ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  “That’s where the old gravestones with the pictures are. Can I stay and look at them?”

  “Okay, but no wandering off.” I playfully ruffled the hair on top of his head. “And no picking flowers.”

  As Nicholas rolled his eyes and tottered off, I smiled to myself, recalling Memorial Day when he swiped a rose wreath from someone’s grave because Matt didn’t have any flowers on his grave. Getting angry was impossible when his intentions were so good.

  While I arranged the roses in the gravesite vase, I heard murmuring. I looked over my shoulder. The woman who walked up the hill next to me sat back on her heels communing with her dearly departed, as her terrier playfully ran laps around her. With lips moving and head bobbing, she sprayed the marble headstone with a bottle of blue liquid, pulled a terrycloth rag from a blue canvas tote, and began polishing the headstone.

  As I turned to check on Nicholas, I thought back to Matt’s parents. They were upset with me because I wouldn’t let them bury him in the family plot in New Jersey. My very first gravesite talk with Matt was a week after he died. As I stood in front of his grave cradling my belly, I told him how important it was to have kept him in Providence. It was more for his unborn son than for me. The thought of Nicholas never meeting his father was unbearable. At least having Matt buried in Providence would always be a reminder to Nicholas of his father’s once existence, a place he could visit, even if it was just a grassy knoll with a headstone.

  Just as I had finished arranging the roses in the vase, I felt something prickly assaulting the back of my leg. I looked down to see the woman’s terrier wrapped around my right calf, as he began to work himself into a frenzy. “Hey stop that!” His spindly little hips moved faster than the hips of a Salsa dancer. I tried to un-stick him, but it was as if he had super-glued himself to my leg. He stared up at me with wild, black beady eyes.

  “Down boy down!” With hips pumping and teeth bared, he growled at me like a jealous Latin lover. I finally managed to shake him loose and looked to see if the woman was paying any attention to her dog. She was still in heavy conversation with her beloved. Just then, the horny little brown beast snatched Greenleaf and ran off like a bandit.

  “Hey, come back here!”

  The distempered pooch raced in the opposite direction of his owner, with Greenleaf dangling from his jaws. With the chameleon’s little mouth open wide in permanent rigor, I imagined a high-pitched voice yelling Help meee! It was like a scene from the old Saturday Night Live Mr. Bill skit, only it starred Mr. Greenleaf and Sluggo the dog.

  My lungs burned, as I chased across the second tier after the terrier. Baiting me, he slowed down to do a pony prance. Agitated and wheezing, the sudden burst of unwanted exercise had put me in a foul mood, but I knew yelling at the dog would serve no purpose.

  “Come on boy, be a good doggie, drop the chameleon.” The little beast stopped and looked at me as if to ask, what’s in it for me? As I was about to tackle him, he dashed off up the hill. He ran past a man standing up on the third tier. Lit from behind by the afternoon sun, all I saw was his silhouette. I lifted a hand to block the glare in my eyes, but all I could make out was his plaid shorts, which were a definite abomination of style.

  A shrill whistle sliced through the tranquility of the cemetery and pulled my attention away. Behind me, the terrier’s master held two fingers between her teeth, whistling as if she were hailing a New York cab. I turned to see the dog run down the hill toward his master and ditch Greenleaf on the way. Like a teeny weenie stuntman in a chameleon costume, Greenleaf’s stiff little body tumbled down the hill and toppled into a bright red potted geranium.

  I scanned the third tier of the cemetery and found Nicholas examining what must have been a photograph on a headstone, but there was no sight of the man, who seemed to have vanished.

  I made my way over to where Greenleaf landed and rooted through the potted plant to retrieve him. Brushing the dirt off his poor tortured body, I noticed he was missing a leg. Find my leg, he seemed to say with his relentless stare. I stuck my fingers back in the dirt and searched, but the leg was MIA, and I didn’t have the energy to trek back up the hill and hunt it down.

