Once Upon Another Time (3 page)

Was the man
describing cookie dough or wine?
 

While considering
whether he’d take a sip of drain cleaner rather than drink a glass of cheap Chablis,
the flickering flames from the candles on the table turned into pretty Fourth of
July sparklers.  Mentally, I felt as wobbly as a three-legged stool with one of
the legs cut short.  My vision of Jack blurred, like a picture snapped from
inside a car traveling eighty down the highway.  The sound of his voice was
like a soft, neurotic staccato, as if he were on a cell phone with poor tower
reception.  In the background, I heard what sounded like an appalling slurping
noise, so loud it was as if it had echoed up from out of the Grand Canyon.

Heads swiveled in
my direction.  I gave a cursory look at the blurred faces around me.  
Good
God, was that me?
  I set my martini glass on the table and demurely cast my
eyes downward to study a blurred patch of floral carpeting, while an annoying
lock of hair hung over my eye.

Laura huffed.  I
lifted my eyes to look at her.  Even through my fuzzy vision, her expression
looked threatening.  I’d seen that same look on my mother’s face in a snapshot
taken back in the late seventies.  I couldn’t have been more than two years old
as I stood next to her.  She and my father had taken me to Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania for a rally.  No pun intended, but apparently, my mother had a
meltdown
when I refused to hold up a sign in protest of the Three Mile Island nuclear
accident. 

Laura sighed in
exasperation, as she turned her attention to David and Jack.  “I don’t care how
much the two of you defend that she-devil district attorney, the woman is a
social climber if I ever saw one,” she said.

“Oh, hell!”  I
babbled, as I felt unable to control the volume of my voice.  “The woman is
like an Olympic rock climber.  And have you noticed everything is big on her,
like her boobs, her collagen injected lips, and what’s up with that J-Lo butt? 
I’ll bet that piece of luggage was surgically implanted.”  As I slapped my hand
to the table with grunting little pig snorts escaping between uncontrollable
laughter, I thought surely this can’t be happening.

Am I going mad?

I felt the
unmistakable sharpness of a stiletto heel to my ankle.  “Ouch!”  I looked sideways
at Laura and squinted trying to sharpen my focus.  The blush on her face was
only a couple of shades lighter than her sexy red halter dress.  She gave me a
deadpan stare, while in my head I heard her say, “Shut the hell up!”

I wrinkled my nose
at her and took a sip of my cosmopolitan.  I heard myself talking back to her
but it sounded as if I was speaking a foreign language.  It was as if someone had
dumped my brain into a centrifuge and whipped it into stiff peaks like
meringue. 

The furrow between
Laura’s eyes deepened.  I half expected the springy spirals of her upswept hairdo
to come unwound.  My gaze gravitated toward her dainty fingers with white
crescent-shaped tips as they tightly gripped the wineglass in her hand.  Clearly,
I saw it as metaphoric--her fingers wrapped around my skinny neck choking the
living daylights out of me.

I stopped talking
and sat quietly, praying I wouldn’t make too big a fool of myself.  However, I
was pretty sure it was a bit late for that.

Someone whisked
the martini glass from my hand.  I raised my eyes to see Laura standing over
me.  I blinked several times trying to make out the details of her face. 
Strangely, she took on the appearance of Drizella, and I found myself cowering
from her like Cinderella.  Her fingernails practically cut into the back of my
arm, as she helped me to my feet.  She put her lips close to my ear.

“I’m taking you to
the restroom,” she hissed, practically spitting in my ear.

I felt like a
tightrope walker doing a balancing act as we snaked our way through the crowded
dining area.  As we rounded the corner to the restroom, Laura yanked my arm to
pull me along, which caused me to trip and fall head first into a man around
the corner. 

All I could see of
the man was one big globular shape, with the exception of one thing.  His eyes
were a mesmerizing blue, like the color of deep blue water with golden flecks. 
He had said something to me, but I was having a hard time stringing the words
together.  For some reason I felt a sense of urgency in wanting to tell him
something of great importance.  As I spoke, not even I could make sense of what
I was saying.

“Ohamorry ezzcus,”
Laura cooed, while looking at the man.

I shook my head as
if to get the water out of my ears.  
What did she just say?
 
