by Dima Zales
The truth is, I haven’t mentioned him because he’s all wrapped up with the nightmares. I still haven’t decided what – if anything – I want to tell them about that. It’s not that I don’t think they’ll believe me; it’s just that I can’t imagine what good could come of it.
And I am a little bit afraid of what they’ll think about how fast things have moved with me and Brian, and how hard I’ve fallen for him. Probably because I have moments where I’m a little afraid of how fast things have moved, too. Even though I’ve been the fast one.
Maybe especially because of that.
Anyway, I tell her about Brian. I give her a heavily-edited version of the story. I leave out any mention of dreams or nightmares at all; I tell her we met at the nightclub, something about him caught my eye, and we hit it off immediately. I tell her that Brian’s a freshman, he’s two years younger than me, that he hasn’t had a real girlfriend before and I’m the one setting the pace on, well, everything. I tell her how thoughtful and kind he’s been to me, how I’ve been feeling very stressed out with final exams and thinking about the MCATs in the spring and how he’s helped me so much.
As we talk, I can see her relaxing a little on the whole subject; I’m not sure how good a job I’m doing convincing her about Brian – I think it’s more that she’s putting herself in my shoes remembering times when maybe she didn’t tell her parents right away when she had a new boyfriend.
She also knows I’m not telling her everything. I can see in her eyes that she has a very clear idea of what I’m leaving out – and obviously the dreams aren’t the only thing I’m editing when I talk about Brian. I can also see that she’s perfectly happy not to hear the things she thinks I’m leaving out. I’m glad we agree about that, anyway!
I was able to sleep peacefully all night long. Maybe it was just being in my own familiar bed at home, or being a couple of hundred miles away from the people whose dreams I’ve been seeing. I don’t know, and as long as it keeps up I don’t really care why.
I take my time getting around in the morning; the house is very quiet. Thankfully, Bob’s still in school most of this week, so I don’t have to fight with him about who gets to use the car today. Not that it would be much of a fight anyway, but it’s easier if I don’t have to argue with him over every little thing.
I need the car today because I’m meeting Aunt Kat for lunch. I find what seems like one of the very last parking spaces at the mall, and I make my way over to the restaurant. It’s precisely 12:05 PM according to my watch, and since we were supposed to meet at noon, Kat’s probably already been here for twenty minutes. I wander into the restaurant and I spot her right away.
There’s the obligatory hug and kiss on the cheek, of course, followed by a little bit of small talk before we get to the important stuff. I see that she’s got a bottle of wine on the table already – I’m sure Mom’s talked to her and given her instructions to find out more information about Brian.
Aunt Kat – Katarina Wells to be exact – isn’t actually a blood relative. What she is, is my mother’s best friend, my godmother, and also one of the very few people in my life who I can tell absolutely anything to. There’s Beth, and now there’s Brian, and there’s always been Aunt Kat. My whole life I’ve gone to her first for advice, before any of my friends and definitely before my parents. And she’s always, always, always been there for me.
The thing about her isn’t just that she’s there for me, but she’s there with exactly the right thing to say. Like the night I lost my virginity. It was awful, I’ve said that before. When it was over Richard drove me home, and I managed not to go all hysterical until I got out of the car and he was gone. But between the driveway and the front door, I totally lost it.
Aunt Kat just happened to be over at our house; she was sitting with Mom in the living room having coffee. I opened the door, took one step in, and I think they both knew more or less what happened as soon as they saw me. I was a complete disaster: clothes all wrinkled, hair a mess, crying uncontrollably.
They sat me down on the couch, got me a big glass of water, and I told them everything that had happened. Any other time, I wouldn’t have told Mom any of it, but at the moment I wasn’t thinking rationally, if you could call it thinking at all. I’m sure she was surprised, disappointed, upset, take your pick, but she didn’t say anything about that, she just comforted me and held me and told me it was going to be all right.
Kat did the same thing for a little while, and then she took me upstairs to my room. She sat next to me on my bed, and then proceeded to tell me how disappointed she was in me.
Not because I had sex, not because I was stupid or careless or anything like that. She was disappointed, she said, because I didn’t listen to my instincts. I’d told her a couple of weeks before that I was having some doubts about Richard. I couldn’t say why, there weren’t any tangible reasons, just a gut feeling.
That’s something Kat always said, for as long as I can remember: always trust my feelings. And I completely ignored them; she was absolutely right about that. We talked all night about it, and by morning I was feeling much better.
I just realized that, to the casual observer, I must sound like quite the fragile little mess. Always crying and screaming and running to the nearest available help when anything bad happens. I don’t think that’s really fair, though. The whole thing with Richard, for example. I was seventeen, I thought I was in love, and I was pretty delusional about him. So what? Who isn’t, at that age? Looking back it’s easy to say, “what did you expect from him?” and looking back of course I was crazy to imagine it could have been anything like my romantic fantasies. But that’s the whole point: at the time, you don’t know – at least I didn’t. I made a mistake. I trusted when I shouldn’t have and said yes when I should have said no. I don’t think I’m the first girl in history to do that.
