John walked up to the house and put his key in the door, opening it with slight hesitation as if something were behind it. The hinges complained under the movement, the creak echoing through the vacant house. John walked in, the sound of his footsteps on the wood floors ping-ponging off every surface in the house. He had turned off the electricity months ago, knowing it would be some time before he set foot in this house again. The sun was high in the sky outside; its rays spilling into each room through the large windows I’d insisted belonged on each modest wall. But despite the bright light it still felt dreary and dark in the empty house. John flipped the light switch in the living room once or twice, as if a little leftover charge could be pulled from the wires.
There was still a lot of work that needed to be done on the house, but when John peered past the walls that still needed painting and the naked electric sockets, he could also see how close he was to the end. He didn’t know what he was going to do with the house. He wasn’t sure he could live in it without me, but he was afraid to sell it and be done with it. Even renting it out seemed like a betrayal to me, allowing someone else to have a part of the dream we’d created together.
He concluded that no decision was necessary right now, but that leaving it to rot among the manicured lawns of the quiet neighborhood seemed a shame. Grabbing a broom, he put all his energy into cleaning up sawdust from the floors and swiping at the cobwebs that hung like drapes in the corners. He kept at it well into the evening, not noticing as the sun cast its rosy hue on the walls as it set in the late spring sky. It wasn’t until the streetlights lit up outside the living room window when the late hour caught his attention. He picked up his cell phone, noting a missed call from Wendy on it with no voicemail message attached. He also noticed it was after nine o’clock at night, and Sam was probably wondering where he was. He pushed the guilt out of his mind that Sam was on his own for dinner, excusing it with all the times Sam hadn’t shown up for dinner at all in the past couple of months.
John didn’t arrive home until almost ten o’clock at night. The lights were off when he opened the door of the apartment and peered in. He figured Sam was in his room, seeing the note he’d written crumpled up on the counter next to a plate with the remnants of unknown leftovers. John picked the dish up and washed it along with the dirty pans abandoned on the clean stove. He was left with minor frustration at how they were just left behind in the sink despite the fact that the rest of the kitchen was sparkling clean.
He was even more irritated when he saw that half of Sara’s oatmeal bread was missing before he could even cut into it. John dried his hands and cut himself a slice in a hurry, as if waiting any longer would result in the bread disappearing right from underneath him. While no longer warm, it still held the fragrance of just being baked. He bit into it and smiled as if sharing a private joke with someone in the empty room. Through him I could taste the dryness of the bread that was almost good. Sara had never been much of a baker, or anything that mothers were assumed to be good at. It was always a source of family amusement when she became a mom, as she had a difficult time boiling water without burning it. But she managed just fine with the girls and they were better for it, even if her bread-baking skills left something to be desired.
Not wanting to disturb Sam, John ascended the stairs with quiet footsteps. He paused at the top, looking over at Joey’s room that held all of his belongings, my belongings, me. He diverted his attention to Sam’s room, the light shining through the gap underneath the doorway. John tapped on his door and listened for movement to signal whether Sam was awake or not. No sound could be heard. He knocked a little louder and still no one answered or even stirred behind the closed door. He turned the doorknob and pushed against it, but something was blocking him from opening it more than an inch. John groaned when he saw that Sam had pushed a chair against the door to keep him from opening it. Ages ago, John had removed the lock from Sam’s door, tired of being locked out while Sam ignored him from the inside. He had taken the lock off the door to give him a chance of reaching his son. This was Sam’s habitual way of keeping the barrier in place.
“Sam, come on. Would you open the door?” He wasn’t surprised when Sam still didn’t answer him, so he struggled with the door to get it open. Little by little, the chair moved with the door until John could reach his hand through the space he’d created to push the chair over. Sam sat at his desk and regarded his dad with eyebrows raised, as if John was just an overreacting child.
I’d seen him give me the same look countless times when I’d try to reason with him. Rather than speak, he’d just let that look land on me for a few moments too long as if to size me up or see if I’d waver. On the outside I’d remain firm. But inside my blood would boil, just as John’s was doing now under Sam’s calm and amused gaze. And then Sam would do whatever it was I was asking him to do, whether it was to clean his own bathroom or stop acting as if all of us were in the wrong. But he’d do it with an air of conceit, letting us know through his silent demeanor that he was only doing this to promote peace, and we should be thankful he was humoring us. It infuriated me then. But now I was beginning to understand why he acted this way, why he found pleasure in the figurative steam coming from his father’s ears even as he climbed to the top of the power struggle by using his father’s force against him.
“I am sick and tired of you wedging your chair against this door, Sam!” John yelled, his face red in his growing fury. “It wrecks the door and can break the chair.” John breathed hard while looking at him, waiting for Sam to say something against it so they could have at it. Sam, knowing his dad was anticipating a challenge, kept quiet for a few moments, his stone cold demeanor standing firm before he gave his dad the reaction he wanted.
