your piece, though.”
“That bastard. Fine,” I said, and pulled my feet beneath me comfortably.
He waited.
“Lily died. She came to see me yesterday, but she didn’t use the door. Did you know she passed?”
“Rosie, I don’t even know who you are.”
“Strange, huh. Anyway, she’s died and is with Mama now. I’m okay with that, mostly. She was in a lot of pain.”
“She had cancer, right?”
“Yes. She was told she had six months to live about twenty years ago, but she fought it up until Mama died. Sometimes I think she shouldn’t have fought it. She’s died so slowly. I read about that once, where the body loses its functions one by one until you just rot from the inside out.
“At least she’s okay now,” I added quietly. “They get to be together and I’m stuck with Maria.”
“Lily is at peace.”
“You know, doc, BDA, I used to think death was a horrible, horrible thing. It didn’t make sense to me,” I continued. “Now I realize it’s actually a blessing. I mean, no one dies peacefully anymore. Everyone dies from something, and they all spend the last few years of their lives in misery. My friend Jay used to smoke two packs a day, drink six days a week, and live on fried food. He was determined to shave off the last few years of his life, because they’re miserable anyway. I’m not sure that’s quite the way to go about it, though he did die happy.”
“How old was Jay when he died?”
“Thirty-two. He was hit by a drunk driver. He didn’t have to deal with this garbage and he got to eat and drink all he wanted. Lucky bastard.”
“Death is natural, whether a blessing or an unfortunate accident,” the doc said stoically. “Sometimes it’s best not to try to justify it. Just a stage of life.”
“For Lily, I think it was good. For me, I think I missed the death train I should have been on. If you don’t believe death is justifiable, then do you believe life is justifiable? Does it have a purpose, or is it another set of stages?”
“All things have a purpose, no matter how trivial. Life and death are a cycle, which is a purpose within itself. They are balanced. There must be death if there is life.”
“What is the purpose of a life like mine?”
“You’re a part of a different balance. Somewhere out there, someone is cursed to live as the happiest person in the world while you live as the most miserable,” he responded with another small smile.
“You’re supposed to be helping me!”
“Rose, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met-- or in this case, dreamed of. I don’t know what you were like before your accident, but you’re an amazing person now. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know why these things happened to you.”
“I was smarter before the accident when I could read books and not quite as bitter.”
“From my brief meetings with you, I’ve noticed you display signs of depression and anxiety, but you’re surprisingly stable despite your condition,” he told me. “You have a unique logic and rationale, and you seem not to fear anything, even your own death.”
“You should hear some of my thoughts. You’d take all that back. You always make me feel better, even if you don’t really help me solve any of my issues.”
“You’ve got the mind to do that on your own. I’m not even sure why I keep dreaming of you.”
“I’m real, doc! You’re the dream!”
“Someday you should tell me where you are, and I’ll really visit,” he offered. “I’d be honored to meet you in person.”
“Georgia,” I said. “But I’d rather you stick to these … dreams, as you call them. I’m hideous in real life.”
I never knew-- even now-- whether the people who visited me were figments of my mind or real. I would never see Joey’s dresser or Lily’s obituary. I felt she had died, but not one of my doctors had even ventured to tell me Mama died five years ago. I knew when she came to visit me in the Mind Café and looked as beautiful as Lily described her.
The counselor rose.
“One day, Norman Petrovic will visit you,” he said.
“I’d be happy to meet you, Norman Petrovic,” I replied.
A door in my room closed, and I blinked to bring myself out of the Café and back to my prison. I recognized Maria’s voice and the soft southern slur of Dr. Nick. A moment later, he appeared before me dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a pressed white shirt.
“Hello there, Rosie,” he said. He bent to look in my eyes with a small flashlight. “How are you today?”
I activated the digital keyboard and typed the word okay. Dr. Nick straightened and moved to the TV and picked up the small screen, angling it to read in the dimly lit room.
“Good.”
He was the most handsome man I ever met. He was tall with large, dark eyes. I liked his visits. He was one of the few who asked questions and pretended that I was a real person instead of another inanimate object.
“You could use some light,” he said in a voice that was always warm. He crossed to the drapes and threw them open. Maria mumbled and went back into the bathroom.
“Are you tired today?”
I tried to type the word no, but it came out o.
“I think that’s a no. Good,” he said again. “We had some irregular results from one of your tests. I’m afraid you can’t have visitors for awhile. I’m concerned that you’re not resting enough.”
Resting was all I ever did. I didn’t even know what kind of tests they performed anymore. Maria drew blood fairly often, but I didn’t trust that graduate of a five-week Guatemalan medical school that refused to speak to me in English.
I typed restborig into the monitor he held. Dr. Nick smiled.
“I know,” he said. “I also told Maria no MTV today. Does the priest come today or tomorrow?”
Tomoro
“Will you insist on him reading the book of Job again this week, or can he choose?”
Job. It was my favorite story. The priest had read the Bible cover-to-cover before I insisted on hearing the book of Job whenever he came. He was kind enough to humor me, and I had heard Job’s pitiful plight every week for the past few years. Rather than feel bad for Job, I found his tale hilarious. His misery at the hands of a god and a devil that may as well have placed a bet over who would win him over was my one good laugh every week. He was the one poor soul whose life was worse than mine.
“Very well,” Dr. Nick answered. “I’ll check on you tomorrow morning.”
Haveagooay.
“Bless your heart, Rosie,” he said with a note of sadness in his deep voice.
He replaced the screen, disappearing from my vision. I heard him exchange a few words with Maria before the door closed. Dr. Nick had visited every day lately. I didn’t know why, but I enjoyed seeing him. Aside from the priest, he was also the only real man left in my life, since the man I wanted most to see never came.
Robert Charles Kiefer, the man I loved once in my life and now only in my dreams. I had not seen him since BDA. He wrote letters weekly that Lily used to read to me until her visits waned. On occasion, the shrink or Dr. Nick or the priest read me his letters. I never stopped loving him, and I wanted to believe his letters were proof he never stopped loving me. And yet, he never visited. The conflicting emotions-- love and resentment-- preoccupied me for many years. The end determination was no less frustrating than the internal battle itself: I loved him more for not seeing what I had become. In this, he could remember me as I was. Of course, this did nothing for me.
He’d never even dropped by the Mind Café like everyone else I loved. I hadn’t received a letter from him in about a year. I knew he was alive as I knew Lily was not.
I stared out the open windows. I missed being outside. I missed seeing the green of life, the brush of air against my skin, the hum of locusts in summer and the quiet fall of snow in winter, the earth’s musky scent after a thunderstorm.
Grumbling in Spanish, Maria crossed my visi
on and closed one side of the drapes. I pondered returning to the Café, my waiting room for death. Instead, I fell asleep in the late afternoon sun, whose warmth I couldn’t feel. I dreamt the only dream I’d had since Mama’s death: of the three of us sitting on a wide wooden porch in the Georgia sun on rocking chairs, laughing and talking.
Soon, I told them as I drifted into slumber. I’ll be with you soon.
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