And of course, I was horribly upset and I thought the world was going to end, or at least my little piece of it, because that’s how everything feels when it’s happening to you. I still feel bad about it, because I was so stupid, but I learned from the whole experience so it wasn’t a total loss in the end. And as for running for help, isn’t that what your friends and family are for?
With these stupid nightmares, well, I won’t apologize for freaking out about them. I’d like to see what anybody else who starts seeing psychic visions of a serial killer would do. I don’t think there’s an instructional pamphlet for that anywhere.
I’ve gotten a bit off track here, I suppose. The original point was that Aunt Kat’s probably the person I trust more than anyone else, and we’re about to get to talking about what’s been going on with me recently. I go through the whole story – well, the most important parts, anyway – and she’s surprised, frightened and appalled by turns. I tell her about the dreams, about the articles in the newspaper, all of it.
“Do you believe me?” I ask her when I’m finally done with it.
She answers immediately. “Yes.” Then she stops to think for a minute. “Of course, I believe you. Your brother, if he told me something like this, I’d think it was just one of his strange little things, some sort of odd fantasy. But you, no. I know you’re telling me something true.” She sort-of frowns. “Or at least something you believe is true.”
I don’t say anything. I had this exact same conversation with Dr. Ritter and I don’t want to explain myself all over again. I want her to accept it at face value, but I guess that isn’t reasonable. Would I accept it at face value from someone else? Probably not.
“You have to admit, what you told me is pretty far out there, Sara,” Kat finally says, more because one of us has to say something to fill the silence than anything else, and it clearly wasn’t going to be me. “Like I said, I do believe you, but it’s pretty hard to wrap my mind around it.”
“I know.” I wish I didn’t, but, boy do I know. “I’ve tried to think about it logically. I mean, I’m going to be a doctor. I’m training to be a scienti
st. I know how things work, physically. This – this doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit anything I know, or anything I’ve read. It shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t how people’s brains work.” That all sounds great, and it’s all true, but my brain doesn’t seem to know that.
Kat empties her glass of wine before she answers me. “That doesn’t matter, Sara.” She pours herself another glass. “Should and shouldn’t don’t matter. Sense doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s happening, and you have to figure out how to cope with it. And it’s all on you because it’s in your head, nobody else’s.”
She’s absolutely right. When I close my eyes, when I’m asleep, I’m alone. Whether I’m at home and Mom and Dad are just down the hall, or I’m in the dorm and Beth is six feet away, or I’m with Brian and I’m in his arms, I’m still alone inside my head. Nobody can make the nightmares stop, nobody can turn off whatever switch got flipped in my brain that’s making me see them.
But I notice that she looked away from me for a moment there. She didn’t say anything about the fact that what I’m seeing in the nightmares is really happening out in the world. That two girls have died already. That I’m the only one who knows what’s really going on. She still won’t look me in the eye. She’s waiting for me to say something about it, because she can’t bring herself to. Well, neither can I.
She’s known me my whole life, and this is the first time she’s ever held back on me. It’s also the first time I’m glad she did. She finishes her second glass of wine in one gulp, and pours a third. She looks back at me, and for a long time, neither of us says anything. Finally she can’t stand it anymore and she asks me, “So tell me more about your boyfriend?” and I’m more relieved than I can say that she’s changing the subject.
Just like that, it’s Friday – another night without nightmares, too! – and Christmas is three days away. After lunch with Kat, I was able to get most of my shopping done. There’s just one person I don’t have something for, but he’s the most important one of all and I’ve been having no luck thinking of the right gift.
We’ve only known each other for three weeks. There’s so much I don’t know about Brian, and I want my first Christmas gift for him to be special, something he’ll always remember. I’ve been getting more and more worried that I won’t be able to think of anything.
But last night I found inspiration – in the sports section of the newspaper of all places. There was an ad for a big memorabilia show today, in Philadelphia, at the Spectrum. There’ll be pro athletes there, players from the Phillies and Eagles and Flyers, signing photos and all that sort of thing. Brian’s not the biggest sports fan in the world, but he does follow them, and of all the local teams, he follows the Phillies the most. And he’s got something in common with my father – they both have the same favorite player, Mike Schmidt, who just retired this past season. And who, conveniently enough, will be at the show.
So I decided to take the car and go there, and wait in line however long it takes, and get Mike Schmidt’s autograph for Brian. He’ll love it. He has to, right?
I was going to try to get one for Dad as well, but he saw the ad too, and since he’s off from work today he was thinking of going himself. So we’ll go together, just me and Dad. My brother couldn’t care less about sports, and Mom wasn’t interested in waiting in line for hours.
Right after breakfast we get in the car and Dad is as excited as I think I’ve ever seen him. He's a huge sports fan. I remember back in 1980, when the Phillies won the World Series. They had a victory parade the day after, and Dad took off from work. He kept Bob and me home from school, and he dragged Mom along too. We all went to Philadelphia and spent the day watching the parade. The whole time he was weeping, tears of joy, literally all day long. It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever seen my father cry.
The entire ride up, Dad is reminiscing about that, going on and on how he can’t believe he’s going to actually get to stand two feet away from “Mr. Schmidt” and maybe even – perish the thought! – shake his hand.
