Beloved Lives

by Evans, Marilyn

  “You’re very quiet,” Mitch told April once they were settled at a table in the corner.

  Other class members were getting their coffee and chatting throughout the coffeehouse. Trish was off comparing notes with the rest of the class.

  “Have you done this before?” April asked.

  “You mean regressed? Yes, back several lives. I was a dog fairly recently. It was the most vivid of all the experiences. Apparently, I died of old age in a basket by a kitchen stove in some farmhouse. Everything I saw during that regression was from about a human’s hip height.”

  “I was murdered,” April said, swirling her latte.

  “I’m sorry. Did that disturb you?” He took her hand, looking concerned.

  “Strangely, no. I have a feeling the person who did it loved me. It was an act of compassion, I think. It was pretty weird.”

  “Well, if it ever bothers you,” Mitch reminded her, “just remember what I said in class. Most people think it’s total nonsense. Or you may be picking up experiences from people who are living or have lived in the immediate past, and these are not your past experiences at all.”

  * * *

  Not long afterward, Trish and April headed for home. April made sure she took her medication before she went to sleep. She didn’t trust what dreams she might have after tonight’s experience.

  Chapter 17. Fast Cars

  During the first part of the next week April ran in the mornings before the day got too hot, played with her cat in the evenings, worked in the hospital lab, and casually tried to bump into Dr. Weston. She wasn't sure how she was going to ask him if he was stalking her but figured she'd think of something. By Wednesday morning when she still hadn't managed to corner him, she tracked down one of the surgery nurses rumored to have him sewn up as a fiancé.

  “I haven't seen Dr. Weston around this week,” April commented as they stood in line in the cafeteria.

  “Oh, he's at a medical conference. Won't be back until Thursday night.” The nurse smiled angelically at April.

  Huh, thought April. That explains that, at least.

  * * *

  Wednesday night, Trish, April, Ravenna, and the techs from the lab who were fans of the Bard made their annual expedition to Westmoreland Park near the Nelson Atkins Museum for their yearly Shakespeare fix.

  April had invited Mitch, but because he was traveling again, he promised to make it next year. Although she had to laugh at herself just a little for acting like a teenager, April got a warm feeling from knowing she had thelong-term commitment of a date in a year.

  No summer event in Kansas City, especially a free one, was complete without the agony of finding a place to park. Too many cars and too few parking spots were a proud, city tradition. The pre-play activities started early, and good seating went fast, so the gang had to arrive no later than six.

  Successful parking of the various designated drivers’ vehicles was followed by toting everything to the best available spot, setting up chairs, dispensing and consuming assorted goodies, socializing with friends, admiring each other’s hats, making a donation to the cause—it might be free but it wasn’t cheap—and, by turn, avoiding sunburn and mosquitoes. The play itself didn’t start until eight, so this meant a long night, but the various pre-show entertainments and the champagne and picnic baskets made it worth the effort. And then, of course, there was the play, which was the thing.

  * * *

  April had enjoyed the production with her phone considerately switched off. When she got home, after much bidding adieus and fond good morrows, she switched her phone back on to discover Weston had called. She checked the message while she got ready for bed. He said he was glad to hear they would accompany him to the ballet, and if it was all right with everyone, he could pick all of them up at her place. He said dinner would be on him, then they would go to the theater. Reservations at a restaurant conveniently close to the ballet venue were for six o’clock, which he figured would give them plenty of time to eat and make the curtain at eight. Unless they’d rather eat afterward. He could change the reservation if she let him know in time. The message was really long. Really, really long. He sounded as excited as a kid, which was kind of endearing.

  “I don’t know, Winston,” April said to her cat, ruffling the fur behind his ears. “Maybe for Trish’s sake, I could learn to like Weston.” But April was still gnawingly uncomfortable about going through with this whole double-date thing. She just couldn’t figure out how to get out of it gracefully. If she was going to bow out, she was going to have to do it soon.

  * * *

  By Friday, April still hadn’t resolved her conflicted feelings to her satisfaction. According to Trish’s chatter at the play and all the phone traffic throughout the week, Trish and Mitch were as ridiculously excited as Weston sounded. April couldn’t bring herself to spoil the fun.

  Friday evening, while Trish prepared to sit with Winston again, she went on and on to April about the plans for Saturday night, just as she had on Wednesday, until April gave up trying to even think about being a wet blanket. She said goodnight to Trish and Winston and headed for the hospital.

  The walk was somewhat less sweaty than the previous week. It had been so long since the last good rain that the humidity was finally dropping, and today the heat was slightly less relentless. But despite the cooler weather, the foliage in the neighborhood was starting to look a little limp, except in the yards of the neighbors who'd been inclined to run their sprinklers.

  As she walked, April brooded over the phone call she had made to her parents the weekend before. She still didn't know if the guy who had shown up at her parent's house was Weston or not. She supposed it was possible someone could have come looking for her for a school reunion or something. It didn't seem likely, but it was still a possibility.

