Читать книгу Claiming Her - Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen - Страница 15

CHAPTER 12

Mists swirl around me, white against a moderate blue background that waivers in hue, slightly lighter, slightly darker. The clouds, if clouds they are, drift by me. Yet my feet stand firmly on something soft but solid.

In the distance I spy Terence, his blond hair, white poet’s shirt, brown pants and boots cutting a sharp contrasting figure against the blue and white ether. His back is to me. He turns and looks at me, as if just noticing my arrival. Then he turns away, as if denying my presence, walking on.

“Terence!”

I want to run, to catch up, and suddenly I am there, right behind him. I reach out and grab his shoulder. “Wait!”

He faces me silently, sullenly.

“Why were you running away?”

He doesn’t answer for a minute. When he finally does, his words spew out in a pettish miserable torrent. “You and that bloody downsider! Prying into other people’s lives. Now he’s trying to destroy my soul as well as yours. Well, you can play in his bloody pit all you like. I’m climbing out, fast as I can. Leave you behind, I swear it. Let Quatama figure out how to rescue your bloody arse if you fall too low. I’m not your fucking Prince Charming. Smear your own face with the ashes from the fire. I won’t have it. None of it. I’m off the job. Ta!”

He turns to leave. I try to push in front of him. The atmosphere in this void feels thick, as if I’m under water when I deliberately try to move, yet when I think about, desire a movement or action, it occurs so fluidly, it seems to happen almost simultaneously. I give up trying to physically catch his retreating figure, and simply concentrate, imagining appearing in front of him, bringing him up short.

“Leigh Ann, please stop that! I want to go.” He glares at me; I have jolted him, materializing so close to him, we nearly collide. “You have plenty of other spirit guides. I’ve no doubt of that, having learned about you, my girl. You’ll do fine without me. Now please let me pass.”

“You’re angry. It’s about your music, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me you had other compositions?”

“Other composi . . . !” He sputters, unable to even complete the word. “You are talking about my life blood, my magnum opus, the gems I seduced from the Muse after I recovered from the depression caused by my critics trashing any pleasure I’d had in the debut of my first record. None of my peers thought my work had merit. But that record was like glass compared to the diamonds of my final compositions. And I hoarded them, like a child with a wondrous secret, holding back to dazzle my mates with three new musical triumphs in one fell swoop!” He lapses back to silence, sucks in a breath, and shivers as if chilled. “No one knew they existed but Cecily. Bloody beautiful Cecily. I told her not to tell another soul. I planned to tape them after our return to London from Blackpool. Just shut myself in with the piano and the recorder, put in all the orchestral parts of the symphony, finish it, then record the sonata’s interweaving movements, and finally, get my nocturne, short but excruciatingly seductive, down on tape! I’d only dreamt of creating music like this before, Leigh Ann. That recording you think so highly of equalled my metaphorical toddler steps, learning to walk as a composer before discovering I could run! And that bastard, that absolute bastard, saying the bloody bitch destroyed it all!” He lifts his hands helplessly to me. “I only had one set of it all, written in musical script. My symphony, my sonata and my poor little nocturne. I tucked them all in a large envelope and stuck it inside the piano bench before we left for seaside. So she destroyed them. Cecily destroyed them.” He heaves a sigh. “Not that I couldn’t recreate the music, upside in the afterlife, you know. But you want to leave your greatest work . . . ” He huffs out another sigh. “. . . in the plane of life you created it on. I was waiting. I thought perhaps Cecily would have shown them to my publisher after I died. It’s been three years, hasn’t it? On Earth?”

I can read the resignation in his eyes, his posture. “Three new compositions? Lost?”

“Three long leaps in my musical virtuosity. Gone forever, it appears. Not to be part of my scant legacy on Earth.”

I lift my hand and rest it on his shoulder. He glances at it, unsure of my intentions, but allows it to remain there. “You were eavesdropping on Bael’s taunts this morning. I thought you had left. Bael said you had, but you were listening in.”

Now he does move, dislodging my hand as he paces to the left. “I went off into the living room. But the words of that wondrous fallen angel of yours were meant as much for my ears as for yours. He means to crush my soul, to ship me to the spiritual boondocks. Away from you, no doubt. And he said my final works were lost, didn’t he? Said they would never be recovered. That Cecily had been particularly spiteful.”

“Was she?”

“I . . . umm . . . didn’t attend my funeral nor look in on friends and relatives after I drowned. I really don’t know. I met Patrick shortly after I went through the death process, the transition. He’d been on the upper planes some twenty to thirty years, and they’d assigned him to act as a sort of welcoming committee and messenger to me. The message was that I had unfinished business on Earth and would have to return to take care of it.”

