Keeping the Spirit Part Five (PG)
This part carries a severe mush warning!
Notes, disclaimers etc. in Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Originally posted between 17 and 21 December 2007.
Last time …
“It’s not just that you trained yourself not to show your feelings; you started to train yourself not to have any. And after today, you’re finally able to stop the training part, because it’s ingrained. There have been times over the past six years when you showed that you had a little chink in your armor - not many, it’s true, but a few nonetheless, but this is the last time. You filled in that gap today.”
“So… that’s it?”
“That’s up to you, don’t you think?”
Donna stood, wearily. “I’m too shattered to think. I just want to go home.”
Mandy smirked. “And I thought we were getting along so well.”
“We’d get along better if you let me go home.”
“Sorry.” She held out her arm. “Let’s go.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Keeping the Spirit - Part Five
Donna watched a young woman carrying a huge cardboard box struggle through a pair of swing doors at the end of the corridor and walk towards the large cubicle that was positioned outside the office immediately to the right. Donna had been standing by a window, looking out at the Manhattan skyline, wondering exactly where - and when - she was. Now, she pushed away from the wall and followed the woman into the cubicle, where a couple of other women were also working. As Donna got closer, she could see that the cardboard box was full of Christmas decorations. The woman carrying it made for the one empty chair and dumped the box unceremoniously on top of it.
The young woman sitting at the desk opposite peered around her computer screen.
“What’s that?”
“I was down in HR and saw this box of stuff in a corner,” the speaker held up a handful of tinsel. “They said they weren’t going to use it, so... It’s only a few days to Christmas and I thought it was looking a bit bare around here.”
“Well, yes it is,” agreed her colleague, “but we… uh, don’t really do decorations up here.”
“What? It’s nearly Christmas, and all the other departments have -”
“Anna, when did you start working here?” the other woman asked, peering over the top of her glasses.
“In October.”
“So this is your first Christmas here.”
“Yes, but at my last place, we -”
“Yeah. Well, here, we don’t.”
The young woman opposite went back to her typing. “It’s just that our boss isn’t that keen on them. She thinks -”
“I think they’re a bit of a distraction in the workplace.” All the heads turned towards the speaker and Donna wasn’t surprised to see herself emerge from the adjacent office and enter the cubicle. She guessed she must be nearing fifty; her hair was silvering and swept up into an elegant chignon, she was dressed in a classically simple - yet clearly expensive - suit, over which she wore a dark grey coat. The dusky pink scarf draped around her neck was the only spot of color in her whole ensemble.
“And I prefer to keep them out of the office,” she finished, with a pointed look at Anna. She spoke quietly and she was smiling; but the smile didn’t reach her eyes, and her manner, whilst friendly was nonetheless one which showed she would brook no argument or discussion.
But Anna didn’t seem to pick up on that, and blundered on. “Oh, I’m sorry; it’s just that we always decorated at my last job, and I thought - ”
Donna’s expression didn’t change - still smiling, still friendly, yet there was a steely look in her eyes that the younger Donna thought could have turned people into stone.
“Elaine, I have that meeting now,” she said, ignoring Anna’s comment and turning to the young woman who had been typing. “I’ll be out for a few hours, but I’ll need all those reports collated by the time I get back, and copies of the new strategies proposal distributed before the end of the day. Oh, and I need the information on Warrington, Sinden and Bailsford I asked for before you go as well.”
Elaine nodded and smiled wanly. “Of course. But, uh - I was going to go down to the Christmas party in creative, and - ”
An uncomprehending look wrinkled Donna’s brow. “Well, you can do that after, can’t you? I’m sure the party will be going on for a while. I’m going to be working on the new research models over the holidays, and I want to make sure I have all the information on hand.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Good.” Donna nodded briskly. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” And she left the cubicle and walked towards the elevator at the other end of the corridor.
“Wow,” Anna smiled nervously at the rest of the group. “She’s the life and soul, isn’t she?”
Elaine shook her head. “Don’t be like that. She’s nice most of the time - she’s just very… um… focused. Doesn’t like anything getting in the way of getting the job done.”
“Nice?” echoed the woman with the glasses. “I think she’s a bit of a cold fish, personally. I mean she’s perfectly pleasant, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh or crack a joke or anything like that - it’s like she just doesn’t get it.”
“Not everyone has your highly developed sense of humor, Karen.”
Anna put the box of decorations under her desk and sat down. “No, I know what you mean. It’s not that she doesn’t think things are funny, it’s that she just doesn’t get it. It’s like she’s had a sense of humor bypass or something.”
“Yes, exactly.” Karen propped her chin on her hand. “But it’s not just that, though. I’ve never seen her get emotional or worked up about anything. Remember when we landed the Vaysey account? I mean the whole place was buzzing; we’d been trying to land them for years and then when it finally happened, she came out of her office, said well done to everybody with that plastic smile on her face, then said she wanted the files for some ‘thing’ or other, and it was back to normal - when every other department head took their team out to celebrate. And then - I don’t know about you, but there are times in this job where I feel like I could hit something. But she just… I don’t know, whatever it is, good, bad or indifferent, she’s there with that fake smile of hers and those… dead eyes. Gives me the willies.”
