t believe she just said that to me!” He tried not to laugh. “Bloody hell! And in Welsh, too! Where‘d she learn that?”

  “She heard it from you!” Oliver glanced back across the garden to Annie, “You think you they can’t speak Welsh yet? They know everything you say. You always were the bad egg.”

  “Aye! There’s nothing I can do! I’ll just go stick my finger in my arse and whistle then?”

  “May as well,” Oliver replied. “But you still better make her come out of the tree or she’ll know you’re a pansy.”

  “Right!” He drew a breath, “Antonia, I said get out of that tree! If you don’t you’ll be the one whistling out your bum!”

  He took only two steps before she was on the ground.

  Bess was a separate sort from the other Dickinson children. I can’t put my finger on exactly how, though. She was bright and lovely. She ran and giggled and dropped candies in the faerie circle like the others. As she grew, however, it became more and more obvious that she lacked understanding of the wood. To her it was a lovely place to visit, but it was never a home. I never saw the winds embrace her. She never woke up and told me she heard voices in the night. Rarely did anything she brought over come up missing.

  Bess was like her brother, Nigel, in many ways. The first would be in temperament, as she was predisposed to outbursts of rage that included knocking around a girl or two at school when they trespassed the boundaries she had set for them. The second was her inclination toward athletics. Bess was one of the few girls who made it on to the high school rugby team, playing forward, as she was extremely nimble and quick in a race. She did quite well at it, but it was tennis that was her real love. She competed in many tournaments throughout the years, but when she was offered the chance to pursue it semi-professionally, she opted for college instead. Sports, she reasoned, could make her quite a name and perhaps a bit of money, but in the end it would take its toll physically and offer nothing permanent. She was more interested in putting her hands into the dirt and therefore opted to study history and anthropology, which became her life long career. Our Bess was full and whole, but she was a different echo from that ancient Dickinson stone. She was more like the Cottons, I’d say, bright as the sun, focused, and not afraid to set goals and chase them until they’d been had, but she wasn’t whimsical and certainly not a daydreamer.

  Warren, on the other hand, was a Dickinson down to the marrow in his bones. He had inherited the red hair of the Cottons, although his was a much darker shade than anyone else, as if coffee had mixed with copper. He had the devil’s grin, that boy. Warren looked as much like Oliver as Gryffin did, but wasn‘t as dark. He was like his father in many ways as well, especially with his enthusiasm and zest for fun, but there were other similarities. Like his father, Renny was very popular without any effort, especially with the ladies. It was hysterically funny the way they flocked to him, even when he was just a little boy. I remember when a new family moved in across the street from Ana and Eddie, Warren, who was about five years old, went outside to see them. Two little girls in pigtails came skipping across the street and it wasn’t fifteen minutes before he had them in the house. It wasn’t an hour after that they were fighting each other in the yard to decide who got to be his girlfriend.

  “He’s going to be a rock star,” I told Oliver.

  “Well, he’s certainly not going to be a rocket scientist,” Oliver laughed, “But he’s not going to be lonely, yeah?”

  Warren struggled with his studies. Many people, including Oliver, took him to be lazy at times, but he wasn’t so much lazy, as in his head, he wasn’t wired like others. Our son wasn’t a dunce, but school books didn’t come so easily to him. It took him a long time to learn to read. He’d look at a page and not recognize any letters, although he could tell you his alphabet and spell out words orally, He had loads of trouble writing as well. It was as if he just couldn’t form the letters properly. He formed his letters backwards and often upside down. He was distractible and impatient with anything that didn’t capture his interest one hundred percent.

  He was immediately labelled learning disabled. Oliver was in agreement with that. We soon discovered that what we thought was a slight stutter was actually a rare speech disorder called a “clutter”. Warren was not stuttering at all. Instead of his words getting stuck, they were combining. For instance, instead of saying his hands were “freezing and red” after playing in the snow, they would come out of his mouth as “f-f-f-fred”. However, his over-anxious teachers were quick to try to diagnose him with other disorders as well, ones that his father was not so quick to agree with.

  “He’s not AdHd,” Oliver told Ren’s headmaster rather hotly.

