Megan's Way (21 page)

Compelled by something he did not understand,
yet felt bound to follow, he placed his hand against the glass of
the kitchen window. A flow of warm air whipped through him, though
the window was closed. As he stood paralyzed and perplexed,
It
was for the best
, filtered into his ear like a whisper.

Olivia walked outside dressed in her black
knee-length silk dress, the one her mother had bought her when they
had gone to see
Rent
, the musical. The morning was brisk,
and she thought for a moment about walking back inside and grabbing
her sweater, but decided against it because her high heels were
hard to walk in and she was already halfway to the car. She took in
the light blue sky and the few clouds that meandered slowly above
her, wondering if her mother was nearby. She couldn’t shake the
feeling that cremation couldn’t have been what her mother had
wanted. If she were cremated, would that mean that she was really
gone,
truly
gone, forever? She never had a chance to ask her
mother what happened to someone’s soul after they were cremated,
but she’d assumed it wasn’t good. This unknown rode heavily on her
shoulders. She fiddled with her dress and began to sweat under her
arms which annoyed her. Nerves! She hated them. Even on a chilly
day she would be the sweaty girl! Urgh!

“Come on, Jack, we’ll be late,” Holly
said.

Jack finished tying his tie and rubbed his
hands down the front of his black suit. “I’m coming,” he said,
quietly. He looked at Holly, whose blue dress against her tanned
skin took his breath away. Jack hadn’t been able to think of
anything other than Megan and their weekend together since the
other night in Megan’s kitchen. He couldn’t help but wonder if
Olivia was his child. It would be just like Megan, given the
circumstances when she had arrived back in town and found that he
and Holly were a couple, to withhold that information in an effort
not to hurt them.
God damn it
.

He reached into his pocket where he’d safely
stashed Megan’s Yin necklace. “Do you think Olivia is okay?” he
asked.

Holly rushed around the bedroom, agitated.
She dropped to her knees in the closet and tossed out shoe after
shoe, looking for her high heels. “Aha!” She slipped them on and
found dangling earrings to match her dress. “Ready!” She slowed for
a moment and looked out the window. “Would you be if Megan were
your mom?” she asked.

“No, I guess not,” Jack said. He stood behind
Holly at the window. They watched Olivia, sitting in the back of
Jack’s car, fiddling with the edge of her dress. “Poor girl.”

Holly patted his hand and walked toward the
door. “We all miss her. We’ll help Olivia, Jack. We’ll get her
through this.”
If only you knew. You could help her more than
anyone else. How do I tell you that Megan raised the daughter that
I never could?
Holly nestled the thoughts back into the
confines of her busy mind and headed toward the stairs. Her own
guilt kept her tears at bay.

“Holly, are you sure this is what Mom wanted?
I mean, cremation is so…final,” Olivia said from the back seat of
the car.

Holly turned to face her and was momentarily
struck by her beauty. She had to blink a few times to ward off her
tears. “Yes, Olivia, I’m quite sure. Ever since we were young, your
mother had a real aversion to being buried. We used to walk through
the graveyards near my mom’s house, and your mom would talk all
about what happened to the bodies after they were buried. She said
it grossed her out. Let’s just say she really didn’t want to be in
the ground.” She smiled at Olivia.

“That sounds like Mom.” Olivia looked out the
window at the passing trees. “But what happens to her after? You
know, after they cremate her, what happens to
her
?” The pain
in Olivia’s voice tugged on Jack’s heart.

“It’s simple, Livi,” he said. “Your body is
like a peanut shell, and your soul is like the peanut. Once someone
passes on, their soul, or the peanut, lifts from them and moves
into their next life. The body is like the empty shell. It’s a
physical structure, but it’s empty.” He looked in the rearview
mirror and watched Olivia contemplate his words.

“I guess you could be right,” she said.

“Where did you hear that, Jack? That’s a
wonderful way of explaining it.” Holly looked at Olivia. “He’s
right, you know, he’s exactly right. The body is simply an empty
frame. The important part, the soul, lives on.”

“I heard it,” Jack began, glancing again in
the rearview mirror, “from Olivia’s mother.”

