Unknown Destiny (Susannah's Wish)

Unknown Destiny (Susannah's Wish)

Susannah put her headphones on and started walking. She resented the
long walk to work every morning. Resented the way people looked at her.
The winos asleep on the pavement and sometimes not asleep but walking
around, or rather swaying, coming dangerously close so that she had to
dodge out of the way if she did not want them to touch her. She could
not avoid the stench, though, of booze and urine and unwashed clothes.
She resented it.

A song she liked played on the radio and she smiled involuntarily. A
man walking towards her smiled back. Susannah blushed. He looked nice,
smart suit, short hair, on his way to work. She wished she had returned
his smile but it was too late. He had already disappeared and most
likely forgotten about her. She kept pondering over the incident. She
thought a lot about seemingly unimportant issues. What else was there
to do? It was a long walk to work and she resented it.

She wished she was a little more confident. That was the thing she
wished for most, closely followed by hoping that one day she would make
a difference. She loved her name, because it was unusual and exotic.
She was always Susannah, never Sue, Suze or Susan and if anybody made
the mistake to call her that she put them straight. Her name was
Susannah and that was what she wanted to be called. Except sometimes,
when she was sure that the name was too grand for her, that she did not
deserve a name like Susannah. That she should be called Tracey or Sarah
or Sue, because she was too plain for a name like Susannah. She was
average in every respect: Average height, average built, average brown
hair and average brown eyes. Another term to describe her would be
boring. She should have smiled at the man in the suit because nobody
ever smiled at her. Nobody ever noticed her. And she resented it.

She wondered what his name was. Her husband's name was John and she
resented that name, resented him sometimes. She felt guilty about that
feeling. She also felt guilty about the man in the suit, how she wished
that she had smiled at him. She was annoyed with herself. After all,
smiling at someone was not like sleeping with them. But one thing could
lead to another. Not for her, though, she would never be unfaithful to
John because nobody would ever ask her to. Not the man in the suit and
not anybody else. She did not know what she would do if she was ever
asked, nor did she see too much point in figuring it out since it would
never happen anyway. And she resented it.

Her job was pointless. It paid good money so she would not give it up
in a hurry, but it was pointless nevertheless. She got to work at nine
and left at five-thirty. Sometimes she stayed a little later, but not
too late because of the children, they had to be picked up from the
childminder on time. Sometimes she took work home, and then she had to
fight John for the use of the computer in the evening. Most of the time
she left her work problems at work and her private problems at home.
Not that she had any problems. Her life was sheltered, boring. She
wished something would happen, something exciting. Something where she
could make a difference, where it would matter what she did.

She had tried to explain this to John once. He had looked at her
bemused.

"Of course you matter," he had said with a slightly exasperated
tone.

"How?" she asked.

He had to think about it for a second and her heart had sunk. "You are
my wife," he had finally said. "Without you, our children would not
have been born. You are doing a great job looking after the house and
holding down a job."

"But how does it matter whether I get the kids to school on time or
whether your socks are washed?" she asked.

"Matters to me," he said and regarded the subject closed.

"I mean, really matter," she said. "If I don't do it, someone else
will! There is nothing that only I can do."

John had kissed her in passing. "You worry too much," he said. She
sighed. Sometimes she resented him.

She was average. She had no special gifts or talents. She had passed
her O-levels easily and had to work a little harder for her A-levels.
She had always wanted to become a doctor, or maybe a lawyer, but her
grades had not been good enough. So she became an accountant. Not
really by choice. She sent out applications for all sorts of jobs,
secretarial, clerical, trainee posts of any description. For some of
them she got interviews, for most of them she did not. She knew nothing
about accountancy when she went to the interview for her current
employer, nor about the employer, for that matter. She was offered the
job anyway. She knew that she was going to. Not consciously, just
somewhere, deep, deep down she knew that she was going to get that job
when she saw the advert in the local paper.

