by Rodney Jones
“I know what you mean,” Joyce said. “Like, sleep on it, right?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
All three stood there gazing down toward Fred’s scratch marks.
“Answers to what?” Brenda said.
The old man shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Well…” Joyce looked at her sister.
“Pork roast sandwiches?” Brenda said.
“What?”
“Pasta with red sauce?” Brenda put on a sheepish smile. “PRS. I didn’t have enough for breakfast, I guess.”
“Uh…” Joyce rolled her eyes. “Ready to head back, are we?”
Brenda nodded.
Joyce extended her hand toward the old man. “Sorry about the cooties.”
“Ah… they’re fine here.” He grinned, but then straightened as his smile was replaced with a more thoughtful expression. “I have something for you.” He dug down into the front pocket of his worn jeans, then held out his hand toward Joyce. A small, blue stone lay in his open palm. “I found this down by the road the other day.” He tipped his head toward the south.
Joyce took the rock and turned it over in her hand, examining it.
“Keep it,” he said.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you, but I can’t.” She offered it back to him.
“It’s not mine. I just found it.”
“Yes… but—”
“Keep it,” he said.
Half of the rock was encased in a rough, gray material, with flecks of rusty brown, the other half was the color of a Caribbean lagoon.
Brenda leaned in for a look. “Turquoise?” she said.
After again thanking Fred, the two sisters started back toward the house, following the same path they’d come on. Once they were beyond sight of the cactus, Brenda said, “I think old Fred was trying to get in your pants.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. He’d never fit.”
“I saw the look in his eyes. Then he comes out with the bribe? A twenty-four carat love rock.”
“You’re awful.”
“PRS… Please return, Sweetie Pie,” Brenda said.
“PRS… Perverse recalcitrant shyster,” Joyce countered.
“Recalcitrant?” Her sister laughed. “Is that even a word?”
Upon arriving back at the house, Brenda headed for the bathroom while Joyce went upstairs to check the answering machine for messages. In the back of her mind was the belief that Roland would call and everything would quickly return to normal. The message counter indicated one message. Her pulse quickened. She pushed the playback button.
“Hi Joyce.” Brian’s voice. “Just called to let you know we made it home safely. I’ll try back later. Or call me if you want. Talk to you soon.”
She stared down at the phone. She imagined calling, imagined Roland answering, imagined his voice drenched in compassion, regretful, repentant, offering something heartfelt, something to smile about, and then maybe, “Everything’s okay. I’ll be home soon.” She picked up the handset and tapped in her brother-in-law’s number. A moment later, her niece’s voice came over the line.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Molly, is your dad nearby?”
“Uh huh. Just a minute.”
Joyce heard her yelling. “Dad! Phone. It’s Aunt Joyce.” She figured Roland was likely hearing it too. Aunt Joyce. Is he making the connection?
“Hey. How are you doing?”
She sighed. “At the moment, okay. Roland’s there?”
“Out on the deck.”
Where he wouldn’t have heard, she realized. “How’s he doing?”
He moaned. “I’m not so sure now that we made the right decision. He may have been better off with you, actually.”
“With me…” Joyce tried to imagine it, the seemingly insurmountable confusion and painful distance that wedged itself between them there in Buffalo, magically dissolving over the course of the plane ride home. What she wanted, and what her pragmatism allowed, however, were at opposite ends of the spectrum.
“I don’t know what to tell him,” his brother said.
“Don’t you think being with family makes more sense, for now anyway?”
“No one has the first clue here, do they? I don’t. Roland certainly doesn’t.”
“Right.” She drew in a breath. “I hate this too, not knowing.” Joyce waited for a response, but none came. “Has he said anything more… about Dana?”
“No, he’s been quiet. And I’m not going to push it.”
“You believe him, don’t you?” She stepped up to a small painting hanging near the door—one of Roland’s—a delicate looking work, which made her think of a bouquet of New England asters, though it was fragmented and scattered: the leaves, the stems, the blossoms, the vase—either coming together, or blowing apart.
“No,” Brian said. “I don’t believe there is, or ever was another woman. Or that business about him living in New York.”
“He believes it.”
“I keep going back and forth. I mean, he has all these stories… strange enough to be true, but really, where’d they come from? It’s crazy.”
“He should see someone,” Joyce said. “A doctor.”
“Kate’s going to check into it.”
“You know what’s creepy? Not all of this can be explained away by him being delusional. His being there for one thing. Buffalo? That will never make sense to me.”
“Yeah, yeah, right.”
“I mean, he was here no more than an hour before. Absolutely impossible.”
“Joyce?” Brenda called, from the bottom of the stairs. “You up there?”
She cupped a hand over the phone. “I’ll be down in a minute!”
“I don’t think he’d ever cheat on you. After you’d bumped into each other in Florida, he told me the whole story. I’d never seen him so excited.”
“At least he remembers Selma.”
“Don’t give up on things working out.”
“As Roland would say. The perpetual optimist. I wonder if he’d say that now. I mean, at what point do you say things didn’t work out?” Her ex-boyfriend, Jeff, came to mind. She’d long before categorized their relationship as “not working out,” but then she realized she’d gone to visit Brenda in Tampa because of him, and stumbled upon the art festival.
