curiouser and curiouser

October 2081 - Nathan Lind is 31, "Ally" is 28, Bianca is 4, Julia is 2. (Maxwell Shaw is 35.) Last update, December 2078.

He calls her Ally now, five years and two kids after their wedding. Eight years after they'd met. She never had a nickname before, but she likes it. It makes her feels special to him. And special to everyone since it's caught on. She is Ally to everyone now - unlike Allegra, who was shy and lonesome, Ally is warm and soft and the grounding force for this little Lind family.

Ally always thought she wanted three children, but now after having two, she thinks they might be finished - or at least finished for now. Of course, if a surprise happened sometime down the line, she would gladly welcome it.

But they've filled up their little starter home, and can't really afford to move into a bigger one right now. They don't really want to move anyway - they love this location, just across the street from the metropark and walking-distance to the rec center. They are approved by the zoning committee to add a couple feet to the back of the house - a couple feet was all they were allowed, you know, we have to keep up appearances here in Lakeside Heights. It's a small addition, but it makes just enough difference.

Ally was hoping she might get Bianca to take ballet lessons this fall, but she's shocked to find that Bianca is talking all sports instead. She and Bianca are almost nothing alike. She's just so un-girly, and beyond the age anymore where her mother can just dress her in bows and frills.

Nathan says, "Let the girl play tennis if she wants to play tennis!" Ally knows it's silly, maybe, but might this have something to do with how they decorated her nursery in blue? She swore she was having a boy, turns out her eldest would just be a tomboy. They even cut her hair short rather than fight with her about keeping it untangled.

And Bianca loves her hat! She even goes to sleep in it.

Heather Thompson walks by sometimes, since she lives just two houses over. She and Ally really tried to make a go of a friendship. They tried many times since each of them moved to Brant Street in Lakeside Heights. They have so much in common! They both graduated from LCU in the same year, they're both so smart, both wives and mothers. Could it really be possible they have nothing in common to talk about? Well, they've been trying to find some common ground for four years now, and still no luck.

Bianca started preschool this fall. The four year-olds go in at noon and ride the school bus home in the afternoons. She tries to read what her report card says, but she can't really read that well yet.

Maybe literature isn't her forte (her mother loves to read, so of course it wouldn't be), but Bianca is proving to be quite dexterous. She likes to build block houses, and says she'll build real ones when she grows up. We'll see how that works out, given that architects generally need to go to college. Maybe she'll refuse college just because her mother wants it for her. Ally would love nothing more than to see all of her children graduate.

They thought Bianca would turn out so smart, but she managed to get a D in preschool! How is that possible? Ally doesn't know what to tell her. She's at a complete loss! She says, "It's not that hard, honey, just study your colors, you only need to know twelve of them!"

Really.

Nathan's sister is always talking about her very highly-strung complicated relationship with their mother, all the pushing and pulling, the expectations and disappointments, and Ally can understand that now. She understands completely, but she didn't expect to see it so soon. Already? Is this where it starts?

Ally is running her mother-in-law's flower shop now, and stops in whenever she can. She's had kind of a rough start here. It's quite a bit more demanding than she'd expected. The store is popular and busy, and she's not able to make all of the arrangements Meadow was, and Meadow is too busy to really show her the ropes - she's been tossed in at the deep end. She'll have to practice a little more maybe, and spend less time making curtains.

She hired some more help. Maia has been with the store for a long time, but Vicky is new - she seems like a nice girl, but a little bitter sometimes.

The weirdest thing happened one Saturday afternoon, and it all happened while Ally was in the bathroom. It was a week or two before Halloween, so not entirely unusual to see someone dressed up as a witch, but what was unusual was that the sky started to pour down with a blinding white light! She swore the sun must have gone supernova or something!

She, um, "finished" in the bathroom as quickly as she could, all the while listening to her customers outside the door chattering wildly about it. They'd never seen such a thing before!

But she had to wash her hands, of course. And by the time she emerged from the bathroom, the light was gone, the customers had stopped talking, resumed browsing the flowers, and everything seemed back to normal.

Also while she was in the bathroom, some odd pug-nosed dude wanted to tell her that she'd won the Best of the Best award. Maia says, "Wait, you don't even want to tell her in person?"

