Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  Tar rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

  “He’s got a great voice though,” Dan added with a shrug. “Very British. Anne said it was sexy.”

  “I hate British accents,” Tar said with a smirk.

  The ambulance arrived and paramedics pulled a gurney from the back. A photographer started snapping pictures and an officer began stringing yellow crime scene tape.

  When the officer with the tape approached the front steps he stopped. Rick stood there staring at the cell phone in his hand. The officer cleared his throat, but Rick did not hear. His eyebrows were furrowed and he gripped the phone so tightly, his fingertips were turning a reddish-purple color. The officer took a step toward him. “Excuse me.”

  Rick jumped and backed away with a lurch. The officer apologized and zipped past him, brushing his elbow with the yellow tape, as he enclosed him into the ‘crime scene’.

  A detective asked Rick about Dan’s next of kin.

  “His parents live in Indianapolis. So does his girlfriend. Uhhh… are you guys going to call them?”

  The detective looked up from his notepad. “We can, son. But it might be better if they hear it from someone they know.” Rick’s already pale face turned a slight shade of green.

  Dan’s stomach did a few backwards somersaults. Rick was about to be sick because of him, and now… “Anne. Tar, how do I get to her?”

  “Think about where you want to go and who you want to be with.”

  Dan closed his eyes and pictured her in his mind. He imagined hurtling past the hundreds of miles that separated them, flying like a spirit traversing the expanse of its former mortal coil.

  Nothing happened.

  Yeah...figures...Gotta let go of something, right?

  He opened his eyes and was standing in the parking lot in front of where Anne worked. He could see her getting out of her old green Ford Escort wagon. “Whoa,” he said, “how did I do that?”

  Tar had come with him and stood beside him. “It’s not a matter of moving your body. You don’t have one, remember? It’s a matter of shifting your focus. Easy enough, even for a new spirit, like you,” Tar said with a wink.

  Anne worked in the quality control lab at a lead refinery. Dan had often dropped her off or picked her up, but had never been past the front security gate. Now he found himself going past that gate with her, into the locker room where she changed into her uniform.

  Her back to him, she crossed her arms and grasped the corners of her t-shirt pulling it over her head. A cascade of golden hair fell tumbling from beneath the shirt and swept over the gentle curve between her shoulder blades. How often had he watched her, admiring that curve?

  Dan raised his eyebrows at Tar, who held both hands up in a gesture of surrender and disappeared in a little puff of white smoke.

  “Anne, can you hear me?” Reaching for her, Dan’s fingers brushed the pale skin of her lower back. Her jeans dropped with a muffled thump at her ankles. Before Dan could slide his hand down to her hip, she stepped into her pressed, polyester uniform pants. Skin slipped away from his touch as the matching shirt was quickly pulled from the locker and slung over those gracefully curving shoulders.

  The locker door shut with a bang! She slammed her palm against it, and leaned her head against her hand.

  “You’re dead, aren’t you? I’m never going to see you again,” she whispered.

  Punching the locker with her fist, she turned around. Standing inches from Dan she looked up, unseeing, directly into his eyes. “No, that’s not right. I’m never going to see you alive again.”

  “Anne, I’m right here.” He reached out for her, barely grazing her cheek before she walked past him and out the door.

  Dan followed her into the lab and saw the faces of her co-workers, who he had heard about, but never met. He saw the lines of worry etched across her face and knew that her fears would soon become reality.

  This wasn’t exactly working out the way he had imagined.

  At this point, she was supposed to be more angry than worried. And then once she found out he was dead, she was supposed to be relieved that it was over. No longer would she be saddled with a weak man. Yes, she would probably be sad and then mad at him for a while, but she would know in her heart that this was for the best. She could move on and find a better man, a stronger man. Dan had felt almost noble about his motives for suicide.

  He was starting to get an uneasy feeling as he watched her nervously fumbling, and checking her cell phone over and over. Could he have been wrong?

  No, he told himself. People were supposed to act worried when they couldn’t find someone. That was normal. Her fear probably wasn’t completely genuine, she was just getting herself all worked up the way people do.

  No, her relief would come, just like he planned.

  Chapter 5

  An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.

  To some I’m worse than an embarrassment, I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel them both thinking. ‘One or other of us must someday be as he is now’.

