Authors: Patti Hill
Seeing Things (23 page)
Huck clutched his shirt over his heart and scooted away. “My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I reckon we tested prefore-ordestination as best as we ought.”
“I didn't mean to scare you.”
“I ain't afeard, not worth bothring about. But I'd druther not be a tangle-headed fool. I reckon it's best I skedaddle.” And he rose and walked to the patio door. With his hand on the knob, his shoulders drooped. “I'm all tuckered out.”
“You can sleep in the chair like you did before.”
“I won't a-turn in. Me and Jim a-going to boom along down the river tonight. I'll see the moon go off watch. That's the splendist sight, unless a storm's a-brewing.”
He opened the door.
“Huck! Thanks for . . . well, thanks for sharing your time with me.”
“Talking donkeys? I'm gonna have to get me one of them Bibles you have a fondness for.”
Chapter 24
“Okay, Bats, the timer's set,” announced Ruth. “Who's first?”
“Praise the Lord, all's stable for me,” Ruby said.
“Me, too,” added Ruth. “Just counting down the days until the great-grandkids come. Betty?”
She sniffed loudly. She did everything loudly. “I suppose you want to hear about my latest hallucination?”
I set my coffee cup down and held my trembling hands in my lap. “Hallucinations?”
“Did Cary Grant show up at the foot of your bed again?” Ruby asked, breathy and eager.
“That's a little pedestrian, Ruby. I'm on to smaller things.”
“Don't toy with us, Betty,” Margie said.
“If you insist.” She wagged her fork at Margie. “You know I listen to Fox News every morning. Yesterday, during my second cup of coffee, I wasn't thinking about anything in particular, and clowns certainly never came to mindâbut there they were. Very strange.”
“Clowns? You had clowns in your kitchen? How many?”
“I never thought to count them, but at least half a dozen of them, right on my table. They stood no more than five or six inches tall, moved just like people . . . or clowns. Some sat at a picnic table, eating a dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Teeny-tiny cobs of corn, stripped down to the husks. One clown sat in front of a mirrorâthe kind movie stars use, you know, with all the lightsâtouching up his makeup. Another scratched his head under a purple wig. A clown wearing oversized shoes smoked a cigarette, which didn't seem very funny to me at all.”
I thought of Huck's pipe. “Could you smell the cigarette?”
“Oh no, I didn't smell a thing. But my schnozz doesn't work too well anyway, not since I had chemotherapy a few years back.”
Margie said, “This is your craziest hallucination yet. Had you been thinking about clowns?”
“I said I hadn't. Don't you listen? I've never even been to a circus my whole life, and if I had, I would have gone for popcorn when the clowns showed up. Back when the kids were small, I saw clowns on
The Ed Sullivan Show.
All that falling and hitting didn't sit well with me.”
The Ed Sullivan Show.
All that falling and hitting didn't sit well with me.”
Ruby pounded the table. “Your doctor said every memory is stored away just waiting for a chance to pop out. I'll wager cold, hard cash that your parents took you to a circus when you were too young to remember.”
Ruth laid her hand over mine. “Birdie, you look white as a ghost. You don't have to worry. Betty isn't crazy. She's experiencing Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Some folks who've lost their sight have vivid hallucinations. Betty's the lucky one of us. She's had Cary Grant come to call.”
“Stepped straight out of
To Catch a Thief.
I must have watched that movie a hundred times after he showed up, but he never came back. Now I'm seeing miniature clowns on my breakfast table. What kind of trade-off is that?”
To Catch a Thief.
I must have watched that movie a hundred times after he showed up, but he never came back. Now I'm seeing miniature clowns on my breakfast table. What kind of trade-off is that?”
My heart raced so that I had to gulp air to talk. “And this is perfectly normal?”
Betty leaned closer. I eased away as much as I dared. “The doctor,” she said, “when I finally got the nerve to ask him, told me the brain gets tired of blank spots, or so they think.” Her voice got low as to add to the mystery. “The brain pulls pictures out of the deep coves of the mind. But honestly, nobody's sure how the mind really works.”
Ding!
“Ignore the timer,” Ruth said. “This is fascinating. Betty, tell Birdie about the stone wall.”
I laid my fork down.
“Most of the things I see are quite pleasant. Flowers where no flowers have business growing. Children playing in the yard. And Cary Grant. For obvious reasons, Cary's my favorite. But every once in a while, a stone wall appears. The stones fit so closely together, there's no need for mortar. A real craftsman built the wall, that's for sure. Moss covers the rocks, so if I've ever seen a wall like that, it wasn't in Colorado.”
“Betty, tell her about the time you went to the zoo,” prompted Ruby.
“The wall never fails to show up at the most inappropriate times. The first time it happened, I was visiting the zoo with my son's family. We were on the way to the elephants, munching on cotton candy as we walked. All of a sudden, the stone wall appeared.”
Ruby said, “Tell her how tall it was.”
“Do you want to tell this story?”
“You leave out the interesting details.”
“Fine. The wall was about chest high, so I stopped cold. My family kept walking. All of a sudden I was on one side of the wall and they were on the other. I looked up and down the wall. No gate anywhere. I knew the wall wasn't real, even though the stones looked as solid as any I'd ever seen. My son returned to find me gaping at nothing. I struggled over what to tell him. I didn't know a thing about Charles Bonnet Syndrome. I thought the only reasonable thing a woman in my situation could think: I was losing my mind. And I certainly wasn't going to announce that I'd lost my marbles at the zoo, of all places. Next thing I knew, I'd be living with the penguins.”
