Time is a Fickle Lover

Mabel glanced at the large white-faced clock hanging high on the wall across the narrow hallway. Twenty past. The clock reminded her of the ones that hung high above the door in every classroom in her secondary school. Those clocks seemed to bend time, the large black hands decelerating as soon as the teachers would begin their lessons, the red second hand ticking agonizingly slow, taunting her above the exit door she so desperately wanted to run through.

Forty minutes. Her pulse quickened briefly. Deep breaths. Slow deep breaths. There. Her heart slowed, her panic passed and she searched her mind for thoughts that would help her to escape this wait.  

Images of her two boys floated through her thoughts. Jack was nine years old and her oldest. Max was seven. Two boys. She wanted so much to have a girl. She spent countless nights under the sheets with her husband trying for that girl after the boys came but nothing ever caught again. All those wasted nights of Bart’s rough hands chafing and burning her skin as he grabbed and poked her for his own pleasure.  

Mabel loved her two boys to the point of obsession and she had tried everything as she raised them to teach them to be intelligent and well-mannered. But they had too much of Bart’s genes in them. There was nothing she could do to stop them from becoming mini Barts. And that had started to make her sick to her stomach; to see those beautiful babies turn into fat, lazy slobs like their father.  

When Jack was five years old, Mabel had looked far and wide for a school that was a better class of people for him. Oh, there were private schools. That would have been the best option for Jack. A school like that would lift him out from the low-income life and send him on his way to a life far far away from that of a grease monkey. But they were far too expensive.

Mabel did, however find a new school in a new subdivision being built on the outskirts of town. Developers were building half a million dollar homes filled with nice, middle-income families whose kids played sports after school and were picked up by their moms and brought home to a home cooked meal where everyone sat around the dinner table and laughed and discussed their days. The fathers never drank, except the occasional beer on Saturdays, when they all gathered around the tv for snacks and a football game.  

This was the school she envisioned would be just right for Jack. It would be a far drive across town every day and they only had one car. Mabel begged and pleaded with Bart for weeks to let Jack go to that school. But every time she mentioned it, Bart got angrier and angrier until the last time she ever mentioned the school; and the first time she got a broken arm.

She wondered if time on those giant clocks slowed for children in the good schools while they sat in their classrooms?  

Time! Her eyes flew to the clock. That damn clock! Larger now. Looming closer. Half past. Breathe. Slowly.  

Her eyes closed as moving pictures of that last summer played in her mind. The time when they were all gathered at their cottage on Lake Huron. She so loved it there. Her grandfather had built that tiny, two bedroom summer cabin when he had first married her grandmother. As the family grew, the cabin never did but this became part of the charm. Her father would laugh hard as he recalled stories of himself and the three oldest siblings all jockeying for the best of four bunk beds, and drawing straws to see who had to sleep with the youngest.  

The cabin remained the same size as the family grew again. This time it was her adult parents, and aunts and uncles who would jokingly jockey for the beds and she and her twin sister Jane and her many cousins would sleep on the living room floor in sleeping bags, telling ghost stories and giggling until the early hours of morning.  

But that last summer in the tiny old cottage two years ago was the best summer ever. She secretly coined the long hot days of August ‘the summer of freedom’. The boys were old enough that they could play in the sandy yard unsupervised alongside her sister’s kids Carly, who had just turned thirteen and the twins, John and George, who were ten. She and her sister had planned their children to all be close in age so they could grow up together and share much in common. 

A particular day from that summer came to mind. The kids were building sandcastles and splashing in the surf with Bart. Mabel and Jane sat on large beach towels and sipped on ice teas secretly spiked with vodka, not that they had to be secret about it, the ladies shared drinks quite a bit; a beer in the afternoon, wine with dinner, but it was only ten in the morning and Mabel just didn’t want to catch any flak from Bart. Bart already thought she drank too much when she hung out with her sister and the last thing Mabel wanted to do was upset the apple cart. Bruises fade, but the memories don’t. It had been going on one year that she’d done anything to anger him and she meant to keep it that way.

“We have to renovate Mabel. The cabin is falling down. Our kids are sleeping on the floor for Christ’s sake.”  

This conversation was getting old. Jane had been after Mabel to agree for years now.

“We slept on the floor Jane. It was good enough for us so I just can’t see why it can’t be good enough for them.”  

