Clarity
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About this ebook
Clarissa Farrell awakens one morning with the certain knowledge that a friend has died. Was it a coincidental dream or precognition? Investigating the phenomena leads to recognizing more of her own uncanny perceptions. But when a reporter interested in her story turns out to have fraudulent motives, she is left to question all of her new found abilities. Looking ahead, she faces a choice: retreat to her old safe ruts or jettison her middle aged holding pattern.
Myanne Shelley
Recently retired San Francisco nonprofit worker, SFSPCA cat volunteer, pickleball player, boxer, writer.
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Clarity - Myanne Shelley
Clarity
by
Myanne Shelley
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Myanne Shelley at Smashwords
The Ghost Family
Copyright © 2011 by Anne Shelley
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/myanne to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Chapter 1
I don’t make friends easily, but I had come to know a delightful old woman named Yvette through a mutual friend at the nursing home where they resided. She died suddenly, unexpectedly – well, unexpectedly for someone who was 86 years old. And I became aware of her passing through unconventional means.
That day, that morning, I think is where I’d put the bookmark in my life and say, here, this is where the path less taken most clearly presented itself. Were there earlier sign posts? Yes, of course, and no doubt many twists still to come. I was only 48. (Now there’s a benefit of hanging around the nursing home: I say that without irony and with only mild regret.)
But back to that morning. It was before dawn, a Monday. My husband Doug slumbered heavily beside me, confident that either the alarm or my insomnia would wake him and launch him into his work week. I lay there silent, awake and vaguely aware of a spring storm gathering outside. I’m nearsighted, but could make out dark outlines of the trees out the window bobbing around as if preparing for a fight.
A disturbing dream had startled me awake a few minutes before. I had shifted awkwardly under our light comforter, and then focussed on my breathing, trying to match Doug’s slow rise and fall. I put the images out of my head. But then I wondered, as the dream world faded to insignificance, what had spooked me? Because the dream seemed fairly benign, with people I didn’t know, some sort of picnic scene. An abrupt end to the picnic, that was the disturbing part.
I was relaxed again, half asleep when I heard a quiet voice speak as clearly as if it was a few feet from my ear. Yvette is gone now, I’m so sorry. She didn’t suffer.
My eyes flew back open. I actually fumbled for my glasses and looked around the room. Of course it was empty, quiet except for Doug and the shuffling of the trees outside. A car rumbled by, and there was a distant yip that could have been a dog or possibly a raccoon; we have both in the neighborhood. No people to attach to the voice though, and I told myself I’d been dreaming. Tried again to ease back into sleep, and finally slept, dreamless.
Doug left for work as usual, precisely at eight. Not two minutes later, the phone rang. I felt my chest tighten and that dance of adrenaline that kicks in when I know something’s wrong, and I considered just not answering it. As if that could prevent the bad news.
But I picked up. My aunt Mags got right to the point. Clarissa, dear,
she said. I need to tell you that our good friend Yvette passed away in the night.
Oh, Mags, I’m so sorry,
I said, aware that I was echoing the earlier voice. What happened?
It had probably been another stroke. She had died peacefully in her sleep, Mags added quickly, the best way to go. I could tell from her quick summary of the facts and the dull tone of her voice that she had already repeated this story several times. Naturally, I thought, I was neither family nor elderly; others must have gotten called with the news at seven or even six this morning.
The service wouldn’t be until the weekend, Mags thought. Yvette’s family was widely scattered and they would want to make sure her various sets of friends could hear about it. We chatted in clichés for a few minutes more. She apologized for being the bearer of bad news and I assured her I was glad she had thought to let me know right away. She said she’d let me go about my day,
but I suspected she had more of these calls to make. I wondered if she had already called Liza and Curtis, her children.
Mags, Margaret Henley, is not really my aunt. She and my mother were close friends for years, though, with the kind of sisterly bond that made her seem like family. And after my mother died – twelve years ago now, so young – Mags had been a life line to me, pulling me through grief and into some semblance of maturity with the strength and vivaciousness of her personality and sheer presence in my life.
As a child I used to think of my mom and Mags as the moon and the sun, dark and cool versus warm and bright. What did that make me, some small asteroid off in the distance? But Mags was a friend when I was in the agonies of adolescence, and she saw me through those darkest days after cancer took my mother.
Our closeness had no parallel with her children, however. Liza and Curtis had each other, had Mags and their dad, the happy Henleys, as my father used to call them. They’d had little connection to my folks, now long gone, in the first place. Liza and I had never seen eye to eye, though we were close in age. (I was ever grateful for having been bumped up a year back in New Jersey, so as not to have been in her same grade.) Curtis and I had a goofy and fond friendship at least. We could go for a year without contact but then jump right back into our comfortable teasing mode.
