False Southern Gentility

Christine looked at the walls and walls of dresses that covered her closet. Something just didn't feel right...something just felt...broken. Christine knew what it was, nothing was broken besides her.

She had committed unspeakable crimes against her faith, God, even her family. She had killed a man, killed him and not felt a single piece of anything for it. How was she supposed to survive with this piece of her missing.

That piece was replaced, replaced by hatred and anger, fear and scorn. She had had things given to her in her first years of life, handed to her on a silver platter with a silver spoon to match.

"I can't live with this at all...not alone. Some burdens are to large to bear alone." Suddenly, Christine stood up from the floor and stared at Christopher.

How long he had been sitting there, she didn't know.

"I killed that Yankee...he was the one that beat me and killed...Grace." she said in a broken voice a she braced herself against the door-frame of the closet. What would he do? scold her for having no heart, or kill her for being a murdering, lying, hussy of a woman.

Christopher rose from his seat and looked her dead in the eye. He walked to her slowly, and Christine silently waited for the first blow to fall. None came. To Christine's surprise, she felt his hands go around her, pulling her to him in a warm embrace.

Christine stood stunned. "You--you mean you don't--don't care? I'm a murderer, don't you see that? I killed a man out of cold blood!" she cried as she pulled away from him, reached out to grasp the door knob and missed.

Where Christine's hand had missed the knob, Christopher's replaced it, and held it there as for it not to be moved. "It was not cold blood, Christine. I always knew there was something that you didn't want to tell me..." his voice trailed off until it finally fell silent. "I think I knew the night that Abigail died. The somber look that was on your face when you saw me, and I saw you."

Christine looked him in the eye as he looked at her back. "How can you say such things? You didn't know because I didn't tell you, and you wouldn't have known unless I had decided to tell you! Don't pretend like you love me, Christopher, we both know if you did, it would be a lie. You don't love me, and you never could...and now..."

Christine had started to say: "And now you never will! Because I'm a heartless, cold, murdering woman that you will never be able to trust!"

She held her tongue instead.

"You make assumptions where assumptions ought not to be made. Not everyone in the world thinks like you do Christine, some of us actually care about people. You know, things could have been different between us, they really could have been."

Christine shook her head. "No, no they couldn't have been! Don't you understand that! I'm not meant to love anything, not meant to love anyone! Everything I love, everyone I touch or feel, leaves me, God makes them leave me! I'm alone, Christopher, and I'm afraid, terribly afraid." she went to crumple to the ground in tears.

Christopher's hands wrapped around her shoulders, bracing her up. "You can't be afraid, Christine. You and I aren't meant to be afraid. Haven't you learned that yet? We are people that are meant to stand, meant to fight, meant to live! We are people that survive!"

"You once told me that surviving wasn't living, it was nothing but a crude imitation of it. I don't want to survive anymore! Can't you see that! I want to live! I want to thrive and be happy, damn it, I want to go forth and prosper!"

"I once said many things, but sometimes we must settle for the imitation! Sometimes you must survive instead of live! Don't you see that? Don't you understand that what you've been doing isn't even surviving, all you're doing in falling...falling into nothingness?" Christopher asked as he shook her gently.

"I just want to live, Christopher, just to live." and with that, the fever that had begun to rage inside of her body, took hold of her, and she fainted into her nothingness...surviving in the darkness that had begun to fill her days and nights.

Christopher sat by her bed, stroking her hair as the doctor took her pulse. "Is--" Christopher began. "is she alright...I mean...is she going to be alright?" he asked quietly. The doctor held up a hand for silence.

After the doctor had sat down the overly white hand down onto the strikingly red velvet blankets, he turned to Christopher and spoke. "She's sick, Christopher." the doctor said as he tried to sit a soothing hand on Christopher's shoulder; Christopher shrugged it off.

"Well of course she's sick, you imbecile!" Christopher shouted as he placed Christine's hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "What's wrong with her?" he asked, his temper fading.

"She's pregnant, and those burns that she received--"

"She's what?" Christopher asked in surprise.

"Pregnant. She's known for about two or three weeks, she assured me that you were told." the doctor looked at the small lump that had taken place on Christine's small figure.

"I--" Christopher stuttered. "I wasn't told...what's wrong with her? That didn't make her sick? She wasn't ever this sick with Abigail...or..." he stopped as he looked at the wall. He hadn't stopped to think that he honestly didn't know if she had been sick with Abigail or Elizabeth, and especially not with her first daughter, Grace.

