It was not supposed to be like this.
Ally pictured her future as a mother as being very happy with long trips pushing her child through a stroller in the park and cuddling with an infant in her arms. She did not foresee two little girls who demanded and controlled her life. William helped her a lot, and he was always willing to be there, but there were a lot of things she did not want him involved in when it came to the girls. One was how she tried to make little ladies out of them, but whatever Collins genes in them made her two beautiful curly raven-haired girls little monsters. Little Lainey suddenly started crying as Ally tried to catch her breath. Her baby girl was crying and she wanted to know why.
"What's the matter, honey?" Ally rushed from one mess in the kitchen to the side of Lainey and dropped to her size to look into her eyes. Little Lainey's big round brown eyes were full of tears as she brushed her brown hair out of her face and whimpered. Her little lips pouted as she looked into her mother's caring face.
"Georgia said I was adopted!!"
Ally turned her head to Georgia Angelique Collins looking contently guilty as she brushed her Barbie's hair. The whole living room floor of their Collinsport home was littered with dressed and unclothed Barbie's in various poses around a pile of clothing and a Barbie sports car.
"I don't know where she gets these ideas." Georgia answered as innocently as possible. Ally just exhaled aggravatedly as she wished for the power to give one of her kids away to an orphanage.
"Didn't I warn you about putting those ideas in your sister's head?" Ally replied.
"I canna remember." Georgia continued brushing her dolls head. Ally meanwhile squeezed Lainey closer to her heart and kissed her. The girl felt secure in her mother's arms as she sniffed and slowly blinked her eyes. She wiped her nose as she kissed her mother.
"Don't listen to your sister, honey." Ally hugged her tightly then turned to her other girl. "And you! One more problem and you will be grounded to your..........." Ally recalled the TV and toys in there. "To the guest room!!"
"Oh, mommy........" Georgia didn't act scared as long as she thought she had her mother in her pocket. From somewhere upstairs, William started screaming as Ally's eyes rolled the other way. What was it now? She lifted herself up to her feet to head upstairs then spun around as William came charging down the stairs without a shirt on. Running barefoot and shirtless in his jeans, he ripped open the refrigerator and grabbed the milk from inside it as he started drinking it down from the jug.
"What's the problem?!!" Ally came running up to him through the living room.
"Not.........Listerine........." He gagged a bit. "Pine-Sol.......... There was Pine-Sol in my Listerine bottle!!"
"Pine Sol??!" Ally froze as she worried about him and then recalled Georgia and Lainey had been playing in the master bathroom in her bedroom. She turned on her heel and looked back to Georgia again.
"Georgia !!!" She screamed. "Did you replace your father's Listerine with something ??!!"
"We were playing mad doctor, mommy." Lainey admitted freely. "We made him more from under the sink !"
"Shuuuut uuuup..........." Georgia tried to silence her sister.
"Bedroom !!!" Ally screamed and pointed to their stairs. The four-year old pixie slammed her doll down and stuck her lip out as she frowned and marched up the stairs. Lainey turned her head to her mommy as she watched the events unfold.
"Are you okay ?" Ally turned back to her husband. He continued gurgling down the milk as he tried to get the taste of the Pine-Sol from his throat. Gulping down the last of the milk, he suddenly gasped and stood a moment trying to calm down.
"Is there anything around here they have not gotten into at one time or another ?" He asked. He turned to drop the plastic milk jug in the trash under the sink. "I'll get more when I go out."
"You wanted kids."
"So did you." William heard the phone ring as he grabbed it a bit faster than Ally. She stroked the back of his head to lend her sympathy to him from nearly getting poisoned. "Hey, Richard." William recognized the person on the phone as Ally's eyes went wide and she started waving her hands. She was not going to Boston !
"Uh, no, Richard........" William looked straight to Ally as he started lying. "She's out right now. Can I take a message ?" Ally grinned and nodded her head assuredly as William pretended to write something in the air.
"I'm writing it down, Richard." William humored him. "Yes, I'll give her the message." He hung up the phone.
