Chapter 24 #2
“Right,” said Auntie Vicky. “The thing is… Could you… Look, I’m sorry to ask, but could you possibly not?”
“Not?” said Mum. “You mean…?”
“Not put anything on Facebook about Furbert. Like, nothing at all? I’m sorry to ask, but… God, it’s so ridiculous, but it’s just Liam, you know? You and he are still friends on Facebook, aren’t you?”
“Ye-es,” said Mum, confused. Liam was Auntie Vicky’s ex-boyfriend.
He’d lost a dog, a lovely ten-year-old English setter called Stilton, nine months after I moved up.
“Vick, Liam will expect me to post about Furbs on the first anniversary of his death. He’d think it was weird if I didn’t.
If you’re worrying it would be an insensitive reminder that his dog also died—”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Good, because grieving dog-parents feel better when they can console each other—”
“Sal, I don’t have time to—” A long sigh came from Auntie Vicky, who has at least three Blitz Your To-Do List planners on the go at any given time and, as a result, has almost no time to do any of the things on her endlessly duplicated lists.
“Okay, listen,” she said. “I said nothing at the time because I didn’t want to have to deal with your judgment as well as Liam’s, but one of the reasons he gave for leaving me was that I didn’t respond to Stilton dying like I would have to the death of a human. ”
“Oh.” Mum’s eyes widened.
Well, well, well, I thought but didn’t say.
“I’m sorry if you felt the same about my reaction to Furbert’s death, by the way.”
“I didn’t,” said Mum. “You sent a beautiful bunch of flowers. I was really grateful. So was Furbs, in spirit.”
True, I thought—but what nastiness was about to come at me down the pipeline? Something highly suboptimal, that was for sure. One thing they teach us in Level 2 is that deciding to make an issue, years later, out of something you originally kept quiet about is a sign of terrible character.
“Yes, I did,” Auntie Vicky said. “That’s right: I did send flowers.
” Her voice had an unmistakable pitch of “So now please do as I ask” about it.
“Look, Sal, I don’t want to ask you to block Liam on Facebook.
I know you’d lose sleep about seeming unfriendly to a fellow…
pet-grief sufferer. But here’s the problem.
If you do a big, emotional post about Furbert, I just know Liam will think: ‘Vicky’s so much worse a human than her lovely sister.
How come Sally can have so much love for a dog while Vicky’s so hard-hearted?
’ And…I just don’t want him having a chance to think that, because I’m not hard-hearted and I wasn’t about Stilton.
I tried to be supportive when he died, I really did.
I just… I’m sorry, but I don’t think some dog dying is as big a tragedy as the kind of suffering millions of people have to endure every day. ”
Some dog… There was no mistaking the dismissiveness.
“Oh,” Mum said again. Do NOT mention any of the boring causes that you’re obsessed with, half of which are on the other side of the world and literally nothing to do with you or me, she snapped at Vicky in her imagination.
I don’t give the slightest shit about any of them compared to my adorable baby Furbs, who I lost.
(I know it’s “whom.” We’re taught grammar in Level 2. But no one thinks “whom” inside their own head, not even the poshest person.)
“Once, only once, I made the mistake of saying to Liam that asking for two weeks’ compassionate leave from work might be viewed by some—his boss in particular—as taking the piss, when it’s just a pet that’s died and not an actual family member,” Vicky went on.
“It didn’t go down well, and I apologized.
Look, Sal, the point is, whatever you were going to put on Facebook, Liam would take one look at it and decide you’re the good sister and I’m the bad one.
And he’d comment on your post, of course, and express his deepest sympathies, and then I’d have to read the conversation between the two of you in the comments, about your loss and his loss, and your pain and his pain.
I know I could choose not to read it, but I wouldn’t be able to help it.
And Liam would be way too tactful to say, ‘And your insensitive sister never understood’ but he’d be thinking it every single second, I promise you, and then he’d wonder if you were right and I was wrong in other ways too. ”
Mum frowned. “Vick, I’m happily married and Liam knows that perfectly well. If you’re implying—”
“I’m not saying he’d decide he fancies you!
” Vicky muttered something under her breath.
“Oh, never mind. Do what you want. He’s a knobhead anyway.
Why should I care what a knobhead thinks?
I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t notice or care if the world’s burning to the ground as long as he and his dog are okay.
Maybe I’ll close down my Facebook account and leave altogether.
I don’t have time to do it properly—not anymore. ”
Vicky was sounding agitated, so Mum said, “I won’t do a Furbert anniversary post if you don’t want me to.”
“You won’t? Sal, you’re a star!”
“It’s fine. No worries at all.” Remember, Mum had been trained to believe that her upsetting others mattered far more than them upsetting her, even when they were in the wrong.
“I’ll ask the kids to put something up on Instagram instead,” she told Vicky.
“The Facebook post isn’t the only thing I’ve got planned.
We’re having a special commemorative dinner at—”
“Thanks so much, Sal. Seriously. I owe you one. Bye!”
