A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  That startled me. I looked up from my sketch. “Really?”

  He stared at me. “You were always in the back of my mind, Rose. I’d never been able to forget you. I frequently wished I could have. I’d have dreams about you.

  They would spring up from out of nowhere, with no warning. I wouldn’t even have been consciously thinking about you, and there you’d be again. And every time you showed up, I’d spend the whole dream trying to tell you how much I missed you. I’d wake up and spend the morning pounding my head, muttering,

  ‘Stupid psyche!’ It seemed I was built around the mold of you. You were my measuring stick. Every person I ever talked to, every friend I ever had, every woman who ever glanced my way was held up in measurement to my memory of you.”

  I wanted to smile, and I wanted to cry. It was tragic. I settled for finishing my sketch.

  “When I got close to them, finally, I asked them about you. They grew so angry; your father nearly hit me. ‘Leave the past in the past,’ he said. ‘We don’t unbury our dead.’ And I believed him.” Xavier’s voice faded almost to a whisper. “Like a damned fool.” He shook his head. “I was twenty- four. I should have tried harder.” The self- loathing was clear in his voice.

  Twenty- four. He would have been only eight years older than me. I cringed as I realized that.

  He sat up a little straighter. “I know they debated firing me after that, but healthy, whole people with half a brain were scarce during the Dark Times.

  They couldn’t afford to lose me.

  So I ended up staying. Working for the devil. I debated leaving, but about that time the true tragedy of the Global Food Initiative came out. And I’d been poisoned, too, along with the millions of others. No children. Ever. Or so I thought —reliable countermeasures hadn’t been developed at that time. And I hated them so much. I knew UniCorp had so much power. I thought if I stayed, I might be able to undo some of the worst evils.

  “I started by trying to sabotage the corporation, make the whole thing go under, and then I realized I could work tangentially and use the corporation to actually do good. It’s a slow process, and I keep a lot of it very quiet. I didn’t want power; I wanted to defuse it from men like your father and Reggie. It was really all there was left to do.”

  “You realize you’re president now,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, yes. I’ve been trying to avoid that. I actually have more control when people aren’t looking directly at me.”

  “Elevate Bren’s dad,” I said. “Delegate to him. He’s a good man, and he likes the work. You’re” — I tried to think of a word that wasn’t old—“near retirement.

  The board would understand.”

  Xavier frowned. “That’s an idea. You’re right; he could do it. Annie had good taste.”

  “I like her,” I told him.

  “She likes you,” Xavier said. “She told me.”

  I couldn’t help but ask. “Why did you call her Roseanna?”

  Xavier looked down. “My wife’s sister was among the dead. She was called Hannah. We put them together.”

  “You wife knew about me?”

  “Of course. We loved each other.”

  I wanted to feel jealous, but all I felt was curious. “What was she like?”

  He smiled. “Like you,” he said. “Compassionate. Dutiful. Artistic. I told you that you were my measuring stick. She was a bit tougher than you, but Dark Time survivors tended to be. She was a designer in the graphics department. She made up a game for herself, to get me to smile whenever she saw me. I’m surprised she saw anything human left in me in the first place. And she put up with my surliness. And with all the invasive procedures it took to get Ted and Annie.”

  “I’m glad,” I whispered. “I’m so glad.” I didn’t need to elaborate. “You miss her?”

  “Actually, not so much. Not that I don’t wish she were still here, because I do.

  But I feel like part of her is still here.” He gestured around the apartment. “Her soul, maybe. Waiting for me.” He shrugged. “Of course, what do I know? I rather thought yours was, too.”

  “It was,” I said. “I gave it to you to hold, like my Young Masters Award.”

  “I still have that,” Xavier whispered.

  “Well, you had my soul, too. I gave it to you with that last kiss.”

  “I never wanted to take your soul,” Xavier said.

  “I wanted you to have it. Keep it,” I said with a laugh. “I grew a new one.”

  I glanced at the grandfather clock against the wall. The paramedics should have been here by now. Otto. He must have been keeping them at bay. It was a good thing, too. Xavier seemed to have relaxed, but I wasn’t done with the hard questions yet. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

  He shook his head. “How could I? Sixty years thinking you were dead, and then my grandson cells me up from out of the blue and tells me he’s discovered Rosalinda Fitzroy in the subbasement, and the entire structure of the universe has changed.” He rubbed his temple, as if he had a headache. “All that time came rushing at me. I split in two inside. As though I’d failed to take the life I was meant to have, and someone else’s life came and stole all those years.

  There was the me I knew: father, grand-father, businessman. And then this angry, wounded teenage boy surged up from out of nowhere, and you can’t believe how he hated me. He would scream at me. Sometimes half the night. All the time she’s been right there, literally under your feet! How could you not go and get her?” Xavier sighed. “He blamed me entirely.”

  He sniffed and closed his eyes. “You were so pitiful, nothing but bones. And so painfully young.”

  I thought about that. He’d had a wife. He’d raised two children. His grandson was the same age as me. I must seem an utter child to him. How ironic. I’d helped teach Xavier to walk.

  “I thought about telling you, right at the beginning, while you were still in the hospital. But when you didn’t even recognize me, I thought . . . maybe that’s for the best. How could you not blame me for leaving you there? When I was the only one who knew.”

  My sketch was finished. There he was. A careworn, inter-nally tormented old man, with a broken heart behind his eyes.

  I always understood things better when I drew them. Xavier’s smile had died during the Dark Times. It was my job to resurrect it, to take it out of stasis and put it back where it belonged. I stood up.

  Xavier looked at me, his milky- green eyes curious. I grinned. “You’ve grown so tall!” I said.

  He stared at me in confusion. “What?”

