What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  “Wait, what?”

  Jane slowly walked over to the dresser. “He left a note, Blake.”

  “A note? Well, what does it say?”

  Jane picked it up and was immediately taken by the quality of the stationery—the rosy hue of the envelope, the texture and weight of the paper inside. It seemed inconceivable to Jane that Adam would have picked out anything so tasteful. That he had taken the time to do so, Jane knew, was only added cause for concern.

  After reading the Virgil Coates quote about “the life I was meant to live, but for whatever reason I did not,” Jane exhaled and shook her head. Why did Adam always have to be so convoluted about everything? But reading on, Jane found lines that were much more direct. “I can’t live like this anymore . . . It’s not your fault. It’s me . . .” This was starting to sound like a Dear John letter, Jane thought. Not good. But as she kept reading, the letter began to imply something even graver. “You and the kids will be better off without me . . . Please don’t try to find me. I need to be alone. To find my peace . . .”

  “Oh God.”

  “Oh God? What do you mean, ‘Oh God’?” Blake sounded like he was trying to climb through the phone. “Jane! What does the note say?”

  “It sounds like he’s going to—”

  Just then the doorbell rang. Jane looked up from the note and remembered that Dr. Mendelson was on his way over.

  “I have to go, Blake. I’ll call you back.”

  “Wait! Don’t you hang up on me!”

  “It’s Dr. M.,” Jane said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “JANE! What does the note—”

  Jane hung up.

  Moving down the hallway toward the front door, Jane reread the note a second time. She was shocked that her husband was actually capable of doing something like this. If he was so unhappy, why didn’t he just say something? You don’t just leave. What about me? What about the kids? The whole situation was so over the top, so dramatic, that Jane was starting to feel like she was in some kind of movie. Which was oddly exciting to her.

  Jane opened the door. The severe expression on Dr. Mendelson’s face said he was there to take charge. “What is it, Jane? Did you hear from Adam?”

  Her hand trembling, Jane held the note out to Dr. Mendelson.

  Dr. Mendelson took the note and read it. Then he looked up, his face somber. “We’ll get Adam back, Jane. Trust me. I know Adam better than he knows himself.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE PRINCESS, THE THIEF, AND A BOAT NAMED PARADISO

  Adam sat quietly in his rental car, parked in a vacant stretch near the bottom of Main Street. Beatrice and her oversize green parka were packed tightly into the passenger seat just to his right. The circumstances of life had kept them apart for over three decades, but now all that separated Adam from his childhood companion was the hand brake and two cup holders.

  They sat there staring out at the ocean for several minutes. Neither of them knew where to begin. The drive back from the Little River Cemetery had been silent, so Adam was still unsure if she remembered anything about him beyond his name. She seemed to have fallen into a state of shock the moment he had called out her name, as if the word itself had cast a spell over her.

  “So . . . Do you remember me, then?”

  Adam heard the crunch and crinkle of Beatrice’s parka as she turned to face him. “Of course I remember you, Adam.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.

  Adam returned her gaze, and she greeted him with a smile—not the mysterious Mona Lisa this time, but something more direct. It felt like looking into the sun. “I can see it’s you,” she said. “But you’ve changed. Your eyes, I remember them as being lighter.”

  “A lot has changed.” Adam gave a resigned shrug.

  After some more uncomfortable silence, Beatrice said that she needed to make a quick phone call. To give her some privacy, Adam gallantly offered to go fetch two cups of coffee, with the idea that when he came back, they could sit somewhere along the bluff and catch up. All very reasonable, Adam thought. But once he was alone again, waiting in line for the coffee, he had time to think, and then to panic. What the hell did he think was going to happen next? They weren’t kids anymore. She was a grown woman, one whom Adam knew nothing about, and she knew nothing about him.

  When he returned with the coffee, he found Beatrice waiting at one of the picnic tables in the grass field across from Main Street. They began talking, and Adam was so nervous that, within minutes, he found himself unwittingly pulling out his wallet to show Beatrice pictures of his wife, Jane, and the kids. “This is from our honeymoon in Hawaii. That’s why we have the, um, swimming noodles and all that,” Adam said aloud, while another voice inside him was screaming, Abort! Abort!

