More Stories from the Twilight Zone (18 page)

And that was exactly how Irma Mendholsson looked, one foot tucked up beneath her leg and her head slumped over to one side.

James knelt down by the chair and felt her forehead. It was ice cold.

“James!” Nicola snapped, her voice barely above a whisper. “Look.”

James followed his sister's pointing finger and saw, clamped in his mother's clasped hands resting in her lap, the edge of what appeared to be a piece of paper.

James pried her hands apart and there was another of his father's postcards, this one featuring a picture of the Sydney Opera House. He tugged at the card—

“She doesn't want to let go of it,” Nicola said softly.

—and, through the tears, he read out the message on the back:

 

Hey swetie
Im in Astraylia. It's veryy hot. God, im so tired. i'm missing you like mad. i don't think i can carry on much lonegr. It is very hot here. i love you more than

I can say.all my love
Boz

 

“Doesn't sound too good, does he?”

“It's worse than that,” James said. “The spelling and punctuation
are adrift as well.” He handed the card over to his sister and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, Mom,” he whispered.

 

This time the funeral was a quieter affair. Neither James nor his sister wanted a lot of people, so the only others in attendance were Jim and Angie, with Anthony, Jennifer, and Maria, and baby Margaret-Jayne, plus, of course, Jackie and Phil Defantino.

At the end of the service and the internment, while Jim and Angie took the children back to their respective cars, James and Nicola stayed back to speak with Phil and Jackie. When they had exchanged the customary commiserations, Phil asked Jackie to wait for him in the car. She looked a little puzzled but did as she was asked.

The three of them watched her walk away and then Phil turned to James and Nicola and, with a deep sigh, reached into his inside coat pocket and produced a brown paper bag that was about the shape and size of paperback novel. He handed it to James.

“What is it?” Nicola asked.

“I think I know,” James said as he opened the bag. Without removing the contents, he peered into the bag. For a few seconds it did indeed look like a paperback book, viewed from the page edges rather than from the spine. He folded the bag over again and handed it back to Phil. “There's nothing there that we want, Phil,” he said. “Just some cards.”

“James—”

“Nicola, remember what I told you Mom had said about destroying the magic?”

Nicola nodded.

James turned back to Phil. What were they like, those last dozen or so postcards? How much did he deteriorate by the time the end came? Suddenly, James felt thankful that his mother had died when she had. He couldn't imagine the heartbreak she would have gone through having to read them right up to the
end, and then for the cards to stop completely. He said, “Just get rid of them.”

“You sure?”

“We're sure.”

Nicola nodded and turned away.

“Will you be needing any help? With the house, I mean. Boz's books and magazines . . . all that stuff.”

James shook his head and breathed in deeply. The intake of breath made him appear bigger and stronger than he felt. “We're going to get a dealer in, sell the lot. We could do it ourselves, advertising them, but it'd take too long. And we'd sooner see it happen in one hit.”

“I understand,” Phil said. “Well, if you need any help with anything at all, just give me a call.”

“Will do. Nick and I are staying at the house for a few days to sort out all the furniture and, as you say, all of the books. Dad's old firm is doing the realty.”

“He'd like that.”

“That's what we figured. Anyway, by the end of next week, it'll just be a shell with a
FOR SALE
sign in the yard.”

Phil sighed and looked around. Jackie was standing by Phil's 4 × 4—she waved when she saw him looking and he nodded before turning back to James and Nicola. “Well, I guess that's it.” He shook James's hand and gave Nicola a kiss on the cheek. “Keep in touch, huh?”

“You bet,” James said.

Watching him walk away from them, they saw him remove a handkerchief from his pocket. In the stillness of the cemetery, the nose-blow—when it came—sounded like a clarion call or
Last Post
. Neither James nor Nicola could decide which.

 

The weekend wasn't as traumatic as they had feared it would be. And though they had both expected to be wracked with nostalgia,
going through their mother's clothing and furniture proved to be relatively easy, with most of the stuff being either thrown away in a collection of garden refuse bags or stacked in neat piles for the thrift and charity stores off Main Street. In addition, they had a guy calling around early the following Tuesday to take all the furniture they didn't want or need—as it turned out, they didn't need anything and kept back only a couple of items that had earned a place in their memory.

The man from the Realtor's office—a guy called Dane—came around on Sunday and prepared a notice on the property. When he left, after less than an hour, James and Nicola stood watching the
FOR SALE
sign long after his car had disappeared.

