I'll See You In Your Dreams (2 page)

“Well, I … uh, my name is Charlie, umm.”

What could he possibly tell her? His persona as a gazelle returned, and in an apathetic confession, he blurted out the truth.

“I was looking for you, but I sure didn’t expect to find you!” he sighed.

She turned her head as if it embarrassed her.

“It seems you have found me,” she said softly.

“I’ve found you if you’re Anne Meux?”

“I am,” she said while turning her head back to him and holding his gaze. Charlie turned his head to the picture on the wall.

“How old were you in that picture?”

“I was eighteen.”

Charlie looked back at her and realized she was almost solid and had been getting more and more so as each second ticked by. Charlie could see the details of her eyes and long lashes. It seemed as if he was looking at her through a soft focus lens. Her hair was piled into soft curls atop her head. The upswept hair at the side seemed to emphasize her eyes.

“If I may be so bold, please don’t be offended, you were then, and even more at this moment, a beautiful woman!” Charlie stated as though possessed by some truth fairy. He would normally never let a woman know how he felt, but would rely on the caginess he had perfected over time in dealing with the opposite sex. Never let them know you care, and always maintain the bad boy. Now, however, he was unarmed, and for whatever reason he had the overwhelming desire to be honest.

“Thank you, Charles, for your kind comments.”

“I noticed in the family history that you died in 1970 at age eighty-five and yet here you are now, young again. How could that be?”

She laughed. A lively laugh, sparkling, a laugh of life.

“Well Charles, I can only say it’s the upside of death.” She laughed again and continued. “It seems that one can choose who one is and what one looks like. This is the real me and who I shall remain simply because I’ve decided it!”

“Good decision,” acknowledged Charlie. “You seem to be more and more solid as we talk. Why is that?”

“I suppose it’s because our conversation draws me more into this universe of which I used to be a part. It’s my first conversation in this universe in thirty-five years.”

“This universe, you keep saying. Where is the other universe?”

“I call it the dreamtime universe.”

“The dreamtime universe?” Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you call it the dreamtime universe?”

“Because it’s where we go when we are not in this universe.”

“You mean the physical universe?”

“Yes, silly.”

Charlie thought about that a moment. “So, Anne, If I get this right, you’re saying that when you are not here in this room, then you’re dreaming and actually in the dream?”

“Same as you, except that when you return to the physical universe, you can return physically. I can only return spiritually and mentally, but have little physical abilities in the physical universe.”

“That must be torture to not be able to affect the physical, but to only observe it.”

“No, Charles, strange as it might sound it is not torture, but actually rather therapeutic. Although there are sensations I miss, there are sensations like physical pain I’m glad to be rid of.”

“How about love?” Charlie enquired.  Anne’s eyes dropped. She paused and sighed. When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears.

“I miss that a lot. I loved my mother and father. My mother was always in poor health, and I cared for her as a good daughter should. They loved me unconditionally, and I loved them, too.” She sobbed and put her face into her hands.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Charlie said softly.

Charlie and Anne paused as they sat on the floor facing each other. Finally Anne spoke.

“Don’t be sorry, Charles. I truly thank you for reminding me of the greatest sensation of all, love. No wonder so much of life is about love. It’s all that matters. It’s probably the reason I always return here to this room and this house. It was full of love. So, Charles, you remind me that I can still experience it. I suppose that when all other sensations disappear, it will be only the feeling of love that remains in any universe.”

She stared at Charlie and he couldn’t look away. As he gazed at her angelic face and into her eyes, he felt suddenly weak. In what seemed like slow motion he watched as her full lips parted and she said with such intensity he had never felt before, “I love talking to you, Charles.” It was as though they had known each other a long, long time.

Tears filled Charlie’s eyes at the tenderness and sincerity of Anne’s heartfelt confession. God, he loved her honesty and sweetness. Charlie thought it ironic, as he sat across from an ethereal vision of a woman; he experienced a more substantial human being than he’d ever known. Perhaps he thought the physical universe somehow robs one of what’s important. Like the guy obsessed with cars and houses often loses the purpose of having them.

“I love talking to you, too, Anne. I almost hate to continue with these sorts of questions, but is it alright to ask about your fiancé?”

“How did you know of my fiancé?"

“From the picture on the bureau. I don’t want to bring up painful memories.”

“Charles, please. There’s nothing that I would not be willing to feel. Your conversation and interest is the most delightful experience I can recall in all my memory. It is sad, I suppose, that I failed in life to realize that truthful and sincere communication was more valuable than anything in the physical universe. I, too, was distracted by the physical attributes of this house and my societal status. It means nothing to me now. Talking to you means everything.”

Charles again fought the impulse to take her hand. He wanted desperately to touch her or hold her or somehow pull her into this universe completely. He knew he couldn’t.

Come on, Charlie, he thought, snap out of it. You’re infatuated with a ghost, you fool, and on the first date, and you don’t even know her that well. You haven’t acted like this since your first crush, Casey, and that was puppy love. He laughed inside at the thought of the ridiculousness of his situation.

“Anne, about your fiancé, what happened?”

Anne sighed. “I suppose it only fair to go from love to but a parody of it. An impression of real love, a ghost you might say, but with no substance. That’s what I had with Paul, my fiancé.”

Anne brought her feet beneath her until her knees were under her chin. She leaned her head against the wall, closed her eyes, and went to a sad and painful time. “Paul Randolph Hawthorne was a handsome man on the outside.” She continued as if in a sort of reverie of actually going back to a moment in time rather than just remembering it.

