Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  “Karma,” Bob said.

  “He understands. Yes. More than I do, I think.” Jim pointed at Bob. “Listen to him. He knows.” Jim turned and touched Ed, then Ed’s wife, Joan. “That’s why we must touch one another, to touch the individual and the all. We’re all responsible for everyone else through our individual actions. In teaching, I teach you all. Don’t you see?”

  “I do,” Brad said. But Jim knew Brad had seen long before that moment.

  Others shook their heads. It didn’t seem that the deer were any longer important. It wasn’t where or how he got the information, it was the information itself that mattered. Even Becky came back into the circle.

  Jim took her hand, “Our love and our understanding. We, working through our personal problems, have touched each of you, know it or not. The fact that we’ve overcome some of those problems has taught a great lesson to each of you, and to everyone else in this world, even if the message is different for each.” He pulled Becky to him and slid his arm around her waist. Then he reached out and touched Ed, who stood closest to him. “We should all touch more often, look at each other more often, explore our lives, not just live them.”

  “That’s good,” Bob said. “Explore our lives.” He was a little drunk and slurred, which brought some laughter, and the laughter broke up the seriousness of Jim’s short speech.

  “We’ll explore, all right,” Mel said, and soon others began to talk.

  Jim pulled back into the circle as the center closed up. In an hour, everyone had talked and drunk and eaten until they became tired. Each thanked Jim at least once before leaving. At the final door closing, Becky stood facing him. “That wasn’t so bad,” she said, but her face said more. She looked proud.

  “The deer thing?” he asked.

  “You’re a brave man. I think you’re braver than I’ve ever known you to be, and I’ve lived with you all these years. I think it’s just that you never had an occasion to be brave until recently. That’s a shame.”

  Jim took the opportunity to reach for her. They hugged for a long time, out of love, out of tiredness, out of mutual respect. He rubbed his hands up and down her back, along her sides. Becky laid her head on his shoulder, as he remembered her doing many years before. The lights dimmed as he closed his eyes and held her. The two of them were suspended there; he hoped it could be forever, but Becky moved away. Just before she lifted her head, Jim felt the tension in her return.

  “We need to clean up,” she said.

  “It can wait.” Jim wanted another moment. “I’ll do it later.” He reached for her again.

  “I’m proud of you, Honey,” she said as though that was all she could do. He had to take that for now.

  “Thank you.” He turned away for a moment, then turned back. She was leaning over the coffee table picking up dirty dishes. Jim came up behind her and touched the small of her back.

  Becky stood with a stack of plates in her hands. She looked into his eyes, not without compassion. “I’m fifty-eight. I’m an old woman, not a young lover. What is it that you need from me?”

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t be here if . . .”

  “Young love? Do you love me like you used to?”

  Holding the dishes in front of her, she stepped past him. “I’m not young. But I still love you. Yes. More than you love me, I believe.” She was in the kitchen by the time she finished the sentence.

  He followed behind her. “Then hold me again. I don’t want you to love me from a distance. I want you near me.”

  “It’ll never be the same,” she said.

  “Then let’s make it completely different,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You are brave to be saying this to an old—”

  “Lady whom I’ve just met for the first time. There are some tiny things about you that remind me of someone I love very much. But there are also new things I need to explore.” He walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed her lightly, then wiggled his lips to get her to part hers. They kissed like a young couple. Becky breathed through her nose to get air. Jim pulled her hips closer to his own. “I do love you,” he whispered into her ear once he let her lips go.

  “Oh, why has it taken this…this…so long.” Becky tried to speak, but couldn’t come up with enough words, or the right words.

  Jim led her into the living room, holding her hand. He turned off the living room light. The front lawn, suffused with light from a streetlamp down the block, cast a soft whiteness into the darkened room. Jim began to unbutton Becky’s blouse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  “What?” She whispered as though someone might be listening.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “Jim! I’m an old woman.”

  “You’re my wife, my lover. Please.” He removed his own pants and shorts and shoes. He stood in only a shirt. When he bent to begin to unbutton her buttons again, she leaned in to kiss him. A sensation of newness rushed through him. He thought he could feel it in her also.

  Her hands quickly rushed to her belt to loosen it, then to help with the buttons. Once her clothes were on the floor, Jim unhooked her bra and let her heavy breasts fall loose. She grabbed for them with her hands, to hold them up. “Oh, Honey, I sag everywhere.” She stood there in only pantyhose.

  Jim removed her hands and placed his over her breasts, holding them up.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  He pulled her close and kissed her again.

  “No.” She pushed him away. “I’m not a teenager. This isn’t high school.” Becky bent down to collect her clothes, then walked into the bedroom, leaving Jim standing alone in the darkness.

  Jim watched. From behind she could have been twenty years younger. Even from the front, he thought. He looked down and noticed he was hard. He wanted to make love with her, but even more to sit with her. He wanted to explore her body like he hadn’t done in years. Touch places he’d ignored, rediscover places he thought he knew well. These included her thoughts, too. He wanted to exchange thoughts and emotions.

