ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  With thoughts still on Matt, I pretended to study the menu when I sensed someone’s eyes on me. Coyly, I turned my head to the left to look at Jack. In my head, I heard what he was thinking. “Hmm, beautiful long, dark wavy hair, full lips, violet colored eyes…remarkable resemblance to a young, thirty-year-old Elizabeth Taylor.”

  People had told me that same thing time and again. As far as I was concerned, the only thing I had in common with Liz was that I had just as much bad luck with keeping a boyfriend as she had with keeping a husband.

  Jack was staring at me with a glowing smile. I was beginning to think he really was a nice guy, when in my head I heard him say, “Small-breasted though.”

  Ugh, the audacity! I turned back to the menu while pulling up on the spaghetti straps of the vintage fifties little black dress I had borrowed from Laura. She was so into designer vintage clothing.

  After a second round of drinks, the waiter arrived to take our dinner orders. By then, my mind was in a mellow wad of haze. I thought back to the yellow warning label on the prescription bottle of the anti-anxiety medicine that I had taken, WARNING, ALCOHOL MAY INTENSIFY THIS EFFECT.

  Oh well, too late.

  “And for you, ma’am?”

  A short, twenty-something young man tapping a pen to his order pad stared down at me. His neck was a splotchy pink, as if his black bowtie was cutting off his circulation. Ordinarily I would have felt annoyed at his blatant impatience, but I had no control over the relaxed grin that stretched across my face. “I’ll have the Peter Lorre Lamb Chops with Ethel Merman Mint Sauce,” I said.

  Laura leaned over and whispered in my ear. “You have that Mona Lisa look. Maybe you should slow down on those,” she said as she eyed the empty martini glass in front of me.

  “I’m fine,” I said in a singsong tone, as the drink waiter swooped up to the table and set another cosmopolitan down in front of me--my third.

  I ignored Laura and looked across the table at her boyfriend, David. Spiky beach-boy blond hair, soft green eyes, and golden complexion with an upper body that looked toned under his expensive linen blazer. He reminded me of someone who’d be more comfortable riding a boogie board or hanging ten surfing the beaches of Waikiki as opposed to being the financial “wizard,” he claimed to be. Laura always maintained an air of detachment about her that appealed to men who drove expensive vehicles and vacationed in Palm Springs, and that fit David to a T.

  I was more like the lollipop on the conveyor belt of “dating relationships” that never made the final cut. Too tall, slightly skewed shape, lacks sparkle, and has a big chip of emotional detachment.

  As I cradled my martini glass in both hands with elbows resting on the table, I examined Jack’s brown hound’s-tooth jacket that looked as if it’d been hanging in his closet since the nineties. However, he did live up to the handsome professor type with wavy, longish salt and pepper hair and lake blue eyes behind Buddy Holly black-rimmed eyeglasses.

  Although I felt more than a little tipsy, I was holding my own while listening attentively to Jack as he spoke about his tenure at Brown University. He had a good sense of humor, considering he was a political science professor. Laura jumped in to say he’d authored numerous theoretical articles in addition to authoring several books, which really impressed me.

  The waiter brought a bottle of Pinot Noir to the table and poured a sampling into Jack’s wine glass. Lifting the glass, he waved it under his nose. His nostrils looked like the wingspan of a 747 as he sniffed in the aroma. The swirling of the wine in his glass lasted so long it was making me dizzy, when finally he took a sip and began a tirade of spewing endless adjectives like nutty, buttery, fat, thin....

  Was the man describing cookie dough or wine?

  While considering whether he’d take a sip of drain cleaner rather than drink a glass of cheap Chablis, the flickering flames from the candles on the table turned into pretty Fourth of July sparklers. Mentally, I felt as wobbly as a three-legged stool with one of the legs cut short. My vision of Jack blurred, like a picture snapped from inside a car traveling eighty down the highway. The sound of his voice was like a soft, neurotic staccato, as if he were on a cell phone with poor tower reception. In the background, I heard what sounded like an appalling slurping noise, so loud it was as if it had echoed up from out of the Grand Canyon.

