Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous OOC Notes: Involves topics of infertility and depression. Also is somewhat fuzzytimed - the first and last sections ("Octobers") take place this past IC Halloween, with the stuff in the middle being flashbacks to events that happened over last IC summer, before the current first years started school. Everybody clear as mud? Great!
The Past, Part 1 - October
Halloween was the best of times and the worst of times. The best, because anyone could be anyone they wanted, at least for one wild round of parties. The worst, because after a certain point, it became impossible to be completely sure of any of one's own senses. Ted Archer was sure he knew who the witch with long, light blonde hair hanging almost to the hips of her rather low-cut silver sparkling evening gown was, but she was almost within arm's reach before he was sure of it, and could put a name to her.
"Mrs. Welles," he said, pleasantly but mildly surprised. "You certainly got into the spirit of the evening, didn't you?"
"I always heard growing up that blondes have more fun," said Julian Welles, twirling a lock of her unnaturally-colored hair around her finger. "I thought I'd test the theory."
Ted had not heard this phrase before. "How's that working for you?" he asked.
"I think it would work better if this wasn't a wig," she admitted. "I thought wearing it would be like just another hat, but it really isn't."
"It sounds like there should be a moral in that."
"I'm sure there is somewhere," said Mrs. Welles. "You can make a moral out of anything, if you really want to."
They must have both thought of the last time they had conversed at a party at that moment, because she then said, "Even in...last time, I suppose, if you really wanted to, though I'd rather not."
The Past - June
Julian raised a blusher brush to her face for another swipe, but the effects were less than stellar. Before she had put the extra blusher on, she had looked corpselike. Now, she thought, after wincing through another surge of pain, she looked consumptive.
Her husband walked into her dressing room and stopped abruptly. "You're not ready yet?" he said.
"No," said Julian, carefully putting the brush down. "William, I don't think I'm going to go out tonight," she said. "I don't think I'm up to it."
William frowned. "What's wrong with you?" he asked.
"It's my stomach," she complained, and any concern or sympathy in his expression went away.
"For goodness' sake, Julian," he said. "You can't miss Eleazar's midsummer ball because you had too much lunch. Put on some lipstick and let's go. We can't keep the car waiting."
She did as he said, though she ended up having to redo her lipstick before she could emerge from the car after biting through it when it stopped. William tapped his foot impatiently; a camera bulb flashed, catching her with her compact mirror open in her hand, golden tube of lipstick almost to her mouth. Slowly, meticulously, she closed them up and put them in her tiny bag, put it in one hand, put the other hand in William's.
This is wrong. Something is wrong. The thought felt as though it were coming from outside her head. Closer to home, she thought, I will not faint.
This would be it, though. She was going to leave as soon as it was remotely polite to do so, and then she was going to go home and collapse into bed and stay there for days, if she wanted to. She had barely seen Cecily for the past two weeks, and there were more and more weeks like that and fewer and fewer when she was left alone. Even when she was home, she spent too much of her time dealing with logistics, planning for the next hectic spiral of events William wanted them to attend or host or whatever. She couldn't breathe with all this chaos around her. She would drag herself through this because Eleazar was family, but this was the end of it until she felt better. She had been feeling worse and worse for the past two days, and she did not think she could keep up the smile much longer even had she wanted to.
She wanted to cling to her husband, to lean on his strength to get her through this, but William considered it vulgar for married couples to spend too much time together at parties and her ill health was not reason enough, it seemed, for him to indulge her impulse toward vulgarity. Soon she was alone, carefully putting her weight on one high heel and then another, with half her attention on that and half on smiling and trying to say something pretty to everyone she drifted within speaking distance of, all the while trying desperately to ignore the growing pain in her insides and the nausea and chills that followed particularly bad pangs. She thought she must have been talking to Teddy Archer for a good two minutes before she even realized who he was.
“What?” she asked, realizing that the second it had taken her to realize who he has had driven all memory of the last thing he had said straight out of her head. “I’m so sorry, my mind wandered for a moment…” she said, forcing false embarrassed laughter into her voice, trying with all her considerable might to make a joke of it.
It didn’t work. Teddy frowned slightly at her, obviously concerned rather than annoyed. “Are you quite all right, Mrs. Welles?”
No, said her mind, along with good sense and the bloody obvious.
“Of course,” said her mouth. “Just a - cramp in my foot, I think I should...I should sit…”
She knew how that sentence ended, but it seemed important. She started to turn away, not sure where she was trying to go, but was impaired first by something pink (her own skirts, she would later discover) rushing up toward her until something caught her roughly about the waist. “Mrs. Welles? Mrs. - Julian!”
Julian. That was her name. She really ought to say something, as someone was trying to talk to her and it was rude to just ignore people, but it was so dark, she couldn’t even see who she was speaking to….
* * * * * * * *
At first, the light was only a blur, a white, but strangely not too bright, blur. After a moment, however, she detected movement, something swaying and thus unpredictably breaking up the white blur. She blinked a few times and managed to clear things up enough to recognize a crucifix swaying on a beaded chain. The beads clicked together. Rosary beads. She almost reached for them, child-like, but lifting her hand felt like a lot of effort.
“And all shall be well,” she whispered instead, her throat scratchy and painful, “and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
There was a start, multiple people moving in the periphery of her vision. “That’s right!” said a woman’s voice. Her mother’s voice. Abruptly the crucifix was withdrawn from her eyeline, but the clicking intensified - her mother making the sign of the cross and then kissing the corpus, she supposed. “Oh Julian. Oh, thank God.”
“What...where…” Her head still felt full of fog, making it difficult to string together thoughts she couldn’t borrow from dead Englishwomen.
“Shh, don’t worry about anything,” said her mother. “We’re all here - well, everyone but John, but he’ll be here as soon as he gets here, I told him he’s too flustered to try to Apparate from the other side of the country after he crosses the border, so it’ll take him a little while. But everyone else is here.”
