Over Our Heads

by Andrea Thompson

  “No, you don’t get it, Rach. It was like people knew beforehand what was going to happen, so it proved both the collective unconscious and pre-cognition.”

  Rachel didn’t remember the rest of the conversation, but did remember that somehow it led to her and Lester having sex, which in hindsight, made her feel a bit pathetic. At what moment, she wondered, did I give in? Lester was like a black hole – seemingly small and insignificant, yet possessing an unfathomably strong gravitational force. Rachel wonders at what point in their interaction she finally reached the “event horizon” – that invisible line, which when crossed, marked the point of no return. Current theory really had no idea what it felt like to fall into a black hole. Some said you’d become frozen in time at the point of entry, infinitely unaware of your own demise. Others theorized that consciousness would end immediately, as the variations of gravity during descent would stretch the body and mind to the point of spaghettification. From her experience with Lester, Rachel thought it was safe to say that it was possible for both possibilities to occur at the same time.

  Rachel opened the freezer door, put the juice in her cart, and crossed it off the list. It still made her wince to remember how desperate she had been for Lester’s attention, how hard she had tried to be cool and sexy when she was with him, how much she had abandoned herself. And it had been futile, because in the end, she just didn’t speak Lester’s language. Emma did. They were from the same distant planet, tuned to a station that nobody could hear but them. Rachel had tried to get on Lester’s wavelength. She had gone with him to photography exhibits, dressed all in black, but it had been no use. He hadn’t been for her. She had known that from the start really. All the time they had been together, it was like Lester had been on loan to her. A filler to take up the space that Emma had left vacant when she moved back out west. And Rachel had been that for Lester too. He hadn’t been her equal. Never could be. And she hadn’t been Lester’s idea of a dream girl. He’d wanted a Ferrari, but she was a Volvo. Getting him clean had been a project they could both work at together, but once that was accomplished, it was over. They had both just been biding time.

  Rachel picked up the eggs, the last item on her list, then pushed her cart to the checkout line. As she waited, she looked at her watch. There was still time. Too bad the liquor store wasn’t open yet. She could just pick up the booze herself. Heaven forbid she should run out of drink, with a house full of mourners.

  Of course, Lester would be staying the night again. What could she say? He was there for Emma, not her. Still, it irked her that while she was out shopping, he was sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen, inserted into the middle of all of their lives. It wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t ever gotten the idea in her mind. Yes, it had been she who had seduced him. She was lonely, and maybe even missing Emma away in Vancouver. Now it was too late. She’d seen how beautiful his face looked when he came inside her. He had seen her naked, time and time again. There was no erasing that. Those moments between them were rocks in the water that Rachel now had to navigate.

  “Don’t worry about the plans for today, Rach,” Lester had said that morning. “Sam and Emma have it sorted. One less thing for you to worry about. Today you can just relax. Let yourself feel.” Then he had given her a smile that reminded Rachel of that poster with the cute little kitten dangling from a tree branch. Hang in there!

  Rachel paid for her groceries, and walked back to the car. Dear God, how embarrassing. Really, how dare he? Who the hell was Lester Templeton to tell her what she should do with herself today of all days? As she put the bags in the trunk, she thought about how she had at least managed to change the subject after Lester’s annoying attempts at sympathy.

  “You haven’t been to bed yet have you, Lester?” Rachel had said.

  “Ha, ha. I knew you’d think that. No, Rach,” he replied.

  Rach. No. She didn’t want him calling her that. Rachel. Full name. No pet names.

  “I got up a couple of hours ago. I’m an early bird, now. It’s partly because of you, you know. Another gift of sobriety, Rach,” Lester said, lifting his coffee cup in her direction, before taking a sip.

  “Rachel,” she replied.

  “What? Oh, okay sure. Rachel,” he said. “I still get my quiet time in, but I do it in the morning now. Ha, ha, turns out you were right. It’s good to do my art early instead of late at night. Then I have the whole day ahead of me to do what I want. Know that my soul has been fed first, you know?”

