Eight Minutes (26 page)

“Suppose so.”

“So there’s a part of me that can understand how much you need to be heard. I want you to know that.” I pause. “Toby tried. He really did.”

“He messed it all up. That’s why she’s got it wrong now.”

“See, when you say things like that, then there’s this other part of me . . .” and I have to swallow to keep from screaming, “. . . that thinks you should know better.” I pause, breathe through my nose, rise from the swivel chair, and put my mouth one inch from his ear, careful not to touch him. “Toby is an innocent little boy.” The rest of it comes out low, through my clenched teeth. “How dare you ask this of him? Listen to me, John Robberson. You. Leave. My. Kid. Alone. Got it?”

“Got it,” he whispers.

“If you do that,” I say, my heart still banging in my ears, “if I ever get the chance, I will try to get you in front of Kay. But I am not spending my life chasing down your shit, so you have to come to terms with that. And when it comes to my family, you have to Back. The. Fuck. Off.”

“Got it.”

“Say it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” My heart is pumping like a piston in my chest. “Give me a minute.” I have to shake the adrenaline out of my system, so I walk to the other side of the room, jump in place, flick my hands, exhale hard a few times, and nod to the hypnotist, who watches the entire episode without comment.

“Thank you,” I whisper to her as I return to the chair. “Is he still there?”

She nods.

“Now, if you’re ready to hear it, I’ll tell you about JJ.”

“I’m ready,” he says.

“I’m not going to get into how it happened, and I didn’t even know who JJ was, or what it meant when I heard it, but here it is.” I pause. “JJ says let go.”

No response.

“Let go. That’s what he said. Just like that: let go.”

In a low voice, as low as the murmur that brought him forth, he says, “Let go of what?”

Of all the things he could’ve said, that was the worst option.
Eric
,
I want to say.
Let go of my husband. Let go of my son.

My eyes fill with tears, and my throat feels like I’ve swallowed a bee. Every thought stings deeper than the last. There’s so much letting go that needs to happen.

Let go of your pride. Let go of trying to clear your name. Let go of your pain. Let go of your need for revenge. Let go of your fear. Let go of your refusal to let the truth be the truth. Let go of everything you think you can control and see what happens.

Finally, I find my voice. “He just said let go. That’s all I know.” I step back, find my chair in the corner, and let the hypnotist finish the session.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

ALL TOGETHER NOW

E
ric doesn’t remember anything, so I’m glad the hypnotist gave us the audio file. Sharing a set of headphones plugged into his laptop, we listen to the entire session that night, legs under the covers, leaning against propped pillows. When it’s finished, Eric closes the lid and folds the headphones in a neat symmetrical coil before he says anything.

“He wasn’t a vigilante.”

“He’s telling the truth?”

“I think so,” Eric says. “It feels like the truth.”

“Since when do you rely on your feelings?” We both snicker at that one.

“Since when did you become such a freaking ballbuster?” He imitates my voice on the tape. “Back. The. Fuck. Off.”

We dissolve in laughter. When we catch our breath, he says, “We really need to contact Kay. Tell her the truth.”

“Oh, Eric.” The minute he says her name, it feels like a boulder rolled onto my chest. “And then what?”

“Then he goes away.”

“We don’t know that.” I try to sigh, but I still have that boulder on my chest. “We don’t know how this works. Nobody does. We’re right back where we started.”

“We’re not,” he says, taking my hand in his. “We’re together now.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

COSMIC RESPONSIBILITY

I
t’s been three months since that session. The John Robberson phase of Toby’s life has passed, just like all those books said it would. He put his airplanes away. We don’t talk about broken legs and dogs in fires. He and Sanjay play soccer now on a little peewee team. Several times a week, Eric comes home from work and plays slow-motion goalie with them.

We haven’t heard a word from Kay. Not that I expected we would, but a lack of closure is a bit like a loose string on your sweater. You know you’re not supposed to pull it, but it’s right there.

Lakshmi is still convinced that if Kay heard the whole story, the stars would align, some cosmic shift would occur, and John Robberson’s spirit would be magically released. And furthermore, if that happened, Eric would undergo a personality change, and any complaints I’ve ever had about our marriage would disappear.

