Episode 78, originally published 24-Dec-97

It's A Wonderful Wife

Neil is in his car driving through fog in the middle of the night, barely able to see anything outside. As the car passes over a small stone bridge, he catches the outline of it in the corner of his eye and looks back saying "hmmm." He pulls the car to the side of the road, almost rolling it over in the process since there is a steep slope down from the plane of the road. He leaves the lights turned on, and flips on the hazards as well, hoping the extra light will help. He doesn't bother to close the door to the car. Fortunate, perhaps, since he also doesn't take his keys. He gets out and ambles back to the bridge. He climbs up on the stone railing and looks down. The creek bed below is covered with ice that may once have been a trickle of water. "Ouch," he says as he looks at the bed of ice. "Not high enough?" comes a familiar woman's voice right next to him. He almost loses his balance as he realizes someone else is there beside him on the stone wall. "Hey! You almost made me fall." The figure is wrapped in a shroud. He can't see her face. "Isn't that what you were planning to do anyway?" the figure asks. "Well, I had hoped for maybe some water below..." "So you want to kill yourself, but you don't want it to hurt too much." Neil shrugs. "Uh, something like that," he admits in an embarrassed tone.

"Hey, do I know you?" he asks finally. The figure turns to face him. "Aunt Mamie?" he asks in astonishment. The woman smiles. "It's nice to be remembered..." "Aunt Mamie, of course I'd remember. It's just that--you've been gone so long--we thought maybe you were--" "--dead?" Mamie completes his thought. "Yeah." "Are you so sure I'm not?" She extends her hand and it passes through him. "Aunt Mamie--you're an angel?" She laughs. "Do you feel like you've been touched by an angel, Neil?" He looks confused. "Your hand went right through me." "Then I'm not an angel," she says. "But there's a lot of work for angels here at CBS these days, so I'm here to earn my wings." "Here? Why here?" he asks. "Because when a bell rings, it means another angel has earned his or her wings. And what better place to find a Bell than here on the set of good old Y&R..."

"But--but--Mamie, the last we heard of you, you were sailing off into the sunset with your new love." Mamie nods and wipes away a small tear. "Oh, here on the show maybe. But in real life, it was the end of the line. I was destitute. Until I ran into Eric Braeden and he got me a role in the Titanic." "So you went away on the Titanic and now you're..." She nods quietly. "... dead. And now I'm just hoping there's a role for me on that Angel show. But first I have to earn my wings." "Oh yeah," Neil says, "and how exactly are you supposed to do that?" "Well, I thought I might start by helping you keep from jumping." "Oh, I dunno, Mamie. You might want to start with something easier. You see, Dru, she's been lying to me..." Mamie gets suddenly angry. "Neil Winters, how dare you talk about my kin that way!" She tries to slap him but it goes through his face. She pauses a moment to think, then says, "Look, here's the drill, ok? I'm going to take you back and show you what a wonderful life you've had and--" "Mamie, mame--look, I remember my life pretty well and it's been no great shakes." "No, I don't mean like that. We're going to show you how things would be if you'd never been here, Neil. So you can see the impact you've made." "The impact I've made? I dunno... I don't think I've had much impact." "Oh, no, I'm sure you're wrong, Neil." She pulls out a big book and says, "I picked this up on my way over--it's a record of all the effects you've had on the world. I haven't had time to read through it but we'll look things up as we go. I'm sure you'll see by the time you're done that it's a really wonderful life you've had."

Mamie waves her hand and they are suddenly back in town, standing in front of an apartment door. She steps through the door. Neil looks puzzled for a moment and reaches out to the wall in front of him. His hand passes through. He pulls it quickly back out and assures that it still feels intact to him. He steps through the wall. Mamie winks at him. "Takes some getting used to," she says. Dru is with Malcolm. They kiss. A serious kiss. "Alright, alright. That's enough," Neil says. They don't appear to hear him. He tries to pry them apart, but his hands pass through. "They don't know we're here?" Neil asks. Mamie shakes her head. "You aren't here, Neil. This is what the world is like when there's no you." Neil sighs. "Oh yeah, that makes me feel a lot better. My brother moving in on my turf. Hey, wait--where's--" he pauses trying to remember his girl's name. "Lily?" "Yeah, where's Lily? Oh wait--I remember. I'm not here so there IS no Lily." Lily comes running in from the bedroom. Dru and Malcolm accept her with open arms and hug her. The three go about exchanging presents in background as Neil turns to Mamie. "Something must be wrong with your simulator, Mame. Lily is my child, and if I'm not there, neither should she be." Mamie thumbs through the index of her book muttering, "Lily... Lily..." Finally she says, "Ah!" and thumbs to a middle page. "It seems," she explains, "that Lily isn't your child at all. She's always been Malcolm's. But Dru never told you..." "Oh, more lies." "Well, not exactly. Here she is a product of love, but it seems that in your timeline that Malcolm raped her. She found out that this might be her last chance ever to have a child, so she decided to go ahead and have the child and call it yours, even though it daily reminded her of the rape, just so you could have a daughter." Neil wipes a tear from his eye. "Well, when you put it that way, I guess it doesn't sound as bad."