After lunch, Joyce and Brenda pulled chairs up before the computer. Joyce brought up a search engine, rested her palms at the bottom of the keyboard, and stared at the blank input field.
“Well?” Brenda said.
“Yeah, so give me an idea.”
“An idea. Okay… uh—”
“Psychological phenomenon.” Joyce typed the words, then clicked the search button.
Stock market volatility – a psychological phenomenon
Pain in the eye
Negativity affect and the emergence of ideologies
UCO Psych Faculty
Channeling and the presence of psychological phenomenon
Absolute pitch…
The list contained another six links, but like the first six, none seemed relevant. The cloud of vague ideas at the back of Joyce’s mind remained unresponsive. “That’s not going to cut it.”
“Amnesia,” Brenda said.
She typed in “amnesia,” and clicked search.
Descriptions of general and retrograde amnesia
Resources and valuable amnesia information
Amnesia and cognition unit
Amnesia and the law
Clinical trials: Memory loss
The list went on. She checked the matching query count—over twenty thousand—then gave her sister a mock scowl. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.” Scanning the page descriptions, she scrolled down several pages. “I have a feeling it’s something else. Not amnesia,” she said. “But how the hell do you query something you can’t pin a name to?”
“What if you did a search within those results? Try delusions, maybe.”
Joyce gave her sister a puz
zled look.
“How would a doctor approach it?” Brenda said.
Joyce typed in the word “delusions” and clicked the “search within these results” link.
False memory syndrome
Case studies in Neuropsychology…
Chapter 12: Psychological disorders
Amnesia in female characters
Dissociative disorders
Abnormal behavior
The list contained over seven-hundred matches.
“Now, that’s encouraging,” Brenda said.
“False memory syndrome,” Joyce read the description, then clicked the link. “Therapy-induced false memories of parental abuse?” she said. “I don’t think so.” She selected the next item on the list, skimmed over the text—a description of a book—and again, read aloud, “Semantic dementia; Cotard’s delusion; organic amnesia; focal retrograde amnesia; schizophrenic amnesia…” Tapping the screen with her finger, she looked at her sister. “I have no idea what any of this is.”
“Well…”
Joyce brought the mouse pointer down to the next link. “This could take hours, you know.”
“I think you’re being optimistic,” Brenda said.
Joyce sat there for a long moment, her eyes on the screen. “You hungry?”
Brenda dipped toast into her tomato soup. “Have you ever bumped into other people out there? Before today, I mean.” She nodded toward the window. “The reservation.”
“No, but last weekend, when Roland and I were on our way back from Twin Peaks, we found footprints at the bottom of the ravine, below the medicine circle. I wonder if they were Fred’s.”
Brenda scraped the last trace of soup from her bowl. “He was a bit strange, don’t you think?”
“A bit.”
“That PRS thing. Maybe he’d been hitting the peace pipe a little too heavy.”
“God, Brenda. I sometimes wonder if you’re really my sister.”
“They do drugs, you know. Remember how we used to get crackers and grape juice for communion? Well, they’d get LSD at theirs.” She made a smoking gesture.
“Pointless Rumination Syndrome… PRS. I think he saw you coming in his vision quest.”
The two sisters cleaned up their lunch dishes, then headed back upstairs to the office where the computer waited. Joyce parked herself before the keyboard, gazed at the screen. “So?”
“PRS.” Brenda said.
Joyce shrugged, then typed in “prs” and clicked the search button. A list appeared.
UK Performing Right Society
Welcome to the PRS Group
PRS Guitars
Philosophical Research Society
PRS: Polski Rejestr Slatkon
PRS – Procedural Reasoning System
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
She scrolled down to the next page.
PRS, Inc.
PRS - Ethnologue
The Hidden Nature of Reality and permanent reality shifts
She clicked the third link down.
Chapter thirteen – oasis
The twelfth of October was overcast. An even, gray, horizon-to-horizon carpet of clouds hung low in the sky. The house was empty by the time Roland climbed from bed. The morning ritual—Beth, Brian, and Molly rushing about, getting ready for work and school—consistently began and ended without him. He’d oversleep, waking in the early hours from dreams that would leave him awash in anxiety. This morning’s dream involved an electrical storm in his house—lightning bolting from the ceiling, lighting the bare rooms like temperamental strobes. It seemed that something, or someone, his wiser subconscious self perhaps, was trying to tell him it was time to get out—move on.
A swish came from the corn bordering the back yard—the stalks, crisp, rigid, and rattly—the corn, ready for harvest. Roland sat on the patio deck sipping coffee, staring off toward the field, sampling memory after memory, all of which were in some way sparked by the sight and sound of the corn.
The farmhouse where he’d grown up—it too was surrounded by fields such as this. He and his siblings had tried playing hide-and-seek in the corn, but no one could ever be found in its vastness. The games would fizzle like a story with no foreseeable end. There were times when he’d go off into the fields alone, finding low spots where the corn had been killed by standing water from heavy, spring rains—a secret sanctuary, an oasis in reverse. He could remain as long as he wished without the least chance of being discovered. He could have conversations with himself, sing, even dance about naked, pretending he was a hundred miles from the nearest living soul. He treasured that.
