Since September

by Noelle MacLeod

  “Like I ran a few marathons in my sleep.”

  He nodded. “Any nausea? Headache?”

  “No. I’m just really tired and I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Yes,” he said, pulling the chair in the corner over to the bed. He sat and looked me in the eyes. “The nurse tells me you don’t remember coming to the hospital last night. Is that right?”

  “Yes. I was home and then I was waking up here.”

  “Do you remember anything happening at home last night that may have been upsetting?” I could see he was studying my face, reading my reactions.

  “My mother,” I told him, looking down at my hands, afraid to let him look into my eyes, to see the depth of my confusion and fear. “She died.” I felt pressure building behind my eyes as tears started to spring to the surface. Dr. Chute handed me the box of tissues on the nightstand. I took one and wiped at my eyes and nose. “I guess it was the night before last, but honestly, I’ve kind of lost count.”

  “Yes, your friend told me about your mother. I’m very sorry.”

  I looked up. “Cyndi? Is she here? Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. What else can you tell me about last night?” He smiled again. He was using that smile, those impossibly white teeth and that copper toned skin, to get patients to trust him, to reel them in. I suspected it worked quite well for him, at least with the female patients.

  “I was just upset. I mean, who wouldn’t be?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he soothed. “Just tell me the last thing you remember before you woke up here. If you can, that is. It would be very helpful.” Another smile flashed across his face.

  Images of Mother’s head on top of that pillow, then swaying in the air, flitted through my mind, followed by images of myself with a butcher knife to my neck, Cyndi wiping blood from my hands, the voice of a stranger that only I could hear – a ghost? A prankster? – And then, a balding fix-it man straddling me, his rat-face red with exertion, my wrists tied to the bedposts with his stinking socks. I pulled the blankets up to my chin.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “It’s all kind of fuzzy.”

  “Your friend tells me she found you with a knife to your throat. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, but it’s not like it sounds.” I took a deep breath and looked at him. “I thought I was sleeping, and that I could wake myself up if I was about to die in the dream.” Dr. Chute squinted and tilted his head to one side. I knew it sounded ridiculous.

  “What made you think you were sleeping?” He asked me.

  “Because,” I told him, ripping another tissue from the box. “What they say happened to my mother… it couldn’t possibly have really happened.” I blew my nose. “She told you how my mother died, didn’t she? My friend?” I started crying uncontrollably, my shoulders heaving with each sob.

  “Yes, she told me. It must have been very traumatic for you, hearing such news.”

  “I didn’t think it was real. I thought I was having a horrible nightmare and I could just wake myself up. I read somewhere that whenever you’re about to die in a dream you wake up first. Like if you dream that you’re falling you’ll wake up before you hit the ground.”

  “Ah, I see.” He leaned closer. “So what do you remember after that?”

  “I was on the couch. I woke up and heard Cyndi and her boyfriend talking in the kitchen – or I thought I woke up anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, again, I couldn’t have been awake. I had to still be sleeping. I guess I didn’t really wake up until I was here. But see, that’s the part I don’t get. How did I get here?”

  “Tell me why you say you had to be asleep on the couch.”

  “Because of what I saw.” It was then that I realized he didn’t know what I’d seen.

  “And what was that?”

  “Mother,” I told him, bowing my head to look down at my hands again. “I saw Mother.”

  “You saw your mother in your apartment last night?” Dr. Chute leaned closer still, his big cocoa brown eyes only inches from my face. I nodded.

  “She was smiling at me,” I added.

  “Well, that sounds like a very comforting dream. Maybe you woke up right after that.”

  “It wasn’t,” I whispered, only half wanting him to hear the rest. “It wasn’t all of her.” Dr. Chute cleared his throat. I’d made him uncomfortable. “And it wasn’t the first time I had a dream like that. A nightmare, I mean. Where only her…” I swallowed hard. “Where only her head was there.”

  Dr. Chute squinted again, clearly miffed by the time-line. “You had this nightmare last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did you hear of your mother’s passing?”

