When I open my eyes again—it could be five minutes or five hours later—the cord above me is gone. Sam is gone, too. I watch my breath, but now the horses have the torsos and faces of men. Quickly I breathe them back into my body. The next time I exhale they are children riding the wave of my breath all the way to the window across the room, where the name Gloria is still written.
I IMAGINE THE house, her in the house, without me.
She wakes in early-morning darkness, her face sore. Ralph waits bedside, wagging her tail as eagerly as possible for an old dog.
She rolls to the edge of the bed, wincing at the pain in her arm, and presents her face for the dog to lick. Then the dog lays her head on the mattress, waits to be scratched.
She sleeps in her underwear. Perhaps—because she packed only a few items of clothing—she sleeps nude.
Jeans, a sweater, one of my coats, a walk with the dog, cold but sunny, down the road and into the woods, hard dirt trails, the satisfaction of watching the dog empty her bladder and move her bowels wherever she wants, her graceful way of squatting, the steam her pee makes at the base of a tree carved with your initials, a sentimental gesture our last year together.
Back home—after a week, the house feels like home—to feed the dog. She knows by now the dog won’t eat alone, won’t touch food unless someone else is in the room, so she makes tea (no coffee or coffeemaker) and spoons some yogurt onto a bowl of granola (she seems the yogurt type). Her car has been towed from the mud. I imagine that she has gone grocery shopping, milk and bread and eggs, a jar of peanut butter; I imagine that she has explored the Vineyard, knows where to buy the Times, where the best bookstores are; I imagine that she has bought a new pair of jeans.
The sound of the dog drinking makes her thirsty. She swallows two pills for pain, then undresses for a shower.
Careful not to soak the bandage on her face, she washes with her back to the water. Her sprained arm is pinned to her side as if by an invisible sling. Right-handed, she shaves her legs with her left, using an old razor I shave my neck with once every few weeks. Her red hair wet looks darker.
When she opens the bathroom door, the dog is waiting with her shoe. Thank you, thank you, good dog, and on to the laundry room, where yesterday’s clothes are clean and dry.
Dressed but barefoot, she sits cross-legged on the rug, her back straight against the couch, and closes her eyes. Her daily practice. She follows her breath, in and out through her nose, and any thought that finds her—her brother lying on the bathroom floor, the note he didn’t leave, how she could have saved him, the strong sense she has, stronger than ever, that accidents are not accidents, that something important is going to happen—she recognizes only long enough to say goodbye, then lets it go, emptying her mind, even if only for a few seconds, before a new thought finds her, then she lets that one go, returns to the breath, and after a while there’s nothing but the breath, and she’s gone.
She comes back only when the phone rings.
An older woman says she’s sorry, she must have dialed the wrong number.
No use trying to meditate again; twenty minutes is enough for today.
The phone rings again. It’s the same woman; this time she asks for me. “Is Eric there? Is my son there?”
“Don’t worry,” Sam tells me when she comes to see me later that morning. “I didn’t tell her who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what would you have told her had you told her the truth?”
“That I’m a friend.”
“Did you tell her about the accident?”
“No.”
“That’s probably for the best,” I say. “What did you tell her?”
“That I was the maid.”
She picks up the pad on the table beside the bed, looks at what I’ve written, looks at me.
“What happened when you died?”
“Nothing.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“It was like sleeping.”
“Is this her last name?”
“Whose?”
“Gloria’s.”
“Who is Gloria?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me.”
“If you don’t know, then why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“If there’s no such thing as an accident, then why are you here?”
“I was trying to find you.”
“Okay, but that was for you. What are you here to do for me?”
“Walk your dog.”
“What else?”
“Get you into an accident.”
“If you believe that I was supposed to get into that accident—”
“I got that from you—from your books.”
“I don’t believe that anymore.” I press the button that sends more morphine into my blood. “You’re the teacher now, I’m the student. Tell me why I was supposed to have that accident.”
“What was it like?” she says. “I mean, did you see the light, or what?”
I press the morphine button, press it again, press it again. “What’s the point of all this?”
She looks at the paper in her hand. “Gloria Foster,” she says.
SHE WALKS THE dog, cooks for me, brings me my toothbrush and a cup to spit into. She offers to wash me, and I’m grateful, but I ask her instead to help me to the sink, where I clean my face and hands and chest with a washcloth. She rereads my books, takes notes in the margins. A refresher course, she calls it. Every time she forgets, and begins to read a passage aloud, I remind her not to.
“Funny how you’re right next to me—I mean, it’s you—yet I’m sitting here reading your books.”
“I’m not the same person who wrote those words.”
“I like the old you better.”
After a pause: “That was a joke, you know.”