I saw more of Curtis these days than I used to, and I imagine more of Liza than she would choose. Because of Mags. Because of the stroke that had left half her body useless and immobile. Her mind still functioned though. The brain injury had affected some of her emotional reactions and impulses, I could tell, although I’m not sure how much of these changes Mags understood. But she had been left in the frustrating position of needing near full care along with the full awareness that she needed it.
Together, they had agreed for her to live temporarily in the convalescent facility. That was almost two years ago. One of the odd staples of our weekly conversations, me and Mags, was discussing changes she should make to her small house in preparation for her return to it. Something patently impossible, of course, given her situation, but something that clearly pumped her up to ruminate about.
These conversations made Liza angry. Not that she was a participant, but she would hear about them later when she phoned Mags. It would take a miracle at this point to change her physical disability, or some sci fi leap of bionics and nano-tech. Liza’s reaction was to painstakingly explain how these things just couldn’t possibly happen, and why not.
My perspective was, it made her happy to talk about it, so what’s the harm. Anyway, why rule anything out? None of us could have guessed that Mags would wake up one morning with a headache, prepare her breakfast and take a short walk over to the community garden where she volunteered, then collapse and within the space of hours lose her independence entirely.
Mags told me she still dreamed of being able to walk. It was odd at first, she said, her legs would be shaky, but suddenly there she would be, balanced and strong and back in her home. The way it was supposed to be.
That reminded me of my dream from the morning, and the distressing news. Poor Yvette. My heart just sank to realize that I would never see her again, never hear her cheerful summary of the activities at the nursing home. She could find something positive to say about the dreariest day or silliest little gathering over there. They would all miss her gungho attitude, I thought, blinking back a sudden rush of tears.
I made a note to myself to send flowers, and amended it to make sure they went straight to the church where they would have the service. I would have to wait until that was set. I didn’t know Yvette’s family well, but I had met her granddaughter a couple times. She was young enough that she’d probably think to post the information online as well as in the newspaper.
I got ready for work as usual, but my mind was obviously distracted. I dressed and brushed back my hair, made a sandwich to take, cleared our cereal bowls and my coffee mug. Idly stroked the cat, who wound around my legs whenever there was a chance I might drop some food. He purred at my touch, his long-whiskered face seeming to smile up at me. But he looked sleepy. He knew the routine; he would commence his morning nap the moment I left.
My office was a short bus ride away. I worked at the Gallagher Illness Prevention and Research Center, at the University. We’re technically a separate, nonprofit entity, and not a part of the university system. But the office is on the campus, our efforts directly support the staff’s research on disease prevention, and we regularly even claim credit when they make a breakthrough.
I usually ran through my email on my phone during the short commute, a task possible even when standing and wedged in at the back of the bus. But as I stared at the tiny screen, the letters became a jumble, not worth even registering. A light rain was falling, and my eyes turned from the phone to the window, watching the water trickle down the glass like tears. I put away the phone and wondered about the voice in the dream.
It occurred to me that Mags must have called. Her sense of time could be a bit off and it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to forget, and then call again. I must have taken the call still half asleep. I checked my phone, though. No calls had come in.
Well, we still had a land line. Doug thought that when a major earthquake came, it would be the only functioning phone. I didn’t argue – anyway we’d had that home number for so long now, people like his mom or aunts wouldn’t know how to reach us otherwise. Mags must have called it. I could confirm that later with Doug, even if Mags herself couldn’t remember. Nodding to myself, I stepped off the bus at my stop and walked purposefully up the hill toward the campus.
It’s a good thing my work is long familiar, and nothing critical like a pilot or doctor or something. Because I was just off all day, unable to focus, easily distracted and even a little jumpy. I did apologize to my immediate supervisor, Wally, although there was a fair chance he hadn’t noticed. Like me, he’s been on the job for a good long while, and pays more attention to results than the details of process.
I explained, death of an elderly friend, not a huge surprise, but still. He nodded slowly, sympathetic and understanding. Both of us, unfortunately, had reached a point in our lives where it was a relief to think that someone struck down suddenly was at least not a peer. Wally asked if I needed to leave early, but I thought not.
Actually, I tend to find my work a comfort. It’s administrative work. I didn’t do the actual research, I didn’t cut open cadavers or field test new drug therapies, they won’t be naming a wing of the hospital after me. But I ran things around here. My efficiency enabled that work to take place, my organization kept the teams on track and rolling ever forward.
One needed a good deal of patience with human foibles here. A significant whole area of the research we fund points to some pretty basic facts about poor eating choices and sedentary lifestyles. More vegetables and fiber, less high fat and cheap corn syrup and over processed stuff – that plus an hour of vigorous exercise a day, and watch the current ballooning cases of Type 2 diabetes level off. Just as an example.
Naturally, the drug companies are hesitant to jump on board with that whole concept. They would much rather fund investigations into the exotic stuff, especially things chronic and requiring a lifetime’s expensive medications.
