by Aiden James
Chapter 5
I didn’t sleep well that night. Especially after I relayed the latest news to my son regarding the assignment we’d been given for our trip to Iran. Not that I ever sleep long as it is...but it was much less than usual.
“You should see if we can cancel our reservations and forego this nonsense!” Alistair told me on the phone. The only good thing was I didn’t interrupt his dinner, decreasing the chance of an acid reflux attack. “It makes a helluva lot more sense to reschedule for the fall break—or even next spring if necessary. No rush for getting school agendas completed on time, and no Russian billionaires to hobnob with in the frigging Alborz Mountains!”
There wasn’t much I could say since they were my exact sentiments, initially. But his irritation greatly exceeded mine, forcing me to pull the phone away from my ear.
“Yes, if given the chance to redo this whole adventure, I would concur with you.” I tried to sound caring while presenting an alternative point of view. “But the ‘die has been cast’, so to speak, Ali my boy. We’re going.”
“The hell you say!”
“Yes, the hell I say! I’m your father and you’ll just have to trust me that this will work out!” Now I was the one a little ticked off. “I’ll still find a way for us to head north to our destination. I promise!”
“To Al-h—”
“Sh-h-h-h!!”
“What the hell’s the matter now??”
“You damned well know what!” I chided him, although by then I had lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “I’d rather not give away the rest of our itinerary, if you don’t mind, son!”
Every phone line we’ve ever had has been bugged over the years.
“Bah! Pops, only you’d be so arrogant to think everyone on the planet wants to know what the ‘Great William Barrow’ is up to these days!”
Awkward silence followed, and I wasn’t sure what to say next. Apparently, Alistair faced the same problem.
“I saw Mother today,” he finally announced.
“How is she?” I felt a sudden lump form in my throat.
“Not so good, Pops.” His tone bore profound sadness. I doubt this world has seen devotion for one’s mother any stronger than the love Alistair holds for his mom. “She’s remembering less and less...the nurse told me that she no longer wanders down the hallways at night.” He chuckled sadly.
“I’ll be sure to stop by Good Shepherd tomorrow after I get off from work. I’m planning to read her favorite passage from Pride and Prejudice.”
“I don’t know, Pops.” He sniffed. “I’d like to think she’d enjoy your company, but she didn’t seem to know who I was tonight. She might not even believe you’re her long lost grandson this time—probably not even if I came with you and told her that you’re my boy.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine with me, son,” I sought to assure him, my tone soothing and confident. “And if my presence agitates Beatrice in any way, I promise I’ll leave quietly. She won’t even know I’m there, unless it’s a positive experience for her.”
“You swear?”
Another image of my kid as a little boy suddenly filled my mind, and now it was my turn to chuckle, although warmly.
“Yes, I swear. Ali, it’s going to be fine.”
“Well, okay.” He sounded a tad hopeful. “I look forward to our evening chat tomorrow night.”
“Good night, son.”
“’Night, Pops.”
After he hung up, I stared out my living room window at the twinkling D.C. skyline for nearly half an hour. A powerful sense of sadness overwhelmed me as I reflected on all that I had been through in the past century...what it was like before I met Beatrice, and how she changed my life and perpetual existence forever. I pictured her so clearly...when she was a young and beautiful woman with bright green eyes and long flowing strawberry blonde hair, and a smile that easily melted my steeled heart. Back then, my Georgetown professor son was just a young kid pretending to be Buck Rogers out in the backyard of our home in the outskirts of Glasgow.
My wife and kid embodied such joy and happiness, and our lives seemed so complete. I’ll never forget the extreme pain I endured when I left them—how it literally destroyed me inside to do what I had to do. To do what I had done so many times before in the previous nineteen hundred years of my existence.
Sometimes I’m not sure which is worse. Is it the terrible loneliness I’ve become so familiar with over the centuries in my solitude? Or, is it more the inevitable goodbyes when those I cherish finally succumb to old age and death?
