by Andrew Biss
Mrs. Anna marched briskly out of the kitchen, muttering what sounded like foreign curse words under her breath as she did so.
CHAPTER TEN
Phantasms
Just as I was becoming more accustomed to death with my mother instead of life without her, she unexpectedly turned the tables on me once more.
“Well, drink up, darling – I must be going, too,” she said, taking a last sip of the thick purple concoction that passed for tea.
“Going? Going where?” I exclaimed with alarm.
“Away.”
“But…you’re at The End of the World. Where is there to go?”
“Lots of places. Lots and lots of places…once you’re here. But I’m not here, so I can just go…away.”
“But you are here,” I said, now more confused than ever.
“Ah, to you I am. You needed me, so you brought me here. And I appeared to you, just as you wanted. Though frankly, darling, I could’ve done without the Diana Ross touch. I don’t know what you could’ve been thinking. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very talented and what have you, but…well it’s just not me.”
“But you’re here…with me. You’re dead – you said so yourself,” I insisted.
“Oh, Valentine my sweet, how many times must I tell you? Sometimes those that love you the most tell you the things you need to hear the most. That doesn’t make them true.”
“So…you aren’t really here?” I asked, as feelings of fear and loneliness began to creep back upon me once more.
“Not for much longer,” she said, as she proceeded to have one last rummage through her handbag. “Hanging out in your subconscious is all well and good but I’ve got better things to do.”
“Then I’m…I’m dreaming? All this is a dream? A dream that I shall wake up from feeling silly and relieved, yet…somehow wiser?”
“Please, darling, you sound like some vulgar Hollywood screenwriter. No, you’re dead, I’m afraid – quite dead – as a dodo. A dodo in Bardo.”
“Bardo?” I asked, knowing the word sounded familiar, but from where I couldn’t quite recall.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already,” she groaned.
“Bardo…Bardo…wait…wait, give me a moment,” I said, wracking my brain to figure out where I knew the word from.
“Honestly, Valentine, I know we’d only begun to scratch the surface of Buddhism in general, but I believe we covered the states of Bardo quite comprehensively.”
“Wait, yes…yes, it does ring a bell.”
“Then try and make it ring a bit louder, otherwise you’re going to find yourself spinning your wheels here for quite some time to come,” she cautioned.
And then, in a flash, it suddenly all came back to me. “Yes, yes a plane…a space between…between…the conscious and the unconscious, between…insanity and clarity, between death and…rebirth.”
“There it is!” my mother cried triumphantly. “I knew it wasn’t all for nothing. You and your father may have scoffed at me when I first made my little forays into the teachings of Buddha, but I think I can safely say that your mother was right yet again.”
“Yes, I remember now…the visions…the appearance of visions and spirits, good and bad, some loving, some terrifying…but…but all in my head…all projections from my subconscious…from my experience of life…before death.”
“A gold star for my son! Well done, darling! Oh, come here and let me give you an affectionate hug.”
Feeling a little bit proud, but mostly sad, I fell into her arms and took comfort in her warm embrace. As she held me I felt safe and protected, even if she wasn’t really there after all. I thought of all the strange people, apparitions buried deep in my memory from who knows where that I’d met since I’d arrived here. I recalled all of the strange sounds I’d heard, some happy and relieved, others grief-stricken or tormented. And I thought of my mother…and how much I missed her.
“Now, tell me,” she said, holding me by my shoulders and looking me straight in the eye. “What do you have now?”
“Have?” I asked.
“Yes, now.”
“You?”
“No. You don’t have me. You have something far more important.”
“But what could possibly be more important than you?”
“What I’ve given you,” she said, with great purpose.
“But how can I think of that? I can’t think of lessons or…or things. I can’t think of anything being more important to me than you.”
“You must. You must because I loved you. And do love you. That’s why I’m here – why you brought me here. Somewhere inside you, you know why I’m here.”
“I don’t. I do and I…I don’t,” I said, awkwardly, trying to avoid the truth that I knew she was driving towards.
“Look at me,” she demanded.
“I am.”
“Look harder. What do you see?”
“My mother.”
“What do you see?” she insisted.
“Someone I love.”
“Look again. What do you really see?”
And there it was. The painful truth that I’d been trying to avoid was now staring right back at me. “I see…what I want to see,” I said, sadly.
“Yes.”
“But…it’s not real.”
“No.”
“You’re not there.”
“No,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“No,” I admitted, my heart aching so heavily I just wanted to cry. “I…I just wanted to see you again, that’s all.”
“I know. And I came.”
I nodded silently, tears trickling down my cheeks, as she placed her hand in mine. I held it as tight as I could and tried to speak, wanting to say so many things yet not knowing what to say at all. I finally managed three words which seemed to sum it all up. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” she replied, holding me in a firm embrace and gently stroking the back of my head, just as she did when I was little. But just as I began to feel loved and protected, nestled in her arms, I suddenly remembered that this was all imagined. I was alone. She wasn’t there. I was simply fooling myself. I felt cheated and angry.