  “I’ve seen many students with AdHd and…”

  “And nothing more out of you!” Oliver snapped, “I’ve got your 'and’! AND I’m a doctor AND I treat every child in this school and the next three towns over AND Warren is not AdHd! There’s a difference between AdHd and being six years old!” The next suggestion made him even more irate. “Aspergers? Are you serious?” He de
manded, “Are you out of your bloody mind? Tell me, what subject did you get your degree in? Where do you get your expertise? Read a couple of magazines, see a child who’s a bit different and struggles to learn, and decide he’s handicapped?” I swear he almost spat he was so angry, “I think you need to spend some time around a child who’s truly autistic before you make a suggestion like that! Then again, maybe you should take anatomy once again as well so you can distinguish your arse from your bloody chin!”

  When challenged, my husband could be more than arrogant, and nasty as anyone you‘d rather not deal with. He ended up pulling Ren and Gryff both from that elementary school and putting him in a private school nearly an hour away. But the result was that his new teacher gave Warren more one on one attention and noticed an odd thing that no one else ever had. Warren’s eyes seemed to roll in his sockets at times when he moved his head.

  We immediately took him to an optometrist, who, after a brief examination, discovered what the problem had been all along. Warren had weak muscles in the back of his eyes, which often gave up, and he couldn’t consistently focus his sight. In reality, he had 20/20 vision, but he couldn’t see a thing because he couldn’t keep focused long enough for his brain to translate what he was seeing. The doctor gave us exercises to strengthen his eye muscles and by the end of the school year, Warren had gone up three grade levels in every subject. The thing that I noticed, however, after we got his eye sight corrected, was that he didn’t seem to be able to remember a thing that he had read, but if he saw it done, he’d get it in a snap. Then once he’d done it himself he’d never forget it. I had to work with him after school with his studies, but after a time he seemed to not need me so much. Warren was never an excellent student, but what he was would have made Merlyn Pierce green with envy. Warren was musical.

  As a baby his favourite thing to do was to sit on his Granddad’s lap and bang away at the piano in their sitting room. Edmond had tried to force both of his sons to play, which they had shown no interest and even less talent for. He was thrilled that out of all the grandchildren, one finally had some concern for his beloved piano.

  “Pay beano?” Warren would ask the minute we’d come in the house.

  “Play my piano?” Edmond beamed, “Of course! Come on!”

  It was always a noisy visit.

  “Oliver, Silvia, a moment please,” Edmond stopped us one evening on our way out the door, “I’d like to ask you if I may do something for Warren. I’ve been playing with him at the piano and he catches on quite quickly. I think he could play. I’d like to ask you if I might set him up with lessons.”

  “You’d do that to someone else?” Oliver asked seriously, shivering at the memory of his own piano instruction. “That’s just mean, Old Man!”

  “Oh, I think that’d be lovely,” I told Edmond, shifting Warren on my hip, “He’s about the right age to start isn’t he?”

  “Bloody hell, he’s only three!” Oliver saw the look on his father’s face and shut his mouth immediately. Instead he picked up Gryffin as if to protect him.

  “He might be a little young, but if he isn’t ready we can just try him again later,” Edmond gave me a rare smile, ignoring his son completely, “I’d like to see how he does.”

  Warren took to it immediately. We had no room for a piano in the cabin, but we bought him a keyboard and not long after a set of headphones for him to use along with it. When he was five he begged for a guitar, which his Granddad supplied for him. By the time he was eight Edmond had him giving concerts in the village on both instruments. Warren didn’t take to the violin very well and he despised the cello, but Edmond didn’t care. He had his little prodigy. When Warren got to school he took up the clarinet, which led to oboe, bassoon and saxophone. Oliver bought him a trumpet for his thirteenth birthday. He’d stand out in the garden and play Vivaldi for the elves, as he would when he took up French horn. I found the flute lovely floating in the windows from the garden, but it was the piccolo I enjoyed the most. Warren could sing as well, but for whatever reason he would choke when it came to using his own voice in public. That was until he landed the lead role in a musical at school and came out of his shell. From then on, it was a different story.

  “Mum! Warren’s in his room with his cans on, crooning in French! Grandad, you never should have told him about Maurice Chevalier!”

  “Caro, did it ever cross your mind to knock on his door and ask him to stop?” I asked.

  “Ugh!” She turned and stomped up the stairs.

  “He’s unstoppable!” I told Edmond, who had dropped by for tea. “He breathes music! There’s hardly any space for him to sleep in his room! It’s filled with instruments and music leaves scattered everywhere!”