  ~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

  ~~~~~

  Anne stared at the ringing phone.

  Her fear became palpable. Her stomach churned. Her hands shook. Her heart raced so fast she panted.

  This is it, she thought.

  She picked up the phone.

  “Lab,” she said, a little too loudly.

  There was a pause.

  “Hey Anne, it’s Rick.”

  His voice trembled slightly. Anne had talked to him already several times today. When she couldn’t reach Dan, she had called him. After looking around the office, Rick told her he was going over to his apartment.

  “Hey Rick.” Anne tried to sound casual.

  Where’s Dan?

  “Uhh…How you doing?” Rick asked.

  Anne could hear voices and movement in the background.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Where’s Dan? Where’s Dan!

  She suddenly didn’t want this conversation to continue. An almost uncontrollable urge to hang up came over her. Her sweaty grip tightened around the phone, and she forced her voice to remain calm.

  “How are you doing, Rick?”

  Oh my God, where is he…

  “Anne…”

  Rick’s voice did more than tremble. Sometimes, a person can sob a word, and this is what Rick did. In his voice, Anne heard his eyes filling with tears.

  Jesus fucking Christ, where is he?

  “Rick, what’s wrong?”

  Fear lanced through her so sharply and completely that she felt a sudden tingling in every part of her body.

  “Dan’s dead,” Rick said.

  Easy as pie.

  Anne experienced a type of paralysis that seemed to freeze not only her body, but time itself. Her perception of reality shrank down into a tiny, immovable point of focus where nothing else existed.

  No room.

  No phone.

  No Anne.

  Nothing except this small undefinable point in time.

  She moved rapidly down a narrowing tunnel, away from that point, away from her body. The light faded, the air vanished, and something heavy wrapped itself around her. Her legs gave out and if there hadn’t been a chair behind her, she would have fallen on the floor. She couldn’t breathe, and for a moment she couldn’t see.

  Later, when she looked back on this moment, she could only remember experiencing it from the skewed angle of that tunnel. An altered state of reality, where she hovered outside of her body. She watched herself fall in the chair, heard herself crying and shouting. She always felt a rush of sympathy for the woman she observed slumping over in that chair.

  Anne’s breath re
turned with a ragged gasp. “What? What do you mean, dead? How?”

  Anne listened to Rick’s words through the sounds of her own sobbing and shouting.

  She shouted things like,

  “That’s not possible, Dan doesn’t have a gun.” and

  “Where did he get it?” and

  “Are they sure he’s dead? Sometimes people get shot in the head and live.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her co-worker leave the lab and hoped he was going to get someone who would know what to do.

  After the initial shock wore off, cold reality crept in. “Rick. What about Sarah? She’s at my apartment right now babysitting Alexandra.”

  “Anne… I…I…”

  She could tell that Rick was in shock. Mentally, she slapped herself and rolled up her sleeves, trying, through her haze of tears, to be brave. “It’s all right, Rick, I’ll call her, but…what about his parents? You know what they think of me. I can’t call them.”

  “It’s okay, Anne. The police said they would call.”

  After Anne hung up, she stared at the phone. Should she call Sarah now, or tell her when she got home? Unlike Dan’s parents, Sarah had not blamed her when Dan tried to kill himself. But what would she think now? Perhaps Anne could be excused the first time, because Dan had never shown any sign of depression or suicidal behavior. Anne no longer had that excuse now. She should have known. She should have saved him.

  Anne picked up the phone and dialed the number. She heard herself say the words from a great distance.

  “Dan’s dead.”

  She should have waited. Should have told Sarah when she could put her arms around her. But maybe then, it would have been too real.

  No way back.

  Sarah would have looked in her eyes and asked, “Why?”

  After Anne hung up, she laid her head on the desk and wept.

  Weeping is different than crying. When a person weeps, a part of their soul is carried away with their tears.

  ~~~~~

  Tar had returned and stood beside Dan in the lab as he watched Anne’s reaction. It was definitely not what Dan had expected, and he realized how completely he had deluded himself.

  “She never cries,” he whispered, more to himself than to Tar. “God, she hates for anyone to see her cry.”

  He thought back to that first night he had met her, when he had found a shivering little heap laying on the hallway floor. She had been crying then as well, something she was embarrassed about later.

  ~~~~~

  “I don’t usually do that,” she said after they had moved on to the second bottle of wine. “Crying is for babies, and if I didn’t do it as a baby, I’m sure as hell not going to start now that I’m all grown up.”

  Dan had closed his eyes, trying to understand what that meant, but the wine clouded his brain. “Aww, come on. It’s okay to cry sometimes, especially for girls. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Oh yeah? Do you cry?”

  “Well…”He flicked open the top to his silver Zippo with a sharp zing and lit a cigarette. He handed it to her and lit another one for himself. He took a long drag and exhaled smoke through his nose, squinting through the haze which hung in the air around him. “That’s different.”

  “Hhump,” She said, smirking, “of course.” She blew smoke out slowly, trying unsuccessfully to make rings. “Allowing yourself to cry is like allowing yourself to get a tattoo. Once you start, I’ll wager you’re likely to never stop. I don’t ever want that to be me.”

  “Hey, I have a tattoo,” he said, pulling up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal the plain, black, bar code tattooed on his left shoulder.

  She leaned toward him to examine it, touching his skin with her warm hand, sending a shiver up his spine. He caught the faint raspberry scent of her perfume, the clean, light fragrance dancing along the edges of his senses.

  At that moment, he knew he could fall desperately in love with this woman and a chill replaced the tantalizing shiver of passion with cold fear and self-loathing.

  A woman like her could never love him, certainly not the real him. And he was already growing weary of holding up his façade in front of her. The best thing, he told himself, would be to get her out of his apartment, and his life, as quickly as possible.

  He pulled his arm away from her, raising the cigarette back up to his lips. Leaning back, he stretched the other arm out on the back of the couch, leaving her hand that had been touching him hovering in mid-air.

  She looked at her hand a moment, and then closing her fingers in a fist, she hastily pulled it back and grabbed her own cigarette out of the ash tray. “Why a barcode?”

  He tilted the wine bottle toward her, and when she shook her head, he nodded, and filled his own glass. “To remind myself that we are all just chattel. Mass-produced and wholly without distinction.” He raised the glass in a toast and drank it all in a few long gulps.

