The Remains (6 page)

I couldn’t honestly admit to being a believer
anymore. But for reasons even I could not understand I opened the
door, stepped through the vestibule, walked past the wall-mounted
Holy Water decanter, past the marble Baptismal font, past the
Christian magazine rack, past the padlocked poor box.

Stepping into the big empty brick and wood
church, I was hit with the organic smell of smoke and incense. At
the same time, I became engulfed in a kind of cold that wasn’t
freezing, but that somehow still managed to penetrate my skin and
bones.

I slid into a pew toward the back. For a
split second I was tempted to kneel, but instead I chose to sit. I
stared out across the pew, focused on the dimly lit altar, the
focal-point-crucified Jesus hanging from the far back wall. The
early morning rays that poured in through narrow, parallel stained
glass windows bathed Him in blood red. The place bore a stillness
that disturbed me. It was a place not of comfort or sanctuary, but
of ghosts. Molly’s ghost.

I saw the spot where her casket was rolled to
a stop by the black clad funeral directors, the place where my
broken down parents stood beside it looking old and so forlorn in
their grief. I could almost see the premature death painted on
their faces—deaths that touched them both within one year of
Molly’s. I saw the bone-colored casket like it was still there;
still in place. I saw the friends and extended family who came to
pay their respects. I heard the organ music and I saw the
heavy-set, white-robed priest, beads of sweat dripping from his
forehead as he blessed the metal casket with holy water.

I saw it all like it happened only moments
ago.

For me, it had.

But that’s when I began to feel like I was
being watched. By who or what I could not say. I begin to perspire,
the droplets running down the length of my spine.

Paranoia took over. Paranoia and
claustrophobia. I became convinced the big wood doors were about to
slam shut on me. I had to get out of that pew, get out of that
church—that house of ghosts. Standing, I slid out of the pew, but
not without tripping on the kneeler. I fell down onto the carpeted
marble. Fell hard onto my chest. But I didn’t feel any pain as I
got back up on my feet, bolted for the vestibule, through the wood
doors and out into the parking lot.

Standing by the open car door, I inhaled
long, slow breaths and exhaled them.

What was happening to me?

Somehow I knew it was a question better left
unanswered.

Back in the Cabriolet I started the engine,
threw the gear shift into first, and burned some serious rubber on
my way out the parking lot.

Time to refocus.

Concentrate on the present. Not the past. Not
the future. Not on ghosts.

Turning onto Central Avenue in the west end
of the city, I decided that I needed to do something to get my mind
off myself. Something totally ordinary. Something calming. Do it
before I was expected at the School of Art.

No more churches! No more ghosts! No more
God!

When the neon sign for the Hollywood Carwash
caught my attention, a voice spoke to me inside my head, told me to
turn left inside the lot. I’m not sure how, but I knew immediately
that it would do the trick. I hung a quick left, pulled into the
open bay, set the tires on the tracks, threw the gear shift into
neutral and let the machines take control.

Back when
I was a kid, the last place on earth I might find calm and peace
was a car wash. I had a real fear of them. The inside of a carwash
was like being inside the belly of some mechanical beast. The
carpet strips that hung down from the ceiling draped the car like
live tentacles. Giant rotating bristle brushes tried to rip through
metal, invade the interior along with an onslaught of white,
foamy,
alien
goop.

That was back when I still believed in
God.

Naturally Molly had no trouble going through
the car wash when we were kids, the ear to ear smile she’d plant on
her face made it seem like she actually enjoyed it. Meanwhile, I’d
stand alone inside the waiting area, closed off to the soapy Buick
and the industrial machine noise by a translucent Plexiglas
barrier. I remember following the car and Molly’s distorted face
all the way along the length of the car wash. From rinse to air-dry
to Turtle Wax. I’d still be standing off to the side when the
cigarette smoking, T-shirted men made a quick clean of the interior
with their white rags, vacuum cleaners and bottles of sea-blue
spray-on cleaner.