  I walked back to Matt’s resting place and placed Greenleaf on the ground in front of the headstone. The tall grass concealed his missing back leg. I peered up at the top of the hill. The feeling in the pit of my stomach was unsettling, like an eerie calm before a storm. Who was that man?

  As I ran a hand over Matt’s gravestone, I heard Nicholas call to me.

  “Mom! Mom!” He was running down the hill in my direction with something in his hand, waving it excitedly in the air. He practically stumbled over his feet as he reached me.

  “Okay, Partner, just calm down. What’s all the excitement about?”

  Breathless he held out his hand. “Look what I have!” The palm of his hand held a tarnished silver chain-link bracelet with a single heart-shaped pendant.

  “It’s for you, Mom.”

  “For me?” I took the bracelet from him. It had been years since I’d seen one like it. It looked like a bracelet Matt had given me, one that I’d lost at a football game when he was still alive.

  “Where did you find this?” The pendant dangled as I held the bracelet by the chain.

  “I didn’t find it. The man up there told me to give it to you.” Nicholas pointed up to the third tier where the man with the atrocious shorts had stood, which oddly enough reminded me of how Matt lacked any kind of fashion sense.

  “Nicholas, what have I told you about talking to strangers.”

  “He wasn’t a stranger. He knew about Greenleaf dying, and told me not to be sad, and that I’d get a pet for my birthday in October.”

  I was taken aback. “He knew when your birthday was?”

  “I guess,” Nicholas said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Mom, look! The heart has writing on the back.” Nicholas eagerly read the inscription on the pendant. “A. B., I Love You, M. P. M.”

  As Nicholas stared up at me, I became lightheaded. No, it can’t be. There’s no possible way. My heart pounded, as I stared at the initials. Aubrey Becker, I love you, Mathew Paul McCory. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t the bracelet Matt had given me in our last year of graduate school, and that the inscription, although the exact words Matt had inscribed on the back of the bracelet, was just a coincidence, but I knew it wasn’t. The man knew my son’s--our son’s birthday.

  My head swirled and I was barely able to catch my breath, as I spun in a circle and frantically searched the empty cemetery hills for Matt.

  * * * *

  Seagulls circled overhead against a cerulean sky, their wings motionless as they glided on the wind. Candy-colored windsurfing sails speckled the crescent-shaped coastline of Fogland Beach. Heat waves crossed over the hot white sand, while a warm salty breeze caressed my face. I peered out toward the Sakonnet Lighthouse that was but a dot on the distant coastline of Little Compton.

  The plastic wefts of the chaise stuck to my back. I leaned forward to spritz my body with cold water. The beaded watery mist glistened on my skin, and gave temporary relief from the late morning heat.

  A few feet away, Nicholas positioned action figures around his sandcastle. A blonde-headed toddler with butterfly barrettes wearing a two-piece yellow polka dot swimsuit trimmed in tiny ruffles, played next to him. Giggling, she poked her pink chubby toes into a small sand hole she filled with water from a paper cup. Apple cheeks and round blue eyes, she was the miniature version of her mother.

  As I rested my head on the back of the chair, I became transfixed with a wispy white cloud drifting across the blue sky. My mind picked up subtle thoughts about what happened at the cemetery, and how Matt wants me to find him. It was as if the answer was trying to creep out from the sky and reach for me.

  “Hey, Aubrey,” Laura said, as she stood over me. Her large-brim sun yellow hat shadowed my face like an umbrella. Her shapely body showed off an indigo bikini accented with a yellow stripe t
hat put my plain black one-piece swimsuit to shame.

  “How’s it going?” she asked. She looked quizzically at the Sesame Street character shoestring tied around my ponytail, as she set her bright multi-colored striped beach bag down in the sand.

  “Oh, not too bad,” I said, trying to pump enthusiasm into my voice.

  “You went to the cemetery this morning, right?’’ said Laura. Removing her large hat and oversized blue-tinted Armani sunglasses, Laura laid back and tilted her face up toward the sun.

  “Yeah, Nicholas actually left Greenleaf at Matt’s gravestone.”

  “Well, that’s positive. You going to let him get another chameleon?”

