by Jill Barnett
Because now I’m a man who’s lost.
It feels like crazy sometimes,
Knowin’ there’s nothing I can do,
I can’t go back and replay time,
And find my way home to you.
It feels like crazy . . .
Living life alone
It feels like crazy . . .
Knowing that you’re gone.
It feels like crazy,
It feels like crazy,
Sometimes, it’s just crazy.
Rio finished the last, long note and got up from the chair, but he took my hand and brought it to his lips. When he let go, he winked at me, then turned and loped back up on stage, “Goodnight, folks!” He picked up his guitar and left the stage to the audience’s enthusiastic applause, and the curtains closed and the lights came up.
The audience was on their feet, along with my kids, who were laughing and cheering, Scott and Phil elbowing each other and getting a big ha-ha of the whole serenade to their old mother.
I, on the other hand, was still trying to get my head on straight and my feet back down to earth, but after a minute I realized I was smiling.
“I can’t believe he sang to you,” Molly said, sitting down again. “Wow!” She sounded impressed, but I wasn’t as I watched Spider’s arm crawl back around her. I wondered if there was some way I could switch him out for Rio.
But Rio was not the man for my daughter, either. I just wanted to think of her with someone other than Spider. Someone safer, I told myself, and Rio Paxton was definitely not safe.
“Can you believe those eyes?” Renee said in a dreamy voice.
“And that voice,” Keely added in the same tone.
Renee sighed. “I’m melting . . . ”
“Hey,” Scott groused.
“Oh, stop it!” she said disgusted. “I give birth to your children. Let me fantasize about something, here, will you? This is the first time in months I’m not waddling around or exhausted, first time in weeks when I’m not pacing the floor and nursing the baby, or covered in baby powder and spit-up.”
“Yeah, jerkface,” Phil said, giving him a hard time. “Let your wife dream.”
“My dream is that you could sing like that,” Keely said.
“Phil?” Scott laughed. “Oh, he can sing, but all the dogs in town would start howling along with him.”
“I wonder why he picked you to sing to?” Molly speculated.
“She’s a beautiful woman,” Spider said, which almost endeared him to me, until I considered the source.
“Mom’s safe,” Scott said. “She’s an older woman. She’s not a groupie. She won’t be waiting for him at the back door.”
“Or throwing her panties on stage,” Phil added.
My mouth dropped and I looked at my sons and asked myself when they had become so insensitive, and counted to three. “Please leave my age and my underwear out of this, boys,” I said and finished off my last cocktail, popping the cherry in my mouth so I wouldn’t say anything more.
Little did they know what was really going on. Although, truthfully, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was going on.
I’d been back home only a few days when I discovered Mike was back, or my visions of Mike were back, or my grief madness was back. Something was back. I came home late from Tahoe, took a long bath, and flopped into bed. As I reached over to the turn out the light, I saw the photo was gone again. I closed my eyes in frustration, and in fear, because I actually thought I had been doing better the past few months.
Was I lapsing back into mental disorder?
It didn’t seem possible, since I’d been sleeping and healthy and feeling as if each approaching day actually held promise. In the morning I could get out of bed and do what I had to do and not want to roll over and pull the covers over my head like I had for so long. I had thought my mind was actually under control again.
Because the photo and the visions had to be in my mind—there were no such things as ghosts—who else other than the housekeepers could possibly hide the photo? And they had no reason. I’d questioned them months ago about it, back when he was first appearing. These women had worked for me for years and would never play games like that with me. They were crushed when we lost Mike.
I stared at the nightstand drawer for a long time. I almost didn’t want to open it. But I did. The photo wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the floor, under the bed, or behind the night stand. Now I was on a mission, which took a few minutes. The photo was in the dresser drawer that held those three shirts of Mike’s.
Looking down at the drawer I had a sick feeling, before I scanned the perfectly normal room while my blood raced and my heart pounded, searching for what?
There was no shadow from the tree outside.
Could it be that he was he here?
“Mike? Please . . . . ”
Nothing. There had to be some logical answer. I would ask the housekeepers again.
But two days later I walked out of the laundry room with a huge basket full of Mickey’s clean clothes and saw Mike sitting at the kitchen table.
I screamed, and the basket tumbled to the floor spilling the piles of folded clothes. When I looked up, he was gone and the chair was empty. I knew then it was impossible for the housekeepers to have had anything to do with what was happening.
I wanted to vomit. The visions were making me sick.
He had been wearing a vee-necked red sweater and plaid shirt. I remembered he’d worn them that last Christmas as he ran around taking photos with a new high tech digital camera Molly and the boys had given him. Every time you turned around Mike was there clicking the camera, and at the time I was annoyed after hours of “smile” and I secretly cursed those big gigabyte photo cards.
Those clothes he wore that day were gone and had been for a long time. I sat down hard in an empty chair and waved my hand in the empty spot where I’d seen him sitting, because these visions were just so real—heart-stoppingly real.
