GHOST IN A DREAM

         She returned to me last night in a dream just before sunrise. It was the hospital room where she was quarantined with one of her infections. Taped to the wall outside the room were announcements that visitors must wear gowns, masks and gloves. The room had an inner door with a glass window in it through which the bed could be seen. She was in the bed when I first looked.

         When I looked again, a curtain had been drawn around the bed. An aide was changing the sheets. Before I could panic I found her, sitting on the side sink here in the outer room, smiling, her hair in the horrid old ladies cut someone had given her in the rest home. She began to speak, but my conscious mind broke through. It was after six and time to get up.

         The dog lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. I went into the bathroom but my side sink was empty. I returned to the bedroom, pulled the bed together, and went to make some wake-up. In the cellar way was a dead deer mouse. The cat was eating her own dry food contentedly. I counted out the spoonfuls of coffee, poured the water and took out the dustpan and brush. My heave off the deck sent the mouse flying, an offering to the crows and hawks.

         I pondered the dream while the shower beat down on my neck. Knowing that my sounding board, the Queen of Cups, had ceased to reverberate and had entered a convent, I realized I had to throw it out to my readers. Lucky you. My first two paragraphs formed in my mind, I turned off the water fully intent on setting it down in writing before I began my day.

         It was then I heard the scratching and clawing of something on my roof. The sun had been out when I entered the bathroom. Surely it couldn't be rain, and it was too early in the year for reindeer. Could the seven hawks I saw the other day have made an aerie above my head? Would my house be known as The House Of The Seven Raptors? Or perhaps it was the flock of starlings I had seen yesterday swarming in the trees that divide my land from the neighbor’s? In that case, Skvoreshniki, an outdoor house for feeding starlings, would substitute Dostoevsky for Hawthorne.

         I went out the front of the house, looked up and saw nothing. I then peered at the deck in back. The white resin chairs were covered with black dirt and a large puddle of liquid was on the deck floor. Had these birds mistaken my roof for a public urinal? There wouldn't be any writing until I found out. I brought out my step stool and reached into the gutter and found water and dirt, not enough to clog the path, but dirt nonetheless. Eight feet of my sixteen feet ladder allowed me to confirm this discovery. With my hands I cleaned some out, but the water would not flow downward to the drain.

         Standing on the deck again, I realized that I was being taught that no good deed goes unpunished. I had been given wind chimes and had hung them from a supporting bracket of the gutter. In doing so I had probably reached up and pulled the middle section of the track lower than the ends. It was compensation raising its ugly head again. To hear the lovely sound of the chimes, I would have to put up with the birds using my gutter for a watering hole and bathtub.

         Once again, 'Strange things are happening.' I had been up late last night writing the Great Valatian Novel, an oeuvre that will linger on my hard drive for years until rescued by my literary executor to be burned in my woodstove. Earlier in the day, my friend and client the famous author called me. I am finishing his taxes, but have been doing so for three months now. He was not calling about them.

         He had read the letter I have sent to my clients announcing my wife's death. It requested they not call or send cards, but rather make a small donation to a local animal shelter in her name. He apologized for calling, but wanted to know how I was doing.

         I have never met him in person. He lives on the other coast. In that we both have dark hair and a mustache, or at least he does in the photos on his book jackets, we bear a slight resemblance to each other. We also share an expertise in talking about death. When my daughter died twelve years ago, he was the only person whose consoling call made a difference. He had telephoned for another reason but sensed something wrong in my voice and asked, and then sat back and listened, punctuating my litany with occasional 'God Damn's'. He listened carefully the whole time, and steered me gently to a better place.

         Several days later I received a book in the mail, not one of his, but Norman Maclean's. He wrote a short inscription telling me that he was thinking of me. By the time of our talk yesterday, I have my part in the routine down well. I should. In 1983 I had six close relatives; now I have one. I have also learned to listen to others when death calls on them. By the time our conversation winds down, he tells me I sound good, better than I did in November, the last time we spoke.

         There is no need to tell him about the good people who helped me. He knows, and I am sure he knows he is one of them. We talk of my joke of a trip to Ketchikan, which by now may be truncated to seeing the "UP", as he calls the area I speak about. He tells me there are many spots that have not changed in fifty years, and he loves the idea of the dog and I heading off there. My mind flashes to an Otto Preminger film, that takes place there and which I mislabel "Witness for the Prosecution" and then remember it is "Anatomy of a Murder."

         Taking the dog for a drive near sunset, my hazy plans continue to formulate. After the ashes are buried in early September would be the perfect time to leave, direct from the glade in the woods. I mentally begin to make a list of tasks to do and supplies to purchase. Inspect the car, stop the mail, payoff any credit card balances, get in cartons of peanut butter crackers and bottled water, and print a list of motels that accept pets. As I am making these calculations, I take a wrong turn on Route 23 and drive ten miles out of my way. We arrive home at dusk.

         At night she returns to me in a dream before sunrise. Is she trying to tell me something? Could she be sitting on a side sink in the Upper Peninsula, waiting? Or is she worried about the hawks carrying off the cat? Tune in next week, same time, same station, for the exciting conclusion to our story.

Valatie August 22, 2001