“Do you hear me complaining?” I ask.

Eric and I made a new rule when it comes to our friends. We talk to each other first. So if we have a disagreement, I can’t go running to my girlfriends to vent. Anna calls it triangulating, when you invite a third party into your relationship.

So maybe we’re overreacting, but given what we’ve been through, Eric and I decide to implement this rule. Neither of us confides in anyone else until we’ve talked it out and come to some resolution. We have to agree on our story before we tell it to anyone else. It sounds like a little thing, but it took a lot of conscious effort on my part. Especially at first. I didn’t realize how much I’d relied on Lakshmi and Carla to help me make up my mind about how I felt about Eric. But now, I have to work it out with him.

When the conflict is over, we can tell our friends about it. But nobody gets the chance to come between us anymore.

Well. We’re not counting John Robberson. We’re learning to live with him. With all the unknowns. Eric practices mindfulness. I don’t know if he’s so present there’s no room for John Robberson to show up or if after that session the old guy listened to me and backed off. Or maybe he listened to JJ and finally let go.

I’ve made my peace. After the session with the hypnotist, I thought a lot about why John Robberson latched on to Eric. Maybe it was nothing more than random timing: the eight minutes Eric’s soul was vulnerable coincided with the time John Robberson’s soul left his body.

I have no idea how a soul gets from Branson, Missouri, to our little Oasis Verde. Surely there were lots of other souls departing during those same eight minutes. Other near-death experiences. Coma patients. Babies being born. I can almost picture this autobahn of souls, running right over our heads, jammed with traffic, zipping around with no speed limit.

Why Eric?

I have no idea. I don’t know why he came, and I wouldn’t presume to know when he should leave. If it’s part of Eric’s soul’s journey to pick up a hitchhiker, then we’ll just have to make room for him.

When I look into my husband’s eyes, I don’t see John Robberson. I see Eric in a different way. It feels like I’m looking back seventy-five years, maybe longer. I wonder if he sees years and years past in my eyes.

If it could be true for Eric, it could be true for me. Who knows who we were, or who we’ll become? All we can do is take what we know and make the most of it. Now that we know that Eric is/was John Robberson, what difference does it make, really? Do we have a different cosmic responsibility than anyone else on the planet?

Well, in one way, I think we do.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

NEXT OF KIN

R
ight after Thanksgiving, my phone rings in my purse, which is on the other side of the room where I’ve been painting leaves with Toby. I have red and purple water-soluble paint on my fingers and, knowing I can get the resulting stain out, I wipe them on my jeans before digging into the small side compartment that holds my phone.

I don’t check the caller number. I’m too busy giving Toby instructions to finish the leaf he’s on and assuring him I’ll be right back. I lurch a hello at whoever is calling.

“Mrs. Buckner? Shelly Buckner?”

“Yes, this is she.”

“This is Patricia Fenton. I’m a social worker at Skaggs Regional Medical Center in Branson, Missouri, and I’m calling at the request of Kay Robberson.”

Kay’s name is like an electric shock to my system.

“Yes!” Walking out onto the patio with my phone, I ask, “Is she okay?” I wave Toby to the backyard. He scampers out, wiping his painted fingers on his shirt.

Ms. Fenton explains that Kay has had an accident. While she was attempting to hang her Christmas lights, her ladder tipped and she went down hard, and she was admitted at the hospital last night with a broken hip. One detail makes me sit down on my patio and swallow hard: Kay had to crawl inside to reach her telephone to call nine-one-one. Ms. Fenton estimates that, judging by the near-frostbite on her toes and fingers, Kay may have been lying in the snow on her own front porch for several hours, until well after sundown. “She must’ve hit her head, or the pain caused her to black out. We’re not exactly sure. She doesn’t remember.”

I picture Kay’s porch, imagining it covered in ice and snow.

“She had surgery first thing this morning. The doctors say she’s strong and tolerated the procedure well. But as you may know, recovery is difficult for this kind of thing.”

“Of course.”