  “He’s got my name in the middle of his!” Edmond bragged with a grin that rivalled either of his sons, “Warren Edmond Dickinson! There’s a reason it’s in there! I love them all, though, you know! All my grandchildren are brilliant! Just brilliant! All of them! But that Warren…”

  Ah, Edmond and Warren. It would be my guess that Edmond had often wondered if his own sons had somehow mutated from the gene pool, but he’d found his soul mate in Warren. For all the years they had together, the two were nearly inseparable.

  If you count from the time that Nigel was born to the day the last child left the wood, you would have yourself twenty-four years. It’s incredible to think about. I spent almost a quarter of a century wiping bogeys from noses and tears off cheeks, sticking plasters to injuries and having to be sympathetic to problems the kids were having in their lives that seemed so inconsequential to me. I mean, being serious, at thirteen, who cares if a boy doesn’t like you? At sixteen, who cares if you failed your driver’s test on the first try? And at seventeen, who cares if you get accepted to three universities like Annie did and have to choose which one you want to attend the most? It was difficult for me to keep in perspective how harrowing these things were for the children. Honestly, at seventeen, I was married!

  “You’re stressing too much! Your whole life is just beginning! Just see where the winds take you…just fly!” That’s what I told them. I said to Nigel and to Carolena. To Natalie and to Gryffin. I told it to Annie. I told it to Bess too. And to Warren. I said it to each of them as they struggled with their fears and insecurities, “You were born with wings! Your heart is free! It’s a beautiful world out there with everything imaginable waiting for you to find! Don’t be afraid! Fly away!”

  It seemed that they must have listened because one night I went to bed and the next day when I woke up, all of them were leaving me.

  Nigel and Caro, of course were first. Nigel headed down to Graytown and got a flat the summer he graduated high school with some mates of his. He worked at a pub and went to uni where he studied Welsh and History. Caro, as promised, headed off to London where she enrolled in a school for Veterinary Science, and worked in a department store to support herself in a flat in Chelsea. Two years later, our little Natalie left off for school in Paris, where she was to study Art. She was still so small. She looked just like a little kid as she hugged her daddy and mum at the rail stop. “Goodbye for now, Auntie Sil! Uncle Ollie!” She hung out the door of the train and waved as it pulled away, “See you soon! I love you all! Cheers! Bye!”

  We all stood there until the train was out of sight. “Three gone,” Alexander said with an obvious lump in his throat, “Four to go.”

  “I hope she’ll be all right,” Lucy’s voice broke. “Paris is so far away.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Oliver put his arm around my sister, “As long as she doesn’t call and say she’s house sitting or camping over spring break, we’ve no worries!”

  “Oh mercy, Oliver! What we did to our parents!” I put a hand over my mouth so Lucy wouldn’t see me smile.

  “I’d kill her!” Alexander muttered.

  “Don’t say such things!” Lucy insisted. “She’d never!”

  Oliver and I laughed. Shameless, we were. We had no remorse for what w
e’d put our parents through. When we’d married we felt it was our life to choose. Not one day after did we ever do a blasted thing that anyone told us we should. We gave each other permission not to. We didn’t listen to a word of decent advice. We were young. Love had a way of making us fearless because we knew that no matter what happened, if we fell on our face as we entered the ring or conquered the world in battle, in the end it would just be us, together. Everyone else would have buggered off before the day was through. He and I were just the way it was supposed to be. It was brilliant.

  There was a two year separation between Nattie leaving us and Gryffin finishing his studies at comp. Gryffin decided that university was not for him. Instead he took a job writing for a journal and the autumn after he finished school he packed his bags and moved straight to Edinburgh to put pen to paper and make a living at it.

  “If there was more opportunity in Wales, I’d stay,” He told me the morning he drove away, “I’m going to miss you, Mum. And this place. Lord Copse and Lady Folia, too. I told them I’ll be back one day and asked them to look after you. You’ll be OK, yeah?”

  I smiled. “Gryff, I have a husband to look after me.”

  My son laughed, “I know, but I love you, Mum. I worry.”

  “I love you, too, Muffin, and don’t worry. Your dad is very good at looking after me, plus I’m pretty sturdy myself. Just go and make your dreams all come true. That’s all I want from you. Be happy.”

  It’s true. It is all I ever wanted for him or for any of the children for that matter. I wanted them to go off and chase their dreams and make happy lives for themselves. But it didn’t ease the discomfort or the loneliness or the worry that followed having them go.

  As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve never been good at letting things go. Oliver was always good at it. He’d mourn for a bit and then he’d move on somehow, but I never figured out how he did it, especially when someone I loved would pass.