A Symphony of Cicadas (26 page)

The sun rose and set, at times in a rapid spiral of motion as
an immeasurable length of time passed me by
.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there when the tears ceased their steady stream down my cheeks
.
But when the last tear dropped, I felt a sense of relief as I realized I was ready to begin a new chapter.

I
took a deep breath,
blew it out
, and
stood up and brushed the snow off my dress, taking one last look out at the ocean that surrounded the big island of Hawaii and my perch atop Mauna Kea
.
The fog had just begun to form at the base of the mountain, and I watched as it grew, gathering
strength
in it
s manifestation
.
Soon, the whole expanse in front of me was covered in the white blanket of clouds.

“What would happen if I walked out upon the fog, Daddy?” I had asked my father
that day
driving above the covered valley.

“You’d pass right through and fall to the ground,” my father had told me, stripping away all the magic my
five year
old self still held when it came to science and life.

The fog touched the edge of Mauna Kea, inviting me to test my father’s theory and prove him wrong. I placed a
cautious
step forward onto the filmy cloud, touching the solidity within the mist that existed on
ly
for me
.
I moved forward so that both my feet were firm on the fog
.
A gap in
the cloudy substance showed I was standing thousands of feet above the shadowed island below, with nothing to break my fall should I plummet from my space in the sky
.
I found pleasure in this dangerous thought, smiling in the freedom that existed in this one simple realization
.
And then I ran across the fog at full speed, skipping over the covering of the earth until I reached the end and jumped off into the ocean below.

Eighteen

J
ohn came home after a
grueling
day of work in the summer heat
.
He kicked off his shoes at the do
or to keep from tracking dirt
any f
a
rther than the entry way
of the apartment
, shedding clothes piece by piece as he walked up the stairs to his room
.
At the top of the stairs, he tried to ignore the view of
Sam
’s room from the corner of his eye, though it was getting harder and harder to do in the emptiness of the house
.
His son’s room was added to his list of ghosts that haunted him, sitting
as it did
beside the ghosts that lay within the door of Joey’s room.

It had been
just over
a year and a half since my death, and a year since Sam had moved out
.
At times,
John felt like time was passing at a rapid pace
.
Other times it
stood
too
still
.
He was glad
he would
soon be free from the clutches of the apartment, fleeing the memories
and starting fresh
when he moved to the finished house in
San Anselmo
.
The whole
apartment
was packed up, save for
the
few belongings he still needed in his day
-
to
-
day life – as well as the contents behind the door of Joey’s room.

This forbidden area of the apartment had
become
something like a
shrine since my departure,
unseen
by human eyes since Sam had moved out
.
While John refused
to view the contents of the room, Sam
had
often
gone
in there when he lived in the room next door, rifling through Joey’s video games and belongings
in secret, just
in case there was anything of interest to him.

I
also
visited the room
.
Often I would find a hollow sense of solace among the clothes on the floor, the unmade bed, Joey’s things strewn below boxes of my things. His smell still existed in the walls and the bedding, and I would sit for hours, days, weeks, just pretending I still held a connection with my son
.
I had given up on finding him in this divide, knowing that when it was time, if it would ever be time, he would find me instead.

As John showered, his mind drifted to Joey’s room
.
He knew he needed to do something with the room, but wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to open the door and face all the things he’d packed in there to keep my memory at bay
.
While it hadn’t worked – I haunted him even when I stopped trying to do so – he found comfort in knowing the solid proof of my existence was hidden behind a closed door.

But he couldn’t move from the house until he had packed
up
everything
.
And that included Joey’s room
.
He needed to decide what to give up forever, and if anything within that room would make it to the new house
.
He knew this was a task he couldn’t do on his own.

John finished his shower and dried off
with hurried movements
.
I knew who he was going to call before he even picked his cell phone up off his bed.

“Can you come over?  I need your help with her things,” he said without even saying hello.

“Of course,” Sara replied.

He’d on
ly
seen Sara
a handful of times
since he came home from the hospital
eight months earlier
.
She had helped him to settle in to the apartment, but he made it clear that he was
okay
to take care of himself. Sam had stayed with him for a while back then to help monitor him until he could get back on his feet
.
And because of
Sam’s involvement
, his ex-wife, Wendy, had lost the iciness she’d developed in the be
ginning stages of their divorce,
and made herself available to him
should he need any help
.

Still,
Sara
called
every now and then
just to check in on him
.
He had let her calls go straight
to voicemail each time
.
Then h
e listened to them as soon as his phone signaled a message, hearing my voice within hers as she let him know she was thinking of him and hoped everything was going
okay.

The intent wasn’t lost on Sara, either
.
She knew he was avoiding her
.
She tried to respect the distance he was keeping,
but
she couldn’t help but feel disappointed in the wall between them
.
Kevin had since moved out, and she was forced to be away from her girls every weekend as a result of the custody arrangement
.
She tried to immerse herself in work to keep from going crazy in the empty house on the days they were gone
.
But the evenings felt unbearable as she ran out of things to pick up,
dirty
dishes to clean,
unmade
beds to make, and a bathtub void of bubbles and giggling girls.