“It was wide too, wasn't it?”
“That wall reached the full width of the walkway. Everything in me said to climb over it to rejoin my family. Wouldn't that have been a pretty picture? Somehow, I knew better. I looked in my son's eyes and walked toward him. I fully expected to crash into the stones, but I didn't. When the wall appears now, I can't help but take a moment to admire its workmanship, enjoy the flecks of color in the stones, admire the cushiony softness of the moss. I welcome its arrival. It's the clearest thing I see, except for the flowers and the clowns.”
“And Cary Grant.”
“His eyes were the color of caramels, not the kind you buy in the bag, the kind you get at the candy storeârich and buttery.”
“Cary brings out the poet in you, Betty.”
Charles Bonnet Syndrome? My hallucinations had a name, a French name. I wished I'd taken French in high school like Evelyn. I took German, but still my heart said,
Frohe Weihnachter
âthe only celebratory phrase I remembered. Knowing my brain caused the visions made the moment as happy as any Christmas I'd remembered.
Frohe Weihnachter
âthe only celebratory phrase I remembered. Knowing my brain caused the visions made the moment as happy as any Christmas I'd remembered.
“Did Cary speak to you?” I asked.
“Oh no, the doctor spoke quite adamantly about that. The hallucinations do not talk, and I was to report to him if they ever did. That's an entirely different part of the brain. And if you don't think I longed to hear something out of Cary's mouth, especially with Harry snoring like a chain saw right next to me, you girls are older than I thought. As a matter of fact, Cary looked completely self-absorbed, as if thinking about a pleasant memory, maybe something about Audrey Hepburn. They were gorgeous together in
Charade.
I love that movie.”
Charade.
I love that movie.”
Ruby said, “If he was thinking about anyone, it was Deborah Kerr from
An Affair to Remember.
Now they had an explosive chemistry. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
An Affair to Remember.
Now they had an explosive chemistry. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
“
I Was a Male War Bride
was on TCM the other night,” Ruth added. “Maybe Cary was thinking about how to get out of his garter belt.”
I Was a Male War Bride
was on TCM the other night,” Ruth added. “Maybe Cary was thinking about how to get out of his garter belt.”
The ladies around the table laughed. My stomach soured, and I pushed Margie's lemon pudding away. If Josie or Emory had seen me refuse a dessert, one of them surely would have called 9-1-1. The Bats jabbered on about Cary Grant movies. I squirmed, my thoughts a jumble.
One speculation after another bounced around my cranium. Maybe Huck's appearances weren't Charles Bonnet Syndrome after all. Maybe another syndrome, something equally benign, allowed me to talk to and touch Huck. Besides, I'd known more than one doctor who talked out of the top of his head. Think of all the recent medical discoveries, especially involving the brain. Perhaps Betty's doctor was behind in his reading. Better still, maybe I'd dreamed Huck's visits. I'd heard that anesthesia remained in a body long after surgery. Surely something as sedative as anesthesia would affect dreams.
Who was I kidding?
Huck and I shared a conversationâmany conversationsâand he touched the back of my hand with his fingertips. Life doesn't get stranger than that.
Just for clarification, I asked Betty, “Are you absolutely, positively sure you didn't hear one word from those clowns? Or a honking horn? A whoopee cushion? Laughing? Anything?”
“If I had, mum's the word. I'm not looking for a short trip to the funny farm.”
THAT NIGHT I BEGGED off listening to the end of
Huck Finn
with Fletcher. He asked if I was feeling okay, and he seemed genuinely concerned, but my thoughts were too tangled to follow a story. He left me a plate of shu mai that I dumped in the trash. I heated a can of tofu soup that tasted like soggy cardboard, then I sat in the dark, hoping Huck would be too caught up in his adventures with Tom to bother with the likes of me. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him. Far from it. He provided color where grayness reigned. I just didn't want to explain him, especially not to myself, and that was getting tougher by the day.
Huck Finn
with Fletcher. He asked if I was feeling okay, and he seemed genuinely concerned, but my thoughts were too tangled to follow a story. He left me a plate of shu mai that I dumped in the trash. I heated a can of tofu soup that tasted like soggy cardboard, then I sat in the dark, hoping Huck would be too caught up in his adventures with Tom to bother with the likes of me. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him. Far from it. He provided color where grayness reigned. I just didn't want to explain him, especially not to myself, and that was getting tougher by the day.
Chapter 25
This grandmother's heart swelled when Fletcher swung behind the truck's steering wheel and brought the engine to life without gulping for air. He even waved off Lupe from directing him out of the garage. At the corner where we usually went straight to go to the Snappy Dragon, Fletcher flipped his turn signal on. “Might I suggest a diner in the Fremont District?” he offered. “They have the best hamburgers in Denver.”
“You don't have to ask me twice.”
The spring afternoons had settled into a congenial pattern of sunshine and a playful breeze, so we chose to sit under a broad umbrella. I sat with my back to the sun. The breeze fluttered the hem of the umbrella. I closed my eyes and I was overlooking Ouray. The town looked toyish from the top of Box Canyon falls. And then a car drove by with the resonance of a drum.
The waitress brought hamburgers she assured us were organic and antibiotic-free. One less thing to worry about.
Beef as pure as the driven snow didn't improve Fletcher's table manners. He talked around a hunk of beef and whole wheat bun. “So, Grandma, what's Huck been up to lately?”
“Can we talk about something else?”
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