"Hey, if Malcolm is here, what about Olivia?" he says suddenly. "Patience," says Mamie. She thumbs through the book a ways and then nods. "First we have another stop to make." She grasps her cape and waves her arm and suddenly they are in a Jabot corridor as Dru goes wizzing past. "Hey!" Neil says. "We just left Dru back at her apartment." "We're moving in space-time, Neil," says Mamie. "so it's another day." "Well, I want to--uh,--can you hold on a sec?" he says without waiting for a reply. She nods calmly as he races after Dru. Dru slams the door to her office but Neil walks easily through it. Then, as if doing a double-take, he bends his back backwards so his head pokes through and he can read the gold plate on the door. "Drucilla Winters. Vice President?" Mamie pushes his head back through as she herself goes through the door.

"She's a Vice President?" Mamie nods. "Apparently, the main effect you had on Dru was to hold her back in her career." "But all she ever wanted to do was be a model," Neil says. Mamie nods. "It says here that she was launched to international stardom by her appearance nude in Sensuality Magazine." Mamie hands him the book, which offers illustrations. "International stardom? Ha! We tried to kill that appearance, but it still happened and it went nowhere." He looks at the pictures. "Hey, these aren't the photos I saw." "Of course it went nowhere, Neil. There's a note here that says the magazine ended up using some poor test photos, not the real spread shot by Jabot's chief photographer Blade. In this timeline, Blade's photos were used and the spread was an international success. Dru's unmatched command of fashion eventually led to her position in Marketing at Jabot... uh oh, that would be the position left vacant by your absence, wouldn't it."

"Well, that explains it," Neil says, letting out a sigh of relief. "She's finally doing some respectable work. I always told her that modeling work was just a flash in the pan." "Oh, she didn't give up the other work, Neil. She's Vice President of Marketing, a World Supermodel, and a happy mother to Lily." Neil is flabbergasted. "But, but, ... how? Those are demanding jobs." "It says here that Malcolm stays home with the child--he's quite a fine chef, in fact. They've talked about opening a line of restaurants when Lily is older. But for now, he watches the kids and Dru brings in--well, I won't embarrass you with how much more she makes than you did. After all, it isn't really a fair comparison. She has all that income from the video tapes." "Video tapes?" "A whole series of very successful `how to' tapes on how to have a happy family life, how balance career and home, how to improve your sex life, how to ..." "Alright, alright. I get the idea. And you say people actually bought these things?" Mamie laughs and taps the book. "There's a whole appendix devoted to secondary effects related to those videos."

Neil shakes his head. "I dunno. I mean, how can she still even manage to be a model--doesn't that time away from her family get to her?" "Who said she's away from her family? Malcolm goes with her." "But--what about his studio?" "his studio?" asks Mamie, thumbing quickly about in the book. "Oh, Blade's studio." "Blade? But he died." "No, Blade never died." "He didn't? And that was my fault?" "Sort of. You see, Blade's brother Rick showed up in town and tried to impersonate him. But after the photo shoot that set Dru's career ablaze, Blade was now a world-class photographer whose work was heavily studied. When Rick tried to impersonate him, the ruse was easily recognized by numerous critics. The police were contacted, and Rick went to prison for kidnapping. So Ashley never ended up hoodwinked, and Blade never ended up hit by the train."

The door opens and Katherine and Rex Sterling enter. "Wait a minute," says Neil. "That's Rex Sterling. He should be dead, too." Mamie shakes her head sadly. "No. Not dead. They're here to discuss a Christmas Charity event with Drucilla. You know, Neil, I'm really sorry all these effects of your having existed are coming out so negative. I just assumed when I saw the size of this book that it was full of positive things you'd done. But apparently this has to do with the video tape series of Dru's." "The video tape?" "Yes, well, apparently Esther--Katherine's maid--had married a man of somewhat questionable background. He had planned, in fact, to rob the Sterlings and in your timeline I see that Rex was killed when he figured this out. But in the timeline without you, Esther and this man--Normie--saw Dru's video tape on how to build a strong family, and the later one on improving your sex life. And, well, I don't want to get into the details, but let's just say he ended up going straight, and so no one ended up shot."