That sometimes happened to her. When she was ten years old, her uncle
had given her a present. It was a little glass devil, hollow, with a
hole in the tail. She put it in a bottle of water and closed the bottle
with a rubber plug. When she pressed down hard on the plug, the little
devil inside the bottle would dance up and down. She had only had it
for a couple of hours when it broke. She had taken it out of the bottle
when she was bored playing with it, and was shaking it vigorously to
get all the water out. It slipped out of her hand and shattered into a
million little pieces on the bathroom floor. She had cried even though
she had known this was going to happen. She had known it from the
moment her uncle had given the little devil to her, had even know how
it was going to happen. It happened anyway. What good were premonitions
if you could not change what was going to happen?

Another time it happened when she drove to London with John. She was
driving that day because John didn't trust her to read the map. She
opened the garage door and looked at the car and she knew that they
were going to have an accident. Not a bad one, otherwise she would not
have driven that day. She just knew, somewhere deep down, in the
subconscious part of her mind, what was going to happen. She even knew
when she was coming up behind the red sports car that this was going to
be the moment. The car stopped to turn right without indicating and she
went into the back of it. Only slightly, but enough to leave a nasty
red scratch on the bumper of her car. She had not stopped, however. She
had driven on, with a red face, shaking like a leaf and listening to
John telling her there had been nothing she could have done. Susannah
knew there had been. They should have stayed at home. She had known
this was going to happen but could not prevent it. She had not bothered
explaining this to John.

Fortunately these things did not happen too often. She would have felt
too much like a freak. But now and again, they did happen.

Sometimes her whole life seemed pointless to her. She would have felt
suicidal had she been able to identify the feeling. Not that she would
ever consider suicide. As a teenager she did, occasionally, when the
rows with her mother got too bad and she could see no other way to hurt
her than to kill herself, see how that will make you feel, mother,
killing your only daughter! But the feeling passed when she grew up.
Had she thought about it she would have had to concede that it was
never really there in the first place. Of course she would not take her
life. After all, she had hit what she thought of as her 'religious
phase' when she was 13 and spent most of her time reading the Bible
instead of studying for school. Her religious phase, too, passed with
adolescence, but what she had read stuck in her mind and she never
really stopped believing in God.

Occasionally she prayed to Him. Quietly. She did not want John to hear
her prayers, she would have been embarrassed. She felt guilty about
praying, because she realised that she only ever prayed to ask for
something. Most often she asked to make a difference, to do something
only she could do that would really change things. Then she waited. God
had never answered her prayers. It made her feel like, even to Him, she
did not matter one bit.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Are you ready yet, Emma?" her mother called. "Yes, mum," she said
obediently and slipped her shoes on. There was always a mad rush to get
to school in the morning. Emma was six but had already decided that,
when she was a grown-up, she would get up ten minutes earlier and not
spend the morning shouting at her children to get ready. At the moment
it was only her, though. There was not much point shouting at Matthew,
he was only four months old. Emma was always shouted at. She did not
mind, really. She knew her mother did not mean it.

"Come on, come on," her mother stood by the open front door and
ushered Emma outside. She ran to the car and wondered why she had
bothered since she had to wait for her mother to unlock the doors. Her
mother carried Matthew in the baby car seat. When the children were
safely strapped in her mother drove off with screeching tires. Emma
cringed. She wished that her mother drove a little more carefully. She
was all right, her mother, and Emma loved her dearly, but the driving
thing she should definitely reconsider.

Emma liked school. Her teacher was very nice and she had made friends
easily. Well, a few friends. One, really. Emma had to reluctantly
accept the fact that she was not very popular. And if she really
thought about it, she did not like school all that much. The other
children laughed at her. She was not quite sure why that was; she was
always nice to them and liked all of them. Almost all. There was this
girl she did not like. Hated, actually. Christine looked like a little
angel. Her long, blond hair was wavy, her eyes blue, her nose pretty.
Of course she was instantly the most popular girl in school. Emma, who
was only six but not born yesterday, recognised that being with popular
Christine would mean that she, too, would be popular.

Unfortunately for Emma, Christine did not like her. She made fun of
Emma, the clothes she wore, her mousy brown hair, her lanky arms and
legs, anything. The other girls were not stupid, either, and bought
Christine's friendship by ridiculing Emma. It worked fine for them, but
Emma was heartbroken. She had done nothing to deserve this. She made
friends with Judy, who was also rejected by Christine and her crowd.
Together they were fine. Who needs to be popular, anyway?