"It's not...there's a mass...it's right beneath her ribs...I'm not sure if I can remove it or not...but I'm going to try...you should know..." the doctor paused for just about the hundredth time during their conversation.

"What!?" Christopher screamed. "What should I know!?"

The good doctor swallowed and then picked up where he had left off. "If I go ahead with the operation, she could lose the baby, maybe never be able to have another baby again. I need to know...if it comes down to it...do you want her to live without being able to bear children, or not live at all?"

Christopher's mouth almost hit the floor. "How long do you think that you could wait? Before you do the surgery? Do you think it could wait until the baby was born?" he asked quietly. He wasn't going to lose Christine, but he didn't want to lose the baby...this would be the first child who's life he hadn't either newly appeared or never appeared in before or after their birth.

This was his chance.

"It could probably wait until about her seventh month...after that I honestly can't tell you yes or no." the doctors eyes darted to the stirring Christine. "Hold on." he said as he pushed Christopher's chair out of the way and then pressed lightly onto Christine's throat.

"Is she--is she getting worse?" Christopher asked as he looked at the doctor frantically.

"No, she's coming out of it. Tell Mammy to get me some cold water, some ice, and a hot mustard paste for her chest. Now." the doctor's voice left no room for argument.

After Christopher had left, Christine opened her eyes painfully. "Oh, my head." she said weakly as she lifted her hand to her head; her hand didn't make it to her forehead, but instead hit Doctor Marshland's arm.

"Don't try to move." he said in a quiet voice as he patted her cheek and pinched her chin. "I've just learned that Christopher wasn't told about the baby, where does this sorted story lead to Christine Emerald?"

Christine swallowed. Why was it that the old doctor always made her feel like she was being scolded by her father? "Nowhere...just like everything about me..." she turned her face away as she felt tears beginning to brim at the surface.

"You should tell him...about it all. What happens when you get worse? Then what will you do? You can't just go to sleep one night and leave him with no explanation when you don't wake up the next day."

Christine shook her head no. "I...I can't...things about my life aren't meant to last...apparently I'm not even meant to last. But I can't tell him about the cancer...I'd rather him just believe that I died out of a fever or..." she couldn't bear to think about it anymore. "I'll have my baby...that will be enough to keep him going...he'll have Elizabeth and then the new baby, they'll help him live."

"Christine, you have to--" he stopped as the door came open and a black mass of a woman that was often referred to as 'Mammy' stood in the doorway.

Mammy was no more than four foot eleven, but she was four feet and eleven inches of pure indignation. She was a rather stout woman, but she had been very small wasted when she had first been given to Christine's mother as her first birthday gift.

"I got yo' paste." she said, her dark black accent furrowing throughout her speech.

"Very good, Mammy. You just go ahead and rub that all over her chest, and then you bring a hot brick and set that at her feet. When this fever comes back," he turned to Christine. "and it will, you'll get an extremely high fever, and you'll needed to be cooled off." he turned back to Mammy.

"You make sure that you keep her feet hot and her head cool." Mammy nodded as she lifted a cotton rag, damp with the mustard paste. "Christine...you'll have to tell him...you will have your good days and your bad...but the good days will stop coming, and you will go, it may not be a peaceful death, you might be conscious, you might not. But you will go, one way or the other."

Christine closed her eyes and reopened them, fighting for consciousness as the thick mustard rub began to sink into her skin. "Yes--yes I know." she said as she closed her eyes again; for some reason, she was sure that she had just seen Christopher, standing at the door with the most heart-wrenching look on his face.

But she was so tired...she didn't have the strength to care about Christopher...she loved him...and she prayed to God that he knew, but if he didn't...perhaps one day someone would remind him of the looks she had given him behind his back, the small personal jokes that they had shared in when they had thought they were alone. Maybe someone would remind him and he would find some way not to loath her for her lies.

"Christopher--" Doctor Marshland started as Christopher held up a hand for silence.

"How long." he wasn't asking, he knew that she was going to die...he had heard the doctor say it, but more importantly, he had heard Christine say it herself. She was giving up...she had lost her will to survive.

The doctor didn't try to deny it, though he wished he had owned the humanity to lie. "I would say a year at the most...maybe a year and a half, it's hard to tell with these things, she could go a year from now...or she could go a day from now."

Christopher swallowed as he ran his hands over her hair. "You're telling me that I have a year with her...a year at the most...you're man enough to tell me that I have to lose her!" he yelled as he stood on his feet and paced back and forth.