  A car drove by. Jim watched the lights reflect off the remaining snow. Spring was around the corner. How long would his new life last? “Speak to me again, Connie. Now, when I need your help.” Jim held out his hands as he had once when Connie would visit him. But she had not visited for a long while. He had eventually told her she could go on. He no longer needed to hold her back. He felt differently now. Tears swelled in his eyes and he began to shake. He felt something in the room with him; the way he used to feel when they talked. But this time she didn’t talk. “Please,” he whispered. He felt alone.

  The wind bent the trees out front. Snow blew along the ground.

  He let his arms drop back to his sides. On the sofa, Jim buried his face into his hands and sobbed quietly. “Be,” he said. “Be what? Miserable? Alone?” He waited for a little while, not so much for an answer, but for his feelings of loneliness to subside. When they didn’t, he got up from the couch. Even if things weren’t going well, at least Becky tried. And she said that she loved him. She called him brave. There was no reason to give up, only to give her time.

  Jim collected his clothes and walked into the bedroom. They still shared a bed. Many people he’d met had stopped doing that for one excuse or another. He removed his shirt and climbed in beside her.

  “I’m sorry I’m not as brave as you,” Becky said.

  Jim didn’t expect her to talk at all. He thought it was over. “I was scared as hell. I just needed to connect again. To talk.”

  “Is that what you wanted?”

  “Brad told me about Susan and him. I wanted us to sit, facing each other, naked. To look at each other. To fall back in love.”

  Becky rolled over to face him. “That’s a tall order.”

  “We owe it to ourselves. To each other. God knows I owe you much more than that,” he said.

  “I just
can’t. I’m old. I’m sagging.”

  “It’s not your skin I’m in love with,” Jim whispered.

  “But.” She couldn’t think of any other words.

  Neither could he.

  “Hold me,” she said, desperation in her voice.

  Jim slid to her and stuffed his arm under her body. Her breasts fell together and in the dim light Jim could see the long heavy-shadowed line of her cleavage. He kissed her forehead and held her until she fell off to sleep. Then, he lay on his back and stared, for several hours, at the ceiling. Even he didn’t know what he had wanted, what he had expected.

  He slept lightly, dreaming that Connie had come to talk with him. He woke early Sunday morning.

  Becky was sound asleep on the opposite side of the bed, the blanket tucked under her arm and her broad back spreading upward. Her skin was smooth, her hair delicate.

  Jim started to reach for her then pulled back. Why wake her? He slipped out of bed and collected his clothes for the day. Without showering or shaving, and carrying a bundle of clothes in his arms, he went into the kitchen to make coffee. He dressed, sitting in a cold kitchen chair, while the coffee dripped. He filled a Styrofoam cup to the brim with a strong, black brew, put on a coat, and stepped outside into the yard.

  The snow crunched under his feet. The sky was clear. Birds chirped overhead in the few trees that stood in the yard.

  Jim breathed deeply. He wanted to go over a few things, particularly the night before, with a clear head. He stopped long enough to take a good sip of the coffee and felt it warm his throat and chest. Then, carefully, he walked down to the sidewalk and up the street. First of all, Connie was not coming back, nor should she. He must let that connection go. The same for the deer—let them go, too. Remember them and her. That’s what was left. If he needed to talk, he’d talk with Brad. Brad had asked to be the one. Or he’d talk with Becky, if that were possible.

  Jim took in the cool air while stopping occasionally to sip his coffee. The sun rose above the houses and the birds cried, “Spring, spring, spring,” all around him. Nothing seemed impossible; nothing seemed too far away to grasp. He felt strong and capable. He had his friends, his family, and his memories. Things came to him clearly: his place in the world, his individual and universal significance. But the understanding didn’t enter with words he could repeat. He just knew. Felt. Was. Maybe that was what was meant by be.

  He recalled the magical light in the forest and transferred it to the glimmer of sun off snow where he now walked. The deer had come as friends, friends from another world, maybe the spirit world where Connie now lived. Yet deer are more connected to the Earth and therefore operate on this plane, and it seemed right. All his thoughts seemed right that morning, but he’d talk with Brad about it, and maybe Becky, too.

  The morning washed away like an outgoing tide, while Jim walked. The coffee gone and the sun warming the air, he turned down the street, which, through his circuitous walk, would take him home again. The rhythm of nature, from seed to tree to seed, from birth to death, and maybe to birth again; or from morning to night, always he came back home, no matter how many times around the block, or the neighborhood. Jim placed his hand on the door knob and smelled bacon. His mind shot back to the farmhouse, to the farmer and his wife. He first thought of their romance and the romance of their way of life—what Brad had seen about them. But then, he remembered the hollowness of the house without them and remembered his own hollowness. In one moment, his heart ached for what he did not have, and for what would not be missing in his house when he died…the romance.

  CHAPTER 10

  IN A FEW MONTHS, the cancer came out of remission. Spring was running full speed ahead. The neighborhood became more lush day by day, and warm evening air carried the voices of children.

