The Lovely Shadow

by Cory Hiles

  When June replied, her voice was thick and slurred and I figured the morphine drip that she was hooked up to had fueled her answer more than her mind had, for she said, “Like a truck squashed turd, fried in butter, served with parsley on rye bread please.”

  Then she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. I continued to stand at her bedside, holding her hand for several more hours. I had a feeling that the road to recovery would be a long one indeed.

  June’s stay in the hospital lasted only seven days and she was released on Christmas Eve. She was still sore and weak, but she was able to travel and the doctors convinced her that she would recuperate better in the comfort of her home than she would in a nursing home, especially considering that I still had another week and a half of winter break and could help her until the worst of her soreness passed.

  I got June home that Christmas Eve and tried to convince her to get straight to bed, but of course the stubborn mule-headed woman refused, saying that it can’t really be Christmas Eve unless she sits in front of the fireplace in the front room sipping a cup of cocoa.

  Seeing as I had forced myself into the position of her caretaker against her wishes, for the time being anyway, I felt obliged to see to her desires for cocoa and roaring fires. So I set out for the woodshed beside the house and gathered an armload of wood. I started a kettle of water to boiling on the stove and then started the fire.

  By the time the water was boiling, the fire was just beginning to flare up nicely, illuminating the living room with the ethereal flickering glow of its dancing flames. June was engulfed in a heavy comforter in her favorite overstuffed chair waiting patiently for her cocoa.

  I stood in the doorway to the living room surreptitiously watching her, and wondering how different and possibly short my life would have been without her. I felt tears welling up again but suppressed them. I was really getting tired of crying all the damn time.

  I supposed one of the side effects of being raised solely by women with no father figure to speak of is that you learn to weep at everything, but I feared that once I made it out in the real world that habit would be seen as a sign of weakness and I would probably find my ass getting kicked regularly, or else find myself getting hit on by gay men. Neither of those scenarios seemed overly pleasant to me so I decided that I’d just try to stop crying instead.

  As I watched June I saw the firelight playing off her eyes. The twinkle and sparkle and glow of firelight reflecting off her eyes was like a fountain of youth for her. Years seemed to slip off her and she looked to me to like a little girl, huddled in her blanket waiting expectantly for Santa to drop down the chimney on Christmas Eve and fill her stocking with special treats.

  Perhaps she felt that way herself, perhaps not. I’ll never know because at that moment the kettle began whistling and I went to the kitchen to get her cocoa. By the time I got back with it, she had fallen asleep in her chair so I couldn’t ask how she was feeling.

  Instead of waking her and sending her to bed I lowered the arm on her recliner as slowly as I could so I wouldn’t wake her and pulled the back of the chair down. Without waking, June immediately stretched out into a more comfortable position in the chair, extending her legs out to the leg rest and snuggling her body into the dropped back of the chair.

  I sat on the couch and watched her sleep. I drank her cocoa and prayed silently, thanking God for the salvation He had brought me in the form of this woman who had been a better mother to me than my mother had been, and pleaded desperately for Him to spare her from the horrors of a cancerous death.

  June remained weak over the next few weeks but was showing signs of improvement as her body healed from the ravages of surgery. By the time I had to return to school she was able to get around the house by herself—slowly—but unassisted.

  She was scheduled to start chemotherapy treatment on the first of February, which was a Tuesday, and I prearranged with my teachers to let me have the necessary days off from school to drive her to and from her appointments.

  The last four months of my junior year at school proved especially difficult for me due to my efforts to take care of June and get her to her appointments. She did not handle chemo as well as we might have hoped and suffered several side effects.

  The most disturbing side effect for me to deal with was the hair loss. Without her hair, June looked like a shaved cat. Tiny and frail are the words that came to mind when I looked at my hairless Aunt.

  She struggled to keep foods down and nausea became a constant companion to her. Nausea was not her only companion during her six months of chemotherapy though; she also made an acquaintance with pain and anemia.

  Frail, sick, weak, and in constant pain June remained in good spirits and rarely made a complaint. She chastised me anytime she thought I pitied her and let me know that she would not trade a single day of her life to get out of the suffering she was going through.

  “Look here, Toots,” she said to me, “if life hands you lemons…”

  “You make lemonade; yeah I’ve heard that old cliché before.” I interrupted rudely.

  “Shut up, Dummy, that’s not what I was gonna to say,” June retorted, not unkindly. “I was gonna say when life hands you lemons your best bet is to take a big old bite out of that lemon and chew it up—even though it’s sour as hell you chew it up—then you spit it right back out and into the eye of the life that handed it to you.”

  “There ain’t one day of my life I would change in the hopes of gettin’ out of this crap, Babe, because if I’d changed anything—anything at all—it might have meant less time with you. And there ain’t nothin’ in this world more valuable to me than you are.”

  “You’ve been my hope, my strength, and my inspiration when I’ve been tired or lonely or bitter. You’ve managed to overcome more pain and hardship than anybody I’ve ever known and you did it without complaint, and without askin’ for pity from the people around you.”

