“You should take better care of that doggie. Not let it wander.”
“If I hadn’t let her run free, how would she have ever found you?”
She didn’t answer. I hadn’t looked at her yet, but I knew she wasn’t a trick or a ghost or an hallucination. In that still moment of psychic adjustment, I sensed the wonder of her soul and tasted a new sweetness in the air.
I spun around on the merry-go-round and looked into Teresa’s eyes. They were alight with her passion, but I could see time’s wary distance there, too, battling against hope and yearning. Her smile wasn’t really a smile, more of a brief respite from a long-suffering sorrow. The way she held herself looked as if she was questioning who I had become.
My mind and body melted, then soared in a moment of uncontrollable ecstasy. The ground felt alive, surging up through my being, and the sky came down, raining a song upon me that washed away eternities of pain.
I wanted to touch her.
And what I had told myself for years and visited her in dreams to proclaim, poured out without any preamble as I was afraid afraid that she would turn away before one of us spoke again.
“Teresa, you captured my soul for eternity. I treated you wrongly, I know, and I’ve begged your soul, offering eternal promises, to someday forgive me, to reunite with me. I couldn’t have faced the troubles I went through without the hope of seeing you on the other side of them. I’m here, to be with you. I’ve told myself lies to go on without you all these years. Please. I can’t anymore. Just now, my heart restarted.”
She stepped forward, took hold of one of the safety bars on the merry-go-round and gave it a tug. I spun for a full circle in silence before slowing to a stop.
“I knew it would be like this.” She smoothed out her skirt, which was decorated in a pattern of tiny yellow roses, as she sat down next to me. She softly bit her lip. The stars streaming across the years finally were released from her eyes to mine.
“Teresa. It feels like forever.”
She answered, her eyes never leaving mine. “All these years without you, it’s been like swimming against a current. It felt as if I was fighting the natural flow of the universe. I’d speak to you out loud, wondering where you were but believing you’d hear me. I convinced myself I’d see you again, not having any idea where or when, but I knew.... well, I knew our life together was true magic.”
“You were right. Remember the day we met? You showed me that beautiful picture you had done. The one you used as a bookmark. I’ll never forget. Doggie with Cookies. So here we are. You foretold this day with that drawing.”
“Maybe I knew something you didn’t.” She pushed back my hair that covered my wrecked ear like she expected to see the wound. “Not all went smoothly, did it? I hope you’re planning on staying in one piece. Have the gods given you back to me?”
She knows. She remembers my mission to heal the time tunnel. I’m not alone.
A spark flew between us, entering each other’s soul, shining light on the broken parts.
“Yes, I believe so.”
Epilogue
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, May 17, 1980
It’s been almost twelve years since I healed the broken time tunnel in the fall of 1968. Eight years have passed since Teresa and I got back together.
It seems I’ve been living in a universe where both the gods and the immortals have lost the true story of how the tunnels were resurrected, but at least two of the mortals who knew about it, haven’t forgotten.
There was an eerie similarity in how the gods and god kin hadn’t been able to sense Shadow Creature and now didn’t have any experiential knowledge of my role in their history. Of course, I had always been a question mark to the gods. Pan hadn’t known how I could see into tunnels without having eaten of the feast of the gods, while Steel and Sheoblask had to throw their violent tests at me to read my purpose.
The impersonal finality of my quest stunned me, considering the absolute invasion of my emotions and the continuous upset to my life all those years. The cost to my well-being had been devastating. I suffered disappointment whenever I thought about how Shadow Creature hadn’t known me personally as I answered its call but had laid out a path throughout eternity for whoever responded. A god’s prerogative, I guess. Maybe I still followed that path.
If I understand post-tunnel repair events correctly, I appear to be in the same universe as before, whereas the gods and their kin are experiencing it as a fresh replay. I live in a universe that probably interweaves with that of the gods’, having similar but not quite the same histories. I’m reminded of Betsy’s explanation of antimatter—a bizarro mirror existence—and Einstein mumbling about traces of previous universes. There are certain episodes in this creation where if I relayed my recollection of them, Doctor Steel’s would be different. How would he explain the miracle of Santa Paloma? I’m not tempted to debate him about it. The town and celebration exist—I’ve seen them on tourist itineraries.
The gods remain a mystery, no matter how involved I had been with them. Observing them before the beginning of time; discussing the war between deities while sharing a beer; sleeping on Pan’s porch and feasting on divine mushrooms—all are just a blip of whatever the gods’ existences are.
Teresa, when we were finally able to talk about our troubled years apart, theorized that the gods, if they were curious, had resources to dig into who I was and what I had done in the universe when Shadow Creature had been my guide. They could probe hers and my memories or dreams, listen in on our talks, study my art. Clues were everywhere. Beelzebub could blab. I worried that Sheoblask might pick up gossip from that wretched slime of Chaos. Would the red-eyed demon carry out his threat of revenge if a different truth than what he lived was revealed to him?