Mamie flips through some more pages. "Oh, my, my," she says, "those video tapes really profoundly affected a lot of people. Look at this," she says handing him the book. He skims the page she is pointing to, reading aloud as he goes. "Grace Turner and Tony Viscardi get a copy of the tape before going to Madison to look for Sharon Newman's lost daughter. They marry. The young girl Cassidy is returned to Sharon where she lives happily ever after." He flips some more pages. "Newman... Newman... Ah,-- After seeing Dru's video tape on creative empowerment and advanced sexual situations, Victor Newman uses his fortune to transplant the entire Mormon community to Wisconsin. Then, using a newfound electoral majority, strikes down the law against polygamy. He remarries all his ex-wives ... except Diane, who marries Jack instead." He closes the book and hands it back to Mamie. "No doubt Jack and Diane saw Dru's video, too." Mamie nods.

"But what about Olivia? Is she ok? She must be dreadfully lonely," Neil says hopefully. "Well, Neil, I--" Neil raises his hand to stop her and shakes his head. "That tape again?" he asks in an irritated tone. "No, it's not that. But without you dropping by every day to flirt with her during working hours, she was able to come home at a reasonable hour every day and her husband never felt like she was an absentee wife." "So she and Nathan are--" "--still alive and happily married, yes," Mamie confirms grimly.

"Look, Mamie, I can see where this is going. Is there anyone who was NOT adversely affected by my presence in the world? How about my secretary, Joyce?" Mamie shakes her head. "With Dru as a role model, Joyce realized that she didn't have to settle for being a secretary, so she took night school and eventually became a lawyer at Collins & Sons." "Collins & Sons? Oh, right--with Sharon Newman's mom--the one in the wheelchair." Mamie says, "Well, no, actually. Dru's self-empowerment tapes apparently--" "--helped her to learn to walk again," Neil says. Mamie nods. Neil rolls his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Neil. This is really all a big error on my part. You see, for people like you who really contribute nothing to society, we're supposed to do the Scrooge scenario where you get visited by Christmas Past, Present, and Future. It has a more hopeful ending for your type. I'm afraid choosing the "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario is not going to work well at all here since really, the world would have been better without you." Neil sighs. "I'm not sure I'm up to doing that whole other story--cut to the bottom line, Mame, is the future cast in stone or not?" "As far as I know," says Mamie, "no one bothers to plan the future of these stories at all. It's pretty much just scripted day to day, as I'm sure the audience can attest to." "OK, so that means I can still change." "Yes, Neil, it does." "All right. Take me back to my world then. I'm ready to try to be better." "Well, I dunno. Do you promise you won't walk around looking like you're gonna whack my niece Dru for lying to you, while at the same time looking like you're all set to lie to Dru and have an affair with my other niece Olivia?" "Yeah, yeah... whatever. I just don't think I can take any more of this sickeningly sweet Christmas `Dru saves the day' stuff, you know?"

Mamie waves her arm and Neil finds himself entering the household of Olivia and Malcolm and Little Nate to find them gathered with Dru and Lily around the tree. This time, the door responds to his touch. "Neil!" says Dru. "Daddy!" says Lily. "Hey, man!" says Malcolm. "Neil--we weren't sure whether to expect you..." Olivia says. "Well, I'm kinda surprised to be here myself," he says. Neil hands Dru a wrapped Christmas present. She happily opens it without waiting. It's a set of three blank video tapes. "Neil, there's nothing on these tapes." Neil nods. "Life is like that, I guess. It's what you make of it..." Just then, the phone rings and Nate answers. "Hello?" "Hello, who's this?" Cricket says. "This is Nate. Who is this?" he asks. "This is Christine Williams. I'm just calling to wish you all a Merry Christmas." Nate smiles. "Thank you, Mrs. Williams. You have a Merry Christmas, too!" He hangs up. Neil laughs. "What's so funny?" Dru says. "Just something I once heard," Neil says. "That whenever a Bell rings, an Angel has gotten her wings." Dru looks at him quizzically. "Hey, you sure you' ok, Neil? 'Cuz honey that don't make no sense at all..."

She's right, of course. But who ever said Christmas stories have to make sense? The important part is that, unlike a real soap, everyone here lived happily ever after. (But remember, Neil--it's Christmas and I feeling pretty charitable. If you go back to your old ways again, next time I'm letting you jump.)

That's all for this episode. Hope you learned something. Don't miss Episode 79!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.

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