“You know, there were less dramatic ways of getting us to come see you, kid,” said her brother Stephen, and she suspected Mom would have given him a deadly look if she had not managed a weak chuckle.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “How...dramatic was...whatever?” She coughed and then bullied forward. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” said her dad. “You were sick and you fainted at a party, but it’s all going to be all right. You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s all over the Society Bee, isn’t it?” asked Julian flatly.
“None of us have looked,” said Paul.
“It is,” said Joe.
“Joe!” said Paul sternly, glaring at their youngest brother.
“No, Paul,” said Julian. “I asked. And I already knew.” She blinked a few times to focus on Joe. “How bad is it?”
“Nobody’s said anything bad about you or William,” said Joe. “Mostly speculation on why you collapsed like that. There’s another picture of you putting on your lipstick before the party, so one idea was that someone poisoned your lipstick, but I don’t think you really have to worry about any of this.”
“I’ll decide that for myself,” said Julian, rubbing her eyes. Every movement felt painful. Not as painful, though, as the pain in her abdomen at that party….
“Why did I faint? And why am I in the hospital for fainting?” she asked, more as a formality than anything.
There was a pause, during which she knew, without even looking, that they were all exchanging looks over her head, trying to get their stories straight. “You had some kind of - internal - hemorrhaging,” said her father. “But it’s all right now - “
Julian looked straight ahead at the blank white hospital wall, refusing to see any of them. “I was pregnant, wasn’t I?”
The silence alone was an answer, but she maintained her own until someone else broke it. This time, it was Paul who decided to have the guts to tell her the truth.
“Ectopic,” he said gruffly. “Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Nothing much to do about those things.”
“Right,” said Julian, and then swore silently in her head when she realized her eyes were filling with tears.
“Darling, darling, it’s all right,” said her mother, rushing in to stroke her hair as she tried to turn her face away from all of them and bundle the corner of the thin sheet over her up into a tissue. “Paul’s right - it wasn’t your fault. There was no sin in anything, Julian. It’s all right - “
It took her a moment to figure out why her mother was talking about sin. Obviously, one could not carry an ectopic pregnancy to term; obviously, she would have had to, at some point, terminate such a pregnancy if it hadn’t decided to self-terminate and nearly kill her too. Anger flashed up.
“For God’s sakes, Mom. Would it kill you to be less Catholic for maybe fifteen seconds?” she snapped.
Immediately, she felt guilty. Mom might not have said that just to be obnoxiously Catholic. Maybe Mom had just been - in typical fashion - assuming Julian might be that Catholic. If Julian had been that Catholic, then maybe that would have been some comfort to her. As it was….
There was no point in crying. She had had the passing thought that she might be pregnant again a few weeks ago, but she hadn’t been at all sure. It wasn’t logical to shout at her family and curl up in a ball and cry over something she had never really had at all. And yet, her eyes just kept welling up of their own accord, temper flashing back and forth….
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. But can you all just - go? Please? Just for a while?”
“I don’t - “ said Mom, anxious, but Dad cut her off.
“I think that’s probably a good idea,” he said, and came over to kiss her forehead. Julian sat up and hugged him, only releasing him finally with severe reluctance. She then hugged her mother and each brother in succession.
It was only as Joe was almost out the door that it occurred to her to ask, “Where’s William?”
Joe hesitated. “Haven’t seen him in a while,” he said. “I’m guessing he’s at home with Cecily.”
* * * * * * * *
When William had realized his wife was at the center of the shrieks and murmurs at the midsummer ball, he didn’t remember feeling anything. Not then, or when he had actually gotten a good look at the situation - Julian’s face ghostly white against her black hair and red lipstick; that was the image on all the papers, largely obscuring Teddy Archer and all the blood. He didn’t remember much at all, really, of the next several hours; one moment, he had been watching Ted shouting orders at people, and the next, he had been watching Alison sitting in a hospital family waiting area, shaking like a leaf but still persevering in her attempts to get through a novena.
He must have moved, he reasoned, at some point in all this. He had probably even said things. Hopefully, however, he hadn’t said any of them to anyone who mattered until he had abruptly come back to his body at the sight of Alison hunched over her beads, a sight immediately followed by the return of his hearing as a door opened, there was a roar of noise and clicking cameras, and then Paul Umland had slammed the door again in the faces of the reporters.
“Why did you do that?” asked William.
“----ing leeches,” said Umland.
“I should say something to them,” said William, standing up.
“Try praying with her instead,” said Paul curtly, nodding toward his mother. “You, too, Joe.” William looked around, amazed, and indeed spotted Joe. Where had he come from? “Three Catholics are probably better than one.”
“The more the merrier,” said Joe. “Where’s John?”
“Steve’s owled him, but who knows when he’ll even get it, if he’s off on one of his camping trips again in the woods….”
“I’m sure Sammy can find him if he’s not home,” said Joe. “Or something. I’m pretty sure he’s not stupid enough to wander too far off in the woods without telling Sammy or Clark roughly where he’s supposed to be.”
William resisted the urge to hex them both on the spot. “I should say something to the reporters,” he repeated, and walked to the door.
He never was quite sure if the quick quotes version of what he said was accurate or not, but even at the time, he had felt the mood of the crowd and known that, at the very least, he was saying the right things. It had not been long after that that they had been told Julian would probably live, and he had taken the excuse to take his leave.
At home, the first thing he did was pour himself a stiff drink, and then another.
The depth of his reaction surprised him. He had known for some time that he did not want Julian to die, but that had all been about money - specifically, about how if anything did happen to Julian, Joe Umland, not William Welles, would most likely control access to the money until Cecily was twenty-five. Confronted with the actual prospect, though, he hadn’t even thought of the money.
He could, he supposed, go forward without her. It would be more difficult, but he could. He just didn’t want to.