“Mom told you that?” Olivia asked.

“Mm-hmm, it’s funny, I hadn’t remembered that
until just now,” Jack smiled at Holly.

“When did she tell you that? That’s pretty
deep,” Holly said.

“Not for Megan. Remember who we’re talking
about here,” Jack said, and they all agreed with a little laugh.
“We must have been about twelve or so. It was at summer camp. The
camp mascot was this dog, a huge newfoundland that had thick
chocolate brown fur.” He looked in the mirror at Olivia again. “Its
fur was exactly like your mother’s hair.”

Olivia smiled.

“Anyway, the dog had been there every summer,
for like a hundred summers. That summer, it died. We were all
really sad. He was the biggest, happiest dog we had ever seen! His
name was Lacky, like the camp, Lakamar. Anyway, when he died, all
of us kids got together and held a ceremony for him. Megan, of
course, was the leader. Even back then she could hold a wicked
ritual!” Jack adjusted himself in his seat and took a deep
breath.

“So there we were, all gathered around the
bonfire by the lake, and your mother, Olivia, was hosting this
service.

She took us back through each summer with
Lacky. She must have talked for forty or fifty minutes, way too
long for a bunch of kids, but she held our attention like she was a
real live movie. Anyway, she described the summers with him and how
wonderful he was, and in the end, when everyone was brought to
tears, she put her hands on her hips and said, ‘We can’t sit and
cry over Lacky! Why, he’s still here with us! Don’t you feel him?’
And everyone concurred, nodded, and she dove right in again. ‘His
soul is right over there!’ Jack pointed for emphasis. ‘His body
might be lifeless, but it’s just like an empty peanut shell. His
soul has already moved on! His soul is everywhere!’ everyone
cheered and laughed, and suddenly Lacky’s dying wasn’t so bad
anymore. We all felt like he was right there with us, thanks to
your mom.”

Olivia imagined her mother at twelve years
old, taking charge of the group and making everyone see the bright
side of the dog’s death.

“That sounds like Megan!” Holly said with a
smile. “Livi, are you okay with our decision to hold a small
ceremony now and a private ceremony later?”

Olivia looked up from her lap, “Yes. That’s
what I want. I think everyone who knew Mom needs to be able to say
goodbye,” she looked out the window again, “but I think she would
have wanted us all to say goodbye privately, too.”

Peter straightened his tie and tried to
mentally prepare for Megan’s ceremony. He still could not believe
she was gone. It was as if her life had happened in fast forward,
at least that’s how it felt to him. He felt cheated, ripped off,
like he didn’t get enough time with her, but then he felt guilty
for feeling that way, after all, he was not Olivia, the one who
really deserved more time with her.

There was something about Megan, something
more alive than he’d ever felt in any other human being. She had
kept her eye on what she had wanted out of life, and had never let
people dissuade her from following her dreams.

Peter inspected his face in the mirror, which
to his surprise, looked to him much as it did when he was younger.
He put his face closer to the mirror, peered deeper into his own
eyes, and wondered why he saw emptiness there. It was no wonder at
all, really, he mused. He knew why he saw emptiness in his own eyes
when Megan’s reflected a full life up until the moment she
died.

“Damn it,” Peter murmured as he walked away
from the mirror. On his way to the door, he passed by a photo of
himself and his father. He picked it up and touched the delicate
lines of the antique frame. He remembered when the picture had been
taken, a few months before his mother left him and his father. He
looked closely at his father in his white t-shirt, khaki pants,
brown shoes, and full head of hair which was slicked back with
something like Brylcreem. Peter wondered why his mother had left
them. Was it really so bad for her, taking care of them? He peered
into his father’s eyes for the answer, but saw nothing of
consequence. He saw a contented man.

Peter had few memories of his mother.
Sometimes he couldn’t decipher what was real and what was merely
hope. She had not been beautiful, that he remembered. She had been
an average-looking woman with short dark hair and a fine figure. He
didn’t remember her hugging him much, though he remembered his
father’s full embrace, long, strong, and often. His mother, it
seemed to him, was always milling around the kitchen or ironing. He
remembered that sometimes she read books to him.

