by Beca Lewis
And now it showed up the slightly white outline of Bryan’s body. The inside of him was translucent, which made the wall turn gray. Also a lovely color, Connie randomly thought to herself.
“No. Oh. Sorry. I bumped my knee on the kitchen cabinet when you called. I didn’t know it would be like that. Okay. This is just plain freaky. I can see you, and you are solid—like a real person. I don’t mean you weren’t a person before, but you were quite see-through.”
“You mean, how you are now?” Connie said, pointing to him.
Bryan looked down.
“Oh, God. That’s too creepy. What do you want? I want to go home. This will take some adjustment. I can’t feel my knee now. I wonder if that’s a good thing.” Bryan’s form spun around, so he was looking into the wall. Then he turned back.
“Oh good. I can see Rachel. It’s good. We’re good. What is it you wanted?”
Bryan sat down, and Connie assumed he had sat on one of the kitchen chairs, but she couldn’t see it. Funny, that only Bryan came through.
“I supposed I don’t want anything, except to see if I could really reach you.” The phone on her desk rang, and Connie looked at it as if it was something from another planet.
Oh. A phone. Yes, pick it up and say hello, she said to herself as she reached out for the phone.
Bryan remained seated, silhouetted against the black wall, and Connie nodded at her phone and said, “Okay,” and then looked at the phone in her hand again as if trying to remember how to hang it up.
“Put that thing you are holding back on the phone cradle,” Bryan said, wondering how come he knew what an old phone looked like, and she didn’t. Probably because she was so disoriented.
“Who was it?”
“Edith. She says she and Theo are going out to dinner after they finish studying. I’m supposed to go out with them.”
“Okay. So you don’t need me anymore,” Bryan said and disappeared.
Connie wanted to yell back that she did still need him, but he was already gone. How was she going to act when she saw Edith and Theo?
She remembered that dinner. They laughed and joked and talked about the wedding. Theo was his charming self, and he even had Connie taking a sip of wine.
What did she wear then? Did it matter if she wore the same thing? Was this happening again, or for the first time? Or was it both at the same time? So did it matter that she wore the same thing, or said the same thing this time around?
Connie decided that was all too confusing and the only thing she had to do was not let on that she knew what was coming. She had to pretend that she liked Theo enough to be around him instead of being terrified.
Wait. She wouldn’t have been terrified yet. Connie remembered what Eddie had said. She had to go through with what happened. Could she do it?
In her head, she heard Bryan say, “You can. Oh, that was cool. I see that I don’t always have to come there for you to hear me. We can talk this way. Gotta go, Eddie just showed up.”
A second later, Connie heard Bryan again
“Oh, one more thing. This is good. If I don’t come there, I can’t see you. So if you don’t see me, I don’t see you. Thought you might want to know that. You know for privacy and everything.”
Connie felt a slight easing of pressure in her head and realized that had been Bryan. She’d get used to it. She grabbed a pair of jeans off the bed and slipped on a clean blouse. That would do for dinner.
A glance in the mirror reminded her that she had that dirty blond hair again. No longer gray. No more wrinkles and saggy skin.
An old woman’s thoughts in a youthful woman’s body. This should be interesting.
Thirty-Four
Since where they would have dinner was just a few blocks away, Connie decided that she would take a walk around town first. She passed the little tobacco shop where she used to buy licorice, smiled at the memory, walked on, and then turned back and went inside.
She was young again. She could enjoy it.
The shop was just as she remembered it. The sweet smell of tobacco hung over everything. Jars of licorice lined up on the counter. She asked for five black and five red pieces. The older man she could barely see behind the counter took them out of the jars and handed them to her in a white paper bag.
“Enjoy them, Connie,” the man said, and Connie smiled, wishing she could remember his name. It had been over fifty years for her. For him, it was probably only a day or two since she had last stopped in.
Connie glimpsed herself in the door’s reflection as she left, and for a moment, forgot it was her. She stared at the young, slim woman, said “excuse me,” and then realizing she was looking at herself, laughed, and then turned back to wink at the man behind the counter so he would think it was a joke. It worked. He smiled and lifted his hand.
Strange that she thought he was old when she was much older than him. Connie wondered if he was still alive. Probably not.
The rest of the walk through town was the same. Memories would flood back, and Connie had to keep placing them in a separate room in her mind. She had to see the world as if she was twenty-two, ready to start a new, beautiful, and exciting life.
Heading to the Tavern she kept saying to herself, you can do this!
Looking back at the campus, she saw Edith and Theo getting ready to cross the street. Like most students, they crossed wherever they wanted to, dodging cars, and smiling at the ones that honked at them.
Connie looked at them, remembering what a handsome couple they had made. Theo, tall, slim with dark hair combed away from his face, was looking very preppy.
Even then, Connie thought he was too styled, too perfectly put together. Back then, she had thought he looked in the mirror each morning and imagined himself as the handsome, charming man ready to take over the world,
Now she knew that was exactly what he did every morning. And noon. And night.