Emma was pondering life in general and why she had to be different in
particular when her mother missed a stop sign and drove straight onto
the main road without looking. Emma had time to see the car that was
going to kill her. It was red. A man was driving and Emma could see on
his face that he had absolutely no comprehension of what was happening.
He had been driving on the main road and had the right of way. There
was nothing he could have done to stop in time. The car crashed into
the right hand side of Emma's mother's car and killed Emma and her
mother instantly. The man in the red car was propelled forwards by the
impact and his airbag inflated. When he sat back down again he began to
scream.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

John got into the car and slammed the door. Why did he always have to
do everything? Susannah could have taken the car to the garage after
she dropped the children off at school, but of course, that was too
much to ask. Sometimes he resented her.

He slammed the car into gear and drove off with screeching tires. This
would delay him by an hour, he was sure. Why could Susannah not be more
supportive? She knew he had an important job. This was not just his
car, it was hers, too, especially as she used it to take the children
to school and get the shopping. He turned into the main road and put
his foot down. He was going against the main traffic and the road was
almost empty. He turned the radio up. It was playing one of Susannah's
favorite songs and he grimaced. Busy day today, important clients, the
boss's wife expecting a baby. He sighed. Busy day ahead of him and he
was stuck taking her car to the garage.

The car came out of nowhere. John did not have time to even think
about reacting to the fact that a car suddenly blocked the previously
empty road. He had absolutely no comprehension what was happening. The
impact propelled him forwards and the airbag prevented him from hitting
the windscreen. His neck made a funny snapping sound. As he sat back
down in his seat he began to scream.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Susannah got into the car and slammed the door. Of course it had to be
her job to take the car to the garage. John could not possibly be
expected to do that for her. "Drop it in when you take the kids to
school, darling. It's only a minor delay." Minor delay, but not for
him. She would be late for work, and she was annoyed about that even
though it did not matter at all. What mattered was that John had said
he would take the car. At the last minute had had come up with some
lame excuse. Why had he said last night that he would take the car if
he had no intention of doing it? She resented him.

She slammed the car into gear and drove off with screeching tires. Not
even the fact that the radio was playing one of her favorite songs
could appease her. She turned into the main road and put her foot down.
She was going against the main traffic and the road was almost empty.
She let her mind wander. Thought about how she had prayed again last
night. Of course nothing would change. Nothing ever would.

On the road ahead of her was a girl. Susannah only just saw her. The
girl was injured. What the heck was an injured girl doing in the middle
of the road? She slammed on the breaks. She was lucky that there was no
traffic on the road. Skidding, the car came to a hold. She was
breathing heavily. The girl was gone. She blinked a few times. There
was no girl.

Out of a side road came a black car and shot straight onto the main
road. She knew the road it came out of, it had a stop sign but the
driver must have totally ignored it. In the car she saw the injured
girl, except that she was not injured. She was fit and well and a look
of horror was on her face. A look of understanding that this had been
close. Had Susannah not stopped for the injured girl she would have
ploughed straight into the side of the black car. Straight into the
girl. She was aware of the paradox.

A car tooted behind her. She started her car and drove off. She was
shaking. The rest of the drive she stuck to the speed limit. The
injured girl in the road had reminded her of the little glass devil,
but this time she had not dropped it. Maybe sometimes destiny can be
changed. And maybe sometimes prayers are answered.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Emma was pondering life in general and why she had to be different in
particular when her mother missed a stop sign and drove straight onto
the main road without looking. Emma held her breath. She saw a red car
and the woman inside it. Saw the shock on her face. As her mother drove
on Emma turned around and looked out of the rear window. The red car
was stationery. For some reason the woman had stopped just short of the
side road. "Sit down, Emma," her mother said. She sat down. Suddenly
she felt happy. So what if Christine did not like her? There were more
important things to life. Like life itself. She was looking forward to
school, to meeting Judy. She smiled and felt very lucky. This was going
to be a good day.