Aside from that bigger picture perspective – which I’d learned to tune out or risk my own regular hormone infused melt downs – our little group had its comic ups and downs. Nobody likes to stick to a job for long anymore, so Wally and I seemed to spend inordinate time training and retraining an ever changing set of young people on the basics of record keeping, gracious letter writing, and why not to yank things out of the copier. More recently, it’s become standard to have to explain that the person at the reception desk should not wear ear buds or spend more than a few moments a day on necessary personal calls, but be alert for the phone or office guests. In other words that here at work, they were expected to work.
I do the more complex of my own data entry, and I have a detailed manual for the oft changing administrative assistants who update our primary database. Even so, I could and often did answer basic questions – things that I couldn’t help but think a person with just a tiny bit more gumption could figure out on their own – simply and politely.
But not this day. I had weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks, and I threw myself into the quarterlies. Just let the mild concentration needed to copy and save, update, double check, print and analyze consume my mind. Yes, this is a coping strategy I’ve had since forever, but what can I say, it works. By 5 PM I felt calm and comfortable, detached even, from the wellspring of emotion that had been seeping through my mind since the morning.
Frankly, that’s no small matter anymore – things I used to be able to glide right past have recently been harder to quell.
Doug hates it when I blame my mood shifts on hormones. Or when I mention hormones, or when I display actual moods. We’ve been married for nine years now, so really, I don’t know that we pay all that much attention to such things anymore.
But still, I got dinner started with an eye on the clock, waiting for his arrival. His evening schedule is less regular than mine, depending on his case load. But he generally knows of changes pretty well in advance. And he’s been good about calling ahead since we met; he was well trained by his first wife, who was given to panic just from listening to the traffic report when he was late coming home.
Clark, the cat, perked up his ears suddenly, and a moment later I heard Doug at the door. Clark trotted out in his dog-like way, and I followed. I waited for Doug to say something about this morning, but he didn’t. He hung up his coat, greeted me and the cat with equal enthusiasm, and walked down the hall to change out of his work clothes.
I followed, waiting till he at least had his pants on before saying, Did you hear me take a call this morning? Early, maybe five?
Doug shook his head.
Are you sure? Just that the phone might have rung?
No, I’m pretty sure I would have heard it. Why, are we expecting something?
A faint frown crossed his brow.
Now it was my turn for a head shake. I swallowed hard, remembering again. Yvette died,
I told him. You know, from Hillside. Mags told me this morning.
Oh, honey,
Doug said, his voice low and tone changed to gentle sympathy. He reached out to embrace me.
I leaned into his shoulder, and wrapped my arms comfortably around his back. We stood like that for a moment, he stroking my arms and the back of my head, and me reminded suddenly of when we had first gotten together. How we had spent time with one another but lived apart, how often we used to embrace.
I’m okay,
I said. I told him about the probable timing of the service, and how Mags seemed to be holding up pretty well. And that Yvette had died peacefully in her sleep, and we both nodded, eager to find something good about the situation.
I followed him back into the kitchen. I’d left the makings for a simple stir fry out, and Doug got the oil heating and reached into the fridge for another handful of fresh herbs.
Doug likes to cook probably more than I do. I have my few solid staples that I like and make well, that come out the same every time. He prefers to improvise. Over the years we’ve adjusted to each other’s styles such that we hardly need even speak about what we’re making. I sat down, the day finally weighing in on me and my earlier calmness dissipating. I tried to regulate my breathing, just sitting and watching him move about the kitchen.
Doug is a nice looking man. For his age, I have to amend, for the over 50 set. He’s kept his weight and his somewhat slender build. He’s only a couple inches taller than I am – okay, we’re both on the short side – but perfectly proportioned. He wears his salt and pepper hair a little long, and we both pretend not to see where it’s thinning. I noticed his eyes right off, deep brown and probing, and to this day I find his resting expression soothing.
He doesn’t talk a lot. Or rather, according to him, he needs to be on and talking all the time at work, and then enjoys the quiet the rest of the time.
He turned to me, spatula in hand as the food sizzled, and asked why I thought someone had called at five.
It’s funny, I thought. You could even pin a frilly apron on him, and that lawyer look would shine through when he was in interrogation mode.
I thought I heard a voice this morning,
I said. I got up to set out our plates and silverware, avoiding eye contact. I heard someone say Yvette was gone and that she was so sorry – I figured it was Mags.
But you said you heard it from Mags.
Mags called later. I thought she must have called twice. That we were half asleep because it was so early.
Wait a minute,
Doug said. He snapped off the burner. You’re saying you heard a voice and it told you Yolde died, but it wasn’t somebody on the phone?
I handed him one, then the other plate. It sounded ridiculous to me now, too, but there you have it. "She – the voice – just said she was gone. I didn’t really put it together till the phone rang. Then I