Somebody else’s life

They had moved into the basement flat, as a temporary measure, two years before when Sandy was pregnant with Louis, their second child. Laura, their daughter, was one and a half then, and Lionel was over the moon at the thought of them having another baby. A boy this time! And it was true, she did indeed give birth to a beautiful baby boy. Chubby and full of life.

Lionel had insisted that the children had names starting with an L, so they were similar to his and had a nice ring when uttered together with his family name, Lawlor. So now they all had the initials LL, only Sandy was different as they never married. At first she did not really gave it too much thought, it was something nice to do for the man she loved. In recent times though, she started to feel a divide between her and them.

Whenever they were introduced to somebody the link between him and the children was clear, but she was still just plain old Sandy Burns. He never asked her to marry him formally. Of course, they had talked about it, in the beginning, eons and eons ago, in what seemed like another life, somebody else’s life. It never materialized though, time had passed, they behaved like they were married, but they were not.

She would tell herself that it did not matter, they had two children together, they were a family and a piece of paper would not change that, but when he would refer to her as ‘the mother of my children’ she would feel this gap between them and would desperately want to be something more to him, to mean something to him, not just be the one that gave him children, who took care of them and raised them. Sandy wanted to be a person to him.

When Laura was born, they were renting a room in an apartment with another couple. It worked well when it was just the two of them, but the baby had baby needs and did baby things, which drove the other couple to ask them to move out. Around the same time she found out she was pregnant again, she was too worried with finding a place to live to even contemplate what this meant.

Lionel was working hard so she was tasked with finding the new place. I am paying for it, aren’t I? I cannot be expected to do everything! He told her while giving her a massive hug. You don’t do anything all day, you can handle that.

Sandy would have liked to contradict him, but she needed the hug and she was afraid to annoy him. Sure, she will handle it.

The search was horrendous. Everything was too expensive and when landlords or realtors saw the baby they immediately took them off the list. Everybody was looking for ‘young professionals’. They ran as fast as they could from families with children, as if they wanted to kick them out later on it could prove tricky. Plus, young professionals paid more and spent most of their time in work, so the houses or apartments were hardly used.

Sandy was almost at breaking point when, finally, she found the basement flat. Small and dark, smelling unusual, it had two rooms and no mold, which was something to cherish in Ireland. The landlord told her his mother had lived there with her three cats and a parrot named John. She wanted it on the spot, that was how desperate she was, and could not risk losing it to any of the other people queuing outside.

When the call came that she got it she felt a huge wave of relief and pride of having accomplished something so important for her family. Lionel did not see it like that though. He did not like anything about the flat.

The rooms were too small and too dark, the rent was too high, the furniture a strange mix of mismatched pieces.But well, it will have to do. Sandy worked hard to make it spotless and to brighten it up, and slowly it became their home.

When Louis was born the house was bursting with light and laughter. Lionel was so kind to her and she rejoiced his careful attention. Then life went back to normal, this time with two small children to take care of.

The money they had did not stretch for a nanny or for daycare, so Sandy decided she would put her career on hold and dedicate herself to raising the children. Lionel agreed and promised he will take care of them all and ensure they will not lack anything. He praised her for being a great mother and then went out as he had a dinner appointment.

Sometimes, when the children were asleep, Sandy would pick up one of her books and try to read from it, maybe she could continue her studies, but her eyes would close and she would fall in a deep sleep. She started to joke that, if she wanted a good sleep all she had to do was open a book. She would laugh, but secretly, inside, she was mourning the loss of something that was really precious to her.

Lionel had no interest in her career that could have been, or her books gathering dust in a corner of the small flat. Sandy was doing what was the most important thing a woman can do, and when she attempted to speak about any of that nonsense, he brought her back to planet Earth by asking something about the children.

Sandy was happy with her lot and loved her babies deeply, she just felt lonely sometimes and would have liked to speak to Lionel about something else than the mundane things that constitute the logistics of a young family with two small children.

