A Voice In The Night

by Brian Matthews

  “Okay. What if we just made every decision as it came up? If one of us got sick we could decide we didn’t want to be and that would be the end of it. We can decide not to know everything in the Universe, but just when we need to know something. We don’t have to know the future, either.” With those words Luke felt the old sadness drop over him, the sadness that was about nothing and about everything. About the past and the future. And he willed it away, and it went. But he knew it was about something dimly felt in the midst of their conversation, like a ship bearing down on them in a fog, unknown in size and direction, but sensed much more strongly because it couldn’t be seen. More menacing in its vagueness. And he chose not to know about it. He stood to signal a halt. “This is giving me a headache, hon. We don’t have to solve this today, right?”

  “Not really. A problem we do have to solve is my car, though. It was really running awful last week. It shakes and wants to stall all the time. Can you look at it?”

  “Look at it, yes. Know what’s wrong? Yeah. Fix it? No. I’ll bring it over to the dealers. British cars are impossible for a backyard mechanic like me without all the tools and gizmos. Way too complicated. I’ll make an appointment and you drive the Healey that day. But promise me you’ll take it easy, huh. It’s a lot faster than you’re used to.”

  “Hey, watch it. I’m a good driver.”

  “No, you’re the worst kind ’cause you think you’re good.” Two weeks later they lay one night under a sheet and light blanket and touched, for what seemed an endless amount of time. They didn’t speak, except through their hands, the way people who have reached complete trust and comfort can. The idea that it could always be this way for them, through endless time, made him supremely happy. This was the mother of his children. She had stood by him through tumult and uncertainty, knowing when to listen, when to tell him what he should hear. This was his wife. What passed wordlessly between them now was more than sex, in some ways deeper than even love. They had found what many miss in the rush of their loving. They had become the dearest of friends. That night and that feeling, recalled later, would bring him both great joy and crushing suffering.

  The following evening he headed to the radio station, knowing that he should be there. The calls mirrored the dilemma he and Eileen were struggling with. The question of an earthly life or what people had started calling, “the higher plane.” He knew after a couple of hours on the air that there was a reason for him to continue his show. Listeners needed a place to talk about choices nobody had ever faced before. “Luke, if we choose endless life, will it hold the same value? Will the absence of death make life less precious?”

  “What about material possessions? We’ve always measured ourselves by what we own.”

  “Knowledge is the thing. It’s the mysteries that keep us going.”

  Underlying all of this, Luke sensed, was the basic problem that people had been conditioned for millions of years to view themselves as temporary, limited, fragile and vulnerable. Those who resisted the new reality couldn’t accept a radically different framework for existence. Acceptance was the thing, abandoning oneself to the higher plane and trusting that they could be happy in a perfect world. “People, are we really saying that we can’t be content with perfection? Doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous on the face of it? Look, we’ve never had to even contemplate this kind of thing before, so just believe in the higher power, and take the leap and trust. It’s just that age-old thing they call faith.”

  Eileen sat in the rocker, listening and disagreeing. A perfect world now was whatever we choose, even if it’s just like before. It’s perfect because it’s our choice. That’s why he gave free will to us. That’s the only thing that’s different.

  Chapter 20

  Jake and Sandy were as untroubled as Luke and Eileen were tormented. They moved into a bungalow on La Jolla cove and swam every day with the seals and sea otters, diving down into the kelp beds, hoping the animals would swoop and swerve at them again, knowing the creatures meant them no harm. They felt the animals’ thoughts and communications through some sort of telepathy. Simple knowing. Back on the beach, Sandy whispered her amusement. “They’re so much more complicated than anybody imagined. Isn’t that cool?”

  “But their whole reality is completely different than ours. Not lower or higher, just different. Do you get a little piece of it when we’re with them? Do you become one of them for an instant?”

  “Umm. Like a little flash.”

  “And don’t you get a vibe from them that they really think we’re pretty strange?”

  “More like they just accepted that we were different and amused that we thought we were superior to them. Almost a little smug about it?”

  Today was Margaret’s first real test drive. She drifted back toward the outdoor café in carefully picked clothes, ones she knew would get the attention she wanted, without going overboard. Her walk alone would have been enough.

  She had always moved with a seductive sway, a subtle movement of her hips that really was caused by the way she was put together. She had never learned it, nor practiced it. It was just the way she walked. The effect was entirely feminine. And it drove men crazy. Heads would turn when she walked into the room. Every head would swivel to watch her leave. On board her Pan Am flights, she would be summoned for countless beverages just so the passengers could watch her walk away, back to the front of the plane.

  He watched from behind his newspaper as she slid into a chair a few feet away. Since their first flirtatious near-encounter a few weeks ago, he had seen her around the village a number of times. He had come, looking for her.

  Ted Fletcher was too good-looking. Women tended to give him a hard time because of this and it made it hard to get beyond game-playing. At 31, he was beginning to become desperate about finding a mate, a mother for the family he now wanted more than anything. He had been close a couple of times.

  Right after college, there had been Sharon, whom he loved completely and unquestioningly. By any reckoning she was not a pretty young woman, but everyone who knew her thought of her as physically beautiful. It was an illusion created by her boundless zest and energy.

