What Lies Below

by Mark Lukens

  But it didn’t matter. She was at the mercy of her dreams—she always had been.

  After reading a few more pages, she was beginning to drift off to sleep with the book open in her lap.

  And then the phone next to her bed rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin and she dropped the book down from her lap; it fell onto the floor with a thud.

  She grabbed the ringing phone and looked at the number on the little screen. It was a number she recognized, she was sure of that, but she couldn’t seem to connect the number with who was calling for some reason—her mind was too sluggish at the moment.

  The thought of Doug came to her mind. Was he calling? Was he finally calling to come back home? To talk about what had happened?

  “Hello?” Pam said into the phone after pressing the TALK button.

  Nobody spoke on the line, but Pam could hear a wheezy breath, like someone was struggling to breathe.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  Pam was about to hang the phone up, and then unplug it, when she heard the person on the phone speak her name.

  “Pam … Pam …”

  She knew that voice. It was her father. But he had Alzheimer’s disease and he was in the late stages of cancer … he was not a very coherent person anymore these days.

  “Dad?” she said into the phone.

  Maybe her father was having one of his rare moments of clarity.

  The wheezing continued and then her father spoke again. “Your mother … she’s come back.”

  Pam’s heart stopped for a moment.

  Mom? Back? After all these years?

  No. That wasn’t possible. Her dad was just mixed up.

  The phone went silent.

  “Hello?” Pam said into the phone. “Hello?”

  But the phone was dead.

  Pam hung the phone up on the cradle and sat there for a moment. She dialed her father’s house number right back and listened to it as it rang in her ear.

  Finally, a woman answered the phone. “Westbrook residence.”

  “Hi,” Pam said. “Who is this?”

  There was a silence on the phone and Pam realized how she must’ve sounded to the woman at the other end at this time of night. “I … I mean, my name is Pam Kaminski. I’m Carl Westbrook’s daughter.”

  “Oh,” the woman said.

  “To whom am I speaking with?”

  “Maria,” the woman said. She sounded young, but her voice had a slight edge to it. “I’m the new home health care worker here.”

  Pam nodded with the phone in her hand. “Of course.”

  “Is everything okay?” Maria asked, and she still sounded confused about why Pam was calling.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just that … well, my father just called me a few minutes ago.”

  “I don’t think so,” Maria said.

  Pam felt a flash of anger rise up inside of her, but she held it in check. “Uh … I just talked to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maria said quickly. “But that can’t be possible. I was in the room with him for the last hour and he’s been asleep the whole time.”

  Pam felt her heart skip a beat and it felt like her skin went cold. “I … I swear … I just heard him on the phone.” Her mind was reeling, and she felt light-headed and flushed at the same time. The bedroom seemed so warm suddenly.

  “I don’t know what to say … Mrs.—”

  “Kaminski. Just Pam, please.”

  “Yes, Miss Pam.”

  “Maybe it was a wrong number,” Pam said, and she suddenly felt afraid and foolish at the same time.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sorry to call so late. Good night.”

  “Yes. Good-night, ma’am.”

  Pam hung up the phone and then felt instantly upset with herself. She hadn’t even asked how her father was doing.

  But what would this new CNA have said if she would’ve asked how her father was doing? He’s barely clinging to life? He’s mumbling and rambling? He’s in and out of consciousness? He’s getting his nutrients through a feeding tube?

  The woman on the phone said there was no way her father could’ve called. But her father had just called her, she was sure of it.

  The possibilities raced through her mind. Maybe it had been the wrong number, and someone who sounded like her father had called. The person on the phone had been whispering and out-of-breath. Wheezing into the phone. Maybe it was just some other old person with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

  But the person on the phone had called her by her name. And he’d said that her mother had come back.

  Maybe it was a prank call.

  But who would be nasty enough to do something like that?

  She thought of Doug.

  But she didn’t think even he would be that cruel.

  Maybe she had fallen asleep and dreamt the phone call. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe. She had been having some very realistic dreams lately … and some very scary nightmares.

  The worst possibility of all was that she had imagined the phone call.

  She tried pushing some buttons to see if she could search for the last incoming call on the little screen, but she didn’t know how to do it—technical stuff had always been Doug’s department. She gave up and hung the phone back up.

  Maybe she could call the phone company in the morning and check to see if someone had called from her father’s house at eleven thirty at night. Maybe it would set her mind at ease.

  FIVE

  Pam sat in Dr. Stanton’s office.

  “So, you didn’t call the phone company and have them look up the phone call?” he asked.

  Pam shook her head no. “No. I thought about doing it this morning. But then I started to feel a little silly. I started thinking more and more that I had fallen asleep and the whole phone call was a dream.”

  “It’s not so improbable to believe, is it?” he asked her.

  Pam nodded. “Yeah, I guess not. But it seemed so real.”

  “And your recurring dreams that you’ve been having, they have seemed so real, too, haven’t they?”

  Pam shrugged. She knew he was right.