“It wouldn’t wreck the door if you didn’t try to push it aside all the time. Maybe if you just gave me my lock back, your precious door wouldn’t get ruined.” He said it in a calm voice, looking John in the eye as he spoke. John, in the meantime, was feeling crazy on the inside, flailing against the air of Sam’s cool disposition.
“Damn it, Sam! You don’t have a lock because then I’d never see you! Why can’t you just do what I tell you to do?” he shouted.
I could see the sparks in the air as Sam broke, something snapping inside of him after months of walls upon walls being built up between them.
“Because you’re never here! Even when you are here, you’re not! You don’t want to see me, you don’t even talk to me. And tell me what to do? It’s not like you’ve even been a parent to me at all since Rachel died. It’s like you’ve locked yourself up in that room with all her stuff and have nothing left for me. But Dad, I’m not dead, I’m here!” Sam stormed, clenching and unclenching his fists as he yelled at his dad. It was the same argument from a few weeks earlier, the unresolved emotions flying up between them after having been pushed down and ignored for too long. “I’m sick and tired of this house, this city, YOU! I can’t stand it here any longer!”
John held his breath at the words, realizing what was coming next. As much as he’d thought this eminent plan of action would bring him relief, he was suddenly faced with fear at the thought of his son moving out. At the forefront, he knew he’d miss his son. But underneath this fear was the knowledge that once his son was gone, John would be faced with my presence in every wall, on every surface, and in the air he breathed despite the fact that I and all my things were locked behind Joey’s door.
“What are you saying, Sam?” John asked, his body rigid as he waited for what they both knew was coming.
“I’m moving in with Mom.”
John let out a slow breath, sitting on the bed across the room as a wave of unexpected peace washed over both of them. The fight ended with those words. John wasn’t going to forbid it, a fact proved obvious in the way he looked at the ground. And while Sam hoped his father would protest a little, he didn’t expect him to. Besides, it wouldn’t have made a difference even if he did.
“Does your mom
know?” John asked.
“Yeah, I called her when I got home and saw your note. But I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he admitted.
“I know. I mean, I knew this was coming. It doesn’t make it any easier though,” John said. His eyes watered, though he held the tears at bay. But the sentiment wasn’t lost on Sam who needed to see some kind of regret from his dad. The wall between them crumbled piece by piece as they stood at the crossroads, finding their truce at the most unlikely of places. “What does she say about it? Is she fine with this decision?”
“She was actually happy about it. She said she’d call you to hash out the details.” John remembered the missed call from Wendy, realizing that was what she was calling him about. He was glad he hadn’t heard his phone ring.
The move wasn’t going to happen for a few more weeks, allowing Sam to finish his sophomore year at his current high school before summer vacation started, transferring to the school in Sebastopol in the fall. When it was settled, John embraced Sam for the first time in years. Sam leaned into John, just as he had when he was young, when life didn’t mean death or the end of marriage, when families stayed intact and everyday life was predictable.
Twelve
The next several weeks, John made every effort to be present in the home. He knew he only had a few weeks left with Sam, and he wanted to make it right. It was during this time that I felt him distance himself from me. For him, this meant he pushed my image away whenever I entered his thoughts. For me, it meant there were a lot more barriers, a lot more hurdles to jump through just to get close to him. And when I did get close, I felt like I was fighting against the wind, struggling from being blown away as he repelled me away like the wrong side of a magnet. I couldn’t touch him, hear his thoughts, or even be in the same room as him whenever he worked to push me away.
It was different when I listened in to those who didn’t know me or even think to keep their minds closed to me. I could dance in their thoughts, sometimes even appearing to them as a flash of an image they were either aware of or not. Their inner dialogue was the stuff from which stories were made, and I would often sit for hours just listening to them talk within their heads.
Did I turn off the stove? I’m sure I turned off the stove. I picked up the pot of oatmeal before it burned, and then, oh yes, there it is. I turned off the stove. The cat is probably licking away the oatmeal left in the pot by now. That’s going to be a glued on mess to clean up when I get home, I know it. Maybe the cat will be hungry enough to lick it clean. That damn cat. I wonder if Peter will know it was me if I leave that door open and let him accidentally run outside.
The physical effects of John’s resistance caught me off guard. It surprised me that a connection like this existed where the living had an effect on the dead, even if it was keeping me away. My natural reaction was that of a jealous girlfriend, trying everything to keep myself in his thoughts in an exhausting array of tricks. I’d learned how to break through the barrier that separated his world from mine, allowing me the power to move objects that existed in the land of the living. Of course, such a feat took every amount of concentration I had. Thus far I had only succeeded in being able to knock things down, using gravity to help my cause along. But I knocked items down in front of him every chance I got – the one photo he kept of all four of us on the mantle, one of my books that was still in the room despite his sweep through in the first week of my death, and the most impressive of all – dropping the remote so that it turned to my favorite movie.