  Heads swiveled in my direction. I gave a cursory look at the blurred faces around me. Good God, was that me? I set my martini glass on the table and demurely cast my eyes downward to study a blurred patch of floral carpeting, while an annoying lock of hair hung over my eye.

  Laura huffed. I lifted my eyes to look at her. Even through my fuzzy vision, her expression looked threatening. I’d seen that same look on my mother’s face in a snapshot taken back in the late seventies. I couldn’t have been more than two years old as I stood next to her. She and my father had taken me to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for a rally. No pun intended, but apparently, my mother had a meltdown when I refused to hold up a sign in protest of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

  Laura sighed in exasperation, as she turned her attention to David and Jack. “I don’t care how much the two of you defend that she-devil district attorney, the woman is a social climber if I ever saw one,” she said.

  “Oh, hell!” I babbled, as I felt unable to control the volume of my voice. “The woman is like an Olympic rock climber. And have you noticed everything is big on her, like her boobs, her collagen injected lips, and what’s up with that J-Lo butt? I’ll bet that piece of luggage was surgically implanted.” As I slapped my hand to the table with grunting little pig snorts escaping between uncontrollable laughter, I thought surely this can’t be happening.

  Am I going mad?

  I felt the unmistakable sharpness of a stiletto heel to my ankle. “Ouch!” I looked sideways at Laura and squinted trying to sharpen my focus. The blush on her face was only a couple of shades lighter than her sexy red halter dress. She gave me a deadpan stare, while in my head I heard her say, “Shut the hell up!”

  I wrinkled my nose at her and took a sip of my cosmopolitan. I heard myself talking back to her but it sounded as if I was speaking a foreign language. It was as if someone had dumped my brain into a centrifuge and whipped it into stiff peaks like meringue.

  The furrow between Laura’s eyes deepened. I half expected the springy spirals of her upswept hairdo to come unwound. My gaze gravitated toward her dainty fingers with white crescent-shaped tips as they tightly gripped the wineglass in her hand. Clearly, I saw it as metaphoric--her fingers wrapped around my skinny neck choking the living daylights out of me.

  I stopped talking and sat quietly, praying I wouldn’t make too big a fool of myself. However, I was pretty sure it was a bit late for that.

  Someone whisked the martini glass from my hand. I raised my eyes to see Laura standing over me. I blinked several times trying to make out the details of her face. Strangely, she took on the appearance of Drizella, and I found myself cowering from her like Cinderella. Her fingernails practically cut into the back of my arm, as she helped me to my feet. She put her lips close to my ear.

  “I’m taking you to the restroom,” she hissed, practically spitting in my ear.

  I felt like a tightrope walker doing a balancing act as we snaked our way through the crowded dining area. As we rounded the corner to the restroom, Laura yanked my arm to pull me along, which caused me to trip and fall head first into a man around the corner.

  All I could see of the man was one big globular shape, with the exception of one thing. His eyes were a mesmerizing blue, like the color of deep blue water with golden flecks. He had said something to me, but I was having a hard time stringing the words together. For some reason I felt a sense of urgency in wanting to tell him something of great importance. As I spoke, not even I could make sense of what I was saying.

  “Ohamorry ezzcus,” Laura cooed, while looking at the man.

  I shook my head as if to get the water out of my ears. What did s
he just say? Were those actual words?

  I felt an arm around my shoulder. I think it was Laura guiding me into the lounge area of the restroom. As I plunked down on the low, curvy blue velvet loveseat, my body slumped and my head fell back. My eyes blurrily focused on the chandelier overhead that seemed to turn into a carousel with tiny white ponies wearing pink plumes on top of their heads. I watched in amazement as they spun round and round and round and round…

  Two

  The next morning I awoke to a thin shaft of sunlight pushing its way through a small opening in the drapes and cutting across my face, directly into my eyes. Squinting, I threw my arm up like a shield, a reaction similar to that of a vampire fearing instantaneous combustion.

