For Want of a Butler

Story Notes:

            Type: drama, angst

            Rating: PG

            Length: 1685 words

 

 

For Want of a Butler

 

I couldn’t blame the butler.  The butler was dead.

 

Alfred was one of those old-style butlers.  He had a precise, cultured voice with a British accent, the kind of voice that made my pinky finger stand at attention while I balanced a teacup between thumb and index finger and prayed desperately that neither cup nor fingers would break under the strain.  He had an immaculate appearance, the kind of appearance that made me feel sorry for the starch.  He had been part of our family for years and knew exactly who was allowed entrance into the house and who was not.  He had such perfect manners that the refusal to enter seemed a compliment, and those who were turned away left with a smile.

 

Alfred had only one flaw.  He died every day at the same time.  So did the cook, the upstairs maid, and the chauffeur.  Every android on the premises died for that one hour while their batteries recharged.

 

One day, my life changed during that hour.

 

You’ve heard the saying, “For want of a nail, the war was lost”?  In my case, for want of a butler, Aunt Margaret got in.

 

Mother and I were taking tea in the second parlor, our usual pastime until the androids revived.  We didn’t expect company.  Visiting simply wasn’t done while butlers, maids, and chauffeurs were out of commission.  It was the unwritten law of fashionable society.  Aunt Margaret wasn’t fashionable.  I wasn’t sure she even qualified as society.

 

I’d only met Mother’s younger sister a few times in my life.  She breezed through our family reunions every third year like a hummingbird, darting from cousin to uncle to niece, never pausing for more than a hurried greeting and one of her dreaded, less-than-tactful observations.  Aunt Margaret noticed things everyone else pretended to ignore, and she invariably commented on them.  She would point out the run in Mother’s nylons or the fact that the lipstick stain on Uncle Jeff’s collar certainly didn’t match the shade of his wife’s lipstick.

 

On the day she changed my life, Aunt Margaret flounced into the parlor wearing a fairy’s dress of spring green and sunshine yellow pieces layered like flower petals.  She also worse a gypsy’s hoop earrings, a hippie’s collection of multicolored bead necklaces, a teenager’s red sneakers, and a toddler’s mass of pale gold ringlets.  All in all, a fairly typical outfit for Aunt Margaret.

 

“Ah!  Tea!  I knew I’d be on time,” she said in her cheerful chirp as she plopped into an armchair.  “Sarah, child, be a dear and pour your auntie a cup.  Heavens, Lyddie, don’t scowl so.  You’re wrinkled enough as it is.”

 

I didn’t think Mother’s spine could become any stiffer, but she drew herself up with a sharp intake of air and glared at Aunt Margaret.  “What do you want, Maggie?”

 

“Can’t I come by for a friendly visit?  Thank you, sweetie.”  She took the cup from me, and instead of sipping politely, she chugged the tea down in four noisy gulps.  Mother winced when the empty cup clattered against the saucer.  “I thought we could chitchat for a while.  Wring the grapes off the family gossip vine.  Pretend we care what everyone else is doing these days.  No?  What a pity.  You were far more interesting before you married, Lyddie.”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

I recognized that certain tone in Mother’s voice, the one she used when I was about to commit an unpardonable sin, like crossing my knees in public or drying my hands on the embroidered towels.

 

Aunt Margaret raised one eyebrow.  “Don’t be snippy with me, Lydia.  You know why I’m here, and if you want to ignore the pleasantries, then so we shall.”

 

“I won’t allow you to take Sarah.”

 

“Pishposh.  As if you could stop it.”

 

Another unwritten law of fashionable society governed children’s behavior during adult conversations.  Children were to remain silent unless directly addressed.  I promptly decided against fashion.  “Take me?  Where?  Why?”

 

“Hush, Sarah,” Mother said.

 

“Don’t hush her,” Aunt Margaret scolded.  “It’s not her fault you haven’t done your duty and explained everything properly.”

 

Mother paled, except for two red splotches along her cheekbones.  According to all the stories I’ve heard, Mother had been such a perfect, well-behaved angel that neither childhood nor adolescence could corrupt her, so the scolding must have come as a shock.

 

Aunt Margaret reached out and patted my knees.  “Sarah, dear, I’ve come to take you to a special school.”

 

“I’m already enrolled in school.  I start Saint Veronica’s Refining School for Young Ladies next week.”

 

At that piece of news, Aunt Margaret cast Mother a look of withering scorn.  “Really, Lydia.  What were you thinking?”

 

“Saint Veronica’s is a respected establishment.”

 

“It won’t do at all.  They’ll have her believing she’s demon-possessed before the month is done.”

 

“She hasn’t shown any signs--”

 

The bead necklaces jangled as Aunt Margaret laughed.  “What utter nonsense!  One has only to look at her to see the signs.”

