Allison, Lily, and Sinnocent

Allison Lily Sinnocent had a full, American standard three names.

Unfortunately, none of them were her own.

Allison, that was her father’s mother’s name; a woman with a kind smile, dignified white curls, and the same figure she’d had when she was Allison’s age. A better one than Allison had, if only because she was taller and Allison was stronger. Skill at cooking, sewing, raising children, crochet and calligraphy. Dignified in the humble, unconscious way of someone whose dignity had never, to their knowledge, been questioned or tested, and whose interests revolved around the happiness of others. As close to the classic model of the Angel in the House as Allison had ever had the rather humiliating privilege of meeting.

Allison didn’t know how much of the decision to name her after her grandmother was a conscious hope that she would resemble her, how much was tradition, how much was unthinking automatic honor for someone her parents loved. She didn’t care, really, because whatever was intended, the effect was that every time her name was spoken, written, or thought, it was an instant comparison to a standard she couldn’t (didn’t want to) ever reach.

Lily--her middle name, there and claimed as a memory and honor, but as close to secret as a name could be--was her father’s grandmother. Lily Opal Sinnocent (formerly Rowe), who married at sixteen, had a child at seventeen and twins at nineteen and another child at twenty and again at twenty three, and at twenty four disappeared into an asylum accompanied by her second best friend, schizophrenia and bipolar depression and maybe another disorder that no one quite ever directly named, and never got to leave before she died, still beautiful, still insane, at thirty seven. Giving her that name, Allison supposed, was meant to be some kind of redemption--for the mother whose kids never stopped resenting her disappearance, the girl whose life got lost, or the woman who failed to be what she was supposed to. Which one, or all of them, Allison had no idea, and didn’t want to know.

She wished her names had been switched. She felt much closer to being Lily than Allison.

Sinnocent, now--she didn’t know where that had come from. It wasn’t a name, as she’d ever known them; it hadn’t evolved fluidly from some ancient ancestor’s work, appearance, or location. Someone, generations back, must have chosen it. A very daring someone, Allison supposed, considering what the time they chose it in must have been like; that almost made bearing the name worth it.

But the name was far too apt for what her family was, now, in a way that whoever chose the name had probably never intended. For a long time her family, like almost all the early American immigrants, had been farmers, maybe the occasional shopkeeper or smith or tailor, just like everyone around them except for that odd name.

But then wars came, and with them came jobs and opportunities and money, and in two generations her family went from carpenters to businessmen, charming and politicking their way through a level of society that wasn’t quite rich enough to attract the media without a scandal, but wealthy enough to be at risk of losing everything they had to the media’s attention should such a scandal occur.

Sinnocents were businessmen and women, politicians who campaigned for private instead of public seats. They were manipulators, deceivers, but rarely liars: liars could be caught too easily. It was far easier to just give the truth a little twist in the presentation, or to be so charming that further manipulation wasn’t needed; people wanted to indulge you anyway.

Allison Lily, like most Sinnocents, was good at being charming. There were very few people she couldn’t charm, if she felt like putting the effort into it, and when she felt cynical enough to do so it made her life quite a bit easier in many ways.

She just thought it would be a bit easier if she could ever manage to charm herself.