The Color of a Silver Lining

by Julianne MacLean

  “Okay,” Carter said, sounding hesitant and disappointed, which wasn’t unreasonable, considering he was paying five hundred bucks for this. Obviously, Maria’s no refund policy was set up for the days when spirits had better things to do.

  “Great. Let’s get to it, then.” She stood up to lead us to a small round table in the corner of the room with three chairs surrounding it. She picked up the glass spray bottle that looked like a centerpiece from the Ming Dynasty, and squirted her hands, then she handed it to me. I used it and passed it to Carter.

  When we were all germ-free, she spread her hands wide to take hold of ours and said, “Ready?”

  I stared at her open palm for a few seconds and felt my heart begin to pound faster. “I’m not sure.”

  Carter frowned at me, probably because we were paying by the minute.

  Maria sat back and folded her hands on her lap. “It’s not a problem, Emma. Take your time. If you decide you don’t want to do this, you can always wait outside.”

  Carter urged me with his eyes to be brave, so I took a breath, sat forward and held out my hand. “No, it’s okay. I’m ready.”

  We all joined hands and Maria closed her eyes. I’m not sure what I was expecting—maybe for her body to jolt and shake, or for her eyes to roll back in her head. Or the lights would flicker. But it wasn’t like that. She simply sat for a moment or two with her eyes closed, then nodded and spoke to us in a normal voice.

  “You had a son who died a few years ago. He says hi, and he wants you to know he loves you both.”

  My heart exploded with a dizzying mix of panic and excitement—Sammy! My boy—but I immediately fought to remind myself that Maria wasn’t telling us anything out of the ordinary. Maybe she’d looked us up on the Internet and already knew what we’d been through. The information was easily attainable. It was in all the local papers.

  “He wants you to know he’s fine and he’s happy, and that heaven is wonderful, and you don’t have to worry.”

  Was this really happening?

  I was at war with myself. Part of me wanted to weep tears of joy upon hearing those words, but the other half was fighting to come up with reasons why I shouldn’t believe in any of this. They were words Maria could say to every client who walked in the door. It didn’t prove anything.

  She continued to speak in a calm, natural voice. “He says he knows you don’t believe what I’m saying—and he’s talking to you, Emma—but that you need to believe it so that you can be happy again. He doesn’t want you to be sad.”

  I felt my brow furrow with disbelief, but still, I tried to tell myself that Maria could probably sense my skepticism. I wasn’t that difficult to read.

  She was quiet for a moment, then inclined her head as if she were trying to hear someone whispering from a great distance away.

  “Now he’s talking to you, Carter. I’m sorry, he’s speaking very quickly. This is difficult…” She continued to listen. “He’s saying something about a…. A time out? He wants to give you a time out. He says you need to sit in the blue naughty chair.”

  My gaze shot to meet Carter’s. His eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed with color.

  Maria chuckled. “He says you’re too big for the chair and you’d look silly, but that’s okay. You need to sit and think about how mean you were to Mommy.”

  By now my stomach was doing flips and I was breathing very quickly. Carter and I stared at each other from across the table.

  Maria continued. “He wants you both to be happy. Just be happy. He keeps saying that. He says life is beautiful. Be happy. Live a happy life. It’s not your fault, Mommy. It was my mistake. I slipped. Daddy, you need to be happy. Have more babies.”

  Maria’s eyebrows pulled together and she sat forward, straining to listen. “Oh… I think he wants to go now. That’s all he wants to say. But he doesn’t want you to come back here. He says he won’t talk to you if you do. He says don’t waste your money. He wants you to go and be happy and stop feeling so guilty. He says he’ll see you again later.” She cleared her throat. “He means in heaven.”

  Maria continued to listen, but then she opened her eyes and let go of our hands.

  “That’s it. He’s gone. He was very sweet. Are you guys okay?”

  We both regarded her with wide eyes.

