by Leanne Owens
Her eyes welled with tears as she thought of Zo and their years together. She had loved him so much.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sandy stood and moved to the bed where she leaned over to enclose Ally in a hug. ‘Now that I’m listening, really listening, I understand the depth of betrayal when we had you committed for treatment. This,’ her hand moved in an elegant spiral to indicate the story of Elli and Zo, ‘is so beautiful, and we were so wrong. I am sorry, Ally.’
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she held her friend, distressed by the memories of that day when Ally had woken from the first treatment, her memories scrambled, her mind in disarray from the electro-shock treatment. If the only way she could reach the man she loved was in the quiet moments in her mind, how abhorrent to try and destroy those moments by treating her imagination, her memory, and the workings of her mind as a mental illness that required curing.
Sandy knew that it did not matter whether the love story was real or imagined – it was the love at the core of Ally's existence, a love that had reached out to light their lives, and they had tried to extinguish it.
‘We really didn’t understand,’ Andrew shook his head, feeling distraught after viewing the depths of what lay between Elli and Zo. ‘Can you ever forgive us?’
The smile that Ally gave him, gave all of them, had sadness in the corners. ‘Please don’t ask for forgiveness – it isn’t needed. I forgave you at the time or, rather, I understood your reasoning, so there was nothing to forgive. I know why you acted the way you did.’
Looking down at her hands, Ally recalled the day their lives split. ‘When I first woke that day, I could not reach Zo. The damage to my mind by that electricity temporarily severed the connections to the part of me that could reach out to him, and it filled me with terror. It was like waking in a prison of my own mind that had no windows or doors, and the walls were slowly closing in on me. All I had was the hazy memory of the fields where I ran free, and a fear that I would never return there. I was a wild animal, caught in that mental cage, desperate for all that had existed before the treatment. I was frightened that I would never find my way back to all that I loved.
‘I ran, driven by all the knowledge that I had gained as Elli, knowing I had to escape before another treatment killed Elli and Zo completely. The connection I had was fragile, and I feared the treatment had shattered it. I ran, and I hid. It is easy to disappear in cities. It took weeks before the connection was open again. I have never been as miserable as I was in those weeks, unable to reach for him and find him.
‘I was unable to share any of this with you because your answer was to fry the wiring of my brain – not that I can blame you for thinking that was what I needed. It was then that I knew I wanted to spend more time in that life than in this. There had been more suffering in this life than I could bare, and knowing that you wanted to break my mind to cure what wasn’t an illness, was the final straw for this life.
‘I disappeared into the wilderness of a city, and I lived small. I survived from the sale of artworks that I painted under a different name. I avoided all government files for tax or social security, I had no driver’s licence, no bank account. I was invisible. No social media. No phone. I lived physically in this life, but I spent most of my time as Elli because I longed to spend as much time with Zo as I could.
‘I knew from history books that he would die in April of 1492 at the place where we first met, but I could not take that knowledge back with me to change anything, I could not change what was going to happen to Zo, so I simply spent every second with him that I could. I kept my body alive in this time, so my mind could live in that time.’
Silence met the end of her words. The enormity of removing herself from this life to live an alternate reality was difficult to comprehend.
‘I was happy,’ she told them, seeing the concern and confusion on their faces. ‘If the purpose of life is to be happy, then my life was purposeful.’
‘Was it happiness?’ Andrew asked softly, ‘Or an illusion of happiness?’
‘The difference being?’ she raised her brows at him, knowing that it was an area of philosophy that would prove as entertaining as watching a cat chase its tail.
‘Happiness is real, the illusion is not real.’
She smiled at him, ‘If the result is happiness, does it matter whether it was caused by reality, insanity, or fantasy?’
‘Of course, it does,’ Andrew frowned, realising that he was becoming the cat.
‘And why is that, exactly?’
‘It just is,’ he gave her a mulish look. ‘You know I hate philosophising with you.’
‘Only because you never win,’ she chuckled. ‘Enough of that, though – I was happy, until Zo died. I survived after that, and surviving is important.’
‘It didn’t look like survival when I found you,’ said Peter, remembering the gaunt, barely alive woman from weeks ago.
‘I had run out of energy,’ she admitted. ‘You need a certain level of energy to survive, and I had dipped below that. I’ll explain later. I might rest now, if you don’t mind.’
The sudden sleepiness that overcame her was a clear signal to them that it was time to leave. Ally closed her eyes, cutting them out of her thoughts. They stood and began to leave.
‘Before we go,’ Lynette paused at the door, curious to learn more about Elli’s life, ‘did you have children with him?’
Ally opened one eye to regard her, and shook her head, ‘In this life and in that, I was unable to conceive. I don’t know why Elli could not. I do know why I couldn’t. It’s not the time to tell you that, though. Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Whenever it suits you,’ Peter touched the back of his fingers against her cheek before leaving. He recognised her withdrawal behind an emotional curtain and did not want to push her to talk of things she found difficult. ‘You’ve given us a lot to think about. Will you be able to sleep now?’
