Chloe (11 page)

But of course, the facility in her town would be the one to
be behind with the times. Just her luck.

Always her luck.

Dryly, “This is a government office, sweetheart.” Pearl
finds her feet and resumes leafing through her clipboard of miscellaneous
documents. “They don’t pay us enough to do a proper filing system. Please step
aside.”

Chloe looks behind at the waiting customers. She obediently
steps aside. Another customer quickly takes her place.

Chloe takes a pen from the canister on the counter and
begins filling out the form. It asks for an ID number. She pulls out her
driver’s license and is about to write off the number, but notices her mother’s
face and number on it. Her eyes narrow. She turns the ID over in her fingers,
watching the light reflect across the glossy surface and her mother’s face. Why
does this feel wrong? Is she hallucinating again?

Chloe cuts in front of the other customer to reacquire
Pearl’s attention.

“Ma’am—” Pearl tries, raising her hands with her palms
turned out. She does not want a scene.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe says backhandedly to the man she shuffled
out of the way. He folds his arms, incensed. Chloe returns her attention to
Pearl. “Please look at this and tell me what you see.”

Pearl stares at her in amusement. She reluctantly accepts
the license with a smart snatch of the hand and brings the picture to her face.
“Driver’s license for Cleopatra Jones. Good picture. Expires on November 10,
2017. Friend of yours?” She gives the license back to Chloe, sliding it across
the reception counter.

“Ma’ mother,” Chloe clarifies. “She hasn’t driven in 24
years.” It makes sense, due to the fact that her father died in a car accident.
“Her license was never renewed.”

Pearl blinks. Deadpan, “Lady, you got issues. But you need
to move on so I can deal with these other customers.” She gestures towards the
line, met with murmurs of agreement.

Chloe excuses herself. She abruptly turns back towards the
desk. Above the chatter, “Can I take the form home?”

“Sure,” Pearl replies, watching Chloe curiously, her hand
moving to hover over the button for security. Chloe takes the hint, folds and
creased the document so it will fit in her purse, and leaves the office.

Chloe stands alone on the side of the road outside of the
Department of Health, framed by a congested parking lot that was not build to
accommodate enough cars. She looks in all directions, not sure which way to go.

She does not want to go home.

All that awaits her at home are more confusion and
self-doubt. Instead, she goes in her bag. Tucked under her wallet, Chloe finds
the card her mother gave her and exchanges the three page document for it.
Chloe stares at the card incredulously. She reaches around to her back pocket
and pulls out her cell phone. She dials the number for Kenneth Ross’s office.

The receptionist checks her in and escorts her to a room
down the hall. Chloe finds herself in a serene and relaxing office with an
aquarium in the center. The sound of the bubbling, buzzing filter is enough to
lull her to sleep. Chloe lies in a reclining chair, staring at the ceiling.
This office feels oddly familiar. Meanwhile, Doctor Kenneth Ross sits in an
upright chair with notebook and pen.

Ross is an older, willowy gentlemen with the slim remains of
an accent. He has a pleasant voice, not unlike waves breaking on the shore. He
has a face that suggests he was very handsome in his youth, having succumbed to
time’s unforgiving price but aged well regardless. He exudes tranquility the
way a rose exudes perfume.

“How are you these days?” he asks her, penning in today’s
date into the upper left hand corner of his notes.

Chloe drums her fingers on her stomach. She shrugs, feeling
strange, as though she has been here before. This is the way all psychiatrist
offices look in movies. This feels scripted. “Not sure,” she confesses
honestly, fighting the urge to conform like a fatal disease.

Ross observes her. “You look good,” he supplies with an
agreeable smile, crossing his legs at the knee. He pens something into his
notes.

Chloe makes a face. She squirms and averts her eyes from his
affable face, now imprinted on the ceiling. “If you say so.”

“You don’t agree,” he infers, glancing up from his notes
over the rim of his delicate glasses.

Chloe spreads her hands helplessly, finding all this
business just another way to beat around the bush—to ignore the elephant in the
room—to conveniently forget that she is laying in a psychologist’s office, in a
shrink’s lair, to candidly discuss the fact that she sees dead people. “That’s
not why I’m here.”