  “You look pale, Emma. Are you feeling faint? You could lie down on the sofa if you need to. Or would you like a glass of water?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m fine. That was unbelievable.”

  “It was, wasn’t it,” she said with a modest smile. “He was a very sweet boy. How old was he when you lost him? Seven? Eight?”

  “He was four,” Carter told her.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Really? He seemed older than that. Probably an old soul.”

  I buried my face in my hands and wept. “I can’t believe he was actually here.”

  Maria rubbed my shoulder. “He was, but he made it clear that he doesn’t want to come back again. He wants you both to get on with your lives and be happy.”

  While I fought to collect myself, Carter drew Maria’s attention away, and I was grateful for the space, emotionally.

  “Do you hear that same message a lot?” Carter asked. “From people in heaven? Or wherever they are?”

  “All the time,” Maria replied. “I don’t like to consider my work predictable or tedious, but that’s one thing that keeps repeating itself, day after day. Don’t worry. Be happy.”

  “There’s a song about that,” Carter replied.

  “Yes.” Maria stood up and I sensed she was eager to usher us out and invite the next client in. But I found it difficult to rise from my chair. I still hadn’t recovered from what just happened. I was having trouble processing it.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you both,” Maria said. “I hope this was helpful.”

  It boggled my mind that she could have such a profound effect on our lives, but take it so lightly, and simply say “good-day” to us, and move on.

  To Carter and me, it was a life-changing moment, a revelation of the highest order, and we would never be the same again. To her, this was just another fifteen minutes in her workday. She wasn’t amazed by this.

  Carter and I stood.

  “Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.

  Maria smiled at him. “If you don’t mind, I won’t shake your hand. I’ll just say it was a pleasure.”

  A few minutes later, we stood outside on the flagstone staircase between the house and the tall cedar hedge. All we could do was stare at each other with blank looks on our faces.

  “Did that really just happen?” Carter asked.

  “I don’t know. I feel numb. It happened so fast.”

  We continued to stand there in a daze. Then we thrust ourselves into each other’s arms and began to cry. We sobbed and wept uncontrollably, clinging to each other as if the world were about to end. I was afraid that if I let go of him, I’d dissolve into mist and sink into the ground.

  Eventually we calmed ourselves and drew back, but continued to hold onto each other by the forearms.

  “She mentioned the blue naughty chair,” Carter said. “There’s no way she could have known about that. It wasn’t in the papers. And we never even had to use it, for pity’s sake. It was just there in his room as a reminder to be a good boy, which he always was.…” Carter’s voice broke. He couldn’t finish.

  Holding hands, we started slowly up the steps. “Do you think it was real?” I asked. “Do you think Sammy actually spoke to us just now?”

  “I don’t know,” Carter replied. “If it weren’t for the comment about the naughty chair, I’d say no. But how could she know that?”

  “Maybe she truly is psychic and can read people’s minds, and she picked it up from you or me, but not from Sammy or from some other dimension. Were you thinking about it?”

  “Not at all.”

  We reached the car, got in and buckled our seatbelts. Carter started the engine
and pulled away from the curb.

  “I’m still trying to be skeptical,” I told him. “I can’t quite believe it.”

  “Me neither. And as far as reading minds, I was thinking about how mean I was to you. She could have read that off me like I was shouting into a megaphone, because as soon as I thought Sammy might be in the room, I felt ashamed. I hated that he knew we were separated, or that we’d fought with each other. I guess, back when we were still married, I didn’t think he was watching.” Carter turned to me and touched my hand. “Honestly, Emma. I’m so sorry. I really am.”

  All I could do was nod my head and sit in silence, swallowing heavily over the painful jagged lump in my throat.

  We didn’t talk for a while, but we continued to hold hands. We drove all the way to the ferry terminal, waited in silence until it was time to drive on, then got out of the car and went up to the lounge area to sit in the comfortable chairs in front of the windows.

