by Jody Sharpe
I look at Gram and she winks at me.
“Hey, yeah, that would be cool, thanks. Uh, you don’t have a big dog, do ya or black cats?”
“Why no, young man, just Muffy, my tiny Chihuahua. She comes with me to work and is the sweetest little dog this side of town.” By now King is at the door with GG following behind him with her walker. Gram puts her hand on King and he halts but eyeballs Jamie. Jamie’s wide-eyed yet looks at GG. My hand is still covering my mouth. Me, a spinster at twenty- six! It’s amazing. Did Mr. James Bond ever hear of the Woman’s Movement?
“Hi, Grandma Norma,” he says to GG. GG blows him a kiss. Obviously, she’s been using her psychic vibes, for something’s up. Grandma Norma? This is funny. All of a sudden, I realize Jamie’s been in communication with Gram and GG. When was it? Was it by phone or did he come over while I was at work? Jamie looks at the dog and then at Tim and says, “When can I start?”
It’s an unlikely lovely pairing like Champagne and hot dogs, but a real job for Jamie. GG and Gram have done a wonderful thing. After I say goodbye to all and walk down a few steps, Tim Thayer, the most quiet gentleman I know, says, “You know Jamie, James Bond has always been my favorite character in books and movies. I always wished I were as suave and debonair as he. What a very cool name you have! A real hero’s name!” King lets out a huge bark and I turn around, but Jamie is still there, sweating for sure but still there!
19
Once Upon A Dream
The sun is setting in an orange foggy swirl. Everyone in Jack’s By the Sea is all atwitter talking about The July North Show airing tomorrow night. Jack will shut the restaurant down for a special party afterward to celebrate. Only those of us who planned the event know the three children have encountered angels. The information has spread through town and advertising on TV that it’s a songfest for the angels, a celebration of the town’s angelic contributions to society, they all think. Everyone congratulates me upon hearing I will sing on national TV. I try not to think about it. With the Mystic Bay High School choir and a San Francisco Symphony quartet accompanying us, well, how can I mess up?
I haven’t had the heart to ask Jack about his meeting with the woman I have decided to refer to as Lyla Jasmine. It is her name now, and we should respect her wishes. I concentrate on the excitement with the Sunday Songfest, yet little do the crowd and TV viewers know how extraordinary it really is. Another child has a song given to him by the angels. He’s just moved to town with his family. His father plays violin in the San Francisco Symphony and will be in the quartet. Benny Chen, the gifted ten–year old, is legally blind but plays the piano well. The angels came to him in a dream, he told his parents. The melody they gave him that night is a message from above. Hannah told me this song will bring tears to the eyes of all those who listen. “It’s mesmerizing,” she said. Mesmerizing like her eyes, I wonder.
Noah is driving home from LA tonight, home late as the San Francisco airport is fogging in. He wants to hear the news about his biological mother in person. “I want to be with you holding me when you tell me,” he said on the phone. My heart aches for him.
Tad is dressed in a suit and tie. “Tad, you look great. Dressed up for a party?” I smile at him.
“No, Jack gave me the manager position yesterday. I’ll be following him, job shadowing him now. He’s been so great to me. Now he wants to scale back, and Jenny and Guy have their own careers so I get this opportunity. Still I’ll barkeep once in a while.”
“Wow, I’m so happy for you. You have a way about you, Tad. You’ll be super at it, but hey, where will Missy sit?” I say it realizing I should keep my filter filtered. “I’m sorry,” I say sincerely.
“It’s okay, Maggie. I broke up with her. The way she acted towards Noah and you when you fainted really burned me. She kinda stalked me anyway. I need a woman like you, kind and beautiful, too.” He laughs. “Got any sisters?”
“Thanks, Tad. You know what? I have a darling cousin, Marcy. She’ll be up here from San Jose for Jenny’s big day. You can meet her then.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He walks away with a lighter step and a plan brewing for a good life. He’ll have more stability and still surf on his days off. That’s his way to peace, and he’ll be more financially solvent. I’m happy for the nice guy whose father disowned him for what, for having a job and loving to surf? I do feel blessed to have GG and Gram. I almost run into Jack as he comes around the corner. I hear Mario singing a song loud and strong. He sounds almost like Andrea Bocelli. Maybe he should sing instead of me the song for the angels. I feel a lump of fear form in my throat…what if my voice cracks?
