Beloved Lives

by Evans, Marilyn

  “Does that mean I’m unsympathetic?” April asked, biting her lip. She tried to ignore the refrain from “Cold, Hard Bitch” running through her head.

  “Not at all. It just means you can stay focused on your job and not get overwhelmed by all the bad stuff happening around you. It may make you better at your job. That’s why I’m not sure it would be good to teach you to not shield yourself and to not miss when you know things. It might open you up to incredible stress. Like I said, complicated.”

  “So, am I more or less psychic than April is?” Trish asked, always the competitor.

  “I am not prepared to go there.” Mitch laughed.

  “Well, then, I’m off. I’ve got a hot date. You two kids have fun.”

  Trish patted Winston one last time, kissed April on the cheek, kissed Mitch nearer the mouth than the cheek, and fled the scene.

  “Oh, rats,” April said once they were alone. “I keep forgetting to ask you. One of the doctors at work has some ballet tickets for next weekend, and he’s offered them to us—to you and me and Trish. I think he’s got the hots for her. Who wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t so much,” he said, grinning at April. “Those tickets are not available for love or money. I knew you liked ballet, and I tried to get some as a surprise. They’ve been sold out almost since they went on sale. So, if I get to take you and not have to lop off an arm or a leg to get a ticket, that’s just almost too good.”

  “Well, it may be too good. We have to put up with Dr. Winston Weston.”

  “The cardiologist? From Mayo?” Mitch stopped putting the Zener cards back into their box and looked at her.

  “You’ve heard of him?” April asked.

  “He’s done some collaborative work on near-death experiences. I’ve read many of the papers he’s co-authored. I didn’t realize he was here in Kansas City. It would be nice to meet him.” Mitch finished packing his testing gear.

  “I’ll tell him we’re on, then?” April picked up her purse.

  “Sure. This will be great. How are we dressing? Formal or semi?” Mitch asked, picking up his box of Zener cards and heading for the door.

  “Don’t know. I’ll ask. I think I still have an evening gown somewhere in the back of my closet. And Trish will have no trouble putting on a good display. She’d like that.” April patted Winston one last time before she closed and locked the front door.

  They walked down April's front walk toward Mitch's scooter.

  “Believe it or not, I actually own a tux. Longish story—I’ll tell you later,” Mitch said as he handed April a helmet. “Now let’s get out there and commit art and/or music. Or at least art and/or music appreciation.”

  It didn’t take long for April and Mitch to realize that the Kansas City heat was sucking the joy out of the possibility of wandering Westport, and the Power and Light District would be no better. The available music and events in both locations were not tempting enough to overcome the sweat. Finally, they fled to an early dinner at Mitch’s favorite Mexican restaurant then decided to check out the newest Star Trek movie.

  Sharing popcorn and snuggling down into the plush seat, April felt as if she were in high school again but without all the angst. As usual, the theater was overly air-conditioned and freezing cold, so she was grateful for the scooter jacket and Mitch’s body heat.

  Afterward, in the cooling darkness of evening, they sat talking on her front porch while Winston, on his leash, chased bugs that dipped and dived at the porch light.

  “So why do you have a tuxedo? You promised me a tale,” April said, taking Mitch’s hand in hers.

  “It's not an epic saga, really. I just had so many friends from college who wanted me to be in their wedding parties, all within a few months of each other, that I did the math and realized it was cheaper to buy a tux than to rent one over and over. I haven’t outgrown it”—he patted his stomach—“so I just pull it out as required. It’s actually been a pretty good investment.”

  “And what about you and marriage? Have you ever been?” She didn’t feel awkward asking. She felt as if they knew each other well enough to be honest. She’d already confessed her Sam indiscretion.

  “Almost. Once.” Mitch ran one finger along the back of her hand that held his, not looking at her.

  “What happened?” she asked softly.

  “My best friend. I can’t hold too much of a grudge.” He looked at her and smiled. “He actually left his wife to be with her. I’d been his best man. It was kind of messy and painful for everybody.” He looked off into the night. “I think they really tried not to love each other, but sometimes, things happen, and you’re just not in the driver’s seat on that bus.”

  “Are you still friends?”

  “We tried, but she felt too uncomfortable. I sort of miss them both.”

  April thought a moment, watching Mitch. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m glad I got a chance to know you. Like this.”

  As the fireflies twinkled and winked at them, Mitch took her face in his hands. He kissed her in that way that made her feet burn and her belly tingle, but there was no hurry. They could take their time, get to know each other and learn how to…love each other, maybe? Too early to say, but maybe. Sooner or later, they would sleep together, but not yet. Not tonight. There was plenty of time for them. Maybe even forever.

  * * *

  Later, after more conversation and reluctantly kissing Mitch good night, April saw him safely off on his scooter, watching him drive down the street until he disappeared around a corner.

  After she prepared for bed and got Winston settled, she took the pill to keep her from dreaming. Looking back over the notes in her dream diary, she noticed that whenever she saw Mitch or talked with him, she tended not to have the dream. Maybe he was like Sam, only better—she actually liked Mitch.