  I sat up slowly and launched myself out of bed, but only managed to do so after the third try. Pressure filled my head and a heavy throb like the reverberating bass beat of rap music pulsated in my temples. Swaying, as if I were walking the deck of a boat, I made my way to the shower to ready myself for work.

  * * * *

  I tried hard to keep my mind on representing the plaintiff at the arbitration hearing held at Fendworth, Ludwick and Glassman, the law firm I worked for. Our offices occupied the eleventh and twelfth floors in a postmodern skyscraper conveniently located downtown, across the street from city hall.

  My recollection of the night before was a bit hazy. I couldn’t recall the events of my date with Jack. The only memory that stood out was the bizarre incident with the anniversary clock and seeing Matt. I still questioned whether the tiny neurotransmitters in my head were firing on all cylinders, because it just didn’t seem possible.

  The thought of losing my mind was just as disturbing as the new abstract painting that hung on the boardroom’s oyster gray wall. It had erratic broad strokes of criss-crossing black and gray washes and a large splash of crimson that was reminiscent of a Rorschach inkblot.

  I glanced toward the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Why the negative thoughts, I asked myself as my gaze traveled across a sweeping view of downtown Providence. Yeah, right, like I didn’t know. Like I was about to forget the date that was slowly creeping up on me, the date that changed my life, the day that part of me was lost forever. The date with the combined numbers of one and five that fell in the seventh month on the calendar, and it was only five days away. I was beginning to obsess over the approaching date that would mark the seventh year of Matt’s death.

  I turned away from the window and glanced across the table at the defendant, Mr. Greenburg. As he squirmed in his chair wringing his strangler looking hands, I thought about the guilt I felt over Matt’s death. The type of guilt that feels like it’s a birthmark on your soul.

  Believe me. I wanted nothing more than to know the answers that would free me. However, knowing the answers to all my problems at once might have caused me to flat-line.

  I talked myself into refocusing my thoughts on the arbitration hearing. I had to forget about the possibility that I was becoming delusional--or maybe not.

  As the late morning sun spilled over the glass-topped mahogany conference table, all eyes turned toward Isabel Rossi, my opponent. Rossi, an exotic beauty chicly dressed in dazzling coral jewelry and a moss green linen suit that emphasized her hourglass figure, shuffled through a stack of briefs, stalling the hearing.

  Aside from me, all seven people seated at the conference table twitched in their seats like they had suddenly developed prickly heat rash, except for the eighth person, Judge Emery Cohen. He was a retired judge in his late sixties with the jowly face of a bloodhound who sat at the head of the table mediating the hearing. He looked bored, like he was performing a chore similar to taking out the garbage.

  Cohen scratched his balding head and leaned his two hundred, fifty pounds back into the cushiony gray leather chair. After serving on the bench for thirty years, he was probably looking for a little Law & Order Criminal Intent as opposed to Legally Blond. The direction Rossi was taking us.

  From the moment she walked into the boardroom that morning, it felt as if she’d brought the Antarctic with her. However, there was that little problem with her husband--something about bad investments. Last I had heard he was facing indictment for income tax evasion.

  Rossi stopped fumbling with the stack of papers. Her eyelids rose quickly like two snapping window shades to meet my gaze from across the table. She stared back at me as if she was looking into the static TV screen of Poltergeist.

  “Your Honor,” she said abruptly, while ostentatiously shifting in her seat. “Ms. McCory has clearly gone beyond the scope of this case with her questions. In pre-arbitration meetings, we agreed on a short three-hour resolution. Now she’s trying to take us on a fishing expedition.”

  Rossi’s protégé, Richard Bloom, straightened the label on his dark navy suit, as he flashed a pair of hypnotic dark rum eyes in my direction. He’d asked me to dinner around the same time he’d made his comeback from an addiction problem. One that involved his name found in someone’s little black book. Although I turned him down, I might have granted him a soft lob toward career rehab, had it not been for his aloofness that he wore like a bulletproof vest.

  Ha! I should talk.

  Cohen gave me one of his stern school-principal looks. “Counselor?”

