A Symphony of Cicadas (19 page)

“I know
.
I mean, I knew this was coming
.
It doesn’t make it any easier though,” John said
.
His eyes watered, though he held the tears at bay
.
But the sentiment wasn’t lost on Sam who needed to see some kind of regret from his dad
.
The wall between them
crumbled piece by piece
as they stood at the crossroads, finding
their truce
at the most unlike
ly
of places
.
“What does she say about it?  Is she fine with this decision?”

“She was actual
ly
happy about it
.
She said she’d call you to hash out the details
.”
John remembered the missed call from Wendy, realizing that was what she was calling him about
.
He was glad he hadn’t heard his phone ring.

The move wasn’t going to happen for a few more weeks, allowing Sam to finish his sophomore year at his current high school before summer vacation started, transferring to the school in Sebastopol in the fall
.
When it was settled, John embraced Sam for the first time in years
.
Sam leaned into John, just as he had when he was young, when life
didn’t me
an death or the end of marriage
, when families stayed intact and everyday life was predictable.

Twelve

T
he next several weeks, John made every effort to be present in the home
.
He knew he on
ly
had a few weeks left with Sam, and he wanted to make it right
.
It was during this time that I felt him distance himself from me
.
For him, this meant he pushed my image away whenever I entered his thoughts
.
For me, it meant there were a lot more barriers, a lot more hurdles to jump through just to get close to him
.
And when I did
get close
,
I
felt like I was fighting against the wind, struggling from being blown away as he repelled me
away
like the wrong side of a magnet
.
I couldn’t touch him, hear his thoughts, or
even
be in the same room as him whenever he worked to push me away.

It was different when I listened in to those who didn’t know me or
even
think to keep their minds closed
to
me
.
I could dance in their thoughts, sometimes even appearing to them as a flash of an image they were either aware of or not
.
Their inner dialogue was the stuff from which stories were made, and I would often sit for hours just listening to them talk within their heads.

Did I turn off the stove? I’m sure I turned off the stove.  I picked up the pot of oatmeal before it burned, and then, oh yes, there it is.  I turned off the stove.  The cat is probab
ly
licking away the oatmeal left in the pot by now.  That’s going to be a glued on mess to clean up when I get home, I know it.  Maybe the cat will be hungry enough to lick it clean.  That damn cat.  I wonder if Peter will know it was me if I leave that door open and let him accidental
ly
run outside.

The physical effects of John’s resistance caught me off guard. It
surprised me that a connection like this existed where the living had an effect on the dead, even if it was keeping me away.
My natural
reaction
was that of a jealous girlfriend, trying everything to keep myself in his thoughts in an exhausting array of tricks
.
I’d learned how to break through the barrier that separated his world from mine, allowing me the power to move objects that existed in the land of the living
.
Of course, such a feat took every amount of concentration I had
.
Thus far I had on
ly
succeeded in being able to knock things down, using gravity to help my cause along
.
But I knocked items down in front of him every chance I got – the one photo he kept of all four of us on the mantle, one of my books that was still in the room despite his sweep through in the first week of my death, and the most impressive of all – dropping the remote so that it turned to my favorite movie.

That one took immense planning
.
On a day when he was gone and I could move about without worrying about being repelled out of the house,
I flipped through the TV listing book they published every Sunday in the newspaper
.
There it was in black and white,
the title of my favorite movie,
“Made in Heaven
.”

I had made him watch the movie with me often, forcing him to endure two hours of my laughing and crying, sometimes
at the same time
, as the hearts of the characters on screen were broken over and over
.
If that movie appeared on the TV screen
now
, there was no way he’d be able to ignore me.

I memorized the time
of when the movie was playing,
and concentrated my hardest on staying within a human timeline rather than the non-existence of time in my own reality
.
And then I just prayed he’d be there at the right
moment
.

All the other
schemes of opening him up to my memory – the photo, the book, and anything else of mine I could place in his path -
on
ly
resulted in John picking up the
wayward
item and depositing
it
in Joey’s room, keeping the thought of me at bay with impressive strength
.
But
the remo
t
e control trick
gave him pause,
the memory of me filling the room as Elmo, the main character of the movie, filled the screen
.
John
s
a
nk to the couch as
Elmo
s
a
ng to the radio in his car, the book “Mike and Me” flung next to him on the passenger seat.

Rachel, just give me time,
he thought, as if he knew I could hear him
.
His resistance gone without warning,
I
found myself
cast inside of him
with a lurch.
I should have known, having planned this little action
with such deliberation
.
But still, it caught me off guard
.
I’d on
ly
expected a smile, a memory, on
ly
one brief moment of recognition for all the effort I put into this plan
.
Instead I could feel the way his hair moved across my forehead, his breath in my mouth, the
beat of his heart in my chest
.
I was wrapped up in his smell, intoxicated on the
familiar
scent I
adored
.