Elaine again jumped to Donna’s defense. “Well, granted, she’s not very… outgoing, but she’s never been mean or anything like that. She just doesn’t have anything else, I guess.”
Anna looked over at the closed office door. “I can’t think why, though. I mean, she’s an attractive woman. I bet she was a real stunner twenty years ago.”
Elaine shrugged and went back to her typing. “Maybe she just wasn’t interested.”
“Maybe she didn’t meet the right guy,” Karen offered.
“Or maybe she did and it didn’t work out,” Anna chipped in.
“Ah,” Karen said, melodramatically, “a thwarted love affair!”
The three of them burst out laughing at that idea.
“But seriously,” Karen resumed, “you have to wonder how people like her get to where they are now. I mean, she must have started somewhere, right? It’s like people who get to be management forget what it’s like to be doing the grunt work, like us…”
Elaine looked up from her computer. “I Googled her once, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. What you said about her being a stunner when she was younger? Completely true. She used to work at the White House, you know; years ago, she was injured in a car bombing in the Middle East when she was out there as part of a delegation.”
“God, how awful.”
“Yeah.” Elaine paused briefly. “She was the top aide to some political whizz-kid in the Bartlet administration.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, so I Googled him as well. You remember when Bartlet got shot?”
“Well, no,” said Anna, deadpan, “I was only four.”
“Now I feel old,” Karen sighed. “But I take it you are aware that one of our former presidents was shot at twenty-or-so years ago?”
“I did go to school, you know.”
“Anyway,” Elaine interrupted, steering the conversation back to its original path, “this guy she worked for, he was the one who almost died that night. And when I looked him up, there was more about her as well. It’s like the two of them were joined at the hip - there’s barely a photo of him from around then that she’s not in somewhere.”
Karen raised her eyebrows. “Maybe there’s something to be said for the ‘thwarted’ thing, then.”
Elaine shook her head. “If there was anything, there was no mention of it.”
Anna snickered. “Maybe it was some torrid, clandestine affair.”
Karen barked a laugh. “Torrid? With her? God, could you imagine it? The guy rolls off her, she’s got that 'Barbie' smile on her face and says ‘well, that was nice.’!”
Anna fairly shrieked with laughter at that.
Elaine cleared her throat softly and pulled herself back into her desk. “Okay, look, I need to get back to work, or I’ll never get out of here in time for Christmas, let alone the party tonight.”
Karen and Anna exchanged a look, then Karen said, “I’ll give you a hand. Do you want me to get started on the reports?”
Relief flooded Elaine’s features. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Mark’s out for the rest of the afternoon, so I’ve got some time…”
“Teamwork. Nice,” came the voice of the spirit from over Donna’s shoulder. Donna continued to watch the three women in the cubicle sharing out the work their boss had left them and cleared her throat. “So that was what you meant when you said… in the cemetery, you said part of me died when Josh …”
Mandy looked at her, steadily. “Yes.”
“So,” Donna said, in a small voice, “how do I fix it?”
“You don’t know? After everything we’ve told you, everything we’ve shown you, you don’t know what your first step should be?”
Donna bit her lip, folded her arms and leaned against the cubicle doorway, watching as the three women went back to work. So she could end up here, like this? Clearly successful, obviously respected for her abilities at least, but… so cold?
“Well, you wanted to prove you could do more, and you did.” Mandy was leaning against the other side of the doorframe. “You got a job here as an analyst a year or so after you left your old job and now you’re up for a seat on the board.”
Donna gestured around the office. “Yeah, but… I mean, surely it must be possible to have both?”
“Both what?”
“Have a good job and… I don’t know, have a life.”
Mandy cocked her head to the side. “I honestly wouldn’t know because I never managed it.”
“Well that’s a big help, thanks.”
“But I’ve seen that it can be done. There was this guy I used to work for - he had a great job, a family that adored him, the people who worked for him loved and respected him…”
Donna sighed. “But President Bartlet’s one in a million.”
“True. But he did it. And,” she continued, with a significant look in Donna’s direction, “he did it with the help of the people he loved and who loved him - not by pushing them away and switching off when things didn’t go the way he thought they should have.”
Donna looked down at the floor, scuffing at the floor with the toe of her sneaker. “I guess I should at least be grateful I don’t go around saying ‘Bah, Humbug!’.”
“Yeah,” Mandy straightened up and walked out of the cubicle. “You’d sound like an idiot.”
“So,” Donna continued, following her guide through the centre of the busy office. “Instead, I end up like the wicked stepmother, not letting Cinderella go to the ball?”
Mandy stopped and turned to face her. “God, no. You’re much worse than that. At least the wicked stepmother was motivated by jealousy and hatred. Not the most pleasant of emotions, it’s true but at least they are emotions. You, on the other hand, just… don’t have any.”
They started walking again. “Just hit me over the head with it, why don’t you?”