  Weston was supposed to have gotten back in town the day before, but she hadn't run into him. She was a little worried that if she was wrong about him being the one at her parent's house, she might be perceived as the scary stalker, obsessed with Weston, imagining him being obsessed with her. But why was she thinking about Weston? She wanted to think about Mitch. Mitch and his chocolate-brown eyes and his mustache that tickled just a little and the way his kisses made her toes tingle.

  The hospital was as brightly lit as ever, the air-conditioning still a shock after the warmth of the evening air. The security guard again waved to her as she made her way through the lobby toward the elevator that would take her to the level where the sleep lab was located. As the elevator doors slide open, April started to step forward and froze just before she collided with Weston as he was about to get off. She saw that he wasn't wearing a white coat or stethoscope, so April guessed he was done with his day and was heading home.

  Smiling and holding the elevator door open for her, he said, “April, I’m looking forward to Saturday. I hope you and your friends are, too.”

  April paused and, making up her mind, said, “Look, we need to talk a minute.” She looked around the nearly deserted lobby and nodded toward a quiet alcove that she knew had semi-comfortable chairs.

  “Sure,” he replied, and stepped out of the elevator, looking a bit wary.

  He followed her to the chairs, and they both sat.

  “Have you been to my house?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” he said, “of course.”

  “No, I mean my parents’ house.”

  He didn’t answer. He also didn’t look at her. He shifted uncomfortably on the chair.

  “You have been. Why? What do you want? What’s going on?”

  “It is difficult to explain.”

  “Well, give it a shot,” April said angrily. “You’re starting to creep me out. The hospital has policies for handling things like this, you know.”

  He looked at her, finally, his eyes sad.

  “It’s not what you think. I was just trying to find you. I’ve found you before. Surely, you must remember…”

  Looking into those sad, m
uddy blue-green eyes, April felt herself shifting, becoming slightly drowsy, and moving back in time, as though she were descending a stairway just as she had Sunday night in the class. Her mind filled with memories of her birthdays, her infancy, down those stairs and through the door at the bottom of the stairs. There she was again, the same old woman, this time surrounded by her children and grandchildren. But then she went back farther, and she was a young woman.

  Her parents lived in a tall, white house with green shutters, a mass of lilacs making a living wall to the north of her yard and spirea all along the front, forsythia on the south. Flowers, always flowers around her, from early spring into the autumn.

  That spring, with the scent of flowers heavy in the air, a young man came to her home. She didn’t know him, but he and her father became good friends, working together on the family car. Her mother always insisted he stay to dinner, that clever, young fellow who had kept the ambulances running in the last year of the Great War, a terrible war that had killed so many and left so many others shell-shocked or maimed.

  The young man loved cars, fast cars, and he had money enough to buy them. He took her out in his newest one, always driving fast, always sweeping her off her feet. He loved her the way heroes in romances loved the heroines, like the picture shows said love should be. He took her to speakeasies and showed her that life could be wild and abandoned and filled with everything you could want if only you dared to live.

  They married. They lived wild, and they loved more wildly still, in New York, Paris, London, Havana, and Rio, dancing late into the night, drinking champagne.

  April shook her head and cleared away the memories that weren’t her memories.

  “Do you remember me now?” Weston asked.

  “I remember someone. Two people who loved each other and lived crazy lives.”

  “We were those people.”

  “But that was a long time ago. That was literally another life.” She was dazed and a little disoriented.

  “I still found you. Even in this life. I found you then, and I’ve found you now. As I must, as I have always done.” Weston’s voice was as soft, as warm as a caress.

  April tried to make sense of it. She stood up and shook her head again to clear her thoughts. “Look, I have to get to the sleep lab.”

  His expression changed, his eyes going wide as he looked at her in surprise. He opened his mouth, but April hurried on.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she said, and rushed away before he could say anything else.

  When April got to the lab, she found Dr. Horner sitting in with Darryl-the-technician tonight.

  “Here I am, ready to go,” she said, as she dropped her back pack on the bed in the designated sleep-study room.

  “Have you remembered not to take the prescription tonight?” Dr. Horner asked.

  April assured them she had not, and the doctor explained they were hoping to reproduce the previous week’s dreams.

  After putting on her pajamas and brushing her teeth, April got into the little bed and waited as they hooked her up. She couldn’t help noticing, Darryl was more subdued and much less chatty this time. For some reason, tonight, she was acutely aware of all the electrodes and cameras and other gear attached to her and had a hard time falling asleep.

  Finally, hoping she was psychic enough to send and they were psychic enough to receive, she sent love thoughts to Trish and Mitch and Winston, then she drifted into dreams.

  Chapter 18. Bendy Straw Revisited

  Her dream began with flowers—lilacs and spirea and roses. Flowers around her parents’ home, always there except when the snow was on the ground, but even then, in early spring, the crocuses might peek through.