He says, "Eh, no big deal."

Nathan does a little extra work from home some nights. Funny enough, for being a top lawyer, they're kind of broke right now. He is a top lawyer, but what that really means is that he is the second-best lawyer in Lake County. Everyone knows Claire Bradshaw is the most experienced and talented lawyer around, and honestly, he's lucky to pick from her scraps.

So after paying their mortgage payment and buying Bianca some school clothes... and building the new extension, and splurging on backyard toys... and their upcoming anniversary date, and a pretty new dress for Ally to wear... okay, maybe they're not so great at saving their money! The point being, they don't have much of it left.

So luckily, Grandma is happy to spend some time (for free!) with the girls, because Nathan and Ally just reached their fifth wedding anniversary last month and they want to go out and celebrate.

They have reservations at Deppiesse's Lakefront Bistro, which is expensive, but they figure it will be their one treat to themselves for this anniversary. That, and Ally had her hair done at Jolie, Jolie... and Nathan bought some new shoes, and a new tie. You know, he has plenty of ties, being a lawyer and all, but he wanted this one to be special...

But before their anniversary date can even begin, someone stops them in the lobby. Maxwell says, "Nate, how the hell are 'ya, it's been forever!"

Ally doesn't know this man, and she didn't know anyone called her husband "Nate." She thought she knew all of his friends, but maybe she was wrong. She would guess he might be a work colleague, but this man doesn't seem like a lawyer. It's silly though, Nathan is a lawyer and he must know hundreds of people she's never heard of.

"This is my wife, Ally," Nathan says.

"Good for you, Man. I mean it, you know, after everything..." Maxwell turns to Ally. "Hi, I'm Max," he says.

Ally shrinks back into her skin. This man has quite the presence, a kind of charm that feels slick and dangerous as a snake. "Nice to meet you," she says. She whispers to Nathan, "Don't forget our reservations."

Neither of them is sure who makes the move first, but somehow Nathan steps ahead in front of her, or maybe it was Ally who tucked herself safely behind her husband's shoulder. This arrangement is mutually desired. Nathan chats briefly with Maxwell, an exchange of small talk, and a brief history of the past fifteen years. And then, as Ally had reminded him, Nathan says, "We've got a table waiting. It's good to see you, Max. Tell your mom I said Hi."

They get a nice table in front, by the piano and fireplace. Nathan just wanted to let Ally know about his x-rays coming back. He had a little ankle injury from jogging that turned out not to be fractured after all. Their waitress is a little touchy about discussing medical matters at the dinner table. "Don't you know how rude that is?" she says.

"Nathan, just order, honey," Ally says.

Ally finally asks, after they've settled into their meal, "So, who is he?"

Nathan tries to be funny, the goof-ball that he is, and just brushes it off. "He's just an old friend from high school," he says.

"You never mentioned him," Ally says.

"Okay, well, he wasn't exactly my friend," Nathan says. "He's Anjali's brother."

Oh, Anjali. Ally remembers that name, vaguely. She was Nathan's high school girlfriend, but he never talks about her. "Did you guys have some big break up or something?"

"No, we didn't," he says. And a wave of seriousness washes over Nathan's face that Ally has honestly never seen before. "She was sick," he says. "For a long time, and then she died."

Ally says, "She died?"

She says it again, trying to process the information, "She died? That's a huge deal."

"Well, yeah," Nathan says. "It kind of sucked."

"Did you love her?"

Nathan isn't sure there's a right answer for this. "She was my first girlfriend, yeah, I guess I loved her."

"And you... you know, did things with her?"

"Well, yeah, I wasn't about to let the poor girl die having never experienced..."

"That's not funny," she says. Ally pictures her husband on this girl's death bed, her last kiss, her last love, her last everything. That's a huge deal!

"Listen," he says. "We were kids. I wasn't going to marry her or anything. But you know, I didn't want her to die either!"

"It's our anniversary, do you really want to talk about this?"

"No," she says. "You're right."

So they have their anniversary date, and Ally tries to push it into the background. They order wine, they get up to dance. Patrick likes it when people dance to his music.

It's a nice evening, despite bombshells and everything.

