Star Woman in Love (26 page)

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I found out I was pregnant with your child three weeks after I left you. When I put my hand on my tummy, I knew it was a girl and that she looked a lot like me. In actual fact she was still no bigger than a sesame seed and looked more like a tadpole. But my vision told me she would be a mini-me with golden brown hair and big green eyes. She had your passionate, artistic temperament and my grace. She was your child and my forever link to your heart. My hands would often rest on my belly: it felt as if I was touching you.

I wanted to keep my pregnancy a secret for as long as possible, lest you find out. I was still hurt and angry with you. But three days on, I decided that that enlightened souls don’t keep secrets, even in their darkest hour. So I conferenced Maria-Carmen and Lydia to ask for some advice on how I should approach my future as the mother of your child. They didn’t react as I hoped. They congratulated me but it was obvious to me that they were trying their best to mask their concern. I could feel that they were upset and I asked them if this were the case. They simply pointed out that the timing of events couldn’t have been any worse. I slammed the phone down and took it off the hook. My reaction amazed me. An angry, pent-up force inhabited my body and was manifesting itself for the first time. You had betrayed me. I didn’t cry this time. I was finally mad at you.

I took the letters you had written to me over the years out of the music box where I’d been storing them. I held them in my hands as disgust rose from my stomach to my throat. I spat on them. Then I went to the terrace and burned them all. Temporary relief filled my chest, as if something stuck had lifted in me. I retired to my bed where I stayed for the following twenty-four hours. When I woke up, I was refreshed and ready to start a war: Cassandra against the world.

I met Polly and Letizia in town. They suspected something odd going was on. My mood had improved dramatically from the previous day.

“I beg you to promise me you’ve not spoken to Oscar,” Letizia said.

Polly took off her glasses, like she did every time she meant business. “I hope it didn’t dawn on you that you want to take him back...”

“I’m pregnant with Oscar’s child,” I said, “and I need your help.”

Lettie breathed a sigh of relief and came over to hug me. “That’s beautiful, sweetie. As long as you’re not letting him near you...”

Everything was okay. Polly was delighted that even in the face of such an event I had resolved to not let you know. My friends seemed happy at the prospect of becoming ‘aunties.’ They began extolling the virtues of single parenthood, in the case of kids being raised by single mothers, in particular. They didn’t appreciate that the baby was my bridge to you, and the reason for my happiness. I felt that it didn’t make much sense without you. My ‘solo’ life seemed like a joke. The Plan had gone wrong and I had to make it right by myself. My pregnancy had to be the quick fix the Universe had sent me. Life would be bearable and meaningful again. I was getting used to the idea of my new condition. I even started window-shopping for baby clothes. This break from hurt was most necessary.

But it wasn’t to last. A couple of weeks later, I was having lunch in a restaurant with Polly and Matt. A strange, sharp seizure paralyzed my womb with pain of the most excruciating kind. I started to sweat. Then I turned white and fainted. My friends rushed me back home in a taxi. As soon as I got there, I began haemorrhaging profusely. I had miscarried. Our teeny weenie little creature was no more. The bleeding continued for ten days as if my body had to purge itself of every single cell of that tiny baby who was my lifeline to you.

I died inside, along with our child. I couldn’t sleep, eat or talk much for the following month. I was devastated at first. Then I became numb and aboulic. I was a non-entity, someone who barely existed without any real purpose. I understood the tragedy of human existence now that I was suffering. I wanted to die. Or just sleep forever. I had no appetite; I was wasting away like a faded flower.

The activities at the Transformation Centre no longer interested me. I continued to finance them, but that was all. I hid from media attention now that our split had become big news. You and I had once represented the epitome of perfect romantic bliss in the eyes of the world. I couldn’t care less about its opinion of us now. To me, it was as if we had almost never existed as lovers. My past with you was a beautiful dream which now haunted the desert landscape of my life. I don’t know how I survived that time. Perhaps the Masters helped me with their energy. Perhaps the Universe took pity of a fool in love.