My doctor has given me orders: two weeks of bed rest; no driving for a month; no exertion, no stress. Expected: headaches and nausea. Possible: dizziness, double vision, tinnitus, depression, mood swings, memory loss, sensitivity to light, and poor judgment, though I’m not sure how I’ll decide if my judgment has been poor. If I experience a headache that lasts longer than a day, or doesn’t respond to meds, or becomes severe, I am to call. If I experience memory loss or confusion, I am to call. If I have difficulty breathing—beyond the difficulty to be expected with a cracked rib—I am to call immediately. Otherwise: rest, rest, rest.
My car is totaled, so Sam drives hers to the market every day for the paper. The third day I’m home, she’s gone three hours. I assume she’s taken a trip to a bookstore or to buy another change of clothes, but she returns holding a stack of paper. She went to the library to use the Internet. She found over three hundred Gloria Fosters in the United States.
“Did God tell you the middle name?”
“God didn’t tell me anything.”
“Did the same angel or ghost or voice that told you the first and last name happen to mention a middle name, even a middle initial?”
“I told you what I know.”
“No location?”
“No.”
“Not even a state?”
“No.”
So she asks the old me for help. She sends out her intention—using a step-by-step process I wrote about in Everyday Miracles—to receive the information she needs in order to find Gloria Foster. For three days she meditates an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, expecting a message to come to her. How it comes doesn’t matter; could be something she reads, something a stranger says in passing, a phrase or even a single word that enters her thoughts as if someone else put it there.
In Sam’s case, it comes as a brief but vivid dream; she’s certain it contains the information she’s been asking for.
A row house with a cemetery behind it.
“That’s my house,” I sa
y. “The one I grew up in, in Queens. My mother lives there.”
“Gloria Foster lives in this house.”
“How do you know?”
“My brother told me.”
“Your dead brother?”
“He was walking in the cemetery,” she says. “It was him, but how he might look now if he were alive. Heavier, the same wavy hair. Still handsome.”
“What did he say?”
“He kept throwing rocks at this house, but the rocks turned into dandelion clocks. They hit the back of the house, and the snow scattered like light.”
“And you take that to mean Gloria Foster lives in that house?”
“You don’t have to believe what I’m saying,” she says. “I should tell you, though, that I’m going to find her even if you don’t want to.”
“Just because a man you don’t know said her name when he came back to life.”
“I know you.”
“You know him.” I point to the book on her lap.
“Okay, then I know him,” she says. “Maybe I’ll take him with me. Either way, I’m going to find her.”
“Even though this has nothing to do with you.”
“My brother was in that dream,” she says.
“Your brother is dead.”
She pulls the bandage off her nose, slowly at first, then one quick yank. Her eyes water.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“Dead or not, this has something to do with him.”
“Fine, but what does it have to do with me?”
“Your books helped me so much, and then you were gone. There were rumors that you no longer believed what you’d written.”
“So what.”
“But what you wrote is true,” she says.
“And you’re going to make me believe again.”
“I just know that we need to find Gloria Foster.”
“Why we? ”
“You’re the one who said her name,” she says.
“Now that you have the name, you don’t need me anymore.”
“Come on,” she says. “Doesn’t part of you still believe?”
“Believe what?”
“That the law of attraction works. That our intentions really are powerful.”
“I didn’t intend any of this—a car accident, cracked ribs, you.”
“Sometimes you don’t realize your intentions until they manifest.”
“If intentions worked, my wife would still be alive. So would your brother.”
“Everything happens for a reason, even though the reason may not always be apparent.”
“Stop quoting me.”
“The universe is always listening to us.”
“Please stop.”
“Your words, not mine.”
“His.”
“He’s you.”
“He’s not me.”
“Okay, but he’s still inside you.”
* * *
That night she wakes me from a restless sleep. I can’t lie on my side or stomach; my ribs hurt too much. On my back, my breathing is shallow.
I stare at her, but can’t remember her name. Red hair, freckles, black eye, broken nose.
“I know where she is,” she says.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Another dream.”
“My brother,” she says. “He showed me the name of the cemetery.”
“Hold on,” I say. “I’m hearing everything you say twice.”
She gives me a pill from one of the bottles on my night table; I work up enough saliva in my mouth to swallow it.
“I don’t trust dreams,” I tell her.
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
“When are you leaving?”
“We are leaving in the morning,” she says.
What I don’t tell Sam is that all night you’ve been singing to me as clearly as if you were lying in bed beside me—the song you were singing when we met, the one I play most often now that you’re gone. It’s been much easier not wanting anything, not thinking too much, not believing in anything but what’s in front of me, and now this woman and her dreams and her dead brother and you singing to me in my sleep.
