Pulse of Heroes

by A. Jacob Sweeny

  “That sounds great! I’ll have the plain one now. I hope you don’t mind.” Michelle looked at Haneul for any signs of upset but he told her that he understood that most cultures preferred a blander breakfast.

  It was just past 4:00 PM when Ando pulled the rental car in front of Eranka’s small home. He surveyed the little front garden and the way in which the afternoon sun reflected from the windows in yellows and golds. He saw Eranka peek out from behind one of the crocheted curtains and wished he had an old aunt he could go visit sometimes. She probably had supper on the table, and she would tend to Michelle’s needs with warmth and affection. He imagined what it would be like to have a real family, like the one he had when he was a child. It hurt to think about such things, and he admitted to the twinge of jealousy that crept into his silent heart. He didn’t want to stick around there a moment longer; there was no point to putting himself through that emotional self-annihilation again. He turned to Michelle and asked her if she was ok? Michelle said that she was and thanked him. While driving, their conversation had been a good one, and she was touched by his sincerity.

  “I almost forgot,” Ando said, leaning over the passenger seat to hand Michelle something as she was just about to close the car door. “Elliot said that you left this with him by mistake?” Michelle had no idea what was in the small pouch, and untied the knot as she walked to the front door. Inside, she found the black pearl necklace Elliot had given her.

  Eranka greeted Michelle with a warm hug and asked her how her long weekend was. Michelle said it was good, but when Eranka saw the tiny cuts on her face her brow wrinkled in concern.

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “Did you fall off the horse?” Michelle had to think fast. Haden had mentioned something about telling Eranka that they were going horseback riding. She hadn’t thought about him all morning, and now that she pictured his face her heart sank and she swallowed hard. Yes he was nuts, but she never imagined him dead. The finality of it shook her whole soul.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed. I fall many times.” Eranka laughed and ushered her into the dining room where a beautiful meal with the aroma of sweet paprika had been laid out on fine crystal serving ware, just as Ando had imagined. “Your mother called and they will be here in little time.” Michelle excused herself to go wash up. Everything in the small house was as she had remembered it, but it felt strange to her; even the small bathroom with the butterfly-themed wallpaper felt as if she had never seen it before. She tried to wake up from this surreal feeling by splashing her face with cold water again and again, but still the person staring back at her from the mirror felt like an imitation of what she used to look like. Was she acting paranoid? Michelle changed her clothes, but the ones she put on felt like they didn’t sit right on her body. They were less soft, and much brighter than she had remembered.

  Before returning downstairs, Michelle took out the leather pouch from the front pocket of the jeans she had worn earlier and slowly pulled out pearl after pearl until the whole necklace sat in the palm of her hand. The necklace was the only item that felt like it did before. Michelle cupped it and placed it over her heart, as if it would quiet her rapidly increasing beat. The cold smooth surface of the pearls cooled her flushed skin, and one lonely tear escaped from her eye as she remembered that only minutes after Elliot placed the necklace around her neck she had told him she loved him.

  When Michelle’s parents finally arrived she was extra glad to see them, and ran into their arms like she hadn’t seen them in years. Both of them were surprised by her display of affection, and after the hugs were properly dispensed her mom asked if everything was all right. Michelle wished that she could burst into tears and tell her everything that she had gone through. From Vilna and her murdered ex-boyfriend, to being kidnapped by Haden, and the mistake of getting too close to him, and of course about how Elliot came to save her… and about all the blood she saw. She wanted her father to assure her that stabbing Haden the way she did didn’t make her a murderer, and that it wouldn’t even have killed him if it weren’t for the special alloy the spear was made out of.

  “How was the concert?” her father asked when he returned from the washroom and sat at a chair across from her. He was wondering if that was why her voice was so hoarse.

  “It was really good. Yes, we did scream a lot. Well actually some of the bands were kind of strange,” she answered.

  “Why you don’t talk about the boy in the car today?” Eranka said mischievously. Michelle had no idea that Eranka’s eyesight was that good. She cleared her throat and looked at the smiling faces around her.

  “It wasn’t a boy like that. Gosh! It was one of Marika’s friends, and I sat in the front because it was my turn, that’s all,” she lied. Her parents obviously didn’t believe her but they weren’t going to press the subject because they saw nothing wrong in a seventeen-year-old girl meeting a few boys her own age.

  Although happy to be back to normalcy and the calm that her aunt’s home offered, Michelle was unable to fall asleep that night. Her mind couldn’t clear itself of the horrible images and memories. It only got worse when she closed her eyes. She tossed and turned on the bed, and began feeling claustrophobic. The only thing that she could do was to force herself to think about something else.

