“Hurry!” hollers Jonah.
“Hey, did you drive in the front?” she yells up, smiling. That sound she heard must have been his car door slamming. “I didn’t see you driving up the hill.”
“Yes. But hurry!” he yells.
All at once sirens blast behind her. She barely turns to look when an ambulance passes to her left in a dirt cloud, followed by a police car. Probably their crazy stoned-out neighbor, Dirk, shot himself in the foot again, she thinks.
But no. The ambulance wheels into her driveway, and Jonah rushes to meet it. What? There must be some mistake. Wrong driveway! Hannah freezes. Then reality strikes and she breaks into a run pulling Godiva, who howls along with the siren.
Jonah disappears into the house with one of the medics. The other two follow with a stretcher.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says under her breath. “Oh my God!” It can’t be Syd, she thinks. Don’t tell me it’s Syd. Though she didn’t look well this morning; it’s true. But still, she was walking, talking. Oh my God! She stumbles up the two cement steps into the mudroom, where she releases Godiva. Her heart pounding, she follows the commotion through the kitchen into the living room. Syd is stretched out on the couch, ashen. The medic takes her vitals.
“Pulse is extremely elevated,” he reports. “Blood pressure too.”
Hannah steps around Jonah and sits on the foot of the couch, rubbing Syd’s leg. “Are you okay, cookie?” she whispers. “What happened?”
Syd opens her eyes slowly. “I’m…okay,” she mutters.
Jonah steps closer. “I found her on the kitchen floor, passed out.”
“I was just getting a donut,” Syd practically whispers.
“They have to know her history, Hannah,” says Jonah.
Hannah reaches into her back pocket for her phone. “I’ll get Mitsy,” she says. “Or Aaron. Aaron says Mitsy isn’t answering.” She looks at him frantically and he lays his heavy hands on her shoulders, grounding her. “No, wait…the clinic,” she says. “I’ll call the clinic and let them speak directly to the doctors. That way…” She pulls her phone out of her pocket and fumbles with the contact button. That way, she thinks, she won’t break her promise to Syd never to speak or even think the name.
“Don’t leave, Aunt Hannah,” Syd mumbles.
Tears pool in Hannah’s eyes, blurring her focus. She hands the phone to Jonah. “Here’s the number,” she says, shaking. “Can you make the call? I’ll um…I’ll stay with Syd.”
Jonah nods reassuringly and walks into the kitchen to make the call. Hannah is overwhelmed with gratitude. She knows she has to call Aaron and at least try to get Mitsy, but she can’t do it yet. She has to collect herself. Or maybe Jonah will call them, too. Maybe he’ll fill in where she can’t.
“I have to get her to the hospital,” the medic says abruptly.
Hannah watches in wide-eyed disbelief as they lift Syd onto the stretcher. Hannah’s hands cover her open mouth and her heart beats so fast she’s surprised she’s not on a stretcher herself. Suddenly nothing else matters. If anything happens to this child, she thinks, I won’t survive. This child is as much mine as anybody’s. The realization strikes her like lightning. She’s electrocuted.
Somehow she makes it to the driveway, where she climbs into the back of the ambulance. She holds onto Syd’s leg, kissing it repeatedly through the thin blanket. “I’m here, cookie,” she says. “I’m here. Hang on, sweet pea. Hang on.”
Syd mumbles something, and Hannah leans closer. “What, sweet pea? Did you say something?”
“Name a place,” she says. “Ask me about a place.”
“Oh!” Hannah whispers. “The game. But you’re not…this is not…anesthesia.”
Syd struggles. “Name…”
“Italy,” says Hannah quickly. Tears spill down her cheeks. She leans forward and strokes Syd’s bald head. “Italy,” she repeats. “Anywhere in Italy, how’s that?”
Syd smiles; her head turns limply.
“Is she okay?” Hannah asks the medic, swallowing the words. She pulls his sleeve. “Is she okay?”
He nods. “I’m working on it.”
Outside, Jonah hands her phone to the driver. “This is her doctor at the clinic,” he says. “He’ll fill you in.” He turns to Hannah. “I’ll meet you down there,” he says as they slam the doors behind her.
