ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  My client, Mr. Levy, a bulky puddle of a man, fidgeted in his seat like he had Mexican jumping beans in his underwear. His witness, Mr. Peach, a thin, shy, aristocratic-looking man with silvery gray hair, looked at Levy and raised an eyebrow.

  Tilting my head, I aimed a smile at Rossi. “The agreement is on the table. We think it’s more than fair,” I said, as I adjusted the cuffs of my crisp white blouse under a black pinstripe suit. “However, if you prefer we take this into litigation, I'll see you in court. It’s up to you.”

  I pushed my chair slightly back from the conference table and crossed my legs, while thinking about narcissistic personalities like Greenburg. People of notoriety or of unscrupulous behavior preferred to settle lawsuits out of court, as to avoid unwanted publicity. They generally played dirtier and were more decadent than run of the mill company heads, and just the kind of challenge I thrived on.

  “I don’t see what relevance any of this has,” said Rossi, as she batted a wavy lock of chocolate brown hair out of her eye like an irritating thought.

  My eyes grew to the size of watermelons. Is she joking?

  Cohen removed his eyeglasses and kneaded the bridge of his nose. “The relevance is that Ms. McCory took an M4 assault rifle and blew a hole through what your witness had stated an hour ago,” he said. His squinty, pudgy eyes magnified like stones under water as he placed the eyeglasses back on his face.

  Greenburg looked confused, as if someone turned off the lights and switched up the furniture.

  The thought of someone shredding my face with a cheese grater and applying liberal doses of lemon juice, couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. In law, rattling your opponent’s cage is like getting a touchdown at the Super Bowl or winning employment as a personal massage therapist for George Clooney.

  My posture suddenly took on the erectness of a catholic schoolgirl, as tingly static-like energy pulses grazed my skin, the sensation skittering up and down my arms and spine. And then I heard it, the faint sound of tinkling wind chimes traveling into the room. Just a phantom echo rattling around in my head, I thought, when the pitch of the chimes became clearer and purer like the reverberation of a tinkling sound made by flicking a finger against a fine crystal glass. My stomach lurched, as the others carried on business in the usual manner.

  A tight-lipped smile crossed my face as I looked at Rossi. She pointed her nose upward as if she were sniffing the air and turned toward Cohen to argue her point. As the tinkling chimes grew louder, I tried to not react as if I were hiding a dead body under the conference table. But seriously, my nerve endings felt like dangling electrical wires.

  Perhaps the strange oddities I’d experienced were precursors for totally losing my mind!

  I held my palm to my chest, as if trying to keep my heart from falling out onto the floor, and turned toward Cohen to state my case. “The complaint for my client, Mr. Levy, set out solid and substantial--”

  “Ms. McCory,” said Rossi, while slapping her palms on the tabletop and springing to her feet, her shoulders hunched like a hyena.

  Rossi not being able to sit for a long period was understandable, as figuratively speaking, she’d always had a stick stuck up her ass. But she was becoming a little theatrical, and the sound of wind chimes playing in my mind was becoming a little louder.

  “Let me make something very clear,” Rossi said. A lock of hair fell over her eye, causing her to blink in rapid succession, sort of mimicking the pace of my heart. “There is no evidence whatsoever that my client was involved in any malicious behavior.”

  Laura made an indistinct coughing sound. Her eyes widened to show emerald colored irises framed by long black lashes. I looked at her perfectly manicured nails that always wore colors with fun names like Don’t Socra-Tease Me, Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie, and Fiji Weegee Fawn. I glanced at my natural, unpainted nails and couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of myself as fun and frivolous.

  “Ms. Rossi,” I replied, when a strange buzz clouded my head. Pausing, I reached for my glass of water and took a sip. “I’m sorry, as I was saying. We believe our complaint for our client, Mr. Levy, set out solid and substantial claims for reputational injury caused by your client’s malicious and irresponsible conduct. And we obviously have proof of that with two signed depositions and our witness, Mr. Peach.”