Mandy snorted. “It’s why I’m here. It’s why we’ve all been here.”
“To show me that I turn into a bitch that nobody likes?”
“That’s not fair. I’m sure your mother still loves you,” Mandy deadpanned. “And anyway, to be a bitch you have to actually care about something, even if it’s not the same thing everyone else -”
“I swear to God, if you weren’t dead already I’d - ”
“Nah, you wouldn’t. Not with those sneakers anyway.”
Donna stopped. “What?”
“Never mind. Come on, we need to get going. There’s one more thing for you to see here.”
“Where?” Donna took hold of Mandy’s sleeve again, automatically.
“The same place you always go on December twenty-second.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Donna and the spirit were back at the Jewish cemetery where Josh and his family were buried. She was saddened, although of course not surprised, to note that where there had previously been three headstones, now there were four. There were also a couple of weather-beaten wooden benches set among the graves that hadn’t been there before; Donna guessed that perhaps they’d been endowed by family friends after Rachel had passed away. It was another gray, wintry day, and she clutched her arms around herself instinctively, even though she couldn’t feel the cold. She moved across to stand in front of the newest tombstone which was inscribed to Rachel Lyman, the date of her death marked as January 2015.
She looked up to see her older self walking along the gravel path - vaguely registering that it no longer surprised her to be watching herself like this - and walked back to stand at Mandy’s side. “I come here on the same date each year?”
“Yes.”
“But why the twenty-second? I thought he… it happened on the tenth…”
Mandy raised an eyebrow. “It did.”
Donna closed her eyes as she made the connection. “It’s the date I left.” She took a deep breath. “The date I left him.”
“Yes. It’s a nice touch, don’t you think?” Mandy said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “You always make a point of coming back to him on the date you left.”
Donna found it hard to breathe through the knot that had formed in her chest. She couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate; her mind sluggishly refused to co-operate when she tried to sort through the swathe of mixed-up thoughts and feelings that had invaded it - but eventually, one thing emerged from the fug and became clear.
She had to do - something - to stop this version of her future ever becoming a reality.
Something? The spirit had insisted that Donna knew what to do, but the question now was - would it be enough?
Words she’d spoken and thought often tonight echoed once more around her head -
Josh doesn’t leave people.
- but she did, and she had. And she didn’t know whether he’d be able to forgive her.
Looking up, she saw that the other Donna had reached the row of headstones belonging to the Lyman family. “Hello, Josh,” she said quietly, her voice wavering.
Donna watched her sit down on the bench at the foot of the grave, hot tears once more pricking her eyes at the sound of the affection and the sorrow contained in those two simple words.
Her older self began to talk softly, but Donna didn’t really hear much of what she was saying. She no longer tried to stop her tears, letting them fall unabashedly as she considered the prospect ahead of her. The idea that in some version of her future, she could be left, not only mourning the one man she’d loved with all her heart, but also in some way grieving for the life she hadn’t lived was agonizing - but she didn’t try to fight it. Not now. Instead she let the full force of it wash over her, acknowledging to herself that while it may well have been ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, what her future self was facing here was quite possibly worse than that. To have lost the one person in the world who meant everything to her was bad enough - but to have lost him without having been truly his was a tragedy, compounded by the fact that things need not have turned out that way.
Donna had never been especially romantic, but she did believe that there was someone ‘out there’ for everyone. And she knew, without a doubt - had known almost since the moment she’d met him - that she had found her someone, nearly eight years ago. Yet what had she done? She’d tried to ignore it, then tried to deny it, and up until that evening, she’d been trying to forget it… and for what? Because she’d been scared of rejection, scared that if he didn’t want her she’d have to leave him - and well, that was irony right there, wasn’t it? She hadn’t suffered the rejection because she hadn’t put herself out there - and then she’d left him anyway.
But even so, she was his, body and soul; and nothing was going to change that - even death, judging by the scene unfolding before her.
Donna sat down at the other end of the bench, and fished around in her pocket for a crumpled tissue, too preoccupied with her thoughts to notice that the other Donna had finished speaking and was now just sitting quietly, pulling distractedly at the fingers of her gloves. After a few more minutes, she stood up, put a hand into her coat pocket and produced a small, yet perfectly oval pebble, which she proceeded to lay on the headstone. “I have to go now, Josh,” she whispered. “I’ll come back again next year.” Then she kissed her gloved fingertips and laid them over the engraving of his name. “I love you.”
Donna gasped, feeling as though a knife had been plunged into her chest.
Mandy’s voice cut through the white noise buzzing around her head. “Seriously, you’ve got to love the romantic irony of that. You can only tell him how you feel after he’s dead. That’s one for the poets.”
Donna sucked in a breath and stood up. “Don’t you think I know that?” she demanded, incensed. “Don’t you think I’ve been sitting here trying to work out how I can stop this from happening?”
Mandy eyed her impassively. “You know how to stop it.”
“In theory, yes!” Donna threw up her hands as she walked towards her companion. “But somehow, I don’t think that ‘Hi, Josh, I’m sorry I left, and by the way, I love you,’ is going to cut it, is it?”