“Mike?” I whispered. “Mike, please . . . ” Tears made my throat tight and my eyes burn. I couldn’t pull my gaze away and just sat there staring at the empty spot, crying miserably and helplessly, short breaths making it impossible to for me to do much else.
I think I might have needed a paper bag to breathe into to, but I had never hyperventilated before. So I just sat there panting and crying and panicking, until I could finally manage to take a long, shuddering breath.
And then I knew. I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to sell the house.
Chapter Twenty Four
The next morning I was power walking up the hill toward home when a familiar long black limo pulled up and the tinted windows powered down.
“Get in. We’re going to breakfast,” Ellie said imperiously.
I stopped and bent down to look inside. All the girls were in the car, even Harrie, who was the only one who didn’t have a mimosa in her hand.
“I look like crap.”
“Everyone looks like crap at this ungodly hour,” Ellie said, tossing her perfectly-straight, precision bobbed dark hair, her makeup flawless, and she was wearing a St. John sports outfit and Prada sneakers I hoped she would later send on to Suki.
I was in hot pink running shoes, black yoga pants and a tee-shirt, with a lime green Cantrell Sports windbreaker tied around my waist, sweaty, red-faced, panting, no makeup, and my hair probably looked like a pineapple.
Ellie opened the limo door. “Come on. Get in, Eugene’s double parked. Besides, it took us twenty minutes to find you.”
I crawled inside and she poured me a cocktail. I held up my hand. “No. It’s seven A.M. I’ve just been on a walk for my health, which Harrie started.”
My doctor and close friend for decades was cupping a large Starbucks’ cup in both hands.
“What are you drinking?”
“Venti, double shot, skinny, sugar-free vanilla latte.”
“Listen to that,” Elli said. “If all the women in the city lose their ovaries, our Do
ctor Harrie, here, can have a second career as a barista.”
“Nope,” Harrie said. “Have you seen those lines in the morning? Too much work for me. I’d rather do a pelvic.”
Eugene choked and started coughing, and I laughed at the horrified look on MC’s face.
“Here.” Ellie shoved a glass of plain, pulpy orange juice into my hands. “You were more fun when you were fat.”
“Ellie! March was not fat.” MC flushed.
I gulped down half the juice. “She’s right. I wasn’t skinny.”
But the past couple of days had made me unsure about myself again, and I’d eaten a whole pint of Häagen-Dazs pistachio ice cream after I’d seen Mike in the kitchen. That ice cream was one of the reasons I was up and walking this morning.
It made perfect sense that we went to Sears for their divine pancakes and apple sausage because we always ate when we were together; but then I was eating without them, too . . . ice cream.
Later, feeling like Jabba the Hutt, I pushed away my plate while half the meal was still on it. “I’ll have to walk again, dammit. But maybe that’s better than going home,” I admitted.
I looked up at my friends and spilled my troubles. “I’ve been hallucinating. I see Mike all the time.”
“What do you mean you see him?” Ellie asked me.
“I’ll walk into a room or casually look up and he’s there, for just a second. The visions of him had stopped for a long time, but I saw him again yesterday, sitting in the kitchen.”
“Like a ghost? Topper? You’ve got to be kidding,” Ellie said. “Does he talk to you?”
“No. He’s not really there. I just think he is. It’s my head playing tricks on me.”
“The two of you lived together in that house for a long time. I’m not surprised you’d walk in a room and expect to see him.” Harrie reached out and grabbed my hand. “I think what you’re experiencing is common. Maybe time will make things better.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Do you see him other places you went, like the Tahoe house? Did you see him over the holidays?”
“No,” I said, realizing for the first time that I never saw him anywhere but at home. “I only see him in the house. No where else.”
“I saw my mother the day she died,” MC said quietly. “She was standing in the living room. I don’t think I dreamed it all up. I heard her. She said ‘Goodbye, my sweet MariClare.’ You all know that’s what she called me. And then she was gone.”
We all looked at MC.
She was using her fork to stab the leftover pancakes. “I’ve never told anyone.”
“I understand why. You think you’re going nuts. At least I do. Mike’s dead. I know he’s dead.” I took a sip of my coffee. “And I must be doing weird things in my sleep again, because our photo keeps disappearing. It’ll be on the nightstand and then it’s in a drawer. I would never hide that photo.”
“Maybe it’s your cleaning lady.”
“I talked to them when it happened before. I don’t think it’s them. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ve made a difficult decision. I’m going to sell the house.”
“Are you ready to make that kind of decision, March? It’s a major one,” Harrie asked.
“My sanity is at risk here.”
“But you love that house,” MC said. “It was always the only house you ever wanted.”
She was right. I did love the house. I couldn’t imagine anyone else living where I had spent so much of my life, my kids’ lives. I was caught between my visions and my memories—one I wanted to stop and one I didn’t want to end, or forget.
“That’s probably a good idea. Too much is tied to that place for you,” Ellie said practically.
“How do you think the kids will react?” Harrie asked.