“I guess that’s that, then,” Mum said once it was just the two of us again.
She stopped choosing photos, blinked away a few tears, and decided she’d use the story to entertain Dad later—since who could fail to laugh in the face of such blatant absurdity?
(Do you get it yet? Absurdity impediment alert!)
“Oh, Furbles,” Mum breathed. “Furbles-Burbles. Your Auntie Vicky’s a bonkers loon. I mean, talk about overthinking things.”
Later, she told Dad, “It makes zero sense. Completely irrational! As if it hasn’t already occurred to Liam, probably hundreds of times, that I’m obviously so much more of an animal lover than Vicky.
Like, what new thought might have passed through his mind that hasn’t before if I’d been allowed to do the post I wanted to do? ”
“Nothing,” Dad said. “Do it.”
“It’s fine.” Mum repeated her favorite self-deserting mantra. “Ree or Tobes can do it on Instagram. And I promised Vicky I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t have done that, should I, if it meant that much to me?” she said thoughtfully.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Dad agreed.
“But I mean, you’ve got to marvel at the sheer craziness of it.” Mum laughed. “I only worked out later that there was a lot more to it—stuff Vicky either isn’t aware of or wasn’t willing to say.”
“Like what?” Dad asked.
“You’re going to say this is pure invention on my part and accuse me of being as insanely overthinky as her, but I know her so well that I know I’m right. She didn’t want me posting on Facebook because she’d have felt she had to leave a comment, wouldn’t she? Her dog-nephew’s first anniversary…”
Dad winced, fearing Mum was about to say the words “Rainbow Bridge,” which she wasn’t because she knew how he felt about that; in any case, she had no desire to trivialize my ascension to a higher realm with imagery that was both childish and inaccurate.
“If I’d posted about Furbs, Vicky would have felt obliged to comment.
Lots of people who are Facebook friends with us both would notice if she didn’t and think it odd.
And especially, Mum would notice. She’d say something like, ‘I think it’d be nice, darling, wouldn’t it?
I think Sally would appreciate it if you wrote something.
’ And Vicky wouldn’t be able to stand that, having always been the good, approved-of daughter, but she’d be trapped in a double bind, because if she did comment, Liam would see it and think, ‘Oh, right, I see. Expressing your sympathies so sensitively when it’s your sister’s dog, but you’ve never left a single comment on any of my posts about Stilton. ’ That’s what’s really going on.”
Dad had the confused expression of one who had been left behind at either the second or third permutation. If Ree or Tobes had been there, they’d have accused Mum of “deeping it” in a way that was unwarranted.
I’m a better listener than Dad by far, and I thought Mum’s point was inspired.
The trouble was, it was also incorrect, which I’d known for some time—from as soon as I’d reached Level 2, in fact, nearly a year earlier.
One of the billions of new tidbits of knowledge allocated to me in Level 2 was the real explanation for Auntie Vicky’s Facebook intervention, which was this:
Vicky had told Liam many times that her sister, Sally, was unfairly negative about their father—who’d had his moments, sure, but was fundamentally a kind, loving, good parent that any child would be lucky to have.
Sally’s perspective on him was ridiculously harsh.
She hadn’t even been to visit his grave since he died—not once.
How awful was that, after all he’d done for her, everything he’d given her?
That was what Liam had heard so far, and Vicky was confident it hadn’t yet occurred to him to wonder if Sally might be as more right than Vicky about dads as she was about dogs. If one day it should occur to him that there was another possibility…
Vicky found the idea unpalatable. No one must ever be allowed to wonder if her sister might have had a bad dad, in case that made it impossible for her, Vicky, to have had a good one.
It’s fascinating when you reach Level 2 and get to explore all the connections and explanations you couldn’t see before. Here are a few iffers, as we call them, that blew my mind when I first discovered them:
If Mum hadn’t felt forced to wait till Granddad died before getting her first dog…
If she hadn’t been too scared to say, “Actually, Dad, I’m a grown-up now and this is my house, not yours. If I want to get a dog, I’ll get one, and you’ll just have to deal with it”…
If the innocence and innate goodness of dogs hadn’t felt to Mum like the opposite of whatever dark, scary thing lay at the heart of Granddad, never properly acknowledged by anyone but Mum herself…
If the world and people in it hadn’t kept socking her with the message that her desires, needs, and feelings mattered so much less than what everyone else wanted…
If she’d tolerated and smiled her way through substantially or even slightly less unreasonable and uncaring treatment in her first fifty-three years, so that she was much further away from her “Enough!” point when Detective Connor Chantree turned up at her door…
If even one of the above-listed “ifs” had applied, the Lambert-Gavey War would not have ended in the gruesome and shocking way it did.
Of course, it’s only in Level 3 that what happened at the end was shocking, which ought to cheer up victims and perpetrators alike.
From a Level 2 perspective, nothing went wrong.
Everything worked out beautifully, as it always does in True Time (nothing in that compartment is left to chance, you’ll be glad to hear), and I’m proud to have been part of the team that made it happen.