“Oxygen!” commands the paramedic. “We’re losing her.”
Sirens wail.
Sydney
She stands alone in a stone grotto, shielded from the spring rain. Tiny, evenly-spaced shoots dot the expansive hills like splashes of green paint against tall brown stakes as far as the eye can see. A brisk wind blows the skirt of her gray muslin tunic and she crosses her arms for warmth. When will they allow her back? She wants to tell them “Tuscany” when they ask, or more specifically, “Gaiole”, not that they would recognize that name, or that she would even remember it. But that’s the word carved into the stone block at the vineyard entrance—Gaiole. She doesn’t want to place too much stress on herself to remember though. This is all stressful enough.
Usually when she plays the game she’s an observer, a visitor from Connecticut. She hasn’t really had a body on any previous trips, or at least not one as heavy as this. On the other trips, she was all energy and light. She touches her face, pokes her cheeks. Yes, this body feels different, more permanent, but she can’t be sure. Her senses are definitely more alert. Her vision is vivid. The rain smells like fresh linen. The grotto smells earthy like the root cellar under the carriage house on the back of Hannah’s farm.
Sydney thinks her other body is in Connecticut right now. Or is it Virginia? Yes, that’s it, though she barely remembers how she got all the way down there from her home. She hasn’t been there long, she knows that. She was there, and now she’s here. She narrows her eyes, thinking hard. They put her out. Or she passed out, whichever. When she wakes up she has to tell them where she went. She sighs deeply. How will she remember all of this?
She runs her fingers over her flaxen hair, woven in a thick braid that runs half the length of her back. It has heft. This pleases her. She hasn’t had hair in a long time. She wants to unbraid it and shake it out and feel it. But she isn’t sure how long she’ll be here or if other people will think her loose hair is odd and inappropriate. The hair on the few female passers-by is bound and hidden under cowls, scarves and hoods. Best not to draw too much attention to herself.
Her hair pleases her as does the fresh scent of jasmine, which is surprising, since she has no memory of encountering this scent before. There’s no jasmine in Connecticut that she knows of, at least not wild. Yet this place seems familiar in an inexplicable, ancient kind of way. The rain abates, and she steps out of the grotto in her rope sandals, spreading her arms like wings. She knows things. She knows things about Tuscany that she shouldn’t know. When she came to Tuscany with her parents before she got sick, they went to Florence, but not this village. Not Gaiole. Yet this part of Tuscany is more familiar to her than Florence was in every way—recorded in her body, almost. Cellular.
The countryside is breathtaking, invigorating. She whirls around, feeling life force within her. Feeling strong. The strength is so empowering she doesn’t want it to end. She hasn’t felt this strong in a long time. If she goes back, will she feel this strong? Does she have to go back?
In the distance, a small stone house is built into the hill. A woman, also in a gray robe, walks briskly up the dirt path in the other direction, carrying a water bucket. Two other women bow their heads in conversation at the doorway. Everything is slow and peaceful. Falcons sweep the lower fields. Close to the house, a rooster pecks the grass, raises his head and crows. Buttercups and wild mustard peek from crannies along the length of the stone wall. Syd doesn’t really know why, but she might want to stay. She’s somehow connected here. The only thing that’s missing is her family.
The shower ends and the sun blazes through a passing cloud. A burst of violet lig
ht flashes in the corner of her left eye, drawing her sight up to the now azure blue sky. On the horizon, the violet light pulsates anxiously, demanding her attention. She has to think, but then it comes to her. Oh no, she thinks, The Taker.
She reevaluates her situation. The Taker is here to take her, she remembers. But she can’t remember where he wants her to go. Or why. She might be losing her memory or her resolve. She’s supposed to fly away, but she’s too solid. She can’t lift off. So she should fight him, she knows, but she doesn’t feel like fighting anyone. Will he take her from here? Or has he already taken her and left her here? She squints into the brilliant sun, her right hand a visor against the radiant glare. His purple halo is denser than she remembers. The Taker has all the light. She’s a heavy mass, no match for him right now. Even though this body feels stronger than her real body, her light is nearly gone.
