Once Upon Another Time (8 page)

My heart rattled
with joy while thinking it was like something out of a fairytale.  I knew it
was Matt, of course, displaying his romantic, playful self, like how he’d
express his love for me through poetry.  His words so beautiful, so meaningful,
that at times they took my breath away.  I saved each and every poem, put them
in a shoebox, and tucked them away in my closet.

Even in college,
he had a romantic side.  We’d spend long, lazy afternoons at Baker Park
listening to “Unchained Melody” while sipping cheap wine and feeling the grass
between our toes.  Once, Matt damaged the environment by using his car keys to
carve our initials into a tall white oak.  That same day he’d given me a beautiful
bracelet with a heart-shaped pendant.  The inscription on the back read,
A.
B., I Love You, M. P. M.
, initials for Aubrey Becker I love you, Mathew
Paul McCory.

He was amazing. 
He’d look at me and make me weak.  Then he’d slip his strong arms around my
waist, pull my body to his, and whisper in my ear while kissing my neck, “M
on
petit chaton
,” my little kitten, he’d say in his endearing New Jersey
accent.  I’d wrap my arms around his muscular shoulders, and let them slip down
to his narrow waist.  The trees in the park could have burned down around us, but
as long as Matt’s mouth covered mine, I couldn’t care less. 

While smiling and
thinking back to that world of shimmering reflections and the sound of laughter,
I watched as the sprinkled sparkles in the garden diminished.  Disappointed
that Matt didn’t appear to me, I picked up the book from my desk to put it back
on the shelf, when I became dizzy.  I reached to grab hold of the arm of my
office chair to steady myself, but missed and collapsed to the floor like a
ragdoll that had lost its stuffing.  Everything went black.

A tall man with an
aloof smile and thick brown hair swept back from his thin face, stood to the
right of me as I rode the crowded elevator up to my office.  He skillfully
punched out a text message on his smart phone with a single thumb, while
carrying a large saddleback briefcase.  The elevator jerked as it stopped on
the eighth floor.  The man exited, but not before his briefcase inadvertently
jabbed the bruise on my outer thigh, making me wince. 

The night before
when I passed out and thought I had missed grabbing onto the arm of my chair,
well I didn’t.  I had toppled it over onto myself, bruising my leg.  The
possibility of handling paranormal situations seemed as remote as transferring
a Rembrandt onto the head of a dime. 

However, my
connection with Matt seemed to be getting stronger.  I took into consideration
that perhaps he wasn’t quite up to speed.  According to the research book I
bought on ghosts, apparently it takes a lot of energy to materialize.  It’s
probably the reason why old or ancient dwellings as opposed to new buildings
were haunted.  Those ghosts obviously had decades to perfect their skills.  

Curious, though, was
the book lying on the floor next to my desk.  I’d never known Buster to scale
the bookshelves or drag a book across the room.  My first thought was that Matt
had something to do with it.  The title, “Love Spirit,” and the dogeared page
about the house with the ghost aspect seemed more than coincidental.  It was
relative to what was happening in my life and books were always Matt’s thing.

He was a serious collector
of books.  When I say serious, I mean he created an A to Z card catalog notating
everything from the purchase date to the name of the person who sold him the
book.  A row of ancient Roman architecture books on the symmetry and geometry
of hemispherical domes and niches was a Christmas gift from his father.  The
poetry by Conrad Aiken and Sandburg I’d given him on our fourth wedding
anniversary, and Yeats, a gift from his professor at Rutgers.  A first edition
of Agatha Christie’s “Sparkling Cyanide” we’d found the day we stumbled upon a
quaint little bookstore in the Village during our weekend getaway to
Manhattan.  And he practically camped out on our front porch waiting for UPS to
deliver a Raymond Chandler novel he’d found online. 

All I could think
about last night was that Matt was trying to tell me something by having me
find that book.  I fell asleep thinking about the years we were together, and
about our house.  It was cold that November day when we first viewed it with
the realtor.  The old English Tudor proudly dressed in white stucco and brick with
decorative timbering, hugged the crescent-shaped coastline of Fogland Beach
like lush green moss hugging the side of a canyon.