Monday morning dawned and with it came a sense of closure. The sun was shining, the house was pretty well cleared, and they were both looking forward to getting back to their own homes. The grieving process had started but, as James said—and had said repeatedly over the weekend—things could have panned out a lot worse than they had done.

By midmorning, Nicola had wiped down all the paintwork and vacuumed the house from top to bottom. Now it was just a house: All the evidence of its life as the Mendholssons' home was stored as memories in the cerebral databanks of James's and Nicola's heads, to be accessed whenever they were required.

The one thing they hadn't thought of doing occurred to James as he watched the mailman walking along the sidewalk.

“Hey, we need to get in touch with the post office to have Mom's mail forwarded to one of us.” He got up from his seat on the floor against the side wall when he saw the mailman turn into Irma's yard. “You want to do it, or me?”

“I guess me,” she shouted after him, “because I'm here in town and I'm home with Margaret-Jayne most days.”

James opened the door. “Makes sense to me,” he shouted. Then, to the mailman, “Hey, how are you today?”

“I'm fine, but tired. Seems like I work harder at home on weekends than I do during the week.” They both laughed. The mailman handed a small bundle of envelopes to James and expressed his sympathy for his loss. “How you doing anyways? It's a sad time for you.”

James nodded as he flicked through the letters. “Yes, it is, but I think—”

He stopped when he saw the postcard. He recognized the picture immediately—Venice . . . the Bridge of Sighs, the gondolier, the stone buildings: Everything was there, just as it had been on the very first card that Irma had received from Boz.

James turned over the card. The first thing that he noticed was that this card was not addressed to his mother: It was addressed, in his father's hand—a strong hand once again—to him and Nicola, care of his mother's address:

Dearest James and Nicola,

the message began.

 

Well, this is going to be the last card, I'm afraid.

 

“Is everything okay?” the mailman asked.

 

Your mom arrived here yesterday morning—I can't tell you how good it was to see her again. Adventuring all by yourself is such a lonely business.

 

“James?” Nicola called from the room, her voice echoing in the empty house.

 

She wants me to show her everything else and while we've got a mighty long time together now, there's
such
a lot to see!!! Look after each other and your wonderful families.

Love as always. Dad

 

And there was a P.S. at the bottom.

Nicola appeared alongside him just as James was finishing reading. The mailman was walking back down the path, shrugging repeatedly to himself.

Somewhere off on the interstate a truck horn sounded, dopplering from soft to loud and then back to soft again, like some kind of animal.

“I don't believe it,” James said, shaking his head.

He handed the postcard to Nicola and put his hands up to his face.

Nicola read.

“My God,” she said. “His handwriting is back to normal and he sounds lucid again. But all this stuff about Mom—how could he have—” She stopped, looked up at her brother, then back down at the card.

 

P.S. I'm sure the past few days have been difficult for you both but I'm absolutely fine. Couldn't be happier. Have a wonderful life, both of you. We'll be following your progress—whenever our busy schedule permits it!

Much love,
Mom

 

“How—”

James interrupted her. “I'll tell you one thing,” he said, “about that card, and the one that came before—the first one.”

Nicola, wide-eyed, simply nodded her head for him to continue.

“I think we were wrong . . . about the sun setting, I mean.”

Nicola turned it over and looked at the photograph closely. “I'm betting that's a sun
rise!
” He turned and smiled at her. “The start of a brand-new day.”

The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns.

—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
,
Hamlet
(1601)

 

 

The great poet Emily Dickinson said that parting was all we know of heaven and all we need of hell, and, at least on this side of the veil, that's true. But who's to say what wonders are in store for us? For when that final breath has been taken, everything that follows may well be turned into a hand-colored, wish-you-were-here picture postcard, sent from the endless sand dunes of Beyond and delivered for your astonishment via that vast sorting office we know as . . . the Twilight Zone.

 

For your consideration: Paul Keller, citizen, husband, father—who went to a party looking for laughs, and instead met his future, in which laughter would be rare. Because your future is never what you expect in . . . the Twilight Zone.

1

 

Paul Keller had the perfect marriage, perfect kids, the perfect job—the perfect life. Perfect but, one might also say, perfectly dull. No edges or surprises. As Mark Twain said, “Heaven is great for the climate but terrible for society.”

One Saturday night at a party, Paul (who was a senior trader at a successful brokerage house) and his wife, Claire, were chatting with friends when, across the room, Paul saw Lily Sass and realized for the first time he had been missing something in his life—her.