  Michelle thought about how strange things had felt that morning, like when she took a bite of the porridge and couldn’t taste it, let alone swallow it. It was even hard to drink water; her throat just closed up. The guys were very supportive as usual, and Mikoto made her some Japanese tea. She managed to drink a small cup while they told her that she was in shock and that it took on different characteristics for different people. They all treaded very carefully around Haden’s name, but later when Ando drove her home he told her that she was probably mourning his death too, whether she knew it or not. She didn’t want to talk about it, and just stared out the window at the countryside, watching as people went about their daily routines and envying them. They had no idea about the world she had now been introduced to, a world that existed parallel to their own realm. They worried about bills and crops. Even the angry man who was cursing at his flat tire on the side of the road had no idea how good he had it. People took the world they lived in for granted. Ando told her that it was a beautiful day, and she could see the scenery stretched out on all sides of her; the hills and valleys of yellowy summer flowers between the rows of green farmlands, the small castle ruins set against the blue sky. She recognized the beauty, but she couldn’t feel it. It didn’t evoke any joy; not even a memory of joy.

  “I feel like I don’t belong here, like its all an illusion. It’s very strange,” she told him. Ando knew how she felt. He had felt the same exact feelings when he first discovered that he was different, when he watched his siblings age and die, or when he lost a wife and later his children to the ravages of time. He told her that they all struggled daily with forcing themselves to survive in a world that they didn’t belong to, adding that they had all gone through various phases of deep depression, which usually meant that they would become reclusive and live somewhere alone for many years. Michelle argued with him that at least they belonged in the sense that they knew there were others like them out there. They had one another. But she was worse off because she didn’t feel like she belonged in her world anymore, now that she knew about them and had lived through some of their realities, but she could never belong with them either because she was human.

  “Michelle,” he told her, “I know this is going to be hard for you, but you will have to balance yourself to live in both worlds, if that is what you choose to do. One foot in ours and the other one out there. There is no other way. Or, you can walk away, severe all ties, and convince yourself that what you have learned in the past few months is just some sort of a fantasy, like one you read about in a book. You won’t be the first or the last woman that has walked away from one of us for that reason. It hurts, a lot, but at the same time it’s a blessing in disguise becaus
e we don’t have to deal with more death.”

  Ando got quiet after that. The next time he spoke, he didn’t even look at her. He told her that it wasn’t easy to be with one of them. They always moved from place to place, which prevented their families from establishing close relationships with friends and other family members. There was anger, jealousy, depression, and at times even suicide he warned. The families were forced to watch themselves age while they stayed young and strong. That led to tremendous insecurity in the women, and they would usually take it out on them, even if they had been completely devoted for years.

  “If an attractive younger woman passes by, she might try to flirt with one of us, mistaking our wife for our mother or grandmother. Can you imagine how that must feel to a woman? And then there are the endless daily logistics of dealing with the public. For example, if husband and wife want to go to the market together, it will look very strange and comments will fly because the mature woman is with a man that looks to be half her age.” Michelle couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would feel like. And she doubted that any young man, which they all were, could still love and want to be with his wrinkly old wife. There must have been plenty of cheating, she thought.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she said finally, after going over so many awful scenarios in her head. And yet, her heart felt like it was slashed when she said those words.

  Ando must have realized how bleak he was making everything sound, and tried to brighten up his tone. He told her that it wasn’t all bad, and that being with one of them could be wonderful and exciting too. “We have the means to go anywhere in the world and experience everything that’s out there. Money is never a problem, so you can do whatever you like and have anything you want. We can use our abilities to help people slow down the natural aging process. We encourage their bodies to get rid of tired cells and replace them with new ones. It doesn’t work forever. But it helps quite a bit.” Ando also told her that they were all highly educated and carried a vast amount of knowledge in their brains. “It’s all in here,” he said, pointing to his head. “I have numerous degrees, and can speak nine languages fluently. I think Elliot has lost count of how many he speaks.”

  Michelle thought about the way Elliot had tutored her in Italian, and how great he would be in helping kids with their homework. But then she remembered that he had been adamant about not being able to have any more children. Ando sensed her apprehension, and told her that Elliot would walk away from her and that she’d never see him again if she were honest about her feelings and told him that she couldn’t handle the life that was attached to him. They had all had to do it before; they had to respect such requests because a human life was very short, and to bother or ruin even one day of that life was a crime.

  The next morning, Michelle woke up in her quiet little perch and felt peaceful. She toyed with the idea that perhaps all the horrible things she had gone through were in fact just a bad dream. Back with her family, she felt safe, loved and protected. They didn’t detect any changes in her, so everything must still be the same. She made her way downstairs, happily skipping every other step, and once at the bottom she saw her father standing next to the telephone by the front door. “Morning Dad!” she yelled extra loud. Her father smiled back at her.

  “Morning, sunshine,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder and asking her how she slept. While she ate breakfast and actually managed to swallow the food, he poured himself a cup of coffee and told her he was going out back to join her mother.

  “Eat more than just that toast. I think you lost some weight,” he said, leaving her alone in the kitchen.

  After breakfast, Michelle walked out back to see what everyone was doing. And as soon as she saw her parents she knew that something wasn’t right. They both smiled at her, but she immediately recognized that it was their ‘everything is fine’ smile, when it was the exact opposite that was true.

  “What?” Michelle asked, feeling the color beginning to drain from her face.