  “These aren’t the best pictures,” he continued, rushing to put them back in his wallet. “The best ones are on my phone, which I lost, but anyway, that’s us.”

  “Your wife is very attractive,” Beatrice said politely. “And the kids?”

  “Madison and Chandler.”

  Beatrice looked confused. “And they’re yours? I mean, they don’t look—”

  Adam had dealt with this before. “They’re from Jane’s previous relationship, but I adopted them when we got married. Yep, it’s a good arrangement.” Immediately Adam wished he could take back the words.

  “Arrangement?”

  “Wow, did I really just say that?” Adam gave a laugh. “I just meant . . . See, Blake, a guy I work with—my best friend, really—he set us up, Jane and me. And we got along great. Jane had just been through a tough separation, and with the two kids and all, she was in a bit of a spot, so I was happy to help her out too.”

  Adam felt like a schoolboy explaining why he didn’t have his homework. “So I guess Jane, she keeps me grounded, and, you know . . . We fit together.” Really? he thought. Did I really just say that?

  “It sounds as if you’re happy.” There was a hint of a question nestled in Beatrice’s words.

  “I am.” Adam shook his head then quickly switched to nodding. It was like at the cemetery when Beatrice called him out for lying. But this was much worse because she wasn’t calling him out, she was trying to be nice. “Look, I’m sorry. I sound like such an idiot. You know that I’m not happy. It’s just that . . . Sometimes when things get crazy at work, and when I get too run-down, I can get a little batty.”

  “What kind of work do you do that makes you batty?”

  “It’s not all that interesting,” Adam warned, but when he looked up, he saw that Beatrice honestly wanted to know. “I’m an engineer. Computer programmer. I make video games.”

  Beatrice’s face lit up. “You make games?” Beatrice broke into laughter.

  “Wait, what’s so funny about that?”

  “It’s just so perfect.” Beatrice beamed. “When we were kids, you used to make up all these wonderful games.” Beatrice scooted closer to Adam. “I remember so many crazy games, treasure hunts, and wild adventures, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, kind of. Just bits and pieces, really. It was so long ago—”

  “Oh!” Beatrice broke in. “There was this one game we used to play with orange peels.”

  “I remember that one!” Adam brightened. “I was just thinking about that! You were like a princess, right?”

  “And you were a thief.” Beatrice smiled wistfully.

  “That was a pretty elaborate game.”

  “One of your very first. And now look at you. Still putting your imagination to good use.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that.”

  Just as Adam was about to make some self-deprecating comment, Beatrice reached over and took his hand. Her touch seemed to open up an electrical current between them that made Adam’s pulse quicken.

  “I remember being so sad when you left Little River, Adam. You were my only friend back then.”

  Adam nodded and looked down at Beatrice’s hand touching his. He could feel a strangely intense sensation of hea
t, almost like burning. Perhaps she was feeling the same thing, because she quickly removed her hand and took a sip of coffee.

  At first Beatrice seemed reluctant to share much about her own life. But while walking with Adam on the footpaths along the bluff, she slowly began to open up. Her parents had separated shortly after Adam’s parents took him away. “I went with my mother,” Beatrice explained. “She’s French, so we moved back to Paris. I grew up there, for the most part.”

  “I thought I detected something like an accent.”

  “Oui, monsieur. C’est vrai,” Beatrice said with a playful smile. “Mom was an activist—environment, human rights, all of it. So we were constantly running around to demonstrations, protests, speaking out on behalf of one cause or another.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “It was. Of course, I turned out a lot like my mother, wanting to save the whole world as soon as possible.” Beatrice stopped to pick up a discarded soda can on the side of the path. “In my twenties I got involved with an NGO doing charity work in India. It was an incredible experience. Then while I was working in Tibet, I met someone and ended up in a relationship . . . a very destructive one. I guess you could say he was the wrong kind of man.”

