Since that "incident" several years ago, I've been unable to rise from my bed without someone's helping me. This bitter reality of helplessness very often overwhelms me, not infrequently to the point of tears. Mary and Jo are such sweethearts to visit me and offer whatever help they can. It's their company that I crave most of all, though I do appreciate the treats they always bring, including books from the local library. I love books, rarely ever bothering to turn on the television. My landlady kindly had cable put it, thinking it a means to keep me entertained and, well, to get my mind off ...
I hate "going there," as they so commonly say. Dwelling on what happened does me no good, no good at all. Then, please, someone tell me how to turn off the nightmare of events running over and over again through my tired brain. The trite but still painful question that everyone asks is - they think I'm out of earshot, but I'm not - "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Don't get me wrong; the outpouring of love and sympathy from kith and kin has been my salvation. Of course, I'm disabled FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Why am I the one who survived?
I need far more than momentary distraction to escape survivor's guilt. In my literary travels, I allow my imagination free rein. However, my past life and what I read often combine in my subconscious mind. Over that I surely have no control. For example, I see myself traveling untold miles to reunite with my family after so many years apart. When I step off the train, my son and my husband smile widely as I step down to greet them. My son's little arms reach up to me ... then the loves of my life vanish before me. Especially in dreams do actual events become jumbled, yet the cutting, profound pain of loss that attends awakening is all too palpable.
I said I didn't want to go there.
Where is the night nurse? She's late.
I guess I could call the agency to learn what's holding up "Nurse Jane" this time. Patience is a virtue I've never had. A reversal of fortune doesn't necessarily bring along with it a new and improved outlook on life. You know, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, or some such. Au contraire, bitterness and anger got in the way of every decent emotion and positive thought I had troubled deliberately to cultivate. Mind over matter ... someone told me it doesn't matter.
Looking out the window - it's to the left of my bed and affords quite a nice view of the bay - I imagine myself the character Johnsy in "The Last Leaf," waiting to succumb to the inevitable. One by one the leaves drop to the snow-covered lane below. My life and my fate are bound up with the last remaining leaf ... do you see what I mean? I get caught up in the story, becoming the central character and booting the real heroine off the stage. What effrontery!
It's getting dark and I can tell from the swaying of the eucalyptus trees outside my window that a stiff wind is coming in off the bay. The two-story house next door does not block my view of the sea as it is set back a bit. What I can see is partially obscured by that little stand of trees. The gentle back-and-forth motion of those graceful eucalyptus causes the light pouring through my window to cut in and out. Hypnotic. Comfortable. Warm.
Coming to, after a brief snooze, I throw a casual glance out the window and, even as I relate this, a shiver goes down my spine. I am unable to catch my breath. What is that on my neighbor's roof? Dark though the sky has become, there is no mistaking what is there. I am frozen ... its unearthly stare is fixed on me.
Its eyes - fitted into huge sockets within a gargoyle's head - are red-hot coals. My mind, my heart, my soul are seared by what is about to become, in a matter of swiftly passing moments, an all-consuming conflagration. That considerable distance of seeming, relative safety from rooftop to bedroom affords me no consolation.
Strangely fascinated, I emerge from the initial state of shock and, by rapidly increasing degrees, find myself helplessly captive to full-blown horror. The immediate impulse in any ordinary emergency sort of situation is to reach for the telephone, punch out the requisite 3 digits and then anxiously await the arrival of the community's finest. I, locked into the creature's horrific stare, am incapable of movement. Of rational thought. Of coming to my own defense.
Terror has never been so delicious ...
Entrancement and enchantment each work their singular charm upon me as four eyes remain set in a fixed stare. Outwardly I am silently screaming, my head exploding and letting fly like shrapnel innumerable questions that have no possible answers. And inwardly? Dare I permit my glacial heart to melt at the unimaginable prospect that, perhaps, this otherworldly entity is my dubious savior?
Is he reading my mind?
I'm sinking ever further into this conflict of strange emotions, a tide of angst over which no straight thinking could hope to prevail. My mind says run for your life, though that, of course, is a physical impossibility.