Ally doesn't know if all these questions are good for them, or for him, but it's just so intriguing. Her husband lead this whole life before her that she never knew about. It's not like with his college girlfriend, Lou. Ally met Lou once. Ally was actually the reason he and Lou broke up.

But this girl, Anjali, she will never meet. There was never any resolution. There was never even a break-up. She doesn't want to pry any more, because maybe he wants to forget. Would he have stayed with her, if she hadn't died? Maybe it's pointless to even wonder.

The thing of it is, he really did think about Anjali for a long time. He really did love her, in the way a seventeen year-old boy does for the first time. Maybe that loss even cursed his relationship with his previous girlfriend, Lou. For years he thought about all the things Anjali would never get to do. She would never go to college, she would never get to grow up, have a career, or get married and have children some day.

He's come to peace with all of it by now though, and he can say that with confidence. When he kisses Ally, she is the only woman on his mind.

The next day, Nathan is spending a lazy Sunday morning home with the girls, and Ally tells him she's headed into the flower shop. She feels ridiculous because that is absolutely not where she's going.

It took her some time to find it, but she did. "Anjali Shaw, born April 2050, died January 2067. Beautiful and much loved daughter and sister, gone from us far too soon."

She was a pretty girl. Ally knows this because someone has been here recently, and placed her picture. Nathan has a type you know, he always has. The quiet dark-haired, sad looking girls, which is what she was when he met her, like Lou, and like Anjali, like he's been trying to replace her ever since.

She's reading way too much into this, she hopes. Maybe her imagination has just run away with her, fallen down the rabbit hole and trying to wake up.

When Ally gets home, she needs to talk to him, and she can't avoid this any longer. She wishes she could just look into his brain and see what he's really thinking.

She should know her husband better by now. Inside Nathan's brain is really much more simple than she's making out. And she's probably better off not knowing all the crude jokes, silly frat-boy humor, and e-mails from George McCarthy about the hot little hippie tart he's sleeping with.

"I can't stop thinking about this girl," she says. "It's driving me crazy."

Nathan will agree with that!

It's laughable to him. "You're thinking about Anjali? I was thinking you'd have a crush on Max, all the ladies like him."

He puts on his serious face - not the one she's never seen before, but the one she sees all the time which means he is trying to act like a grown-up. "She's gone, Ally, what do you want to accomplish here? If she hadn't died, then I still would have met you in college and maybe I'd be dumping her instead of Lou."

"Okay," Ally says.

"Oh, and I remembered," Nathan says. "You have kind of met Max before, in passing. Remember when we went to that old club on the west side, and you..." Nathan leans in and whispers filthy things into her ear! Oh my, how he makes her blush in front of her children!

Julia is thinking, Some attention down here please!

Well, one mystery solved, another one arises. Someone's been dumping their trash can over all month, and leaving garbage all over the yard.

Mail man says, "Dude, somebody doesn't like you!"

***

notes: Motherhood has softened her considerably, and Allegra will be known as Ally from now on. And I am SO seeing echoes of Meadow and Aurora in Ally and Bianca - Ally is turning into her mother-in-law!!! Well, don't they say boys grow up to marry their mothers? Nathan always was a bit of a momma's boy.

So Nathan really did run into Maxwell at the restaurant, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to drive Ally up a wall while simultaneously working in some 'hood history. You've seen Anjali before, she's one of the dead girls hung on Nina's wall ;)

*** outtakes ***

No, Ally, you're going to want to stay away from Maxwell.

And awww, Lucy's grandma came in. Tosha says, "My first grandbaby with a job!" Lucy looks nervous, lol!

And what was Maxwell doing at Deppiesse's Lakefront Bistro anyway???

A "business meeting" at the bar, with one questionable dude, and another pretty-boy-looking dude who doesn't quite know what he's gotten himself into! Maxwell says, "I can have you set up as fast as you can flutter those pretty eyelashes! You'll be put away for life, and that's no empty threat!"

Shortly after, Maxwell sends questionable-looking thug out to do his dirty work. Pretty boy is brave, and holds his head high thinking, "It's been a nice thirty years on the planet, I'll miss it dearly."

Wow, I wonder if Ashlee knows what kind of business transactions are going on in her restaurant?

Sheesh, Alon, what are you asking to be next or something?

Knock him off, Max, we don't mind! ;)