  Then there were orchids. Orchids sent to her home, in her hotel rooms, always waiting for her wherever she went, wherever they went. He never forgot. In all the cities in all the world, he found orchids for her. He even built her a greenhouse when they settled in their country place, not so far from New York, close enough that they could drive into the city for the clubs and the ballet, the shows and the music. But people came to them, as well, to their suppers and their weekend house parties.Beautiful people, bright and happy and full of life. So much laughter and conversation.

  On that day, drowsy and peaceful, a summer day, lazy, and maybe even a little boring, it was too hot to do anything.

  “Maybe a drive,” he said, “in the convertible.”

  Let the wind blow through their hair.

  “Let’s go upstate,” she said. “I’ll throw a few things into a bag for us, and we can get away to one of the lakes. The water will be so cold and sweet up in the mountains.”

  “That’s a great idea. We’ll need to take some supplies. Champagne, other essentials. I’ll have Daniels pack us a basket. All the good stuff.”

  At first, the hot air gave little relief, whipping their hair as he guided the car down the road, but when they climbed into the mountains, the temperature grew cooler. They laughed and made their plans for the rest of the day—picnicking, swimming, lying in the shade, drinking their champagne. He didn’t see the slow-moving tractor until he was upon it. She started to scream, but time was too short even for that.

  She must have slept late, past her usual time. She’d had dreams of people talking to her, but she could not answer. Strange dreams that lasted late, late into the day and perhaps into night again. The pain was there, too, solid and immovable, but somehow far from her, contained within limbs too distant to really feel. Her parents sometimes were nearby, calling to her, and she could smell the roses they brought, a smell like home. But she didn’t want to come back, to wake up. Not until the pain went away. Not until the time was right.

  Finally, the pain receded, and her eyes flickered open, stayed open. She did not bound out of bed, a strange bed in a strange place. She felt as though she were tied down, unable to move her arms, legs, head…well, maybe a little, though less than an inch. She waited until someone came to help her. The woman, dressed in white like an angel but with a face like a sad dog, cried out and dropped a metal tray when their eyes met.

  There was so much noise and activity that she went back to sleep to rest up for whatever it was that was making everyone so excited. When she woke again, things moved more slowly. Still, she slept often, gaining a little every day, a little movement, a little food, a little understanding.

  She knew who her parents were, but they looked strange, not as they had when she last remembered. They were so old. She knew her name, but sometimes, it wouldn’t come into her mind until she sat for a minute and thought about it. They told her that her husband was dead, but she didn’t remember having a husband. They said he'd died two years ago in the car accident that had broken her body so badly.

  A very nice, older gentleman worked with her, helping her to sit up then stand up, slowly, painfully teaching her to walk again. The coma had left her muscles weak, although all the broken bones had mended. Her wasted limbs barely held her, but she and the gentleman worked every day, and little by little, she grew stronger. The nice man told her that in time, she would make a full recovery. She believed him. She trusted him partly because he always made sure she had a bendy straw in her water glass. She liked the clever straws that had aided her in the first victory in the battle to eat and drink by herself.

  The nice man had a son. He would come to pick up his father after the long, exhausting, physical therapy sessions. She talked to the son about the weather, about what flowers were in bloom, what things had changed over the years. He was her first introduction to a world that was different than she remembered. After a year of talking with him, she came to love him, in part because he was so much his father’s son, steady and patient and infinitely kind.

  By the time they married, she could walk without help. She even danced on their wedding day, a slow waltz and not for long. He always gave her flowers on their anniversary, roses, red roses, her favorite flower. And he gave her children, beautiful children who ga
ve her grandchildren. When, after many anniversaries and many red roses, he died, she would have died, too, if not for the love of all those children that bore her up.

  And now, here she was, eighty-five today, with the generations coming later in the day to celebrate with cake and ice cream and stories. But there was the young man, in her house where she was usually alone, standing before her and holding orchids.

  “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.”

  She remembered now, who he was, who she was.

  “It’s all right. We can start over. I’ll be quick. I won’t hurt you.”

  He pointed the gun at her temple as he caressed her neck, kissed her lips. Then, his hand trembling, he pulled the trigger. She lingered long enough to see him turn the gun on himself.

  * * *

  April woke from the dream, unconsciously scratching at the EKG lead above her left breast. The young man was her dead husband, the first husband—the one she could not remember after the coma. His body was not the same, and yet it was him. He had come back for her, had found her, as he had found her before. But this time, they were out of sync, she old and he young.

  So, was that the answer? Start over? What the heck was that about?

  Weston had said he'd found her before. But how many times, she asked herself, reaching for the water glass with the bendy straw. How long has this been going on?

  Chapter 19. Bear Claws

  When April woke in the morning after a second round of dreaming—this one having to do with St. Bernard-sized macrophages engulfing and digesting trash in Swope Park—she felt rested and content. At least some things were starting to make sense, perhaps not trash-eating macrophages but certainly the apparent continuation of the past-life regression.