My foolish heart quietly insists that there is an unseen beauty in this being whose aspect defies all human description. Most would declare this a beast. Regardless, his presence would doubtless cause a brave man to faint. As I am really no beauty myself, I find it, in the beneficent Law of the Cosmos, unfair to consign any of the Great Spirit's creatures to the prison of human bias. Isn't it too ludicrous, that I, a captive audience of one, should render such pious judgment?
Released momentarily from my inward stirrings, I focus once again on the creature's face. His eyes ... they are no longer red but turned the color of the sea. Cool. Calm. Serene.
Is this chimera - whether real or in my brain - reading my mind?
Certainly my heart has not hardened in fear or revulsion. I know that the creature reads my heart, if not my mind. A gradual but, nevertheless, astonishing transformation occurs before me, so clearly visible despite the physical separation that maintains between us. The absurdly misshapen is metamorphosing into a comely form that commands my unbroken, wondering gaze. Scales of a peculiar geometric form fade into the pink smoothness of human skin. A warm glow surrounds what was only mere moments ago a horror of the darkest grotesquerie. What could only have been construed as his mouth has taken the shape of beautifully formed and sensuous lips. While otherwise stock-still for these fleeting yet intolerably protracted moments of physical modifications, my beast has become beauty.
Released from an appearance of suspended animation, my beauty begins to move but in an incredibly drawn-out slow motion. Slowly, very slowly, his right arm rises from his side and reaches upward toward me, his hand extended and beckoning. That mouth, those lips quiver ever so slightly ...
Beauty smiles at me.
So long immobile but for brief moments up with "Nurse Jane's" assistance, I feel an unfamiliar restlessness in my lower body. My mind and heart coax me arise and seek what awaits outside the barrier of glass.
It is no longer a matter of wishing, hoping and fighting long-entrenched despair. A power beyond all that is humanly possible - even in the most extraordinary of circumstances - seizes hold of atrophy and regenerates what was once officially declared dead. In spite of myself, I arise from my imprisoning bed and, as if it were a completely normal occurrence, glide over to the French windows. I do not touch the handles yet, in the manner of a dream, the doors open before me.
Standing upon the balcony, I observe with the utmost clarity the pure magnificence of celestial beauty. My mind no longer questions the why, the wherefore nor the how ... My heart says I must follow its direction:
I could never lead you astray ...
Something wonderful awaits you.
Return to your room, stand before
Your mirror and close your eyes...
It is still too much to believe that I arose from near total incapacity, hastened to the windows and beheld what dreams are made of. I've cast off all doubt regarding the validity of miracles in modern times. And Beauty - whether angel, alien or demon - convinces me in my heart of hearts that, truly, something wonderful is about to happen ...
Returning to my wardrobe, I momentarily close my eyes. Somehow sensing a subtle change in the direction put upon me, I open my eyes and look into the full-length mirror. I see only myself, no reflection of the room at all. There I stand, tall and erect, as in my vibrant and athletic youth. Now, however, it is as an assured, mature woman. Radiant. Smiling. Possessed, so it would seem, by an inner confidence emanating from my every pore. Behind me I sense a warm and comforting presence. It is he. The aura surrounding his now invisible self does not compete with my inner glow but interplays with it, creating a show of light, not of spectacular brilliance, but of undulating waves of luminescence.
My pounding heart fairly leaps from my chest. In the mirror are the likenesses of two men, one younger, one older. My brain must be playing tricks on me. I gasp. The older - a handsome man of not quite middle age - is clearly my husband, Jonathan. Who can that younger man be, who so resembles Jonathan? Is this father and son? No, it cannot be. Both Jonathan and Quentin were killed in the train ...
It was a lifetime ago.
I feel the gentle touch of a hand upon my shoulder. Rather than startle me, this tactile sensation calms me. As tears stream down my cheeks, I hesitate to confront the dream-like reality that remains unaltered as the mirror's reflection. I lower my head, overcome.
Beauty speaks barely a whisper into my ear:
Look again. There is nothing to fear. It is your husband
Jonathan and your son Quentin. They've come to take
you home.
Looking up once again into the mirror, I smile through my tears and gaze upon the beautiful countenances of father and son. My husband. My son. They reach toward me, bidding me follow them. I step closer toward the mirror ...
The bed that Sarah Gardner had languished upon for so many years is now empty. The eucalyptus continue to sway gracefully, their gentle susurration filling the former occupant's room through open French windows.
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