She hadn’t been out in forever and they hadn’t taken any trips as they used to, because each outing was like a huge project that needed to be started hours before leaving the house. Spontaneity and lightheartedness no longer formed part of their life.

Sandy wished she had somebody to help her, to chat with her, to tell her it will get easier, that she is more than a cleaner, cook and all around help, that she too will be cared for again. There was no one though, so she just pushed through as she always did.

One day, when doing the laundry, a faint smell of sweet perfume drew her attention to one of Lionel’s shirts. Must be a new soap or something in work, she thought.

Another day, when they were sat for dinner, his phone buzzed and Sandy happened to be close to it when the screen lit up for a second and she could see the name of a woman. She did not get the time to read the message, but later on, when Lionel was looking at his phone, his face displayed a strange, pleased smile that she could not help but associate with the woman’s name. Some colleague in work for sure, she thought while doing the dishes.

When Lionel started getting back home later and later, Sandy would feel bad for him having to work such long hours to support them.

One such evening, after the children were asleep, she took a long bath, shaved her legs, put on her best nightwear, did her make-up and set the table for them in the living room.

Lionel opened the door slowly hoping against hope he will not wake anyone up. He had had a great evening and he could still feel, her bite on his lower lip. Such a fiery minx that one! Some people get all the luck! He knew it was not luck though, it was his charm and his good looks. He was almost chuckling to himself when he saw movement in the living room and a hand lighting two candles.

It was the other. Grrrr!

‘What are you doing up?’, his voice was harsh and cold.

She floated slowly to him, grabbed his hand and directed him towards the chair. When he got a better look at her face he saw she was made up like a scarecrow. Huge black lines around her eyes, very red lipstick and shiny green eye-shadow on the eye lids.

‘What in the world…?’, he did not get to finish his sentence because he was stunned into silence by her pulling a big platter from the fridge, piled high with books mixed with ham, and boiled eggs and something sticky that looked like glaze.

Lionel fell in his chair unsure of how to react, struggling to understand that the disheveled woman in front of him was Sandy, his long time partner, the mother of his children. His foot slipped on something and when he looked down he could see the floor was streaked with blood coming from her legs. He was horrified and when she sat down a panicked thought split the confusion in his mind. The children.

‘I need to wash my hands my love. I will be right back.’

She nodded while expertly taking a dripping book with the serving fork and putting it on his plate.

‘Hurry up! You know how you like your food piping hot! You told me so a million times!’, and she laughed an unusual, guttural laugh he had never heard before.

Lionel got up slowly trying not to disturb her and slipped into the children’s bedroom. They were there sleeping, looking the same as always. He woke Laura telling her they are playing a game and the game is to walk out of the house as slowly and as quietly as possible. With Louis in his arms, they went out and he knocked at their neighbors.

The guards and the ambulance were there in twenty minutes. When they went in Sandy did not seem to have noticed he was gone, that her legs were covered in small cuts, or that she had been munching on a book page.

It would be more than a month until, with the help of doctors, she would come back to herself.

When searching the house they found books stuffed in the fridge, the oven, even in the washing machine. Everybody was being grateful nothing worse happened and that she got the help she needed. Lionel took the children to his mother and returned to the city as a single man. Without his knowing, his mother and father had taken the children to visit Sandy. For them, mommy just needed a bit of time to recover from a very difficult illness.

It would be years before Sandy could think about that time in her life without crying or throwing up. At some point, she moved to Offaly to be close to where the children were living with their grandparents. She got a job as a librarian and would spend her afternoons reading books to her children and to the others in the small town.

Through her work, the library grew and became a point of interest for the small community where they would spend evenings doing readings, having quizzes or just hanging around.

Lionel had a good life in the city, never married, he enjoyed being a bachelor to the full extent of the term, and when he felt the call of the earth, he would visit his children at his parents’ house.

Their paths did cross one day, but strangely none of them recognized the other, so they just walked by not registering who that stranger was.