The End of the World (11 page)

“Who?” my mother interrupted.

“You wouldn’t believe what comes through my door. I’ve seen it all. Everything.”

“Yes, it certainly sounds like it,” my mother said, sounding only half-interested. “But I’m afraid there’s just one thing I don’t understand.”

“Just the one?” said Mrs. Anna, snidely.

“Why are there only two cups on this table? Surely you’re going to join us?” my mother asked.

“Me?” cried Mrs. Anna, looking aghast.

“Yes.”

“Have tea with you?”

“Yes, of course. We wouldn’t dream of hearing otherwise, would we Valentine?”

“Please say you will, Mrs. Anna,” I said, taking a sip of the tea, which was actually quite tasty even though it didn’t taste of anything. “I’d love to hear some more of your stories about the dead.”

“My God, you people are insane. You think I have time to sit here and participate in your clichéd, anachronistic rituals of tea and tired anecdotes?” she scolded, as she crossed back to the kitchen door. “I have work to do!”

“Oh, don’t go, Mrs. Anna,” my mother protested. “Surely you can spare us a few minutes?”

“No, don’t go, Mrs. Anna,” I protested.

“Please don’t go, Mrs. Anna,” insisted my mother.

“Don’t go, Mrs. Anna! Don’t go!” we cried in unison.

Mrs. Anna stopped and turned rather ominously, then took a few steps back towards us and folded her arms across her chest in displeasure.

“Look,” she barked, “in my hallway right now I have an 83 year-old Sudanese woman and her 6 year-old granddaughter both wanting to know why the world looked the other way as they were raped, drenched in gasoline, then burned alive in their huts with the rest of their village. I have a group of Iraqi children asking me what a ‘Bunker Buster’ is, I have a U.S. marine with his right arm and most of his head missing, I have a gentleman who survived the Nazi death camps as a boy, only to die from hypothermia in old age because his pension didn’t cover his heating bills, I have three suicides from Guantanamo Bay, and I have a very distraught and embarrassed young man from Wall Street who accidentally choked himself while engaged in an act of autoeroticism. Now, perhaps you would like to go out there with all the answers while I sit here and sip tea and chitchat, yes? You want this?”

“Oh, all right, snub us if you must,” said my mother, reprovingly. “But don’t think you’ll get off so lightly the next time.”

Mrs. Anna marched briskly out of the kitchen, muttering what sounded like foreign curse words under her breath as she did so.

CHAPTER TEN

Phantasms

J
ust as I was becoming more accustomed to death with my mother instead of life without her, she unexpectedly turned the tables on me once more.

“Well, drink up, darling – I must be going, too,” she said, taking a last sip of the thick purple concoction that passed for tea.

“Going? Going where?” I exclaimed with alarm.

“Away.”

“But…you’re at The End of the World. Where is there to go?”

“Lots of places. Lots and lots of places…once you’re here. But I’m not here, so I can just go…away.”

“But you are here,” I said, now more confused than ever.

“Ah, to you I am. You needed me, so you brought me here. And I appeared to you, just as you wanted. Though frankly, darling, I could’ve done without the Diana Ross touch. I don’t know what you could’ve been thinking. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very talented and what have you, but…well it’s just not me.”

“But you’re here…with me. You’re dead – you said so yourself,” I insisted.

“Oh, Valentine my sweet, how many times must I tell you? Sometimes those that love you the most tell you the things you need to hear the most. That doesn’t make them true.”

“So…you aren’t really here?” I asked, as feelings of fear and loneliness began to creep back upon me once more.

“Not for much longer,” she said, as she proceeded to have one last rummage through her handbag. “Hanging out in your subconscious is all well and good but I’ve got better things to do.”

“Then I’m…I’m dreaming? All this is a dream? A dream that I shall wake up from feeling silly and relieved, yet…somehow wiser?”

“Please, darling, you sound like some vulgar Hollywood screenwriter. No, you’re dead, I’m afraid – quite dead – as a dodo. A dodo in Bardo.”

“Bardo?” I asked, knowing the word sounded familiar, but from where I couldn’t quite recall.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already,” she groaned.

“Bardo…Bardo…wait…wait, give me a moment,” I said, wracking my brain to figure out where I knew the word from.

“Honestly, Valentine, I know we’d only begun to scratch the surface of Buddhism in general, but I believe we covered the states of Bardo quite comprehensively.”

“Wait, yes…yes, it does ring a bell.”

“Then try and make it ring a bit louder, otherwise you’re going to find yourself spinning your wheels here for quite some time to come,” she cautioned.

And then, in a flash, it suddenly all came back to me. “Yes, yes a plane…a space between…between…the conscious and the unconscious, between…insanity and clarity, between death and…rebirth.”

“There it is!” my mother cried triumphantly. “I knew it wasn’t all for nothing. You and your father may have scoffed at me when I first made my little forays into the teachings of Buddha, but I think I can safely say that your mother was right yet again.”

“Yes, I remember now…the visions…the appearance of visions and spirits, good and bad, some loving, some terrifying…but…but all in my head…all projections from my subconscious…from my experience of life…before death.”