  “Yesterday morning, I guess.”

  “So when was the first time you had such a nightmare?”

  “The night my mother was murdered.” I wiped furiously at my eyes, willing the tears to stop, hoping for some explanation from the good, smiling doctor. Instead, I got more squinting.

  “You had a nightmare about your mother the night she was killed, but you didn’t know yet that she’d been killed, is that right? You found out the following morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “And can you give me any more details about these nightmares you had?”

  “The first one, the night she died, I dreamed I was in her house. The house I grew up in.” I blew my nose and took a few deep breaths before continuing. “And I went into her room and found her. You know, the way my father did when he got home. I saw it, her head, in the bed like that, you know… detached. And she spoke to me.” I could still see it in my mind and I shivered.

  “What did she say?”

  “I asked her who did that to her. Who hurt her like that. I was screaming, in the dream. And she just looked at me and said that I did. That it was me.” I was sobbing again, big loud sobs of utter despair. “And then I woke up and got the phone call.”

  “Were you and your mother very close?” He was smiling again, but with his mouth closed. No shiny white teeth to chase the pain away.

  “No. We weren’t.”

  “Well, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. We’ll find someone who can help you with your grief, help you cope a little better. In the meantime, I want you to rest.”

  “But you still didn’t tell me how I got here.”

  “You had a grand mal seizure, Miss St. John.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Sometimes, when a person is dealing with a lot of emotion, the brain just can’t take any more and it has to shut itself down for a bit, like a computer. It reboots.” Dr. Chute stood and moved the chair back into the corner, preparing to leave. “And some people have hallucinations right before the seizure. I’m sure that’s what your nightmares were. Hallucinations. It’s nothing to worry about. But we are running a few tests just to make sure.”

  “A seizure?”

  “Yes. It’s not all that uncommon, really.” He moved closer to the door. “Just rest as much as you can and I’ll be back to check on you later.”

  The little blue pill certainly made me feel like resting, but no sooner had Dr. Chute left the room then I heard the familiar taunting of a certain throaty voice.

  “A grand mal seizure!” It croaked, seeping from the pea-green walls and filling the room. “How marvelously dramatic!”

  “Oh, please, God,” I whispered. “Not again.”

  “Oh, Sweetheart,” she said, “You can’t get away from me!” I rolled over onto my stomach, careful not to tangle the IV, and put one of the pillows over my head to block the sound. It didn’t help. She was as loud or as quiet as she wanted to be.

  “That’s right, dear. Rest, like the good, smiling doctor said. Gather your strength,” she said in that gritty voice of hers. “You’re going to need it.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The air was crisp and cool, the sky clear blue - a perfect autu
mn morning except that I was on my way to Mother’s funeral. I’d spent the days following my talk with Dr. Chute mostly sleeping, being awakened whenever they wanted to take blood or stick me into an MRI machine, and, of course, at meal times. I had not seen or heard from Cyndi except for one message a night nurse gave me saying that she would be there to pick me up for Mother’s funeral in the morning, and that she would bring whatever I needed to get ready. She arrived just as I finished picking at the cold toast and warm orange juice they called breakfast. After proper hugs and a few tears, she fixed my hair and smoothed concealer under my eyes. It seemed the dark circles that had appeared the night of Mother’s death had not yet faded. She brushed a sheer gloss on my lips, to keep them moist, she said, and then went about dressing me in black dress pants and a flimsy black sweater while I offered minimal help, lifting a leg or an arm whenever she instructed. I was a rag doll, unable to think or make any decisions on my own.

  Once I was dressed, Cyndi stuffed my feet into black heels that she must have dug out of the very back of my closet. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn them. Cyndi herself was wearing her little black dress with the pale pink buttons. Her fingernails, freshly painted, were the same pale pink, as were her toenails peeking through her favorite open-toed black sling-backs. Her makeup was appropriately understated: a touch of pale pink blush on her cheeks and just a hint of lipstick. Her gold hair was tied at the nape with a soft pink ribbon. I could tell she hadn’t been getting a whole lot of sleep but she was still quite exquisite.