It was a strange thought. Julian annoyed him a great deal. She had slowed him down more than once. She was stubborn, self-willed, driven by her own inexplicable codes and loyalties that were of no use to him. Seducing her had been the most tiresome task of his life. And yet he had just gotten used to her being there, he supposed….
He had another drink, not thinking much, and was almost relaxed when one of his brothers-in-law appeared. Immediately, he tensed again. “Stephen? Has something happened?”
Stephen Umland was so carefully not looking judgmental about the fact William was drinking alone instead of saying novenas with the rest of the family that it was impossible to believe he wasn’t being very very judgmental indeed inside his head. “Julian’s asking about you,” he said simply.
* * * * * * * *
“It Mommy naptime?” asked a tiny voice, somewhere far away. “We need turn off the light.”
“I think Mommy would rather wake up to see you,” said William’s voice as Julian stopped pretending to be asleep. “And see? There she is!”
“Mommy!” exclaimed Cecily, running to try to clamber onto Julian’s hospital bed.
Julian smiled involuntarily at the sight of her daughter. “Hi,” she said, putting out her hands, then wincing as Cecily barrelled into her. “Where did you come from?”
“My home,” said Cecily matter-of-factly. “Poppy said you not feel good, but Daddy said now you feel better,” she informed Julian.
Presumptuous of Daddy, she thought drily. She was somewhat annoyed with her father, too, for telling Cecily anything. It wasn’t as if the child was used to seeing her mother every day anyway. She deserved so much better….
“Don’t cry Mommy,” said Cecily reproachfully. “Why you sad?”
“I’m not,” said Julian, in one of the full, unquestionable lies she had ever told Cecily. “I’m just so happy to see you.”
* * * * * * * *
John, white-faced and grim, showed up half an hour later, clutching a thermos in one hand (“I made stained water. You should like it.”) and his rosary in the other. Cecily’s immediate response was to squeal in delight.
“Hello Reacher!” she exclaimed.
John’s expression had softened slightly at the greeting. “Hello yourself, Creature,” he said to the toddler now clinging to his knee. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think they let Creatures up here.”
Cecily began to jabber, which did make Julian’s task of convincing John that she was alive enough to hold out long enough for him to take Cecily to find a snack a bit harder. Finally, though, she succeeded, and was left alone with her husband.
She had no idea what to say. Neither, it seemed, did William. Finally, though, he cleared his throat and said, “How’s the tea?”
“Drinkable,” said Julian, taking another sip of actually quite tasty but very heavily leafed Earl Grey and shuddering slightly at the strength of it. “John really did try, bless him. It’s at least a few inches short of the usual Russian prison tea.”
William chuckled, and Julian did, too. Almost immediately, though, a tear fell into her teacup, followed quickly by another.
“Sweetheart, don’t,” said William.
“I’m sorry,” said Julian. “I’m so sorry - “ She tilted her head back, blinking hard, trying to catch her breath, wishing he would come hold her but not expecting him to. “It’s just - this is the first time I’ve known I was pregnant since Cecily, and - well - now I know I’m not, and might never be, and - “
“Hey, what’s this?” asked William, his brow creasing with concern - and confusion. “You never said anything about wanting another kid. What’s wrong with Cecily?”
“Nothing,” said Julian. “She’s perfect. But it’s not right for her to be alone, and who knows what my family thinks, after all these years and I only have one child - “
William thought back to the premarital counseling they had had to have as a condition of a Catholic wedding. They had both agreed that they wanted children. They had been told what the Pope and Saint Whoever thought of birth control. William had assumed his young, modern, none-too-devout fiancee thought as little of that advice as he had, and still did. Now he was unsure.
“I might as well have been an only child, and I think that worked out okay for me,” said William reasonably.
“Yes, but it’s not the best way. She needs brothers and sisters, and - all these years and I can’t, apparently - “
“You never said anything about this,” repeated William, still stunned.
Julian smiled wanly. “I didn’t think about it much,” she said. “But now a pretty important part of my reproductive system decided to kind of explode in public, so...it’s a lot harder to just assume things will work out now.”
William had been seated on the other side of the tiny room, but now crossed to the chair beside her which her mother had occupied earlier. He took her hands in his. “Julian,” he said. “Listen to me. When I saw you on that floor…” He paused to collect himself. “When I saw you on that floor like that, and when I didn’t know if you were going to be all right - you paralyzed me, sweetheart. I realized that I don’t know if I can go on with all the life we have planned without you. Sweetheart, we have everything we need - except for you back on your feet now. Anything after that is just extra. Okay?”
Julian forced another smile, but didn’t answer.
The Past - July-September
It had taken Julian two hours to select which lipstick to wear to the speech she had agreed to give at the hospital auditorium, and at the time, William had been nearly furious with her for being so - something. Vain. Particular. Infuriating generally.
Now, though, looking at the effect, he thought he could have spared her four hours. Beneath the huge lights - candles suspended in great glass orbs, their light directed by mirrors - casting squares of gold on her black-brown chignon and in a soft grey dress that he would have sworn wouldn’t work but somehow did on her, he thought she might be the most exquisite creature he had ever seen.
“...I want to thank you all again for allowing me to be here, and to speak about what happened to me, in the hopes that it can help others,” said Julian, her voice mostly steady. “I know none of us would choose to belong to this particular sisterhood, but - in bringing awareness to how difficult these things are for all of us, I hope I can help make it a more - helpful place to be…”
She was losing her thread, he noted with dismay. She was going off-script. He tried to catch her eye, but knew she couldn’t possibly see him…
...Unless she did, because she glanced very definitely in his direction, anyway, before taking a breath, saying “So, I thank you. Good evening,” and cutting herself off to applause.
William applauded, too, smiling, proud of her. They had taken one of the most publicly embarrassing moments of their marriage - Julian collapsing in public - and turned it into a way to make her an even more effective weapon in getting him where he wanted to be. They had not played a good hand. They had played a very bad hand very well.