“Probably not,” Mandy agreed, her eyes alight with mischief. “You could just go over there and jump him, I suppose.”
Donna just stared at her in disbelief. “What?”
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you never thought about it,” Mandy scoffed. “In fact, I know you did, because I caught you looking more than once or twice. And why wouldn’t you? He’s good-looking, he’s got a great body and he’s - uh,” she smiled, suggestively, “full of energy. If you know what I mean.” Her eyes narrowed, slyly. “Although come to think of it, maybe you already know exactly what I - ”
Donna snapped her mouth closed, immediately. “No! No, I don’t!”
“You two really never - ?”
“No! I mean, yes! I mean, we didn’t - ”
“Never?”
“No!”
“Not even once?”
“No!”
“Wow. The pair of you must’ve had more self control than I gave you credit for. I really thought you’d have… you know, at least once.”
“Well, we didn’t.” Donna narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I thought it was your job to know these things.”
Mandy grinned. “I’m the spirit of the future, not the past.”
“Okay, we’re done talking about this.” Donna sighed, exasperatedly.
“Why?” Mandy said, gleefully. “This is girl-talk. This is fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe. And should you really be talking about… stuff like that here?”
Mandy snorted and waved around an encompassing hand. “Are you crazy? There’s no-one to hear us!”
Donna put her hands on her hips and shot her a meaningful look.
“Oh. Well, point taken, but they still can’t hear us.”
“I know that, but it just feels inapp - ”
Donna noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see that her older self had moved back to stand at the foot of the grave. And suddenly, it was as though a veil had fallen. The Donna of the future was smiling that serene - plastic - smile again; the traces of emotion that had been evident in her face earlier had vanished and it was as though they had never been.
Donna watched herself turn around and make her way back to the path.
“She… I … never said goodbye.” - was the only thing she could think of to say at that moment.
“No. And that’s odd, don’t you think?”
Donna was about to agree with the spirit - but then the light dawned and she realized it made sense - in a completely nonsensical way. “No, it’s not,” she said, shaking her head. “I never said it the day I left, either.”
“That’s right,” Mandy said encouragingly. “And you still can’t.”
Donna frowned at her. “Wait a minute - why ask me a question when you already know the answer?”
Mandy shrugged. “I’m cute like that.”
“So all that stuff before about me and Josh …” Donna shook her head and turned back to watch her older self walk away along the path, following her retreating figure with her eyes until it was out of sight.
“I’m like a - a robot,” she breathed.
“Well, not quite,” Mandy conceded. “But whatever you had inside that made you you - the empathy, the heart - it’s more or less gone for good, now. This is the one hour a year you allow yourself to remember him and your old life, but even those memories have faded and soon, they’ll disappear altogether. You were so bitter before you left - all you wanted to do was forget Josh and forget the way you felt about him, so you systematically locked away every good memory and feeling you associated with him, because - ”
“Because it was the only way I could bring myself to leave him,” Donna admitted, finally.
“Yes. And after you left, you didn’t want to feel the pain of being in love any more, you didn’t want it to get in the way of the new life you were planning to make for yourself, so you just stopped yourself from feeling any of it. The good parts, too.”
Donna felt herself flush. She knew Mandy was right, but that didn’t mean it was easy for her to hear. She grinned weakly. “Hearing you talk like this is still freaking me out, you know.”
Mandy sat down on the bench. “Deal with it.”
Donna scuffed at a piece of grass. “But…” she looked at her companion, pleadingly. “I can stop this happening, right? I mean, why would Mrs Landingham, and Noah, and Fitz - and you - ” she began to pace backwards and forwards in front of the bench, her voice becoming more and more animated as various ideas began to take hold, “why would you all have turned up if it wasn’t possible to change things?”
Mandy opened her mouth to reply, but it was evident that none was required. She folded her arms, a small smile on her lips as Donna continued to pace in front of her.
“And you said this was only one possible future.” Donna glanced at her briefly, and Mandy merely nodded her confirmation. “And that if I - if Josh ...” Donna stopped and whirled around as a thought occurred to her. “I mean, Tiny Tim didn’t die because Scrooge went back and changed things, and - ”
Mandy threw back her head and laughed. “Seriously, Donna? You have to promise me that I can be a fly on the wall if you ever refer to Josh as Tiny Tim to his face.”
Donna laughed, too, and dropped down onto the bench beside her.
“So,” Mandy said, eventually. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Yes.” Donna frowned. “At least I think so.” Now that it had come to it, she thought that perhaps she needed more time to let everything sink in, more time to decide exactly what it was she was going to do. “It’s just… there’s a lot to think about, you know?”
“There is. But then again, maybe not. You know what you have to do if you want to stop yourself from going down the path that leads to this,” Mandy waved a hand around expansively. “So just… go to him. As for the rest,” she shrugged. “It’ll take care of itself.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Are you kidding me?” Mandy rolled her eyes. “When has anything involving Josh Lyman ever been simple? But it’s a start.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Part Six
Notes, disclaimers etc. in Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Originally posted between 17 and 21 December 2007.