“This is all going to turn out to mean nothing.”
“Nothing means nothing,” she says.
“If you quote me one more time, I swear.”
“Sorry,” she says.
“I’m tired,” I tell her. “I’m just tired.”
“I’ll do all the driving.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired.”
“You can sleep the whole way if you want.”
I turn away from her and close my eyes, hoping to fall back into my dream of you. I listen for your voice, but it’s gone.
Part Four
It’s On Its Way
Sun Valley Wellness Festival, Sun Valley, Idaho, 1998
It’s great to be here with you on this beautiful day. In fact, there’s no place in the world I’d rather be.
All it takes is a single happy thought. Then another. Then another.
I like when it’s sunny, when it rains, when it snows. I like when it gets dark early, when it stays light late. There’s something beautiful about every moment of every day. All you have to do is make the decision to see the positive, to filter the world.
You need to live as if.
Let me repeat that: You need to live as if.
As if you already have everything you want. As if the universe is listening. As if it, whatever it is, is on its way.
Anticipate what’s coming. Live in a perpetual state of expectation.
If you want love, expect love. If you want health, anticipate health. If you want good news, prepare for it. Celebrate whatever you want as if it’s already arrived.
When you expect something, it’s on its way. When you fear something, it’s on its way.
* * *
All that you desire is behind a door. All you need to do is open the door and receive it.
Imagine you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B. You’re moving along, you’re doing fine, picking up speed, you’ll get there in no time, but suddenly there’s an obstacle. What do most people do when an obstacle is in their way? They slow down. They go around the obstacle. Fine. But what happens when there’s another obstacle, and another, and another? You have to keep slowing down, and eventually you get frustrated, you get tired, you come to expect obstacles.
Now, let me ask you all a question: Wouldn’t it be better to get rid of those obstacles?
The first step in getting rid of obstacles is simple: Name them, expose them, get them out in the open.
So, take out a piece of paper and fold it in half.
On the left side of the page we’re going to list the ten obstacles that keep the door of abundance closed.
Impatience
Doubt
Negativity
Fear
Competition
Worry
Jealousy
Anger
Blame
Desperation
Take a good look. See if you recognize any of the obstacles that have stood in your way.
Be honest. Today is a day for being real. Today is going to be one of the best days of your life. Trust me.
Now, on the right side of the page we’re going to make a new list. Ten keys to keeping abundance flowing into your life.
Patience
Faith
Positive thinking
Fearlessness
Being happy for others
Confidence
Kindness
Joy
Self-responsibility
Gratitude
Circle that last one, gratitude.
Underline it. Put a star next to it.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of thank you. Don’t complain, don’t judge, don’t blame, don’t compare. Just say thank you. Over and over, to everything: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Some days nothing seems to b
e going your way. But the truth is, if you greet even those days with one thank you after another, the universe hears this. The message you’re sending out is: Everything always goes my way, even when it seems like it’s not. I’m going to celebrate now, because I know that it, whatever it is, is on its way. Nothing can derail me from this certainty. There are no obstacles in my way. If something seems like an obstacle, it’s really not. This is what the universe hears every time you say thank you.
Don’t sweat the details. Don’t worry about how or when. Miracles aren’t rational. Just know that it’s on its way.
But things haven’t always worked out, you say.
I know, I know.
Please, listen to me: Don’t allow the weight of the past to pull you down. Don’t allow your past to define your future. It’s time to retell your story beginning with your next thought.
Now is all that matters; nothing else exists.
Right now I feel good about blank.
I want us to begin today by filling in that blank. Take the next ten minutes and write this sentence as many times as possible. Think of all the things you feel good about and let the universe know how grateful you are.
One happy thought, then another, then another. One thank you, then another, then another.
Right now I feel good about…
Right now I feel good about…
The universe is listening. Trust me.
I was hearing the song everywhere; it was following me.
Late one December night, after a talk, I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and turned on the TV. I hoped to find It’s a Wonderful Life, the movie I’ve seen more than any other. My affection for the film had to do with its idea that everything happens for a reason, that life is a meaningful chain of events. You save your brother from drowning and he becomes a war hero. Rather, your brother becomes a war hero because you saved him from drowning. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. You hear a song because you turn on your TV at 2:22 a.m. You turn on your TV because you can’t sleep. You can’t sleep because you wake from a dream that your father, dead almost twenty years, is tapping on your hotel room’s window. You have this dream because sleet is falling against your window and because once, when you were a boy, you made your father disappear and he never came back. You hear the last ten seconds of a song, the end of the credits of a movie, and it’s enough to make you fall in love with the voice.
The Book of Why Page 7
