Moments continued
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| Join us at the Slice of Life each Tuesday, hosted by Two Writing Teachers |
Every life is filled with moments.
Mostly, these moments are ordinary. Fill the dishwasher.
Discover that you drank the last of the milk before noticing that the recipe
that needs to go in the oven right now
requires a third of a cup. Scrambling to find someone to bring to the holiday
party for work so that no one gives you those pitying, “she’s always alone”,
looks yet again. Empty the dishwasher. Grab a bowl of dry cereal to eat in
front of the television, rather than venture out to the Indian take out place.
Some moments start out as just part of the daily grind, but
change your life forever. I remember the
exact moment with crystal clarity. The moment it all began – again.
*******
Slamming the door behind me as I enter the dark hall of my
townhouse, I juggle an armload of mail and a backpack filled with files from
the lab I need to review tonight.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” I shout into the dimly lit kitchen,
and chuckle. My only response comes in the form of the glint from a pair of
eyes on top of a bookshelf and a miffed little “mrrrow”. Slipping my backpack
off my shoulder and tossing my keys into the bowl by the door, I use my elbow
to flip on the lights.
“Bill… bill… junk mail, bill.” I rub the back of my neck. I
need that promotion at work now, more than ever. So much for ignoring those
files and plopping down in front of the television tonight.
One envelope slips out of the pile and flutters to the
ground. Oddly enough, my address is handwritten in a lovely, flowing script.
Intrigued, I snatch it up and carefully rip it open. Inside the envelope are a
childish drawing, a faded photograph, and a brief note.
Dear Meghan,
It has been years since we spoke –
years since you were like a second daughter to me.I am finally moving on with my life
and leaving the house where you and Cassie so often played. I came across these
pictures, and the good memories came flooding back. Please, if you can, come visit me
one last time. I have some things I know Cass would want you to have.
“Aunt” Deirdre
The drawing is
a simple one, and I remember it well. Cassie had loved to doodle, and insisted
on hanging it in her room well into high school. Even the possibility of having
a boyfriend see it on the wall hadn’t convinced her to take it down. Seeing it
brought it all back, and I was six again.
*******
“Meghan!” Cassie whispered my name and then
giggled softly. “Don’t move. Don’t … even… breathe.”
I sat
motionless under the weeping willow in her backyard. I felt the tickling touch
of the leaves on the back of my neck, but I knew better than to ignore her
demands. We might be best friends, but her temper was quick to flare and I’d
had my feelings hurt too many times to defy her when she was in this mood.
Lying on her
belly just a few feet away, with her sketch pad shielded from my view, Cassie
chewed on one of her new pencils. Yellow, bright like the sunshine, the color
she insisted on using for my hair. Even at six, though, I knew my hair was
mousey brown. Mousey brown, and always tangled.
“There, you
can move now.” I started to unfold from the ground and leaned toward her to get
a peek at the drawing. “Not yet, Megs! I
still need to draw me, you know.” Thoughtfully, she selected just the right
shade of red from her pencil set, and scribbled swiftly on the page.
That shade
of deep red delighted her, because it was the exact right color to draw her
hair in the sunlight. She said it just like that, too, every time. I stretched
out under the willow tree, staring up at the small bits of sky I could see
through the leaves, and pushed my fingertips into the soft dirt.
“Now, Megs!
Come and see!” Cassie was breathless, panting slightly with exhilaration
Swiftly I
darted to her side, eager to see what had her so excited. My jaw dropped open,
just like in the cartoons, and I whispered.
“What….
Cass…. What is that?”
“See, Megs?
That’s what was tickling your neck. Isn’t she so pretty?”
****
So many years
later, and I still feel a little shiver run down my spine as I gaze at the paper.
It’s a childish drawing, but it’s clearly me sitting under a willow tree. Perched
on one of my shoulders is a tiny creature with wings. It sounds beautiful;
until you take a closer look and see the sharp teeth peeking out from behind
her delicate lips.
It was all
just childhood fancy; one that I’d put behind me years ago. That fine line
between imagination and delusion? I was
building a career studying people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see that line. Yet
the memory makes me want to reach up and brush off my shoulder, just in case.
“Enough of
this nonsense,” I mutter, stuff it all back into the envelope, and toss it on
the counter. Fifteen minutes later I had fed Socrates, fed myself, and was
ensconced at my small desk with my backpack gaping open beside me. Brain scans,
with brightly lit regions, fill each folder. No names, just numbers to identify
each subject.
Hours pass
in a haze of silent sorting. The quiet is a blessed relief after the incessant
chatter of the magpies at the lab. Two piles, or more, depending on the region
of the brain lit up in the scan. I’ve been doing this task for long enough that
I hardly have to think about it.
“That’s a
steaming heap of fewmets, Megs, and you know it!”
Startled, I
jump up and gaze around the empty room. Socrates opens her eyes to glare at me
reproachfully for daring disturb her slumber, then stretches and stalks to the
bedroom to resume napping.
The scent of
wet earth and fallen leaves fills the room, though it hasn’t rained in days. I
rub my eyes and look down at my desk.
One pile.
The scans I’ve
spent hours sorting are in one large
pile on my desk.
“No. NO! Oh
shit, not again.”
In all the
years I spent with Cassie, she never believed me when I told her I couldn’t see
them. I guess I’d spent too many of those years playing along when we were little.
Everyone found her little girl imagination delightful. The redheaded darling claiming
to play with fairies. Delightful, that is, until the years rolled by and she
still believed.
What twists
my insides into knots of guilt was that I’d never admitted to her, or anyone, that
I heard them. It began once Cassie drew her first picture. Right up until that
very last day, I could hear their voices and the soft whisper of their wings. I
could feel them, too. The tickle of their tiny feet. The insistent tugging on
my hair. Would it have changed anything to have told her?
A soft burst
of musical laughter mocks me. I’m no
longer startled, just resigned. It’s time to go home.
*****
Less than
twelve hours pass before I’m on the train. The song of the tracks soothes my
nerves. The scent of damp earth which clung to me is now gone, having succumbed
to the assault of the body odor and perfumes of my fellow travelers. Cassie and
I often spent afternoons riding on trains, back and forth from the nearby city
as teens. Her joyful partnership with the sprightly beings had, by then, turned
sour. She insisted that they couldn’t follow her onto a train because of the
iron that surrounded us. It was on one of those trips that I fully realized
just how bad it had gotten.
***
Her eyes
were red and swollen, and her once shiny auburn hair had thinned. She tugged on
the sleeves of her turtleneck, pulling them down all the way to her wrists. It
was too late. I had already caught a glimpse of a jagged line of red along her
forearm.
“Cassandra.
What the hell?” I shouted.
The train
wasn’t very crowded, but the few adults sprinkled throughout the train car
glared at me, then studiously stared out the windows to avoid getting involved.
I grabbed her arm and yanked it toward me. I turned so that my back concealed
her from the other occupants on the train; protecting her had become second
nature.
Shoving the
sleeve up to her elbow, I swore again. Her entire forearm was covered with tiny
gashes.
“Megs, I swear,
I don’t know what they want from me,” she whispered in anguish.
I knew.
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