  Rachel got in the car, and drove back to the house. No. Yet again, she hadn’t had a clue as to what he was talking about. Or to be more precise, she had known exactly what he was talking about, but she thought it was inane. What grown man talks about feeding his soul without a hint of embarrassment or irony? Self-awareness and maturity were not Lester’s forte. Not that Rachel had shown a lot of clear thinking with her choice of Lester in the first place, but it was the nature of the beast. Falling in love was dangerous. You might as well say to someone, will you please inject me with a drug that causes hyperbolic euphoria and then allow me to make huge, life-changing decisions?

  Love had baffled Rachel until she learned about oxytocin. Then it had all made sense, but it had also then become clear what a terrible idea romantic love was. Sure, it worked wonders to enhance the possibility of procreation, but in a world already over-populated to a point, which made humans more akin to a weed or a virus than any other animal, help with procreation was the last thing we needed. It was an evolutionary glitch, Rachel thought, most probably caused by the rapid rate of expansion of our cerebral cortex. Humans had become too smart for their own good. Evolution didn’t stand a chance of keeping up.

  Rachel left Lester in the kitchen without a reply. She had a shower, got dressed, and wrote out her shopping list. It had taken a moment for her to figure out what to wear before she left. At first she thought she’d go for a black dress, but then decided against it. All black was for Italians. Dark brown. Browns were a more subtle way to say goodbye.

  29.

  AFTER THE ZOO INCIDENT, Emma kicked herself for letting her guard down. She should have known Rachel would make fun of her for saying she knew what the apes were thinking. Some people couldn’t be trusted with secrets like that, especially people like Rachel. Emma felt stupid for even trying. Ever since that time in the garden, when Emma had sensed Rachel’s grief, and her dead father floating around in the air, it had been clear that Rachel was afraid of anything she couldn’t understand.

  Every morning at breakfast, when Grandma was reading the news section of the new morning edition of the Toronto Star, and Rachel searched for articles on the latest science breakthroughs, Emma read the horoscopes. Everyone knew she believed in astrology, so there was no point trying to hide it. She’d read Grandma’s aloud first, which meant reading both the Capricorn and the Sagittarius horoscopes, because Grandma was born on the cusp. Next Emma would read the one for her own sign, Pisces, and then she’d read the one for Virgo. No matter what it said, Emma never read it out loud. Even that time when the stars warned that Rachel’s Mars in Aries would be at an antagonistic angle to Uranus in her first house. Emma knew Rachel would say that astrology was stupid, so she kept her mouth shut. She did feel a little guilty though, when Rachel came home at the end of the day with a tensor bandage around her ankle. Emma didn’t read Wanda’s horoscope out loud either, but she still checked it, trying to imagine how each transit would affect her mysterious Gemini mother, wherever she was.

  Emma decided, after that day at the zoo, that it was best to keep her dream journals under her bed. They were filling up quickly. By the time Emma was halfway through grade eight, she had become a whiz at remembering her dreams. She had even gotten to the point where she could control what she wanted to dream that night.

  The first time it happened, Emma said to the darkness of her bedroom, “tonight I want a dream that will tell me who I can trust.” Then,
after Emma fell asleep, there was Grandma, dancing around their living room in a long flowing ball gown, singing a duet into a microphone with a nice looking black man in a red shirt. Grandma was about to introduce the man to Emma, but just as she was taking a breath, Emma woke up.

  Although she was happy that she had been able to dream up her grandma that night, Emma didn’t realize that the dream was a miracle, until later that day when she came home from school and heard music she hadn’t heard before coming from the house as she headed up the driveway. Day-O! Day-ay-ay-ay O – a male voice sang through the windows. When Emma went inside, she almost passed out when Grandma came up to her waving a record with the same man on the cover that Emma had seen in her dream.

  “Oh, wait till you hear this!” Grandma said. “I know you’re sick of Tom Jones, but this Harry Belafonte guy you’re just going to love.”