“Well, the method of return obviously wasn’t reincarnation.”

He smiles halfheartedly, his melancholy and aching vulnerability visible. “No. Actually they didn’t tell me what the unfinished business was. They said I would know after I’d completed it. I expect it has something to do with my music.” He looks at me expectantly. “I wonder if I could dictate those lost works to you? Can you read musical script, Leigh Ann? I’ve never seen you do it, but . . .” I shake my head. “Well, there goes that idea. Probably wouldn’t work anyway, trying to convey musical notation through telepathy, remembering the exact compositions.”

“Even if I could, I’d probably mess it up in more than one place. Not to mention the problem of trying to convince others that it’s your music, Terence.”

Another flicker of hope lights his face. “Perhaps it hasn’t been destroyed.”

“Maybe we can try to contact this Cecily,” I offer, then correct myself, “Maybe I can try to contact her, in the physical world. Do you remember the address, where you lived with her?”

His pale brows furrow. “It’s been so long. It’s hard to remember details like that as well when you’re dead. What? Oh, come now, I am dead, you know. In your world, at any rate.”

I sigh. The word really gives me the willies. I find it difficult accepting the mortal description of death. In the mortal world, one is indeed gone, never to regain one’s physical form in that particular lifetime, when one dies. But I still view Earthly life as the fantasy, the dream from which one awakens. “Perhaps,” I agree. “But death is a transition, not a permanent condition. It’s not my fault that most mortals treat Earth as the only dimension succoring life and the physical body as its only vehicle.”

“Tell it to the coroner. Look, Leigh Ann. Even if I could remember where I lived with Cecily, what surety do we have that we’ll translate the address correctly? Psychics can miss by a kilometer. It’s one thing to mix up a simple conversation a bit. It’s another to give specific information that needs proving out. I don’t even know if Cecily still lives there. Maybe we should forget this.”

“No. We’re not giving up that easily. We have to try to recover your lost works. But one thing does bother me. Why didn’t Cecily take them to your publisher or to someone else in authority in the classical music field? No matter how badly upset she was after your death, it would benefit her. She’d become a celebrity. The media would eat it up. The grieving heroine who saved her sweetheart’s music from oblivion.”

Terence considers that. “You don’t think she did, and the publisher turned it down, do you?”

“Highly unlikely. Your earlier works had been popular despite the critics. Dead composers with newly discovered works can get more attention than living ones that are still composing. So why didn’t she open the piano seat, scoop it out, and wave it in front of the music world’s face?”

Terence furrows his brows again, as much at a loss as I am, then his mouth opens, his expression stricken. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Leigh Ann!”

“What?”

“Dear Lord, I didn’t tell her.”

“Tell her what? You said you did tell her about the new music.”

“No, no, no! I mean I didn’t tell her where they were. I lifted the piano seat, placed them in the compartment inside, and locked it, while she was packing the car for seaside.”

“Well, wouldn’t she have looked for them? I mean, afterwards?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t musical, you know.” He sighs again, heavily. “Wherever that piano seat is, my music may still be.”

“Well, we’ve got to try to contact her. Think! Try to remember the address where the two of you lived.”

“Umm . . . Doughty Street! In London. I can’t remember the number. Was it 42 or 44? Damn! We lived right up the street from the Dickens House.”

“The Dickens House?”

“One of the houses Charles Dickens once lived in. They converted it into a museum.”

“The street number, Terence,” I remind him. The sound of faint crying begins to distract me.

“The number . . . yes, yes! It was No. 44. 44 Doughty Street. We rented the second floor. Yes, that’s it. The second floor flat at 44 Doughty Street in London,” he repeats, then peers at me. “Are you all right, love?”

I can’t answer. For one instant longer, I stand facing Terence in the blue and white ether . . .

* * * *

. . . half a second later, my eyes opened to afternoon sunlight brightening the bedroom as Daniel’s loud bawling filled my ears. I got up and picked him up, checking his diaper. “Oh, boy. It’s all right, Danny. Mommy will get you cleaned up.”

I removed the soiled diaper, wiped him around with a wet wash cloth, then dried, powdered and freshly diapered him. Even his outer rubber diaper had leaked through to the butt and legs of his sleeper. “What a mess.” At least, the crib sheet had stayed dry. I retrieved a new rubber diaper and sleeper from below the bathinet. I redressed Daniel and laid him in his crib. “Stay put for a moment, sweetie. Mommy has to wash your dirty diaper out.”