  They were planning marriage when her father dropped the bomb. If she married Ted, he would disown and disinherit her. He had nothing against the young man, but rather, Ted’s father, who had, years ago, blown the whistle on his stock market manipulations, nearly ruining him. Sharon rejected his threats at first, but eventually caved in. “I can’t choose you over my father. He raised me since my mother died. I can’t lose him now.” It took Ted two years to get over her. But he noticed one day that the anguish that had filled him was gone. For a long time he had been certain that it would never relent, that he would drag himself through the rest of his life a sad remnant of his former, vital self. But day-by-day it had ebbed unnoticeably until it reached the vanishing point.

  Claire had been an easier ending because it was nobody’s fault. They had meet in London where she was a struggling actress with some promise, still learning the craft. They had mutual acquaintances that repeatedly tried to fix them up. He held them off for several months, thinking she wouldn’t really be interested in someone as unartistic as he. But when they finally met at a party, he was captured by her absolute attention to him. She locked in on Ted like radar, oblivious of everyone around them. There had never been anyone who listened so intently, drew him out, engaged him so totally. Within weeks he was revealing everything of himself to her with abandon.

  She came to the states later that year, moving in with him and planning a life. Two years later her mother became desperately ill and Claire returned to London to care for her. They tried to maintain a long-distance relationship, but her mother would need years of care. After 18 months Ted and Claire gave up and let each other go.

  Now he eased out of his chair and walked to Margaret’s table. He stood before her as she squinted at the menu. “Could I have a couple more minutes? Don’t really know what I want.” Then sh
e looked up and saw that he wasn’t the waiter. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Yeah, it’s me alright. I have those name tapes in my clothes, and I could check to be absolutely certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s me.”

  “Well good. Maybe we should just start again. I’m Margaret Mann, Maggie. Mag.” She reached out her hand and he took it. “Ted Fletcher. I’ve been seeing you around for a couple of weeks and I just got up my courage to come over here and say hello. Can I sit? For a minute?”

  “Please.” She gestured to the chair. “All the minutes you want.” He had auburn hair and nearly turquoise eyes, or at least they seemed so in this light. Tan and freckled, he spent a lot of time in the sun. His smile was confident. It was nice. A nice smile from a nice person. A good person. She got a sense of his goodness as he sat there in their first silent, smiling moment. This is the perfect part, she thought. The moment of attraction and knowing. She remembered this from years of first meetings. Next would be the awkward part when they wouldn’t be themselves for several weeks, when they would put on their date personalities, working at it too hard. Then, they would make love and intimacy would begin to emerge. But she would enjoy this first part anyway. White shirt, stripped tie, blue suit perfectly tailored over a perfect body.

  “I’m not very good at this,” he said. But he knew he was very good at this. He slipped out of his suit jacket and laid it over a chair and acted like she had him completely unhinged. “God it’s hot. Is it hot?” He looked around to the other tables as though he could find the answer among the diners. “Here’s an idea. How about we make a deal to be absolutely truthful with one another from now on. And I don’t just mean telling the truth. I mean being completely forthcoming with each other. Does that make any sense? I mean, I know what I mean by it, but do you?”

  She smiled. “You’re about to explode. Do you know that? Boom. All over the place. Yes, I think I know what you mean. We can start by telling each other about ourselves. I’m 56 years old. How’s that for the truth?” Ted thought she looked maybe 25. “The higher plane thing?”

  “Right. And you probably should drop your act. You’re a nice man, Ted and you really don’t need it.” He stared down at his hand in his lap for a moment, glancing up at her like a boy who’d been caught smoking a cigarette. He exhaled his relief. “Yeah, okay. That stuff is exhausting anyway.” They ordered lunch and told their lives to one another. Ted had moved here a few months ago to setup a Western U.S. and Asia headquarters for his family’s company, the largest mutual fund group worldwide. In fact, his grandfather had pioneered the idea of mutual funds back in the ’30s, but their headquarters in Boston couldn’t adequately service its far flung customers any longer.

  “I volunteered to take a bullet for the team and move out here to California,” he said with a wry smile. “I just love calling my Dad and brothers in February when they’re knee deep in ice and snow. But I miss them something awful. We’re a really close family.”

  His eyes drifted away for a second, and Margaret could see the loneliness in that tiny shift. “I miss them. My mother and father are extraordinary people,” he said, his eyes on the table now, his shoulders hunched up, hands clasped in his lap, all earnestness. “Everything was centered on us kid – seven of us. I grew up in the happiest home imaginable, and you know why? Because we all knew our parents loved each other so much that we knew we were safe, that our home would always be there. It’s still home to me even now.” Margaret could see into his eyes more clearly now, the distance he felt, cut off from them.

  “You have six brothers and sisters? Six?

  “Two brothers and four sisters. All married now with kids of their own. I guess that’s the big missing piece of me. I mean, I have a great life, but not like them. I try not to dwell on it too much.”

  “No, I know exactly how you feel,” she said, uncomfortably facing the outcome of the choices she’d made years ago.” I have friends next door who have young children and sometimes I feel like they’re my own. But they’re not. I get a little taste of what it’s like, but I know it’s just that – a taste.”