  “You, Johnny, are my inspiration to make it through this illness with dignity, and now I’ll either beat it or it’ll beat me, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let it beat me down and I’ll be double damned if I’m gonna let anybody pity me.”

  I didn’t know how to respond when June said things like that. I likewise didn’t know how to respond when Elle had declared that I was her hope either. Similarly when Miss Lilly had told me that I would be the personification of hope for the lingering dead I didn’t know how to handle it.

  I am Johnny Krimshaw; regular dude and nothing all that special. I have never been a hero and I have never performed any feats of superhuman endurance in the face of great peril. I have managed to escape some traumatic experiences without being destroyed by them, but not by any conscious effort on my part. I simply don’t know how to carry a grudge, and have always found forgiveness to be less exhausting than anger. If anything, I have endured due to laziness, not strength of character.

  I must admit that I found the experience of trying to care for my mulish Aunt to be one of the more difficult and trying experiences of my life. Although I never considered giving up, I did have a few moments when I thought I might have benefited from a little pity. But somehow I managed to hold it together until school let out in early June and from there we only had two more months of chemo to deal with.

  Repeated trips to the doctor showed that the cancer appeared to be in remission and June and I dared to be hopeful. June’s final chemotherapy session was at the end of July and we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing more strenuous than watching a movie together in the comfort of our living room.

  June had been miserable for seven straight months and I’d done my best to keep her spirits up even as my own spirits were plummeting. There are few things more difficult than watching the person you love most in the world suffering and knowing that you are completely powerless to help.

  On top of trying to take care of June, keep my grades up and maintain the house throughout that long winter and spring I had an ache in my heart. I ha
d not heard from Elle since I poured my heart out to her in the hospital.

  I was left to assume that she had either taken my advice to walk through the doorway to eternity without saying goodbye, or I had said exactly the wrong thing and had hurt her deeply, chasing her away and dooming her to be miserable forever.

  As June and I sat on the couch watching The Mummy, a special effects heavy movie that lacked any substantial plot as far as I was concerned, my mind began to drift and finally I dozed off.

  I was awakened by a long missing but familiar scent and a kiss on my forehead. I opened my eyes blearily and expected to see June still cuddled in her favorite chair and the movie half over, but instead I saw that I had slept for a lot longer than I could have imagined.

  The T.V. was off and June was gone to bed. The wall clock told me it was nearly one-thirty in the morning. All those things surprised me because I felt like I had only barely dozed off, but none of those things surprised me as much as the fact that not only had Elle finally decided to visit me, but she had decided to let her shadow become visible in my presence!

  “Elle!” I cried out in surprise.

  I had previously wanted to blast her for her extended absence and the subsequent guilt I felt, fearing that I had hurt her, but I was so fascinated by the definitively feminine shadow that loomed before me that I couldn’t remember why I had been pissed off and what I wanted to complain about.

  “Shh, Johnny, be still, my Love. I am sorry that I have not come to you sooner, but I needed time to build my courage. Your words when last we spoke have been tormenting me and granting me hope simultaneously. I have been confused and did not know which way to turn.”

  If she thought she was confused she should have spent some time in my head at that moment. I was pretty sure I could show her what true confusion looked like. I was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that I was really awake, that her shadow was truly visible to me for the first time, and that she had called me her “Love”.

  Since I am often a blithering idiot when faced with serious emotional moments I did not surprise myself when I simply stared at her amazing shadow and said, “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes, Johnny. I have been confused, but I know my place now. I know where I belong. I have found peace. I am whole.”

  I assumed this meant that she would be crossing the threshold of eternity now and I was happy for her but it was a bittersweet joy because I had already decided in my heart that I would love her until I died. Even though I could not have her in a regular sense, I would never settle for another and I would miss her presence in my life.

  “So, you are…going then?” I asked, hoping that my voice did not betray my deep feeling of impending loss.

  “Yes, my Love. I will be going, but… not yet. I have the courage now. I know that I belong in eternity, but I have waited for so long that waiting longer will not kill me.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at her pun, but I didn’t have a clue as to what she might be waiting for, so I had to ask, “What are you waiting for?”

  “For you, of course! I will enter the door when I can hold your hand and we can enter together. You have saved me from my past, and I would have you for my future if…if you would also have me.”

  Under normal circumstances having somebody tell you that they are going to happily sit and patiently bide their time waiting for you to die would be rather insulting, but it brought me great joy. Maybe I’m just weird.

  “Elle,” I said uncertainly, “are you sure that you want to spend your time waiting on me? I mean, don’t get me wrong here, I want nothing in this world, or in any world for that matter, more than I want to be with you, but I want you to find peace and joy and rest, and I don’t know that you will find that here.”

  “If I am with you, I will have those things, and eternity will never shine brightly for me until I have you there with me. I will wait. Will you have me?”