  “Like an evil monk?”

  Beatrice laughed. “No, no. Like a wealthy, handsome, charismatic philanthropist who was also out to save humanity.”

  “Oh, right. That sounds much worse.”

  “Much, much worse, believe me. Especially if you follow him around the world, devoting yourself to his great causes only to find that behind the charity is just a selfish agenda. Behind the pseudospirituality is narcissism, drugs . . . other women.”

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said gently.

  Beatrice simply shrugged. “I was as much a part of the problem. Lying to myself mostly. Pretending to be something I wasn’t. Years of useless virtue, trying to fix the world, never fixing anything.”

  Adam nodded. “And after that?”

  “I traveled a lot, mostly on my own. Became very independent, but also quite closed off. I was looking for a Reset button, maybe.” Beatrice looked at Adam again with a hint of a smile. “Sometimes you have to lose everything before you can discover the path you were always meant to follow.”

  “And did you? Discover that for yourself?”

  “I did. And what’s funny is that it was always right there,” Beatrice said, a glimmer of serenity in her eyes. “I’d just been looking in the wrong direction.”

  Beatrice gazed out at the horizon.

  Adam looked out as well. He wanted to ask Beatrice more. He remembered how the night before she had said something about doing research, but before he could ask about it, there was a loud ringing sound from Beatrice’s parka.

  “I’m sorry; hold on a sec.” Beatrice pulled her cell phone from her pocket. It was unusually large, like one of those satellite phones Adam had seen mountain climbers use on the Discovery Channel.

  Beatrice didn’t take the call. She put the phone back in her pocket and then looked at Adam. She seemed to want to say something to him, something serious, but then she shook her head. Instead she sighed. “Would you mind giving me a ride somewhere?”

  Adam drove Beatrice north out of Mendocino, up Highway 1. Just before reaching Fort Bragg, they passed over a bridge high above a river that emptied out into the Pacific. Once across, Beatrice directed Adam to turn down a steep, winding road that gradually led down below the bridge to Noyo Harbor. There were several restaurants, a few dive bars, but not much else. The nearest docks were for commercial fishing vessels, but up near a bend in the river was an area for private boats.

  Beatrice instructed Adam to pull up to the far end of the parking lot, closest to the private moorings. As they drove past the booth by the gated entrance to the dock, she gave a quick look to see who was on duty. She had explained earlier that she wasn’t technically allowed to dock there since she didn’t have a current California registration. However, one of the night guards, a guy named Hank, had agreed to let her stay as long as it wasn’t for too long.

  Adam stopped the car.

  “That’s her, over there.” Beatrice pointed to a large green-and-white sailboat. Written in script on the forward side of the vessel was Paradiso 9.

  “Wow, you weren’t kidding.” On the drive over, she had told Adam that she lived on a boat, but he’d thought she was joking.

  “And you sail it? By yourself?” he asked.

  “All over the world.”

  “So you actually live on it—on the boat? Like it’s your house?”

  Beatrice laughed, clearly enjoying Adam’s enthusiasm. “Not always, no. It depends on where I’m heading and where I’m docked. But, yes, it is ‘like my house.’”

  “What’s your favorite place?” Adam blurted out. “The most amazing place you’ve ever been?” Looking at Beatrice, he realized how childish he must sound. “Sorry, I know that’s a ridiculous question. I’ve just always wanted to travel, but have never really been able to.”

  Beatrice didn’t seem to think Adam’s question was ridiculous, taking a few long moments to consider it. “In the space between,” Beatrice finally said. “Out on the open water, between destinations. That has always been my favorite place to be.”

  Adam tried to imagine that. “It sounds like freedom.”

  “It is . . . but sometimes,” a remorseful smile flashed across Beatrice’s face, “sometimes it’s just running. There are all sorts of ways people can get stuck.”

  Adam noticed a gentle patter on the roof. It had begun to rain, just lightly enough to ease the sudden silence inside the car. Beatrice looked serious again as she picked at the sand beneath her nails.