  Dr. Stanton sat in his chair with his leather-bound notebook on his lap, his silver pen poised over the papers inside the notebook. He stared at her through his wire-rimmed glasses.

  Just like in her dream.

  Except this time Pam wasn’t lying down on the couch with the back of her head on the puffy arm; she sat up ram-rod straight on the edge of the couch.

  “I think this realistic dream of talking with your father means something,” Dr. Stanton told her.

  Pam already knew what he was going to say.

  “I think your subconscious is trying to tell you something.”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “I think, deep down inside, you may want to go and see your father.”

  “Not really.”

  “You may not think you do, but you may really want to see him before he passes away. You may really need to see him.”

  Pam got up from the couch and paced across the room, walking towards Dr. Stanton’s desk.

  Dr. Stanton’s eyes followed her. “Pam, your anxieties and your depression, it all started at that house when your mother left you. You felt your father never did enough to find your mother or try to bring her back. I think, for your own closure, you need to talk to your father while you still can.”

  “He’s in and out of it now. More out of it than in, these days.”

  “That’s why you don’t have much time left to do this.”

  Pam stood at the corner of Dr. Stanton’s desk, staring at the venetian blinds that covered the window.

  Dr. Stanton sat up a little straighter in his chair, and then he hunched forward slightly as he stared at her. “When was the last time you saw your father?”

  “Probably six months ago or so.”

  Dr. Stanton sighed like he couldn’t believe it.

  Pam walked back to the couch and pl
opped down on the edge of it. She didn’t lie down—no way was she going to lie down on the couch right now after the dream she’d had the night before.

  “I know you and your father have never been on the best of terms,” Dr. Stanton said.

  Pam snorted out sarcastic laughter.

  “And I know that you’ve always blamed your father for your mother’s abandonment. You’ve always suspected that he knew where your mother was, but he would never tell you.”

  It was true … Pam had always harbored those suspicions; she’d told Dr. Stanton about them many times.

  “Well, now is the time to face your father. Now is the time to talk to him. You’ll never get another chance.”

  It was Pam’s turn to sigh with exasperation.

  “I know your father was an imposing man,” Dr. Stanton said. “Believe me, the few times I met him at conferences, I was very intimidated. It was like meeting a rock star or a celebrity for me.”

  Dr. Stanton set his notebook and pen down on the table next to his chair.

  (Just like in the nightmare)

  He got up and walked over to his bookcases which took up nearly one whole wall of his office.

  Pam watched him. She knew where he was going with this. He stood in front of a row of books written by her father years ago—books about various treatments and his theories, books that had never gone out of print, books that had opened up the lecture circuit for him, books that had made him (along with his private practice) a multi-millionaire.

  “Your father was a great psychiatrist. And he was a great influence on me and many others.”

  Dr. Stanton turned and looked at Pam. “Do yourself a favor and go see him for a few days. Or even a week. Talk to him about all of the things you’ve always wanted to talk to him about. But most importantly, be with him. If you don’t see him before he dies, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  SIX

  Pam picked Sarah up at Nancy’s house. She always brought Sarah over to Nancy’s house when she went to an appointment with Dr. Stanton. Sarah didn’t mind, she loved playing with Nancy’s daughter Amber.

  Pam had a cup of coffee with Nancy, but she didn’t feel like sticking around too long today. She told Nancy that she had some errands to run.

  After a stop at the supermarket to grab some dinner and a few other items, Pam drove back to their house. Their home was a nice three bedroom, two bath house at the end of a quiet street. It sat on an acre of land with a fenced-in backyard. Even though it was an upper middle-class home, it was modest compared to the mansion she’d grown up in. Her father’s mansion—she had never really considered it her house.

  As Sarah snacked on some fruit rollups and watched a cartoon on TV, Pam went into her office. The office, as she called it, was really a room with a mishmash of uses: there was a bookcase built into one wall and a desk with her old desktop computer on it in the corner, but that was about as office-y as this room got. The rest of the room was taken up with her Stairmaster and a metal rack of light dumbbells and a foam mat on the floor. There was a small TV and VCR player that she used for her workout tapes. The closet was stuffed with the storage that didn’t fit in the basement or the garage.

  She walked over to the wall of books. She had always been an avid reader and she tended to hold onto books. But what she was interested in right now were the books her father had written. She ran her fingertips over the spines of hardcover books, and her fingers stopped on a blue book with the title: Case Studies by Carl Westbrook. She pulled the book out and opened it. She thumbed through the pages and breathed in the slight musty smell of the book. She flipped to the back flap of the dust jacket and stared at her father’s author photo. It was a black and white photo from at least thirty years ago. Her father looked so strong in the photograph, so wise, so confident.

  But he didn’t look like that now. The last time she had seen her father, he was just a wasted skeleton of a man. His hair and mustache were pure gray now that he didn’t color them anymore. His cheeks were sunken in. But his eyes were the worst. They were wide and lost. And there was something else in his eyes that she had never seen before—fear. He was afraid of something. Dying? Losing his memories? Being a burden?