He peered out over the dull ochre field and imagined being surrounded by a wall of corn, cut off from any reminders of the days that followed his youth.
He lifted the ceramic mug to his lips—a quarter-cup of cold, black, bitter coffee—stepped to the edge of the deck, slung the coffee out onto the lawn, then set the mug down behind him. He walked across the yard to the edge of the cornfield, then pushed through the crisp wall of stalks. The first eight rows ran parallel to the field’s border; beyond that they ran perpendicular. Roland stayed between two rows, walking a straight line, deeper into the field. In his youth, the long knife-shaped leaves left stinging, superficial cuts on his face and arms, like paper cuts, stinging all the more on hot summer days—his skin, moist with salty perspiration. The reward of solitude, however, would inevitably outweigh the discomfort of getting there.
One memory led to another as he walked on: the school bus, the songs on the radio, the playground, the tether balls and swings, the rattle and squeak of their chains, conversations with Joyce, her telling him of a new show she’d watched over the weekend, The Outer Limits. “Nothing is wrong with your television set.” He could still recall the enthusiasm in her narrative, but could not locate a face. Even after seeing her in the hospital, he still could not find the face that belonged to those school-day memories of her. He could call her, he realized; he had her number. He could request a photo of her, as a young girl—something he would have treasured in his youth. She’d grant him that, no doubt. After all those years of wondering, it was now simply a matter of asking. But he hadn’t, and he was almost certain he wouldn’t.
A wall of corn stalks blocked his path at the opposite end of the field. He pushed through into a perpendicular row and followed it north for a way before cutting again to his right, looping back toward his brother’s house.
A breeze, like a gentle wave, rustled the stalks as it passed—a noise not unlike the sound of a Gulf of Mexico beach. Roland stopped. He listened as it quieted, and waited for the next wave. The wind was selective about where and what it touched. It whispered in the distance—rising, then falling. Then the opposite side—moving closer. A picture of a dark-gray moonless sky, meeting the featureless Gulf horizon, came to mind. The only clue as to their meeting point was a few, faint, distant lights—fishing boats on their way home. Dana sat close to his right—a glass of Chardonnay, crackers and cheese—cool, fine sand between their toes—Coquina Beach, hardly a soul in sight—the only sound, the swish of waves breaking forty feet away.
They’d moved to Bradenton less than two years after having first met in Stelle. The entire Florida experience, from the beginning to the last day, seemed like an endless test of resolve. Even the act of moving their possessions was wrought with breakdown after breakdown, as though the universe was trying to say, “No no no, bad idea.”
There were moments though, pleasant memories now, such as the nights on the beach. They’d go at night more often than the day. The heat—the long sweltering summers. It didn’t take long for Roland to realize he was not cut out for the southern climate. The dull, nearly nonexistent contrast—hot and humid, day after day.
A crow cawed from somewhere behind him. Roland turned, but saw only gray sky and corn, and then heard another caw.
The doorbell rang as Roland was cleaning up the remnants of lunch. A man in a brown uniform stood on the front porch, holdi
ng a clipboard. Two brown, corrugated cardboard boxes as big as moving boxes were stacked on a dolly beside him. A Federal Express van sat idling in the driveway.
“Two packages for”—the man glanced at his clipboard—“Roland Bax.”
“Uh… really?”
“Do I have the wrong house?”
“No, no… I’m Roland. I just wasn’t expecting anything.”
“Sign here if you want them.” The man held the clipboard up while Roland scribbled his signature in the tiny, pressure-pad window. Then, pulling the dolly out from under the boxes, he added, “They’re not heavy, just awkward.”
Roland examined the shipping labels. “Joyce Bax” was neatly written above her Queen Creek address. Roland moved the boxes into the house, then retrieved a knife from the kitchen and sliced the seals on the boxes. The first box was filled with clothes, all neatly folded—an envelope with his name written on it lay on top. He lifted the envelope, removed the letter from inside, unfolded it, and read:
“Dear Roland,
“I’ve been staring at the space below my so carefully worded salutation for ten minutes before admitting this much. I’ve never been very good at letter writing. How about an essay on writer’s block? I’m better at that sort of thing. Not that I don’t have anything to say; the problem is, everything seems either too trivial or too something else.
“I think about you, a lot. I hope you’re doing well, or better. But what can I do? I sometimes try to imagine being in your shoes, which only makes me feel sad and sorry. So, since returning home from Buffalo, I’ve been digging around, trying to identify this ‘thing,’ your thing; I’ve made it my thing too. There apparently has been little published on the subject (what some experts call, ‘reality shifts’) as things such as this generate about as much respect as crop circles and fairies. The only book I could find that contained anything remotely relevant was mostly theories about the influence we have over our realities (quantum physics and other spooky stuff) though somewhat sketchy on the topic of people vanishing, or whatever it is they do. I didn’t think it would be helpful (wild theories with no practical relevance), so I sent a novel instead. It was one of your favorites. But if you ever want to talk about this other thing, or anything, call me. You’ll find my number on the backside of my letter. I’d love to hear from you.