  “Honey, why don’t you come sit down with us.” That was always what her mom said when there was something serious to talk about. Michelle looked at the yard and saw Eranka bending over some plants in the garden. She was talking to herself about God knows what, and seemed upset too. Probably the rabbit, Michelle thought, and shook her head. When she looked back at her parents they were no longer smiling. Great, she thought as she hesitantly made her way across the scratchy grass barefoot. What did she do now? Maybe they found out something. There were definitely plenty of things that she could get in trouble over. Perhaps her father had talked to Marika’s dad and found out that she hadn’t spent the night there, or maybe Vilna called screaming about her dead brother, father, whatever. Michelle looked at her mother and her mother looked at her father, meaning that he was going to be the speaker.

  “Michelle, I was just checking my messages at the office… and there is something that I think we should tell you rather than you hearing it from someone else when we get back home.” Horrible scenarios began running through Michelle’s mind. It couldn’t be about Elliot because there was no way he had made it back to Willow’s Creek yet. But what if his plane crashed? But that didn’t make sense either because how would such news travel straight to her father’s message box. She kept thinking and thinking until…

  “Oh my God! It’s Crumb isn’t it?” she screamed in worry.

  “No baby, Crumb is fine,” her father said, almost smiling. He called her ‘baby’, meaning that things had gone from bad to worse.

  “Then what is it? Don’t make me guess!” Michelle said angrily. Her father apologized and told her that he was trying to find the best words to use.

  “Did somebody die?” Michelle yelled with dread and frustration. Her mother put her hand on her father’s arm.

  “Let me, Ron,” she said, and Michelle watched her father shrink in front of her eyes. Her mom took Michelle’s hand into hers. “Sweetie, the bad news is that Mrs. Bianchetti suffered a heart attack a few days ago and…” Michelle’s face went pale.

  “Is she all right though? I mean they can fix that right?” Michelle felt her mouth dry.

  “She was very old. I’m sorry. She’s passed away,” her mom said to her, clasping her hand even tighter.

  “Are you sure? Mom, I mean are they sure?” Michelle asked in a shaky voice. Her father gave her the napkin he was holding under his coffee cup because he saw Michelle’s eyes turn glossy. But Michelle didn’t cry.

  “We’re sure baby,” he said. “A funeral will be held at Saint Alodia after Sunday services. Michelle began feeling angry. At first she didn’t know at whom, but then she realized that she was angry with herself. She had left Francesca all alone for her birthday, and she remembered how Francesca had told her that she wanted to celebrate it with her because she didn’t know if she’d have many more after that one. Michelle had let her down, and now she was dead. If only she would have stayed at home none of this would have happened and most likely Francesca would still be alive. With a sudden burst of energy, Michelle ran inside the house and up to her loft. But not before she yelled at her parents that she wasn’t going to miss the funeral. She was going back home. Michelle lay on the bed staring at the ceiling waiting for the tears to come, but they didn’t. It was like she was crying, but she was empty. She eventually fell asleep; her last thought was that she wished she could turn back time.

  As the Andrews climbed into their small egg-shaped rental car, Eranka grabbed Michelle by the elbow and whispered to her to remember what she had told her. “You have gypsy blood in you. I am sorry about your friend, and I am sorry that you were in a bad place over the weekend. But that’s why I kept it to myself and not worry your mother or father.” Michelle looked at Eranka in horror, but Eranka just hugged her tight with her muscular grasp, and Michelle thought she might squeeze the stuffing out of her. After she let go, Eranka smiled and whispered to Michelle that she had special dreams too. Since she was a little girl. “
You have good friend around. You are very lucky,” she said, giving her a small friendly shove towards the car. Through the rear window, Michelle watched her aunt standing outside her small home in her apron and sunflower-print polyester dress. She got smaller and smaller, and eventually disappeared along with the house. Michelle wished that Eranka lived closer to them, and she hoped that, unlike poor Francesca, she would get to see her again.

  For the first time in her life, Michelle actually felt safe as the plane accelerated down the runway and took off. She didn’t care that she could hear the large engines roaring as they worked overtime to lift the heavy aircraft. She didn’t care that her body felt the pull of the earth’s gravity fighting to keep her grounded like a mother trying to hold on to all her children. There was safety in the air. Up above the earth, no one could touch her anymore. She could tell that her mother was nervous because she squeezed Michelle’s hand tighter. Michelle reassured her with a smile. If her mom only knew how secure she felt as the powerful engines cut through the sky, climbing higher and higher, she wouldn’t have needed to hold her hand. Michelle had only one objective in mind, and that was to be there to say goodbye to her friend before she was returned to the earth. Even after the plane leveled off and the sounds of the little service bells began to chime, she sat straight and wanted nothing.

  They had about two hours to spend in Zurich before the next flight would carry them across the Atlantic Ocean. Michelle sat on one of the benches in the terminal with her knees pulled up against her chest, methodically munching on a wonderful chocolate bar, guilt free, until she realized that she had nothing left in her hand but the wrapper. Her parents had gone to the duty free store. At first her mother was nervous about leaving Michelle alone, but the way that she had been doting over her daughter since the news about Francesca had been driving Michelle crazy, and she insisted that she would be fine.