Never Really Alone

Chapter Nine

Somewhere in the distance  I could hear the first few bars of Carole King's "You're So Vain" playing, over and over again.  'What on earth?'  Suddenly it dawned on me...my phone, it was my cell phone.  Instantly I was yanked back to the present.  I closed Miranda Jean's trunk and climbed down from the attic.  I had left the phone on the kitchen table, but by the time I got to it, I had missed the call.  I checked the voice-mail and just as I thought, it was Stephen, calling to make sure I was alright and letting me know that he and the girls were settled in at the lake.  Well, I needed a break anyway.  I poured another cup of coffee, availed myself of the tin of cookies and let my mind wander once more back to the past.

The actual details of my wedding were mostly a blur in my memory and always had been.  I do remember walking down the aisle with my father and I remember kissing Stephen, but mostly I remember my mother.  She cried non-stop.  I don't mean she stood there quietly weeping, politely dabbing at her eyes.  She sobbed, openly and loudly, with hiccups, gulps and coughs, while Sousa held her, trying to keep her under control.  I was in no way the main attraction at my own wedding, no, that honor went to my mother.  The only way she could have made it worse, was if she had worn a long, black dress with a black bonnet, veiled to her chest.  I'm certain that's the reason I don't remember all the details from that day.  My brain has always been too busy trying to block out all of that 'joy'.

The  thing I do remember during that time, or think I remember, is an incident between my mother and Miranda Jean on the last day of their visit.  Aggie was at the diner, Sousa and my father were upstairs packing, and my mother and I were having coffee in the kitchen.  She'd cornered me there insisting that we must have a talk before she went back home.  This was the last thing I wanted to do, but there was no getting out of it.  So there I was, captive in Aggie's kitchen with my mother and no one to act as a buffer between us.  Of course Miranda Jean was there, but I didn't see how she could help.

"Sarah Jane, I don't think you understand the magnitude of what you've done," she looked at me with eyes that said so much more than her words.  These were the eyes that always backed up Dr. Rudolph.

I had decided to put myself in a new 'frame' and I wasn't going to play anymore.  "Well, Mom, I suppose you could be right, but I love Stephen and he loves me.  So I'm going to work hard at making our marriage succeed."  I looked at her face and it was easy to see that she was surprised at my response.  She had expected me to argue with her.

"I see," she hesitated.  "It's not just about love, you know.  You're not a well person Sarah Jane.  What about Miranda Jean?  What if he finds out about her, what then?  What  will you do then?"  She stood up and took her coffee cup to the sink.  I think she knew better than to face me after saying something like that.

Miranda Jean was standing right next to me and she started to laugh.  Then she skipped over to mother and in her best 'told you so' voice, said "He already knows!" in her loudest voice.

I was just about to say the same thing, when my mother turned to me and said, "It doesn't matter."

I was dumbfounded.  I stared at Miranda Jean and she stared at me.  Had mother heard her or was she just continuing her thought?  "What do you mean, what doesn't matter?"

"Are you deaf, Sarah Jane?  I said it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter if he knows, because eventually he'll stop humoring you and everything will fall apart."

But I pressed on.  "How do you know that he knows?"

"What is wrong with you girl?  You just told me he knows two seconds ago...didn't you?"

Our eyes went round as saucers.  Mother heard Miranda Jean, she heard her as clear as a siren.  I hadn't told her that Stephen knew, but she knew...she had heard.  Had she always been able to hear her?  Had she kept this secret all these years?  Why hadn't she told me?  I didn't know what to do or what to say.  I felt like I had been dropped into a world in which I no longer knew the rules of existence or the language spoken.  I was standing on a narrow bridge barely strung between the world I knew and a foreign land, desperately in need of escape.

I panicked.  "Yes, of course I did.  Of course.  I need to lie down, Mother.  I'm getting a headache.  I don't think I'll be able to go to the station with you.  Will you tell Stephen for me?  Tell him I just needed to lie down."  I put my arms around her and kissed her good-bye.  "Have a safe trip.  Tell Dad and Sousa good-bye for me."  Then as quickly as I could I climbed the stairs and headed to my room.  But once I shut the door, the magnitude of what happened exploded inside of me and I couldn't leave it alone.  I shot down the stairs taking two at a time and arrived in the kitchen at almost the same minute I left.

"Sarah Jane, slow down, where's the fire?"  She took hold of me by the shoulders and gave me a shake.  "What is wrong with you?  You're as white as a sheet!"

I pulled her hands from my shoulders, stepped back and then sat down and took a deep breath.  "I didn't tell you that Stephen already knew about Miranda Jean, Mom."

"Of course you did."  She rose and went to the sink, turning her back to me.

