Things That Never Were

Fairy Tale Fragment #3

This is the last piece of the Katy-Mathilde story. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here

And so Katy grew up, and fell in love and out of love and back in love again, until one day she met a man named Brian who captured her heart and managed to hold onto it, and gave her his heart so that she wouldn’t feel the loss of her own, and together they moved into the big old house that Katy had grown up in and began their life with each other.

It wasn’t long after that that anyone observing the house would have seen a number of things going into it that spoke of children – a crib, small toys and storybooks, and a wooden rocking-horse that looked as though it had stepped, or rocked actually, out of the pages of an old fairy-tale nursery. The neighbors began to nod wisely to each other and comment on how much time Katy spent knitting tiny booties and bonnets.

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?” they asked each other, and “What will they name it, do you think?” But Katy’s head was filled with much more troubling questions. She knew that the world outside the house and the garden had become a much less friendly place than it had been when she was a little girl, and she wondered how she would ever raise her child to know the same golden moments of childhood that she herself had. One night, when the conversation had turned to such somber topics, she mentioned her fears to her sister.

“Yes, it must be hard, to bring a child into the world in these days,” her sister agreed. “Still, what can you do? Just the best you can, and that’s all there is to it.”

That wasn’t much help. So Katy turned to Brian, whom she loved more than anything else in the world, and asked him what he thought they should do to help their baby live a happy life.

“You worry too much,” he replied. “Everything will be fine – you just trust me on that, Katy-my-girl.” And he tousled her hair and gave her a kiss, and for a while that helped, but her worries soon came back, and stayed with her all the long months until the baby appeared in the house.

Katy’s daughter was born with fine, golden-blonde hair, and big blue eyes, and apple-round cheeks that made everyone who came to visit want to pinch them. A fine spray of freckles covered her nose, just like Katy’s, but everyone agreed that the fashion for milk-white skin was quite over and that a few freckles were very becoming. At the beginning, she didn’t do very much, except sleep, which seemed very boring to the neighborhood children, who were dragged over to visit with their mothers. They certainly didn’t understand what it was about grown-ups that made them so silly over babies.

Several of the visitors, who were closer to Katy than others in the neighborhood, remarked that Katy seemed somewhat troubled – although very happy about her new daughter, of course. Katy told them her worries for the infant, and they did their best (as friends always will) to ease her mind and make her more cheerful.

“After all,” one lady was heard to say, “It’s not as though you can be her fairy godmother, waving your wand and making her life perfect.” Everyone agreed that this was true, and the subject was changed. If a few of the visitors noticed that Katy became somewhat pensive after this remark was made, well, they said to themselves, new mothers often have a great deal on their minds.

After everyone had left, Katy sat thinking for a long time. At last Brian came in, and asked, “What’s on your mind, Katy-my-girl?”

“Oh – nothing,” Katy replied. “I was just thinking about when I was a little girl. I had an invisible friend who lived in the garden – you know how children come up with these things. Well, my invisible friend – Mathilde, her name was – was a fairy godmother who had run out of godchildren. And when Mary said that about fairy godmothers, I just remembered. I haven’t thought about her in years,” she laughed, but it was tinged with sadness, the way grown-ups laugh when they remember the happy times that they believe are long gone.

“Well, our little Suzie could surely use a fairy godmother,” Brian said heartily. “It’s too bad there are no such things.”

Katy gave another sad laugh by way of agreement, but she sat in the window, looking out on the garden, for a long time after that.

That night, after Brian had gone to sleep and Suzie had fallen into one of the catnaps that babies use instead of sleep, Katy put on her dressing gown and slipped out into the garden. She walked down, through the dew, to the bottom where the hedges bordered the property, and looked for that hole in the hedge, the one that never seemed to close no matter how much Brian pruned and teased and tried to train the branches to grow over it.