Stop it, she said to herself.
She turned her attention to Edith, holding on to Theo’s arm, alternately smiling at the drivers and Theo. So happy. So innocent. Edith caught the eye of all the men, young and old, with her shining ebony hair and curvy body.
Theo beamed. Why wouldn’t he? He had captured the woman of every man’s dreams.
Connie sighed and looked down at herself. She wasn’t that and never had been. Too skinny, mousy blondish hair, too short, and too opinionated to be any man’s dream girl.
She thought she hadn’t cared. But what if she did? What if her biased look at Theo had caused the problem? What if she had been jealous, and that’s why he did what he did?
When the two of them reached Connie, Theo bent down to kiss her on her cheek, Connie recoiled slightly. Both Theo and Edith looked at her with puzzled looks on their faces.
To cover up her reaction, she hooked her arm into Theo’s other arm and said, “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”
Later that night, as she lay in her bed looking at the ceiling, Connie realized that everything that happened that night was just as she remembered it.
But that fact worried her. Connie knew that all memories are false. That every time someone recalls a memory, they unconsciously alter it. When she first heard that idea, she dismissed it. Couldn’t be true. Then what was the point of having a memory? She didn’t have the answer to that question, but she came to believe the studies that showed how false memories are.
So that night, did she relive a false memory, or what really happened?
What if when she got to the part where she made the wrong choice, she made the wrong choice again? Given all that could go wrong, how would she ever get it right?
*******
Eddie had lied. Well, not lied completely. He did have some other jobs to do in the in-between. But they were easy. At least compared to the one with Connie. All he had to do was greet the newly dead person and help them to
their next stage of life.
Not everyone needed an escort to their destination. That was a good thing, because there were not enough people in the in-between to do that. Thankfully, most people had friends and family waiting for them who would help with the acclimation.
But some people couldn’t accept that they had died, so they didn’t see the people waiting for them. They wandered around confused and often angry. Which made it worse.
Those were the cases he didn’t like to take, although if it was busy, and no one else could, he did.
Then there were those like Connie, who had to stay in the in-between until they completed some unfinished business.
Right now, other than Connie, the only cases he had were the confused ones. They were often easily guided to where they could get more help. Sometimes, they went directly to the light once they accepted what had happened.
Eddie always liked those moments. It made his life in the in-between worth it. He treasured those moments when the lost were reunited with their loved ones and remembered who they were.
He always heard beautiful music when that happened, but he thought that his imagination supplied that effect. He knew that as in life, in death, people saw what they thought they were supposed to see—or had accepted as truth.
So Eddie had lied about why he would not help Connie directly. But he didn’t consider it lying. He just wasn’t filling Connie or Bryan in on all the details yet. It was better that way.
Eddie wanted Bryan to find himself as he helped Connie. It was the other thing he had promised—this time to Jillyan, Bryan’s mother.
So far, Eddie was pleased with both Connie and Bryan. They had done well for the first day. Eddie knew it was confusing. If he thought about it too much himself, he got confused, too, understanding the great mystery, some people called God? Well, he wasn’t there yet, so he didn’t expect others to be there either.
Eddie thought since Connie was doing so well on her own, perhaps Bryan would like to play angel. He had the perfect event in mind for him.
Thirty-Five
When Eddie went to see Bryan, he and Rachel were already in bed. Because Eddie told Rachel that she needed to stay close to Bryan, she had gone home and packed a suitcase.
Neither of them complained about her staying at Bryan’s house, but the way they were getting together was not as either of them had once imagined.
Rachel was staying in Bryan’s parents’ bedroom. Following his mother’s request, Bryan had cleaned it out after she died, and donated all her clothes to Goodwill. He had kept only a few things—a bottle of perfume, and framed pictures of the family. Everything else was gone, so it was a clean slate for Rachel.
Bryan wondered if his mother knew Rachel would need a room and decided it was highly possible.
Rachel had gone to bed early, claiming exhaustion. Eddie knew she must be tired. All of this was so new to both of them. She had told him a little about her meeting with the Doveland crowd. She said that it had been both supportive and frightening. She was happy that they were there, but wondered what she had gotten herself into.
Bryan had headed to his bedroom not much later, but found he was too keyed up and too tired to sleep. A dichotomy, he realized, like the one with Rachel. He wanted her in his house. But not the way it was happening. He wanted more.
Rachel had always been the one for him, but he could never say that out loud. He had always been afraid that he wasn’t good enough for her. Now they were working together, making him more aware of how he felt about her. And yet he was still too much of a useless coward to tell her so.
That was the state Bryan was in when Eddie found him. Lying on his bed, pretending to sleep, but mentally beating himself up for not speaking up. Even now, after all these years. He was a grown man, for Pete’s sake.
When Bryan saw Eddie standing beside the bed, he shrieked, making him feel more ridiculous than ever. Who shrieks like that, Bryan groaned to himself.
