Coming Home

by David Lewis

  Jessie just stood there, the entire park swirling around in her mind like a Tilt-a-Whirl. She felt a hand on her own shoulder. It was Andy.

  “You okay?” he asked gently.

  Jessie hugged herself. “I just … I thought I saw … someone I knew.”

  Andy slipped his arm around her. “Too much excitement, huh?”

  She nodded. They walked back to the bench, where Laura was fiddling with one of her toys, and Mrs. Robinette was serenely examining a piece of carved wood.

  Chapter Twenty

  ANDY AND JESSIE helped Mrs. Robinette into her house. She marveled at the “wonderful day” and hugged Jessie, who promised to visit again.

  Jessie hurried back to the car to wait with Laura, who seemed to be descending into despair, a startling contrast to her earlier exuberance.

  “Can I get you anything?” Andy asked Betty.

  Betty took a tentative cane-assisted step. “Just a kiss on the cheek.”

  Andy complied.

  “Now don’t keep your lady friend waiting,” she clucked.

  “Laura doesn’t look so good,” he commented.

  “Today was a good day for her,” Mrs. Robinette said. “Outings like these are few and far between.”

  Jessie got back out of the car and met Andy on the porch. “Laura isn’t ready to go home yet.”

  “Ice cream, maybe?” Andy offered.

  “You always could read my mind.”

  Andy raised his eyebrows humorously. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk that way.”

  “Don’t make me hit you.”

  They drove to Betty’s shop, where her daughter, Kay, was running things. Laura, whose smile had made a faltering reappearance, ordered mint chocolate chip. Andy watched curiously as Jessie stepped up to the plate.

  “Pistachio again?” He asked.

  “Not tonight,” she said slyly. An immediate throwback to their childhood. “Okay, Mr. Andrew, go for it,” she challenged, making a sweeping gesture with her arm.

  Andy ordered banana nut for her.

  Jessie began laughing.

  “Am I right?”

  “Not even close. Are you serious? Banana nut?”

  After settling on butter pecan, they sat at their old table. Laura was still a bit sullen, so Andy and Jessie attempted to put a positive spin on the end of a glorious day. They reviewed the various events and activities at the fair, and eventually Laura began giggling again.

  Andy’s cell phone rang and he intended to let it go, until he checked the ID. It was his dad, who rarely called Andy’s cell number. Smiling apologetically, he headed outside where the reception was clearer.

  “Andy, where are you?” His father sounded worried.

  Where am I? “What is it, Dad?”

  “Is Jessica still with you?”

  Andy looked in through the shop window. Jessie noticed him looking and gave a gentle wave. “I’m not following you… .”

  “Have you talked about anything?”

  “Dad, just say it.”

  His dad paused. Andy turned toward Elephant Rock, which was visible above the building across the street. Long shadows were already descending upon the mountain-enclosed village, matching the growing shadows of his own mind. His father was obviously troubled about something.

  “What is it?” Andy repeated.

  When his father finally continued, his tone was grave and his words were measured. “Andy, there’s something you need to know… .”

  Jessie smiled as Andy entered the shop. He smiled back, almost too brightly. Laura had been chattering about her friends at school, describing their hair colors and styles. “I want to be a hair stylist when I grow up,” she had told Jessie. “They get to wear purple whenever they want.”

  Something was troubling Andy. She remembered the way he’d always overcompensated when he was a kid, especially when he was trying to hide something, and he was the worst fibber on the planet.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  Andy didn’t respond. “So … get enough ice cream?” he asked Laura, who shook her head and took another bite.

  “That’ll never happen!”

  He laughed and Laura giggled. Jessie watched him, wondering what had changed so quickly. Laura took another long, slow bite. Jessie finally caught Andy’s eye, and he winked at her.

  An hour later, they dropped Laura off, and she trudged mournfully to her house. They heard Molly’s muffled barking, and then Laura suddenly appeared in the window, waving. It had an almost desperate quality.

  “You okay?” Andy asked, looking over at her.

  “Her mother is a witch,” Jessie replied.

  Andy looked at the house again, pondering the situation. He straightened in his seat and stared through the windshield, lost in thought. “I hope I didn’t offend you earlier, Jess.”

  She leaned back in the leather seat, taking a deep breath, unwilling to belabor the obvious. “I get too worked up sometimes.”

  Andy put the car into gear.

  “Do you remember when we used to ride to the top of the hill?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Jessie whispered.

  They drove up in nostalgic silence, his headlights blazing a trail. Reaching the top, Andy parked on the gravel road in front of an apartment complex, facing Elephant Rock to the east. To their right was the majestic southward corridor to Colorado Springs.

  Andy cut the engine and they settled into a comfortable stillness. From this vantage point they could see their old haunts: the lake, the gazebo, the town hall, the school and flagpole, and the gift shop.

  “Shouldn’t even be called a town,” Jessie suggested. “It’s so tiny.”

  “It was our whole world.”

  “A village, and barely that.”