The wind was
strong that dreary afternoon, as I pushed against it to open the car door.  My
hair whipped at my face, as the three of us walked toward the house, pitching
our bodies into the fierce wind as if we were leaning forward off the prow of a
ship.  Trudging through a side yard filled with the twisty skeletal remains of
dried tomato plants, the neighbor’s dog welcomed us with a steamy deposit next
to the rotted squash. 

The house had good
bones, but the interior needed a good amount of updating.  “What were we
thinking?” I said to Matt that first cold December, as we ripped the old kitchen
cabinets off the wall to the tune of Tori Amos singing “Have Yourself a Merry
little Christmas.”  In spring, we planted a Japanese maple in the center of a
large square of bluegrass and slapped a new coat of white paint on the picket
fence in the backyard.  The next year we had an attached garage built on to the
house.     

The elevator
chimed and snapped me out of my thoughts. 
That’s it!
  I had to see
Laura and tell her everything.  I managed to elbow my way out of the iron box
and made a beeline straight off to Laura’s office, barging in just as she put a
spoonful of strawberry yogurt to her lips. 

“I have to talk to
you--right now,” I said like a drill sergeant calling the troops to attention.

Laura jabbed the
spoon into the yogurt and placed the container on her desk.

“If this is some
kind delayed reaction from yesterday thinking I’m forcing you to go out with
Jack, who by the way is obscenely wealthy, then fine, if you don’t want to date
him, and I won’t say another word.  I promise.”

“No, it has
nothing to do with that,” I said, as I collapsed onto the leather chair facing
her.  A large floral arrangement from David, sat on her desk.  Equal in size to
that of a small rhododendron bush, I jutted my head to one side to see around
the grove of exotic wild orchids and bird of paradise.  She pushed the
arrangement to one side, unblocking my view of her.

“So, what is it
then?” she asked.

My palms were
sweaty as I cleared my throat.  I was sure Laura could hear my heart beating
like a jungle drum.  And although I felt ridiculous, I had to try and explain
what was going on with Matt, for fear of totally imploding.  After all, what
are best friends for?  Yes, I know.  I tried once and failed, but I just had to
try again.

“Okay,” I said and
took a deep breath.  “I’m going to warn you that what I’m about to say might
seem a little off-the-wall.”

“And this should
surprise me?”

“I’m serious,” I
said, as I set my briefcase on the floor next to the chair.  “Do you remember
when we were in high school and my parents talked about solar activity, lunar
cycles, geomagnetic activity, and, well…parallel universes being on different
planes and frequencies?”

Laura gave me a
questioning stare.  “I love your parents dearly, so forgive me when I say I
thought that was rather strange.” 

I tried to speak
again but my mouth felt too dry.  My tongue lay there like a slug.  If she
thought
those
things were strange, after what I had to tell her, she’d
think I was insane.  After all, my parents never once claimed to have seen a
ghost.  Suddenly, I panicked searching for a way out.  I’d never had a
“shrinking violet” type of personality.  Bold, bordering on offensive maybe but
I was beginning to feel like a wimp!

“Well?” she
asked. 

Oh, for pity’s
sake just spit it out
.

I cleared my throat,
straightened my shoulders, and looked at Laura with a steady stare.  “Do you
think it’s possible--or rather do you believe in--?”  I just couldn’t find the
right words.  My eyes rolled upward toward the ceiling, as if the words were
written somewhere overhead.  “Okay, here’s my question.  What exactly are your
thoughts on parallel universes and ghostly beings?  You know like spirits
returning to people they love--like on those paranormal reality TV shows.”

Laura gave me a
deadpan stare.

Anyway,” I said
shifting my weight.  “I happened to be thinking about spirits crossing over
into the world of the living and wanted to know your thoughts on the subject? 
I mean, anything’s possible, right?”

I couldn’t decide
if pity was what I saw in Laura’s eyes, or if she was just deep in thought
trying to figure out a way to sneak off and phone my therapist.  Perhaps my
timing still wasn’t right.  However, would there really have been a right time?

