A Symphony of Cicadas (4 page)

"We'll see you in a couple of weeks!" she exclaimed
, and smiled at me
.
"I bet you can't wait to be standing up there next to all your handsome men!"  I was about to respond, but Joey
must have sensed another gushing conversation was about to begin, because he
pulled at my arm to lead me out of the store.

"Come on Mom, I'm hungry," he said
.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was
almost
noon
.
My stomach rumbled to
remind me that
while Joey had enjoyed a full breakfast, I still needed to eat something
.
I smiled
an
apolog
y
at Darcy, but she shooed us out with a smile.

"Enjoy your lunch
! B
ye!" she called out as we left
.
Beside me, Joey gave a sigh of relief.

"That wasn't that bad, now was it?" I asked him
.
He turned to me in disbelief as we got into the car.

"Are you serious?" he asked
.
"That was horrible!  Please say I don’t need to do that ever again.”

“Honest
ly
,
Josiah
.
What was so awful about that?” I kept my eyes on the road as we pulled out of the driveway and back through the quaint town
.
He mumbled something out of the side of his mouth in response that I couldn’t quite understand
.
“What?”  H
is sigh was deep as he
shifted
in his seat.

“She touched the
‘
d
,
’
” he mumbled again.

“What?  The
‘
d
ee
’
?  What the heck are you talking about?” I asked him, confused.

“The
‘
d
,
’
Mom
.
The boys
.
When she was measuring my leg, her hand brushed against it
.”
It sudden
ly
clicked as to what he was talking about
.
She had touched his penis during her measurements
.
And while the measurements had taken on
ly
a few moments,
it must have lasted a lifetime for my teenage son
.
Judging by the way Joey slumped even lower in his
seat
, it may even have been an eternity
.
As I grasped what Joey was telling me,
the laughter started bubbling up from deep inside me.
I tried my hardest not to laugh, but I was almost crying by the time I gave up and burst out laughing.

“Mom! It’s not funny!” he protested.

“I’m sorry,” I chuckled, wiping my eyes
.
“It’s total
ly
not
.”
I glanced over at him, and the wide look in his eyes almost sent me over the top
.
I bit my lip and shook with silent laughter
.
He couldn’t help but smile
as I laughed
,
breaking
into a sheepish grin.

“Did you like it?” I couldn’t help but ask, and he groaned in response.

“I total
ly
got wood,” he said, to which I caved to the hilarity of the situation and burst out into a full
-
on fit of giggles
.
Even Joey,
despite his red
face, grinned as we moved further away from the store.

“See?” I said
.
“Going to a wedding shop isn’t so bad
.
I mean, you might get felt up by the staff.”

“Ugh
,
Mom
.
You’re
so
gross
.
She was like
fifty
.”

“Watch it, buddy
.
She was younger than
I am
,” I shot back, taking my hand off the wheel to nudge him
.
He laughed as he ducked out of the way.

“Mom, watch out!”
he cried
, the terror in his voice breaking the moment without warning
.

I jerked my head forward as a semi-truck straddled the yellow line on the windy road, coming straight at us
.
With no shoulder on the road, t
here wasn’t anywhere to pull over on my righ
t.
Instead, the right hand side was bordered by a sheer hill that crowded the road. 
On the other side of the road was a steep drop carpeted with thousands of trees
.
I had nowhere to move as the truck barreled towards us, and I weighed out my best chance of survival in a flurry of thoughts that lived within a second
.
My foot hovered over the brake, but I then saw my chance
in the widening space on the
other side of the truck
.
My on
ly
hope of survival was if the truck driver understood what I was doing, and moved over
to the wrong side of the road to allow me to drive on the left
.

I jammed my foot onto the accelerator and gunned it forward,
driving over the yellow line and
onto the
left
side of the road
.
The truck driver blasted his horn as I passed
his truck
,
my tiny car
teetering on the edge of the sloped roadway
.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I sensed the truck making room for me
.
However, I didn’t anticipate the cars behind the truck
.
An older red car appeared out of nowhere, and I on
ly
caught a glimpse of the driver’s terrified face before I swerved left to avoid hitting them
.
A
ll my efforts of staying on the road
were
for naught
as our car sail
ed over the
edge of the roadway, floating
towards the sea of green that lay in the forest below.

We were going down.

In between the chaos we’d just left on the road above us and the impact we were headed for on the ground far below, there existed a few silent seconds that became little lifetimes wrapped up in the shifting of tides
.
As memories and thoughts of John and Sam, my parents and sister, and everything I held close to me fluttered in scattered images behind my vision, I looked at Joey’s silent and terrified face
.
He never made a sound as his eyes met mine
.
W
e both knew that this wouldn’t have a good outcome
.
I reached out for
him
and he took
my hand, squeezing it as if my hold would keep him safe
.
And it felt like I held
his hand
for years as we waited
in the silence
for what was going to come next.