I went to the bathroom to rinse off and flush away the feces. As I wrung the cloth out tightly, Terence made a sudden reappearance, asking in an agitated rush, —Do you remember?—

—What.—

—The address! Lord, I hope you’ve gotten it right.—

—44 Dougherty Street, second floor, in London.—

—Not Dougherty. It’s Doughty. Like the dough you bake bread and biscuits with.—

—Doughty. Okay? Now, I’ve got things to do, so cool it.—

I took the rinsed diaper back into the bedroom, dumping it in the pail, then threw the wet baby clothes into the hamper.

Daniel reached out his hands to me. I lifted him into my arms and headed downstairs.

Terence trailed after me. —When are you going to write the letter?—

—Later.—

—Can’t you do it now? You can walk it to the post. It’s a lovely day. Take Daniel for a ride in his pram.—

I walked into the kitchen. My mother wasn’t there, but the door to the basement was opened. “Mom?”

“I’m in the laundry room, ironing,” she called up.

—I’ve remembered Cecily’s last name,— Terence cut in. —It’s Saraband. Cecily Saraband. 44 Doughty Street, second floor, in London. Please, Leigh Ann. For the possible sake of posterity?—

I gave in. “Mom? Do we have any stationery and envelopes? I want to write a letter to someone in England.”

“In England? Who do you know in England?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“Look in the hutch in the dining room. Top left drawer. Is Daniel up?”

“Yes. I’ve got him with me.” I found a matching set decorated with a border in the drawer. Putting Daniel in his swing, I sat down to write, wondering how to best put what had to be said—in mundane terms that wouldn’t alarm the woman.

I started,

“Dear Cecily,

“You don’t know me, but I am an admirer of the music of Terence Dearborn. Having researched his life, I found that you and he were sharing this address before he . . . ” (I hesitated, wondering how to put it delicately, and decided prettifying it would sound pretentious) “. . . died. I hope you don’t find me presumptuous, but being a musician myself, and having found and loved Mr. Dearborn’s one album, I wonder if he left other musical compositions, as yet undiscovered. It seems strange that he hasn’t, as someone as talented as Mr. Dearborn surely would have been working on new compositions after his successful debut.

“Is it possible that unpublished music was misplaced and forgotten following his demise? Pianists often store music in the compartments beneath their piano benches, although I imagine you and his family have already checked this possibility. Consider me a concerned fan who feels some exploration ought to be made.

“If you do turn up any recovered work by Mr. Dearborn, I would greatly appreciate hearing of it. Hoping this letter reaches you and will hopefully bring fruitful results, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Leigh Ann Elfman”

I addressed the envelope and held it and the letter up for Terence’s inspection.

—I can’t read it. It’s hard to read physical writing through spirit eyes. Some can. I’m not particularly adept at it.—

—Would you like me to read it silently?—

—No need. I caught your thoughts as you wrote it. I’m quite satisfied.—

I slipped the letter into the envelope, sealing it up. I had some money from a small allowance my father had given me. “I hope this doesn’t cost too much to mail overseas,” I muttered, then called down to the basement. “Mom. Danny and I are taking a walk to the post office. Do you need anything while we’re out?”

“No, dear. I got groceries this morning.” She appeared at the base of the stairs. “You can help me make dinner after you get back. Do you need money?”

“No. I’m fine.”

I dressed the baby and myself snugly and, Daniel held firmly in one arm, pulled his carriage outside with my other hand. I put him gently inside, drew the carriage blanket around him and wheeled the carriage down the pathway to the sidewalk.

The weather had warmed, cotton clouds drifting through a pastel blue sky.

It would be a triumph, both psychically and culturally, if Cecily Saraband found the missing music. —So much for Bael’s prediction,— I telepathed to Terence. —With any luck, we may yet resurrect your lost symphony, sonata and nocturne.—

Terence remained silent, walking beside us for two or three blocks, then, so softly I almost didn’t catch it, said, —Thank you.—

We continued to saunter along, the pleasant day lulling us. Then a faint unarticulated question played in the corners of my mind. It concerned Terence’s death.

—Why do you have to know how it was for me?— he asked me.

—Well, you’re the first person I’ve met psychically who, well, has died. Just curious to know what it’s like.—

—I’ll tell tonight, while you’re out-of-body. I’ll try to wake you up afterwards. It might help you to remember. That is, if your precious Bael doesn’t come around to interfere. Although we seem to be spared his presence for now.—

I let that last terse remark rest. Terence still smarted, no doubt, from Bael’s crass denouncement on the fate of the lost compositions.

We reached the Castor Avenue post office. I parked the carriage outside and carried Daniel into the building. A man coming out held the door for us.