I stood and went to her, forcing her to look at me.  "It wasn't me.  I didn't tell you.  But you heard it, didn't you?  You heard someone say, 'he already knows'.  You heard it, I know you did."

"What is the point of this, Sarah Jane?  Your husband knows that you think you can see your sister who's been dead for eleven years.  Do you really think that's something to shout about?"

"You're missing the point Mom, and you're missing it on purpose.  Miranda Jean told you that Stephen already knew and you heard her.  I was there, I saw you.  You heard her, Mom.  Did you know it was her?  Have you always been able to hear her...from the beginning?  If you did, then why didn't you believe me that I could see her?  Why didn't you believe me?  Why?"

"Listen to yourself, Sarah Jane.  You're becoming overwrought, overexcited.  You really need to calm down.  I'm going to get your father and Sousa.  Now you just sit here and try to relax.  Do you have a doctor here?  Where is his phone number?  Does Stephen know it?  Do you have any medication you can take, any sedatives?"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  Miranda Jean had followed me up the stairs and back down again and now she took cover behind me, preparing for the worst.  "I am not overwrought or over-anything.  Whether or not you admit it, you heard her.  What I need from you is an honest answer.  Can you at least give me that...please?"  I could feel myself trembling.  It was coming from someplace deep inside of me.  It was coming from a pain that had been born that day in June so many years ago.

"I don't have an answer, because nothing happened,  I didn't hear your sister today or any other day.  You're confused, Sarah Jane.  That's what it is.  That's the only thing it could be, you know.  Rational people cannot see or hear people who have passed on, they just can't.  That's a fact.  That's the way things are and there's no changing it.  Only people who are sick think they can see or hear the dead or spirits or well, you know.  So you see, nothing happened, nothing could have happened, so nothing did and that's the end of it.  Do you understand?"

It was hopeless.  The pain in her eyes was real, but it was obvious that she believed what she believed and even if she had heard Miranda Jean, she would refuse to allow herself to admit it.  Only crazy people could hear the dead, only sick people, only people like me.  I think it would be fair to say that she may have heard bits and pieces of her little girl gone for years, but most likely attributed it to daydreams and other easily explained phenomenon; rather than Miranda Jean's real ghostly voice.  Anything else would be too much for her mind to handle.  So if I were to actually try to live in that new 'frame', I had no choice but to let it go. 

"Yes, Mom I understand.  I guess it was just my mistake.  I'm sorry, I won't mention it again."

The muscles in her face relaxed a bit and she tried to smile, though it was a weak attempt.  "I think that would be best."

"Okay, well, it's been an awfully long weekend.  So, I think I'll head upstairs and lie down after all.  If you'll excuse me..."

She put her arms around me and made a brief try at a hug, managing something more like a shoulder to shoulder stand-off with a brief peck on the cheek.  "Take care, Sarah Jane.  I really do think you should find a doctor out hear that you could see on a regular basis.  Maybe I could get Dr. Rudolph to recommend someone for you."

I quickly pulled back.  "That's not necessary.  Really, I'm fine."  I turned and re-traced my steps back up to my room and quietly shut the door.  I had assumed Miranda Jean would be right behind me, but upon reflection it made perfect sense that she would go to the train station and keep an eye on Mom.

She needn't have bothered.  When she returned from the train station she looked worse than I felt.  She resembled those pictures of the little children left orphaned in third world countries by war or disease.  Hopeless, defeated, as if her face had never felt the stirrings of a smile and her eyes had never seen the sun.  When she and Stephen walked into the kitchen, him with the look of a newlywed happy to be once again with his bride, and Miranda Jean, with the face of and angel who most surely had been pushed out of Heaven, all I could do was cry.

Dear Stephen not really understanding, but so full of love, gathered me into his arms and just rode out the storm of tears until I was spent.  All the while, Miranda Jean, still so small, in her green and yellow sun-suit, cried her ghostly tears, her arms wrapped around the two of us.

At the train station she had been determined to force Mother to own up to her existence.  She had whistled in her right ear and then her left.  She sang lullabies that Mother had sung to us as loudly as she could, but with no result other than the complaint of a ringing in her ears.  She tried calling out to her, over and over again, first in one ear and then the other, but Mother either couldn't or wouldn't hear her.  So Miranda Jean had finally given up and come back, beaten down and soul weary.  And why not?  She was feeling now how I'd been feeling ever since the first time I had seen her standing by the oak tree, and no one but me could see her.

Once more as identical twins often do, although not physical this time, we were now sharing an identical pain.  It was a pain I had carried since my sister had died.  I had hoped she would never have had to experience it, but just like Sousa said about hope, 'if pebbles were pennies...'