“I don’t believe gods, or even Doctor Steel, lie, Deets, so after Shadow Creature was healed at the beginning of time, the gods’ perspective changed. They really didn’t have any knowledge of you. And if they’ve figured out more by now, they may have no reason to let you in on what they know. I wonder how Cassandra’s, Tuma’s, and other mortal travelers’ roles played out. Is their history unknown too? My memories of you are from the same universe as before you saw the gods in the beginning of time. Maybe everyone still lives in that one. Everyone but the gods and their kin.”
“In a way, everything is still shaped by Shadow Creature’s tragedy.”
“The gods have trouble identifying you in any version of the universe. Maybe you have some shadow residue from the wounded deity.”
“What purpose would it serve this time around for me not to be on the god’s radar?”
“Being hidden is the nature of shadow.”
“Or protection. There may still be issues.”
And Teresa would take my hand as we lay under the darkness of the night. Without a word, we both understood that the other was hoping Sheoblask would never grow curious and come visiting. I don’t know who she prayed to, but I could sense her twirling the black stone feather she wore on a chain around her neck while I grasped the white carving hanging from mine. I found my prayers to be memories of Shadow Creature tending to my concerns, teaching me to heal. Then Teresa would stir and cross the room to check on our baby daughter. I would listen for any restlessness from Piddles, asleep on the floor next to me. Trusting our dog’s instincts to protect the family, I would stop myself from going to the window, knowing it would heighten Teresa’s worries.
Not all the questions in life are answered. Not every path is accounted for. Of course I don’t believe it was luck or coincidence that Teresa and I met that sunny day in New Hope. That moment testified to the magic and miraculous madness of our love.
Over the years since, I’ve come across a number of my old acquaintances, some by planned encounters, others by whatever laws synchronicity operates.
With the combined efforts of Mandrake and Daisy, plus
their international contacts, Teresa and I made a small fortune from the two hundred odd drawings and plywood cutouts I had stacked in corners of my studio. We bought a farmhouse overlooking the Delaware River. After the birth of our daughter Melinda in June of ‘73, Teresa and I decided to get married. We invited friends, new and old, to a small ceremony on the riverbank behind our house.
Maureen was to be the bridesmaid and flew into Philadelphia International. I watched with anticipation as her plane taxied into its slot. The last time I had seen her, almost six years earlier in ‘67, I had been in Bellevue after returning from the Andes, crying my soul into Teresa’s lap. A year before that, Maureen had responded and staunched my wounds after Brenda stabbed me. She had kept me breathing. She was a true friend.
And so there I was, thinking of our reunion, when I heard tambourines jangling. A group of orange-robed, baldheaded people swarmed around me.
“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare...”
I smiled, but wanted them to move on.
“Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare...”
One of them asked me for a donation, while another tried to sell me a book. I shook my head, trying politely to discourage them from pestering me.
A woman stepped out of the bald orange mass and handed me a pamphlet.
“This may answer some questions you may have had about your existence.”
Her fellow Hare Krishnas skipped away—chanting, selling flowers, rattling tambourines, and asking strangers for donations.
She looked the same as the last time I saw her. Seven years earlier.
Funny how the mystery stirred people together. If the gods had forgotten my universe, then they weren’t the overseers when I had strange synchronic moments that related back to how my quest unfolded. What was that enigma I looked at, above the fountain garden before time began and the gods came forth?
Of course she didn’t remember me. I glanced at the pamphlet, wondering what to say. Its cover showed a flute player with blue skin standing with a woman who wore a garland of roses.
“Krishna is the highest form of God. Radha, his female counterpart is the embodiment of divine love. We believe your soul is an individual, eternal identity and does not merge into formless light or nothingness.”
“Could be, could be.”
But what about a god who chooses to end its own individuality and become one with another god?
Her presence was haunting me. An unexpected empty sadness tugged at me as I took in her bright demeanor. “I know you.”
She smiled with genuine delight. “Of course, we are all brothers and sisters.”
One of her colleagues called to her, and she turned her head. The purple crisscross of scars behind her ear hadn’t faded.
“C’mon, Panda, over here. I need the pamphlets.”
“Coming.”
And the physicist from Radcliffe danced off to join her fellow adherents of Krishna.
I always wanted to hold on to that pamphlet, but over the years it’s been misplaced, lost to me, like Betsy has been ever since Richard attacked her.
Thanksgiving dinners with Uncle Ted and Aunt Maddie are now, more than ever, practices of self-restraint by all. Richard has never contacted his parents, but Uncle Ted believes he is alive and claims he has picked up clues about the life his son is living. When he launches into his theories, my dad’s eyes dart toward me. I know the look—“Keep your opinions to yourself.” Aunt Maddie always reaches for her glass of wine.
“Nothing new. The boy’s life is a secret,” Uncle Ted would begin.
My mother then says something about Richard being smart, or a survivor, or that he must have a good reason to stay hidden.
Most times it’s Stephanie that starts the well-worn discussion of who the mysterious man on the train was. Uncle Ted had been traveling on Amtrak to Washington when a man sat next to him and started up a conversation. The probes had been gentle, but Uncle Ted believed the man, who spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent, had been trying to learn about Richard’s childhood and military service.