  “But now you can do it all over and get it right this time,” he said. She’d forgotten her newly realized youth while they were talking.

  “Yes. Yes I can. I hadn’t even thought of that until you said it. I’m still stuck in the old reality, the 56-year-old reality. She told him then about her stewardess career, how the constant traveling made it impossible to sustain a relationship. Men wanted someone who was there, not gone for two weeks every month. “I loved the job, but I stayed too long and didn’t see where it would leave me in the end.”As they sat there, it occurred to them both how easily they could talk to each other, the instant rapport and trust each felt, even on the very personal things they spoke of. Silence then. Finally he reached across the table and put his hand on hers. “Well now you get a second chance. Maybe we both do.”

  The mutual fund business was his passion.

  “People think I’m nuts but our company is something that’s like a special calling. I can remember my grandfather and then my father preaching, pounding it into us that our purpose was to help people get to a point of financial security, not to make a pile of money for ourselves. They would say, we were in this for the little old ladies. Never forget that for a moment. They would fire any broker who was getting clients to change funds just to get the commission. And they held everyone to incredible standards. That’s what made the company grow so big. That and our being the first kids on the mutual fund block.”

  She felt his earnestness like a tremor that ran across the table between them.

  Chapter 21

  Eileen grabbed her handwritten errand list as she headed for the car. Sliding into the seat she hoped the MG would behave. It started right up, startling her a little because it usually groaned over and over a few times before kicking to life. Maybe Luke wouldn’t have to bring it in for a checkup after all. It looked like it was going to be the perfect day to put the top down and take the long way to each of her stops, to cruise the Pacific Coast Highway, watching the blue-green waves curl and break along the beach out of the corner of her eye. There was still some of the early fog that hugged the coast in the morning, but it would start to burn off soon. It made the ocean and surf look like impressionistic art, softening and blurring the scene. And it made the car run roughly again. She’d have to tell Luke about that. It could mean something.

  At the bottom of the hill she decided to turn into the parking lot that served a small sliver of beach just North of Torrey Pines to enjoy the scene for a moment. Closer to the water now, the fog was much denser. She couldn’t even make out her front fenders or the stones marking the entrance, squinting to find her way. Then she stalled, and instinctively reached for the ignition switch. In that instant there were noises and forces that she could never have imagined. A movement, rolling, crushing, sliding, grinding, screeching that made her insignificant. It was an entity unto itself, huge and voracious. An attack against which she couldn’t defend, except to beg for something higher to save her. Then a fleeting awareness of nothingness, then being transported somewhere both known and different. Out of focus, but with familiar forms and sounds.

  She was no longer, and yet she was.

  The truck driver was dazed and trembling but only superficially hurt from holding tight to the big steering wheel and standing on the brakes. He knew the small car was beneath him, obliterated. He crawled down from the cab and slid underneath, then quickly back, feeling like he was going to pass out from what he’d seen, a beautiful young woman, oddly unscathed, but clearly gone. Then his experience kicked in and he began lighting all of his warning flares and calling on the CB radio asking someone to patch him over to the police.

  He knew it wasn’t his fault. He knew this road, every bump, dip, sand patch and manhole cover. He’d traveled it several times every day for two years on a construction project. He was obsessively careful with his truck because he knew it could be lethal.
He had to make payments on it every month and it was his livelihood. He concentrated. He drove. That was his total focus. He never listened to the AM radio. He watched. He anticipated. Today he was inching along in low gear through the fog that usually blanketed the shoreline in the morning, today especially impenetrable. He was trying to think of a safe place where he could pull over until the relentless fog lifted. He needed to get off the road, especially with 80 thousand pounds of stone on board. Now, the thought of the young woman he’d seen overwhelmed him. The police and ambulance driver found him sitting on the running board of his truck, sobbing.

  Luke was watching the kids and making notes on his next show. The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway surprised him. He hadn’t expected Eileen back so soon. He sat waiting for her to

  come through the door, then the doorbell sounded and he caught a glimpse of uniforms on the two figures at the door. They came in quietly, almost sheepishly and asked him to sit. As they told him what had happened, he felt the blankness sweep over him, the kind he had heard about experienced by those confronted with such a loss. His mind went to mundane things. Who would take care of the kids? What about work? Maybe Maggie would come over and watch them. Who did he have to call?

  The police must have stopped at Maggie’s house next door because suddenly she was standing before Luke who was sitting bolt upright in his chair, trying to believe what he had heard moments ago. He looked up and saw her ashen face, her trembling hands, and it let loose all the terrible thoughts his mind had blanked out. Luke rose and then fell against her for support, just shaking his head, silent, looking at her for some kind of answer for all of it.

  After a moment she held him at arm’s length, locking her eyes on his. “You know I’m on the higher plane thing, right?” Then you must believe me. This isn’t the end. She was in the accident. But something essential of her still exists. I can’t explain it any better than that. I just don’t have the words, but I know it – I’m certain. Maggie agreed to watch the children so Luke could go to the coroner’s office to identify Eileen.