by Lizzy Ford
large, almond-shape eyes were the most beautiful pale green I’d ever seen. Her hair was blonde and shoulder length, her slender shape toned. I stared at her, startled to see her as she appeared when she was twenty-four rather than her age of nearly fifty-eight.
The back way. If my heart could break again, it would have. It was already in too many pieces to shatter further, though it did sink from my chest to my toes. I glanced at the eerily glowing back wall.
“I wondered why you hadn’t been in,” I whispered.
My throat tightened, and I hung my head to stare at my black nails. Death was a release to me, an escape from hell, yet the death of my soul mate, best friend, sister was nothing but another reason to yearn for death to take me faster. Her pain had been far greater than any I could feel. I felt nothing of the doctors or their surgeries; she felt twenty years of chemotherapy, experimental surgery, and what it was like to die one body function at a time. If I could have traded her the last twenty years and know she wouldn’t suffer despite the inability to move, I would have.
“I’m better now,” she said, sensing my despair.
I nodded, plagued by sorrow, understanding, and most of all-- jealousy. She was joining our mother, grandfather, and every other person I had ever loved. I was alone at last.
“The funeral was nice,” she told me. “I had yellow roses.”
“That’s what I want, too. Where did they bury you?”
“They didn’t.” She hesitated. “Mama and I made the decision before she died. I wanted to tell you in person, but I … well, it didn’t work that way. We decided to be cremated, like you told us you wanted to be. My husband has Mama’s-- and now my-- ashes. When you die, he’s going to take yours, too, and-- ”
“-- we’ll all be together again.”
“Just like we always planned.”
Lily smiled, but I stared at the table. The three of us had long dreamed of one day sitting together as shriveled old women in rocking chairs on the wide porch of an old Georgia farm house, sipping Earl Grey while we ruminated over lost loves and the storms we lived through. I had planned to leave and make it in the world and then come back for them. I never made it. Mama died five years ago, and though Lily lived on in person, I always felt she died with her and lost her will to fight the cancer eating her own body.
“You’re sure your Bobby won’t just leave the three of us sitting on his mantle for all time?” I asked, trying to rally my spirits, which were curled deep within me sobbing.
“No. He’s going to scramble us up and toss us over that cornfield behind Mama’s old house!”
“Wonder if the corn will turn out or end up tasting ashy,” I said then laughed. “How’s your husband?”
She looked down, as she always did when she spoke of him. I never knew why she reacted so strangely. She never brought him up in conversation. It had taken a year of asking for her finally to reveal his name to me. Bobby. They were married for twenty years, and yet she never showed me pictures of them together, or of him at all. “He’s well. I left you more money in your home fund.”
“You left a will? I didn’t think you believed in that stuff.”
“I don’t. He’ll do it,” she responded.
“You trust a man that much with your money?”
“You’ve trusted a man that much before!”
“But your man isn’t mine! Guess it doesn’t matter-- I never heard from mine ADA.”
Lily looked surprised and flushed. I sensed she was about to change the subject again.
“You never did bring him to meet me,” I reminded her. “I languished away waiting for you.”
“He’s funny looking anyway.”
I laughed, doubting he was any funnier looking than my Picasso face.
“Oh, Lily. I almost forgot. The ‘d’ and ‘n’ aren’t working on my virtual keyboard. Does Bobby know how to fix it?”
Lily’s money came from her many inventions, only one of which I ever understood. Shortly after my accident, she invented a communication system using a virtual keyboard and a chip inserted into my eye that translated a combination of my eye position and blinks into letters on a screen for visitors to read. It was my only method of communicating with outsiders.
“The chip must be bad,” she said with a frown. “I’m sorry, Rose. I should have come to see you before things got so bad.”
“That would’ve been a pitiful sight. They’d wheel you in so we could stare at each other,” I said before I could stop the words.
At her sad smile and the awkward silence that followed, I tried to push away my growing sense of despair. My best friend and sister would soon walk through the back wall again, never to reappear. Mama, Grandma, and Grandpa had all done the same. I wouldn’t see them again until I, too, took that journey.