“Maggie, can I talk to you a moment?” Jack looks serious.
“Sure,” I say, afraid of what’s next. We walk into his office and he shuts the door behind him. “Maggie, there’s something I need to tell you.” Oh God, I feel lightheaded again but hang onto the desk chair. “Sit down, please,” he gestures with a sad smile on his kind face.”
The fog hasn’t lifted. I toss and turn, worrying about Noah driving in from LA. What time will he arrive? After midnight? My mind drifts as I hear the trees hum through the slit in the opened window. Breeze comes in cold. How will he react to the news? I see his eyes, his mother’s eyes. Drifting off trying to imagine I’ll hear his car come down Moon Road past my house, I try to remember everything Jack said about my mother so long ago. I sat down, then blurted out, “Are you my father? Brian, my ex-boyfriend, said he had her followed and you met with Polly Ann at the Paradiso Hotel.” I so wanted to cry but held back, knowing my tears would flow like rain off the roof.
Jack began the story. Stella asked him to contact Polly Ann and ask her who my father was. Jenny wanted me to finally know the truth, to get answers. Stella wouldn’t talk to my mother herself because Jack and my mother had a brief affair in college. Just like Gram said, it was right after he and Stella broke up for a while.
Jack had such melancholy on his face when he said, “Jenny has taken the news well. I was a fool to hurt Stella, but I cared about Polly Ann too, then. When you’re young, you make mistakes and all throughout life, too. It was brief and long ago, Maggie. I’m sorry you found out that way. Jenny is adamant we help you find your father.” He looked out the office window at the fog and ocean for a moment, then he turned to me. “I’m sorry I met with her now because she wouldn’t tell me who your father was. I explained how you, your Gram, and Norma are so hurt, but she was rigid. She still has big problems, I think. Money hasn’t helped her. She never realized how lucky she was to have you all. I truly wish I could tell you it’s me, but I’m not your father. We stopped seeing each other a year before you were born. You are a fine young woman and any man would be proud to be your dad.” He walked over to me and I held the tears back as he put his arm around me. “Don’t be upset with us, please. You mean so much to all of us.”
I’m not upset with them, of course, but it makes me sadder still. I fall asleep again and dream of Great Grandpa Joe and his cigar smoke and then the scene changes to the past… ten–year-old me flying with the dream angel who called me home. I’m aware I’m dreaming. It’s a recurring dream from childhood. This blurry dream is back again, the dream when I first saw those amber eyes, when I first saw Noah. Dream angel and I flew far above, like airplanes looking down at the lights of towns scattered below. Our destination in what seemed a nanosecond was New York City. I remember the way the Empire State Building lit up with colors and all the tall buildings welcomed us with bright lights and neon signs. His angel’s wings slowed down and we glided to a stop at one of the lighted windows of an apartment building. I was suspended in air, holding the angel’s hand, looking in. An older boy was standing at the window looking at me too. He smiled. He had big brown eyes. The fateful dream ended. In the dream, the boy is the man I met just weeks ago. My eyes open and I’m awake now. It was so long ago I’d forgotten, but it’s come again, the dream I totally forgot about. Noah said he remembers where we met. Does he remember
we met once upon a childhood dream?
20
I Run To Him
My night with Noah has been the most magical night of my life. Just like he predicted, I waited by the window till I saw him drive by our house half past midnight, then I drive to his house near the speed of light.
“I remember,” I whisper as he takes me in his arms and carries me to his room. He opens his bedroom door to the outside patio as the fog swirls and the cold night begs in. With tears of joy, he tells me of his guardian angel, Francis, and how he always calmed his fears when Noah was a child. How one night Francis told him to wait by the window and he waited and saw me with my angel for a moment at his window. “I remembered your beautiful face, Maggie.” I’d forgotten that night twenty years ago until a few days after we met. And when I remembered, I thanked Francis even though I couldn’t feel him near.