"I am not going to Boston again." Ally glared. "I told him when we got married that I'd take random cases, random cases, but he's calling me three to five times a month ! I've barely any time spent with my girls because I'm always on the train back to Boston !"
"I can bring the girls down." William offered.
"No," Ally answered. "I'm a wife and mother, first........" She snuggled grinning to her husband. "And a lawyer second."
Something crashed to the floor over their heads in the spare bedroom.
"Georgia !!!!!" Ally screamed and tore away from her husband as she stormed the back stairs.
PART TWO
There was one little girl in the Collins house who had been grounded for a while. She couldn't visit any of her friends for a few days or venture out of the yard unattended; not that that occurred a lot anyway. Ally just watched her daughter from the kitchen and then turned to peek out the kitchen window as Lainey digging and playing in the sandbox out in back of the house. As Ally turned to prepare lunch for her daughters, she heard a noise from the living room and rushed to see what it was. Georgia had motioned over to the mahogany display case where her unicorn collection was and was trying to remove the big glass one. It was far too heavy for pre-adolescent hands!!
"No !!!" Ally came running as she scooted it back into place.
"But Barbie wants to ride it." Tiny Georgia looked up.
"Honey," Ally knelt by her daughter as they looked at it. The eight pound sculpture was a unicorn carved out of solid glass. Its mane, horn and hooves were of solid karat gold and the light passing through it cast a spectrum of colors over all the other porcelain unicorns in Ally's collection. The big glass one was the centerpeice of the collection as she closed the doors to the display case up again.
"Your father bought that one for me in Paris for a lot of money." Ally explained. "In fact, I was pregnant with you at the time and he gave it to me as a birthday present. It was my first birthday gift as his wife so you can imagine how special it is."
"Can I play with it ?" Georgia looked through the doors to it.
"It's not for playing, it's for looking at." Ally explained.
"Why do you have so much stuff you can't play with ?" Georgia looked at her mother as she tried to figure it out.
"You'll understand when you get older." Ally stood up straight again. "Look, why don't you go play with Lainey outside ? I'll have your lunch in a few minutes."
"Okay," Georgia grinned like a little girl and raced through the kitchen, paused to open the patio doors and then dashed out leaving the doors for her mother to close. The sun was shining and the air wasn't too hot as Ally gave her daughter a look. She closed the doors and watched to make sure she didn't tell her sister any more lies before being satisfied with what she saw.
"You be good to me." Lainey sat in the sandbox and shoveled sand into a pail.
"Ain't I always ?" Georgia grinned her toothless grin.
"Is daddy back yet from the library ?" Lainey looked up with her big brown eyes.
"Is that where he told you he went ?" Georgia pulled on one of the swings as she started to swing from it. "Don't you know where he really goes ?"
"Where ?" Lainey didn't know it yet, but she had just been baited again.
"You know." Georgia swung back and forth a bit.
"Where ?"
"Well," Georgia stopped swinging. "Every time daddy or mommy go away, they go an' help people. You see, they're like superheroes who go around an' save people and things."
"They do ?" Lainey was getting absorbed in the story.
"Uh-huh." Georgia continued lying. "I got super powers too. I can fly and do all sorts of things."
"Show me !!" Lainey stood up excitedly.
"Uhhhh..... I can't." Her big sister looked around a bit. "You see.......... mommy caught me flying in the house yesterday and said I couldn't do it for a while........ but I can show you how !!"
"Show me ! Show me !!"
"Okay," Georgia took her sister by the hand and took her out of the sandbox to the teeter-totter. She made her sister stand on the edge of it touching the ground as she herself moved closer to the one tree growing near it.
"Put your hands up." She told her as Lainey placed her hands up and readied to fly like a comic book superhero.
"Oh boy !!!" Lainey could not see her big sister climbing the tree. Georgia pulled her self up on one limb, stuck her foot in the crotch of the tree as she had done before several times and then lifted up on to another limb. She had to be just a bit higher than her father's head as she looked to the opposite end of the teeter-totter under her.