The line wasn’t long, the letter to Cecily Saraband quickly weighed, stamped, and deposited in the overseas mail bin. I took Daniel back outside, snuggled him into the carriage and headed home.

I wondered if the letter would ever reach the woman and, if so, if Terence’s missing music would really be recovered. I knew the difficulties involved in trying to work from psychic clues. Failure was more of a potential than success.

I wondered if I should have done more mortal sleuthing, written a letter to the recording company producing Terence’s album, asked them for his publisher’s address. But the authorities might find it strange at best or an intrusion at worst if I asked for the current mailing address of Cecily Saraband and Terence’s parents. I could imagine the polite response letter, if I received a response at all: “We are not at liberty to give out personal information of this nature.” That left me back at square one, mailing the letter to Cecily at the address Terence remembered, our only option, short of Terence haunting his ex-girlfriend and parents, and trying to lead them to his music.

—It’s not the same for everyone,— Terence said. His words seemed unrelated to my current thoughts.

“What’s not the same?” I asked aloud, then brought myself up short for it. Someone not near enough to hear me clearly might assume I spoke to my baby, but it was definitely a bad habit to get into.

—No one heard you.—

—I still shouldn’t answer verbally. People sock you away in mental institutions for things like that.—

—Oh, you’d give them a lovely run, I’ve no doubt, if they stuck you in one. Probably give them a nutshell lecture on the universe’s dimensional nature.—

—Then they would throw away the key.—

—My guess is they’d throw you out to save their own sanity.—

—I’ll definitely take caution over being committed. It’s a rational thing. I prefer not having to stage escapes from loony bins.— We had turned the corner to my street. —So what is it, that’s not the same for everyone?—

—The death experience.—

—Well, then,— I told him, steering the carriage up the walk to my family’s house, —I couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth.—

—Not at all,— he conceded. —It appears to be all relative to one’s state of mind.—

—When you die, you mean.—

—How you die and, apparently, how you live, before and after.—

I unlocked the door and pulled the carriage with Daniel in it up the front steps and into the porch. Carrying Daniel into the living room, I rested him on the sofa, unsnapping his jacket. My mother walked into the room, carrying a finished basket of ironing. She glanced about the room with an expectant air, as if sniffing a scent. “There’s a male presence in the room, Leigh Ann.”

I hesitated then said, “His name is Terence Dearborn, a classical musician who passed away about three years ago. I have the first and only album he recorded. The letter I mailed was an inquiry concerning his work. Not that there’s any guaranty that the person we wrote to will get the letter.”

She put the basket down and sat opposite us on the sofa. “Leigh Ann, there’s a difference between having psychic ability and immersing yourself in it.”

“I’m a medium, Mom. I can’t help it anymore than you can.”

“But you can control it.”

“I do, Mother. But Terence has unfinished business on Earth, probably to do with some missing classical compositions he wrote. I’ve done my best to help him find them, and I worded the letter carefully. Not a hint of anything psychic in it. If the letter fails and his lost music doesn’t surface, maybe he’ll be able to let it go. But at least he’ll know I tried.”

“But it’s not your job to find his music. It’s one thing to deliver a message from a spirit to surviving relatives or friends who request that communication. It’s also acceptable to help spiritfolk let go of the mortal concerns that hold them Earthbound. But they have to do the work, not you. You can’t cohabit with them as if they were still physical.” She leaned toward me, both her tone and blue eyes intense. “Trying to balance two dimensions is a precarious tightrope act. You know the psychic’s first rule for emotional stability. Our primary allegiance is always to the living, Leigh Ann.”

I shifted my own gaze away from that sharp maternal glare. I knew I was being advised to set limits, uncompromising limits, on my interaction with spiritual entities. “You want me to impose strict rules on myself. We share similar talents, and you’ve taught me well to measure my experiences carefully and protect myself. But I’m an individual, and our experiences may not be the same or call for the same limitations. Mine may even require an openness in areas yours don’t. You’re going to have to trust me to judge those experiences on my own terms if you want me to learn and grow from them. I’m not a child anymore.”

She slowly shook her head. “Sometimes I wish . . .”

“. . . that I had never inherited your gift,” I finished for her. “Mother, has it ever occurred to you that the gift isn’t inherited, that it comes from a different source? And the reason you also have the talent is to help me over the initial development of my own talent? There is a point where the mother bird has to let its young leave the nest.”

She smirked with all the insouciance a redhead could muster. “But, darling, you have returned to the nest. And helping you to develop does include passing on the wisdom of my own 25 years of hobnobbing with the dead.”