  I sunk back in my chair and tented my fingers under my chin. I paused, milking the moment as if I had a box of jurors hanging on my every word. “Your Honor, it was Ms. Rossi’s witness who contradicted herself on the timeframe which opened up further questioning.”

  Rossi drew her lips into a tight knot that made the muscles in her jaw jump. “A moment please,” she said, as she put her hand on the thick shoulder of her client, Mr. Greenburg. An arrogant sounding man with an overbearing voice and thick English accent, his bushy brows hung over his muddy brown eyes like two black caterpillars.

  Discreetly, I looked past my client and shot a sideways glance at Laura. Not only were we best friends, we were colleagues. Her perfectly tanned complexion and tailored black suit accessorized with a Tahitian pearl necklace and matching earrings, contrasted beautifully with her long, platinum hair that she wore stick-straight that day. She looked at me and rolled her eyes heavenward.

  My gaze slid across the table to look at Rossi. I couldn’t miss the pained look on her face, like she was about to walk the gangplank. She sat back in her chair and slouched like someone had punched her in the stomach. As her fingers drummed the table in a steady, rhythmic beat, the diamond on her wedding ring--like the size of a disco ball on platinum prongs--caught the sparkle of the overhead incandescent lighting. The ring was a grim reminder of the enigma I’d become. My life, in large part, was a paradox of sorts, an incongruity to the otherwise normal life I led.

  My six-year-old son was the light of my life. I was six months pregnant with him when Matt died. I had a wonderful group of friends and a great career. My downfall was my uneasy relationship with mortality that added to my emotional detachment. Therapy helped, but each time I was on the threshold of “feeling my feelings,” Matt would pop into my head.

  In my mind’s eye I’d see him happily puttering in the garage and humming to an acoustic guitar solo of November Rain while rethreading the weed-whacker. The small metal trashcan that used to sit next to the wall of hanging rakes and shovels always held a heap of his crumpled Moon Pie wrappers. And on his wooden workbench was where he kept a red beach pail of plastic action figures he’d paid fifty cents for at a garage sale. He told me they were collector’s items that he was cleaning up for our son.

  That first year after Matt’s death, I felt as if his workbench held me hostage. The one-armed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sitting on top of the heap of action figures would pitifully stare back at me, as if it could relate to Matt’s death making me feel as if I, too, had misplaced a limb.

  Plain and simple, “feeling my feelings” brought pain. I didn’t need to relive that fateful day of Matt’s death, and that he would never meet his son, and that my son would a
lways miss not having a father to bond with. And rehashing the awful feeling that I was to blame for Matt’s death, when I couldn’t remember what had happened, made me feel helpless to change my dismal outlook on developing a relationship with any of the men I’d dated.

  Not only that, but I was confused when my psychiatrist diagnosed my memory loss as psychological trauma. Because aside from my husband’s sudden, tragic death, I couldn’t imagine what would have been so traumatic to have erased my memory of the two hours prior to him falling to his death off the Mohegan Bluffs on Block Island. But here’s the thing, every time I wondered about that buried little secret in my head, for some reason I associated it with a cold gray existence that resembled a deserted subway station littered with debris. A morbid thought at best, but one, that for reasons I couldn’t explain, confirmed my suspicions that I was at fault for Matt’s death.

  “Excuse me Ms. McCory,” said Cohen, “do you or do you not have the date of the incident?”

  My head shot up from staring absentmindedly at a faint coffee ring on the glass-topped table, to see Cohen glance at his watch with an irritable flick of his wrist.

  “Yes, I have the date right here. April tenth.” I pulled a signed deposition out of a manila folder and handed it to Cohen.

  Greenburg leaned in Rossi’s direction. “Rip her throat out,” he whispered loudly.

  One side of Cohen’s mouth turned up as he sat forward in his chair, like something finally caught his attention. Greenburg’s wife who looked chic and rich, and very Dynasty-like dressed in a white suit, dark sunglasses, black wide-brimmed sun hat and air of entitlement, shot a stiff look at her husband. Greenburg turned away from her and gave me a grisly stare, while adjusting his two hundred dollar Bulgari tie.