“All my young life,” Noah says, “Francis would appear, his glowing outline calming my fears. He would tell me everything would be all right and I’d find the answers when I was grown. You see, I didn’t understand why the subject of who my biological parents were was forbidden in my house. My father told me long ago it would hurt Mother deeply to talk about it, and so I never asked. When I found the letter, I prayed for Francis to come again. I hadn’t seen his winsome presence or heard his voice in years, but this time he appeared instantly. For the first time I was able to see him in all his magnificence.”
Awestruck by his story, I hesitate to tell him about Tina, but he holds me.
“Tell me, tell me now about my mother.” I tell him she is Tina Beaujolais and how her sorrow was so clear in the tears in her eyes. They are his eyes, I tell him. He says he plans to go to her. He hopes someday Jason will be told the truth. But it will be Tina’s call when. It will be all right, Francis foretold. There will be bumps and slow moving walks forward, but time will help. Noah will wait to speak to Tina since Jason and Jenny get married in a few weeks. He’s waited so many years to know the story; why didn’t his father tell him the truth? Noah’s psychic abilities perceive his dear mother Josephine must have found out. That’s why she insisted they move here. With loving kindness, she wanted Noah to meet his biological mother after she died. But the plan didn’t work. Marshall’s dementia escalated. “My life has changed so much here. My father is indeed my biological father and Tina is my mother? What is the very story of my life? Now, I will finally have the answers I’ve yearned for.”
“I know in my heart it’s a love story, Noah. For your father is a good person and so is Tina. He put his love for Tina in the book, brief but heartfelt; Connor’s unrequited love for Sahara.”
“They must have had an affair while he interviewed the psychics in town, though he’d recently married my mother. I wonder how that could be, they were always so happy. But I’m trying not to judge.”
“That’s like my mother and Jack’s relationship. He told me he cared about her, yet he still loved Stella. How strange love is sometimes, the way it works.”
“Francis says not judging others is a hard lesson, but necessary for a wonderful life.”
“That thought makes me think. I’ve been judging my mother my whole life, making her the bad guy. I try to think of her good points and, of course, I can’t think of any. I don’t know her.”
“Maggie, you will figure it all out one day, who your father is and why it happened the way it did. I just know it.”
We lie listening to the night sounds. The bigger dogs are snug in dog beds. Murphy and Nursie have joined us now, cuddling in the covers. Outside I hear Noah’s trees hum. It’s then I decide to tell him the truth…how I hear the hum of life in the trees outside, bending in the foggy night, sipping in moisture. But Noah’s abilities have escalated like GG’s and he beats me to it. “I know what you are going to tell me, Maggie. When you told me how drawn you are to nature, trees especially, I had a vision of you listening, listening to the trees. You hear them somehow?”
“Yes,” I say, astonished at his psychic vibes, “I hear the trees hum, Noah, their sounds of energy, their life.”
“Extraordinary! This is a gift from heaven! They’re speaking to you, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a comforting hum, a vibration, but it’s escalated, the birds are flying nearer, and there’s something else, something I haven’t told Gram and GG because, well, I’m worried I’m hallucinating.”
“What is it, Maggie? Tell me, please.”
“Do Francis’s eyes shine a golden starry light like the angel’s in my dream?”
“Why, yes, yes, they do, as a matter of fact. They’re mesmerizing.”
“Well, mesmerizing eyes like that? I’ve been seeing the same light in the eyes of our friends when they look directly at me. I see starlight and auras. I saw an aura around you once. I heard the rustle of wings too. It’s all happened since I came back to town, since the children saw the angels.”
“Whose eyes, who has these stars in their eyes, Maggie?”
“I see angels’ light in the eyes of July, January, Josh, Gabe, Taylor Msumba who works with Hannah, yet dimmer in Hannah’s and Chris Whitefeather’s. Do you think I’m going crazy?”
Noah holds me tight. “No, Maggie, I think my mother was right. There are angels here, living as humans among us. Maybe others suspect, but keep the knowledge to themselves. What a wonderful town we live in where angels just might live as humans. It’s the town I’ve grown to love through your eyes. Our angels brought us together long ago. We were meant to be. And now they are calling the children, these precious children from Mystic Bay. They are calling you too. They want you to know.”