“Indeed,” the Dr. concurs. “Small talk is good though,” he
explains, as though it rectifies everything. “Helps you to relax.”

Chloe assumes a surly frown. Her eyes track to Ross and she
levels him with an expression that conveys she will not be bought. “Not a problem
if this session was free.”

Ross smiles patiently, sits back, and resumes penning things
into his notes. “Why are you here?” he asks.

Finally, they are getting down to business. Chloe resumes
staring up at the ceiling, scouring for patterns in the textured paint. “I’ve
been seeing things,” she confides in him. “I’ve seen things like wine changing
color, ma’ mother’s name and face on ma’ license. Ma’ dead father. I’m wide
awake when it happens. It just happens. No one seems to notice but me.”

Ross makes a sound that originates in his throat, conveying
that he acknowledges and hears her. “Do you have any hobbies?” Ross asks.

Chloe’s brows knit together, struck by the sudden, seamless
transition to a new subject. He had no reaction to her confession—adverse or
otherwise. Chloe flounders with more confusion. She does not know what she
expected to happen, but she does know what she did not expect:
that
. “I
write.”

“Do you enjoy writing?” Ross asks her amiably.

Chloe nods her head. She finds herself surprised that she
enjoys discussing this with him, much more so than her worrisome visions. “Yes.
Want to write full time. Just not financial rewarding at the moment.” Chloe
looks forward to the time, whenever that might be, when she can live off the
income earned from her writing.

“It’s not strange for a writer to have illusions,” he
informs her, as though that is supposed to be a comfort. Chloe is almost
impressed at how well he was able to tie the two seemingly different subjects
together. “New writers often tend to confuse dreams with reality.”

The idea that Chloe’s driving passion is also the reason she
cannot choose between what is real and what is contrived is absolutely
outrageous. She does not want to believe that. Chloe shakes her head. Bluntly,
“I don’t dream.”

“Everybody has dreams,” Ross reminds her, as though his word
is law and cannot be argued with. Chloe supposes it might be true. But there is
an exception to every rule. In this case, that is her. “It is detox for the
subconscious.”

“
I
don’t have dreams,” Chloe repeats. She will not be
swayed on this matter. The fact that she does not dream has been a constant in
her life much longer than the hallucinations.

Ross glances at her over the rim of his glass again. “The
fact that you think so indicates you may have dreams you think are real.”

Chloe sighs, frustrated. “I close ma’ eyes and I see
darkness,” she describes flatly. “That’s all there is when I sleep. I wake up
from darkness, not dreams. I wake up from nothing.”

Ross leaves the matter alone, which is probably for the
best. “How would you explain the things you have seen?” he leads.

Chloe scrubs her face with her hands. This is going nowhere
fast. “Well, gee, I wouldn’t be here if I could do that.” She does not
apologize for her attitude, even though she knows it is inappropriate for a
professional situation like this.

Ross lays his notepad down on his thigh and removes his
glasses. “If in reality you see someone who is dead, either you both are alive…
or you both are dead.” Chloe tries to follow this. “One of those conclusions
must be true and sound even if one of the premises is false. If you are dead,
then I am dead. We could go on and on.”

“English,” Chloe prompts.

“You either have an extra-ordinary gift of communicating
with the dead or you really did see your father,” Ross clarifies. It still
makes no sense to her. This is the worst gift she has ever received. It is
exhausting and weighs on her mind and heart—a burden she cannot bear for much
longer.

This is not a gift.

It is a curse.

“Not sure this is helping,” Chloe mumbles.

“Give it time,” he encourages. “The mind is a powerful
thing. Eventually the line between imagination and reality will automatically
be established.”

The problem with this being that a brain which cannot tell
the difference might draw said line in the wrong place…

Chloe fumbles where to archive that useless piece of
information. She could have told herself that. In fact, she probably has told
herself that and it has done nothing to help, which was why she came here in
the first place. But this doctor can do nothing but reiterate her own thoughts.
Maybe she should become a doctor.