That one took immense planning. On a day when he was gone and I could move about without worrying about being repelled out of the house, I flipped through the TV listing book they published every Sunday in the newspaper. There it was in black and white, the title of my favorite movie, “Made in Heaven.”
I had made him watch the movie with me often, forcing him to endure two hours of my laughing and crying, sometimes at the same time, as the hearts of the characters on screen were broken over and over. If that movie appeared on the TV screen now, there was no way he’d be able to ignore me.
I memorized the time of when the movie was playing, and concentrated my hardest on staying within a human timeline rather than the non-existence of time in my own reality. And then I just prayed he’d be there at the right moment.
All the other schemes of opening him up to my memory – the photo, the book, and anything else of mine I could place in his path - only resulted in John picking up the wayward item and depositing it in Joey’s room, keeping the thought of me at bay with impressive strength. But the remote control trick gave him pause, the memory of me filling the room as Elmo, the main character of the movie, filled the screen. John sank to the couch as Elmo sang to the radio in his car, the book “Mike and Me” flung next to him on the passenger seat.
Rachel, just give me time, he thought, as if he knew I could hear him. His resistance gone without warning, I found myself cast inside of him with a lurch. I should have known, having planned this little action with such deliberation. But still, it caught me off guard. I’d only expected a smile, a memory, only one brief moment of recognition for all the effort I put into this plan. Instead I could feel the way his hair moved across my forehead, his breath in my mouth, the beat of his heart in my chest. I was wrapped up in his smell, intoxicated on the familiar scent I adored.
I danced in the memories that flashed through his head, enticing him to keep me there with him as he let his imagination run wild. But then he thought of Sam and I felt the barrier rising up again. I screamed in pain as it fought against me.
I haven’t forgotten you. I love you more than my own life. But I also love my son, and I need to be with him now.
With that final thought, I was flung from his body, from his home, from the city, at thousands of miles an hour. I was thrown with the force of a speck of dust flicked from an otherwise-flawless suit jacket. I found myself propelled through space with such velocity I was sure I was on fire.
My pride wounded, I realized there was no fighting back. I needed to stay away, at least for a little while. I’d sewn myself too deep into the fabric of John and Sam’s life. I had become so involved, even from the stance of a mere fly on the wall, I sometimes forgot I was even dead.
The thought of walking away from them terrified me. Would John end up forgetting me? Would he learn to live without me? Would I become a memory from a past life and would he begin something new with - and the next thought almost paralyzed me - someone new?
But I knew staying away was the only answer. And out of respect for the man I loved and the relationship he had with his son, there was no other choice but to let go for now. So I fought every fiber in my being that ached to be near him. Instead, I spent a few days of human time in space, practicing my own form of meditation by closing my mind to John. I focused on the wonderment that existed in the pure nothingness that held me up; surrounded by stars and meteors, planets and black holes, experiencing the coppery taste that existed in the lack of atmosphere, and the siren’s call of the heavens that bordered the delicious quiet of the universe and could only be heard if I didn’t move at all.
And I thought of Joey.
Despite my disbelief in Heaven in those early days of my death, I had grown to believe that there really was something out there. I could sense a stirring within me at the faint trembling notes that existed in the corners of space, and I felt its pull whenever I let go of my hold on the living long enough to exist in the world of the dead. And I believed Joey was there.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I watched myself ask six-year-old Joey. We were at the breakfast table back then, and in a journey through time, I was watching now from the leaves of the ficus I had inherited from my Grandma Bonnie after she died.
“An astronaut!” he exclaimed. He grinned, revealing his two missing front teeth before diving into the Cheerios in front of him. I had forgotten how young his voice once was, how his hair had once been a sandy blonde before darkeni
ng to the milky caramel it was before he left the earth.
“Why an astronaut?” I asked him. “Is it because you want to see if the moon is made of cheese? Or maybe to see if the cow jumped over the moon?” I asked him in all seriousness, though a hint of a smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
“No!” he giggled. “Those things aren’t true; those are just jokes!” he informed me, and I feigned shock that I had been misinformed.
“I had no idea! What will you see if you travel to space?” I asked him. And in his young wisdom, he described to me a vast universe with giant planets that traveled around the same sun as us, moving in a silent journey at varying speeds with tiny spheres of moons that traveled around them like our cats that swirled around our ankles in the morning before I opened their cans of food. He told me of the meteors that enter our atmosphere, how they are smaller than the palms of our hands but fifty times faster than the speed of a bullet. And he talked of the more impressive comets, the dirty snowballs of the sky that orbit the solar system and hold glimpses of early life. I listened then in the kitchen, and now in the folds of the ficus, with amazement as my young kindergartener explained the secrets of the universe, giving me information I’d learned over the course of time as well as new insight to a mysterious horizon that existed beyond the minuscule earth we lived upon.
“How do you know so much?” I exclaimed, no longer feigning astonishment.
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