  As the last word left my lips, the buzz in my head turned into a drone of voices. The thoughts of all eight people in the room talking in my head at once sounded like a televised GOP brawl on C-SPAN.

  The air in my lungs felt thin, while tiny stars shimmered on the walls and wind chimes tinkled like raindrops all around me. I knew I was in trouble, but I had no idea to what extent, and then I turned toward Cohen. As my breath hitched in my throat, everything went silent, as if I had submerged underwater. The boardroom took on a soft, hazy glow, while Greenburg’s flailing arms looked like slow moving blades on a fan, barely cutting through the air. Cohen’s head shook from side-to-side in slow motion, his words sounding like loud noises from a stifled trombone, while I focused on the wall behind him.

  The library of legal reference books housed on one full wall of cabinets behind glass doors, showed though the transparent image of a man’s body. Attributes quickly came into view--a warm smile and expressive eyes the color of amber jewels backlit by the sun, broad shoulders, the sleeves on his sky blue shirt rolled up over his forearms. His hands shoved into the pant pockets of his light khakis. Minus a set of splayed wings shooting out from behind him, Matt looked like an angel all glowing and bright.

  At home, I could handle the situation, but how in the hell was I supposed to handle this at the office? As I gripped my chest with both hands I thought about Fred Sanford crying out, “I’m coming Elizabeth, it’s the big one!”

  And then I glanced at the people seated at the conference table and everything changed. The faces staring back at me looked as if they were straight out of “Deliverance.” The people were scary, the room was scary, the lights, the pointy pens, the double closed doors, everything! All while Matt glowed like a glorious day of brilliant sunshine. The kind of day that fools you into thinking your life is perfect.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, I was no longer in the boardroom. A bright light whitewashed my surroundings, making me squint and wonder whether I was still in Providence or perhaps had slipped through some whirlwind portal into Nebraska. I was all alone in a state of confusion, but didn’t know where I was or how I had gotten there. All I knew was that a total nervous breakdown is when your brain is too tired and decides to take the next jet out to Hawaii to sit poolside and sip piña coladas.

  Three

  “Oh, crap!” My voice cracked, as I shouted a knee-jerk reaction after my sight came back into focus. Battleship gray institutional looking walls surrounded me. Had the white jackets locked me up?

  I felt a sudden poke to my back, causing me to flinch and slam my shin against something hard. I looked down to see a toilet. Behind me was a metal door with a coat hook. Oddly enough, I held my cell phone and tiny battery operated fan in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. How I ended up in a bathroom stall within the building was anyone’s guess.

  Setting the fan on the back of the toilet, I rubbed my forehead, as if I were trying to rub some sense into my brain. “Thank God I haven’t been institutionalized with the rest of the crazies,” I said under my breath, while twisting the band on my watch to see the face. Roughly, ten minutes had passed since I was in the boardroom. Wonderful, now I was having blackouts. However, that was the least of my problems.

  It was one thing to see Matt at the house, but the office! My heart thumped as I inhaled deeply on the cigarette while thinking about spirits, ghosts, and the afterlife. I knew nothing about any of it, nor did I understand why Matt would be following me around, other than haunting me for causing his death. But wouldn’t he have done that right after he died instead of years later? Thinking back to my childhood, I should have paid better attent
ion to my parents conversing with their friends about parallel universes.

  I wasn’t convinced I wasn’t totally batty. It seemed the most logical. Almost seven years of a dark secret about Matt’s death rooted somewhere in my head, could have caused me to go insane. That, combined with my dysfunctional childhood was enough to scramble anyone’s brain. After all, how sane can one expect to be after growing up with parents who people referred to as the Abbie and Anita Hoffman of suburbia? Hippies who invited half-naked people to backyard bonfires, grew alfalfa sprouts in the bathtub, and constantly quoted Zen Buddhism.

  Then there was my luck, which I had none of, that played into my rationalization. I’m a McCory, being insane would have been too normal, too easy.