“Well,” Eddie answered Bryan’s unspoken thoughts. “Most everyone shrieks when a spirit startles them. Not that you aren’t an idiot, but that’s different from being useless. That you are not. Since you can’t sleep, do you want to have some fun?”
“Fun? Do you and I have the same idea of what is fun and what is not?”
“Probably not. But even so, how about testing out something to prove to yourself that you are not useless?”
Bryan didn’t know what Eddie was suggesting, but he wanted to say no, and yet doing something new excited him. There’s that dichotomy again, he thought.
“Sure why not,” he made himself say.
Before he got the word “not” out, they were gone.
Having watched Connie’s excursions to other places, Bryan immediately recognized what was happening, and his exhaustion faded away. He was excited and worried, but his curiosity overrode it all. What would happen? Was he going to help someone?
“I get to be an angel?” Bryan asked, his face lit up.
Eddie stared at him and smiled. If this was what it took to get Bryan into life, he could use him more often. Funny, how helping dead people made Bryan feel alive. But Eddie didn’t say any of what he was thinking. Instead, he pointed.
All Bryan could see was what looked like a middle-class neighborhood. Most of the houses were dark, and the only light was a street lamp at every corner. He looked again and saw a man walking down the sidewalk. Well, not so much walking as shuffling. The man was staring at his feet and moving about as slowly as someone could and still be walking.
“Talk to him,” Eddie said, and then disappeared.
Bryan was more than disappointed. He thought he would get to save someone from a speeding car the way that Connie had, or rescue someone from a fire. Something exciting.
“So you can be a hero?” Bryan heard Eddie ask him.
Yes, he thought to himself, so I can be a hero. At least I am honest about that.
A gaggle of geese flew overhead, making so much noise the young man looked up and stopped in his tracks when he saw Bryan.
“Oh, sorry,” he mumbled, “I didn’t see you. Sorry.”
Bryan looked down at himself and realized that he wasn’t just drifting like a ghost; he was solid. At least he looked that way to the man in front of him.
“Oh, hey, my fault,” Bryan said, “I was just out for a walk and not paying attention. Mind if I walk with you?”
The man shrugged, and the two of them started down the street together. For blocks, neither one spoke. Finally, the young man asked Bryan why he was out walking.
Bryan decided that he might as well tell this guy about his fear of being nobody, living his life without purpose, never telling the woman he had loved his whole life that he loved her, that he would die a failure because so far he had acted as if he wasn’t alive.
He didn’t know what came over him. It was as if all the pent-up thoughts and emotions came gushing out. Maybe it was because he was talking to a stranger. Bryan felt embarrassed that he couldn’t shut up, but kept talking anyway.
The young man listened, only asking a question or two to keep Bryan talking. Somewhere along the way, they ended up on a bench in a small neighborhood park, and Bryan kept talking, and the man kept listening.
Finally, Bryan ran out of words and turning to the man sitting beside him said, “I don’t know why we ran into each other, but dang it, you have helped me. I never told anyone all that stuff. I feel so much better. Lighter somehow. It’s like you were put here to help me.”
“No,” the man said, standing. For the first time, Bryan could see his face, the streetlight shining on it.
“No, you helped me, thank you.”
He reached out and shook Bryan’s hand, gave him a shy smile, and walked away, no longer shuffling.
Bryan watched him go, wondering who was being the angel that night.
Later, back in bed, he fell asleep still not knowing, but grateful for the chance to help someone else in some small way, and aware that he had received much more than he had given in doing so.
In the dark, Eddie smiled to himself.
Thirty-Six
When Bryan finally woke up, Rachel had already gone. She had left a note on the kitchen table that she was heading to the coffee shop. He could join her if he wanted to.
He didn’t. He had things to think over.
First, he checked in with Connie, but found her still sleeping. He wasn’t sure what the rules were about being able to see into Connie’s life.
He could tell by the mess in the tiny space they called a living room that Edith and Theo were probably in the other bedroom. He was tempted to look. He knew that whatever had happened involved the two of them. Maybe he should know more?
But he stopped himself. That was spying for no reason except personal curiosity, not something he wanted to get in the habit of indulging. Not knowing for sure how this all worked, he also worried that it would change something that shouldn’t be changed, and it would be his fault. Not something he imagined was his fault, but actually his fault. It was a terrifying thought. He hoped that Connie could keep it together.
While he dressed, Bryan drank a cup of coffee, ate a piece of toast, and then added a bottle of water and a food bar to a small pack he wore when he was planning to stay in the woods for a while. And he was. If Connie needed him, she would reach out, and Eddie always knew where to find him.
He left a note for Rachel telling her where he had gone. It was the first time since his mother’s death when he had to let someone know where he was.
Bryan smiled to himself, surprised to find how happy he was that he was not alone anymore.
*******
Rachel sat on the park bench listening to the morning chorus of birds, marveling at its beauty. It was early, and she was the only one in the tiny park. It would be bustling in a few hours, but right now, it was just her and the birds.