  Jim tried several times to approach Becky on an intimate level, suggesting they sit on the floor naked, to talk and explore, but Becky couldn’t do it. She still didn’t see the purpose in exploiting their old bodies while trying to bring back young love. The last time he attempted to approach her, she saw it coming and actually left the house. So, they carried on their relationship as they always had: comfortable, caring, and sexual at times. Becky still thought him brave for “sticking to his guns.”

  The miracle of the deer had become an element of conversation, and the relaxed atmosphere about it allowed Jim to remember more, most of which, by this time, he kept to himself. In fact, in opposite proportion to the relaxed atmosphere, he became increasingly secretive for fear of losing the mystery. An odd thought at first, but as time went on, it proved an accurate one. With all the other people involved in the mystery of the deer’s words, there also came too many answers, and from too many directions. Jim felt removed from his own experience. He knew that it had happened to him, and extrapolated from that that it was also meant for him. As much as he appreciated their thoughts, his friends and family plagued him with answers, none of which were his own. Their well-intentioned help physically exhausted him.

  “It’s the chemo too, Dad,” Brad said one day when Jim was complaining adamantly.

  Jim took the coffee mug from Brad’s hands. “Thank you.”

  “How’d it go today?” Brad asked.

  “Who knows? I think they stop telling you the truth once you’re heading down the opposite side of the mountain.”

  “That’s not true,” Becky said from the kitchen doorway. “He just wants to believe that it is.”

  “So, what’d they say?” Brad asked her.

  “They have it under control,” Becky told him.

  “But it’s in my body,” Jim said.

  “Take it easy, Dad. They’re doing all they can.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  “He gets like this sometimes,” Becky said. “Depressed. God knows, I’d be worse in his situation. Most of the time, it’s like he doesn’t even think of it.”

  “Oh, I think of it, I just try not to. And I don’t talk about it,” Jim said.

  “Even while you’re getting sick after the treatments?” Brad said.

  “I focus on the deer. On my interpretation, not everyone else’s, and let it happen. I just let everything happen. It’s all I can do now.” He sipped his coffee. “Your mother’s here to help me get through it.”

  Brad looked up at Becky.

  “It’s not always easy for me,” she said.

  “It’s probably worse for you than me,” Jim admitted. “I know how I feel; you can only guess. That’s got to be tough.”

  They all sat quietly for a minute.

  Finally Jim spoke again. “That’s why I want you to go with me.”

  “Take Brad,” Becky suggested.

  “Where?” Brad wanted to know.

  “No!” Jim slammed his fist against the chair arm. Coffee leaped from the cup, but did not spill onto the chair.

  “Where’s he want to go?” Brad asked.

  “To that old farm,” Becky told him, “but I’m no outdoorsman. I can’t walk through the mountains.”

  “Then I’ll go alone. I just wanted you there, that’s all.” Jim said.

  “It’s not a difficult walk, Mom.”

  “Listen to your son. He knows,” Jim said.

  “Why should I go look at a run-down farm?”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll go alone. I want to see it. I just wanted you with me. But it’s me who needs to go. It reminds me of myself,” Jim told them both.

  “Run-down?” Becky said. “That’s not you.”

  “Empty. Full of dead romance. The memory of usefulness,” he said.

  “Go, Mom.”

  Becky shook her head and walked over to Jim. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve never in my life met anyone like you.”

  “You’re lucky if you never do again.”

  “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “Something must be okay. You’re still together.”

  Both his parents shot him a look, both saying that he didn’t know the w
hole truth of the matter.

  “Sorry.” Brad patted Jim on the knee and stood up. “Look, I’ve got to go. Susan’s expecting me home early today. She has some sort of plans.” Neither one of them appeared to be listening to him. Jim had all but closed his eyes and Becky seemed off in another world.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, as if they were going to spend quality time together. He could hope so.

  Jim’s eyes widened. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Susan’s waiting.”

  “So you said,” Jim said.

  Brad kissed Becky’s cheek. “For what it’s worth, Mom, I think you should go.”

  Jim thanked Brad, knowing that Becky would be more likely to listen to her son than she would to him. He didn’t blame her. Through the expanse of their life together, they had both let the relationship grow into what it was. And, at the moment, he felt much too tired to try to change it. Her hand on his shoulder, its warmth and feel, belied his thoughts on what they had become. Sometimes, it seemed there were more elements to their marriage than even he could understand. He felt her lean over and kiss his neck; her breath, the odor of morning coffee, lingered there. She slipped the cup from his hands, her fingers brushing against his. Then he heard her footsteps as she walked away and he drifted into a light sleep.

  CHAPTER 11

  IF SHE WAS GOING TO GO ON THE TRIP at all, it was going to be that weekend. “Or I might change my mind completely,” she said.

  “It might rain again,” he said.

  “Then we’ll take an umbrella.”

  “Fine, just fine.”

  “I thought you wanted to go see this…thing that reminds you of yourself. This old farm.”

  “You don’t have to be so derogatory. And yes, I do want to go. I was just hoping for some better weather.” He remembered how the sun hit the house and the field, the snow on the ground. There wouldn’t be snow, but the field illuminated by sun would be much more beautiful than drenched with rain. He got up and walked past Becky toward the bedroom.