  As the ferry pulled away from the terminal, the sun was setting and the sky was a spectacular panorama of pink and grey clouds with bright silver linings. The mix of color and light was mesmerizing—like a snapshot of heaven—and neither of us needed to say a word about it. We just looked at each other and understood that this sky embodied the true definition of the euphoria we both felt.

  A short time later, Carter slouched low in his seat. “Just be happy. Maria said he was determined to be clear about that.”

  I inhaled deeply and looked up to watch the stars begin to come out.

  Carter turned to me. “Are you happy, Emma? I mean…as happy as you can be, without Sammy?”

  I focused on the brightest star I could see. “Yes. I’m happy. I’m in a good place. Are you?”

  He paused. “I don’t know. I want to be. For Sammy.”

  “And for yourself.” I turned to him, but he continued to gaze out the window, not at me.

  “I’ll need to work on that,” he replied.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, and didn’t talk about certain other things Maria had said, pertaining to our futures. We chose to leave that alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Bev

  Halifax, Nova Scotia

  It had been two full days, and the reporters were still outside my house.

  Louise and I took cover indoors. I’d planned to keep her home from school anyway for a full week after the accident, and I’d asked for sick days at the hospital. Thankfully we had a private fully-fenced backyard with tall trees, so we were able to go outside with Leo and get some fresh air in a safe place with no cameras pointed at us.

  One good thing came from our self-imposed lockdown: We had plenty of time to get creative with crayons. Over the course of two days, Louise drew dozens of pictures of her visit to heaven, and I tacked each one to the wall outside her bedroom.

  To a stranger, they might have looked like any other drawings by a five-year old because they were images of colorful rainbows and yellow suns, trees and tall buildings—just like what she’d described to me in the park. But to me, I saw something more.

  Each time she finished a new picture, she handed the page to me and said, “This isn’t as good as the real thing. I don’t think I can draw it.”

  “Would it help if you had something better than crayons?” I asked, encouraging her to continue. “What about paint?”

  “That would be good.”

  “Let’s go to the art store tomorrow,” I suggested.

  In the meantime, she drew hearts everywhere to surround herself and her grandfather, who held her hand wherever they were—in the sky above the clouds or in an orchard with sunlight filtering through pink apple blossoms or rabbits in the tall grass. I could almost hear the sound of insects buzzing, grass swishing against my legs…

  And she always drew a mustache on her grandfather.

  By the end of the second day, the entire hallway was papered with Louise’s colorful crayon illustrations, but now she was painting with oils on canvas—using an easel I’d purchased at the art store.

  I spent a lot of time in the hallway, studying her creations, which she produced at an alarming rate. She drew birds and trees and meadows with colorful wildflowers and sparkling drops of dew. Oceans with turquoise water, dolphins and seagulls. Mountains with white, snow-capped peaks. Sunsets with spectacular clouds and silver linings.

  On the third day, when I woke at six am to the sound of rain pelting against my window, I donned my bathrobe, went to the living room and peered through the slats in the blinds. To my relief, the street in front of my house was deserted. The reporters and news vans had departed.

  Knowing my sister was an early riser on school days, I called her. She told me to turn on the television because it appeared we were no longer the top news story on every station. We’d been bumped aside by an earthquake in California the night before. I wasn’t happy about the devastation, of course, but I was thankful to have our privacy back.

  * * *

  As soon as I heard Louise stirring in her bedroom, I went to see if she might like to go shopping. A rainy day at the mall seemed like the perfect getaway after being holed up for two days. Maybe we’d even go to the indoor playground after lunch.

  I knocked on her door, entered and found her sitting at her art table, drawing another picture, but this time with crayons. Moving closer, I knelt on my knees beside her. “Good morning. What are you drawing?”

  She was so intent on the task of drawing clouds with rays shooting out from behind, that she ignored my question. Deciding to leave her alone until she finished, I kissed the top of her head and went to make us some eggs and toast.