“Aubrey?  You know
most of that stuff on TV isn’t real, it’s just entertainment.”

“I know, but this
is about Matt.”

She leaned forward
and placed her palms flat on the desk.  “Uh-huh.  Well, he’s dead.”  She
whispered this as if she was afraid of waking Matt up out of the grave. 

“Yeah but look at
all the people who say they have seen ghosts.  They can’t
all
be crazy. 
Besides, there are research books and documentaries that prove ghosts
do
exist.” 

“There’s no
scientific proof,” said Laura.

“There’s no
scientific proof that heaven and hell exist either, but you and I and just
about the entire world believe they do--right?”

Laura shook her
head, looking like she was bored with the conversation.

“Think back to our
quantum physics class.  Remember Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  It
postulates an infinite number of alternate realities and many other things that
most people don't believe in either.  But the scientific community accepts them,
largely in part because many elements of his theory
have
been proven to
be correct by scientific experiments.  One of his famous quotes was, ‘Energy
cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to
another.’  So even after a person dies, technically, they still live on.  Matt
really believed in that theory.” 

“So, what are you
saying?”

“I’m saying that
if physics tells us that energy never dies, then the soul or spirit never dies,
which means maybe people live on in a different form.  Like ghosts.”

 “Sorry, I just
don’t see the point to all this,” she said wanly. 

I stood and paced
back and forth in front of the window feeling frustrated and not at all
qualified in claiming people can come back from the dead in an altered state. 
I stopped and looked down at the streets below.  The train of cars jammed up at
Kennedy Plaza seemed reminiscent of the congestion in my mind as I wondered how
I was going to explain Matt being in this living and breathing world of ours. 

Left with no
choice, I chose not to go any further in telling her about Matt.  Not because I
wimped out, but truth is if I hadn’t seen him for myself, I would never have
believed such things were possible.  So, how could I ever expect Laura to
believe that Matt was trying to tell me something and that I felt it was
something really important?

I looked over my
shoulder to see her rummaging through her desk drawer, when it dawned on me
that she’d become complacent with my never-ending idiosyncrasies.  My talk of
ghosts hadn’t even fazed her.  Not surprising, considering my OCD.  One time
while staying at a luxury hotel on business, I felt compelled to record the
thread count of the sheets and the number of chocolates on the pillows.  Even I
found that odd.

Perhaps
subconsciously, my need for perfection was just an attempt to fix myself.  It
was easier to center on what I
could
control, a diversion for what I
couldn’t
face.  Like accepting that I was lonely and that if it weren’t for me, my
husband would still be alive.

Matt used to
compare me with a Jane Austen heroine, exacting social standards, exhibiting
stubborn gustiness, stanch loyalty, and facing life’s daunting challenges and
turning them into conquests.  And there I was traipsing about the wild kingdom
hoping to prove his ghostly existence.

Folding my arms, I
turned back toward the window contemplating how I was ever going to get back to
the person I used to be.  In college I was the one who had given the
valedictorian commencement speech, while Laura fussed with the tassel on her
cap and complained endlessly about her gown not flattering her figure.  How had
it all switched around?  How in God’s name did Laura become the Jane Austen heroine?
 

“Okay,” Laura
said, “if there’s no point to all this, I really have to get over to the
courthouse.”

I looked skyward. 
“No, it was just something that happened to pop into my head,” I said.  I
turned to see Laura stuff a file folder into the briefcase on the credenza. 
Her back was to me when a watery image of Matt appeared beside her.

He wore a
thoughtful smile that reminded me of one day in particular.  We were sipping
espressos at an outdoor café in historical Federal Hill, known as Little
Italy.  A flock of skinny fashionistas in Dolce & Gabbana, sophisticated
beauties with the world at their Gucci heels, sat one table over, openly
flirting with Matt.  He looked at me with that same judicious smile on his face,
as if to say, “I have nothing to do with any of this.”

His voice came
through in my head, loud and clear, “Aubrey, find me.”

I hurried toward
him when his image disappeared like the burst of a bubble.