  They talked some more, nothing controversial, and the minutes passed effortlessly. The town lights grew in proportion to the dimming of the evening. Before long, the dash lights were illuminating a misty green into the interior of his car. Andy turned in his seat, facing her. “Why did you come back, Jess?”

  She frowned thoughtfully and considered telling him the truth: I was zipping along on my way to Oregon when a giant hook descended from the sky … but then realized this was the perfect opening. She dug into her purse and pulled out a white box, handing it to him. “This is why—my sum total reason for coming home.”

  Andy raised his eyebrows but accepted the gift. He brought it to his nose and sniffed.

  Jessie laughed. “What were you expecting?”

  “Cologne maybe?” Andy chuckled.

  “Just open it, silly.”

  He pried the lid off and removed the Toto key chain, holding it as if it were pure gold. “Hey … I do remember this.”

  “I forgot your twelfth birthday, remember?” She opened her purse again and pulled out her own key chain, comparing the two. “I stopped by Finders Keepers a couple days ago. Happened to see it.”

  He was still examining the key chain. “Doesn’t this take me back.” He whistled. “Do you remember Mrs. Peterson?”

  “How could I forget?” Jessie answered. “I honestly think she hated kids.”

  “It’s like we had a time limit or something.”

  Jessie nodded. “I remember telling her once that I would never steal anything and that she could frisk me if she needed to, but I was going to take my time looking around. Or she could call the cops!”

  “You were gutsy,” Andy said, grinning. “You actually said

  that?”

  “I had a lip.”

  “Still do.”

  “Thank you.”

  Andy was still staring at the key chain. “Well, let’s do this right now.” He removed his keys from the ignition and, one by one, put each of his keys on the new ring, like an important ritual or ceremony. Then he caught her by surprise. He spoke softly, carefully, as if he were walking on broken glass. “What happened at the fair today?” His gaze was clear and unwavering, and she knew instantly what h
e meant.

  You mean, why am I so messed up? she almost said, tempted to brush it off with another joke.

  “I told you about the dreams, remember?” she began. He nodded, encouraging her to continue. “This is going to sound strange.” She was staring out the window, emboldened by the top-of-theworld perspective.

  “The dreams come almost every night… .” She described them, how they had evolved over the years yet in many ways stayed the same. A few varieties on the same theme, with little difference between them. And in the dreams her mother always wore a yellow sundress.

  “I freaked out today,” she admitted. “I saw a woman in a yellow dress, and everything went crazy.” She closed her eyes, feeling ridiculous. Now that she was actually saying it, she questioned her own sanity. “I had this counselor once,” she continued. “Actually he was a therapist with a bunch of fancy letters behind his name, and all he ever wanted to discuss were the dreams.” She chuckled at the memory. “‘Dreams are the key to your subconscious,’ he once said.” She stopped and looked sheepishly over at Andy. “You don’t want to hear this… .”

  “Tell me,” Andy replied simply.

  Jessie reached up and rubbed her shoulders. “In spite of his stuffy background, he was a neat guy, just a little stuck in the world of Freud.” She peered out the window again, down the glorious corridor. The view had a trancelike effect on her, like an inkblot test that reaches into your mind and pulls out the truth. She glanced at Andy again, and he seemed concerned. “You look worried. Am I scaring you?”

  He shook his head, but she sensed something else. She let her head drop back against the seat.

  “He said I was a repressed soul, that I needed closure, and I remember laughing at him. ‘Do psychiatrists actually use that word?’ And he said, ‘Call it what you will, but the story isn’t finished for you yet, not if you want to be emotionally healthy.”’

  “The story?” Andy said.

  “Yeah. I think he’d keyed in to how much I liked to read. I’d told him I’d started War and Peace and really hated it but was determined to finish it anyway.”

  “So … what did you think about what he said?”

  “I didn’t want to be emotionally healthy,” she replied. “Not if that meant the dreams would stop. I actually cherished them … and yet they …” She stopped. And yet they tormented me… .

  Andy continued his probing. “So the shrink thought the dreams meant you needed closure?”

  Jessie nodded. “He said my subconscious was trying to communicate with me.”

  “Oh,” Andy said with a tone of wonder. “Like a secret message in the back of your mind… .”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “No. Makes sense.”

  “He said my mother was like a phantom limb.”

  Andy frowned. “Phantom limb? That’s seems a little weird.”

  “Well … he knew the circumstances of how they took my mother away, how I never saw her again.” Jessie shivered at how easy it had become to talk about her past with Andy—things can change in a moment. In spite of their earlier disagreement, she also marveled at the ease with which they had dropped into their former roles again, like fitting the pieces into a puzzle. But she also remembered the childhood arguments. Things weren’t so different after all. Even as youngsters, they’d had a way of challenging each other.

  Andy’s expression was too serious, and she was struck again with the notion that he knew something he wasn’t sharing. He finished for her. “So … do you sometimes think your mom didn’t actually die?”

  She looked him in the eye and pondered his statement. “I sometimes feel as if she didn’t die, but I never really think it.”

  Andy nodded once and began rubbing the steering wheel with his palm, obviously formulating his next words.

  “What?”

  He turned in his seat. “It makes perfect sense. You and your mother were very close.”