  Chapter 16. Elderly Ladies

  April woke Sunday morning, feeling not entirely rested…more like she’d passed out than slept. Still, she rose as usual and did her naked-Sunday exercise routine with assistance from Winston.

  After breakfast, she tried to call Dr. Weston to say she and Mitch and Trish were on for the ballet next weekend, and they planned to dress formally, if that was all right. April had appointed herself the “Decider,” and she had decided formal because she wanted to see Mitch in a tux. People attending the ballet in Kansas City were likely to wear anything from jeans to furs and sometimes both at the same time. To avoid confusion, misunderstanding, or general embarrassment, it was best to state your intentions, so no one in the group felt out of place.

  When Weston didn’t answer after two tries, she left a message.

  Next, she called her parents.

  “Happy Father’s Day, Dad! I know I’m a week early, but I wanted to call and say hi, and tell you I’m thinking about you.”

  “How are you, sweetheart?” he grumbled, obviously pleased she’d called, although few outside the family would recognize this as the tone and timbre of a happy man.

  “I’m great. I started running again. Work is going well. Saw the new Star Trek movie. I have a new boyfriend. Winston is good. Trish says hi.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  Leave it to Dad to zero-in on the one thing he could most worry about.

  “He fixed my doorbell.”

  That earned Mitch a grunt. That was a good sign. Sam had never gotten a single grunt.

  “He has a scooter. We always wear helmets and gloves when we ride.”

  That earned a second grunt, a new record for anyone April had ever dated.

  “You have any plans for next weekend, Dad?”

  “I think your mom is going to drag me to something to do with gardens. I want to go to the boat show. Can you talk to her?”

  That was as close as her dad ever came to begging. He hated garden shows, but he loved her mom, so he submitted to many indignities. Poor Dad.

  “Sure, Dad. Love you. Put her on.”

  She could hear her dad grumble who it was and why she’d
called, then the phone being handed off.

  “April! How are you, dear? When are you coming to visit? It’s been forever.”

  “I was there for Mother’s Day less than a month ago and for Memorial Day a couple of weeks ago, Mom. That’s not forever. Now what’s this I hear about you taking Dad to a garden show on Father’s Day? That’s cruel.”

  “But it’s the rose show,” her mom said, as though it was obvious to any fool what was important, even essential.

  “Mom, for me, please let him go to the boat show. If I were there, I’d take him. Be me for that day. Please?”

  “Oh, all right. If that will make you both happy.” April’s mom was not tenacious about many things except cooking. “Are you coming for the Fourth? Your dad has made some really big rockets for the display this year. He’s been nominated for a pyrotechnic prize, you know.”

  “So you told me on Memorial Day. But you know loud noises and explosions freak Winston out. Fireworks aren’t even legal in the city, but there are still so many in the neighborhood that he spends the whole holiday hiding in the closet.”

  Winston wandered into the room when he heard his name mentioned, then jumped up onto the sofa to sit with April.

  “I think you worry about Winston too much. He needs to man up.”

  “Mom, he’s a cat. He can’t man up.” April stroked the cat in question.

  “Are you dating?”

  “Talk to Dad. A new boyfriend who has already earned two grunts.”

  “My goodness. Is it that handsome man who came looking for you two weeks ago—I think it must have been, right after your Memorial Day visit?”

  April felt goose bumps rise on her arms. “What man?”

  “I never got his name. He's quite tall.”

  “What kind of car did he drive?” April held her breath, waiting for her mother's answer.

  “Oh, I don't know. Some rental car. He said he knew you in college. Is that who you're dating?”

  “No, Mom, my boyfriend’s didn't go to school with me. And he's not really tall, just sort of medium height. Look, I’ve got to go. You and Dad have fun at the boat show. Kiss him for me.”

  April hung up the phone and stared at it for a long time wondering how many coincidences justified a girl being creeped out.

  * * *

  When Trish stopped by before class, April told her about the conversation she'd had with her mother.

  “Who do you suppose would go to my parents’ house, trying to find me? I can't think of anyone I went to school with who would do that. Do you think it could be Dr. Weston?”

  “Why would you think that?” Trish asked.

  “I'm not sure, but I've been getting weird vibes from him. And the silver Mercedes keeps showing up. And he keeps showing up. Except Mom says the guy was driving a rental. Am I just being paranoid?”

  Trish, always direct and logical, said, “Why don’t you just ask Dr. Weston?”

  “Well, I could be wrong. I mean, I can’t know him from school. He went to some Ivy League or East Coast or Canadian school or something—certainly nowhere local. And as far as anyone knows, he’s never even been in this area before he came here from Mayo.”

  They gathered up their things and headed out the door to dinner.

  “All things considered, I think I must be right,” Trish said as she unlocked the door of her little car. “He’s stalking you.”

  They hadn’t decided where to eat before class and were planning to drive around Westport and the Plaza until something struck their fancy. They settled on a new fish place that looked a little pricey but had gotten good reviews. Sadly, the reviews had exaggerated. After dinner, they headed for the campus and class.

  When everyone was seated in the classroom, Mitch first handed out the results of the telepathy tests and spent a few minutes explaining the results. Then he moved on to that evening’s topic.