  Incredible as it seemed my obsession of wanting to see Matt might have pushed me over the threshold into another world, or had opened some type of portal from beyond into the living, or that I really was so totally insane that these options actually seemed to make a small amount of sense.

  Years before in my grief class while I sat with a group of women in the hospital meeting room on creaky folding chairs in a big circle and sipped tea from a Styrofoam cup, I tried to will it to be that Matt was still alive. A widow was not supposed to be a twenty-eight year old pregnant woman. Widows wore cable knit cardigans and had a hint of blue in their white hair and veins on the backs of their hands that resemble roadmaps. Even so, one common thread bound us all, and that was the longing for the miracle of communication from beyond to see and speak to our spouses one last time.

  Happenstance had brought Matt and me together the first time, but when it happened a second time, I knew it was fate. Matt had grown up in Kearny, a small town dwarfed by the shadows of nearby Newark and New York. Both of his parents were professors at Rutgers University in Brunswick, and at the time, I was completing my law degree.

  I was at Rutgers stadium with my friends. The Scarlet Knights were playing against UNC. The stadium was busting at the seams with hooting, hollering, and high-fiving college kids. Charging up from the lower bleachers was this bare-chested guy leading the pack. His upper body and face painted red with a slash of white across his eyes like the stripe on a raccoon.

  We both tried to get out of each other’s way, but sidestepped in the same direction. I was miffed that his painted body nearly missed getting on my white angora sweater. “Excuse me,” he said. I looked into his beautiful whisky-colored eyes and felt we had shared a moment, right before he shot past me, climbing to the higher bleachers. I couldn’t get his beautiful, soulful, eyes out of my mind. Occasionally, we’d cross paths on campus in the central quadrangle. Neither of us spoke a word to each other, but still there was always that special moment when our eyes locked.

  Back in Providence on spring break, I had stopped at Iovino’s Market at the corner of Depasquale and Kenyon Street to grab some lunch. When it was my turn to order, I asked for the Italian tuna, and a voice behind me said, “Make that two.” I turned around to see those familiar whisky-colored eyes staring back at me. “Hi,” said Matt, with a cocky smile. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  Although it was unrealistic, it felt as if fate has brought us back together again.

  “Ouch!” The coat hook on the stall door jabbed at my back one too many times. Annoyed, I turned quickly. My tush slammed into the gray transparent jumbo toilet paper dispenser. Of all the stalls in a twenty-story building, I’d chosen one so tiny you’d have thought it’d take a small explosive to dislodge me from it.

  As smoke wafted out through the silent O of my lips, I pondered the thought of whether crazy people truly know if they’ve gone off the deep end. Are there times before they lose complete touch with reality when they rationalize the craziness? Like me trying to rationalize the existence of my husband’s ghost haunting me. Not the kind of thought most people entertain. Certainly, not people who ooze confidence and fit into the heady spheres of society like Laura. A serious problem for her could mean a single raindrop had hit the top of her kid-suede Gucci stilettos or that her hairdresser had gone out of town for the weekend and failed to notify her.

  “Aubrey! Are you in here?”

  How she’d found me, I’ll never know.

  As the click-click-click of her stilettos fast approached the tiny stall, I swept the air with the fan to clear the smokiness, sending a vaporous cloud swirling toward the ceiling. I tossed the cigarette butt into the toilet, just as Laura pounded on the stall door. Startled, I lost my grip on the fan and watched as it took a dive into the bowl along with the cigarette.

  “Aubrey! Come out of there right now,” Laura demanded, while still pounding on the door.

  “All right, just stop with the banging!”

  The metal door latch screeched as I slid it open and shimmied my way around the door. “Wonderful,” I said, planting a hand firmly on my hip. “You made me drop my little battery operated fan into the toilet.”

  “That’s not all that’s going to be in the toilet if Fendworth finds out you ran out of the hearing. Listen, I know you thrive on trench warfare and heaven knows I only wish I could lob legal artillery the way you can, especially when push comes to shove, but this case was a breeze. I don’t get it,” she said with a dismal air. “Were you really that bored? And what the hell was that cryptic message about? The one you whispered in my ear before you shot out of the boardroom.”