 

In unison, they turned to stare at me.  I wasn’t sure what they saw or even what they looked for.  I did a mental inventory of my appearance.  Despite my climb up the oak tree earlier that afternoon, trying to help a neighborhood cat down, my hair was neat, though not as stylish as Mother’s since I didn’t have the patience for an hour of hairdressing every morning.  I’d torn my dress, but I’d arranged the skirt folds to cover the tear.  I’d polished the scuff out of my black leather shoes, and I was using my left arm as little as possible so Mother wouldn’t notice the scratch I’d procured from elbow to wrist.  I wasn’t fashionable, but I was at least presentable, and Mother often said that was the best she could hope for.

 

“Oh, yes.”  Aunt Margaret scrutinized my face.  “She’s started.  It’s there, in her eyes.  Don’t you see it, Lydia?”

 

“No,” Mother answered curtly, but her voice wavered.

 

Aunt Margaret’s gaze didn’t leave mine.  “You have started, haven’t you, Sarah?  You’re TrueDreaming.”

 

The word triggered the Dream.  Suddenly I was no longer in the second parlor, drinking tea and pretending to be fashionable.  I was somewhere else.  Wherever I looked, a scorched plain stretched before me.  Black, dead trees forked toward a reddening sky.  Steam hissed and escaped from cracks in the ground.  The air was hot and stank of sulfur.  My hair clung to my face in moist, sickly strands.  Nothing lived in that land.  Not even hope.

 

“Come back,” a voice whispered from faraway and long ago.

 

The TrueDream left me.  Or I left the Dream.  I shivered in the cold, herbal-scented air of the second parlor.  My skirt was wet, soaked in the tea from the cup I had dropped in my lap.  I felt dizzy and weak.  Aunt Margaret looked shaken as well.

 

“A very strong TrueDreamer at that.”  When she turned to Mother, she was no longer my frivolous aunt, but some wise and ancient crone.  “So, Lydia, the Gift you forsook, the Gift you called curse, has passed to your daughter and rooted itself so deeply that she can never renounce it.”

 

Mother pursed her lips and looked away.

 

“What was that?” I asked in a whisper.  I’d been having nightmares for the past month, so real and vivid that I felt myself inhabiting them, but they had never bothered me in the light of day.  “What happened?”

 

“The TrueDream calls you to your future, Sarah,” Aunt Margaret said.  “To a place and time where you will be needed.”

 

I thought of the dead land and shivered again.  It wasn’t a place I wanted to revisit, in the future or any other time.  “It was horrible.  Did you—did you see it too?”

 

“No one can see another’s TrueDreams.  The school where I’ll take you has Guides, people who can teach you to understand your TrueDream and help you fulfill the destiny that calls you.”

 

Mother folded her arms across her chest and glared at Aunt Margaret.  “She’s not going.”

 

“Lyddie, please.  Be reasonable.  Without training, she will go mad, just as Father did.”  Aunt Margaret gave Mother a look that was both sad and loving.  “You cannot keep her in this perfect world you’ve created.  You can’t protect her forever.”

 

Mother closed her eyes.  Her jaw twitched and then hardened.  Her entire face stilled and became stone.  When she opened her eyes, nothing remained that I recognized as Mother.  She was a stranger, cold and distant.  She looked at me without a spark of compassion.

 

“If you choose this, you will not return.”  Her heartless gaze slid to Aunt Margaret.  “Neither of you.  I wash my hands of this nonsense.  I renounce it.  I renounce it again.  I renounce it thrice.  So let it end.”

 

The air shuddered.  Something I couldn’t see or understand slammed into place with a finality that stole my breath.  Mother stood, ramrod-straight, and stalked from the parlor without a backward glance.

 

I wanted to run after her.  I wanted her arms around me, her voice whispering in my ear that what I had seen was only a nightmare.  I wanted to stay in this idyllic childhood Mother had given me, where everything was safe and familiar and comfortable.  My legs trembled with the desire to rise from my chair, but I didn’t move.

 

The TrueDream had changed me.  It had stripped away the pretenses and revealed the charade of my life.  I couldn’t be the person Mother wanted.  I couldn’t live her life.  I wasn’t fashionable.  I didn’t like society.  Mother’s world was not mine, and I had always known that.

 

I swallowed around the lump in my throat.  “I have to leave, don’t I?”

 

“Yes,” Aunt Margaret whispered.  She touched my knee and gave me the same look of loving sadness she had given Mother.  “I am sorry.”

“I’m scared.”

 

Unlike Mother, Aunt Margaret made no reassurances and offered no promises.  “I know, Sarah.  I know.”

 

Ten minutes later, Alfred the butler came back to life.  Aunt Margaret and I were already gone.

 

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