  “Actually, he was talking about wanting a rabbit,” I said.

  Laura stretched her lean body out on the chaise. Her platinum hair caught the fiery rays of the sun and she looked the perfect picture of a tawny cat sunning itself. I wanted to be honest with her. I wanted to tell her that everything I told her about seeing Matt and hearing people’s voices in my head was true and not some ridiculous joke.

  “Laura, there are things in my life I haven’t told you.”

  One emerald eye opened as Laura turned her head toward me, squinting. “Like what?”

  I paused and watched two young boys laugh as they took turns dunking one another underwater, each of them gasping as they came up for air. “I used to write letters to Matt.”

  “I used to write letters to Robert, too. The last one was me asking for a divorce after I kicked him out of the house.”

  “Actually, Matt was dead when I wrote them.”

  Laura lasered a look at me. “Dead?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You mean like when he first died, right?”

  “Um, yes and no. I just stopped writing the letters a few weeks ago.”

  “Laura sat upright and raked her fingers through her hair pushing her blond locks off her glistening forehead. “You’re not serious,” she said.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it made me feel close to him, like he was still here for me.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me about this before?”

  “Too embarrassed to admit I was scared, I guess.” I rested my eyes on Nicholas and watched him crash his action figures into his sandcastle, crumbling one side of it.

  “I don’t understand. I was always here for you,” said Laura.

  “I know. You and my parents gave me strength, but I was still scared inside. At first, writing letters to Matt was therapeutic to help me through the grief. After a while, it made me feel safe like Matt was watching over me. I didn’t want to stop. It was like fifth grade when my cousin, Brent, let me in on the secret that there was no Santa. I cried, and it wasn’t because I thought I wouldn’t get any gifts. For an introverted kid who kept feelings to herself, writing letters to a nonjudgmental Santa had nothing to do with gifts. He was someone I’d tell my dreams to or wrote about things that bothered me.”

  “Hmm, therapist Santa,” Laura said.

  I sat up and slid my legs over the side of the chaise to face Laura. “I don’t feel the need to write to Matt anymore.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Laura.

  “I’ve realized it was part of my unwillingness to let go of the past. In a way, I hid behind his death. I put myself in emotional lockdown and threw away the key.”

  “Have you ever shared this with any of your therapists?”

  I dug my feet into the sand, the fine grains shifting through my toes. “No. I’ve never been completely honest with any therapist.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think that admitting I have weaknesses would make me feel as if I were out of control. A few days ago, you alluded to the fact that it was unhealthy for me to try and put life into perfectly organized little compartments in an attempt to control every aspect of it. It’s how I’ve lived my life since Matt died. It was like an automatic coping mechanism. But I’m going to start doing things differently.”

  Laura eyed me skeptically.

  “Really, I am. On the way home from the cemetery this morning, Nicholas said he felt like he didn’t fit in with his friends. He cried over not having a father to hang out with like the other kids. I feel it’s my fault. I’ve been selfish. I’m not saying I should have remarried just to give my son a father. But I never stopped to think about how my actions were affecting Nicholas. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I think I’m finally ready to loosen up on the reins.”

  Laura nodded thoughtfully and studied my face. I wasn’t sure she believed me. But then why should she after almost seven years of crying wolf.

  “All I’m going to say is I’m done living in a dream world. Speaking of which, do you still have that book on dream interpretation?”

  “So, I take it we’re done with our conversation?”

  “Yep, nothing more to talk about.”

  Laura shook her head. “Yeah, I have the book somewhere. Why?”

  “I had the most bizarre dream about Matt and his accident and I don’t know what it means.”

  “Was it different than that reoccurring dream you used to have where Matt’s teetering on the edge of the bluffs?”

  “It was similar, but very different this time. Long story short, Matt didn’t look like Matt. In my dream, he had black hair and was very tall. He wore sunglasses and when he took them off, his eyes were blue not amber like Matt’s eyes were. I can’t explain it but when I looked into his eyes, somehow he was Matt. It was weird.”

  Laura eyes narrowed. “Hmm, that’s odd.”