“What do I do while I wait?” Chloe asks him.

“Write,” he tells her candidly. “Focus all your energy on
that one thing you really enjoy doing.” Chloe finds herself partial to this
suggestion. Maybe this guy isn’t a total sham. Doctor Kenneth checks through
his notes. “Also, you went to church the other day and made a commitment to
follow Jesus. You should follow through with that.”

Suddenly, everything feels wrong. Chloe’s stomach knots up.
She recounts their conversation in detail and cannot recall a time they
discussed this. “How do you know about that?”

Ross blinks and slides his glasses back up his nose. He
flips through the pages on his notepad. “You told me.”

Chloe slowly shakes her head. “No,” Chloe states
steadfastly. She would stake her own life on the fact that she said nothing of
the sort. “I didn’t.”

Ross turns his notepad over and gestures towards a section
circled in red. “It’s here in my notes, Cleopatra.”

Cleopatra…?

Chloe braces her hand on the recliner and sits up, facing
him at eye level. She waits to see if his mistake will register. It does not.
“Ma’ name is not Cleopatra,” she reminds him, waiting to see the embarrassment
flash across his face…
hoping
that the embarrassment will flash across
his face. It doesn’t.

Doctor Kenneth sighs. He looks at his watch and revisits his
notes. “Our time is up. I want to recommend we have more than one session for
the month.” Chloe blinks. Doctor Kenneth takes a small rectangular pad of paper
from the organizer on his desk. He writes a prescription. He tears the page
from the pad and gives it to Chloe. “The pharmacist will give you
instructions.”

Chloe looks at the prescription. “It’s written for
Cleopatra.” She tears her eyes from the prescription and locks them on Ross.
“This is written in ma’ mother’s name.” She gives it back to him, expecting him
to fix it. He just sighs and removes his glasses again, massaging the bridge of
his nose between his two fingers.

•

Once at home from the human resources station and the
psychiatrist, Chloe flops down in bed, huffing a weary gust of air from her
lips. She shrugs her purse off her shoulder and removes the three page
document, skims the directions, and scans the prompts and questions.

Name of inquirer. Reason for inquiry. Name of deceased.
Social Security Number of deceased. Relationship to deceased. Date of birth.
Date of death. Age at time of death. Cause of death. Description of death.
Discrepancies in death. Other parties involved. Witnesses in death. Death,
death, death.

Blah blah blah blah blah!

Chloe rolls her eyes, heaving a great sigh. Working the system
is such a chore. To think, this is supposed to help anyone. The whole reason
she visited the department was to find out this exact information. It is such
an ironic slap in the face. She cannot complete half of these questions on her
own. She knows so little about her own father’s passing. She is not even sure,
garnering her help, that her own mother could answer all these questions.

Then again, the last thing Chloe wants to do is seek her
assistance. This is Chloe’s project. She is determined to complete it on her
own.

She recalls Kenneth’s mistake in silence, having played it
on loop in her mind all afternoon. Chloe, a blonde, looks nothing like her
mother, a brunette. Not to mention the gap between their ages should make
deciphering between them easy as pie. It throws her back to the incident at the
health department, when she extracted her mother’s driver’s license from her
handbag.

What was Cleopatra’s license doing on her person anyway? Did
her mother stash it in there on accident, or maybe on purpose? Maybe she
thought Chloe would need it at the therapist’s office. Cleopatra is not known
to think of anyone but herself, but it is possible. This world, and the events
of its plot, just get more confusing.

Chloe does not have the energy, emotional or physical, to
plow through the tedious questionnaire. Instead, she flops back in bed and
closes her eyes, succumbing to total darkness that she has come to accept is
what sleep feels like.

•

The following night after a long, berating day at work, is a
full moon. The lawn and the rooftops outside of Chloe’s window are awash in
ghostly silver light. Chloe sits before her laptop in the middle of her bed,
deep in thought. She rubs her forehead.

She looks at the bible sitting on her nightstand. She
reaches over, picks it up, and opens it to the book of Psalms. She reads
several verses and closes it again. She abides in the comfortable silence,
quietly wading through her mind.