Peter did remember longing for a real mother,
though, and the memory was painful. He remembered visiting his
friends’ houses where the mothers were always baking cookies,
setting up crafts for them, or playing games. He remembered long
hugs his friends would receive, with a firmly planted kiss on his
forehead; his friends always cringed and tried to pull away, and
all the while Peter was hoping the mothers would grab him and
slather him with that kind of love.

“Why’d you do it, Ma?” Peter whispered,
though he knew he could ask the question one hundred times and
never receive an answer.

He had asked his father once, and only once,
“Dad, why did Mommy leave us?”

His father’s stern response had told him the
subject was off limits, “Your mother didn’t leave us, son, she was
running away from herself.”

That answer left Peter wondering how someone
could run away from herself, and why she would want to. He pictured
someone running in circles while peeking behind her, like a dog
chasing its tail. For years this vision haunted him.

His grandmother wasn’t much help, either.
“There are just some people in this world that weren’t meant to be
tied down,” she had said, “and your mother was one of them.”

That comment left him with even worse visions
of his mother tied down somewhere in the house when he wasn’t
around, which led to him worrying that his father was some kind of
monster that he hadn’t found out about yet. But that fear faded
fast, as his father always woke him with a kindness that lingered
through the days and into the nights. It was a kindness that
permeated his being. When he went to school, he knew his father
would always be there upon his return. He didn’t worry that he
might disappear as his mother did.

His father’s job at the steel mill was
flexible, so he could work while Peter was at school, and then
again at night after Peter was in bed sleeping, when Mrs. Waters
would come and sit at the house, but Peter hadn’t known about the
latter. He hadn’t known that his father went back to work while he
slept. He was told after a few years had passed since his mother
had left. His father had mentioned it in passing, having assumed it
was prior knowledge for Peter.

At first it had scared Peter a little to know
that his father had left him at night, but then, he came to revel
in the fact that his father always came back, which was something
his mother never did.

As his mind vacillated between thoughts of
Megan and of his father, he realized that he had been living his
life just as Megan had pointed out. He’d been afraid to commit.
Peter placed the frame gently back on the table and whispered,
mostly to himself, “Goodbye, Mom.” He then picked up the phone to
call Cruz.

Megan hovered above and watched the small
gathering take shape. She was pleased that they had chosen the
nauset Lighthouse property to hold the gathering. Never one for
conventional religion, she would have been disappointed if the
ceremony had been held at a temple. Megan held her breath as Holly
and Jack arrived with Olivia in tow. She was so beautiful, and yet
her face, her eyes, looked as though she had aged five years in a
few short days.

Oh, my baby girl. I am so sorry
. Megan
reached out, yearning to touch Olivia, to make her feel safe and
happy once again, though she knew it was a hopeless feat. She could
not touch Olivia from her new world.

Sadness permeated Megan’s form, as if a heavy
cloud had overwhelmed her and weighed her down. Tears streamed from
her eyes as she realized that her lower form was rapidly turning a
sad shade of gray. She somehow knew this was reflective of Olivia’s
sadness. She also knew that she could not fix her daughter’s
despair. She was gone. gone! Her tears turned to sobs, and were
quickly swept away into a path as rough as a raging river, snaking
its way to a nearby cloud. She watched the sun disappear and felt,
more than saw, Olivia look up toward the sky.

Megan didn’t know what remained in her form
that was now her body, but if she had a heart, it was lifted at the
thought of Olivia finding her above.

Holly and Jack were unaware that Olivia had
stopped walking, and they continued toward the lighthouse. Olivia,
however, stood in the dune grass, just past the parking lot, and
looked up at the shadowy cloud, unable to put her arms around the
emotions and feelings that swam within her. Sad? nervous? Angry?
Mostly, she just felt empty—empty as a dark well with no water to
fill it up. Somehow, she thought she would be prepared for the day.
She’d seen the need to say goodbye, and she had thought she’d be
strong enough to see it through without hysterics. She knew it
would be hard, but she hadn’t imagined the despair that she now
felt; nausea, pain, and tumult boiled in her belly.