Last time …
“It’s not just that you trained yourself not to show your feelings; you started to train yourself not to have any. And after today, you’re finally able to stop the training part, because it’s ingrained. There have been times over the past six years when you showed that you had a little chink in your armor - not many, it’s true, but a few nonetheless, but this is the last time. You filled in that gap today.”
“So… that’s it?”
“That’s up to you, don’t you think?”
Donna stood, wearily. “I’m too shattered to think. I just want to go home.”
Mandy smirked. “And I thought we were getting along so well.”
“We’d get along better if you let me go home.”
“Sorry.” She held out her arm. “Let’s go.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Keeping the Spirit - Part Five
Donna watched a young woman carrying a huge cardboard box struggle through a pair of swing doors at the end of the corridor and walk towards the large cubicle that was positioned outside the office immediately to the right. Donna had been standing by a window, looking out at the Manhattan skyline, wondering exactly where - and when - she was. Now, she pushed away from the wall and followed the woman into the cubicle, where a couple of other women were also working. As Donna got closer, she could see that the cardboard box was full of Christmas decorations. The woman carrying it made for the one empty chair and dumped the box unceremoniously on top of it.
The young woman sitting at the desk opposite peered around her computer screen.
“What’s that?”
“I was down in HR and saw this box of stuff in a corner,” the speaker held up a handful of tinsel. “They said they weren’t going to use it, so... It’s only a few days to Christmas and I thought it was looking a bit bare around here.”
“Well, yes it is,” agreed her colleague, “but we… uh, don’t really do decorations up here.”
“What? It’s nearly Christmas, and all the other departments have -”
“Anna, when did you start working here?” the other woman asked, peering over the top of her glasses.
“In October.”
“So this is your first Christmas here.”
“Yes, but at my last place, we -”
“Yeah. Well, here, we don’t.”
The young woman opposite went back to her typing. “It’s just that our boss isn’t that keen on them. She thinks -”
“I think they’re a bit of a distraction in the workplace.” All the heads turned towards the speaker and Donna wasn’t surprised to see herself emerge from the adjacent office and enter the cubicle. She guessed she must be nearing fifty; her hair was silvering and swept up into an elegant chignon, she was dressed in a classically simple - yet clearly expensive - suit, over which she wore a dark grey coat. The dusky pink scarf draped around her neck was the only spot of color in her whole ensemble.
“And I prefer to keep them out of the office,” she finished, with a pointed look at Anna. She spoke quietly and she was smiling; but the smile didn’t reach her eyes, and her manner, whilst friendly was nonetheless one which showed she would brook no argument or discussion.
But Anna didn’t seem to pick up on that, and blundered on. “Oh, I’m sorry; it’s just that we always decorated at my last job, and I thought - ”
Donna’s expression didn’t change - still smiling, still friendly, yet there was a steely look in her eyes that the younger Donna thought could have turned people into stone.
“Elaine, I have that meeting now,” she said, ignoring Anna’s comment and turning to the young woman who had been typing. “I’ll be out for a few hours, but I’ll need all those reports collated by the time I get back, and copies of the new strategies proposal distributed before the end of the day. Oh, and I need the information on Warrington, Sinden and Bailsford I asked for before you go as well.”
Elaine nodded and smiled wanly. “Of course. But, uh - I was going to go down to the Christmas party in creative, and - ”
An uncomprehending look wrinkled Donna’s brow. “Well, you can do that after, can’t you? I’m sure the party will be going on for a while. I’m going to be working on the new research models over the holidays, and I want to make sure I have all the information on hand.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Good.” Donna nodded briskly. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” And she left the cubicle and walked towards the elevator at the other end of the corridor.
“Wow,” Anna smiled nervously at the rest of the group. “She’s the life and soul, isn’t she?”
Elaine shook her head. “Don’t be like that. She’s nice most of the time - she’s just very… um… focused. Doesn’t like anything getting in the way of getting the job done.”
“Nice?” echoed the woman with the glasses. “I think she’s a bit of a cold fish, personally. I mean she’s perfectly pleasant, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh or crack a joke or anything like that - it’s like she just doesn’t get it.”
“Not everyone has your highly developed sense of humor, Karen.”
Anna put the box of decorations under her desk and sat down. “No, I know what you mean. It’s not that she doesn’t think things are funny, it’s that she just doesn’t get it. It’s like she’s had a sense of humor bypass or something.”
“Yes, exactly.” Karen propped her chin on her hand. “But it’s not just that, though. I’ve never seen her get emotional or worked up about anything. Remember when we landed the Vaysey account? I mean the whole place was buzzing; we’d been trying to land them for years and then when it finally happened, she came out of her office, said well done to everybody with that plastic smile on her face, then said she wanted the files for some ‘thing’ or other, and it was back to normal - when every other department head took their team out to celebrate. And then - I don’t know about you, but there are times in this job where I feel like I could hit something. But she just… I don’t know, whatever it is, good, bad or indifferent, she’s there with that fake smile of hers and those… dead eyes. Gives me the willies.”