‘Sleep has usually been a blessing,’ she told him, looking up at him with an expression filled with empathy for the friend whose unrequited love burned in his eyes. ‘My dreams of Italy are never as clear as my memories, but they give me the chance to touch them, even if the dream versions are slightly disjointed and distorted. Sometimes, in dreams, there is a moment where Zo reaches for me and I feel him there again. That is worth every nightmare, every fear, every rambled and scrambled memory that dreams can churn up.’
They took their leave and made their way back to Peter’s house, walking slowly and silently through the gardens of Kamekura, their thoughts busy inside their heads but not yet ready to burst into sound. Lynette and Nick led, holding hands like teenagers on a date. Andrew and Marcus walked with an arm around each other’s shoulders. Peter and Sandy wandered behind the others, a gap between their bodies that was small in distance but emotionally vast.
Where is happiness? Sandy thought as she kept in step with Peter through the hush of the night gardens. Where is fairness? Almost all her life, Ally had loved a man who had died five hundred years earlier, and whatever the source of that love – mental illness, overactive imagination, or memories from a past existence – it meant that she missed out on so much in this life. While Ally gave up everything for the ghost of her Zo, Peter had spent all his years loving Ally. He lived like a monk who had given his heart, body, and soul to the church, only the church was Ally, and she had never wanted him to make that sacrifice.
And she had loved Peter, she sighed softly and glanced sideways at his profile, still so familiar after all these years. Gossip columnists linked her name to many of the rich and famous through the decades, but it had never been anything except promotion for the next movie or an incorrect assumption. For her, there had only been one love, ever since they had been at primary school and were always the last two chosen for any team.
Are Peter and I any worse, she wondered, than Ally? All three of us loving someone we can’t have, even though we can walk beside our loves and she can only dream of hers. Why is h
ers a disorder and ours merely unrequited?
She remembered one of her first nights in Hollywood when she had been crying because she missed Peter. ‘I know he’ll never love me as anything but a friend,’ she sniffed, wiping her nose on the tissue Ally had passed her, ‘and I know you will never love him in any other way, either, but I love him so much that I wish you would return his feelings. I love him enough to want him to be happy, and you would make him happy.’
‘Happiness is not our destination, maybe it’s not even our purpose,’ Ally had told her as they sat on the old couch in Sandy’s shabby apartment. ‘Our destination is some future point. Our purpose is to live as long as possible and help as many as we can. Happiness is in the passing moments, the birdsong, the sunshine, the wind in our hair, the smile of a friend. Happiness is like the wildflowers that grow in the fields that we walk through. If you stop and pick one and try to hold it forever, it will wither, so you keep walking and being grateful for the flowers that you pass. Peter is not the object that will make happiness stay with you, and I am not that object to him.’
‘I don’t even understand what you said,’ Sandy gave her a miserable look. ‘But I know this hurts. Loving him hurts. Loving him and watching him suffer in his love for you is an ache I can’t escape.’
‘It is always better to be the person who can be hurt than to be the person who feels no pain,’ Ally had looked down, her lavender eyes troubled with thoughts of something or someone else.
‘Are you in love with someone?’ Sandy asked her gently, curious about the private life of her friend. ‘You keep that part of your life locked away from us.’
‘I love all of you,’ Ally winked at her, sidestepping the question.
‘I’ve often wondered if there was someone. You seem to know a lot about love, but I don’t know that you ever seriously dated anyone.’
‘Not recently,’ Ally replied, a droll tone to her voice, ‘and not someone I could tell you about.’
‘Why not? Why be so secretive?’
‘Because you’ll think I’m mad if I tell you,’ Ally had chuckled, withdrawing behind some emotional wall that she had started to use more since the death of her parents. ‘Mad, or certifiably insane.’
She had been right. They had thought she had a mental disorder and they had recoiled instead of treating it as a physical issue, like asthma or allergies, that was just a part of her. Now, she didn’t know what to think, apart from the fact that Ally had always been, and always would be, her friend, and that friendship was worth more than almost everything else in her life. If Ally was crazy because she imagined the greatest love that had ever been, then she wanted to be crazy right alongside her.
‘Coffee or wine?’ Peter asked, bringing Sandy back to the present.
‘I think I need wine,’ she smiled at him, ‘but I remember Ally telling us that if we ever think we need alcohol, it’s time to drink tea, coffee, or water.’
‘Coffee it is, then,’ he returned her smile with the hint of sadness that always seemed to linger in his eyes. ‘For both of us.’
‘And me,’ chimed in Lynette, turning to look over her shoulder as she entered his house.
In his kitchen, Peter made a pot of coffee and served some pastries supplied by the Kamekura kitchens. They sat around the table, still pensive after the day of Ally’s stories. Apart from some compliments about the pastries, their thoughts kept their voices quiet.
‘As someone who didn’t know her before yesterday,’ Nick finally threw words into the quiet, ‘I’m finding the story compelling. I hope, for her sake, that you four are able to accept her reality because I think that is what she is seeking - your acceptance of her world.’
