Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  Alexandra raised one eyebrow, the way only she could. “It wasn’t no dream, Mama. It was real. But I dreamed about it jus’ now, that’s all. I had two udder babies before that one, but they lived. They was big when I died.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good. Were they boys or girls?”

  “They was boys. One was good, and the udder was bad.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Alexandra gave her a very serious look. “One was a good boy, but the udder one - he was bery, bery bad.”

  Chapter 44

  Dear Dan,

  I want to tell you all the things I wish I had told you when you were alive. I admired and respected you more than any other person I have ever known. I wanted to be like you. You were always so strong and clear in your convictions. I never saw fear, hesitation, or doubt. Your mind was constantly on the go. You were always thinking and planning, and you were always talking.

  You were so sure I must be upset about something when I was quiet. But my mind was just quieter than yours. Sometimes, I wanted to quiet your mind for you, so you could have peace. I thought it was because you were this responsible, intelligent man. I thought that was what made great men great.

  I had simple thoughts and ideas, but you had big thoughts and grand ideas. You had philosophies. And when you talked, I just got lost in your voice. I could listen to you forever...God, I miss you...

  How many times did I say to you “Where did you come from?” And you always laughed. You told me there were lots of men like you out there. I said, “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  You told me it’s because you were the guy who was always sitting in the corner drinking a glass of wine and reading a newspaper. You said no one ever paid attention to that guy, or noticed that he was even there. Maybe it’s true, because I’ve never known a man that drank wine...

  I was such a mess when I met you, do you remember? You found me shivering on your doorstep that night. You literally picked me up and carried me into your apartment and life. I couldn’t stop shaking, but you started talking to me with that...God, that voice of yours. It just melted the shock away. When you looked at me, I could barely look back because there was so much power and compassion in your eyes.

  And you kept pestering me about that glass of wine. It warmed me up, and I felt safe that night. Why can’t I have that night back again? Why did you leave me?

  Everything happened so fast. I looked up from my despair and there you were. My savior. And now, just as suddenly, you are gone. Do you miss me? Do you wish you could come back to me? Are you trying to come back to me?

  In your moment of despair, I was not your savior. I wish I could have done for you what you did for me. I was too stupid...too blind...too...what...?

  What did I miss, Dan?

  Why couldn’t I save you?

  ~ Anne

  Chapter 45

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of every day’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with a passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  ~~~~~

  The heat of July was replaced by the blast furnace of August. On August second, what would have been Dan’s thirtieth birthday, Anne drove to the cemetery in Nashville.

  On Anne’s twenty-ninth birthday, Dan had dragged his hands across his face and groaned. “I can’t believe I’m gonna be thirty this summer…”

  Anne had playfully tousled his hair and said, “Hey, it beats the alternative.”

  “What alternative?”

  “Well, you know,” she said with a smirk, “not turning thirty.”

  He had paused for a moment and then grimaced. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  During the past two months, Anne had visited the cemetery several times, when she needed to be closer to him.

  With a bouquet of plastic flowers gripped tightly in her hand, she stood over his grave and stared down at the earth which had settled around it. The earth had settled so much that a hole had appeared just below the flat bronze grave stone.

  Looking at the blackness of the hole, Anne imagined it stretching away into a vast, yawning chasm at the bottom of which, lay Dan. If she stuck her hand in there, he would reach up and grab it with his own skeletal claw.

  Could she fall into that blackness?

  Like Alice down the rabbit hole?

  She had purchased the headstone herself, and had inscribed upon it the last line of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem that Dan had sent her.

  They had exchanged love poems and quotes almost daily by email. Had he ever truly loved her? Had it all been a lie?

  Staring down at the hole, she leaned slightly toward it. “Happy birthday, mother fucker.” She threw the flowers down at the grave stone and stomped them with her feet into the earth above his rotting corpse.

  Apparently, she was in an angry phase of her grieving.

  Her anger flared up, unbidden sometimes, but was always quickly replaced by guilt.

  Her hands flew up to cover her mouth and her face closed up as if she were in pain. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the ground. And she lay down on the trampled earth and let the scorching Tennessee sun burn down on her until her pale face turned red.

  Her checklist almost complete, the time for her suicide was close at hand.

  Life insurance – check.

  Will – check.

  Children’s Trust – check.

  Suicide plan – check.

  The only thing left was to finish writing her letters. She liked to think of them as not ‘suicide letters’, but ‘goodbye letters’. She would make them all understand. Her death would be so much different than Dan’s.

  She had been corresponding with her new friend, Chris for over three weeks now and he had made an intriguing proposition. He lived in Seattle, and wanted to fly to Indianapolis and meet her in person. He insisted that Dan and Kim were together in Heaven, and had conspired to bring the two of them together as well.