Elaine again jumped to Donna’s defense. “Well, granted, she’s not very… outgoing, but she’s never been mean or anything like that. She just doesn’t have anything else, I guess.”
Anna looked over at the closed office door. “I can’t think why, though. I mean, she’s an attractive woman. I bet she was a real stunner twenty years ago.”
Elaine shrugged and went back to her typing. “Maybe she just wasn’t interested.”
“Maybe she didn’t meet the right guy,” Karen offered.
“Or maybe she did and it didn’t work out,” Anna chipped in.
“Ah,” Karen said, melodramatically, “a thwarted love affair!”
The three of them burst out laughing at that idea.
“But seriously,” Karen resumed, “you have to wonder how people like her get to where they are now. I mean, she must have started somewhere, right? It’s like people who get to be management forget what it’s like to be doing the grunt work, like us…”
Elaine looked up from her computer. “I Googled her once, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. What you said about her being a stunner when she was younger? Completely true. She used to work at the White House, you know; years ago, she was injured in a car bombing in the Middle East when she was out there as part of a delegation.”
“God, how awful.”
“Yeah.” Elaine paused briefly. “She was the top aide to some political whizz-kid in the Bartlet administration.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, so I Googled him as well. You remember when Bartlet got shot?”
“Well, no,” said Anna, deadpan, “I was only four.”
“Now I feel old,” Karen sighed. “But I take it you are aware that one of our former presidents was shot at twenty-or-so years ago?”
“I did go to school, you know.”
“Anyway,” Elaine interrupted, steering the conversation back to its original path, “this guy she worked for, he was the one who almost died that night. And when I looked him up, there was more about her as well. It’s like the two of them were joined at the hip - there’s barely a photo of him from around then that she’s not in somewhere.”
Karen raised her eyebrows. “Maybe there’s something to be said for the ‘thwarted’ thing, then.”
Elaine shook her head. “If there was anything, there was no mention of it.”
Anna snickered. “Maybe it was some torrid, clandestine affair.”
Karen barked a laugh. “Torrid? With her? God, could you imagine it? The guy rolls off her, she’s got that 'Barbie' smile on her face and says ‘well, that was nice.’!”
Anna fairly shrieked with laughter at that.
Elaine cleared her throat softly and pulled herself back into her desk. “Okay, look, I need to get back to work, or I’ll never get out of here in time for Christmas, let alone the party tonight.”
Karen and Anna exchanged a look, then Karen said, “I’ll give you a hand. Do you want me to get started on the reports?”
Relief flooded Elaine’s features. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Mark’s out for the rest of the afternoon, so I’ve got some time…”
“Teamwork. Nice,” came the voice of the spirit from over Donna’s shoulder. Donna continued to watch the three women in the cubicle sharing out the work their boss had left them and cleared her throat. “So that was what you meant when you said… in the cemetery, you said part of me died when Josh …”
Mandy looked at her, steadily. “Yes.”
“So,” Donna said, in a small voice, “how do I fix it?”
“You don’t know? After everything we’ve told you, everything we’ve shown you, you don’t know what your first step should be?”
Donna bit her lip, folded her arms and leaned against the cubicle doorway, watching as the three women went back to work. So she could end up here, like this? Clearly successful, obviously respected for her abilities at least, but… so cold?
“Well, you wanted to prove you could do more, and you did.” Mandy was leaning against the other side of the doorframe. “You got a job here as an analyst a year or so after you left your old job and now you’re up for a seat on the board.”
Donna gestured around the office. “Yeah, but… I mean, surely it must be possible to have both?”
“Both what?”
“Have a good job and… I don’t know, have a life.”
Mandy cocked her head to the side. “I honestly wouldn’t know because I never managed it.”
“Well that’s a big help, thanks.”
“But I’ve seen that it can be done. There was this guy I used to work for - he had a great job, a family that adored him, the people who worked for him loved and respected him…”
Donna sighed. “But President Bartlet’s one in a million.”
“True. But he did it. And,” she continued, with a significant look in Donna’s direction, “he did it with the help of the people he loved and who loved him - not by pushing them away and switching off when things didn’t go the way he thought they should have.”
Donna looked down at the floor, scuffing at the floor with the toe of her sneaker. “I guess I should at least be grateful I don’t go around saying ‘Bah, Humbug!’.”
“Yeah,” Mandy straightened up and walked out of the cubicle. “You’d sound like an idiot.”
“So,” Donna continued, following her guide through the centre of the busy office. “Instead, I end up like the wicked stepmother, not letting Cinderella go to the ball?”
Mandy stopped and turned to face her. “God, no. You’re much worse than that. At least the wicked stepmother was motivated by jealousy and hatred. Not the most pleasant of emotions, it’s true but at least they are emotions. You, on the other hand, just… don’t have any.”
They started walking again. “Just hit me over the head with it, why don’t you?”