“A gold star for my son! Well done, darling! Oh, come here and let me give you an affectionate hug.”

Feeling a little bit proud, but mostly sad, I fell into her arms and took comfort in her warm embrace. As she held me I felt safe and protected, even if she wasn’t really there after all. I thought of all the strange people, apparitions buried deep in my memory from who knows where that I’d met since I’d arrived here. I recalled all of the strange sounds I’d heard, some happy and relieved, others grief-stricken or tormented. And I thought of my mother…and how much I missed her.

“Now, tell me,” she said, holding me by my shoulders and looking me straight in the eye. “What do you have now?”

“Have?” I asked.

“Yes, now.”

“You?”

“No. You don’t have me. You have something far more important.”

“But what could possibly be more important than you?”

“What I’ve given you,” she said, with great purpose.

“But how can I think of that? I can’t think of lessons or…or
things
. I can’t think of anything being more important to me than you.”

“You must. You must because I loved you. And do love you. That’s why I’m here – why you brought me here. Somewhere inside you, you know why I’m here.”

“I don’t. I do and I…I don’t,” I said, awkwardly, trying to avoid the truth that I knew she was driving towards.

“Look at me,” she demanded.

“I am.”

“Look harder. What do you see?”

“My mother.”

“What do you see?” she insisted.

“Someone I love.”

“Look again. What do you
really
see?”

And there it was. The painful truth that I’d been trying to avoid was now staring right back at me. “I see…what I want to see,” I said, sadly.

“Yes.”

“But…it’s not real.”

“No.”

“You’re not there.”

“No,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“No,” I admitted, my heart aching so heavily I just wanted to cry. “I…I just wanted to see you again, that’s all.”

“I know. And I came.”

I nodded silently, tears trickling down my cheeks, as she placed her hand in mine. I held it as tight as I could and tried to speak, wanting to say so many things yet not knowing what to say at all. I finally managed three words which seemed to sum it all up. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” she replied, holding me in a firm embrace and gently stroking the back of my head, just as she did when I was little. But just as I began to feel loved and protected, nestled in her arms, I suddenly remembered that this was all imagined. I was alone. She wasn’t there. I was simply fooling myself. I felt cheated and angry.

“But why? Why can’t you be there…like I want you to?”

“Because I can’t. Things are what they are…and aren’t. This is the only way.”

“But you’re ruining it,” I said, churlishly.

“No I’m not. I’m giving you a chance…another chance.”

“I don’t want it. I want things to stay the way they are.”

“They can’t. Life’s not like that. Neither is death. Everything changes all of the time – without you even knowing it. You have to move on – you have no choice,” she said, firmly.

“I don’t want to. I hate change. I hate it with all of my heart.”

“Don’t. You mustn’t,” she insisted. “When all’s said and done it’s the only thing you can really count on.”

What a depressing thought, I thought. Could it really be true? Could I only depend upon the undependable? What happened to stability and reliability? The comfort of the known? And what about my own mother, come to that?   

“And you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Can’t I count on you?”

She released me from her arms with an air of frustration. “Oh, Valentine, you may be dead but please do try to retain some presence of mind. I’m not even here – what would be the point in that? I may not be the most practical person to turn to in times of crisis but I can tell you this: if it’s reliability you’re looking for, courting it from figments of your own imagination is most assuredly not the way to go. In fact, I’d venture to say it’s the first sign of madness.”

She then abruptly pushed her teacup across the table and stood up. “Now I really must be off, your father will be getting worried.”

“How could he be worried if you’re not even here?” I asked, still groping for logic where I shouldn’t.

“Oh darling, do try and use your imagination,” she sighed, before furrowing her brow, deep in thought for a moment. “Though on second thoughts, I suppose that’s the only thing you are doing at present, isn’t it? So then…just dream up something satisfactory for me to tell you and…there’s your answer,” she shrugged.

She was right, of course, but I realised no answer was needed. I stared at her wistfully as she straightened her outfit and tidied her hair, making one final adjustment to the pearls around her neck.

“Thank you,” I said, simply.

“What on earth for?” she replied, as she snapped her handbag shut and prepared to go to wherever it is that figments of your imagination go to.

“For coming.”

“Don’t be silly. Thank you for inviting me. I’m going to leave through the refrigerator if it’s all the same to you – it’ll save me a few steps.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, with more than a little trepidation.

As she opened the refrigerator door, a flood of bright light burst forth from within, just as before. This time, however, and much to my relief, there wasn’t a Stetson-wearing entrepreneur in sight.

“Do give my apologies to Mrs. Anna for rushing off like this,” she said, as she stepped inside the mammoth machine. “And remember what I told you, won’t you?”

“I will.”

She kissed the fingers of her hand and placed them on my forehead, before disappearing inside the refrigerator. After a moment or two, I heard her voice calling back.

“Goodness, these steps are narrow. Oh, look! There’s your aunt Eleanor – looking every bit as miserable in the afterlife as she did in her heyday. Let’s hope she doesn’t see me. Bye, darling!”