Bending down, so that her head was level with the hole in the hedge – so much smaller than she remembered, Katy peered inside. She couldn’t see anything at all like her memories of Mathilde’s cottage, or the tunnel of leaves that led to it – only a small hollow, with some bits of colored cloth and what might be pieces of long-broken toys. Suddenly she felt rather silly, coming down here in search of what was surely a childhood fancy, and she straightened up and turned to go. Just as she was about to leave, though, little Suzie’s features popped into her mind – so young, so frail! So undeserving of all the cruel things that the cruel world could do! Her resolve strengthened, she turned back to the opening, and said softly, to whomever might hear, “The christening is tomorrow. I do hope you will attend – and, oh, Mathilde! Be my daughter’s fairy godmother!”

She waited a few moments, but of course there was no reply. Feeling foolish once again, Katy turned and hurried into the house.

The next day, there was a great hullabaloo about the big old house, as preparations for little Suzie’s christening went on. There were tiny sandwiches to be made, and the crusts cut off; there was to be punch, and cookies, and little teacakes, and of course not one of these things was ready nearly in time for Katy’s peace of mind. She ran about, fixing this and straightening that, stirring pots on the stove and checking pastries in the oven, until you would have thought she was a wild woman, with her hair flying everywhere and her dress mussed and dusty. Finally Brian made her stop, and go upstairs to change and get Suzie into her christening gown. “For what’s the sense in everything else being ready, if our little guest of honor isn’t?” he asked.

The day seemed to fly by, and Katy hardly even remembered her midnight invitation until the christening was over, the cakes were all eaten, and the guests had all gone home. Only then, when she was sitting in the nursery, knitting and watching over little Suzie in her crib, did she remember Mathilde.

“She didn’t come,” she thought sadly, and then laughed at herself for the thought. “Of course she didn’t come – she wasn’t real, after all.” And she continued with her knitting, letting her thoughts wander, until she began to drowse in her rocking chair.

Some time later, a noise in the nursery brought her back to wakefulness. Like any mother, her first thought was for her child, and she looked toward the crib, to see if Suzie had woken and needed to be comforted, or fed. What she saw there made her breath catch in her throat. Was that a human figure, bending over her child, or just a shadow? What was that it held in its hand? Katy sprang up, ready to chase all manner of intruders away from her daughter, when the figure seemed to speak – or was it only the wind in the eaves?

“Be happy, little Suzie,” the visitor seemed to say, in a voice that was soft, and kind, and somewhat muddled with age. “Be happy, little one.” The figure waved what it held over the sleeping baby – for a moment, Katy saw a wand – and a watchful eye would have seen a glimmer of magic fall into the crib, to cover the infant like a sparkling blanket. And then it was gone, and so was the figure, or the shadow, and Katy sprang to the crib to be certain that Suzie still slept, and was unharmed. Finding her just the same as she had left her, Katy gathered her daughter up out of the crib and carried her into the bedroom. Just for tonight, she told herself, I will keep her close by me – just in case. Strangely, Suzie didn’t fuss when she was picked up, as infants are wont to do – she only opened her big, blue eyes and smiled at her mother – but of course it was only gas, as everyone says when babies seem to smile.

Katy’s daughter grew up straight and tall, and even as a child was widely accepted to be the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood, with her fine, golden hair and her big, blue eyes. Even as a baby she rarely cried, and her gurgling laugh echoed off the walls of the big house until it seemed to sink into the very bones of it and make it an even happier place than it was already. As she grew, she was always smiling and laughing, running about the neighborhood with her infectious good humor. Everyone began to look for Suzie when they had had a bad day or were just out-of-sorts, for they quickly learned that the little girl could dispel the worst bad mood with just a few cheerful words and her sunny smile. Brian especially began to look about for her when his work had been especially hard, because just a few moments with his “little Suzie”, as he called her, made any sort of trouble seem far away and not so important. And Katy at last ceased to worry about the sort of life her little girl would have in the world they lived in, because anyone could see that nothing in the world could bring her down, and very little would even dare to try it. And so, while she never knew for sure whether she had seen Mathilde in the nursery that night or if she had dreamed it all, many of her stories to Suzie began, “There was once a little girl who had a fairy godmother…”

Posted by cyclopatra at April 15, 2004 10:17 PM