And it was, he was convinced, finally they. He had played a bad hand very well when it came to adapting to the inheritance issue, but now, they were in it together. And on the whole, he thought - at least in the warm glow of this moment - that he was all right with that.
* * * * * * * *
“Julian. Julian.” Door creaked, footsteps stopped abruptly. “You’re still in bed?”
Julian rolled over to face her annoyed husband, running her hands over her face to push some of her hair back and to press at her puffy eyes. “Demonstrably,” she said flatly.
“Well get up. We’re speaking to Sorceress Circle this afternoon.” Julian didn’t move. “You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?”
“No,” said Julian, who had been dreading this for days. “I haven’t forgotten. Afternoon. It’s still morning.”
“It’s nine o’clock. For Merlin’s sake, get up, brush your hair. I’ll pick out your clothes for today.”
William strode into the walk-in closet, muttering curses as he tripped over a pair of shoes she hadn’t had the energy to put back where they went...sometime. There were several pairs scattered around the closet now, along with clothes thrown over racks or the back of a chair because it had just seemed too much effort to hang them back up. Just as it currently seemed too much effort to push back her light summer quilt far enough to free her feet so she could stand up.
William’s grumbling lowered in tone, then rose. “How do you find anything in here?” he demanded.
Instead of answering, Julian compromised, Summoning her hairbrush and beginning to run it through her hair, wincing when it hit tangles.
She was staring off into space, still running the brush through her hair rhythmically, when William came back out clutching various hangers. “Dammit,” he muttered, and she jumped at the noise. “Do I have to tell you to do everything today? Go wash your face, put on your make-up - whatever it is you have to do to look presentable. We do have to show up before we’re expected to go live you know!”
“Of course, William,” said Julian, because that was the magic phrase which usually earned her at least a temporary respite from listening to her husband’s voice drone on and on at her about whatever he thought she ought to be doing.
He was right most of the time, of course. Everything he told her to do was something she needed to do, something it was better for her to do. She didn’t dispute that. She knew it was wrong to even want to just stay in bed, or at best to cuddle on the sofa in a sweatshirt to watch Cecily play, all the time - actually behaving that way was worse. She couldn’t seem to help it, though. And it was getting worse, not better. Even a month ago, she had made a few decisions, and had not found it too difficult to do as she was told. She had even usually managed to keep moving after she finished what had to be done, to a point. Then she had started to stop moving whenever she wasn’t getting directions, and now….
Wasn’t right. She knew that. Just as she knew that nobody but herself could help her out of this rut and that she needed to use her will and good sense to try to escape her head. She was just in a funk, after all - a self-pitying slump. She had, since all this begun, seen women with real postpartum problems, both general and from miscarriages. The ones who wanted to hurt themselves, wanted to hurt their own children, who thought their children were demons, who thought something was after their children...She wasn’t one of those. She was just...tired. And lazy. And not trying hard enough. She wasn’t sick. She was just...inadequate. As a wife, a mother, a friend, a sister, probably as a person generally....
There was a sigh, and William came over and put an arm around her shoulders, running his hand through a section of her hair. “I’m sorry if I snapped at you, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her temple. “I know you don’t feel well. As soon as we finish this interview, you can come back to bed if you want to, all right? Or maybe you could go on a walk with Cecily. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Will you come with us?” asked Julian.
“If I have time,” said William. Her face must have changed, because he quickly amended that to, “Never mind - I will, if that will make you happy. Smile for me?”
Julian obediently did so, and William nodded happily. “That’s my girl,” he said approvingly. “Now let’s get dressed.”
* * * * * * * *
Julian stared at the dress. “I’m not going to wear that,” she said.
William fought down a sight. “Why not?” he asked, cursing her moods. For weeks, she had simply gone along with anything he said. Now, she was digging in her heels over a dress.
Julian looked over the dress. She had worn the dress before. She could point that out - point out to him that the Society Bee would definitely comment if she wore the same dress twice in the same year to events. She could point out that she had heard it might rain, which would make the shoes which went best with that dress a bit impractical, in the moments they were outside. She could point out -
“I’m just not going to wear it!” she exclaimed, looking away from the dress. The dress that needed to be worn with a corset. The dress that drew attention to the smallness and flatness of its wearer’s waist. “What do you care what I wear?”
“I’ve helped you pick out your outfits for important events since we got married,” said William. “You’ve always said I know better than you do what’s appropriate for different events - “
“It never occurred to you that maybe I learned something in - what - years now?”
“You never said anything before, so I just kept doing what I’ve been doing,” said William, clearly willing himself to remain calm and not shout at her. “Pick out your own dress if you want. Just do it fast.”
“You know what? Never mind. I’m not going at all,” said Julian, pulling off her heavy party earrings.
“What?”
“Tell them I’m sick.”
“Julian, what is wrong with you?” But by that point, Julian had already slammed the door behind her. When he returned from the party, she and Cecily were gone. She had, however, had the thought to at least leave a note that she had gone back to her parents for a few days.
* * * * * * * *
Chris Umland repressed a sigh as he looked at his only daughter, looking strangely both perfectly in and out of place in the living room, which had changed very little since she moved out.
Julian might have been the only girl in the family, but she had always been one of the kids Chris had had the least trouble connecting with. They had almost always simply drifted companionably, without need for much discussion, along the same wavelengths. They weren’t like Ali or, God help him, John - those two and Paul, they were complicated people, full of layers and unexpected angles. Then there were Joe and Steve, ordinary enough guys, as far as he could tell. And then came Chris and Julian, who were - he generally thought - the uncomplicated ones.
Right now, though, Julian seemed almost as distant as John, even though she looked more like the Julian he always thought of her as than she had in years.