  “I always say that,” I said. “It’s tradition.”

  Xavier took a deep breath and looked down at his knees. “I’m not sure it’s true this time. Age tends to wear on one.”

  “As does guilt,” I said. I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Stop hating yourself. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t mine, either. It just happened.”

  He lifted his hand and placed it on mine for a moment, then let it fall again. “I missed you,” he whispered.

  Tears stabbed my eyes then. “I missed you,” I said. “I missed everything.”

  We were silent for a moment. I sank to my knees and leaned my head against the arm of his easy chair. “Well,” I said, “at least now you can have your apartment back.”

  Xavier shook his head. “No. It’s yours.”

  I shook my head back at him. “I didn’t say I was leaving it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I squared my shoulders and looked him dead in the face. “I mean, I’ve finally learned to make decisions all on my own. No more passive lying down and letting others tell me what to do. I know what I want, and I want you. I want you to be my guardian.”

  Xavier shook his hoary head adamantly. “I can’t do that, Rose. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Says who? Xavier, when has our being together ever been wrong? I’m not stupid,” I added, cutting off whatev
er he’d been about to say. “I know what can and can’t be between us. We lost something. That blazing, all- encompassing inferno of first love. And that isn’t fair.” I couldn’t quite keep the tears out of my voice, but I held them back. I had to make him see. “That will never be fair.

  And I will always grieve for it, as much as you have. My parents stole you from me as surely as they stole my life. But that isn’t all we had. That was the least of what we had together. We had something more real, something time and age difference simply can’t kill. I know you, Xavier! We were always together. It wasn’t always romantic. You started as my little brother, then became my best friend. Why can’t we go on? Become something else? I’m all alone. I need you now. I need my family.” Damn it, now I was crying.

  And his frail arms were around me. “Shh, shhh. Hush, now.” He kissed my forehead with as much tenderness as I used to kiss his, back when he was barely more than a baby.

  I pulled away and looked at him. “Xavier, from the very beginning, you’ve been doing everything in your power to show me you still loved me. My studio, my schedule, Desert Roads.” I smiled. “The prism. It was your hand I felt stroke my hair, in this very room, after I was attacked.”

  His eyes lowered and I saw that I was right.

  “I know you want to be with me. You want to be my family. The only reason you don’t is because you think people will think it’s wrong. Well, burn them!

  They don’t know what we are to each other. I know you’re probably horrified by the idea of what we once were to each other, as horrified as I would have been by the idea if you’d suddenly turned three again when I was sixteen. But that’s over. That girl died. And I’m here now.” I looked to the ground for a moment, willing the strength from all my thorny inner briars. “Are you really going to deny me the only love I’ve ever known?”

  Xavier looked at me for a long moment, and then he frowned. “Are you and Bren . . . ?” he asked.

  I laughed, which fortunately banished the tears I’d been fighting. I knew I be blushing bright pink if I weren’t already red from the burns. “Why do you ask?”

  Xavier looked away, and I realized he was afraid that I expected something impossible from him, that I wasn’t ready to let that part of my life move on without him. “I don’t know,” I said, as reassuringly as I could. “Maybe one day.

  I scare him right now.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Xavier said. “I’ve never seen you be anything but passive.”

  I shrugged. “Hasn’t done me much good. So,” I said, “do I get you as my family, or do I have to get my board to fire you?”

  Xavier laughed.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Now that I’ve found you, I’m not letting you go again.”

  Xavier blinked at me. “I thought that was my line.”

  My face broke into a grin. “You mean I get to keep you?”

  He sighed. “Why not? You have me already, anyway.”

  I jumped up and hugged him. He smelled old, and of that cologne I noticed in his office, and he didn’t feel like my Xavier when I held him anymore. And I loved him as much as I ever had. Brother. Best friend. Grandfather. What did it matter? He was my Xavier.

  – epilogue—

  I will try to hold on to my dreams for the future as long as I can. I’m past the game of marking time, holding on to fantasies, denying what’s in my heart and what is before my eyes. I try to keep myself active, keep my heart open, refuse to sink into despair when I find myself crying for no reason in the middle of the night.

  I often have dinner at Bren’s house, and Bren good- naturedly tries and fails to teach me tennis. I don’t know how I feel about him anymore. He’s my gorgeous, sexy friend who could have been my grandson. It’s all a tangle of confusion and awkwardness, but it’s good. We’re fond of each other —almost family, almost not. It’ll do for now.

  I link up with Otto’s screen every evening, and we try to find new reasons to laugh. I don’t know how I feel about him, either. I know how he feels about me, though I think he thinks he’s keeping it a secret. He has my sympathy and my love . . . but what kind of love I’m not even trying to figure out yet. What we have is what it is, and that’s all I want it to be. For now.

  As for Xavier, he is very formal with me, and I don’t blame him. This is a somewhat disturbing situation I have forced upon him. He will hug me (with only one arm) if it seems necessary — like if I’m crying. Otherwise he won’t touch me. I respect his distance. He’s teaching me how to cook, and he still sits down with me to help me study. That part of our relationship hasn’t changed in sixty years. My grades are improving. I’m not as dumb as I once thought I was.

  I don’t know where my brother and sister are. Xavier helped me to track down their existence —my parents couldn’t manage to erase every hint of their birth, and physical records were filed in the local archives. If Sarah is alive, she’s been in stasis now for nearly eighty years. Stephano would have been stassed for more than ninety. Even the thought of it fills my throat with bile.

  I dream that one day I’ll find them. I dream that one day I’ll truly believe in my place in this world. I dream that I am strong. And I have three best friends who dream with me.

  My name is Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy. I am one hundred years old. I am free. I am haunted. But if nothing else, I am wide awake.