Mandy snorted. “It’s why I’m here. It’s why we’ve all been here.”
“To show me that I turn into a bitch that nobody likes?”
“That’s not fair. I’m sure your mother still loves you,” Mandy deadpanned. “And anyway, to be a bitch you have to actually care about something, even if it’s not the same thing everyone else -”
“I swear to God, if you weren’t dead already I’d - ”
“Nah, you wouldn’t. Not with those sneakers anyway.”
Donna stopped. “What?”
“Never mind. Come on, we need to get going. There’s one more thing for you to see here.”
“Where?” Donna took hold of Mandy’s sleeve again, automatically.
“The same place you always go on December twenty-second.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Donna and the spirit were back at the Jewish cemetery where Josh and his family were buried. She was saddened, although of course not surprised, to note that where there had previously been three headstones, now there were four. There were also a couple of weather-beaten wooden benches set among the graves that hadn’t been there before; Donna guessed that perhaps they’d been endowed by family friends after Rachel had passed away. It was another gray, wintry day, and she clutched her arms around herself instinctively, even though she couldn’t feel the cold. She moved across to stand in front of the newest tombstone which was inscribed to Rachel Lyman, the date of her death marked as January 2015.
She looked up to see her older self walking along the gravel path - vaguely registering that it no longer surprised her to be watching herself like this - and walked back to stand at Mandy’s side. “I come here on the same date each year?”
“Yes.”
“But why the twenty-second? I thought he… it happened on the tenth…”
Mandy raised an eyebrow. “It did.”
Donna closed her eyes as she made the connection. “It’s the date I left.” She took a deep breath. “The date I left him.”
“Yes. It’s a nice touch, don’t you think?” Mandy said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “You always make a point of coming back to him on the date you left.”
Donna found it hard to breathe through the knot that had formed in her chest. She couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate; her mind sluggishly refused to co-operate when she tried to sort through the swathe of mixed-up thoughts and feelings that had invaded it - but eventually, one thing emerged from the fug and became clear.
She had to do - something - to stop this version of her future ever becoming a reality.
Something? The spirit had insisted that Donna knew what to do, but the question now was - would it be enough?
Words she’d spoken and thought often tonight echoed once more around her head -
Josh doesn’t leave people.
- but she did, and she had. And she didn’t know whether he’d be able to forgive her.
Looking up, she saw that the other Donna had reached the row of headstones belonging to the Lyman family. “Hello, Josh,” she said quietly, her voice wavering.
Donna watched her sit down on the bench at the foot of the grave, hot tears once more pricking her eyes at the sound of the affection and the sorrow contained in those two simple words.
Her older self began to talk softly, but Donna didn’t really hear much of what she was saying. She no longer tried to stop her tears, letting them fall unabashedly as she considered the prospect ahead of her. The idea that in some version of her future, she could be left, not only mourning the one man she’d loved with all her heart, but also in some way grieving for the life she hadn’t lived was agonizing - but she didn’t try to fight it. Not now. Instead she let the full force of it wash over her, acknowledging to herself that while it may well have been ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, what her future self was facing here was quite possibly worse than that. To have lost the one person in the world who meant everything to her was bad enough - but to have lost him without having been truly his was a tragedy, compounded by the fact that things need not have turned out that way.
Donna had never been especially romantic, but she did believe that there was someone ‘out there’ for everyone. And she knew, without a doubt - had known almost since the moment she’d met him - that she had found her someone, nearly eight years ago. Yet what had she done? She’d tried to ignore it, then tried to deny it, and up until that evening, she’d been trying to forget it… and for what? Because she’d been scared of rejection, scared that if he didn’t want her she’d have to leave him - and well, that was irony right there, wasn’t it? She hadn’t suffered the rejection because she hadn’t put herself out there - and then she’d left him anyway.
But even so, she was his, body and soul; and nothing was going to change that - even death, judging by the scene unfolding before her.
Donna sat down at the other end of the bench, and fished around in her pocket for a crumpled tissue, too preoccupied with her thoughts to notice that the other Donna had finished speaking and was now just sitting quietly, pulling distractedly at the fingers of her gloves. After a few more minutes, she stood up, put a hand into her coat pocket and produced a small, yet perfectly oval pebble, which she proceeded to lay on the headstone. “I have to go now, Josh,” she whispered. “I’ll come back again next year.” Then she kissed her gloved fingertips and laid them over the engraving of his name. “I love you.”
Donna gasped, feeling as though a knife had been plunged into her chest.
Mandy’s voice cut through the white noise buzzing around her head. “Seriously, you’ve got to love the romantic irony of that. You can only tell him how you feel after he’s dead. That’s one for the poets.”
Donna sucked in a breath and stood up. “Don’t you think I know that?” she demanded, incensed. “Don’t you think I’ve been sitting here trying to work out how I can stop this from happening?”
Mandy eyed her impassively. “You know how to stop it.”
“In theory, yes!” Donna threw up her hands as she walked towards her companion. “But somehow, I don’t think that ‘Hi, Josh, I’m sorry I left, and by the way, I love you,’ is going to cut it, is it?”
