But there was nothing like seeing her sitting at breakfast with the morning sun at her back and her hair a corona about her head; nothing like the curve of her hips, as smooth as a classical phrase whenever she draped them with a dress, framed herself in a doorway, even pushed a grocery cart. There was nothing like the pleasant roundness of her breasts under a sweater or her body against mine, that close to no other for forty years.
Was I happy? You bet I was happy.
Nine forty-five. Eloise sat on her bed in the soft light of her bedside lamp, flipping a quarter, part of that day’s earnings.
“Heads,” she called in midflip. She caught the coin, slapped it on the back of her hand, uncovered it …
Heads.
She flipped it again. “Heads.”
Heads.
“Heads.”
Heads.
“Heads.”
Heads. She put her hand over her mouth to keep it quiet.
Pretty lucky.
No, extremely lucky.Her last toss made fifteen heads in a row.
She didn’t know how she did it other than just wanting it to happen, like touching the coin without really touching it.
And I suppose I should be honest with myself while I try to understand what happened in Coeur d’Alene today. A part of being lonely, I suppose, or perhaps needing to be needed, or perhaps for no particular reason other than her being a fledgling magician and my being … what? The wise old mentor? I just couldn’t stay out of it, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
Dane had to pause a moment, sit, think, and try to make sense of himself. He thought of calling Dr. Kessler but put that thought aside. What happened to him that day could have happened to anybody, trauma or no trauma, and he’d ended his pain medication days ago. It had to happen. She was a magician and …
It could be what Dr. Kessler was talking about.
Oh, come on!
He decided to pour himself another cup of decaf from a little coffeemaker he bought just to buy some time. When he sat down and faced his computer again, his thoughts hadn’t changed.
All right, I’ll admit it: She reminded me of Mandy. Her shtick was silly, ill-timed, ill-located, poorly done; her outfit was hodgepodge, the makeup was stagey, and I could tell she didn’t believe it herself… .
But how many people, young or old, would have taken such a chance, gone out on such a narrow limb, just put it all out there the way she did? Mandy was one of the few I’ve ever known.
Maybe he shouldcall Dr. Kessler.
Oh, it was over now. He’d probably never see her again. It was an interesting phenomenon, looking into that girl’s eyes and … he must have subconsciously loaded his own memories into what he was seeing. That’s why the eyes looked so much like Mandy’s used to look when she was troubled, when she was trying to figure something out, when she was fascinated. The voice, too, so much like Mandy’s when she was goofing around, trying to do a stagey accent …
So what’s Kessler going to do if I do call her, charge me by the hour and send me a bill?
Forget it. Today’s over, she’s gone, it was a unique grieving experience, something to remember with interest, maybe write about, maybe share with another widower someday to compare notes.
I wonder … what if … ?
Eloise tried it. She set the quarter to spinning on the top of the dresser and then watched it … and watched it … and watched it … and as long as she stayed with it, somehow connected with it, it never slowed, it never wobbled. When she “let go,” the spin decayed and the quarter wah-wah-wobbled down to a stop. She stood it on edge, flicked it with her finger to set it spinning again, and this time, with her eyes and will locked on it and her body unconsciously leaning along, she made the spinning quarter move toward the rear of the dresser and back to the front, then back and forth again, then in a circle, then in a square. Upon her command—or whatever it was she felt or did, she wasn’t sure what it was—the quarter wah-wah-wobbled down and settled—ker-plink!—on the dresser.
She rubbed the side of her face, thinking, trying to deal with this. Was it really happening, or was it from the same bag of insanity as thinking Nixon was president and the war in Vietnam was still going on?
The last girl to use this room left a tennis ball on the dresser. Eloise grabbed it. What to do?
The room was carpeted, not a great place to roll a tennis ball. All the better.
She placed it on the carpet and watched it.
Hmm.
Maybe if she watched from the other side …
Ehh …
Well, maybe if she watched it and gave it a nudge …
It rolled slightly, bumping on the nap of the carpet until it came to rest looking tired and discouraged.
She got down on her elbows and knees, her nose inches away from it. “Come on now, Burt. Look at all that wonderful open space in front of you. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
She tapped the ball with her finger and it rolled, bumping against the nap …
“Come onnn!”
It bumped against the nap, bumped again, rotated a few degrees more … and kept rolling. She crawled and followed it, her nose inches away, willing, commanding, feeling, whatever might work. “That’s it, Burt, that’s it! Keep goin’!”
It kept rolling, faster now, until it bumped into the wall and started coming back.
She backpedaled, drawing it after her, making it roll, and it followed her like a baby chick after its mother. Wow, if that guy I met in town could see this!
What was that on the wall?
She stopped and looked. The tennis ball bumped against her knee and stayed there, forgotten.
The white paddock fence. She could see it projected on the wall … no, she could see it throughthe wall. The wall was thinning as if turning to glass, and just beyond it, just outside the house, was the white paddock fence, dimly visible in the night. Beyond that, the green pasture stretched like a dark expanse, and in that expanse stood the three aspens, fragmented shadows against the starry sky, leaves trembling.
Eloise froze right then and there, still on her knees, enraptured, not taking her eyes off it. She did not want to lose this.
The vision widened and clarified before her and beside her as the other walls of the room dissolved and she was no longer in a bedroom but outside on a clear night on a two-lane country road that vanished over a rise in one direction and dipped into an expansive, restful valley in the other. She stood slowly, turning, taking it all in. The stars above were brilliant, like diamonds on black velvet; she could recognize Perseus, Cassiopeia, Aquila, Hercules, and the Big Dipper, and all around her the forested hills traced a black, sawtoothed bite out of the sky. Here and there on the hillsides were the nighttime stars people had put there: mercury vapor lamps burning blue over driveways and barnyards, bare little bulbs on back porches, and the orange glow from the sleepy-eyed windows of ranch and farm houses. The night was so quiet; no town noise. A dog barked; another replied. The birds had all turned in.
Just off the road from where she stood, a mercury vapor lamp illuminated a heavy wooden gate spanning a driveway. The driveway went up a hill between two white-fenced pastures, and at the top of the hill, nestled among charcoal evergreens, were the glowing cathedral windows of a house. She could just make out the angular roof, gables, and stoney facade, but the sight drew her in as if she were seeing a memory, something from a beautiful dream. It looked—it felt—so much like home, only … better.
Was this heaven?
Of course I have to wonder how this house would feel, how real, how complete the dream would be, if Mandy were here to grace the rooms with her spirit, her charm, her tasteful touch. She would know where everything should go, how the living room should be arranged, how the walls should be adorned, and …
Dane paused to savor the feeling: a sweet and gentle joy he knew from mornings with Mandy, sitting at breakfast with Bibles and coffee; the sense of completeness whenever she returned home from shopping, getting her hair done, running three miles; the way he felt when he would sit beside her in church and she would place her hand on his hand …