"Christopher, I've never taken a liking to you before, but I'm going to tell you something now." Christopher stopped pacing as Marshland spoke. "You're a good man, a very good man, and Christine was lucky to have you...no matter how long she had you for." and with that, the doctor left the room.

Christopher stood, planted into her bedroom carpet. He was going to lose her, he didn't have a choice anymore. She didn't care about whether he knew she was going to die, or whether she died in bed next to him, she didn't care.

Marshland came back into the room, looking down at Christopher. "Christopher," he spoke softly as he put his hand on Christopher's shoulder softly. "I'm going to leave some syringes and some Morphine for her...half a vial into her wrist during one of her fainting spells...it will get worst Christopher...it will, and there's no stopping it."

Christopher couldn't look up, he had to keep his eyes on her. She was his everything and that was the way it had to be, he couldn't survive without her. She hung his stars and cradled his moon, and he was losing her.

"How will I know?" Christopher asked, trying to disguise that fact that tears were beginning to stream down his face.

"If you love her like I think you do...you'll know." Marshland said as he took a few steps back and observed the pair. "The two of you were grand...you were grand in your time."

Marshland's footsteps faded away from the spiraling bedroom that was engulfing Christopher's life. Why did the people he loved fade away? Abigail was gone, he stopped, trying to think of someone who had been as important as Abigail. He could find none. And with that thought, he cried, holding onto Christine's small frail, feeling the usually warm hand stiffen with the demands of sickness.

After having cried next to her, he straightened and walked to the end of the bed, and lifted the vial and a single syringe into his hands. "How much did he say again?" he asked himself aloud. "Half, that's it, half the syringe."

As he filled the tube with the clear liquid and pressed the needle deep into Christine's wrist, he could only look at her startling angelic features. After the needle had been out of Christine's wrist for about five minutes, she awoke, a startled look draped across her brown burgundy eyes.

"Christopher?" she asked as she rolled her head to the side. "What's wrong? What happened?" she wore a strong expression, but Christopher could see that the expression was from the drugs he had injected and not from her usually head-strong ways.

"You were sick...that's all...but you're alright now. Just rest for a little while, just rest." Christopher said in a strangely calm voice as he stood and kissed her lips gently. He couldn't lose her, but he knew that he had to...there were so many things that he had to do.

He would have to be strong for Elizabeth and the new baby, he would have to bring himself to hold onto her memory without letting that pull him into the depths of what was her. He would have to survive when all that he would want to do was give up.

"Christopher," Christine whispered as she tried to pull him close to her, her small hand twisting the fabric of his coat. Christopher leaned down and slid into the bed close to her. "Christopher, am...am I alone?" she asked in a quiet whisper.

Christopher barely suppressed a withered sob. "No, Christine, you're not alone. You won't ever be alone." he said as he cradled her close to him, pulling her body next to him as if he could hold onto her tight enough that she wouldn't be able to leave.

As she slept, Christopher listened to her quiet breathing, memorizing the steady rhythm that was the rise and fall of her chest. If he could memorize every piece of her, then maybe, just maybe, when she left, he could recreate her for himself. Convince himself that she was just sleeping soundly beside him. None of her usual painful, feeble movements that she made when she had her nightmares, no, he could imagine her asleep peacefully.

She yawned in her sleep, and Christopher looked down on her as she kept her eyes closed. "Christopher, don't leave me." she said in a husky whisper through her dreams.

Christopher knew this particular dream very well, she had described it to him many times when she was asleep. "Christine, Christine." Christopher said as he shook her gently. She opened her eyes and balled up close to his chest.

"Christopher," she said as she touched her chest. "I...I think I'm going to be sick." she cried as she threw her feet off the side of the bed and ran to the water basin across the room.

Christopher stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes and then he sat up stiffly and reached for a towel at the foot of the bed. "Here," he said as he walked up behind her, pulling her hair back from the sides of her face.

Christine turned around and wiped her face with the soft cloth. "Thank you." she said as she turned back around, looked at her face in the mirror and cried.

"It's alright, you're okay. You were just sick to your stomach, it's alright." he said as he turned her around and pulled her to his chest.

"Oh Christopher, Christopher I'm sick. Not just sick with a cold or even a flu. Christopher," she turned around and faced him. "I'm going to die...I don't know when, but I know that I am. I'm pregnant also...I'm dying and pregnant...what am I supposed to do?" she asked as she wept in his arms.