Not much had changed since those days, except
that Molly was gone and now I occupied the car’s interior alone,
feeling the bucking of the machines and the relentless spray of the
water against the fabric ceiling. I almost hated for it to end.
After all, I no longer believed in monsters and I understood the
mechanical utility of machines.

Coming away from the air-dry, I threw the
transmission into first and pulled up to the two men who would give
the interior a swift cleaning. One teenage boy and a short,
white-haired, white-bearded, slow moving man who looked like he
might be pushing one-hundred. The old man smiled through all that
white hair, asked me to step out of the car ever so briefly while
they vacuumed the interior, washed the seats and windshield. In the
bay beside me, a well-dressed middle-aged woman who drove a black
Mercedes Benz was all worked up. She couldn’t locate her cell
phone. She was sure she’d had it on her when she entered the car
wash.

A big man in khakis and blue shirt that had
the words ‘Hollywood Carwash’ stitched on the breast pocket assured
her he’d do everything in his power to scour the car for it.
Because after all it probably just slid behind the seats. He’d seen
it happen “a thousand and one times before. Make that a thousand
and two.” But she just made a face and with a dismissive wave of
her hand, got back in the car and peeled out, no doubt on her way
to purchase a brand new cell phone. When you’re rich, the cost of a
new cell phone is pocket change.

As the two men completed cleaning the
interior of the Cabriolet, I felt my jacket pocket for my own cell
phone.

Yup, still there. I guess you could never be
too careful about such things.

The old man smiled at me once more. He looked
into my face for more than a few fleeting seconds, as if he sensed
a familiarity. Getting back in the car I pulled down the window,
reached out to hand him a five dollar tip.

Overgenerous?

Maybe.

But he seemed like such a nice old guy. It
made me sad that he had to work at a car wash at his advanced age.
He thanked me, asked me to have a nice day in a voice that was both
soft and raspy.

I pulled out of the carwash feeling much
better about myself. Hanging a quick left, I made my way for the
downtown and the start of the rest of my life.

BUT RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC was a bear.

By the time I stopped off at the Stagecoach
Coffee Shop on State Street for a double latte-to-go, the clock had
already reached the back side of nine o’clock. This meant that
Robyn would be operating the art center all by her lonesome.
Something neither one of us appreciated since the not-for-profit,
art patron-funded organization employed only two people to do all
the studio tutoring, gallery event planning, bill paying, public
relations, and just about everything required of running an art
center.

I got back in the Cabriolet with my coffee,
headed for the Broadway parking garage and parked in my designated
by-the-month rental space. On my way out of the garage, my cell
vibrated. Approaching the congested city sidewalk, I dug out the
phone and flipped it open.

The screen indicated another new text. I
swallowed something and thumbed the OK button that opened the
message.

Remember

That one word, like the last time I’d
received it, made no sense to me.

Remember what?

What in God’s name was going on?

Per usual I thumbed the OK button that was
supposed to reveal the caller’s name and number only to get Unknown
Caller.

“Molly,” I whispered, purely out of
instinct.

I was becoming more and more convinced Molly
was trying to communicate with me from the dead. Maybe it helped me
to imagine her living in heaven. But then, what if heaven did not
exist?

Distracted by the sudden emptiness I felt,
not to mention anxiety, I nearly ran into a tall suited man
carrying a black briefcase.

“Watch where you’re going, young lady,” he
snapped.

I evil-eyed him as he passed.

“If I knew were I was going,” I said, “I
wouldn’t be here.”

I FINALLY ARRIVED AT the studio at a little
past nine-thirty.

My stomach sank when I saw Franny.

Franny in attendance, the second day in a
row. Even though he was the studio’s Painter-In-Residence, his
visits usually averaged once or twice a month, depending upon his
production as an artist. Usually he brought in a completed or near
completed piece, just as he had done yesterday, and in turn we
offered him advice on how to improve upon it. This of course was
all a big joke since Franny’s talent far surpassed our own.