He sat down beside her on the sofa, where she was curled up in a ball, watching distantly as Cecily played with her dolls on the rug. “Talk to me, kiddo,” said Chris.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said.
“For what?”
“Just...showing up like this. I promise I won’t stay long.”
“You stay as long as you want to,” said Chris. “I told you when you left this house that you knew you could still find it the same place you left it any time you wanted to. I want to know what’s going on with you, but you don’t even have to tell me that if you don’t want to.”
“Nothing’s really going on with me,” said Julian. “I just - I don’t know, Dad. I just haven’t felt - right - ever since…”
She trailed off. Julian had been prone to losing her train of thought in recent months, but he didn’t think that was what had happened this time.
“Since you lost the baby,” he finished for her.
Her eyes welled up, as expected. “Yeah,” she said. “William...he doesn’t...I don’t know. Of course it’s not the same for him as for me, but….”
“You’re right,” said Chris. “He doesn’t know how it is for you, and you don’t know how it is for him.” He looked at his hands. “Your mom and me...stuff like that happened to us a few times, you know,” he said.
Julian looked at him. “I didn’t,” she confessed.
“Yep. Well, the first time, the second time even...of course we were both sad, but we got through it. The third time, though...your mom, she was like you’ve been lately.”
Julian’s cheeks flushed. “Like what exactly?” she asked defensively.
“She wouldn’t go out. Wouldn’t see people much. She even started missing Mass.” Julian looked shocked, but he couldn’t blame her; when the kids had been little, Alison had taken them to Mass every single day, barring that one time all five had been sick at the same time.
“What happened?” asked Julian.
“I told her to take her ass to a doctor,” said Chris, so bluntly that Julian burst into a croak of weak laughter. “I’m not kidding. You know your mom. She’s not like that. I knew something was wrong with her, and I knew that neither of us could fix it.”
“And now you think the same thing about me,” said Julian. “You do remember the part where Mom’s not my biological mom, don’t you?”
“Julian,” said Chris. “There’s nothing wrong with being sick. Even the Church admits that.”
Julian wiped at her eyes. “I just keep thinking that I’m feeling sorry for myself,” she said, her voice full of tears. “Wallowing in it, when I ought to snap out of it, or walk out of it - “
“That’s not you,” pointed out Chris. “Not while you have someone to take care of. Just think about all the stupid shit you’ve done for John over the years. If you were like that for your brother - God love him - then don’t you think you’d pull yourself together for her if you could?” He pointed to Cecily.
Julian reddened again. “I’m not neglecting Cecily,” she said.
“Of course not. But you’re not being the best you can for her, either, and you know it.” He softened his tone. “I heard you on the radio, and saw you in those magazines,” he said. “Your mom keeps an album, actually, whenever you’re in something - “
“Oh God love us all,” said Julian.
“Quite,” said Chris. “But we saw those things. You giving people all that money to start support groups, hire therapists - the help’s right there, you paid for it. You’ve got more right than anyone to use it.”
“I couldn’t,” protested Julian. “It would look terrible. William would never have it. His career...he can’t have people saying his wife is a mental case. And I wouldn’t want them to either,” she said quickly before he could point out that in that case, William could shove his career where the sun shone not. “Like you said, Dad - I take care of people. I don’t really like them taking care of me.”
“But sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. Go to a Muggle doctor for all I care - but you need to get sorted. Promise me, Julian.”
Julian nodded, but he continued to stare her down. “Fine,” she exclaimed finally, with a hint of a laugh, as if to downplay the seriousness of the situation. “I promise.” He held out for a moment longer. “Pinky-swear, cross my heart and hope to die,” she added, extending her smallest finger as though she were making a pact with one of her brothers as a child. He returned the gesture, then pulled her into a hug.
“There’s one other thing I want us to do first,” he said to the wall over her shoulder. “Something I did with your mom, too.” Julian looked wary. “Going to pray for our dead.”
* * * * * * * *
Julian hunched in on herself as she followed her father, reluctantly, into St. Luke’s. Every inch of the church was as familiar to her as the living room at home, as her own face, but that, in its way, was part of the problem. She had not bothered getting out of bed for Mass in two weeks, and her last good confession had been in June. Early June.
“Chris,” said Reverend Moreau. “And - why, Julian. Good to see you. We’ve missed you at Mass.”
Of course the pastor and the vicars here knew them all on sight; the church was large enough for their little neighborhood, but Mom was sufficiently involved in everything that of course her family was known.
“Thank you, sir,” said Julian, flushing. “It’s good to be home.”
The sentence slipped out effortlessly. Goodness, what a politician she was becoming, sucking up to priests like that. She definitely wasn’t planning to actually become an anchoress, even if the church was willing to have her as one!
“How may I help you?”
“We just wanted to pray quietly, Father, if you don’t mind,” said her dad.
“Of course. You are welcome.”
Julian did not particularly want to pray, and so just followed her father where he led. Where he led her was into the side chapel, to where the votive candles were, and then realized, to her horror, that her father was going to pray out loud - or at least, in an audible murmur.
Instead of listening to the words - first for healing for her, then for the soul of the departed - she tried to focus on the roughness of the kneeler under her knees. The strangeness of wearing some of her mother’s church clothes, slightly magically shrunk to fit her, as Mom was so much taller than she. How she could smell Mom’s lavender perfume on them - her mother wore the same clothes for years, over and over again until they weren’t fit to be worn, and apparently the scent just impregnated the fabric after a while. The feel of her own hair hanging down her back. It had been coming out in excess since the miscarriage; that had happened when Cecily was born, too, but that had been because everyone grew extra hair while they were pregnant and then lost it post-partum. This time, she didn’t think she had been pregnant long enough for anything to grow in, which meant that sleeplessness and stress and an increasingly poor diet probably had more to do with it. That nagged at her - she had beautiful hair, one of the few things about herself she would attribute the word to, and she knew how proud William was of it. Her husband expected - needed - her to be beautiful. - but everything outside the physical just seemed...remote right now.