“Probably not,” Mandy agreed, her eyes alight with mischief. “You could just go over there and jump him, I suppose.”
Donna just stared at her in disbelief. “What?”
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you never thought about it,” Mandy scoffed. “In fact, I know you did, because I caught you looking more than once or twice. And why wouldn’t you? He’s good-looking, he’s got a great body and he’s - uh,” she smiled, suggestively, “full of energy. If you know what I mean.” Her eyes narrowed, slyly. “Although come to think of it, maybe you already know exactly what I - ”
Donna snapped her mouth closed, immediately. “No! No, I don’t!”
“You two really never - ?”
“No! I mean, yes! I mean, we didn’t - ”
“Never?”
“No!”
“Not even once?”
“No!”
“Wow. The pair of you must’ve had more self control than I gave you credit for. I really thought you’d have… you know, at least once.”
“Well, we didn’t.” Donna narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I thought it was your job to know these things.”
Mandy grinned. “I’m the spirit of the future, not the past.”
“Okay, we’re done talking about this.” Donna sighed, exasperatedly.
“Why?” Mandy said, gleefully. “This is girl-talk. This is fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe. And should you really be talking about… stuff like that here?”
Mandy snorted and waved around an encompassing hand. “Are you crazy? There’s no-one to hear us!”
Donna put her hands on her hips and shot her a meaningful look.
“Oh. Well, point taken, but they still can’t hear us.”
“I know that, but it just feels inapp - ”
Donna noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see that her older self had moved back to stand at the foot of the grave. And suddenly, it was as though a veil had fallen. The Donna of the future was smiling that serene - plastic - smile again; the traces of emotion that had been evident in her face earlier had vanished and it was as though they had never been.
Donna watched herself turn around and make her way back to the path.
“She… I … never said goodbye.” - was the only thing she could think of to say at that moment.
“No. And that’s odd, don’t you think?”
Donna was about to agree with the spirit - but then the light dawned and she realized it made sense - in a completely nonsensical way. “No, it’s not,” she said, shaking her head. “I never said it the day I left, either.”
“That’s right,” Mandy said encouragingly. “And you still can’t.”
Donna frowned at her. “Wait a minute - why ask me a question when you already know the answer?”
Mandy shrugged. “I’m cute like that.”
“So all that stuff before about me and Josh …” Donna shook her head and turned back to watch her older self walk away along the path, following her retreating figure with her eyes until it was out of sight.
“I’m like a - a robot,” she breathed.
“Well, not quite,” Mandy conceded. “But whatever you had inside that made you you - the empathy, the heart - it’s more or less gone for good, now. This is the one hour a year you allow yourself to remember him and your old life, but even those memories have faded and soon, they’ll disappear altogether. You were so bitter before you left - all you wanted to do was forget Josh and forget the way you felt about him, so you systematically locked away every good memory and feeling you associated with him, because - ”
“Because it was the only way I could bring myself to leave him,” Donna admitted, finally.
“Yes. And after you left, you didn’t want to feel the pain of being in love any more, you didn’t want it to get in the way of the new life you were planning to make for yourself, so you just stopped yourself from feeling any of it. The good parts, too.”
Donna felt herself flush. She knew Mandy was right, but that didn’t mean it was easy for her to hear. She grinned weakly. “Hearing you talk like this is still freaking me out, you know.”
Mandy sat down on the bench. “Deal with it.”
Donna scuffed at a piece of grass. “But…” she looked at her companion, pleadingly. “I can stop this happening, right? I mean, why would Mrs Landingham, and Noah, and Fitz - and you - ” she began to pace backwards and forwards in front of the bench, her voice becoming more and more animated as various ideas began to take hold, “why would you all have turned up if it wasn’t possible to change things?”
Mandy opened her mouth to reply, but it was evident that none was required. She folded her arms, a small smile on her lips as Donna continued to pace in front of her.
“And you said this was only one possible future.” Donna glanced at her briefly, and Mandy merely nodded her confirmation. “And that if I - if Josh ...” Donna stopped and whirled around as a thought occurred to her. “I mean, Tiny Tim didn’t die because Scrooge went back and changed things, and - ”
Mandy threw back her head and laughed. “Seriously, Donna? You have to promise me that I can be a fly on the wall if you ever refer to Josh as Tiny Tim to his face.”
Donna laughed, too, and dropped down onto the bench beside her.
“So,” Mandy said, eventually. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Yes.” Donna frowned. “At least I think so.” Now that it had come to it, she thought that perhaps she needed more time to let everything sink in, more time to decide exactly what it was she was going to do. “It’s just… there’s a lot to think about, you know?”
“There is. But then again, maybe not. You know what you have to do if you want to stop yourself from going down the path that leads to this,” Mandy waved a hand around expansively. “So just… go to him. As for the rest,” she shrugged. “It’ll take care of itself.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Are you kidding me?” Mandy rolled her eyes. “When has anything involving Josh Lyman ever been simple? But it’s a start.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Part Six