  “I know. What do you think it means?”

  With the sun almost directly above her, she put her arm over her forehead to shade her eyes. “I wasn’t referring to the meaning of your dream being odd. It’s about the man in your dream. When did you dream this?”

  “A few days ago, maybe. Why?”

  Laura scooped up the sunglasses from her lap and slipped them on. Sunday night when we went out to dinner with the guys, do you remember bumping into this guy when I was taking you to the restroom?

  “Let’s get real, I don’t even remember eating.”

  “Well, as I was dragging your sorry ass to the restroom, we turned the corner and you stumbled right into this very tall, handsome guy who caught you.”

  “Oh yeah. I do remember, but very vaguely. Why?”

  “He used that lame pick up line of ‘Have we met before?’ and you mumbled something back to him about his eyes.” Laura shrugged her shoulders. “It was hard to decipher exactly what you were saying, but I think you called him Matt.”

  “Really? That’s odd. I wonder what I was thinking.”

  While the scent of coconut tanning lotion mingled with the warm breeze, I couldn’t even begin to rationalize why I’d call a complete stranger, Matt. My thoughts drifted back to the evening before and the book lying on the coffee table with the highlighted mark next to the last paragraph on the page. “He just wanted to sit there and think about her for awhile…the woman he had loved and lost…and then the woman he had caught a glimpse of the night before, and could only dream of.”

  Was Matt trying to tell me something about the man at the restaurant? The man whose face I couldn’t remember.

  Part 2

  Eleven

  As we sat in the crowded food court at the mall, I gazed across the table at Laura as she finished the last bites of her salad. Next to me, Nicholas sat cross-legged on a plastic cafeteria chair. With soggy French fries in hand, he bulldozed a road through the ketchup in the bottom of his Happy Meal box. It was just another day at the mall and everything seemed so normal--but it wasn’t.

  There was nothing normal about Matt being at the cemetery talking to our son. At least that’s what I had believed. I so wanted to ask Laura her opinion. However, the last time I asked her advice on parallel universes and spiritual beings, you’d thought I had just confessed to being a serial killer.

 
“Hey, let’s stop at Nordstrom’s to look for a Marc Jacobs handbag,” Laura said, as she popped to her feet and tossed her hair back off her shoulders.

  “Okay.” I took the spongy fries from Nicholas’s hand and gave him a wet wipe I pulled from my purse.

  “Oh, but let’s stop at Victoria’s Secret first.”

  A good-looking middle-aged man dressed in a white dress shirt and blue jeans caught her attention.

  “Victoria’s Secret? No, no,” I said, wagging a finger at her. “You’re all about those expensive little things you bring back from New York when you fly out there to stock up on Prada, Versace, and Manolos, not to mention the rest of your designer wardrobe. By the way, I hope you have those items insured.”

  “It’s not for me silly, it’s for you.”

  “And exactly who am I going to wear Victoria’s Secret lingerie for?”

  “Well, no one right now, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look for future reference. Besides, you’ll have to get rid of your days-of-the-week underwear someday.”

  I figured what the heck, if it’ll get her off my back, why not? We rode the escalator up to the second floor. No sooner did we step foot in the store, when Laura made a beeline toward the racks at the back.

  “You have to try this on,” she said, as she pulled a long black lacy nightgown off the rack and held the hanger up under my chin, letting the gown drape in front of me. “It’s perfect!”

  “You’re joking, right?” The slit up the front looked as if it could reach my belly button.

  Her eyes shifted to look past me. “I don’t believe it!” She whipped the nightgown from under my chin and flung it back on the rack. “Quick, look at the guy standing out in the mall right in front of the display window.”

  “Where?” I said, as I turned to look behind me. “You mean the elderly mall-walker in the blue jogging suit?”

  “Ugh! Not him, look at the tall, dark-haired guy standing a few feet to the right of him. I can’t be sure from this distance, but he looks like the guy you bumped into at the restaurant.”

  My heart leapt, as a sick feeling in my stomach rose up in my throat.