That was, at least, until the direction of her father’s mumbling toward St. Luke changed.
“...for my grandchildren - for our sweet Cecily, that she continues to grow and flourish - and for my other grandchild, who we wish was here.”
Julian nearly tipped over on her kneeler. The final clause hit her almost like a physical blow. Prayers for the dead were hard - that was why she had been doing her best not to hear them - but they all focused on how being dead was really for the best. They were full of images of heaven and rest and blessings. You weren’t supposed to admit that you wished someone was still alive. You weren’t supposed….
She fumbled for her wand, hoping to Silence herself before she lost the ability to control her throat, but Dad caught her hand and she barely even tried to cling to her composure before it was swept away entirely.
She sobbed, gasping for air, curling in on herself. She could tell her father was murmuring something to her, patting her even, but she was barely aware of it and had no idea what he was saying. The noise in her head was too loud to crowd out at all - the incoherent sadness and, more than anything, anger.
Dame Julian, passages in the scriptures - they spoke of God as a mother. And if she could be omnipotent - eternal - if she could know that all would be well, and all would be well, and all manner of things would be well - if she knew for a verifiable fact, with no faith involved, that there was a life beyond this one - then maybe she could accept that idea. But God was a fanatic who was willing to play the game of ‘for the greater good’ - at least when He or She only had to lose a child for three days. Maybe, if she knew Cecily or the child she’d lost would forgive her, Julian could have played that game, too - but for nothing short of universal salvation. For what there was supposed to be, she could not - she would not - do it. And to not know if there was even that - it wasn’t good enough. None of the explanations were good enough. They just weren’t. And everything she had been told her whole life told her that she was a monster for even thinking this, that it wasn’t her concern, that in the end all would be well - but she couldn’t not think, or feel, and she was tired of trying not to.
Finally, she was also tired of crying. Tired of everything. Finally, she wore herself back down to quiet.
“Why did you say that?” she asked her father finally.
“Because it’s true,” he said. “And because your mother - the priest back then, and her therapist, they said it was something she needed to do. To mourn in public. Like having a funeral I guess.”
Julian wiped her eyes. “I don’t know if it went for me the same way it did for her,” she warned him.
“I don’t think there’s any one way it’s supposed to work, kid.”
“And that sucks, because then you never know if you’re doing it right.”
“I guess we all just do the best we can,” he said.
Julian sighed. “Yeah.”
* * * * * * * *
On Sunday, Julian wasn’t sure if she wanted to smile or roll her eyes at her brothers, who were trying to pretend it was just chance that they had all re-converged this weekend, or that Paul had just taken a whim to go to Mass with the rest of the family when he hadn’t set foot in a church since Cecily’s baptism. “This really isn’t necessary, you know,” she informed him.
Paul thought about this for a moment. “It’s not unnecessary, either,” he said. “Humor me, sis. I get sentimental sometimes for the old days, all of us trying to stay awake on one pew…”
“Yeah, is John just being John or is he asleep standing up right now?” she asked, nodding toward their younger brother, who appeared to be having a staring contest with a cabinet door. The rules said fast for at least an hour before Mass, which meant John had to get out of bed, dress presentably, and go through most of the long service all before having his tea. He had never been very good at it. As kids, it had often been Julian and Joe’s task to elbow him regularly through the service to keep him at least vaguely conscious.
Julian giggled suddenly at a memory, and Cecily - who, as a small child who had not made her First Communion, was exempt from the fasting rules - looked up from her breakfast of porridge and milk. “What’s funny, Mommy?” she asked.
“I just remembered something,” she said. “You know how when we go to church, we’re all sitting beside someone in the pews?” Cecily nodded. “When I was a little girl and Uncle John and Uncle Joe were little boys, one day, all three of us fell asleep and toppled over together.” She used her two hands to illustrate how they had done, and Cecily shrieked with laughter.
Cecily was supposed to have that sort of memory. She was supposed to have brothers - or sisters; Julian didn’t know what sisters were like, but assumed it worked more or less the same way - to lean on and get into disgrace with and just live with. But she didn’t. And might not. And if that was so - then they would simply have to learn to live with it. Unless….
“Your nanna was so mad at them,” reflected Paul, clearly remembering the same incident. “But you know what else, Sesame?”
“What?” asked Cecily.
“Nanna was mad at me and Uncle Steve too! Though how we were supposed to watch your mommy and John and Joe while we were talking to Jesus, I don’t know exactly….”
“Poor you,” said Julian, knowing perfectly well that Paul had never really pretended to pray when he was supposed to during the Mass. He thought it would be hypocritical as long as he continued to refuse to formally convert.
After Mass, her brothers continued to put up the front that they all just happened to want to have breakfast - seven people crammed into a tiny kitchen not meant for above four - together like old times, and Julian let them. Cecily’s presence meant that there was no real pretending that their lives hadn’t changed since they had all lived here together like this, but it was comforting, at least, to hang a gauze over it all. She was almost in character, too, when there was a knock at the door, and she knew even before Joe went to answer it that it was William.
“Daddy!” crowed Cecily, running to greet him with the enthusiasm with which she did everything.
“Good morning, Princess,” he said, picking her up as though nothing were wrong. “Have you been having fun staying with Nanna and Poppy?”
“Yeah,” said Cecily.
“Yeah? That’s good.”
“Are you coming to stay with us?”
“No, no,” said William. “I’m just checking on you and Mommy.”
“Mommy and Un’ Joe and John fall over!” said Cecily, and William looked alarmed.
“They did?” he asked.
“About fifteen or twenty years ago,” explained Julian, leaving her place in the kitchen to join her husband and daughter and youngest brother in the lounge. Joe slipped back into the kitchen, giving them an illusion of privacy. “We were reminiscing about going to Mass when we were kids this morning while Little Bit had breakfast.” She chucked Cecily under the chin, then stood on her toes to give her husband a brief kiss.