“Have you seen Mama yet?”
“Yes. She’s beautiful and happy, like she was when we were young,” Lily said, brightening. “We sit around and drink tea and listen to country songs.”
“Oh, ouch,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We’ll have to change the music when I get there. She came to see me right after she died but never came back. I’ve kinda been waiting, but she …”
To my embarrassment, my voice broke, and I clamped up.
“Oh, Rosie! I’m so sorry. She can’t. Not yet but soon. She would stay with you here if she could, Rosie. She loves you so much!”
“I miss her, Lily.”
Lily’s head cocked to the side, listening to the silent call that drew all my visitors away.
“I’ll tell her you say hello,” she offered, and stood. “I have to go now, Rosie.”
I wanted to beg her to stay, even one minute more, but the words stuck in my throat. She waited for a response. I could only nod. Lily walked toward the glowing wall, turned back to wave, and disappeared. I stared after her before lowering my head to my hands and crying.
The TV was off when I awoke in my chair. The drapes were closed, the room dark, and I listened for Maria. Muffled singing emanated from the bathroom. Irritated that the TV and window were closed, I blinked twice rapidly to activate the virtual keyboard and tried to create the words “open the window.”
Opewiow appeared on the screen near the TV. I waited for Maria to emerge. She babbled at me in Spanish and disappeared once again into the bathroom without understanding my butchered English. I stared at the blank TV while listening to her off-key singing and wished my ears had gone as numb as the rest of my body.
In agitation, I activated the keyboard again and typed letters at random, sending indecipherable messages. Maria poked her head out once more to snap something in Spanish before retreating to the bathroom. I never knew why she spent so much time in the bathroom, and any other day-- when I had something to stare at-- I probably wouldn’t care.
Things would have been easier had I died. Of all my theories and ponderings, I could never answer one question: why wasn’t I dead? If life had a purpose, then what was the purpose of a human vegetable like me? I could not positively affect anyone. In fact, I was a financial and emotional drain on all those around me.
Ironically, the weakest member of my family was now the only one standing. I drove my family into ruin and death. If I had died, my family may be alive. Once, maybe twenty years ago, this thought would have sent me in to a depression.
Not that my body didn’t try to kill me. I gave myself that much credit-- my body knew what misery awaited me if I became a vegetable. The doctors saved me from half a dozen strokes, heart attacks, and the shutdown of my nervous system. Yet somehow, I survived to watch MTV and think.
Maria began to sing again, and I began sending my nonsensical messages to the screen.
“You still have a lot of spunk.”
The words were accompanied by a jingle. I blinked and was taken to the Mind Café, where I sat across from a large man with a mustache and frizzy, untrimmed hair. His eyes were small and nearly hidden behind bushy, graying eyebrows.
This was the only stranger who e
ver wandered into my café. I knew his face from the back of his books, which I read as part of a mandatory psychology course I took in college, BDA. I didn’t remember his name.
“My apologies for not visiting for awhile,” he said in a warm, soothing voice befitting the kiddie counselor he was. “I see she has your windows closed today.”
“She probably has a damn hangover.”
“I brought your notebooks.”
“Where did you find them?” I demanded, happy to see my stack of notes. I placed them on the seat beside me and rested one hand on them, determined not to let them escape me again.
“They were right outside the door. Thought you might like for me to bring them in.”
“Thanks. You come to counsel me?”
“I don’t counsel, Rose. I allow you to talk, if you’d like,” he reminded me.
He smiled a smile so small, it had taken me a few visits to notice it. His voice was monotonous. His features rarely displayed emotions. I often wondered if he was like this in real life, or only because I knew nothing more about him than what was revealed by the picture from the back of a book.
“I thought you might like to talk today,” he prodded.
“You only come when you expect me to be upset,” I murmured. “How is that?”
“Maybe you create me when you need help.”
“I don’t need help!”
One of those small smiles crossed his face.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him.
“We can talk about whatever you want. I don’t think your guardian angel lets me leave ’til you’ve said