Beatrice would be leaving soon. All the more reason to spend as much time as possible by her side.
***
“She’s sleeping, William. Maybe you should come back tomorrow in the daytime.”
Thursday evening after work, and a woman I greatly admire was trying to shoo me away from my wife’s room. Of course, this lady, Nurse Larisa Jones, has no idea to this day that the young man standing before her is not actually Beatrice Barrow’s grandson. I can only imagine the shock this portly middle-aged caregiver would experience if she were to learn I was her favorite patient’s husband instead.
I had no intentions of ever telling her.
“I promise to be quiet,” I said softly, and for good measure flashed the devilish smile I’m known for. “I’ll only be here for a little while. Dad and I are headed overseas early tomorrow morning.”
“Oh? Where would you two be off to now?”
My charm was working. Larisa’s golden brown eyes seemed to glow within her youthful ebony complexion as she chuckled and shook her head.
“You ain’t going to China or Japan this time, are you?”
“No, not this time.” I no longer worried that my wife’s nurse would stop me from entering her private room in the Good Shepherd nursing home. I pushed gently on the door’s latch and quietly opened the door. “We’re heading to Europe.”
A little white lie, though technically we would be stopping over in Frankfurt before continuing to Tehran. But, the sooner I could weasel myself into a chair next to my wife’s bed, the better my chances of getting to stay for an hour or so.
“You two go out that way a lot, don’t you? Can I come along the next time you jet-set to the French Riviera??”
These seemed more like polite questions. I already had one foot through the door, and she had turned to continue her rounds through the building’s second floor.
“Sure, if you can squeeze it into your schedule.” I kept my voice low, to not disturb my wife. Still, I managed a seductive wink—all in good fun, of course.
“Um-umm, well we’ll see about that!” I heard her laugh to herself as she moved down the hallway, along with an echoed ‘I’m gonna hold you to it!’.
My playful distraction successful, I felt confident I would have at least an uninterrupted hour with Beatrice. I moved over to the right side of my wife’s bed and gently scooted my chair to where I sat less than a few feet from where she lay. At the moment, she slept soundly. Part of me was saddened that our visit would likely go unnoticed by her. But the smoothness in her breathing gave me hope that her rest would be a healing period for her tired body and would prolong her time on earth. I wanted to be there when she passed, and prayed silently that it wouldn’t happen while Alistair and I were out of the country.
And why would I care so much when I had exited her life once before? Good question. Really it is.
I left her after nearly ten years of marriage. Those ten years were the best years of my entire existence. We were in love...and a love deeper than any I have known before or since. Our love transcended anything I ever had experienced—something beyond sex and longing. A level of knowing and understanding that I’ve often wondered if it is the thing so loosely thrown around these days: Soul mates.
But if soul mates, then what in the hell was I thinking when I left? After all, even today I love her just as much as I ever have.
I turned chicken shit. But chicken shit with
a compelling reason. As much as I loved her—and knew I would always love her—I also realized I’d be in a world of terrible despair for eventually having to leave Beatrice, when she aged and I did not. Things have ended badly every time I’ve hung on too long, and it’s not usually me who has the initial urge to leave. Most of the time it’s been the person I love who has insisted on getting away from me, as if I’m some unnatural demon in the flesh—an unacceptable anomaly and cruel joke by nature.
The pain of such separation has damned near been unbearable. Imagine my fear of what this could mean if Beatrice rejected me, my only true love? The very fires of hell would be a comfort in comparison to what that would mean for me.
I staged a fiery car crash near Birmingham, England back in September 1957, using a purchased cadaver. This was long before forensic medicine would have uncovered my ruse. I watched from afar as the woman and son I loved more than anything grieved terribly. And I grieved too.... I just thought foolishly another man would enter their lives as a husband and father, and they would eventually forget about me.
It never happened...at least not in time to make a difference in their lives. Even when I tried to prod potential suitors into Beatrice’s path, or befriend my son, it didn’t work. Believe it or not, it’s worked many times before in centuries past. Just not this time.