While two gray-haired, ‘retired’ women worked
studiously at their easels on the far side of the brightly lit
studio, Franny occupied his favorite corner of honor, round body
partially hidden by what looked to be a brand new canvas.

My beating heart would not let up. Like
yesterday’s ‘Listen’ canvas, I knew instinctively that this
painting had my name written all over it.

Robyn caught sight of me just as I hung up my
knapsack inside a wood cubby that once-upon-a-time housed the
little jackets and mittens of long grown kindergartners.

“Becca honey,” she said in her animated
sing-song voice. “You are not going to believe this.”

I swallowed. Shooting a forced smile from
across the room at the two retired women, I reluctantly made my way
toward Franny and Robyn.

“Okay kids,” I said, “keep your clothes
on.”

“Okay kids,” Franny chanted while rocking on
his stool.

“Wait,” Robyn barked, coming around fast from
behind the canvas. “Close your eyes, Bec.”

“Come on, Rob, I’m not in the mood. I haven’t
slept—”

“Just do what I say,” she demanded. “This is
magnificent.”

My heart pounded; stomach twisted and
turned.

No choice but to play along.

I closed my eyes. But just to make sure I
wasn’t cheating, Robyn propped herself behind me, masked my eyes
with both her hands. From there she led me around to the business
side of the canvas where I stood directly beside Franny. Pressed up
against him actually. As usual, he smelled like he’d just taken a
bath in Old Spice.

“What you’re about to see,” Robyn said, “took
the master only eight hours of non-stop painting.”

Thus all the fuss?

God, I felt like back-kicking her. If only my
heart weren’t pounding so hard.

“Come on, Rob.” She pulled her hands
away.

When I opened my eyes it felt like two
charcoal pencils were being shoved up into my eyeballs. This
painting, as opposed to yesterday’s, contained no abstract
squiggles and dashes. But very much like yesterday, it depicted a
rural landscape. Accordingly, Franny had chosen to paint the piece
using sublime colors—greens, browns, soft yellows and oranges,
blues and even ocher.

But it was neither color choice nor style
that robbed me of my breath. What shook me up was the field of tall
grass. Beyond it I saw a stand of trees that marked the beginning
of a thick dark wood. No question about it, the field and the woods
were just like my dream—the recurring dream where I am following
Molly. Or, more precisely said, the dream which was not a dream at
all, but the re-creation of actual events that took place almost
thirty years ago to the day.

There was something else too, something I
recognized in the tall grass. It contained the word ‘See’. Maybe
you had to really search for the previous day’s word, but not this
one. To me it was obvious that the letters that made up the word
S-e-e were transposed onto the canvas in the play of yellow
sunlight on brown grass. But even with the word that obvious, I
didn’t open my mouth up about it. Nor did I mention that the
scenery matched that of my dream.

But then if the word was so obvious, why
didn’t Robyn say anything about it?

“Earth to Becca,” she said, breaking me out
of my trance. “Earth, Becca. Earth.”

“Earth,” Franny said. “Earth.”

I pulled my eyes away from the new painting,
focused silently upon Robyn’s face, her blue eyes.

“You’re right,” I said, half under my breath.
“Incredible… for only eight hours of work.”

But I don’t think Robyn heard me at all. She
took a step back, squinted .

“Whoa, girl,” she said. “You’re so white you
look like you’ve just seen your own ghost.”

She couldn’t have been more right. That’s
when everything inside me fell—a total organ slide. Sliding myself
out from behind Franny’s painting, I made a beeline for the
bathroom.

I FLEW INTO CERAMIC-tiled bathroom, made my
way for an empty stall, dropped to my knees, buried my face in the
toilet. But all I could manage was to purge an acidic mixture of
bile and hot latte. Still, my stomach convulsed, chest heaved,
sternum split down the center.

After a time I got back up onto my feet,
somewhat dizzy, out of balance, mouth tasting like turpentine.
Stepping out of the stall, I made my way over to the sink, turned
on the cold water, positioned my open mouth under the faucet, and
rinsed it out. I then splashed the water onto my face.