“He was charming, witty and intelligent. He was educated and from a wealthy family and likely to inherit a fortune. So, what could possibly be the problem?” The word problem, Anne said with a sort of forlorn irony. It was as though she relived a question she’d long ago answered. The exasperation melted away, replaced by her next statement, which she delivered with certainty: “he had neither heart nor soul.”

She paused as in deep thought, then continued. “I remember the first time I saw him. It was in 1902 and I was seventeen-years- old. My father had taken me with him to his friend Judge Hawthorne’s home to drop off a book he had borrowed on the Stoics-a philosophy that believed that emotion prevented clear thinking. The Stoics held to the belief that it was better to avoid the highs of life, which would help prevent the lows. They believed a person should always be in the same mood or else he may suffer from a mental illness.”

Charlie chuckled. “A mental illness if you’re not dull? Man, that’s funny.”

“Well, let me correct myself. I’m blaming the Stoics for the mental illness part when that was really more attributable to the field of psychiatry. Sigmund Freud was all the vogue and his label of “hysteria” to describe any woman willing to fight back against the domination of men was of course quite a burden for women. In essence, Dr. Freud popularized an old myth, and named a mental illness after a woman’s womb or hyster-a label not easily removed.

“The fact that my former fiancé was quite the advocate of psychiatry should have been my first warning. I didn’t know this, standing beside my father as he chatted with Judge Hawthorne in the library of his home.”

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“Father!” Paul interjected into the room; it caused all heads to turn to him.

“How could you entertain such a beautiful woman without as much as a warning?” he said this while entering the room with a flourish. He came to a stop three feet in front of me and smiled with total confidence, with his ‘oh so perfect teeth.’ He was charming, confident and handsome on the outside.

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Charlie noticed Anne begin to fade.

“Are you alright, Anne?”

A frustrated and sad look came over her.

“I’m sorry Charles, I must go.”

In a panicky voice Charlie beseeched, “why must you go? When will you come back? How will we meet again? Where? Don’t go Anne.”

“I must free your foot,” she said almost to herself. She bent forward and touched Charlie’s ankle where it entered the broken board. She looked up into Charlie’s eyes and said tenderly, “sorry to have kept you here so long.”

Charlie looked down. His foot was freed and setting atop a perfectly good board. There was no sign of any broken boards. He stood and shook out his foot. Anne stood and looked into his eyes.

“Thank you for listening, Charles, I hope we meet again.” She faded more.

“Anne, please, there’s so much more I want to know about you,” Charlie pleaded as she seemed to recede into the distance. He caught her small wave as she disappeared. “Damn!”

CHAPTER THREE

Stanley Myers had flunked kindergarten. Unbelievable but true. He had two major problems in kindergarten: a speech impediment, and no interest in kindergarten tasks. His kindergarten teacher called Mr. Myers into her office one day and pronounced with certainty that his son was retarded.

Stanley’s father was devastated. She gave him a card with the number of a testing facility to sort out just which Special Education classes might help Stanley live as normal a life as possible.

Mr. Myers was a kind, gentle fellow who loved his son very much. He wanted only the best for him. He slept little up to the date of Stanley’s testing.

At the testing facility important folks took Stanley from room to room, test to test. In the waiting room Stanley’s father conjured up the possibilities. He pondered of all manner of dim futures for his son.

The time ticked by as the testing went on far longer than his father could have ever imagined. By the time the director came to the door Stanley’s father was drained.

“Mr. Myers, could you come to my office with me?” His morale sunk with each step to that office. When he got there he sat heavily down on the chair and mustered up all his courage to face the devastating news.

The director sighed and looked down at the report in his hand. He slowly shook his head as though not believing. Stanley’s father was having difficulty breathing. The director looked into his eyes and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, I don’t know how to take it myself.”

The room seemed to close in on Mr. Myers. He felt sobs trying to wrest themselves from his analytical control. He pulled all his self control together to face this.

“Your son just scored the highest IQ ever tested in this facility.” Stanley’s father sat stunned as confusion enveloped him. It seemed his son’s life flashed before his eyes.

“Combined with his creativity score of two hundred, frankly I just don’t know what to say at the moment, besides feeble congratulations. I’ll tell you this, he’s certainly smarter than anyone at the school who labeled him retarded.” They both laughed.

“Holy smokes, that explains a lot.” Mr. Myers’ head cleared and his smile got wider. His life changed at that moment. The explosion of this bombshell sent mental shrapnel through not only Stanley’s father, but through Stanley and Charlie’s entire life to follow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Charlie looked around Anne’s bedroom. He had the tripod in his hand and all else in his pockets. Finally he was satisfied that Anne’s room was as he found it. The key, where was the key? He put the tripod down and checked all his pockets. No key. He dropped to his knees and searched the floor and under the bed. Stop, he told himself. Think. Charlie closed his eyes and went back to the moment he put the key into the lock. I’m turning the key. I’m pushing the door. The tripod is slipping. I’m scrambling to catch the tripod. I’m catching it, recovering and closing the door. That’s it! I left the key in the door. Charlie had an almost photographic memory.

He picked up the tripod again, grabbed the key from the lock, and was out of there. He picked up the freeway a few blocks over and was soon tearing down it with the accelerator to the floor and all windows open. The boiling rush of cool morning air bouncing around inside his car was invigorating. At ninety mph Charlie let off the accelerator and slowed down to seventy-five. He checked his watch; it was four-thirty in the morning. He thought about his last few hours. It seemed unreal, like a dream. Well, not exactly a dream, but it now seemed like it sure could be some obscure mixture of dream and reality. However, there was no use thinking about it. This job was for Stanley to figure out.