‘I do,’ said Andrew, thinking of the emptiness that had been near his heart since Ally had left their lives. ‘If she told me she was cavorting with polka-dot aliens and spent her weekends on a passing asteroid, I would not object in any way. I want to keep her in my life.’
‘Will accepting her reality on those terms be enough?’ asked Marcus as he looked around the others at the table, ‘Or will that be like saying, I know you’re lying, but I’ll pretend to believe you? Is it possible to believe her? To have faith in her?’
‘Not without proof,’ Lynette shook her head. ‘All we have is stories. You said you’d looked for evidence of an Eliga Spini from that time and found nothing. I looked earlier, and found nothing. There is no evidence.’
Marcus made a loose fist and tapped it against his mouth as his thoughts arranged themselves into sentences. ‘Billions of people around the world take stories from their chosen religions as proof that their god exists. Our justice system is based on believing that someone’s story of innocence is truth, and relying on evidence to prove otherwise. I can have faith that what she said today is the truth unless there is definitive evidence to prove otherwise.’
‘I don’t see religious stories as truth,’ Lynette countered, then paused to think about the rest of his words. ‘But, Marcus, I think you might have something with that innocent until proven guilty notion. There may be no proof that her stories are true, but neither can I prove that they are wrong. That actually makes me feel more positive about everything.’
‘Always glad to help,’ he saluted her.
A few hours later, when Lynette lay in Nick’s arms, delectably tired from their lovemaking, she murmured to him, ‘If what Ally or Elli experienced with Zo was anything like that, I can understand it lasting two lifetimes.’
‘We do work well together, Dr Morrison,’ he whispered against her forehead, his lips moving on her skin. ‘I don’t want to presume to be included in your future, but right now, in this moment, if I thought we had the rest of this lifetime together, then I’d go to sleep a happy man.’
‘Really?’ she tilted her head so that they could make eye contact. ‘I thought this might be a holiday romance for you, and once you were back in your own environment, you’d go back to those pretty young things that used to decorate your arm, not, well, whatever I am.’
‘I’ll tell you what you are,’ he kissed the tip of her nose, knowing he was lucky to have her in his life and in his arms. ‘You are amazing, spectacular, glorious, intelligent, funny, witty, beautiful, superior, a goddess, an angel, a leader, divine, attractive, delicious, sexy, sensual, incredible, a treasure above all others…’
She chuckled at his excessive list of compliments, ‘You are laying it on too thick.’
‘No, I’m not.’ He took her hand and raised it to his mouth, closing his eyes as he pressed his lips reverently to her palm. ‘I want you to know that I have never felt like this before. I’m worried that what I’m feeling will scare you away as these emotions are overwhelming to me, so I fear they will send you running. Maybe I should play games and not hit you over the head with my feelings – I really don’t know. This,’ he waved a hand over their bodies, and then placed his hand on his heart, ‘this has never happened before. If you want this, whatever it is, to end at any time, I will walk away…but for as long as you want this to continue, I will be here. If we could come back in another life, then I’d want that life with you, too.’
Tears welled in her eyes at his words. The sincerity rang through clearly, as did his awkwardness at conveying feelings that had never awoken in him before.
He knew that all the beautiful women he’d partnered in the past were ornamental and fun, perhaps even interchangeable, and he felt ashamed for treating them so lightly, but Lynette had a substance to her that he could never take so casually. In the few days he’d known her, he felt as though they fitted together like two parts of a puzzle - complete without each other, but so much better together. If she did not have the emotions mirrored in her heart, though, he knew that his outpouring of emotions would be unwelcome.
Luckily, her feelings paralleled his, and it was a great relief to hear him confess his sentiments, and she told him so.
‘To hear you say that,’ he said, raising an eyebrow speculatively, ‘is going to
result in less sleep. You do realise, don’t you?’
She laughed as he rolled over and lay his body over hers, resting his weight on his elbows so he could look down into her eyes.
‘I’m happy to sacrifice sleep,’ she grinned up at him and patted his naked buttocks, ‘for a bit more of this.’
‘We might never sleep again.’
‘Sounds heavenly,’ she smiled, then thought of something he’d said a few sentences earlier. ‘If we could both come back in another life, we would. I wonder why Ally came back but Zo didn’t.’
‘We’ll ask tomorrow,’ he lowered his mouth to hers, and gently nibbled on her lower lip. ‘Not now.’
‘Not now,’ she repeated at a whisper, feeling the pull of the hot current that rushed through her veins. And this is not a late-menopausal hot flush, she told herself as she gave herself over to the emotions, this is passion.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Other Memories
‘A lot of my visits to Zo’s time weren’t exciting or taking place during something historically important,’ Ally explained the next day as they sat on a veranda overlooking one of the gardens. ‘Often, it was just an hour or two of gentle time - painting or drawing or chatting to Leo, walking through the streets dressed as a man, buying goods at the markets, sitting in an art studio learning from the masters, walking in the gardens at the villa. That sort of thing. It was those small everyday things that convinced me I really was there. If I’d been inventing the story myself, or having some form of hallucination, then I think every scene would involve Zo or something exciting. Sometimes, I’d be sitting alone, reading. Just reading.’