As time drove an ever wider, inexorable wedge between us, I became angrier. Anyone would be the victim of my revenge. I had become a hurt-generating machine, just like you. I would read people’s souls and show them the ugly faces of their egos. I was startled by the amount of rage of which I was capable. When I least expected it, this rage would send my kundalini spiralling up my spine and into the centre of my forehead, the seat of imagination. It made me want to strike where it would hurt the most, and spurred me on to touch long-forgotten wounds in people, until I could bring them back to life. I struggled to stop this surge many times, telling myself I could choose analysis over action. I tried to keep my focus on figuring out the reasons why humans choose to hurt their kind, and why they allow others to hurt them. But I reached no conclusions; I had not wanted to be hurt and here I was.

I wasn’t that love-filled, that Light-filled, after all. I, too, was capable of jealousy and lowly feelings just like any other human being. My body was no longer part of the equation of my evolution and was no longer in the Plan because my heart was faltering. Not one miracle was left in me or for me, but all that remained was a growing sense of void and isolation. I had been cut out, cut off, left behind, abandoned, rejected, forgotten. How could you have feigned love and affection so well, only to turn your back to me in a second, lured by your compulsive lack of self-love? You shattered my vision with one single act of contempt. Now my mind was set on looking at the world you had created around me with disgust and scorn. I cursed that world.

As a consequence of our violent split, I lost the love for my environment. I saw Dublin in a different light: it was ugly, and as too its inhabitants. Everything and everybody looked dirty, unhealthy, aging, rotting. No signs of beauty and harmony of form were anywhere in sight. Only walking zombies. Even the smiling ones looked stupid, oblivious as they were of such things as choice, improvement and evolution. Blessed by their stupidity, like a drunken spider the city dwellers wove their lives around me. Many different reflections presented but they were all the same; random existences lived out of biological needs gone astray. No seasons, no cycles, no tides. Just a denial of the flow of life that moves us, a contorted version of what humanity was meant to be. Worn out faces, worn out clothes, worn out lives. Alcohol and drugs insinuating their evil way into their skulls, to the high seat that was once the realm of imagination. I was becoming one of them. No one recognised me as Cassandra Morgante anymore. I was a ghost.

This vision was too bleak. Was that the way you saw the world? No wonder you had thought I stuck out like a sore thumb. Even now in my loathing of my heart’s stopping-place, at its current space-time junction, I was still aware. Despite my suffering, my thinking faculty progressed. With such little Light left in me, the best that I could do was to invoke the power of life to bring about the evolution of the species. It was a meek prayer from my dying hope. I doubted that it could ever be granted.

The months went on and spring was approaching. My anger subsided and I became numb, my inner tides became paralysed and my emotions dead. What should I do next? How could I love again? How could I forget the pain? Would there ever again be someone like you? Did you really get me out of your mind? Why weren’t those moments of bliss we shared eternal? How could I bring it all back? Was there really a Life Force and did it really join us at all?

Matt Norman provided the answer to all of these questions. He was the only person I allowed near me in the months following our separation and my miscarriage. I had met him a year earlier at a TV show; we had ended up sitting on the same sofa in the green room. At the time, I remember thinking how pretty he looked, with his turned up nose and blue Bambi-eyes. He was adorable and scruffy in a rock’n’roll way. His stiff upper lip English accent was in sharp contrast with his street-credibility attire and raucous, cigarette-smoky voice. I didn’t fall in love with him back then simply because I was still madly in love with you. But we had got talking. Matt had been keen to discuss the powers that are latent in humanity, and the possibility of evolving into more fully-fledged beings. With his wit, knowledge and physical attractiveness, I had realised that he was a valid candidate for the work I was soon to unravel at the Transformation Centre. So I had invited him to one of the pilot workshops we would be holding in Lady Honour’s castle. He had agreed to join us the following month.