  Matt and Ralph were with her, both of them dressed in dark suits and somber faces. They’d been waiting outside the door until Cyndi got me dressed. I hadn’t seen Ralph since the night we met and wasn’t exactly crazy about seeing him now. I protested, not wanting anyone but Cyndi to go to the funeral with me, but they insisted on going with us. More importantly, Cyndi insisted. She was much too upset to drive, she said. We were taking Matt’s Volvo into the country and that was that. I didn’t have the strength to argue. They’d gotten directions to the funeral home from my father the night before and it turned out that Cyndi knew the place. It was the same funeral home where her grandfather’s service had been held just a few years earlier.

  Matt pulled his tan Volvo up to the front of the hospital at seven o’clock and we packed ourselves in, me and Cyn in back and the guys up front. The funeral service began at nine and it was just an hour away but Cyndi had insisted we get there early enough to give me time alone with Mother before everyone showed up. Time with Mother’s casket, to say my goodbyes, she said. I had no idea how to say goodbye to a box.

  The drive was quiet and I managed to sleep most of the way, thanks to whatever was in those little blue pills the nurses kept giving me at the hospital. When I awoke, we were pulling into the parking lot of McLean’s Funeral Home. I spotted Uncle Paul’s cherry red convertible right away, shining brightly in the morning sun. Mother had accused him of buying it to make up for the fact that he was middle aged and balding. It had caused quite a rift for a month or so, with Mother refusing to let it go, citing statistics about men going through their mid-life crisis and how many of them buy sports cars to get attention from young women, to make them feel attractive again. Uncle Paul insisted he wasn’t trying to get attention from anyone, that he just liked the car. The two of them bickered about it until finally Aunt Jenna told them that if they didn’t both shut up about that damned car she was going to drive it into a tree. It seemed apropos that they would bring the convertible to Mother’s funeral after all that instead of the more sensible beige SUV that sat in their garage. It was one final jab to the woman neither of them liked but tolerated for the sake of my father.

  My father was pacing back and forth in front of the entrance to the funeral home, glancing at his watch every few seconds. He smiled when he saw us and started toward the car. Cyndi got out first and ran over to my side to help me out. My legs were shaky and I felt like I’d been asleep for days.

  “Cyndi,” my father said, approaching us. “Thank you for coming. You look wonderful.” He gave her a long hug before finally turning to me. I was holding onto Cyndi’s sleeve to keep my balance. “Sheridan…” his dark eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m glad you’re here.” He hugged me, too, trembling ever so slightly. “Cyndi tells me you’ve been ill.” His voice was scratchy and weak.

  “I’m okay,” I lied.

  “Oh, Mr. St. John,” Cyndi said. “These are our friends, Matt and Ralph. I hope you don’t mind that I asked them to come. I just didn’t think the two of us should drive all that way alone, you know? I mean, not right now, anyway.”

  “Of course not!” He turned towards them. “I’m glad you boys were able to make it. I know this is a hard time for these girls. Thank you for looking out for them for me.” They both gave their condolences and shook my father’s hand, polite smiles plastered on all their faces like they were meeting for lunch instead of getting ready to bury one of their wives. Nice to meet you. Sorry about your wife. Such a tragedy. My father cleared his throat.

  “Come inside,” he said, walking toward the big double doors of the funeral home. Ralph and Matt followed behind him, heads looking down at the gravel walk. I hesitated. I didn’t want to go inside. I was sure it would be a closed casket under the circumstances, but still, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to go in there and have to face it. Cyndi saw that I hadn’t budged and stepped closer to me.

  “You okay, Sher?”

  “Oh, God, Cyn. I don’t know.”

