it's an everyday decision

___

I remember when you told me

it's an everyday decision

But with my double vision,

how was I supposed to see the way?

Haven't I given enough, given enough?

Haven't I given enough, given enough?

___

The lamplight is low and rosy, a dusky glow in the quiet hours of the evening. It’s late, much too late for anyone to still be awake. The house is stuffy and the soft light feels as heavy and oppressive as the unnaturally hot day had. It’s still very warm, and Winifred can feel little wisps of hair at her ear and neck sticking to her skin. Her body feels as heavy as the evening air, and she isn’t ready for the true summer heat to finally come full force when the season actually changes. She sits in the quiet, eyes heavy as the rest of herself and itchy with sleep. She should be asleep like the rest of her home, but she’s been staying up into the late hours more and more frequently. It’s simply the only time she gets a moment to herself. A moment to think. A moment of respite. It’s the only time the facade of the lady of the house drops and she can be free. Naturally, this is the moment she hears footsteps on the stair.

Winifred sighs, righting herself, pulling her spine up and pushing her shoulders back, making herself at least somewhat presentable for her husband. They have separate rooms, the best people always do, so it isn’t as if he knew she would be here, quietly mulling in the semi-dark. She knows her hair is a frightful mess, feels the stickiness, but she’d given up on maintaining the style sometime around dinner and there isn’t anything to be done for it now. She knows she probably looks downright indecent, but it is the middle of the night. She can’t be expected to be impeccable at this hour, can she? She musters up the sweetness expected of her. The pleasant demeanor. The performance. She’s an actress after all.

To her surprise, it is the slender form of her nanny that turns the corner on the stair, and another completely different sigh escapes Winifred’s lips, unbidden. Said nanny locks eyes with her employer for only a brief moment as she glides down the rest of the stairs, with almost ethereal grace. Winifred catches the flash of warm blue in the dark, and something in her stomach turns. Naturally, her nanny hasn’t a single hair out of place, looking fresh in her pinstriped ensemble Winifred had seen her in earlier. She’d only removed the apron. She’s soft and delicate, nothing weary about her as she enters the glow of the parlor. Winifred is nearly angry she looks as put together as she does at this hour. But she’s long since realized that she couldn’t be anything else. Nothing out of place for her nanny. Not for Mary Poppins.

“Ma’am?” Mary Poppins asks softly, concerned.

There’s a soft ringing in Winifred’s ears.

“Hmm?” Winifred hums, startling slightly. How long had she been trying to speak to her as she appraised her employee?

“I asked if you would like a cup of tea as well Mrs. Banks?” Mary politely asked again, her eyes turning from slightly worried to slightly pitying. Winifred finds that she actually is angry. She wants to tell the young woman off. Tell her to get the hell out of her parlor and let her have her peace. Tell her that it’s ridiculous she should be so pretty in the dead of night after corralling her unruly children.

“Only if you intend to join me,” she hears herself saying instead, gentle and sweet. An award-winning performance.

Mary nods and with a quiet swish of her skirts, she disappears from the parlor. Winifred sags into the overstuffed settee, a headache forming behind her right eye. She prays it doesn’t turn into one of her worse ones that leaves her bedridden. Or maybe she’d welcome it at this point. She isn’t sure anymore. Winifred doesn’t have much time to sulk or think before Mary returns with a tray full of all the necessary items for a quick cuppa in the dark, and she straightens again and attempts a sliver of decorum in front of her subordinate. Mary pours out for the both of them and gracefully takes her seat in a chair across from Winifred and daintily enjoys her evening treat. Winifred finds she can’t look at her as she takes hers from the table and sips quietly, relishing the feeling of warm liquid down her throat.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Mary Poppins’ voice is soft but clear as a bell. Winifred finally looks at her and sees those warm blue eyes piercing her in the lamplight.

“Something like that I suppose,” Winifred answers. She’s surprised the nanny asked at all, though it’s probably unlikely any of her previous employers were found in the wee hours overthinking alone in their parlors. It’s a fair enough question, and the concern would be touching if it didn’t grate Winifred so.

“The abrupt change in weather often makes it harder. The children struggled to settle tonight as well,” Mary offers with a small smile over the rim of her cup, and Winifred feels something in her begin to shift.

“I’m sure it wasn’t too difficult for you Mary Poppins,” Winifred replies, keeping her tone neutral. Mary’s face remains passive. If she is upset by the remark, she doesn’t show it. The shift Winifred felt now manifests as a breeze that blows through the still-open windows of the house. She represses a shiver.

“I do enjoy a difficult challenge now and again, but your children are hardly what I would describe as difficult Mrs. Banks,” Mary answers with another gentle smile, but her inquisitive eyes betray her ever so slightly. Of course, Winifred thinks, she knows something about this conversation is odd. She would expect no less. Her nanny notices everything. But Winifred has also noticed so many things as of late.

“Please, call me Winifred. It’s just the two of us, there’s no need for such formality at-” Winifred stops and glances at the clock on the mantle. “-nearly two in the morning.” Mary smiles and nods, acquiescing to the request.

“It should only be fair then that you call me Mary.”

“Thank you, by the way, for the tea,” Winifred says, giving a small but real smile. She did appreciate the gesture. She was too worn out to do it herself and had given up on the idea until Mary appeared.

“It’s my pleasure Winifred,” Mary replies, demure and kind.

“As I’m sure a great many things are,” Winifred says. She sips at the last dregs of her tea.

“I’m sorry?” Mary asks, her eyes widening only slightly and only briefly before the cool and calm demeanor went back into place. Winifred blinks at her in the dark. She isn’t sure she even wants to go down this path. Not right now. She hasn’t the energy. Hasn’t had it in a while. But her head and her heart are not in conjunction this evening, and when had an opportunity like this presented itself before?

“It’s nothing Mary Poppins, do forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive Winifred,” Mary says carefully, setting down her empty tea cup. Perhaps it’s the soft glow and the too-hot house. Perhaps it’s because this is the first time she’s ever been alone with the woman. Perhaps it’s because she simply cannot go on living with the way things had been going. But whatever the shift in Winifred, it becomes a full crack in the facade.

“I think you’ll find,” she murmurs softly, as her nanny slowly gets up and begins collecting their finished tea, “there are a great many things you’d have to forgive me for.” Mary picks up the tray and stands ramrod straight, fair skin glowing in the dark. She looks otherworldly somehow, here in the parlor of the Banks household at a godforsaken hour. Winifred could cry.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand Winifred,” Mary says gently.

“I find that hard to believe,” Winifred replies, laughing softly, almost cruelly. “But the first and perhaps largest of my transgressions against you is that I am impossibly jealous of you Mary Poppins.”

Winifred stands and moves to make her way over to the stair and head to bed, but she must walk past her nanny to do so and a slender but gentle hand grasps her forearm, stopping her. She looks down at the fingers grasping her, unadorned and smooth, before looking up into the eyes of Mary Poppins. She could drown in that warm blue.

“With everything you have in your life Winifred, how could you ever be jealous of me?” Mary asks, her breath close and soft. Winifred does shiver this time. Mary releases her arm.

“You don’t have to play coy with me Mary Poppins, I’m not a child you can soothe with a holiday into a chalk painting,” Winifred sighs, tired and defeated. She doesn’t bother to look at Mary for her reaction. “Good night,” she whispers to the floor, before deftly scurrying away to the stair. She doesn’t look back, but if she did, she might have found the startled reaction on the nanny’s face that she’d been hoping for all night.