  “Tonight,” he began, “we’re going to try an experiment since we had so much fun last week with all of us trying our hands—or rather, our minds—at being telepathic. But first, let’s talk about the topic of past lives and past-life regression.

  “Among the people who believe in reincarnation, the ancient Chinese and Greeks believed ‘drinking forgetfulness’ prevented those who are reborn from remembering their past lives. The Upanishads of ancient Indians and the Taoist Book of Three Lives describe how to recover memory of those past lives. Even today, Tibetan Buddhists believe that great teachers, priests and lamas can be identified by their ability to recognize and claim items they owned in earlier lives.”

  Mitch stepped out from behind the lectern and wandered back and forth across the front of the classroom as he spoke.

  “In modern times, Madame Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, a gentleman from France writing under the name Allan Kardec, and even more recently, the psychiatrist Brian Weiss have written about past-life regression and problems these past-life experiences may cause in our present lives. In fact, there is an entire body of study related to past-life intrusions into current lives.

  “Now there are some folks who don't believe in reincarnation. I know. Shocking, right?”

  The class laughed.

  “Those people suggest that through psychic abilities we are able to tap into information from people who have previously lived—remember, we talked about this kind of psychic ability last week.

  “Still other people don't believe psychic phenomena exist and insist the details of past lives can be attributed to cryptomnesia. This is when the subconscious mind creates a story, drawing on imagination, forgotten information from movies or books or other sources, or even through suggestions provided by someone who is guiding the regression, such as a therapist, medium—or maybe even a teacher of psychic phenomena classes.”

  Mitch put on a modest face and pointed to himself, getting another laugh from his students.

  Mitch talked more about methods used for regression then proceeded to talk about past-life regression experiments under controlled conditions and the evidence for and against their veracity. He included anecdotal reports of people who claimed to recall their past lives in great detail and how these were corroborated or debunked.

  Finally, he said, “So tonight, we’re going to try to do a past-life regression. To avoid me trying to lead you—one of the common criticisms of studies done in the past—we’re going to use a neutral method that isn’t specific to any one person.

  “We’ll all get as comfortable as possible, then I’ll begin this recording.” He indicated a little CD player sitting on the desk in the front of the class.

  “It begins by inducing a light trance state, and then we’ll try regressing to our most recent past life. In some cases, people only remember the events immediately surrounding their death at the end of that life, but remember, these events have presumably already happened, so there is nothing to be alarmed about.

  “Anyone who would like to skip this exercise is welcome to do so, and if you want to stay but not participate, that’s fine, too. IfI see anyone in distress, I’ll come to your assistance right away.”

  Everyone looked around. They all seemed to be game. A few people got out of their chairs and settled onto the floor with their backs to the wall. Once everyone was ready, Mitch started the recording.

  April closed her eyes and listened to the voice describing a pleasant scene that made her mind drift lightly into a state that was neither asleep nor fully awake. Then the voice guided her back to memories of birthdays past, while at the same time, she imagined herself slowly descending a staircase. She called up memories of events farther and farther back in her childhood, then infancy, drifting down the stairway as she remembered. Finally, she slipped past her birth, through a door at the very bottom of the stairs, and into a scene that was so real she wanted to reach out to touch the little table by her rocking chair. A glass of water with a bendy straw in it sat on the table. The chair she was sitting in was comfortable and situated by a curtain
ed window in a quiet and softly lit living room. She could see that her hand was veined and wrinkled, spotted with age.

  A slender young man, perhaps as old as twenty but maybe younger, was standing in front of her. Somehow, she knew today was her birthday, her eighty-fifth, and at first, she thought it was her grandson come to visit her. But that wasn’t right. She knew him, but he wasn’t family.

  “Why didn’t you die?” he asked in anguish, tears choking his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes burning with tears to match his. “I didn’t know. I forgot.”

  “It’s all right. We can start over,” he said and pulled a black, dangerous-looking gun from the small of his back. “I’ll be quick. I won’t hurt you.”

  He pointed the gun at her temple as he bent down to caress her neck, kiss her lips. Then he pulled the trigger. The old woman who was April did not die immediately. She lingered long enough to see him turning the gun on himself.

  When she opened her eyes, Mitch was looking at her, apparently trying to decide whether or not to interrupt her regression. She was not overly distressed, only surprised, and there were tears on her face. If this could be trusted, in a past life, she had been murdered on her eighty-fifth birthday and by a young man barely out of his teens.

  When everyone had returned from their journeys, they wanted to discuss their regressions, but class time was up.

  “Anyone who would like to meet at the coffeehouse, we can continue there,” Mitch told the class.

  * * *

  “What was yours like?” Trish asked.

  They were headed for Trish's car.

  “I lived to be an old woman,” April said, not yet prepared to talk about the strange vision.

  “Apparently, in my past life I was a preacher who fell off a building during a barn raising. I think I might have been Amish or something. How weird is that?” Trish sounded completely bemused.

  They decided to drop by the coffeehouse for a little while, just out of curiosity to see what everyone else experienced.