  Anne wasn’t sure if she believed this, but she wanted to. Chris had said some interesting things to her. He told her about the bridge. And he said Dan told her to take care of ‘A’. How could Chris have known these things? She hadn’t told him anything about Alexandra, on the off chance he was the kind of man that a woman doesn’t want knowing she has children. Had it just been coincidence?

  When Anne asked Rale if Dan and Kim were together, he said they were. “But that doesn’t mean they brought you two together.”

  “Chris understands me, Rale. Like you do. Maybe he can help me talk to Dan.”

  Rale had caressed her face and whispered softly, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Anne had agreed that Chris should come visit. He would arrive tomorrow night, and Anne arranged for Alexandra’s father to take her for the week that he would be here. Part of her hoped everything Chris said was true, and that they would spend the whole time talking to Dan and Kim, finding meaning and healing and forgiveness.

  Most of her hoped that Chris was a psychopath who would murder her without causing her too much pain first.

  Rolling over onto her stomach, she stared at the hole. Wriggling forward, she tried to look down into it, to see where it ended. Her face inches above it, the dusky scent of damp earth hung in the air bringing to mind images of worms and bones.

 
; She closed her eyes and reached into the rabbit hole. Dan was down there, waiting for her. She just had to grab him. Dirt brushed the sides of her balled up fist, cool and moist. Down her hand went, deeper and deeper until her wrist scraped the outer edges of the hole.

  The bony hand rose up, bits of flesh falling away, just as her hand was stopped by a barrier of cold earth and could be pushed in no further.

  Chapter 46

  Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

  ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  ~~~~~

  By first, outward appearances, Chris did not seem like a psychopath. The first thing he wanted to do upon arriving in Indianapolis was stop by a liquor store. It was clear to Anne that Chris meant it when he said he intended to drink himself to death.

  He appeared well on his way.

  Anne was well stocked with ecstasy, GHB, and a hallucinogen that Sean called ‘Melt’. After the trip to the liquor store, she was also well stocked with booze.

  The week was already turning out to be a success in her mind.

  As Anne put the key into the lock of her front door, Chris reached out and put his hand over hers. She looked up at him, and saw all the pain she had been harboring the past months reflected in his eyes.

  His voice cracked slightly. “You do know I didn’t come out here to get laid, right? I came out here to find Dan and Kim with you. Or maybe I came out here to die with you.”

  As Anne nodded her head, a weight shifted and she felt lighter. Walking into her apartment, the light around her seemed brighter and her vision was no longer fuzzy, but sharply focused.

  Together with this man, she would find the end.

  Chapter 47

  Dan turned to Kim with irritation. “You know, if your boyfriend wasn’t such a damn alcoholic, we might be able to accomplish something here.”

  Kim had been kneeling beside Chris, who now lay passed out on the bedroom floor. She jumped up and threw her arms out toward Anne, who was lying on the other side of Chris, staring at the carpeting. “I was getting through to him just fine, until your druggie girlfriend got her hands on him!”

  Anne was on her stomach, running her hand over the carpet, jerking it back suddenly every once in a while. “Whoa…I never realized this is what the carpet actually looked like. How the hell do we keep our balance on this stuff? Chris?”

  She looked over at Chris when he didn’t answer, and then leaned closer to his face and poked his cheek. “Holy shit…”

  Dan gave a low moan. “Uugghh…we’re never going to get through to them like this.”

  Anne and Chris had spent the last four days locked away in Anne’s apartment drinking, and tripping, and rolling on ecstasy, usually all at the same time. They had tried mirror gazing, automatic handwriting, tape recording, channeling, and even the Ouija board that Chris had brought with him. Several times they had been convinced that they were in touch with Dan or Kim, but they were actually just hallucinating.

  At first, Dan thought the drugs might free their spirits enough to make it easier for them to make contact. But in truth, the drugs had set their brains into such an altered state of reality that their spirits were distracted and had turned inward.

  Dan stomped over to the kitchen and banged his fists loudly on the table. “This is a disaster! Why won’t they stop taking all that shit?”

  Rale sat on the couch, smirking. Dan turned to him with venom in his eyes. “You think this is funny?”

  Rale’s face became serious. “No, actually, I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

  “Show me how to talk to her like you do, Rale! If you have one shred of compassion in you, then help me…please.”

  Rale looked at Anne and shrugged. “I can talk to her because our spirits are alike. You think you know despair, but you don’t. If you knew true suffering, if you felt true despair like she does, then her spirit would recognize yours.”

  Kim walked over to Rale and pointed an accusing finger at him. “Cut the ‘poor me’ bullshit, Rale, and just help us for Christ’s sake. You can tell her the things me and Dan want to say, and we all know it!”

  Rale inclined his head toward Kim. “Perhaps. But to what end?”

  Kim dropped her hand. “What?”

  Rale stood up and maneuvered around the coffee table to stand before Kim. “If I told her everything you wanted to say. What would that accomplish?”

  Kim turned to Dan with a puzzled look on her face.