Matt had started his work with the transformative properties of harmonious sound on the cells of the organism, developing a system of modes and rhythms aimed at raising the frequency in the listener’s body. At the same time, he had produced an album that contained the fruits of his labours. It had gone to number one halfway around the world on the day of its release. The time was right for the wave of evolution channelled by his music. I was becoming enthralled by his charms, I admit it. But I had never thought of him in a romantic light. That was up until almost a month to the day after I lost our baby.

That night he slept in the guest room of my apartment, to make sure I was okay. Of course I still wasn’t. I sobbed for most of the night and must have looked like a zombie, my eyes had sunken so much that they looked like craters. Matt must have heard my noise. He knocked on the door of my bedroom. My weeping didn’t stop when I heard him enter. He sat on the edge of my bed. Like you had many times before, he started caressing my head. The soothing sound of a lullaby came from his lips, hummed almost in a whisper. He continued for a while, till I had no more tears left and surrendered my agony to the arms of sleep.

That night he lay beside me, fully clothed, with his arms wrapped around me. In my slumber I could feel a grounding, peaceful energy surrounding my heart. When I woke up he was fast asleep, still in his jeans and t-shirt, next to me. He looked like a child. I remembered the tragedy of the month before. My hand on my womb still felt the void therein. There was no bridge to connect you and me anymore. Our baby had died. Her spirit was lingering somewhere else, far away from me, far away from the parents we couldn’t be, far away from the lovers we weren’t anymore. Matt sensed me moving and opened his eyes. For half a second he didn’t know where he was.

“Thank you, Matt,” I said.

“Don’t mention it, Cax. How are you feeling now? Are you still in pain?”

I realised that I was hurting. Death had passed through me and I bore the mark of its visit.

“I’m okay. Just very weak and shaken. My whole life is in complete chaos. But these dark clouds will pass. Peace will return. I am not going to give into fear. I am strong...”

My hand moved as if by its own volition to his face.

“... But I need your help...”

I wanted to stop it but it continued imperturbably on its trail.

“... I need your company...”

My index finger came to a halt on his cheek.

“... at least for a little while...”

I started to caress him with the tip of my finger, afraid of rejection, afraid that my touch would disturb him, or hurt him, or hurt me. What if my gesture were to irrevocably impact the boundaries between us? I wanted to remove it but my hand was moving of its own accord. There was nothing I could do, especially when Matt held it with both of his hands to keep it on his face. He closed his eyes and I let his love slip into my petrified heart, bringing a bright ray of Light to the darkness that had descended upon it. I was a mess, I looked like a mess and I felt like one too. Yet Matt kissed me softly, as if to taste my pain, dipping his toes in the water of my devastated soul. He was in love with me. He had been from the second we met. His smile pulled me towards him as he caressed my hair, just like he had done the night before when I was in despair. We stayed in sweet abandonment for a while, watching serenity return to my days without you. I may have been heart-broken but someone still loved me. My heart was coming apart at the seams but Matt would help me keep it together.

* * * *

Matt Norman was the first of the substitutes we sent to Cassandra, to replace the place where Oscar had stood in the Plan. Matt’s presence was a development we had not envisaged but one that we had to quickly invent. The Plan was engrained in her heart, and in order to be projected to the outside world, her heart needed to be whole, to be healed. To nurture the Plan, while Cassandra was still hurting, she needed an injection of love from the outside, to support her in the aftermath of the first of Oscar’s many betrayals. Because of their Sacred Marriage, there was an inversion of roles; Oscar had become the happy one with the magical powers and a strong, albeit ego-driven self-centred mind. Cassandra was now the self-doubting, hurt-generating half of the couple. With his love, Mat could remind her of her past and the person she had been and had lost. He could point her back Home if she paid enough attention. In a similar way, Charlotte reminded Oscar of his future, and where he was heading if he paid heed to what she stood for.