"Are you ready ?"
"Yeah !!"
"NO !!!" Ally screamed racing from the house as she wondered what would have happened if she had waited another moment to look. She pulled up her baby into her arms as she looked into her other one in the tree.
"What are you doing ?!" Ally glared at Georgia sitting on the same limb above her the kid's tire swing hung on.
"She's teaching me to fly, mommy !!!" Lainey exclaimed excitedly.
"What ??"
"I want to be a superhero just like you, mommy !!" Lainey answered again.
"What ??!" Ally scowled even more confused than before.
"I don't know where she gets this stuff." Georgia announced.
"I think I do !!" Ally moved Lainey to the other side of her hip for a better hold. "And you can sit in that tree until I come back !!!" She growled disgustedly and turned back to the house. Georgia hung on to the tree as she rolled her eyes innocently and looked to the ground nearly six feet below her. She sighed a bit as she enjoyed the tree while she could.
"I don't know how I get myself into these things........" She mumbled.
PART THREE
William Collins wandered into his home with two library books under his right arm and a bag of food in a bag in his left hand. His daughter Lainey had been coloring in her books before the TV as she looked up excitedly and rushed to meet him as she poked first into the bag.
"What'd you bring ?" she cooed excitedly. "Eggplant ? Yuck !!!"
"Thank you, Little Miss Proper," William looked up as Ally came from the back hall. she gave him a kiss as would any dutiful wife and then took the bag for him as William followed with Lainey on her heels.
"I was wondering how much longer you'd be." Ally started unloading as she pulled out plates. "Lainey was getting hungry, but I told her you were bringing dinner."
"I'm only a little late." William placed his books aside as he looked around the kitchen. "Any problems ?" He asked.
"Georgia telling stories again." Ally remarked as she laid everything out. "She told Lainey that we were costumed superheroes who went around saving people."
"You didn't tell them about when I was hypnotized, did you ?" William looked at her as Lainey jumped around wanting her plate.
"No !"
"Where's Georgia now ?"
"Oh, she's up in........" Ally suddenly recoiled as she remembered something. "I left her in the tree !!!"
"What ??!!!!" William looked at her.
"Well," Ally raced for the back door. "It took me an hour to calm down !!!" she raced for her daughter still out in the tree in the backyard as dusk was already starting to set. The wayward princess was still balanced on the limb of the tree perfectly as her little face rested asleep in the crutch of the limbs. She jerked and flailed a bit thinking she was falling as her father reached up and pulled her down like a little monkey. Ally stood in shock and wondered how she could have done such a thing.
"I've got you, princess." William told his girl.
"Honey," Ally stroked her head. "I am so sorry !!!"
"Am I still grounded ?" Tiny Georgia's brown eyes looked up as her father carried her into the house and rubbed her arms and legs to warm her up.
"We'll talk about it....." William answered as the phone rang in the house. Ally started to reach for her daughter as they started to step back into the house. The phone rang once again and stopped as Ally heard Lainey in the living room.
"Hi Uncle Richard !!!"
Ally's head turned toward her unprepared.
"She's right here !!!" Lainey grinned and handed her mother the phone thinking she was doing good. "Here you go, mommy !!!"
"Thanks, baby....." Ally wondered what else could go wrong tonight as she hesitantly took the receiver. Lainey grinned up to her glad to be doing her mother a favor as Ally wondered how to get out of having to have to go to Boston. She started faking a raspy voice.
"Hel - lo, Richard......" She tried to cough up some phlegm.
"Wow, Ally," Richard cringed on the phone in Boston. "You sound horrible."
"Well," Ally faked some coughs. "We're having a bit of a cold spell up here." William eavesdropped long enough to roll his eyes as he took care of the girls.
"Are you well enough to take over a case for Nell ?"
Ally put her hand over the phone and made several motions and gestures to her husband to help in her trickery. She pointed silently to the phone as he just stared at her confusingly. Ally gritted her teeth unable to get through.