It was on those nights she called John, even just to hear his voice in his message on the phone, giving her a sense that she
wasn’t
alone.

The doorbell rang thirty minutes later, and John let Sara in
.
He gave her a quick hug, turning his face far away from hers in their embrace.

“Thank you for coming over,” he said.

“Anytime!”
she
exclaimed
.
Both of them moved around each other
with caution
, acting as if this were more of a first date
instead of a friend helping a friend
.
“So what’s going on?” she asked.

“Well, you know how I’m moving?” he asked, and she nodded

“You want me to lift heavy furniture, don’t you?” she joked
.
“I knew these muscles would curse me one day
.”
He chuckled with her, grateful for the break in the tension.

“Not exact
ly
.
But I do need you to move some things with me, specifical
ly
Rachel and Joey’s things,” he said in an apologetic tone
.
Sara smiled
in reassurance
and nodded
.
He led her up to Joey’s room and took a deep breath at the closed door
.
With great force, he turned the knob and pushed the door open, the boxes behind it shifting so that a few things fell over in the process
.
“Oops,” he
said, wincing
.

Sara moved past him and
looked around. Step by step she
maneuvered through the crowded room, taking in e
v
ery single thing that had ever been mine
.
John, on the other hand, kept a safe distance on the outside of the door.

“Wow,” she said
after she drank it all in
.
“This is everything, isn’t it?”  John nodded, running his hands
through his hair in embarrassment
.
“Have you even been in here
since Rachel died
?” she asked.

“Just to put stu
ff in here as I found it
.
O
ther than that, no
.
I couldn’t bring myself to give anything of hers away
.
But I couldn’t look at it anymore, either,” he admitted.

Sara moved a few
of my belongings
around in a box, seeing glimpses of me in things she recognized, running her
curious
hands over the things she didn’t, and feeling overwhelmed by the task as a whole
.
She was beginning to regret even answering her phone when John called
.
But she could also tell that if the physical task of this job seemed daunting to her, the mental portion of it
might be
impossible for John.

“Did you want to do this together?  Do you think you can handle deciding what goes and what stays?” she asked him
.
He nodded
, though the look in his eyes lacked conviction
.

“I, uh…  I was thinking we should just get rid of it all
.
I can’t keep any of it
.
It’s too painful
.
But I figured that if there was anything in here that you wanted…  You know, since they were your fami
ly
and all
.”

Sara started to protest at this, sure that there was something in here that he wanted to hold on to. But when she looked
at
John’s face she could tell he’d been haunted enough
.
Keeping anything around would on
ly
serve as an anchor for that ghost that wouldn’t allow him to move on.

It would keep
me
from allowing him to move on.

I watched as they rifled through my belongings. At first they moved in silence, going from one box to the next as they divided things to give away and things that Sara would
take home
.
Sara
made faster
work of the task
than John, many of the possessions I’d once owned holding no meaning for her as she held them for the first time
.
Others brought back a flash from a past event, and she’d stop to remember what we had been doing, how I had smiled that day, the sound of my laugh
.
Many of those things found their way into her pile.

John was cautious in the task, afraid to touch anything should it tear at him with another memory
.
But as he watched Sara move through the boxes, he realized he needed to pick up the
pace
.
He tried to ward off the thoughts that came with each piece, knowing that I had touched each one of these things he now held in his hand
.
He
stopped looking at my things
,
seeing through them as he
grabbed and dropped items into a box close
to him
.
Sara retrieved a few of the items, ex
plaining to John
the memor
ies
they brought back to her
.
And John was happy for the distraction from his own thoughts of me
.
But as his memories became less painful in the act of going through my things, he began to understand the therapy in this simple process
.
Soon he was allowing
visions of me
to come at him unharnessed, laughing as he held the sweater I had ripped when we thought sliding down the banister might be a good idea, and shedding a tear over the blanket I wrapped myself up in every night on the couch
.
He
tucked
the blanket
away in his own “keep” pile, one that
held
on
ly
a few items.

“I think Sam might want all of Joey’s games and gaming equipment,” John said
.
“And I suppose if there’s anything else in here that a teenage boy might want, we should save it
for him
.”
Sara nodded, pulling out another box and placing a few of Joey’s things inside.

“What about the dress?” Sara asked
.
It still hung from the frame of the closet, the ivory material glowing in bright contrast against the darkness of the room
.
Sara got up from the boxes that surrounded her, running her hand over the fabric
.
She paused at the part that was cut away,
glancing over
at John
to give him a curious look. She looked away
when she saw the pained look on his face
.
“I suppose we can decide later…” she mumbled, but John shook his head
with determination
.