“Anyways, have you looked hard at our kitchen lately? There’s no storage for food so its piled up on the table to keep the ants away. We have to eat with our food in our laps. And that fridge is fifty years old. We’re living like animals!”

Then don’t come, Mabel thought. “It has charm,” she insisted.  

“Charm my ass. It’s dilapidated and Angelo says he won’t come anymore. He’s not comfortable here.” Angelo was Jane’s husband. The perfect man. He was handsome, wealthy, made beautiful children but most importantly, he never hit Jane. Mabel thought he probably never even raised his voice with her. And every time she saw him she couldn’t help but think only if he had seen her first, and not her identical twin. Her entire life would be a dream come true. 

“You told me he was working,” said Mabel. She was so disappointed when Jane told her Angelo wasn’t joining them this summer. She was so looking forward to spending time with him. He was always so nice to her. And he smelled so good.

“I did. Because I wasn’t ready to have this conversation at that point. But I think this is a good time. We inherited the cabin because none of our cousins wanted it. Because its a piece of shit. But Angelo says we have a little gold mine here, sitting on the edge of the lake like it is. He says with a few hundred thousand, we can build something with tons of bedrooms. There will be enough space for everyone.”

Mabel choked. “Come on Jane! We don’t have that kind of cash and you know it. Bart is a mechanic. We can barely afford our mortgage some days.”

“Well thats not my fault is it? Just because you made some poor decisions in life, it doesn’t mean I have to suffer, does it?”

Jane was glaring at her, like she had more and more lately, with those squinty eyes that made her feel so small. Jane poured two more teas from the jug in the cooler beside her and slipped the mickey from her designer beach bag being careful to add vodka in a way Bart couldn’t see.

Jane’s eyes softened, “Listen. Angelo and I would like to make you a proposition. Please don’t answer right away. I want you to take time, discuss it with Bart.  We would like to buy your half of the cabin. It’s a pretty sweet deal, actually. We will give you $30,000.00 to have your name removed from the deed. Angelo and I will go ahead with the renovations and then you and Bart and the boys will have a free pass to stay in the cottage whenever you’d like. We’ve already made preliminary plans for it, and you would have your own wing. Take all the time you need.”

That conversation stirred deep anger in Mabel and she opened her eyes to remove herself from the memory. Take all the time you need, as if she were simply one of Jane’s real estate clients.

It’s all Jane’s fault. She should never have asked that of her. Making her feel so inferior. Mabel was an equal. They were identical twins for Christ’s sake! It was then that her idea had begun to form.

She heard stirrings down the hall, which brought her to look at the clock again. She held her breath and turned her eyes up to that god awful thing hanging across the hall. A quarter to. Mabels chest tightened and her head began to pound. Fucking time.

Footsteps came up the hall and a priest was led into her waiting room. “Time is a fickle lover, don’t you think father? Slows to a turtle’s pace when you aren’t enjoying what it has to offer but then zips right through any good stuff there might be.“

The priest sat down at the table across from Mabel. “We have a few minutes. Is there anything you’d like to say to god? 

“God? Yeah! Where the hell was he when Angelo saw Jane first? Jane and I were side by side, I was closest to him. And he saw right through me like I didn’t exist and went to Jane. It wasn’t fair! Jane was living my life. My life! And when I saw the opportunity on the boat that day, I took it. She didn’t deserve that life. I was first born. I was the oldest. Her life should have been mine.”

More footsteps coming up the hallway. Mabel began to shake uncontrollably. It was five minutes to midnight. She knew who was coming and what was about to happen.

“It would have been perfect, you know. Angelo would never have known that I slipped into Jane’s role as his wife. I would have two perfect children, my own car and bank account. Oh, the boys would have survived without me. They’d be happy with their father. Three peas in a pod, they are. I did, you know, have them all fooled. And it would’ve been perfect except for that damn broken arm Bart gave me.”

“Yes, I read about this part in the papers,” said the priest. “Your sister was married to a osteopathic surgeon and he figured the ruse out pretty quickly. God works in wondrous ways.”

The cell door opened. “It’s time, Mabel Post. Please stand and put your hands behind your back.” Cuffed and shackled, Mabel Post was led down the long hall toward the heavy steel door at the end. And as she made her way toward her fate, voices rose up from every cell of death row. “Dead woman walking.”