  Dr. Stanton’s words came back to her as she held her father’s book.

  She needed to see her father. It was summer now and Sarah was out of school. What better time was there than now? She was between jobs, even though she really didn’t need to work—the trust fund that her father had set up for her years ago provided more than enough money for her to live on.

  Pam took her father’s book with her to her bedroom. She set the book on the table next to her bed right on top of the historical romance novel. She stared at the book for another moment, and then she left her bedroom to find Sarah and tell her that they were going to visit Grandpa for a few weeks.

  SEVEN

  The next morning Pam drove out of the city and towards upstate New York. It took six hours to get to her father’s house, but the scenery along the way was beautiful—everything was green and fresh-looking. The sun was shining from a perfect blue sky.

  Sarah was happy about going to Grandpa’s house. She remembered their previous visits vividly, and she said that she couldn’t wait to spend time with Grandpa. Even though Pam and her father’s relationship had been strained through the years, her father had always doted on Sarah. He was the father to Sarah that she always wished he would’ve been to her. And sometimes she wondered if Sarah was always the daughter he had wanted, but she pushed that thought out of her mind. It was probably just that as her father had aged, he had changed; he had become less preoccupied with his work and a little more focused on his family. Maybe his relationship with Sarah was his way of starting over and trying to be a parent again.

  Her father loved playing games with Sarah: board games, card games, puzzles. And even though she hadn’t seen him too much over the last two or three years, Grandpa always called Sarah at least twice a week, and sometimes they talked on the phone for an hour, which was another thing her father had never done with her.

  But then her father had gotten really sick these last eight or nine months and he’d stopped calling Sarah. He had deteriorated so quickly. And now with the complications of his cancer along with the Alzheimer’s disease, the doctors didn’t expect him to live another three months.

  Pam felt sure that she was doing the right thing. She needed to see her father. Maybe they needed to talk. Even if he couldn’t respond, or even understand what she was saying, she at least needed to get some things off her chest. And she needed to forgive him. Perhaps he shared some of the blame for her mother leaving, but in reality it was her mother who deserved most of the blame—she was the one who had left.

  And she wanted Sarah to see her grandfather one last time, even if he was bedridden and frail. Sarah loved him as much as he loved her, and she couldn’t take that away from her daughter.

  “You know Grandpa has gotten even sicker since the last time we saw him,” Pam told Sarah as she drove her Toyota 4Runner down the country road.

  “Yeah,” Sarah answered as she stared out the passenger window at the palatial estates and farmland they were passing.

  Pam knew that Sarah understood that her grandfather was very ill, but maybe she didn’t completely grasp how ill he really was. And she wasn’t sure if she was ready to have the conversation about death with Sarah right now.

  “I just want you to know that Grandpa may not always recognize us or know who we are.”

  “I know,” Sarah said, still staring out the passenger window, watching the scenery whip by at forty-five miles an hour. “You told me before.”

  Pam just nodded and clenched her hands tighter on the steering wheel. “I know we’ve had this conversation before, but Grandpa is even more ill now than he was before.”

  Sarah turned and looked at Pam. “Why’s he so sick?”

  “Grandpa’s brain is injured.”

  “But how? Did he fall and
hit his head?”

  “No. It just happened. It’s like a disease. Like the flu.”

  Pam realized that the flu was a bad exampled as soon as she said it.

  “Can it happen to me?” Sarah asked. “Or you?”

  “It only happens to people who are much older than us. Grandpa’s age.”

  Which wasn’t entirely true. Her father had gotten a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease that showed up in younger people and was much more aggressive. And cancer could happen to a person at any age. But again, this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Sarah at this time.

  “But what about when we get to be Grandpa’s age?” Sarah asked.

  “Well, maybe there will be a cure for the disease by then.”

  “I wish there was a cure now,” Sarah pouted and looked back out the passenger window. “I miss talking to Grandpa.”

  “You mean the secrets you keep with him?” Pam asked and smiled at her daughter.

  “They aren’t secrets,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t hide her sly smile.

  “You won’t tell me about them.”

  “Grandpa says it’s kind of like a game.”

  “A game you won’t tell me about.”

  “I will,” Sarah said, and then she hesitated like she wasn’t sure if she was giving something away that she wasn’t supposed to. “It’s just not time yet.”

  Pam didn’t push. Whatever “secrets” Sarah and Grandpa had shared, she was sure they were innocent enough—just one of the games that her father liked to play.

  EIGHT

  Memories overwhelmed Pam as soon as she drove past the gates that opened up to the acres and acres of property that her father’s house sat on. She drove down the long, winding driveway through the small forest of trees which eventually gave way to the clearing where the house sat in the distance beyond the gigantic circular driveway.

  Her father bought this property when Pam was born; he bought it for a song before everything else around this area was divided up and sold off into large lots for mansions.