Damn soul mates!
Anyway, I would’ve banished myself to a permanent absence if Alistair had stayed on the right path. But after he and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1968, he started down a path to personal ruin, where booze, drugs, and unscrupulous friends and fast women threatened to destroy a promising career in academics. By 1983, my beloved son was on the verge of being thrown out onto the streets. Despite the risks to both him and me emotionally, I reintroduced myself at that point into his life. At first he saw me only as a benevolent stranger. But I eventually presented enough clues to where he was forced to consider the impossible. The friend who appeared to be a few years younger than him was in reality his father—a man supposedly dead for nearly thirty years.
He wanted so badly to tell his mother about me, but after an ongoing argument that lasted the better part of one full summer, he finally saw how damaging this knowledge could be to her. By then she had remarried, and although Alistair convinced me that she didn’t love the man, it seemed incredibly cruel—and rude—for me to pop back into her world and say, “Hey, sweetie, I’m home!”
So, my son and I have spent the past twenty-eight years rebuilding our bond with each other, and skirting around her. Often times, I’ve felt as if she knew I was near—especially back in the days when I would watch her as she worked in her favorite garden. I’d catch her looking around herself and smiling—even though no one else was around. After her second husband passed in 1992, I have made an even greater effort to be near.
You’re probably wondering if I’ve ever accosted her before the onset of Alzheimer’s. Surely you can picture the perpetually young man walking up to the elderly lady in public. I did that just once, at a grocery store in Clemson, South Carolina, where Alistair was finishing his doctoral work. She glanced at me, and our eyes met for a moment. But when I smiled, a look of recognition suddenly came over her, and I realized immediately this was all I ever wanted. At the same time, the shocked and sad expression upon her face let me know I could never do this again. I’ve always hoped that she chalked it up to old age and shrugged off the incident. Since Alistair has never mentioned it, I believe she’s never told him.
But, back to the present…Beatrice shifted in her bed, ever so slightly once I sat down. I’d like to believe she still senses when I’m near, as I’ve gotten this response before when I’ve sat down close to her while she sleeps. When conscious, even though her mind is fragmented, she smiles when she looks at me. If not for the usual ‘Alistair, who is this young man?’, I’d find it easy to believe she still recognizes me on some level….
“My love, Alistair and I will be gone for a couple of weeks,” I said softly, confident that she would hear me in her sleep, and watchful should she awake and think some pervert had snuck into her room. “Don’t go. Stay here and rest...we will be back before you know it.”
A subtle groan escaped her throat, one that for a moment belied her age. Was it the sound of her heart’s longing?
That’s how I chose to interpret it.
After watching her sleep for a while longer, I read her favorite passage from Pride and Prejudice. Beatrice wore a slight smile on her lips while I read to her, and when I got up to leave I reached over and took her hand in mine. I squeezed it gently.
“Hang on for me, please...wait to leave until I return.”
She looked so frail, though she had aged gracefully until the last few years. I searched her pale and withered face for a response, but other than a light flutter under her eyelids there wasn’t one. But her peaceful countenance was enough for me. After all, her fingers gently squeezed mine.
Chapter 6
I should’ve known.
When Michael Lavoie never contacted me before our scheduled departure from Dulles International Airport, I should’ve expected him to pull some shenanigans.
Yes, I admit part of this was my fault. I could’ve done a much better job of zipping my mouth and avoiding the urge to strut my cavalier side during Wednesday evening’s sedan conversation. But, he could’ve shown us—both Alistair and myself—some common manners and not diverted our travel plans. Granted, getting an upgrade from standard first class on Delta to luxury pods on a chartered Emirates flight must be taken into consideration before I go off on Mike the next time we see each other. Not to mention we’d reach our destination several hours earlier by flying to Dubai instead of Frankfurt. Then on to Tehran after the jet refueled.