The more telling evidence of Richard’s activity, though still not a certainty, is a newsmagazine photograph of Cambodian boat people being rescued by an American destroyer. A small launch vessel’s naval crew is helping the refugees board the larger ship. Steadying an old woman with one hand, there is an officer whose blurry profile could very well be that of Richard’s.
How did an army grunt gone AWOL, forced into military service on a judge’s orders, turn up ten years later as a naval officer?
Stephanie is the only one who voices a conclusion. “Well, he always wanted to be CIA.”
She lives with an artist in Philly, writing unpublishable, erotic science fiction novels. It was a heartbreak to learn she had a hardcore heroin problem for a while, but she shook the habit after an overdose that ended luckily. Steph’s a beautiful, good-hearted, and funny little sister. I wish she’d drop the boyfriend, though. He’s constantly disparaging my art and insinuating that I must have sold my soul to have succeeded and become wealthy as an artist.
Which brings me to Ham Sherwin, my oil painter buddy from the Village who had become a professor in Rhode Island. I’ve been to his openings. He’s attended mine. Some years ago, in ‘75, Ham quit his teaching job and dropped by the house on his way to the West Coast.
He claimed he was tired of urban atmosphere and painting portraits. Surprisingly, so contrary to what I believed his nature to be, he spoke rapturously of interpreting pastures and cows and goats and snow-capped mountains on canvas.
Looking through his sketchbook, I came across a drawing of a volcanic eruption with pine trees burning in the foreground. A single phrase was scribbled beneath.
In the beginning, the end came.
Neither Teresa nor I commented on it, but listened curiously as he talked about his new job with the forest service in Washington State’s Rainier National Park.
After he left, Teresa drummed her nails on the table, deep in thought, then expressed her concern that the volcano sketch reminded her of the circumstances of his painting of the alley years earlier.
“First, he paints The Monster Beckons from a dream or something, which led you to examine Monster Alley and discover the formula. Now he’s going to live near the portal where you finally caught up with the ruined shadow area to end the quest. What do you think it means?”
I didn’t answer except with a look filled with damaging possibilities. Was his volcanic sketch foretelling another episode in some game of the gods? Could his scribbled notation be a direct reference to the end of Shadow Creature back at the beginning of time?
Is some god speaking to me through Ham again? Why now and who’s it from?
Later that night, Teresa lay in my arms and said sleepily, “Let’s not get hung up on it. The dream will go on forever, honey. Messages from the great mystery sometimes just fade to nothing.”
I had to agree. I had done my job. My past was invisible to the gods, and I didn’t want to worry about their problems.
Despite the questions Ham’s visit brought up, our life by the side of the river went on.
Daisy continued to represent Teresa and me. A proposed show of mine in Caracas never materialized, but shows in Chicago, London, and Paris expanded my customer base. Mandrake died of a rare, aggressive cancer recently, but before he did, he came across an odd set of some unknown drawings of mine which led us to the discovery of a truly strange tale. The illustrations were immediately recognizable as part of the large art piece that had glowed magically with golden clues every time I healed someone in the apartment above Mandrake’s Folly in L.A. I had never completed that immensely detailed attempt to portray life on Sunset Boulevard, and at Monkey Man’s insistence, left the eight-foot-long drawing behind when I fled with Tuma to the tunnels.
Someone had cut up the s
treet scene I had been rendering from the window into a series of small compositions, put my name and the year 1968 in the lower right corner of each, and sold them, apparently, around that same year.
Mandrake’s contacts were able to track one of the drawings back to being purchased by a Hollywood actor from Freddie Cranston. I surmised that when the now infamous murderer had come to from the altercation with Monkey Man, Tuma, and myself, he had taken off with the drawing and made as much money as he could from my unfinished work.
It was a damning realization that my drawing, which had seemed holy at the time, may have kept a pack of cutthroats stocked with their daily needs. When Freddie and Brenda, or as most of the world knows her by, Tweety McIntosh, were arrested for the gruesome mass murder of three Hollywood actresses in ‘76, old wounds surfaced between Teresa and me. She grumbled, questioning my judgement in everything I did for days, until, gratefully for me, I had a series of time-jumps that Melinda witnessed.
“Mommy.” Melinda screeched with laughter. “Daddy funny.”
“What’s he doing, sweetie?”
“Bye-bye juice.”
And there I was, drinking a beer, then again, and again—an automatic refill, with Melinda giggling as I popped through time, getting tipsier with each jump. Teresa came in from the kitchen. After I explained what had happened, she crossed her arms and said, “Y’know, I’ve been waiting for you to do something like that for me.”
“What do you mean? I can’t control it. It’s just never happened in front of you.”
Her hips swayed provocatively as she crossed the room to sit on my lap. “You know when I wish you would have a series of your multiple time-jumps.”
“There wasn’t a chapter about that in that sex book we used to devour.”
“Put on your turban, mister.”
The family’s grown, with Johnny and Rita coming along.
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 37