  “Well, I don’t go in for all that psychedelic hippy stuff like your mother was into,” Grandma had said once, while they were folding laundry together in the living room. “But I do believe in dreams. And that thing – what is it when you know who’s calling before the phone rings? I believe in that,” Grandma said.

  “You mean psychic powers? Like telepathy?” Emma had replied, rolling a pair of tube socks up into a ball.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Grandma had said. “And I know a thing or two about dreams. Like just before your grandfather died, I had a dream that I was swimming in muddy water,” Grandma had frowned and stopped folding. “Your mother was there too,” she added, then paused. Grandma had looked away for a moment, then she turned back to Emma and gave her a pretend smile. “I heard one of those psychics on TV say that muddy water is a bad omen. So are those dreams where you lose all your teeth.”

  “I had one of those once!” Emma let the sheet she was folding fall to the ground.

  “And I bet somebody died right after that didn’t they?” Grandma had said, picking it up again.

  “Yes. Sorry,” Emma had replied. “Somebody did. Barney the dog.”

  “Oh that’s too bad, Emma,” Grandma had said. “But that’s a common one. Someone close to you is ready to pop off, and all of a sudden you’re dreaming about all of your teeth falling out.”

  Grandma was a natural at remembering her dreams, but she had no interest in learning how to control them. “Honey,” she had said as she folded the last shirt, “the last thing I want to do when I’m asleep is think. Once I’m out, it’s like I’m in a movie theatre. I just lay back and let the show begin!”

  Emma’s ability to lucid dream was getting better each night, and more and more often she was able to recognize that she was dreaming without waiting for the voice to tell her. She had almost forgotten about the dream miracle of conjuring up Harry Belafonte for Grandma, until she dreamed of Lester Templeton. In that dream, Lester was walking across a football field. It was overflowing with poppies like in The Wizard of Oz. He looked pretty much the same as he did at Foster’s house, only taller, as if he had been stretched out, or as if Emma were looking at him in one of those warped mirrors in the fun house at the CNE. Lester was dressed all in black, like Johnny Cash. When he looked at Emma, he put his hand on his heart. He tried to talk, but when he moved his mouth only gasping sounds came out. At that moment, she heard the voice that told her she was dreaming, the next moment, she woke up.

  The following morning, Emma recorded the details of her Lester dream in her journal and headed downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. Rachel was already eating her cereal, and Emma watched her out of the corner of her eye while she waited for her toast. She wanted Rachel to leave, so she could tell Grandma about seeing her old friend Lester again. Usually, Rachel left early for a meeting of the science club or the student council, but on that morning, she lingered over breakfast. “Aren’t you going to be late?” Emma asked as she cleared away the breakfast dishes.

  “No student council meeting today. Didn’t you hear?”

  Emma looked at her blankly.

  “Geez, Emma, get with the program. The Saints play the Riverdale Raiders this afternoon. We’ve had enough on our plates with the decorations. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice all the streamers and balloons? The Riverdale student council went nuts when the championship was there last year. It was red and black all over the place,” Rachel replied, flipping her hair leisurely before going back to chewing her toast.

  Red and black? Hearing those colours gave Emma the same sort of jolt the old toaster used to give before they had to toss it out. Emma almost dropped her dish before it made it to the sink. Lester had been wearing all black, standing in a red field. “There’s a football game?” Emma asked. “Today? With a team with red and black uniforms?”

  “That’s usually how they do it, Emma. Pretty hard to win a football game when you don’t have a clue who you’re supposed to be bashing around,” Rachel said, laughing to herself.

  “I’m coming,” Emma announced in a voice so loud and uncharacteristically decisive that even Grandma stopped unloading the dishwasher for a minute to turn around and look.

  “Huh. Well, that’s nice, Emma. Isn’t it, Rachel? Nice for your sister to get involved with school events.”

  “Yep,” Rachel replied, not bothering to look up. “That’s swell.”