From her standing position, Syd tries to inhale the light that surrounds her, but it isn’t working. The warmth doesn’t penetrate. She can’t breathe it in. She’s too solid. Behind The Taker she sees a rainbow made of an explosion of colors she’s never seen. The colors arrest her. She can’t look anywhere else. Exquisite colors she can’t even name are emblazoned on the sky in an arc. She looks down at her drab cassock then back up to the electric aurora. She wants the color. She needs the color. Something tells her that if she doesn’t get the color, she’ll disappear. She reaches up, but nothing happens. She tries to spring off a nearby stone—to launch herself into the sky—but she’s a hunk of steel. Gravity clings to her like a magnet.
A gong sounds, and she turns to her right. In the doorway, a woman strikes the metal slab with a rod, calling a name she doesn’t know. Is it Italian? It sounds like Alicia. The way she says it, “A-lis-i-a,” like a song, is so musical. Syd likes the name, but it isn’t hers. She studies the scene to see when Alicia will appear. She doesn’t. Syd’s kind of hungry, actually. If it didn’t mean explaining herself, she wouldn’t mind sharing a meal with the women. Hunger is one more thing she never experienced in her other lucid dreams. She steps toward the house, then remembers the rainbow and turns back.
The colors are gone.
Pandora
Pandora’s head jerks and she awakens with a start. Her rheumy eyes widen, staring ahead, and she pulls herself slowly upward on the couch. Oh my God, she thinks, not the couch again. Well, she can’t blame her vagabond sleeping entirely on the hashish or cabernet. Or was it vodka last night? She rubs her head. It’s not the anesthetics, really, that keep her there; it’s the mesmerizing fire. Unless fire is an anesthetic. She leans forward, sighing deeply. It probably is.
The truth is she seeks answers, not anesthesia. She seeks insight through twists of consciousness illuminating answers from new directions. The dancing flames speak to her. She seeks truth from the alluring reds and oranges, the piercing white and the penetrating blue of the burning wood. Why blue, she’s always wondered. Blue is cool, not warm. How does a red hot fire produce a cool blue flame at its center? It seems unnatural, and yet like so many secrets of the universe, it isn’t. Yin and yang are often contained in the same object, but we don’t see it until it’s in a state of separation. Until it’s broken.
She rubs her sticky eyes and draws Guru onto her lap. “I need your help,” she tells him, scratching his neck. He purrs. “We need to clean up our act, little buddha. We need to clean it up fast.”
Pandora stretches her long brown arms and elegant piano fingers into the air, articulating them like a dancer. She rises slowly. It’s true she needs to clean up her act, she thinks, but how? How will she do it? How will she end all this lovely nonsense—all the wallowing, the luxurious casting about in a vast sea of unknowing? It’s over. There can be no more unknowing, only knowing. Quantum knowing. There’s not a crack of room for doubt. Just thinking about it generates anxiety in her belly, and she’s…afraid. The great and powerful Pandora is afraid! Her spirit is surrounded with the very information she needs. She reaches out with both hands, grabbing the air. It’s right there! But she’s too burned-out to retrieve it.
The information hangs on her spirit like fishing weights—sinkers. She is sinking. She can only ignore it so long, but she’s not ready to examine it yet. Or process it. Or feel its significance. Something about this time, this process, this information, is radically different from anything previous. Nevertheless the download has initiated, and she knows it.
“Damn you, Anjah,” she says aloud. “You think it’s easy to draw the infinite into the material? To give it form? To define it! Well, it isn’t. It’s hell!” She picks a burgundy-stained wine glass from the glass-top side table as she passes by, and pitches it across the room. It smashes against the white tiled kitchen wall into shards. “You do it, Anjah, damn it!” she whimpers. “You bloody well try to do what I do.”
Spent, she shuffles into the kitchen to clean up the broken glass before Guru treads through it. It’s a chore; life is a chore. Fuck it all. She swallows two aspirin with a cup of standing water and begins the coffee prep. She should be drinking green tea, she knows, but deep down she feels as if the time to rebuild may have passed. She may actually have blown it. A sickening feeling courses through her. I may actually have blown it. Something tells her she’s blown it before, that this is not the first time, though the details aren’t clear. She fills the carafe with tap water and pours it into the reservoir. Just to get to the point where she can think straight, she needs the caffeine. She can stop it later, maybe, when she has a plan. She needs a plan. To get to the plan, she needs caffeine.
