He frowns, considering. “It was a Wednesday,” he says. “It was Halloween. They’d flown over Tuesday night; that must have been the night of the thirtieth. Their Honolulu flight was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, and then they were to take a connecting flight back to Denver. It would have been the morning of Halloween.”
“Well, there you go.” I stand up. “They did not come home on Halloween. They came home the day after Halloween. I remember it distinctly.”
“No.” Firmly, he shakes his head. “No, it would have had to be Halloween day, because they wanted to be here for Halloween. To see the children in costume.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I shake my head, and I laugh and laugh. It’s almost too hysterical for words.
“Are you all right?” Lars asks.
“Of course,” I say, practically gasping for breath. “Of course, but you see how absurd that is. My parents would not come on Halloween to see the children in costume. Because in the real world, Lars, there are no children! Don’t you understand?” I sweep my hand around the room. “None of this is here, Lars. None of it. No house, no Mitch and Missy, no Michael. No you.”
And then my face falls, as I think about what that means for him. He is so lovely and so beautiful and so perfect, and the last thing I would ever want is for such a divine man to have died as young as he was on that October evening in 1954, when we talked on the telephone.
I turn to face him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want it to be this way for you.” I laugh again, a bit cynically this time. “I would rather you’d turned out to be who I always thought you were—the rat who stood me up. Not someone who died alone in his apartment.”
His brow furrows. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“You died,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, truly I am, but in the real world, Lars, we didn’t continue talking on the telephone. We made plans to meet each other, said good-bye, and hung up. I went to meet you for coffee two days later, and you never showed up. You had a heart attack and died that night. Right after we got off the telephone.”
He swallows the last of his drink. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“But it’s not!” I put my hand on his knee, pressing into the flesh through his trousers. “This is what’s crazy, Lars. All of this. You are a figment of my imagination. This house and this family and Alma and the neighbors and not speaking to Frieda anymore and my parents dead—all of that is crazy, Lars. Not the real world. Not the world I live in, where everything perhaps is not perfect, but at least it makes sense.”
I lean forward, wrap my arms around his neck, and kiss him deeply. I want to burn the memory of his lips, his touch, into my mind and heart. I never want to forget—but I never want to be back here again, either.
Finally, we break apart. I give him one last sorrowful look. “I’m going to bed now,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to go lie down in that imaginary bed in this imaginary house, and I am going to go to imaginary sleep, and when I wake up, I will be back in the real world.” I touch a curl of hair behind his ear—tenderly, as if he were one of the children. “Good-bye, my darling,” I whisper.
Chapter 26
When I wake up, I’m not sure where I am. The room is dark, and the bed is narrow and high. Curtains close off two side-by-side windows. The coverlet that envelops me is chenille, soft and cozy.
And then the smell hits me, that roasted-squash-and-lavender smell that I would recognize anywhere, and I realize that I’m at home. Not my home, not my duplex, but my parents’ home. I am in my own childhood bedroom in the house on York Street.
Throwing off the covers, I pad to one of the windows and open the drapes. It is still dark out, and misty. I can’t tell if the sun has not yet risen or if we have a cloudy day in store. I have no idea what time it is; there is no clock in this room. I make a mental note to remind my mother that she needs to add one.
Some years ago, after I moved out, my mother depersonalized this room. She pulled down my South High School banners and my movie posters—Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind; Deanna Durbin in It Started with Eve; William Holden and Martha Scott in Our Town. My mother painted the walls, which had been sea green, a more impartial beige. She replaced my old pink-and-yellow patchwork quilt and matching curtains with this austere colonial-blue chenille spread and coordinating drapes. On the walls, she hung several small reproductions of French Impressionist paintings: Degas ballerinas, Renoir café scenes. “It’s perfect for a houseguest,” my mother proclaimed when it was finished. I honestly can’t remember my parents ever having a houseguest here, though my mother is right; the room would be lovely and ideal if a guest were to arrive.
I glance down at my body, which is covered in a too-large white nightgown, high-necked with a lace collar. Doubtless it belongs to my mother. What happened? Was I so drunk they couldn’t even get me home to my own place? Good heavens, how humiliating.
My mother has thoughtfully placed a glass of water on the bedside table, and I gulp it in its entirety. My head is pounding softly. I open the bedroom door and creep into the hall.
I glance at my parents’ bedroom door, which is closed. It’s all I can do to stop myself from flinging it open and hurling myself into bed with them, as a six-year-old might. As a six-year-old has, I remind myself wryly, in that imaginary world.
And then the horror of what Lars told me in the dream comes back to me. A small, barely audible cry escapes my throat. I stop walking and stand motionless in the dim hallway, my arms wrapped around my body for warmth.
My mother had mentioned something about the Honolulu flight on Tuesday being “dreadful,” so it seems likely that Lars’s information was correct. An airplane coming from Hawaii must have gone down in a storm, though I hadn’t heard about it here in the real world. I feel an overwhelming sadness for those who lost their lives and those who lost loved ones. And then I feel a vast sense of relief that my parents were not on that plane.
I try to imagine this life, my real life, without my parents. I know it happens—airplanes crash, people die. And I know that unforeseen death, whether via illness or accident, could happen—to my parents, to Frieda, to anyone I love. But the point is, it did not happen. Not to my mother and father. Not in my life.
I make my way down the hall in the darkness, heading for the kitchen and the coffee percolator. It’s no matter. I am not going back to that imaginary world. I am not sure exactly how I am going to keep it from happening, but one thing is certain: I’m not going back there again. I simply can’t let my mind go there again, I tell myself as I fill the percolator with water.
The truth is this: I am terrified that if I end up there again, I may never be able to get back home.