  Emma wanted to ball up the soggy dishrag and lob it at the side of Rachel’s head. She knew it was mean, and didn’t want to have that thought, but she did. More and more these days, Emma found herself feeling angry with Rachel. On the outside, she was the same. But on the inside, Emma seethed whenever she was in her sister’s presence. She just couldn’t forgive her for threatening her with Alaska. And often, she found herself having to fight off an overwhelming urge to do something nasty, like cut all Rachel’s hair off in the middle of the night, or throw her homework in the fire.

  Emma stood by the sink, dishrag still balled up in her hand. Grandma had gone outside to check on the mail. Rachel got up and put her plate on the counter, not bothering to so much as look at Emma as she walked past and headed up the stairs.

  “I’m not going to the game today because I care about that school spirit stuff or anything. I have my own reasons, okay,” Emma shouted into the air of the empty kitchen. She knew Rachel was out of earshot, but it felt good to say the words anyway.

  All day, all Emma could think about was the big game, and the feeling she had that it was somehow connected to her dream about Lester. She asked around about the Riverdale Raiders. What time would they be coming? What were the names of the players?

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Ina Banerjee asked Emma at lunch, while Ling Ma reached over to touch Emma’s head.

  “Well, she doesn’t have a fever.”

  “Not that kind of fever maybe, but I think she’s got football fever for sure. What’s his name, Emma?” Ina laughed.

  Emma stayed silent, eating the peanut butter sandwich Grandma had made her that morning, hoping the chewing would hide her smile. She knew better than to say anything to anyone this time. If a miracle were about to occur, Emma would be the only one who would know.

  After all the anticipation, the big game was a letdown. Rachel was there, hanging out with her gang of popular grade niners. The Riverdale Raiders were there too, and it sent a wave of possibility through Emma to see the colours of their jerseys – a field of poppies and Johnny Cashes. Still, when she scanned the faces of the players, none of them looked like Lester. Emma began to lose faith. Not all of her dreams had come true. In fact, it had only happened once before. Now that she thought about it, she had no idea why she thought dreaming of Lester would make him appear. It was just a feeling she had. But where did that feeling come from? When she tried to recall it, that sense of surety that she would see him that day, she came up empty. Maybe it had only been wishful thinking. Maybe she just missed her old friend and had tricked herself into believing that dreaming of him meant something more.


  The Sunnyside Saints scored the winning touchdown. Whoop-ti-do. Emma was looking away from the field, toward home, wondering what Grandma would be making for dinner that night.

  “Emma?” A familiar voice asked the back of her head. She turned around. Some boy in black jeans and a red T-shirt was standing in front of her. It took her a moment to recognize the face, but the eyes brought her back. Sad eyes, full of love. Lester.

  “It is you! I knew it!” His voice was deep now. And his hair was short. No bow tie. Lester, the little boy with the Winnie-the-Pooh suitcase was gone.

  Lester was beaming. “I saw you. From across the field. I don’t know what it was that made me think it was you. Just had this feeling. And it is! It’s Emma. From Foster’s house on Columbia Street.”

  Emma couldn’t speak. She could only stare. In a way, Lester was like a stranger. He had a new body now, and his face had lost its childishness, but how she felt around him was the same. It was no different than when they were kids. Instantly, instinctively, all she wanted to do was love and protect him, like he was a wounded animal.

  “Are you okay?” Lester asked, snapping Emma out of her trance.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m good. Wow, Lester! It’s you.” Emma began to giggle.

  Lester started to giggle too. It sounded funny coming from his grown-up body. Then a look of pain came over his face. He put one hand on his chest, and the other on his knee as he bent down and tried to catch his breath.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Emma watched as the colour faded from his face.

  “Oh God.” Lester was still bent down and breathing hard. “I don’t know. I was fine until practice. This afternoon. I took a hit. Knocked the wind outta me. Didn’t think it was a big deal. But my chest hurt. Like a son of a gun. Ever since. Been getting these pains. Then I can’t catch my breath.”