"Uhhhhhhhhh....." Ally groaned a bit as if she were really sick. "Richard, I need some sleep. I couldn't possibly......... wait, hold on, William wants me to get off the phone to take my temperature again. Gosh, I hope it's down this time." She coughed raspily again. "Richard, I got to go. I'll call you next week." She hung up the phone and grinned all healthy and full of vigor. Shining a bit, she pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and walked in to eat dinner with her family as William held up the brown glass bottle of Mrs. Butterworth.
"And now," He presented it to Ally. "The award for the best death scene by phone goes to Mrs. Ally Marie McBeal-Collins." He gave her the syrup bottle. "Tell us, Mrs. Collins, where did you study your acting skills ?"
"Very funny." Ally sat at the kitchen table ready to eat dinner with her husband and children. "But like I said, I am not going to Boston."
"Are you sick, mommy ?" Lainey looked up worriedly with a corn cob in her hands.
"Why does mommy get to lie when I have to get punished all the time ?!" Georgia screamed the obvious question. She was wearing her father's sweater to get warm as Ally realized her goof and looked to William for the answer.
"You want to field that one ?" William looked to his wife sitting across from him as she struggled for the right answer.
PART FOUR
Ally was not very proud of herself right now. She had left and forgotten her child yesterday clinging to a tree waiting for her to return and she had been caught lying to Richard over the phone. She was 0 for 2 as she once more tried to be the best wife and mother she could be by cleaning up her daughter's room and putting dolls back on shelves and dirty clothes in the bathroom hamper. As she sat on the floor and sorted things from out of dried potato chips and tiny toys and accessories to Barbie's, she felt someone step into her peripheral vision.
"You know....." William looked at her. "If you keep cleaning up after them, they never will."
"They're babies........" Ally glanced up to him. "I'll worry about them being neater when they get to be teenagers."
"If we live that long........." William wondered if he could survive the early years of being a father as he turned around and stepped on something in the shag rug. He heard a sharp crack as he had broken something under his foot. He reached down and picked up something that looked like a tiny curving spear as he fitted the two halves back together.
"What did that go to ?" He asked Ally as he handed the pieces over to her.
"I don't know." Ally looked at the shattered pieces. They were covered in sold gold and the broken ends looked like glass. They seemed familiar as she wondered which of the girl's toys they had come from. She didn't know they had anything like this. "This looks like the horn off my.........." Her eyes went wild as she had to check the display case down stairs, but William caught her and stopped her. She then dove to the floor and looked for more evidence as her husband bent down with her. Lightly passing her fingers in the fibers of the shag rug, Ally found one of the glass hooves broken off just above the foot. Her grief was getting worse as William tossed up the covers on Georgia's bed to peer underneath it. He shoved a box of shoes to the side as his hands reached under and pulled out the remains of the unicorn's glass body. Ally's eyes started weeping to see that it had been dropped hard to the floor. It's legs, head, tail and anything else had been broken off as she clutched it to her heart and started crying her heart out. It was all that was left of a once beautiful glass unicorn. She stared at it in shock as she realized she'd never see it again. It was the pinnacle of her porcelain unicorn collection.
"Oh no........." Ally started choking on her tears as William held her. "Gone, all gone.........."
"I can get you a new one." He said as he tried to comfort her.
"It won't be the same !!" Ally's sorrow was overwhelming her before turning to revenge. "Where are those two girls ??!!!!!!" She shoved the remains of her most cherished memento into her husband's hands as he gripped her arm.
"Ally !" He spoke to her. "Calm down ! You can't go accusing them while you're this hurt !"
"But it was.........." She broke down crying again as he held and consoled her.
"Calmly bring them to my study........." He had an idea. "They'll be punished, but first we have to catch them lying to us."
"Okay," Ally regretfully pined for the dead unicorn that once adorned her collection. She felt William kiss her as she stood and wandered in her dulled trance down to the stairs. The girls had stopped coloring in their books to watch cartoons on the television. Ally looked at them, to the empty space in her cabinet and back to the girls.
"Girls," She sniffed a bit. "Your father wants to see you."