  “Adam,” she said quietly. “Do you ever remember your dreams?”

  Adam thought about it. The way she asked the question demanded a level of honesty that he wanted to live up to. At the same time, the mention of dreams immediately evoked discomfort. Dreams were something Dr. Mendelson encouraged him to talk about, but whenever Adam did, it always left him feeling empty afterward, as if putting dreams into words had somehow defiled them. He had learned to keep his dreams, those important ones, at least, to himself.

  “Sometimes I do. Not always. Why?”

  Beatrice didn’t speak for a long while. The rain was now amplifying the intimacy within the car, giving Adam the feeling of being a child again with Beatrice, huddled inside their hollowed-out tree together.

  “Three nights ago,” Beatrice began, “I think it was Thursday, I was sailing up the coast. I was close to San Francisco, near the Farallon Islands. I hadn’t actually been planning on stopping in Mendocino, but that night I had a dream.”

  Adam shifted slightly in his seat. He was doing his best to listen to Beatrice the way she listened to him, however, that slight anxiety he felt the moment she had mentioned dreams was increasing.

  “In this dream,” she continued, “I was a kid. And it felt as if I was back in Little River. It was hard to tell, though, because I was spinning. It wasn’t a bad feeling. In fact, it felt wonderful. I felt warm and free and safe all at the same time.”

  As Beatrice spoke Adam could feel the blood drain from his face. Thursday night was his birthday dinner, the same night he had dreamt of lying on the school yard merry-go-round, spinning round and round. Could it be possible that Beatrice had had the same dream?

  “Then I felt something touching my hand,” Beatrice went on. “And when I looked down, I saw this little butterfly. It was beautiful, and I understood that it needed help to fly; it wanted me to help it fly. But then,” Beatrice’s expression darkened, “I’m not sure what happened, dreams can get so crazy, but it felt like something had gotten hold of it and was pulling the butterfly down into the dirt. I started digging for it, deeper and deeper into the earth, and when I finally found it again, it was filthy, and one of its wings was crumpled. But it was alive, so I tried to pick it up, but then—” Beatrice covered her mouth. “I saw something in the
ground, holding on to it, attached to it, like . . . like some kind of parasite. And the more I tried to lift the butterfly, the more this thing pulled back, ripping it apart as I pulled and . . .”

  While Beatrice had been speaking, the buzzing tinnitus in Adam’s ear had grown louder and louder, as if provoked by her words. As discreetly as possible, he stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around, but Beatrice noticed. “Oh God, I’m sorry. Is this too much information?”

  “No, no. I’m sorry. Please, go on,” Adam said, doing his best to look relaxed. The last thing he wanted right now was a damn panic attack.

  “Well, when I woke up the next morning, all I could think was, there must be something here in Mendocino from my past that I had to come back for. And the whole digging thing—” Beatrice shook her head and gave a small laugh. “I know it sounds silly, but as a kid I put some things together, you know, after you left. Keepsakes. And I put them in a box, an old, metal lockbox that I buried in this special place I used to go to—”

  “The sinkhole behind the cemetery,” Adam said and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  “You knew about the—” Seeing Adam’s face, Beatrice quickly put it together. “You saw me down there.”

  To his surprise Adam heard nothing accusatory in her voice. “I truly didn’t mean to spy on you. I was just trying to find you and I—”

  “It’s all right, Adam.” Beatrice brushed her hair back out of her face. “Just don’t tell anyone about that sinkhole, okay? There aren’t many places like that left. Places with that kind of . . . energy, I guess. You know this whole area used to be considered sacred land. The Pomo, the Native Americans who once lived here, believed this was the edge of the world.”

  Adam remembered the photographs in the lobby of the Mendocino Hotel.

  “They had a wonderful phrase to describe this area,” Beatrice continued. “I’m pretty sure it was your grandmother, Anne, who told me about it. Did she mention it to you? The Pomo called this ‘the land where skies grow thin.’”