“I see,” said William.
“Long story,” said Julian. “Cecily, why don’t you go ask John if he remembers that?” she said, latching onto the first thing that might make Cecily go away.
When Cecily skipped away, William looked hesitant as he asked, “So - are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” said Julian, as brightly as she could. “A little bit. Not a hundred percent, but - a little bit.”
“You look rested,” he observed.
“Mom’s been more than happy to do all the looking after Cecily,” explained Julian.
“Good, good.” There was a pause. “So what now?”
Julian looked at her feet, then made herself look back up. “I’d like to stay here a little longer, if that’s all right,” she said.
“Okay,” said William slowly, warily, and she couldn’t help a weary half-smile.
“Don’t look so nervous,” she implored. “This isn’t some ‘I need space’ thing and then I surprise you with divorce papers. It’s nothing like that.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said William. “You had me worried for a minute.”
“I’m sorry,” said Julian. “I wasn’t thinking straight when I just - yeah. But I’m - I’m having a me thing. Not an us thing. I promise. You can come by every day if you want, or take Cecily home if you really want…”
William grimaced. “I’d take you up on that first offer,” he said, “except...I’m supposed to spend most of the next month out of the province….”
Julian closed her eyes. “Oh gosh. I forgot. I’m so sorry William…”
“Sweetheart, it’s all right. There will be more events.”
“But I know...the convention at the end of next month. You wanted me to go with you, you said - “
“Well, it’s weeks away. Maybe you’ll feel better by then. For now, it’s probably best you’re with your mom and dad - I’d hate for you and Cecily to be alone when you’ve been so upset.”
* * * * * * * *
At times, when she was a girl, Julian had resented how very suffocating her family could be. How they all so often worked as a unit. How there was no privacy, nothing she was really able to do on her own. Rebelling against that was how she had learned to put on lipstick, how she had formed a sort of relationship with her biological mother, and how she had met her husband, so she couldn’t regret her feelings from back then, but now, she found it a profound relief to simply let the Umland machine kick into action and take over her whole life.
John and Joe were the ones who combined their respective knowledge networks to find her a shrink - an honest-to-God Muggle shrink who happened to have a Muggleborn brother and so understood the delicacy of Julian’s situation. John and Joe were also the two who kept trying to kill her. John couldn’t be around as much as the other brothers, but made up for it in enthusiasm when he could, dragging her out of the city on long rural walking tours, alternating between lectures on how exercise was good for her and teasing her about her inability to keep up with him - a man more than a head taller than herself, who lived a rather rough life and additionally was not burdened with the annoyance of breasts. And Joe...somehow, she did get into the most absurd scrapes with Joe. He took it into his head first that they should learn target shooting together - a surprisingly successful venture, but one which felt absurd, not least because they wore their own clothes and thus got more than a few strange looks from other people, Julian with the flowered shirtdresses and curls she wore casually at home, Joe with his preppy haircut and continued habit of wearing the same uniform of button-down shirts and khakis which the boys had all grown up in under Mom’s hand.
”We look like time travelers,” observed Julian once, and she had surprised herself with her glee. She had been less amused, however, when Joe took it into his head that she should teach him to drive, after which they had promptly ended up in a ditch fifty miles from home; ”I think they think we escaped from the circus,” she commented of the police she had just had to Confund, which Joe had found very amusing - at least, that was, until she pointed out that since it would be absurdly stupid for a woman to sit alone on the side of the road for any length of time, he was going to have to stay with the car until she could go home and get Steve and Dad and hope they could sort it out.
Steve had also rearranged his work schedule so he could go to Mass with her and Mom and Cecily every other morning (Mom, of course, took them alone on the other mornings). He and Paul and Joe all ate supper at home more, too. If not for the child under her feet, and John so rarely being home, she might have been a girl again.
She didn’t magically recuperate, regain her balance, but then, she hadn’t expected to, really. She did, though, feel better. Back in the circle of her family, knowing that everyone she saw had nothing but her best interests in mind, with plenty of time to rest and read as she chose and also to see the child she did have more often instead of constantly being dragged from obligation to obligation, she felt calmer than she had in many months - including many months before the miscarriage. Part of her missed William, but most of the time, she forgot to notice. It was like she was in Eden.
It couldn’t last, though. Social acquaintances sent her notes; she gathered that her sudden disappearance had set every tongue to wagging. She knew, too, that she had obligations to her husband and her people that she could not continue to put off. Finally, she made her mind up to attend the convention in Ottawa at the end of September.
It was amusing to imagine showing up at one of the big opening parties and surprising William and the whole crowd, but on reflection, it seemed too likely to go wrong somehow to do that in public. Instead, she decided to surprise her husband alone. The reservation had been made for their hotel for months, so she knew where to go, and decided to slip into the suite during the first evening, to attend the events with him for the rest of the week.
It proved harder than she thought. She was able to spend some time arranging the absurd number of clothes changes she would have to go through for the next few days, and putting out all the pots and tubes of pasty nonsense that were necessary to take care of her skin, but after that, she found herself walking around, anxious. The suite was more comfortable than John’s tent, and about the same size, but she felt confined, like a gull in a gilt cage. All she could think of was the months and months of endless engagements, the nights away from Cecily, the old thought that maybe if she didn’t spend so much time being a mother to her people around the estate and then playing the role of political wife to William, maybe she wouldn’t have miscarried….
The sky slowly dimmed, then darkened. Her impatience grew. She took a nap, and woke up near midnight. At twelve-thirty, she finally heard a door unlock, and emerged from the bedroom into the small sitting room, only to find William entering the room, closely followed by a woman in pink.