Were
those actual words?

I felt an arm
around my shoulder.  I think it was Laura guiding me into the lounge area of the
restroom.  As I plunked down on the low, curvy blue velvet loveseat, my body
slumped and my head fell back.  My eyes blurrily focused on the chandelier
overhead that seemed to turn into a carousel with tiny white ponies wearing
pink plumes on top of their heads.  I watched in amazement as they spun round
and round and round and round… 

The next morning I
awoke to a thin shaft of sunlight pushing its way through a small opening in
the drapes and cutting across my face, directly into my eyes.  Squinting, I
threw my arm up like a shield, a reaction similar to that of a vampire fearing
instantaneous combustion.

I sat up slowly
and launched myself out of bed, but only managed to do so after the third try. 
Pressure filled my head and a heavy throb like the reverberating bass beat of
rap music pulsated in my temples.  Swaying, as if I were walking the deck of a
boat, I made my way to the shower to ready myself for work. 

* * * *

I tried hard to
keep my mind on representing the plaintiff at the arbitration hearing held at Fendworth,
Ludwick and Glassman, the law firm I worked for.  Our offices occupied the
eleventh and twelfth floors in a postmodern skyscraper conveniently located downtown,
across the street from city hall. 

My recollection of
the night before was a bit hazy.  I couldn’t recall the events of my date with
Jack.  The only memory that stood out was the bizarre incident with the
anniversary clock and seeing Matt.  I still questioned whether the tiny
neurotransmitters in my head were firing on all cylinders, because it just
didn’t seem possible.   

The thought of
losing my mind was just as disturbing as the new
abstract
painting that hung on the boardroom’s oyster gray wall.  It had erratic broad
strokes of criss-crossing black and gray washes and a large splash of crimson
that was reminiscent of a Rorschach inkblot.

I glanced toward
the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.  Why the negative thoughts, I asked
myself as my gaze traveled across a sweeping view of downtown Providence. 
Yeah, right, like I didn’t know.  Like I was about to forget the date that was
slowly creeping up on me, the date that changed my life,  the day that part of
me was lost forever.  The date with the combined numbers of one and five that
fell in the seventh month on the calendar, and it was only five days away.  I
was beginning to obsess over the approaching date that would mark the seventh
year of Matt’s death. 

I turned away from
the window and glanced across the table at the defendant, Mr. Greenburg.  As he
squirmed in his chair wringing his strangler looking hands, I thought about the
guilt I felt over Matt’s death.  The type of guilt that feels like it’s a
birthmark on your soul.

Believe me.  I
wanted nothing more than to know the answers that would free me.
 However, knowing the answers to all my problems at once
might have caused me to flat-line.

I talked myself
into refocusing my thoughts on the arbitration hearing.  I had to forget about
the possibility that I was becoming delusional--or maybe not.  

As the late
morning sun spilled over the glass-topped mahogany conference table, all eyes
turned toward Isabel Rossi, my opponent.  Rossi, an exotic beauty chicly
dressed in dazzling coral jewelry and a moss green linen suit that emphasized
her hourglass figure, shuffled through a stack of briefs, stalling the hearing.

Aside from me, all
seven people seated at the conference table twitched in their seats like they
had suddenly developed prickly heat rash, except for the eighth person, Judge
Emery Cohen.  He was a retired judge in his late sixties with the jowly face of
a bloodhound who sat at the head of the table mediating the hearing.  He looked
bored, like he was performing a chore similar to taking out the garbage.  

Cohen scratched
his balding head and leaned his two hundred, fifty pounds back into the
cushiony gray leather chair.  After serving on the bench for thirty years, he
was probably looking for a little Law & Order Criminal Intent as opposed to
Legally Blond.  The direction Rossi was taking us.

From the moment she
walked into the boardroom that morning, it felt as if she’d brought the
Antarctic with her.  However, there was that little problem with her husband--something
about bad investments.  Last I had heard he was facing indictment for income
tax evasion.

Rossi stopped
fumbling with the stack of papers.  Her eyelids rose quickly like two snapping
window shades to meet my gaze from across the table.  She stared back at me as
if she was looking into the static TV screen of Poltergeist.