  Dan rolled his eyes and sighed. “Make your point, Rale.”

  “All right, I will.” The shadows swirled around him as he walked over to Dan, looking at him for a moment with eyes aflame. “All you ever think about is yourself.”

  He whipped around and looked at Kim. “You want to talk about someone’s ‘poor me’ bullshit? Fine. Let’s talk about yours. You want to tell them you love them, tell them you’re sorry, that you’re still with them, waiting for them, protecting them.”

  Turning back to Dan, he leaned in close, letting his voice drop to almost a whisper. “You want forgiveness.”

  He backed away, looking at them both, raising his voice slightly, which took on a matter of fact tone. “But mostly, you just want them back. You both played the game, and you both lost. Now you want a do-over. But there are no do-overs in this game.”

  Anger rose in his voice as he pointed to Chris and Anne. “You’re turn is over, but they’re still playing, and to them, it’s not a game.”

  Dan and Kim silently watched the two of them on the floor. Chris snored loudly and Anne was lying on her back moving her hands in front of her face, giggling.

  Kim turned back to Rale. “All right, Rale, you made your point. We’re selfish bastards. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love them. I want to help Chris. He’s going to die if I don’t do something.”

  Rale looked up toward the ceiling. “Tar. I know you’re there. I know you’re listening. Why don’t you tell them?”

  Silence.

  Then a soft knocking on the front door.

  Dan shook his head and chuckled. “Tar?”

  The front door opened, and Tar walked in, looking at Rale with obvious contempt.

  Rale gave Tar a half-hearted bow and went back to sit on the couch.

  Tar turned to Dan and sighed. He held his arms out, one to Dan and one to Kim and ushered them over to stand close to Anne and Chris. “It’s just not as simple as you both think.” He motioned toward the two on the floor with a nod of his head. “Right now, they’re willing to give up their lives based on the merest glimmer of hope that they’ll be reunited with you.”

  Tar looked over Dan’s shoulder at Rale, who was fading into a misty shroud of darkness. He turned back to the two on the floor. Anne had laid her head in the crook of Chris’s shoulder, and they both slept. “What do you think they would do if they saw you, talked to you, if all their hopes were confirmed?”

  Dan broke away from Tar and took a step back. “What are you saying, Tar?”

  Tar took his arm off Kim and turned to Dan. “Did you ever consider that maybe we don’t know about Heaven when we’re alive on Earth because if we did, none of us would want to stay there?”

  Dan sneered. “If I had known Heaven was like this, I never would have killed myself.”

  “We’re not talking about you right now, Dan. We’re talking about Anne. If she knew you were right here, right now, she would kill herself to be with you. And she just might bring Alexandra with her. Is that what you want for her?”

  Dan wilted. Kim turned away from them, and knelt beside Chris on the floor.

  Tar motioned to the apartment. “Besides, this isn’t real Heaven, and you know it. This is still Earth and life. If you had seen real Heaven, you wouldn’t stay here. You would let go of all this. “

  A helpless, impotent rage bubbled up within Dan’s spirit and he shouted at Tar. “Then why haven’t you let go of it, Tar? Why are you still here? Have you actually been to real Heaven, or not?”

  At
this, Rale came sharply back into focus, and stood up, an expectant look on his face as he watched Tar.

  Tar huffed, and looked angrily from Dan to Rale. “You can keep trying to make this about me if you want, Dan. Maybe you should try making it about her for once.”

  And with that, he disappeared with a red flash and a puff of black, acrid smoke.

  Chapter 48

  He was my North, my South, my East and West,

  My working week and my Sunday rest,

  My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

  I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

  ~ W.H. Auden

  ~~~~~

  On day five of Chris’s six day visit, he and Anne attempted to sober up. They were both feeling sick and tired and disappointed. Anne seemed especially despondent. “If Dan is there, then he knows I want to kill myself. Wouldn’t he try to stop me?”

  Chris did not have an answer for her. “Maybe he’s tried, but can’t get through to you. Maybe the drugs numbed our spirits too much. Usually I hear Kim, but this week she’s been so quiet.”

  Anne gave Chris a look of reproach. “Or maybe it’s all just bullshit.”

  Chris reached for the bottle of rum on the coffee table. “Yeah, could be that too.”

  Anne moved to intercept the bottle mid-air. “Hey, you said we need to get straight. You gotta get on a plane tomorrow, remember? And I have to go back to work.”

  She sat down beside Chris and swallowed a handful of aspirin with a rather long swig from the bottle of rum.

  Chris reached up, took the bottle back from her, and emptied it in three long gulps.He turned to Anne with watery eyes. “No one understands but you. My buddy back home thinks I came out here to get laid. No matter how many different ways I tried to tell him it wasn’t true, I know he didn’t believe me. I don’t want to get laid. I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to ever love another woman again. I want to die. And I don’t even care anymore if Kim’s there or not. I just want this over.”