  When I served everything up, I called out to her. “Breakfast is ready! Do you want apple juice or orange juice?”

  She didn’t respond, so I called again. “Louise? Apple juice or orange juice?”

  Leo lifted his chin off the floor and tilted his head at me. Then he rose to his feet and trotted to Louise’s room.

  I don’t know why, but I panicked. For a blazing instant, I feared my daughter had been sucked back to heaven in that vacuum cleaner she’d mentioned. I slammed the fridge door shut and ran to her room where I found her on her knees on the rug, smiling and rubbing Leo’s belly.

  Exhaling heavily, I laid both hands over my heart. “Louise. Why didn’t you answer me?”

  She looked up and smiled. “I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”

  “You weren’t!” I replied playfully because I didn’t want her to know how irrational I’d been just now. I dropped to my knees to join her in the belly rub. We scratched Leo’s underside together.

  “Breakfast is on the table,” I said.

  “Okay.” She rose to her feet and turned to her art table where her crayons were spread all over the picture she’d just finished. She slid it from underneath, and a bunch of crayons rolled off the table, onto the floor. I crawled on all fours to pick them up, and placed them back in the Tupperware box.

  She handed me the picture. “Can we hang this one up, too?”

  I took it from her, sat back on my heels, and stared at it.

  It was different from the others. This time, there were four people, all holding hands. Louise was in the middle, my father with his gigantic mustache was on the left, and two others stood to her right. Above them, a cloud with a silver lining beamed rays across the sky.

  “Who are these two?” I asked, pointing at them.

  Louise stood before me at eye level, meeting my gaze directly. “Nanny and Papa.”

  I stared down at the picture. “But…”

  But what? Did I mean to tell her that she didn’t have two other grandparents? All children in the world have four—two from the mother’s side and two from the father’s. That’s how biology worked.

  But Louise had never met her paternal grandparents. I didn’t even know who they were or what their names were, whether they were dead or alive. That’s how little I knew about her father, who had been a beautiful, reckless mistake I’
d made one wild weekend five years earlier.

  Although, I never considered it a mistake, because that’s how Louise came into my life. Unexpected. Unplanned. If I hadn’t gone out that night, drank too much wine and acted irresponsibly—which wasn’t like me at all—I wouldn’t be her mother today.

  “What are their names?” I asked.

  “Just Papa and Nanny.” She spoke without the slightest hesitation.

  “I’ve never met them before,” I mentioned, trying to keep a cool head and not freak out. “What do they look like?”

  She climbed onto the bed. “Papa is tall and skinny with white hair and glasses. He doesn’t have a mustache. And Nanny has hair like yours, long and curly, but it’s brown. She’s not tall. She’s very small.” Louise giggled self-consciously. “That rhymes.”

  Louise rolled over on the bed and kicked her legs in the air.

  “You’re in a silly mood,” I said good naturedly, reaching out to tickle her belly. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about Papa and Nanny?”

  “Just that they’re my daddy’s mommy and daddy.”

  I felt the color drain from my cheeks as I stared at her. Only once had I mentioned her father to her, about a year ago when she asked if she had one. I told her yes, but that he lived very far away and we didn’t know each other anymore. Thankfully, she had let the matter drop.

  I’d never planned to keep the truth a secret from her, but I didn’t see any point in bringing it up again or telling her anything about him because I’d decided long ago that I would raise her on my own. I didn’t want any help from a man I barely knew—a man I’d only spent one night with. He’d been in town for a conference and was leaving the next day, and we never intended for anything to come of it. It was a one night stand, pure and simple.

  He texted me a few times the following week, and we laughed about our crazy weekend. But that was it. Two months later I found out I was pregnant, but I had no desire to bring a stranger into my life. It felt dangerous and risky, because what if he was a psychopath? Or already in a relationship? He might have been married for all I knew. I just didn’t want any drama, nor did I want to spend the next twenty years chasing down child support payments from someone I didn’t even want in my life. So here we were.