"Are we going out for pizza ??" Lainey hopped up first and raced ahead of her mother. Georgia noticed her mother glaring at her and quietly scuffled along a bit conscience-stricken as she worried what was going on. Her mother's hand guided her firmly to the study in the back of the house and then lifted her into a chair. She looked up to her father behind his desk as he looked out at her.
"Girls," He leaned back. "Have you seen your mother's big unicorn ?"
Lainey looked at her sister.
"No, daddy." She answered.
"Georgia ?"
"Did it run away ?"
"No," William reached down and picked up the headless, limbless body and put it before them on the desk as Ally whimpered at the sight of it. "It seems to have been hidden in the house." He replied. "Who broke it ?"
Georgia looked at Lainey with a warning gaze. The little pixie reacted with fear and then back to her father.
"I don't know."
"Lainey," Ally put her hand on her youngest daughter's head. "Did you drop it ?"
"No, mommy," Lainey responded as she sat in the leather chair. "I swear !!"
"Georgia," William responded to his other girl. "Do you know whose bed we found it hidden under ?"
"Nooooooo........"
"Lainey," Ally reacted like a mother with a lawyer's mind. "Leave the room."
Lainey slid out of the chair to her feet and started to dash off. She hesitated and looked back before returning to the living room. Ally sat in the empty chair and looked at Georgia and waited for her to crack. She and William just stared at Georgia as she looked at both of them.
"It was an accident." She stuck her lip out.
"I told you not to touch it !!!" Ally was fighting her want to bounce the girl off the walls.
"Honey," William answered. "It's bad enough you broke it, but it's even worse you tried to hide it."
"Screw that !!!!" Ally snapped at him and pointed her finger into her daughter's face. "I told you not to touch it and you tried to play with it, didn't you !!!!"
"I'm sorry...." Georgia started blubbering as her face started turning pink.
"How many times do we have to tell you to keep your hands off of things that do not belong to you??!!!" Ally's voice slightly rose.
"I'm sorry!!!" Georgia was crying now.
"That's enough, Ally." William continued sitting as he recalled how much money the unicorn had cost and how much Ally loved it when she first laid her eyes on it. He grumbled a bit and recalled books of his that the girls had ripped up or manuscripts that they had ruined. He sent a look to Ally as they tried to compare their tempers.
"Georgia," William finally spoke. "Up to the guest room. I want you to get on the bed in there and stay there. Don't go searching the closets or the drawers or anything again. Just lie on the bed and wait for your mother or me."
Georgia blubbered a bit more as she pushed her curly brown locks out of her face. She scooted to her feet and ran crying through the kitchen to the back stairs. Ally groaned a bit as she started to turn, but instead spun around on her heel. She kicked her husband's oak desk with all her might to try and get her anger out then exhaled disgustedly and folded her arms as she looked to William.
"Are we bad parents?" She lightly shook the hair out of her face.
"Everyone starts out as bad parents." William brooded a bit as he stared to the grandfather clock in the room. "We just have to figure out what it takes to make good parents."
"My husband, ladies and gentlemen.........." Ally looked him over and pictured a studio audience watching their lives. "He may not have the answers, but he always has something to say."
William turned his head to her.
"Sarcasm does not become you............"
PART FIVE
Georgia Angelique Collins was dreaming that she ran the house and her parents had to bow and cater to her whims. Her sister, meanwhile, had to run around and try to get noticed as her mother and father forgot who she was. It was a neat little fantasy of a world as seen through the eyes of a child, but then she was suddenly yanked out of it as her mother stirred her awake. Georgia looked up wearily through sleepy eyes as he mother looked at her and held her sweater.
"Wake up, princess."
"Am I being punished?" The girl asked.
"No."
"Are we running away from home?" Lainey stood at the end of the bed as she wore her sweater.
"No," Ally helped Georgia on with her sweater. "And don't wake your father. We're going outside on the back porch."
"Why?"