  Looking past her to stare at the bland beige walls, I wondered how I was going to explain that I had no recollection of even leaving the boardroom.

  “Um, cryptic message?”

  “Yes, something about people’s thoughts invading your mind, like little gremlins.”

  I felt like telling her, I tried to explain the abbreviated version last night when I told you about how it all began with a bump to my head.

  I recall the goose egg on the back of my head was nothing compared to the disassociation I’d felt with my body when it happened. Like my toes and feet had disconnected from my Capri covered legs and my brain was floating above my head like a fluffy omelet. When the voices in my head began, I tried to find scientific answers. So I searched the internet and found that it was possible that solar activity from the blue moon combined with the bump to my head might have caused some type of hallucination. Not that I could have been positive of anything that was happening, as hallucination and hearing voices are also hallmark signs of schizophrenia.

  “Oh, that,” I said, trying to hide the sound of surprise in my voice. “What I said was Rossi’s stupid comments were grating on my mind like annoying little gremlins.”

  “Hmm,” said Laura looking at me quizzically. “Whatever,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Rossi had already hung herself. All I had to do was tighten the noose. Everything went well. Still, Fendworth’s going to get his boxers in a bind.”

  “It’s not as if I had purposely tried to commit career suicide, it’s just that…”

  I stopped short of asking her advice on how Miss Manners would have handled the situation of seeing a dead person appear before her eyes.

  “The fact is,” I said dryly, “I guess I just snapped. What else is there to say?”

  Laura squinted at me as if she were checking the odds of her portfolio against the stock quotes on the exchange floor. A half-inch square sapphire stone glittered on the ring finger of her right hand as she folded her dainty arms across her ample Armani clad bosoms, while one perfectly tweezed eyebrow shot up.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I’d blame your unusual behavior on last night’s fiasco because of how sick you got, but--”

  “I got sick? Like puking sick?”

  Laura nodded. “Yeah, don’t you remember we were talking to Trudy Knox, you know, the sporty brunette that chairs the symphony league? We were in the restroom at the restaurant and you practically pushed her down trying to get into the stall. You overshot the toilet, but not a big deal. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

  “Oh-my-God, there’s more! But--”


  “Here’s the thing Aubrey, you haven’t seemed like yourself for weeks.”

  Technically speaking, it wasn’t me and I wasn’t even sure if it was all a dream. I reached out and ran my hand over the top of Laura’s head to see if she was real.

  “What are you doing?” she said and pushed my hand away.

  Everything that was happening was real. Everything that constituted the last three weeks of my life, and everything that was going to happen, everything I had ever imagined could or would happen--did happen! Although I’d accepted these things and accepted the fact that I saw my dead husband, for some reason the supernatural enormity of it all hadn’t fully sunk in until now.

  MATT WAS REAL!

  “Hey,” said Laura, her voice echoing in the bathroom. She reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  Her soft, sappy tone triggered an odd reaction. Is that watery stuff bubbling in my eyes actual tears?

  All at once, I felt slammed with a ton of emotions, as if I’d just lived the five stages of grief all over again. Denial that I’d somehow connected with the spirit world. Anger at why it was happening to me. Bargaining with God to give me a chance to talk to my husband and tell him I love him. Depression over feelings of guilt that I had caused Matt’s death, and acceptance--well that shocking part had just sent me over the edge. I gave a hard stare at the floor, trying to keep my sudden upheaval of emotions at bay, while thinking about my son, Nicholas, whose pet chameleon had recently died.

  Escaping from his cage, I found him days later under the living room sofa in full rigor with his tiny mouth wide open as if he’d tried to call for help. We planned a backyard burial, but Nicholas couldn’t lay him to rest. He took comfort in playing with the chameleon, hopping it across his bedroom floor as if it were a plastic action figure, while at times, getting the chameleon’s stiff little feet tangled in the looped carpeting.