“I was hoping to visit Romerberg Square again, but I guess we’ll now have to wait on that,” my son lamented once we got the news our flight reservations had been changed. We had just stepped into the line of travelers who bypassed standard check-in, when two of Mike’s operatives accosted us and led the way to where the private jet awaited us. “Can you picture me shopping inside some glassed cathedral mall?”
“Why, yes, Ali I can,” I teased him, knowing his disdain for modern excess, which the famed modern malls, restaurants, and monuments in Dubai pay the highest homage to. “Maybe we can upgrade to some designer suitcases while we’re there.”
“Humph!...Perhaps you’d enjoy that, since it’s looking less and less like an archeological venture and more like a cheesy espionage farce we’ve been recruited for!” His disgust drew brief over-the-shoulder glances from our two escorts dressed in dark business suits. The fact that Alistair and I were attired in khaki shorts and sandals made it obvious these two men hiding their identities behind tinted Raybans weren’t exactly buddies of ours. My son continued undeterred. “I have a mind to talk to Michael about this cluster-fuck myself when we return to Washington!”
That brought a chuckle, though I kept it soft. No sense in pissing off anyone else associated with the CIA until we were far removed from any immediate consequences. The walk to where the private boarding gate sat wasn’t far. I was surprised I’d never noticed it before.
“Have you—”
“Yes, Pops, I’ve seen this gate before,” Alistair interrupted me. This time he chuckled, despite his irritation that hadn’t subsided. “In fact, I’ve noticed it several times the past few years. You might discover what wonders exist outside of your narrow focus, if you’ll only pay a little more attention to the world around you!”
My son picked up his pace before I could respond with something clever. He nearly ran over our CIA attendants as they led us to the ticket counter.
“Why the frigging hurry, Ali?” I still wore an impish expression, despite his grumpiness and stern little digs.
A beautiful young woman of Middle Eastern descent smiled warmly and greeted us from behind the counter. I barely caught her name—Kali—before she immediately left her post
to lead us all down the covered walkway to the airplane. No ticket check-in that day...just skip ahead and pass ‘GO’ and collect two hundred dollars without having to roll the dice. Swweeeeett!
Well, considering that our present CIA escorts were still with us, maybe not so much.
“‘Why the frigging hurry’, you ask?” Alistair scolded me over his shoulder. “Except for you, everyone else seems as anxious to get this misadventure over and done with as much as I am!”
His irritated Scottish brogue at its best, it drew snickers from the two agents, proving they at least carried human pulses after all. Meanwhile, the cute stewardess named Kali urged us to keep up with her on our short trek to the plane.
Was I the only one in vacation mode, I wondered? Granted, we had an appointment with some crazy Russian billionaire willing to waste his cash on a quest for the Garden of Eden. Not a tremendous amount of fun to be had, but still....
As soon as we actually boarded the jet two more dark haired beauties greeted us, named Pirma and Serena. All three females could pass as sisters. Not sure if they were from Dubai, or perhaps somewhere deeper in the Gulf region. The shape of their big deep brown eyes looked Jordanian. If nothing else, their charms effectively cooled my boy’s ire. Meanwhile, one of the ‘suits’ made a call on his radio, and then I heard him add, “We’re ready for her...send her to the plane.”
“So, who’s joining our Iranian party?” I glanced to my left where the cockpit sat. To my right were two rows of luxury passenger pods. This clearly wasn’t an American airplane. “I doubt the Ayatollah would approve of this. Don’t you guys?”
Although my question was directed toward the two men representing the U.S. government, who suddenly stiffened, the girls giggled shyly. The one named Pirma shot me a flirtatious wink...might be a little fun to be had on the way to the Arab coast.
“If this person we’re waiting on is a striking female, she might not appreciate being compared to some old bearded guy with an Aladdin turban.” Alistair chuckled as he stepped over to the closest pod to set his flight bag down in the plush leather seat. His ill mood had lifted. “I’d like to see how your considerable charms work with this information as prior knowledge. I’ll lay down a Jackson that says you’ll never see first base.” He glanced playfully at me after relieving his shoulder of the bag’s weight.