“But why now? Why me? This town, this moment in time?” I can see he’s thinking the same thing.
“It may be you were meant to have this ability, this gift, all your life. My theory is it may help you in your work with your students. I can see Francis but why? There are many stories of people seeing angels as they help them in times of need. These stories are from across the world, but I’ve never read anything about anyone encountering them as friends, except in fictional stories like the novel insinuating Hannah and Gabe were angels. It may be we aren’t meant to ask why!”
My heart is overflowing with love for Noah. I can tell him anything. I’ve just told him the very secret I’ve told no one else. “You’re my angel,” Noah says as he kisses me and we fall into the wonder of our love.
21
The Last Chapter Of One Psychic Summer
Noah sees me in his father’s office. He’s surprised I’m here. “Francis, I’m so glad to see you. I’m in love with Maggie, and truly excited about finding Tina, yet nervous too. But you know all this, don’t you?”
“I do,” I say gently.
“I’m here to read the last chapter of Dad’s first novel again, but I gave my copy to Maggie. Look at all the shelves of his favorite classics from Dickens to Twain. This one shelf is devoted to all his Connor Diamond novels.Every one of them is here, even the newest ones, but I can’t find One Psychic Summer.”
Lorraine walks in the office with his dad. “Mr. Greenstreet and I are going to take a walk around the front yard and look at the angels,” the kind, short, and strong companion says to Noah. She can’t see me. Looks right through me in fact. “He wants to be by the angels.”
“Dad, do you know where your copy of One Psychic Summer is? It’s not on this shelf. I gave mine away and I need it, Dad.”
“I send a thought to his father hoping he will receive it. His incredible mind still can feel emotion, still remember the past sometimes. “Josephine gave it back to me for safekeeping.” Marshall lets go of Lorraine’s hand and walks to the desk, opening the bottom drawer. There the book sits, looking worn, but still intriguing with the scene of the imaginary seaside town on the cover. He hands it to Noah. “You keep it now.” Then he takes Lorraine’s hand again and they start to walk out the door. Marshall turns back looking at me. “See you soon, Angel,” he says.
; Noah sits on the desk chair looking at the book, then looking at me again.
Lorraine explains, “Oh, Mr. Greenstreet’s been talking to spirits or angels all day, Mr. Noah. He sees them, he really does.” Tears form in Lorraine’s eyes. They walk out toward the front door, her hand holding his.
“He saw you!”
“Yes, it’s all right.” I feel for Noah. He knows what the discovery of the book means. His father’s time to leave is coming soon. “They’ll be together again, Noah. It’s their love story. There were rough roads in the beginning and then the love, the melting of two hearts happened, and they had you. . . their precious son.” Noah’s tears come down. His intuitive abilities will help him now. He knows he will find the answer in the book. Why his father had the affair, the very reason he was born.
Connor Diamond strolls in to Big Rich’s Drugstore. There she is, standing at the counter in all her evilness, the lady referred to by all he’s met as the “witch,” Tessa Stapleton. Her slit-black eyes penetrate his very soul, but Connor Diamond isn’t afraid of her. His Grandma Donna did a good job raising him. She always said, “You’re a gift to me and someday you’ll use your psychic twist for the world, Connor. Remember, don’t live scared.”
“Mornin, Mam,” he says in his polite way. It’s the only way he knows how to be.
“Hello,” she says, begrudgingly looking him up and down. Connor knows he’s still quite a rumpled, hippy-looking kind of guy. But he’s clean and has his Vicky V’s shirt on and some brand new jeans. His hair is long and tied back in a pony tail. She clearly doesn’t like hippy types and that makes Connor really glad.
“Since you’re a lady (he coughs), can you recommend a nice perfume for my new girlfriend, Sahara Molina? You know her? Man, she’s one pretty girl!” Connor knew that would tick off Tessa and he loved rubbing it in. Now he’ll get the clue he needs. How? He’ll see it by watching her evil face.