Strangely, it was the other woman who noticed Julian first. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Wha - “ William looked up. “Julian,” he exclaimed. “Sweetheart!” In three steps he was across the room and had her clasped to him. “Is everything all right? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Where’s Cecily?”
“She’s still with Mom and Dad,” said Julian, standing on her toes to give him a peck on the cheek. “I missed you, and I knew how disappointed you were that I’ve been - on the sidelines - so I thought I would surprise you.”
“It’s a wonderful surprise,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“Who is this?” she asked, indicating the woman in pink, who was still awkwardly standing in the background.
“Ah.” William sounded awkward, too, but not quite in the way she would have expected someone caught with a hooker to sound. “Julian, my colleague, Madelein. Madelein, this is my wife, Julian.”
Pink Lady smiled in a way which made Julian think she was rather drunk. Her tone did nothing to detract from that impression. “Hi! Isn’t that a guy’s name?”
“Hi,” said Julian, not answering the question about her name.
“I told her I needed to give her some paperwork just to ensure she got back from the convention hall safely,” said William quietly into Julian’s ear. “She’s a bit…” he made a back and forth gesture with her hand. “I thought she’d wander off to her room once we were back in the building, but she remembers this paperwork.”
Julian looked up at him, looking for some trace of a lie. He sounded sincere, and slightly embarrassed for the woman. Julian picked up the newspaper she had passed some of the time with. “Do you think this will do the trick?” she asked, offering it to her husband.
“Let’s see,” said William. Stepping away from Julian, he walked over to Madelein and offered her the newspaper. “Madelein, here’s the papers I was telling you about,” he said, a bit too loudly, pressing the paper into her hands with both of us. “Now you need to go to your room, do you remember where it is?”
“What?” she asked.
“Your room, Madelein. This is my room. See? That’s my wife. You go two floors down. There you go….”
Julian watched as the other woman left, looking vaguely confused. “Thank goodness you are here,” said William. “I imagine it would have been hard to get rid of her without you.”
“Yes,” said Julian. “I hope nobody saw you coming up here with her. People might get the wrong impression.”
“Entirely the wrong impression,” said William, coming back over to her and taking her hands.
“Not tempted at all?” asked Julian.
“Not more than three seconds,” said William. “And not at all after I saw you.” He ran his hands through her hair, one ending up cradling her neck while the other wrapped around her waist. “I can hardly believe you’re really here. I’ve been thinking how much I missed you all day.”
Julian smiled. “I missed you too, “ she said again, and kissed him.
* * * * * * * *
The Past - October
“It’s good to see you feeling well again,” said Ted, not wishing to dwell further on the last time they had met. He had sent flowers to the hospital, and had - feeling strangely responsible somehow, since it had been his arms she’d collapsed into at that party back in June - checked up on her condition a few times through William, so he knew something of why she had been so rarely seen in public for the past few months. William had been circumspect, but from what he’d said, Ted had frankly expected the next thing he’d heard of Julian Welles to be that she was petitioning for a divorce or that she had been admitted to an asylum. “All of society was nearly in mourning while you were away.”
“Oh, no doubt,” she said. “And I suppose they’re like children at the circus now that I’m back. I know they’re gossiping like hens.”
The tone did not sound, somehow, like she was talking about the hypothetical knowledge they all had of such things - it sounded like a statement of fact. Warily, Ted surveyed her. “Well, how else would anyone know anything?” he joked.
“They could go to a masked ball in secret,” she said. “You know, Gennie Esterhazy had one last week….”
Oh, hell.
This was the only coherent thought Ted could form just then. He had been at that ball - Gennie had cast herself as Prosperpina, her husband as Pluto, King of the Rich and Dead, and they had had hired dancers milling around as Todesengels, with black veil masks that hid their faces completely and fabulous black feathered wings - all rather morbid, but spectacular, and the game had been too remain as anonymous as possible - anyone who one of the black angels or the Esterhazys recognized before midnight got thrown, none too gently, into ‘hell’ outside the dance floor by the Todesengels. Ted had made it through the night hidden, and he knew William had as well - he thought the two or three people who had been ‘discovered’ had been prearranged, to provide entertainment and verisimilitude without actually running the risk of offending anyone; that was Gennie’s style. He had also been fairly sure that he knew William’s wife was supposedly not up to attending that event, and therefore had seen it as harmless when Will’s response to making it to the unmasking had been to make a tipsy pass at one of the Todesengels….
“She did, I was there,” he said. “It was rather a novelty. I enjoyed it.”
“I’m sure,” said Julian sweetly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”
Perhaps she really hadn’t been. As she was on the list, she could have theoretically have come after her husband unannounced, and then left unmasked somehow - but was it really very likely? Plus, why, he couldn’t even say for sure that Will had done anything truly improper - he had boasted about conquering Death’s handmaidens later, after vanishing for a bit, but Ted was under the impression this was as much something married men lied about having done to make themselves feel better as a thing they actually did. Neither he nor his twin sister had managed to remain married long enough to allow him to develop a firm opinion, especially since adultery had not been part of what ended either of their ill-fated marriages, but he thought that was how it went, and William certainly behaved as though he were besotted with his wife most of the time. And it made sense. Damn fine woman, and so charmingly unaffected most of the time - that was, he imagined, as much as the problems of a natural brunette’s undertones going poorly with a faux blonde wig to do with his vague dissatisfaction with her current manner.
“I’m sure the Allens will manage something at least as good next week,” said Ted. “You know they won’t want to let Gennie outdo them.”
“Quite,” said Julian. “Everything is tennis to everyone, isn’t it? Even how hard most of them try to avoid love.”
He chuckled, surprised but also amused by the wordplay. “You’re not wrong,” he agreed. “Though I’d hardly call Will a loser, and he’s certainly in love,” he said.
She smiled brilliantly and he suspected he had finally said the right thing. “I like to think so,” she said, and with a murmured farewell, gradually disappeared into the crowd.