“Mrs. Buckner, that’s why Mrs. Robberson asked me to call. She has no family here. She’s got a good support group in her church, but she needs . . . well, she’s going to need some consistent help.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Starting today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“And . . .”

“And she listed you and your husband as her next of kin.”

The very next day, Eric and I are sitting at her bedside, and not one of us is acting like this situation is as weird as it actually is. I guess that’s our coping mechanism. The only thing Eric and I agreed on during the plane ride was that we would under no circumstance bring up the subject of John.

“When people ask, Kay, what do you tell them? How are we related?”

“I tell them the little squirt is my godson.”

Sure. How else can we explain how our families are spiritually related, except through Toby?

Eric tackles the insurance, and I make arrangements for a nurse’s aide. We coordinate with her church and its impressive prayer chain as well as casserole-toting friends who will make sure she has a hot meal and some company every day.

While Eric’s away working on insurance details, Kay says, “Sit down. I’ve got some things to say. And then I have a favor to ask.”

“Sure.”

She swallows, clears her throat. “They told you what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I bet they didn’t tell you everything. You’re the only one who will know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay.”

“You know I fell. I laid there on my porch a long time. I didn’t know if I was ever gonna get up. You know what I did as I laid there?”

“What?”

She shakes her head slowly. “Well, I’m supposed to pray, right? I even said the words, but they weren’t going nowhere. You know how that is? Like you’re talking to the inside of your own thick skull.”

“That’s pretty common, I think.”

“No. You’re not getting it. I could not pray because I was so busy cussing John.” She gives a little snort-laugh. “I’m still so mad at that man.”

I nod, hoping she can’t hear my pulse from there.

“It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t bring JJ back, and it doesn’t bring John back. It doesn’t do me one bit of good to stay mad.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I say.

“Once I got that out of the way, laying there flat on my back like that, something new burned a hole in me.”

“What?”

“What if it was my time? What if I died right there? I have to tell you, there’s a big part of me that wanted to. I thought about seeing JJ, and then it hit me.”

I waited.

“He’s not there.”

“John?”

She leans in and whispers, “How can he be there waiting for me, when I seen him here, with my own eyes?”

“You mean, in Eric.”

She nods slowly, her arms crossed.

“It’s time for him to go. I’ve been thinking about it. If he ain’t gone by now, he idn’t gonna go unless he knows I need for him to be there when I show up. So I have a favor to ask.”

She fidgets in her hospital bed, straightens the sheets, and glances at the door. “I wasn’t ready before, but I am now. Will you let me talk to John again?”

“Oh, Kay.” Now it’s my turn to fidget. I fight back the temptation to flood her with details of all we’ve been through. I struggle with whether to tell her about JJ’s message. For the first time, I wonder if it was meant for her instead of John. Or for me.

Let go.

“I’m not sure it will work,” I finally say.

“Me, neither.”

Eric walks into her hospital room, rolling a thick stack of papers into a cylinder. “All done.” He smacks Kay on the toes with the papers and gives her a wink. “How’s it going there, Sugar?”

I squeeze Kay’s hand. “Let me think about it.”

Eric flips through channels and stops on
Let’s Make a Deal
. I can feel Kay’s gaze, but I don’t make eye contact with her. Eric and Kay play along with the game show, but the commotion of it irritates me. The nurse comes in to check Kay’s vitals, and Eric starts fussing around with the dinner menu even though we don’t need to order for another couple of hours.

I don’t know why I’m procrastinating. There’s only one thing to do.

When the show is finally over, I stand up to give Eric a hug. “I think I’m going to step out now. Kay has something to say to you.” I smile at her as I leave and whisper, “Good luck.”

I step into the hallway, waiting until I’m well out of earshot before I allow myself to collapse into a waiting-room chair. I’m not sure how long I sit there before a familiar realization emerges from my core: the unimaginable could be happening right now. Anything is possible.

I shift in my chair and feel a slight nudge in the small of my back.
That’s right, Mom. I can deal with it either way. I know that now.

I probably should check on them. I look at my watch. I’ll give it about eight minutes.