I danced in the memories that flashed through his head, enticing him to keep me there with him as he let his imagination run wild
.
But
then he thought of Sam and
I felt the barrier rising up again
.
I screamed in pain as it fought against me
.

I haven’t forgotten you.  I love you more than my own life.  But I also love my son, and I need to be with him now.

With that final thought, I was flung from his body, from his home, from the city
,
at thousands of miles an hour
.
I was thrown with
the
force
of
a speck of dust flicked from a
n
otherwise-
flawless suit jacket
.
I found myself
propell
ed
through space with such velocity I was sure I was on fire.

My pride wounded, I realized there was no fighting back
.
I needed to stay away,
at least for a little while
.
I’d
sewn myself too deep into the fabric of
John and Sam’s life
.
I had become so involved, even from the stance of a mere f
ly
on the wall, I sometimes forgot I was even dead.

The thought of walking away from them terrified me
.
Would John end up forgetting me?  Would he learn to live without me?  Would I become a memory from a past life
and would
he beg
i
n something new with -
and the next th
ought
almost
para
ly
zed me -
someone new?

But I knew
staying away
was the on
ly
answer
.
And out of respect for the man I loved and the relationship he had with his son,
the
re was no other choice
but to let go for now
.
So I
fought every
fiber in my being that
ached to be near him
.
Instead, I spent
a few days of human time in space,
practicing my own form of medi
t
a
tion by closing my mind to John. I focused
on the wonderment that existed in the p
ure nothingness that held me up;
surrounded by stars and meteors, planets and black holes,
experiencing
the coppery taste that existed in the lack of atmosphere,
and the
siren’s call
of the h
eavens that bordered the delicious quiet of the universe and could on
ly
be heard if I
didn’t move at all
.

And I thought of Joey.

Despite my disbelief in Heaven in those ear
ly
days of my death, I had grown to believe that there
real
ly
was something out there
.
I could sense a stirring within me at the faint trembling notes that existed in the corners of space, and I felt its pull whenever I let go of my hold on the living long enough to exist in the world of the dead
.
And I believed Joey was there.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I watched myself ask
six
-
year
-
old Joey
. We were at the breakfast table
back then,
and
in a journey through time,
I was watching
now
from
the leaves of the ficus I had inherited from my Grandma Bonnie after she died.

“An astronaut!” he exclaimed
.
He grinned
,
reveal
ing
his
two missing
front
teeth
before diving into the C
heerios in front of him
.
I had forgotten how young his voice once was, how his hair had once been a sandy blonde before darkening to the milky caramel it was before he left the earth.

“Why an astronaut?” I asked him
.
“Is it because you want to see if the moon is made of cheese?  Or maybe to see if the cow jumped over the moon?”  I asked him in all seriousness, though a hint of
a
smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.

“No!” he giggled
.
“Those things aren’t true
;
those are just jokes!” he informed me, and I feigned shock that I had been misinformed.

“I had no idea!  What will you see if you travel to space?” I asked him
.
And in his young wisdom, he described to me a vast universe with giant planets that traveled around the same sun as us, moving in a silent journey at varying speeds with tiny spheres of moons that traveled around them like our cats that swirled around our ankles in the morning before I opened their cans of food
.
He told me of the meteors that enter our atmosphere, how they
are
smaller than the palm
s
of our hand
s
but fifty times faster than the speed of a bullet
.
And he talked of the more impressive comet
s
, the dirty snowballs of the sky that orbit the solar system and h
old
glimpses of ear
ly
life
.
I listened then in the kitchen, and now in the folds of the ficus, with amazement as my young kindergartener explained the secrets of the universe, giving me information I’d learned over the course of time as well as new insight to a mysterious horizon that existed beyond the minuscule earth we lived upon.

“How d
o you know so much?” I
exclaimed
, no longer feigning
astonishment
.

“I saw it on the Discovery Channel,” he said
b
efore finishing his last bite of cereal and bringing the bowl to his mouth to drink the rest of the milk
.
“Can I be excused?” he asked me, and I nodded with a reminder to brush his teeth.

“Are you out there now?” I asked Joey out loud, back to the nothing of space that held more than even I could see in
my limitless existence
.
“Can you see me from Heaven?” I whispered, the sound hanging in front of me without echo.

I
became
aware of the possibilities that lay before me as I floated free from my earth
bound
body
.
The space that Joey once described to me was out here, and I had the ability to see it all
.
Earth, in the far away distance, shone at me like a star in the sky
.
The giant orb of Jupiter moved
in a slow rotation
next to me, the gasses swirling in an ever-moving sphere of colors
.
Beyond that were much smaller planets in their own slow
-
moving journey around the sun, a star that looked much smaller from this far away
than
it did from the comfort of Earth
.
And all around me were particles of rock and dust floating beside me, sparkling from the faraway sun.