  “I’ll be right there with you. Your dad, too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, let’s go in.” With Cyndi’s arm linked around mine to keep me steady, my legs wobbly and weak, I crossed the parking lot and walked into the lobby of the funeral home. Immediately, the thick scent of flowers was over-whelming and I felt nauseated. Pink roses, white roses, potted peace lilies, and so many more that I couldn’t name. A guest book sat perched on a little marble-topped table in the corner, an elaborate black feather pen to its side. Matt, Ralph and Cyndi all took turns signing it as I stared at the flowers. So many flowers!

  At the door leading into the main room stood an artist’s easel holding an enlarged photograph of Mother. It was one of her wedding photos, one of the extremely rare photos of Mother that showed her smiling. I realized then that I had seen her smile more since she died than I ever had while she was alive. Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself.

  Having finished signing the guest book, Cyndi and the guys were now standing next to my father, waiting for me to walk through the doorway into the room where my Mother’s lifeless body (and head) lay waiting for me. I stepped cautiously through the door, half expecting to see Mother’s head floating towards me again, but I saw nothing but empty chairs, a podium, vases of more flowers, and, of course, the coffin. Its dark mahogany wood gleamed in the dim lights. A single, long-stemmed white rose lay on top. White roses were Mother’s favorite. I walked slowly towards it, my vision blurred with tears, my legs incredibly heavy and weak, my aching heart pounding fast and furious. I stretched my hands out and touched the dark, cool wood, my fingers trembling.

  “Are you really in there, mom?” I whispered. I pictured her lying breathless inside the long wooden box. In my mind, the casket was lined with a silver-blue satin, and Mother was breathtakingly beautiful in a champagne silk dress. With her hands folded on her chest, her eyes closed to the world, she was peaceful, sleeping on a silver cloud, with the velvet petals of a thousand white roses at her feet. I took a deep, ragged breath and was convinced that I smelled the warm, comforting smells of onion and garlic rising up from that box. Mother was never one for perfumes or scented lotions like other women. She had smelled like onions and garlic and oregano for as long as I could remember. And although I was familiar enough with the process that a body goes through between death and burial, knew for sure, on some level, that it was not possible for her to still carry that scent, I had not yet allowed myself to think of
that process where my mother was concerned.

  But then it came to me that maybe they hadn’t bothered to dress her in pretty clothes and do her makeup and hair. Maybe they only did that for open caskets. And, logically, the next thought that came to me then was maybe they hadn’t even bothered to sew her back together. Maybe they hadn’t bothered going to all the trouble of re-attaching her head. If nobody was going to see her, what would be the point? I shivered once more, quite violently this time, my knees threatening to buckle. I placed both of my hands flat on the casket and bowed my head, willing back the peaceful image of Mother sleeping on a silver cloud.

  “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Mother together again!” sang the all-too-familiar gravelly voice of the woman from my dreams. She had crashed Mother’s funeral.

  “God, no,” I moaned. “Not today. Not now. Not here.” Sensing my sudden spike in distress, Cyndi appeared at my side and put her arm around my shoulder.

  “You okay?” she whispered. I lifted my head and blinked. Tears escaped my eyes, rolled down my cheeks and fell onto Mother’s casket. “Oh, Sher,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard this is for you.” I plucked a rose petal from the flower on Mother’s coffin and pressed it gently to my lips. “Are you ready to sit down?” I leaned forward and kissed my mother’s coffin. Then I nodded and turned around to find that the room had filled up and almost every chair was taken. So many people! Who were they all?

  “Here,” Cyndi said, leading me to a chair in the front row. My father was sitting on my left, seemingly unaware of anything other than the worn out handkerchief in his hands that he kept fiddling with. Cyndi took the seat on my right and held my hand in hers and then the minister took his place at the podium and began to speak. I knew that if I listened to his words I would break, for standing there, with my hands on that coffin, it had taken everything I had in me to silence the screams that rose in my throat. And so while this minister – this man who had never in his life met my mother – did his best to paint her in the most positive light, to offer comfort to those left behind, I blocked him out by silently reciting the lyrics to various pop songs in my head. The less emotional the lyrics were, the better. Madonna’s “Vogue” worked exceptionally well.