“The kids? I haven’t told them. I just decided yesterday. Honestly? I hadn’t thought about them yet. God . . . ” I said on a groan and sank my face in my hands. “That’s the only home Molly and Mickey have ever known.”
“Based on the Molly we all know, I expect she will pitch a damn good fit . . . the little shit.” Ellie said.
“Ellie!” MC and Harrie said at once.
“Well it’s true,” Ellie muttered.
“I don’t think Mickey would like it if I sold his home out from under him the minute he’s gone off to college. Now I don’t know what to do.”
“When does he fly back to school?” MC asked.
“I’m taking him to airport this afternoon.”
“Talk to him, March,” Harrie advised.
“He’d tell me it was okay, even if it wasn’t. He’d just agree because he thought that was what I wanted. He’s been acting very protective.”
“Feel him out a little. Ask him how is it to be in school then come home. Does home feel the same?” Harrie offered. “Something like that and see what he says before you make the decision, or at least until you tell them.”
“I just don’t think I can live there anymore. It’s tearing me up.”
“You could redecorate,” MC said. “Get rid of everything that was yours together and make the place completely different.”
“You think Mike’s ghost will stop showing up if she changes the furniture?” Ellie asked facetiously, then she paused and apologized. “I’m cranky today.” She watched me for a moment then said, “You know MC’s probably right. Every time I get divorced, I redo the whole house. It always makes me feel better.” She held up a hand as the others started to speak. “I know divorce is different from losing your husband, but it works. New surroundings can’t be a mistake.”
“She’s got a point, March,” Harrie said. “Maybe you will stop seeing him if the rooms don’t look like they did when he was living in them.”
So my decision to sell the house lasted all of about fourteen hours. Instead, when I got home from breakfast, I called the decorator. I would start with our bedroom.
A room the size of our master bedroom echoed badly when it was empty. My voice seemed to bounce from the stark walls and bare wooden floors it as if I were shouting. There wasn’t a single stick of furniture, the drapes were gone, the art, even the rug had been rolled up by the movers and added to the truck.
My decorator gathered her tapes and laptop, print outs and portfolio intending to follow the mover out, but she paused in the doorway. “You’re certain about this change, March? I remember how much you loved the room.”
“I’m absolutely certain,” I said and handed her a house key and my contact numbers—I was going back to Tahoe for a while.
We had started only two days ago, when I came home from breakfast with my friends and told her I wanted a whole new room, and that I wanted to do this immediately, then I took Mickey to the airport and by the time I got home, she had booked movers for today and begun her plans, ones that didn’t use the same colors we had before.
The master bath would be redone completely, walls, floor, all the fixtures changed, and all the light fixtures replaced with something different, everything was to be changed but the wood floors, the fireplace, which was original, and the windows and doors.
With nothing in the room, my decision seemed easier and felt right, as if I were standing in front of a huge blank canvas, brushes in hand. What I felt was sheer freedom. I could do anything I wanted. As I turned slowly around and looked at the vacant room, there was no way the place felt like our bedroom anymore.
Like a stage set broken down after the last show, what had been there before seemed fake and unreal now that it was only in my memory. I was so overwhelmed with relief that I sat down on the hard wood floor and cried my eyes out.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly relief I felt. Maybe this was how I said goodbye.
Chapter Twenty Five
I arrived in Tahoe not knowing if I was running away from something or toward it. My original thought was that being on the mountain would bring me some kind of peace. From the mountains and snow and altitude, a pure closeness to the ma
jesty of life usually settled over me. Riding down a ten thousand foot mountain at a top speed tested my control, my technique and balance. Boarding had always given me joy, and perhaps a sense of power. Now I pushed myself more and rode faster and harder.
Years back there was slogan—a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Well, my mind must have been wasted, because when I first decided to go up to Tahoe, I had painted a rosy mental image of the new me on the mountain—traversing one of the most important places in our lives, and in doing so, erasing the past. Cathartic. Healing. A how-to on making a fresh start.
At some point on the drive there, I even did the mental math on what portion of my life had been spent on the mountain and figured conservatively, over thirty seven plus years, two thousand five hundred days of my life, I had been riding snowboards at Heavenly Valley.
But now, on the first full day on the slopes, I didn’t find comfort on the mountain. Riding alone was not the same. There was no one to trade stories with at lunch. There was no one to share the thrills and spills. There was just no one.
Stubbornly, I kept trying to use the mountain to rediscover myself but after riding down every challenge trail or bowl or run on the whole mountain, both California and Nevada sides, after pulling tricks that would test the skill of someone half my age, all I discovered was I was hauntingly alone, and everything I did was uncomfortably different.
I felt trapped in another dimension—standing at a clear glass wall, hands pressed to the glass and watching the whole world go by. I was the fly caught between a screen and a window. All around me were lovers kissing on the chairs or at lunch, wives and mothers, teens and kids. I had been all those things once upon a time. My fairytale life was gone.
A depressing thought, and here I thought I had made some progress. I did know for certain I was bone tired of lapsing backwards, and tired of letting myself fall back into feeling lost and pitiable.