"Come on, babies," Ally answered quietly as she lifted Lainey up and carried her out of the room on her hip. Leading Georgia on her left, she took her daughters quietly down the back steps to the kitchen. Georgia sleepily rubbed her eyes and staggered a bit as her mother guided her and then lead her to the back patio door. It faced directly east as she looked up to the violet and orange sky. The faint rising rays of sunlight barely breached the trees as Ally left her girls standing at the steps to the back yard and grabbed the cushions from the patio furniture. She gave one for Georgia to sit on the steps and then pulled Lainey on to her lap as she sat down.
"Girls," Ally sat down wearing her sweat shirt and pants. "Every time I look at both of you, I see a lot of your father in you. You're both exactly like he was when he was your age - constantly in trouble."
"Did you know daddy back then?" Lainey asked as Georgia yawned.
"No," Ally pulled her long hair over her shoulder. "The thing is, babies, I want, no, I need to know if there's a part of me in you. I need to know if there's a part of me in either of you."
"What about Maddie?" Georgia sometimes missed her older sister attending school in New York.
"I know she's got a lot of me in her." Ally scratched her chin. "But, babies, I want to know if there's anything about you two that comes from me. You see, when I was a little girl, I used to crawl out on the roof of my parent's house from my bedroom window............"
"Can we??!" Georgia's eyes lit up.
"No!!!" Ally remarked then continued. "And when I did, I sometimes saw things in the woods behind my parent's house."
"Like what, mommy?" Lainey played with the buttons of her sweater as she listened.
"Unicorns." Ally confessed in a whisper with a bit of magic in her eyes. "I used to see unicorns." Ally paused as the dawn started getting brighter. "I want you two to look as the light comes through the trees; this is perfect time to see unicorns. I want you to look for them not with your eyes, but with your heart."
"You're not making breakfast are you, mommy?" Georgia asked.
"Georgia, honey," Ally somehow knew she'd be the lost cause. "Please, try to see something."
"I'm not seeing them." Lainey cried out.
"Please, baby, try to picture them." She squeezed her tenderly.
Lainey stared at the lights coming through the trees as the sun rose. There was a lot of bright light filtering the trees as light bounced off green leaves covered in dew and the rainbow of colors merged and danced between the shadows of tree trunks reaching to the brightening sky. There was a bit of movement as she thought the wind was blowing and then her eyes started rounding and her little jaw dropped. She started gasping as she imagined a horse coming through the illusion of lights. It was white with a long whiter cascading mane and an even longer plume of hair for a tail. It did not have a horn, but then it knelt it's head to nibble on the long weeds bordering the property and suddenly it was there. A long slender curving horn extending from its forehead as it looked up to her and then started nibbling again.
"I see it, mommy !" Lainey gasped excitedly. "I see it !" Georgia looked at little sister, picked up the mat she was sitting on and ran around to sit on the other side of her mother. Ally squeezed her daughter lovingly as her cheek touched her cheek.
"Where ? Where ??" Georgia looked around the back yard.
"I see it too, baby." Ally beamed with her baby girl in her arms. "Hold up your hand and pretend to stroke her."
"Where is it ??" Georgia started fidgeting.
"It's beautiful !!!!!" Lainey cooed as she fell into the illusion and imagined herself riding on its back. Ally kissed her as Georgia started panicking. Was it gone yet ? Why couldn't she see it !
"Oh, yeah........." Georgia rolled her big brown eyes. "I see it now. How long is it staying ?"
"Forever....." Lainey grinned excitedly. "And we can see it whenever we want ! Right, mommy ?"
"We sure can, sweetheart." She kissed Lainey then Georgia. "Anytime we want........"
The breeze picked up as Lainey swore she could hear it shake its mane and shudder a bit. She was definitely feeling magical as she grinned ear to ear and kissed her mommy. Ally beamed ear to ear herself as she felt she and her girls bonded beyond time and space and finally shared in one wonderful illusion.
Behind her, William Collins stood leaning in the door frame of the patio doors with a hot chocolate in his hand. He smiled contently at the magic Ally and his daughters brought into his life as he felt for the first time in his life truly secure.
END