“But why? Why can’t you be there…like I want you to?”
“Because I can’t. Things are what they are…and aren’t. This is the only way.”
“But you’re ruining it,” I said, churlishly.
“No I’m not. I’m giving you a chance…another chance.”
“I don’t want it. I want things to stay the way they are.”
“They can’t. Life’s not like that. Neither is death. Everything changes all of the time – without you even knowing it. You have to move on – you have no choice,” she said, firmly.
“I don’t want to. I hate change. I hate it with all of my heart.”
“Don’t. You mustn’t,” she insisted. “When all’s said and done it’s the only thing you can really count on.”
What a depressing thought, I thought. Could it really be true? Could I only depend upon the undependable? What happened to stability and reliability? The comfort of the known? And what about my own mother, come to that?
“And you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“Can’t I count on you?”
She released me from her arms with an air of frustration. “Oh, Valentine, you may be dead but please do try to retain some presence of mind. I’m not even here – what would be the point in that? I may not be the most practical person to turn to in times of crisis but I can tell you this: if it’s reliability you’re looking for, courting it from figments of your own imagination is most assuredly not the way to go. In fact, I’d venture to say it’s the first sign of madness.”
She then abruptly pushed her teacup across the table and stood up. “Now I really must be off, your father will be getting worried.”
“How could he be worried if you’re not even here?” I asked, still groping for logic where I shouldn’t.
“Oh darling, do try and use your imagination,” she sighed, before furrowing her brow, deep in thought for a moment. “Though on second thoughts, I suppose that’s the only thing you are doing at present, isn’t it? So then…just dream up something satisfactory for me to tell you and…there’s your answer,” she shrugged.
She was right, of course, but I realised no answer was needed. I stared at her wistfully as she straightened her outfit and tidied her hair, making one final adjustment to the pearls around her neck.
“Thank you,” I said, simply.
“What on earth for?” she replied, as she snapped her handbag shut and prepared to go to wherever it is that figments of your imagination go to.
“For coming.”
“Don’t be silly. Thank you for inviting me. I’m going to leave through the refrigerator if it’s all the same to you – it’ll save me a few steps.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, with more than a little trepidation.
As she opened the refrigerator door, a flood of bright light burst forth from within, just as before. This time, however, and much to my relief, there wasn’t a Stetson-wearing entrepreneur in sight.
“Do give my apologies to Mrs. Anna for rushing off like this,” she said, as she stepped inside the mammoth machine. “And remember what I told you, won’t you?”
“I will.”
She kissed the fingers of her hand and placed them on my forehead, before disappearing inside the refrigerator. After a moment or two, I heard her voice calling back.
“Goodness, these steps are narrow. Oh, look! There’s your aunt Eleanor – looking every bit as miserable in the afterlife as she did in her heyday. Let’s hope she doesn’t see me. Bye, darling!”
“Bye, Mother,” I called off, before gently closing the refrigerator door behind her.
And I was alone again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Tricky Part
In truth, of course, I was no more alone than I had been before. I knew that now. She’d never been here to begin with. I’d willed her into being and I’d sent her away, but she was never actually here. She spoke to me, guided me, because I was lost and panicked and frightened. In all this nothingness, in all this inanity, my mind had scratched and clawed for something to hang on to, and it found it – in my mother. My slightly unconventional, sometimes strange, but always open-minded mother. And however it came to be in the grand scheme of things that that person ended up being my mother, all I knew was that I was grateful. You could lose your mind in a place like this. But with her came clarity and enlightenment. It was as if everything made sense now.
That was until Mrs. Anna suddenly reappeared wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and nonchalantly proceeded to clear up the tea things.
“Mrs. Anna?”
“Yes,” she said, gruffly.
“Why are you wearing Mickey Mouse ears?”
“How should I know? You’re the one with all the answers. You know everything now, apparently.”
Quite what she meant by that I wasn’t sure, but oddly enough, just at that moment, a memory from my childhood popped up from out of nowhere and answered my question for me.
“Oh, wait…Yes, I do remember. My thirteenth birthday party, if I’m not mistaken. Mother insisted I wear them, despite my begging and pleading. She said they were distinctive and would make the occasion memorable. They certainly did. Everyone laughed at me, I cried my eyes out, and later that night I wet the bed.”
“You poor impoverished wretch. My heart bleeds for you,” she mocked.
“There’s no need to be like that,” I said, defensively.
“I can be like whatever I want. And don’t get uppity with me, mister gilded child of your free market economy – it’s your mind, not mine.”
“Good point,” I conceded.
“Anyway, it is you who should be wearing these, not me – you people are the great consumers. You all consume and consume and consume until you’re fit to burst, while the rest of us get flushed down the toilet in the process. That’s all I am – all the rest of us are – just the end result of all your consumption.”