“I’m sorry,” I mouthed to him, unable to break the silence
.
He only nodded and squeezed my hand tighter.

There was a loud bang as his hand ripped from mine, and a searing pain electrocuted my body
.
I could hear a piercing scream inside my head as it rattled through my chest
.
The wail that escaped my lips drowned out the muffled crunching sounds of the trees colliding with the metal of our car.
I grabbed blind
ly
for Joey, no longer able to see anything
.
But I couldn’t find him
.
The world thundered around me, making up for my loss of sight by flooding my ears
with
an undecipherable static
.
My voice was silenced by the eruption of sound, and by the gurgling liquid that invaded my lungs
and left a copper vapor in my mouth
.

The deafening noises around me
began
to
fade
into the distance, and I felt
relief
at the silence
.
There was peace within the absence of chaotic sound
.
The car seemed to have stopped falling, teetering
upon
what I guessed was a branch or the top of a tree
.
I couldn’t feel my legs, and my hands were starting to go numb as well
.
It was like they were sleeping, inviting me to go with them
as I faded in and out of consciousness
.

Somewhere far
away, a bird tested out the startled quiet with a soft song
.
It was soon
joined by other calls in the forest
.
Sensing how alone I was, I focused on the cries that surrounded me, letting them become my
faltering
heartbeat, my
labored
breathing, the heaviness in my head
.
Their song
wove
in and out of my senses, echoing in a dance of sounds
.
They, too, began to fade away
.
I yearned for
the sound to remain in my ears
, knowing that once they disappeared I would be on my own
.
But the sense of peace
grew
, wrapping my cold body in its layers of warmth
.
I felt my head grow even heavier against the car seat, the pain in my body evaporating with the sounds
.
When the last bird had sung, the whole world became quiet.

And I was cast into a sea of nothing.

Three

I
sat up with a start in a room bathed with light
.
I blinked to allow
my eyes to adjust to the images around me
.
I was in a bed, wrapped in a tangle of blankets
.
The pattern
of the cover
was familiar,
the same
loose weaving of lavender flowers and green leaves I had talked John into buying when we first began living with each other.

I was in my own room.

John was sleeping next to me, his back toward me under the heavy mass of blankets
.
I could on
ly
see the top of his head, but felt him stir
a little
.
I unwound myself from the blankets and moved closer to him, spooning him from behind with my arms wrapped around him
.
I began to place my hand in his, touching my fingertips into the palm of his hand
.
But he moved his hand just out of
my
reach.

“I had the strangest dream,” I told him
.
“I dreamed that Joey and I died in a car accident
.
It was so vivid
…
it was disturbing
.”
I moved closer to him and brushed my face against his back.

“How are you doing?” he asked, shifting his body to lift his head off the pillow.
His back was still to me, but I sensed a deep concern in his voice.

“I’m
okay,
” I answered
.
“It was just a dream
.
But it
felt
so real!” I moved my hand again to place
it
in his, but he moved
his hand
away once more
.
I was confused by this
.
He felt so far away
, almost as if
he
weren’t even there.

I sensed
another presence in the room
.
I sat up again, looking over on John’s side of the bed
.
Sam was next to him, his eyes puffy and red as he lay on his back close to John
.
He had been crying
.
I hadn’t felt him come in while we slept, and was
concerned to see him in tears; I wondered
what could be bothering him.

John stroked his son’s hair
as if he were just a little boy and not a
fourteen year
old teenager almost as tall as his father
, comforting him as Sam kept his eyes up on the ceiling
,
trying not to cry
.
His
usual look of disdain was replaced by
the innocent expression
of a
distraught
child
.

“I just,” he began, and the tears ran down the sides of his cheeks onto the bed
,
“I just can’t believe they’re gone,” he whispered.

My hands shook as I tried again
and again
to touch John’s hand on
ly
to have him move it away each time
.
Neither one of them turned toward me, acting as if they were alone and I wasn’t even there.

“Who’s gone?” I asked, my voice wavering
as I tried to remain gentle
.
Sam on
ly
buried his head in his father’s chest, both of them shaking as they cried together
.
“Who’s gone?” I demanded
.
They still didn’t respond
.
I leapt out of bed and slammed my fist against the wall over the
headboard
, on
ly
to have it sink into the drywall as if it were
a foamy meringue rather than a solid surface
.
No sound could be heard from the
angry movement
.
I pulled my hand back and tried again
.
Nothing
.
I kicked at the bed and tore at the covers
.
But
all I could grasp before
now seemed to slip through my fingers
with ease
.
  It made no sense.  I could stand on the floor.  I wasn’t just sinking through the earth or floating off into space.  And yet, every motion I made in my panic proved fruitless in contact.  I gave up and faced John and Sam.