  ~~~~~

  Standing in the lab now, remembering that first night, the pain he had seen in her, the fierce pride. And now seeing her once again reduced to this wretched state, knowing it was him who had brought this upon her, Dan was torn.

  A part of him wished he had gone away with Tar when he had the chance. But another part of him wanted to go over to her and put his arms around her and comfort her. And he wondered why nobody else did.

  He pointed angrily at the small crowd of people gathered outside the lab door. “What are they doing? Why are they all standing around out there?”

  Tar shrugged. “They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know what to do.”

  The scene was surreal.

  A woman alone in an empty room, crying.

  A gathering of silent people just outside the door, listening.

  Finally, a man pushed his way through and walked in. He went over to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Anne, what’s happened?”

  The man walked her to her car. Just outside the building, she collapsed. He caught her in strong arms, and planted her back on her feet. Dan hoped someone would offer her a ride home, but no one did.

  People watched from a distance.

  Dan and Tar went with her as she drove back to her apartment. Dan sat in the front seat beside her, Tar in the back.

  “Where are you?” she asked, looking up at the sky, perhaps expecting to see him in the clouds.

  “Tar, does she know I’m here? Can she feel me?” Dan asked as he stroked her hair.

  “No, she’s just hoping.”

  Dan slammed his fist into the dashboard. “There must be a way to get back!” His feeling of helplessness grew hotter, fueling his fury. She was so close. “What about people who do come back? They see the tunnel and the light, and then they come back to life. What about them?”

  “Yes, that happens. Sometimes, spirits leave their bodies early. You did, remember? Your body was still alive when you left it. A spirit can go back, if their body still works. But yours didn’t. Your brain was destroyed...I’m sorry.”

  “Damn it!” Why did I do it?” Tears streamed down his face. “What the hell was I thinking? Why, Tar? Why?”

  Tar shook his head. “Don’t you know why?”

  Tears streamed down Anne’s face as she shouted and beat the steering wheel with both hands. “Why? Why? Why!”

  Chapter 6

  Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

  ~ Seneca

  ~~~~~

  Alexandra slept under her blankie. It was her favorite, the one all poky dotted with fluffy white sheep. The bed moved like someone had just sat down on it. Then, something wrapped around her and picked her up, out of her warm snuggy nap.

  Her head bounced and her eyelids fluttered up and down as she was put in someone’s lap. It was Mama that was wrapped around her, and she squeezed her so tight that it hurt.

  “Hi, baby,” Mama whispered in her ear. “I love you.”

  Alexandra wriggled. She didn’t wa
nt to be held. She wanted to burrow back under her blankie for nappy time. She squirmed and straightened her back so she could get out of Mama’s hug.

  Alexandra suddenly realized that something didn’t seem right. Mama was holding her different, way too tight. She looked up and saw something she’d never seen before – Mama was crying.

  So what if Alexandra didn’t want to be held. Mama wanted to hold her real bad, and that must mean something important.

  Alexandra always needed Mama to make bad things go away. But nothing bad ever happened to Mama.

  Did it?

  She stopped whining, and relaxed. “Mama, why you cry?”

  Mama was quiet, looking at her with shiny eyes. “Mama’s just sad.”

  “Why you sad?” Alexandra reached up and wiped away the tears.

  “I’m just sad, baby.”

  Alexandra held Mama’s face in her hands. “It’s okay. I’m here. You don’t haf’ta be sad no more.”

  ~~~~~

  Anne touched her daughter’s warm, sticky hands, the cozy scent of apple cider and peanut butter gently caressing her raw nerves. “Mama has to go away to Nashville for a few days. You’re going to stay with Daddy until I get back.”

  “I go to Nashville. To Dan.”

  Anne cringed slightly. “No baby. You can’t come this time. Daddy needs you right now.”

  Anne hastily packed a bag for Alexandra, as she knew her father, Tom, would arrive any minute to pick her up.

  Anne was separated from him, but not yet divorced. “Estranged” someone had once called it, the word as tangled as their relationship had been. He arrived a few minutes later and was surprised to find Anne there.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he asked with what seemed to be a perpetual scowl painted on his face.

  Anne took him outside and told him what happened.

  “What did you do to him?” were his first words. He gave her a moment to respond, but how could she? Tom had been so angry and hurt when she started dating Dan. He had wanted their marriage to survive, and had harbored nothing but contempt for both Anne and Dan from the moment their relationship began. Still, she had hoped for a shred of compassion from him now.

  When she didn’t respond, Tom continued. “Well, I’m glad the cocksucker’s dead.”