“That’s not a very flattering self-portrait, Mrs. Anna,” I said, still quite mesmerised by the sight of a grown woman going about her business in a pair of Mickey Mouse ears as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Your factories fill the world with crap, filling the air with crap in the process, and when you’re done with it you dig a big hole in the earth and crap it all out. It’s all crap.”
“It’s supply and demand – it’s the basis of economic survival,” I pointed out.
“It’s a con. If you ask me you should all be wearing Mickey Mouse ears – mouse ears and tee shirts that say ‘I Bought it All!’ Yes, then I would laugh. Then I would be tickled pink, as you people say.”
As she continued to clear the table, humming merrily to herself, clearly pleased with her scathing denouncement of current economic policies and mass consumerism, I began to wonder where all of this was leading. How much longer would I be here? Or was this where I’d always be? I truly hoped not.
“Mrs. Anna?” I said, cautiously.
“Questions, questions, always with the questions,” she groused, as she stopped what she was doing and glowered at me. “What now, my poor little over-privileged, undereducated, premature death?”
“What, um…what do I do now?”
“Why ask me? You’re the one with all the answers.”
“But I’m not.”
“Yes, yes, you know everything now.”
“No I don’t.”
“Of course you do. Don’t think I didn’t hear that sickly little speech you just gave about your mother coming to you just when you needed her most. What was it? Uh…ah, yes, ‘But with her came clarity and enlightenment. It was as if everything made sense now.’ My God, it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up. It was like watching a Mexican soap opera.”
“Mrs. Anna!” I cried, shocked at the thought of my most private thoughts being snooped on. “Were you at the keyhole?”
“What! Who do you think I am? How dare you suggest such a thing!” she protested.
“But how else could–”
“You think I am some low-rent housekeeper that snoops around her tenant’s drawers looking for some cheap, nasty pleasures? Is that what you think?”
“No, no, I just–”
“I was listening in your head, dummy. I’m in your precious little first-world head, remember? Comprende, mi amigo muerto?”
“Oh…oh, of course, yes. I’m so sorry, I…I didn’t mean to imply that…”
“Ah, forget it. Anyway, you’re the least of my problems,” she sighed.
I meandered over to the kitchen window and looked out, which was actually a rather pointless exercise since all that could ever be seen from it was pitch darkness. Still, it seemed to be the sort of thing one does when one’s deep in thought, so that’s what I did.
“The thing is…despite what I know…despite my mother’s insight and illumination on all of this…I’m still not sure what exactly it is that comes next.”
“What can I tell you?” she said, matter-of-factly. “That’s death.”
“It’s a great big unknown.”
“It’s The End of the World,” she corrected me.
“Yes…it is.”
“And now you want me to make it all so very easy for you, is that it?”
“No. No, I’d…I’d just like your help. That’s all.”
Mrs. Anna took off her Mickey Mouse ears, placing them carefully on the table, and crossed over to the window, standing in front of me with her arms folded across her chest. “Very well,” she said, resolutely, “you will get my help.”
“Really?” I asked, quite taken aback by her sudden generosity of spirit.
“What, you think I am joking? Everything is a joke for you, yes? Or maybe you think I am a liar because my accent is different from yours?”
>
“No, I-I…thank you.”
“Anyway…it’s time you went. I told you you would. You all do in time,” she said, before giving me a sly look. “Most of you,” she added, with a chuckle.
“What happens to those that don’t?” I asked, warily.
“You don’t want to know. Suffice to say they’re in the back bedrooms on the top floor. You may have heard one or two of them on occasion – they’re a noisy bunch.”
Just then a piercing scream echoed and ricocheted around the house, right on cue.
“And where will I go?” I asked, with more than a little apprehension.
“Back,” she said, bluntly.
“Back there?”
“Yes.”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“As the same person? The same person living out the same life?”
She looked at me incredulously. “Of course not, are you crazy? You think I do all this just so you people can go back and make the same mistakes over and over and over again?” She scratched her head and paused for a moment. “On second thoughts, don’t answer that. Anyway, this is…well, this is where it gets a little tricky.”
“In what way?” I asked, the use of the word ‘tricky’ making me feel decidedly ill at ease.
“In the way that you go back. You see, there are options, but for someone like you…let’s just say they’re kind of narrow.”
“Who’s someone like me? What have I done? I haven’t done anything. I hardly made a ripple,” I implored.
“That’s the problem.”
“So I’m to be punished for that?”
“Not at all. But not rewarded, either. And don’t blame me. I just do what it says in the guidebook.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Well, if you were more liberated in mind and spirit – your awareness more heightened than it is – you could maybe return as, say, a saint or a hero of some sort, beloved and adored by right-minded people everywhere. Oh, how they would sing your praises! From all corners of the earth! You’d be bathed in respect and adulation.”
That sounded very appealing. “Yes, I like that. I like that a lot. Is there any possible way that I could–”