“Who. Is. Gone,” I demanded through clenched teeth, staring straight at them and willing them to answer me
.
John
leaned
away from Sam and looked down at him.

“I’m going to miss them
,
too,” he told his son
, his voice breaking
in
sorrow
.
His face looked about
ten
years older, the lines more pronounced in the dark circles around his eyes
.
He hadn’t shaved in what looked like a couple of days, and
appeared not to have
slept either
.
I
knelt
down and peered into his face.

“Please look at me,” I pleaded with him
.
“Please tell me what’s going on
.”
John
sighed and moved onto his back, both of them now staring at the ceiling.

“I still can’t believe
this happened
,” he said, choking down a sob as he tried to get beyond the tears
.
“
I keep thinking they’re going to walk through the door at any moment, that the police officer was wrong.”  He fumbled with the covers, taking several deep breaths in and letting them out slowly.

“
I never
thought
yesterday was the last time I’d ever see Rachel or Joey again.”

I felt my heart drop in my chest
as
the room began to fade away
.
John’s
and Sam’s
face
s
took on an ashen
color
before
they resembled
an image off a black and white screen
.
I could feel a sense of being pulled,
my stomach tumbling
as if falling
in a roller coaster car in
a steep decline
.
I reached out to grab onto something, anything
.
The room was gone, and all I came up with was air
.
Looking up
,
I could see a million stars and galaxies planted above my head in an infinite universe. Floating with nothing to hold onto, I was suspended in this space
for only a moment
before I was cast back into the world with a flash.

Pine needles crunched below my feet as I crouched down on the forest floor
.
I could smell the dampness in the air from the morning dew
and feel
the fog mist against my skin
.
It calmed me, though
a feeling of
fear
also
remained as I tried to get a sense of what was real and what wasn’t
.
My ears pricked at the sound of voices in the distance, and I turned my head towards the trees around me in a search for
the source
.
M
en
shouted
directions at each other, and
I could hear
the distinct sound of a chainsaw cutting through trees.

“That’s it, a little more,” a voice said, followed by a crash that echoed through
my
wooded surroundings
.
What I couldn’t see before
appeared
right before me
.
The voices of the men now matched the scene unfolding in front of me as they worked to extract something from a broken car. 
I recognized my car immediate
ly
, even in its crumpled con
dition
.
The windows were just s
hards of glass underneath the crumpled hood of the vehicle, the tir
es bent in odd directions like
broken limb
s
.

“Did you find the
other
body?” one of the men asked
.
I could see flashing lights on the road far above where we all
stood, a hazy glow surrounding them through the light fog of the
late
hour
.
Several cops with flashlights were making their way down the hill, and I could hear dogs barking in the distance.

“Yeah, they called it in on the walkie about
fifteen
minutes ago,” an older man said, patting the
device
clipped to his jacket
.
“Said he was a boy, about
twelve
or
thirteen
.
I’m willing to bet that’s his mother inside the car.”

I was both curious and afraid to see who they were referring to inside the car
.
I stayed planted where I was, now just several yards away from where they worked to
pry off the driver’s side door;
but I kept my eyes trained on the car.

“Were there any others out there?” the younger of the two asked.

“No, I think there
were
just the two of them.”

An emergency team joined them, and I could see them lifting a body out of the vehicle and onto a gurney
.
I on
ly
saw the battered skin on the woman’s arm as they zipped up the body bag, relieved that I couldn’t see her face hidden under a mass of
tangled hair
.
But before the bag was closed
altogether
, I caught the unmistakable glint of the ring on her finger, recognizing the modest diamond on a band John had presented to me almost
exact
ly
a year before the day I left the world.

As if in recognition, my own body responded to what I had seen
,
taking on the horrific
reality
of my earth
ly
body
.
Wounds and shards of glass appeared on my arms, traveling up to my shoulders
.
I fell to the ground out of instinct as my legs splintered and twisted in different directions
.
I couldn’t
see my face, but I could feel the warm blood dripping from my matted hair down my forehead
and the blood filling my lungs with a sickening taste of copper
.

“Help me,” I
gurgled
, and my body was healed
in an instant
.
I
t was as if it had never
happened
.
I lay there shaking, past the pain of being broken and afraid that it would happen once again
.
But my skin remained unblemished against the muddy ground of the forest
.
I wondered how Joey was doing, if he were as confused about all this as I was.
And that’s when it hit me.

Joey
.
Where was Joey?