It’s a very long ride.
We finally get there, park the car, and Dad goes to the trunk, opens it up and pulls out a box. He takes out his official replica Phillies uniform and puts it on, and then he hands me a Phillies cap to wear. Now that we’re properly outfitted, we start walking into the arena. I’ve only ever been here once before, to see the circus, and in my opinion this is kind of a circus all its own. Most of the people around us are wearing jerseys for the Phillies, or the Eagles or one of our other teams. And most of them have this distant sort of look, just like my father does now. As though they’re on a pilgrimage or something. All I want is a nice Christmas gift for my boyfriend.
For the two hours we wait in line, Dad acts like the people waiting all around us are long-lost relatives. They’re rehashing every play from the World Series. It’s amazing. Most of them, my Dad included, start to get less talkative and more nervous as they get close to the front of the line.
Finally, we arrive. There’s a table piled high with photos of Mike Schmidt in action and behind the table, the man himself. My first impression is that he seems smaller in real life than he looked when he was playing. And it’s weird to see him in a suit instead of his uniform. But it’s definitely him.
He looks at Dad, waiting for him to say something, but in the presence of his hero my father has lost the power of speech. I forcibly grab Dad’s arm and shove it towards Mike Schmidt, and Schmidt dutifully shakes it. “You’re his idol, sir,” I say for him, and it’s obvious from Schmidt’s bemused expression that this is far from the first time today he’s encountered a scene like this.
“Who do I make it out to?” he asks, taking a photo from a stack on the table by him.
“Could I have two? One is for my Dad here. Howard Barnes,” I answer, and the great man quickly signs a photo of himself. “The other one, it’s for my boyfriend, I wanted him to have something really special for our first Christmas together,” I babble, and then realize I haven’t said his name. “It’s Brian, please,” and he signs a second picture while the people behind us in line glare at me for wasting so much time. I grab the pictures, mumble “Thank you, sir,” and drag Dad away.
He recovers his wits a few minutes later, and we wander around the show some more. He gets a couple more autographs, and then we – finally! – head out of the arena. When we’re back at the car he carefully and reverently takes off his replica uniform, folds it neatly and puts it back in its box along with my Phillies cap, and then we’re off.
We stop at McDonalds for a quick bite on the way home, and we just sit for a few minutes after we’ve eaten. Dad is staring longingly at his autograph. “This is beautiful,” he says, a faraway look in his eye. I look at Brian’s gift. Mike Schmidt signed it, “Brian – Go get ‘em, slugger! – Mike Schmidt, #20.”
He’s going to love it. How could he not? I just stare at the words, picturing Brian opening up his gift, imagining his reaction, feeling him holding me, kissing me…
There’s a sound, my Dad clearing his throat, and I’m back in the here and now. He looks at the picture in my hand, and then, with a very odd expression on his face he wags his finger at me. “I think I need to meet your young man.”
“You’re going to, Dad. On Sunday.” What’s going on?
He’s still got that expression. He’s looking at me as though he’s noticing something he’s never seen before. “I see so much of your mother in you. I don’t think you realize how like her you are,” he says, finally.
I do, actually. I look a lot like her. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was young, and if you didn’t know it you might think you were looking at me. I start to say that, but he shakes his head.
“It’s not just that you look like her,” he says, reading my mind. “It’s – well, I was watching you just now. I saw how your eyes lit up when you were thinking about your Brian.” How long was I staring at that picture?
“Nobody else has eyes like you
rs. Nobody else’s are that bright. Nobody else’s light up the way yours did just now. Except…” and now he chokes up a bit, and he has to have some water before he can go on, “Nobody except your mother. How you looked just now, that’s how she looks sometimes, when she’s looking at me.”
Oh.
Oh, my.
I didn’t expect that. “Um – I – I don’t know – Dad, I’m not sure what…” As I’m babbling, it hits me. I’ve heard this before. From Brian, the night we met, at the club. He said something very similar to me, and suddenly I’m feeling dizzy, and warm. I have to hold on to the edge of the table to steady myself.
“I saw it, honey,” he says with a gentle smile. “I see it right now. You’re done for. This Brian, he’s in your heart. You can’t hide that, and you can’t fake it, either.”
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my father. But he’s right. Brian’s in my heart, that’s exactly how it is. There’s no point pretending it’s not true. And it’s such a relief to have someone really and truly get what I’m feeling. Even if it is Dad.
“Can I ask you something?” My voice is very small and very far away. I still need to hang on to the table for support.
“Always. Anything. You know that,” he says.
I already know the answer, but I want to hear it anyway. I let go of the table and my hands are shaking. “Sometimes when I look at him, when I look into his eyes, I mean really look into them, and he catches mine, it’s like everything else just disappears. Like we’re the only two people in the whole world. Even if we’re in a crowd, or at the movies or wherever. Isis it like that with you and Mom?”
He reaches across the table, takes my hands in his. “Boy, you do have it bad. Worst case I ever saw. Or the second-worst, anyway.” He lets go of my hands. “It was. It was exactly like that.”