  Is that what you really want to say? she wanted to ask but couldn’t.

  “They took her away and you never saw her again,” Andy said.

  Jessie squeezed her key ring tightly.

  “And you never visited her in the … hospital?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” A faint image flashed in her mind. She tried to follow it, but the memory flicked away like a slippery fish.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Jessie shrugged. “I think I just … tried to bury it.” Good choice of words, she thought.

  “I think your therapist was right,” he submitted. “Your dreams are telling you something.”

  “Okay, Dr. McCormick. What is your prescription?” Jessie grinned, hoping to lighten the conversation. Poor Andy looked as if he were being led to the gallows. The thought struck her again that their entire conversation had been a kind of setup. “Is this what you really wanted to talk about, Andy?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  She was tempted to throw it back in his face, the comment he’d made at the fair about honesty. But she didn’t. “Maybe this is why I came back,” she said, letting him off the hook.

  “Why?”

  “To finish the story somehow.”

  He gave a subtle shake of the head, seemingly not convinced. But by now their conversation had piqued her curiosity. Never before had she been this open about her mother’s death.

  “Do you remember what happened after my mother died?” she asked, looking straight ahead.

  “Our friendship basically ended.”

  She frowned. “I don’t remember that… .”

  “You stayed in your room. You didn’t come back to school. I knocked on your door and your father would answer, and he could barely speak. He looked like living death itself.”

  “That’s because he was practically dead. Did you come to his funeral?”

  “I stood right next to you.”

  “I threw a big fit before the funeral,” Jessie remembered. “The coffin was closed and I demanded they open it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t convinced.”

  Andy whistled. “Did they open it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you have nightmares?”

  “Not one,” she whispered. “Seeing him dead was closure for me. I was convinced he was gone.” It struck her what she’d just said, and her entire body broke out in shivers. But I never saw my mother dead… .

  She turned to Andy. “How do you prove someone is dead?” He looked at her incredulously. “What?”

  “What would I do?” she whispered. “How would I start?”

  He thought for a moment, and then, sighing, he pulled a piece of paper from the glove compartment, removed a pen, and began scribbling. “I’ve worked for my dad before,” he explained. “I’m not sure this is proof, but as far as legal details, this is where you start… .”

  Jessie leaned over to watch him write. Once finished, he handed her the paper.

  “A death certificate can be prepared by any number of people,” Andy said. “Coroner, attending physician, hospital authority, or funeral director. Then it’s supposed to be filed at both the county and state vital records office. You can order a copy of the death certificate, but it takes a while.”

  She studied his list of three Web sites.

  “These should be up to date,” Andy said. “I haven’t checked in a while.”

  “Isn’t there a social security death index I can access?” she asked.

  “The Social Security Administration doesn’t provide it directly,” he replied. “Various commercial interests assemble an index from the death master file and offer the information for a fee, but depending on your source, it’s notoriously incomplete.”

  She read through the Web sites again. “What’s the last one for?”

  “My mother is into genealogical research. She uses that site for researching our ancestry—it’ll give you access to any public records: birth, marriage, death, census, you name it. That’s her user name and password.”r />
  “Maybe I should just start there.”

  Andy shrugged. “Don’t forget the cemetery and the funeral home. They have records, too.”

  She met his gaze, and he smiled back.

  “Why don’t you just ask your grandmother for the death certificate?”

  Jessie smiled sheepishly. “I suppose that would make the most sense, wouldn’t it?”

  Andy gave her a friendly wink. “Are you free for dinner tomorrow?”

  “That would be great,” she said, staring at his list again. Her mind was elsewhere. She was formulating a few ideas of her own.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE FRONT RANGE was a silhouette against the darkening horizon. Andy’s thoughts were accompanied by the hum of the highway and the rush of the wind against his windows. He hadn’t even turned on the radio, preferring to drive in the clear blaze of his own anguish, the silence like a black hole, siphoning out the poison of despair.

  He was discouraged with their argument over religion, chagrined with his own need to be right, and yet saddened at Jessie’s position. What a difference a few years made. When they were kids, it was she who had lived on the edge of faith.

  At least once a week, like a ritual, they had ridden their bikes to the top of the hill in Palmer Lake. They exerted a lot of energy to make the journey, but the view was worth it, giving them the illusion of worldly dominance. Looking back down toward the southeast, they embraced a view of the Front Range, just as they had tonight.

  He remembered one afternoon in particular, when Jessie had been lost in her own thoughts, lost in a grief that would soon swallow her whole. He’d asked her why she was so preoccupied, and she’d turned on him with fire in her eyes.

  … “Aren’t you keeping up with current events?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tears had sprung to her eyes. “Nobody believes me. Everyone thinks my mother is going to die.” He wanted to embrace the same conviction she had, but it was difficult. “Andy, do you believe me?”

  Of course he didn’t, but if he told her that he did, she would either call him on it or her eyes would flicker with disappointment. You didn’t lie to Jessie and get away with it; she had uncanny instincts. Even at the tender age of twelve, Andy had discovered that life rarely delivers what we want.