  Being a young man of seventeen I briefly considered the fact that by spending my life in union with a hundred-something year old dead woman meant that I would never be able to have sex, but that was only a fleeting thought and was quickly chased away by the idea that there must be sex in the afterlife, and there it was likely to be something far more amazing than any physical union on earth could ever hope to be. I could wait.

  “Elle, I love you. I am less when you are not with me, I would have you.”

  Elle positively squealed with delight at my words and rushed forward to embrace me. As she rushed forward her full form became fully visible to me for the first time. I did not have enough time to see her clearly before she was on top of me and planting a kiss directly on my lips that felt as warm and real as if she were a physical person, and not merely the insubstantial manifestation of a soul.

  As she kissed me passionately, and I kissed back just as passionately, I wondered briefly just how long a man could wait for sex without going insane.

  After a first kiss that seemed to last for an hour, Elle stepped back and allowed me to see her clearly. Her expression was anxious as I looked at her and I knew she was insecure about revealing herself to me. Even fully clothed as she was, this experience was to her, very similar to revealing our naked bodies to our new lovers for the first time—hoping they won’t be repulsed by what they see.

  She had nothing to fear, for she was absolutely stunning. All the indistinct images of alluring feminine beauty, the sensuality, the absolute perfection of female form that I had seen in my mind’s eye failed to do justice to the woman who stood before me.

  She appeared to be about eighteen to twenty years of age. Her auburn hair hung majestically down to the middle of her back and cascaded over her slim shoulders. Her bright blue eyes sparkled behind her long eyelashes. Her somewhat sharp nose was nestled perfectly below her eyes and between her smooth, rosy cheeks. Her puffy red lips were of a quality that is rarely, if ever, found naturally and usually can only be achieved with surgery or collagen.

  Her neck was long and slender and she held her head high, not showing any of the insecurity that had plagued her for so long, but instead projecting an air of self assuredness that spoke volumes for her true character before life beat her down.

  I will stop my description at her shoulders, for to describe the rest of her would seem to be disrespectful, but I will say only this—the rest of her body was as pleasing to my eyes as her head and shoulders were.

  I told her just how beautiful she was and she blushed, though she was confused when I told her she was more beautiful that Kim Basinger. From that night on, Elle was my constant companion, except, of course, for my eternity in Hell. That was an experience I faced alone.

  CHAPTER 30

  Life had never seemed so good for me by the time September rolled around in the first year of the new millennium. June’s cancer was in remission, her strength was returning, albeit slowly, and Elle was finally an important (and visible) part of my life.

  I was starting my senior year of school and would be graduating in only nine months, freeing me up to do whatever I wanted with the rest of my life. From time to time I considered what I would do after school, and considered my unusual gift and the responsibilities that came with it, but I couldn’t really fathom spending my life sitting around waiting for the spirits of the dead to find me so I could help them.

  I figured I would take a year off from school, live off my inheritance for awhile and then go from there. My inheritance, which had been wisely invested in start-up technology companies in the early nineties, had grown to an unbelievable sum over the subsequent decade, and it was not likely that I would ever be able to spend all the money I had earned, as long as I didn’t try to fund a ridiculously extravagant lifestyle.

  I knew that just because I was financially stable for life did not mean I should kick back and enjoy a life of leisure. I had never respected people who did not work for a living, and I fully intended to do something with my life, I just had no idea what that something might be.

&n
bsp; June had not returned to work yet, as her limited physical endurance would not allow her to do any type of physical labor. Fortunately our financial situation at home was not affected much by June’s lengthy illness.

  She had wonderful long term and short term disability insurance policies and had always been financially wise, and thus she had accumulated a healthy savings account that we could draw from when the insurance proved to be insufficient.

  Her appearance was getting better by the day. She had regained color in her skin, and no longer looked like a corpse. She had begun to pack on some pounds again, and her hair was beginning to grow back.

  The biggest sign for me that health was returning to June was the gradual reduction in her aura.

  Through all the trials of chemotherapy, June had refused to purchase and wear a wig, even though her doctor tried to convince her that doing so would boost her self confidence and help her to heal faster.

  That doctor was painfully unaware that June possessed more self confidence than Hitler and she did not suffer any bruises to her ego when she wasn’t looking her best. Her self confidence had never been built around her appearance and it was unlikely that she was suddenly going to change that perception of herself simply because she was bald and skinny.

  Since June was not working, she developed new hobbies, one of which was looking up every college in the damn country and ordering brochures from them.

  At least a half dozen of them would come in the mail every day and at supper time June would spend the entire meal going over the benefits and drawbacks of each institution, trying to convince me that I really needed to consider this school or that school.

  The college suppers were annoying, but I never told June that I found them so. As annoying as it was, it was nice to see her being passionate again. Though her self confidence had not suffered during her illness, some of her fire had burned itself out and it was great to see the coals slowly being fanned back into flames.

  Time seemed to have put His slingshot away, pulled all His cards off the table and decided to step away complacently, allowing us to simply drift safely along in the currents of His river, enjoying the slow moving placid waters instead of paddling frantically and uselessly away from whirlpools and whitewater.