“You need to trust me, Mother.”

“I need you to be trustworthy,” she countered firmly.

“Then give me a chance.”

My mother sighed, then gave me a hard glance that seemed to war between foreboding and faith, before rising and picking up her basket of freshly ironed clothes. “Will you let me have a final say?”

I nodded. “I’m listening.”

“Then a short piece of advice. Keep your psychic encounters firmly separate from your everyday mortal life. Mortal needs weren’t meant to be fulfilled in the nonmortal realm. It can be dangerous, can lure you away from our world. Safeguard yourself. Draw a line. Let no one force you across it.”

“That’s intelligent advice, Mom, and I do intend to follow it. But there may be exceptions to that rule . . . and I may have to extend that line to explore them, for reasons that may go beyond any normal mortal life you and I may want me to have. But I promise you I’ll respect my responsibilities and my needs and not let anything interfere with their fulfillment or their stability.”

She hugged the basket closer to herself, as if its weight might symbolically anchor her to the solid and real. Then she nodded, and I knew I had gained a measure, at least, of her trust. “I hold you to that promise, Leigh Ann. Confide in me or don’t, as you see fit. But remember that this mortal world will always demand at least the illusion of your acceptance of its laws of nature and of the limitations those laws seem to impose. Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t try to make the whole world conform to your visions.”

“I’m not stupid, mother.” I gazed down at Daniel, busily studying the taste and shape of his fingers. “I know how to keep my visions to myself.”

“Then God watch over you, Leigh Ann and guide you to make the right decisions. And I’ll trust you to balance your own life and seek your own wisdom as you live it.”

It took a moment to sink in, to understand the full impact of her concession. My mother had relinquished control, bestowing on me the mantle of maturity, the privilege of my own choices, the responsibility for their outcome. “Thank you,” I murmured. A rite of passage, however subtle its ceremony.

“Now I’m going to unload the ironing before my arms give out.” She headed upstairs. “We’ll prepare dinner when I come down. In the meantime, you might compose your resume for those job interviews. I wouldn’t count on a reward for that music. I don’t know who you wrote to, but unless you luck out, it’ll probably end up in some dead letter box in England.”

I sensed Terence standing by the foot of the stairs, looking up at Mother’s retreating figure. —Was that a joke?— he called after her.

She either didn’t hear or ignored him. I hoisted Daniel up, taking him to the kitchen and setting him in his high chair, while I warmed up his four o’clock bottle and found some paper and a pen.

I held Daniel’s bottle up for him with my left hand, drafting my resume with my right.

For one sardonic minute, I considered putting down gardener and musical detective as past employment, then laughed at my silliness and got down to serious work. I listed the few jobs I had temporarily held; I had last worked as a typist at the certified public accounting firm in New York City until the last three months of my pregnancy. Detailing my minimal job experience as impressively as possible, I added a statement of my employment goals and finished the resume with a one-line listing of my hobbies. I didn’t include psychic phenomena on the list, although I sorely wished I lived in a world in which I could, without fearing its mockery and rejection.

I set the resume aside for later typing, burped Daniel and held him, musing over the nearly irreconcilable difference between my mother’s and my own approach to psychic exploration. Mother treated her own unique talent with an ironclad caution, prepared to protect herself, whether against spiritual evil or the disdain of a mortal world with limited vision. I knew, with a deep gut knowledge, that I would explore beyond the sensible boundaries my mother had erected. I would be the one to extend the barriers rigid science and timid religions laid, refusing to acknowledge the versatility dimensional reality might possess. I would be the one to burst through the mold of mortal denial, to overcome the fear and embrace the universe with a child’s sense of wonder, unafraid of the challenges ahead, welcoming the risks.

I would be the one to chance opening a communication between two worlds—possibly three—since time immemorial closed off to one another.

I had no foreknowledge of how I would work this miracle. I only knew, felt, the pull of a path being laid before me. I would follow it where it led, only certain that the Creator guided me and would help me along the way.

As Leigh Ann Elfman, I would live my mortal life as honorably and as honestly as I could without denying my own uniqueness and vision.

As Leianna, I would seek to repair, and once again hold dear, bonds between loved ones long ago torn apart. I could see the fabric rewoven, a tapestry of souls throughout time, made whole again, its sundered sections rejoined, the dimensional universe restored to a glory and coherence hitherto unimagined.

Living both lives, existing in both worlds, I would nevertheless be whole, be unified, be one person, my duality necessary aspects of one eternal soul.

It had to be that way. My duality was the key.

Somehow, together, I would unlock forgotten doors and ultimately heal the rift between Heaven, Earth, and Hell.