While the coffee brews, she picks Guru’s hair from her black leotard top; tries to brush it off her wrinkled skirt, but it sticks. It’s everywhere. She needs to clean up. She needs to shower and clean up the house. What am I still doing in yesterday’s clothes? she thinks. I’m disgusting.
She pours coffee into her earthen mug, shakes cinnamon over it and scans the room for her phone. Not here. She must have left it on the couch. She realizes she hasn’t seen it in a while, and wonders if it’s even charged. To think that she once made her living by phone is a staggering thought. If it weren’t for Sydney Michaels she would happily never use that contraption again.
In the living room, she lays her coffee on one of the end tables and digs under the oversized corduroy cushions where she finds too many things—a purple wide-toothed comb, a crushed cigarette, a crumbled cracker. She pulls the cushions entirely off the couch to reveal all the archeological artifacts at once.
Ah! The phone! She pulls it out of the crease and brings it across the room to the sideboard where she plugs it into the charger. Checking her voicemail—oh my God, Mitsy has called her five, six, seven, eight…fifteen times! She checks the text messages, only one. Sydney has gone to Virginia with Hannah, it says. Huh, thinks Pandora. Well, that’s hardly worth four alarms. Good for Sydney! Good for Hannah, too, for taking her. So maybe that’s it. Maybe the thrall of anxiety Pandora’s feeling isn’t hers after all. Maybe it’s Mitsy’s. Mitsy all alone and missing her daughter. Well, screw it, Pandora thinks. Mitsy needs to be alone. She needs to be alone to figure out who she is underneath all that sediment. Pandora will give her a call later on.
She replaces the cushions and stares down at the pile of paraphernalia on the varnished burl coffee table. The sour stench of creosote chokes the air. She opens a window, allowing a burst of fresh pine into the room. The air invigorates her, emboldens her. She takes her coffee and walks to the easel, staring. Breathing deeply, she stares at the stained linen cover. She sips her coffee, thinking, I can do this. I can figure this out. She snaps the cloth from the canvas and forces herself to look, to stand there and look for as long as it takes.
The paint is faded. She will not leave! The paint has faded significantly since the other night when she first viewed the painting. So it’s happening. Elysha’s spirit is fading by the day, so much so that it no longer resembles Elysha. Or does it? It no longer resembles the Elysha of Pandora’s memory. T
hat Elysha was strong, elegant, and as blue-eyed as a Siamese cat. That Elysha had sheets of silk black hair draped over her shoulders and down her back. That Elysha did not have a tattoo. That Elysha was not bald. Bald!
Pandora’s stomach churns. Is Elysha trying to tell her something? Pandora hasn’t seen her child anywhere in any realm since the day she died. What are you telling me, baby? She strokes the canvas with her index finger. Are you in there? Are you leaving me a message? Or just leaving me?
The phone rings, startling her. Coffee jumps out of the mug. She steadies herself and walks to the sideboard to see who it is. It’s Mitsy, of course. She doesn’t want to deal with Mitsy yet, but she probably should. She knows the painting and Mitsy and Hannah and all of them are inextricably connected somehow. She knows she’s known this for some time, but has no idea what to do with the information. But now she has to face it. She looks frantically around for cigarettes. She can’t talk to Mitsy without one. Look what I’ve done, she thinks. I’ve gone and got myself addicted. She’s allowed herself to become weak, and now what? What will happen now? She turns back to the painting. Is it an illusion, or is it fading before her eyes?
It’s fading before her eyes.
She accepts the call while rooting through the drawer for a smoke. “Hello, Mitsy” she says. “Hold on a second.” She grabs one, lights it, and inhales the smoke, freezing the last moment of unknowing. Capturing it.
“How can I help you?”
Mitsy
“Pandora?” says Mitsy. “Is it you? Where have you been? It isn’t you, is it? You sound exactly like your voicemail. It’s your voicemail isn’t it?”
“It’s me,” says Pandora. “Flesh and blood. I lost my phone, but as you can tell, it’s been located.”
The Anesthesia Game Page 16