 “Your Honor,” she
said abruptly, while ostentatiously shifting in her seat.  “Ms. McCory has
clearly gone beyond the scope of this case with her questions.  In
pre-arbitration meetings, we agreed on a short three-hour resolution.  Now
she’s trying to take us on a fishing expedition.”

Rossi’s protégé,
Richard Bloom, straightened the label on his dark navy suit, as he flashed a
pair of hypnotic dark rum eyes in my direction.  He’d asked me to dinner around
the same time he’d made his comeback from an addiction problem.  One that
involved his name found in someone’s little black book.  Although I turned him
down, I might have granted him a soft lob toward career rehab, had it not been
for his aloofness that he wore like a bulletproof vest.

Ha! I should talk.

Cohen gave me one
of his stern school-principal looks.  “Counselor?”

I sunk back in my
chair and tented my fingers under my chin.  I paused, milking the moment as if
I had a box of jurors hanging on my every word.  “Your Honor, it was Ms.
Rossi’s witness who contradicted herself on the timeframe which opened up
further questioning.”

Rossi drew her
lips into a tight knot that made the muscles in her jaw jump.  “A moment
please,” she said, as she put her hand on the thick shoulder of her client, Mr.
Greenburg.  A
n arrogant sounding man with an overbearing voice
and thick English accent, h
is
bushy brows hung over his
muddy brown eyes like two black caterpillars.

Discreetly,
I looked past my client and shot a sideways glance at Laura.  Not only were we
best friends, we were colleagues.  Her perfectly tanned complexion and tailored
black suit accessorized with a
Tahitian pearl
necklace
and matching earrings, contrasted beautifully with her long, platinum hair that
she wore stick-straight that day.  She looked at me and rolled her eyes
heavenward. 

My gaze slid
across the table to look at Rossi.  I couldn’t miss the pained look on her
face, like she was about to walk the gangplank.  She sat back in her chair and
slouched like someone had punched her in the stomach.  As her fingers drummed
the table in a steady, rhythmic beat, the diamond on her wedding ring--like the
size of a disco ball on platinum prongs--caught the sparkle of the overhead
incandescent lighting.  The ring was a grim reminder of the enigma I’d become. 
My life, in large part, was a paradox of sorts, an incongruity to the otherwise
normal life I led.

My six-year-old
son was the light of my life.  I was six months pregnant with him when Matt
died.  I had a wonderful group of friends and a great career.  My downfall was my
uneasy relationship with mortality that added to my emotional detachment. 
Therapy helped, but each time I was on the threshold of “feeling my feelings,”
Matt would pop into my head. 

In my mind’s eye
I’d see him happily puttering in the garage and humming to an acoustic guitar
solo of November Rain while rethreading the weed-whacker.  The small metal
trashcan that used to sit next to the wall of hanging rakes and shovels always
held a heap of his crumpled Moon Pie wrappers.  And on his wooden workbench was
where he kept a red beach pail of plastic action figures he’d paid fifty cents
for at a garage sale.  He told me they were collector’s items that he was
cleaning up for our son.

That first year
after Matt’s death, I felt as if his workbench held me hostage.  The one-armed
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sitting on top of the heap of action figures would
pitifully stare back at me, as if it could relate to Matt’s death making me
feel as if I, too, had misplaced a limb. 

Plain and simple,
“feeling my feelings” brought pain.  I didn’t need to relive that fateful day
of Matt’s death, and that he would never meet his son, and that my son would always
miss not having a father to bond with.  And rehashing the awful feeling that I
was to blame for Matt’s death, when I couldn’t remember what had happened, made
me feel helpless to change my dismal outlook on developing a relationship with
any of the men I’d dated.

Not only that, but
I was confused when my psychiatrist diagnosed my memory loss as psychological
trauma.  Because aside from my husband’s sudden, tragic death, I couldn’t
imagine what would have been so traumatic to have erased my memory of the two
hours prior to him falling to his death off the Mohegan Bluffs on Block
Island.  But here’s the thing, every time I wondered about that buried little
secret in my head, for some reason I associated it with a cold gray existence
that resembled a deserted subway station littered with debris.  A morbid
thought at best, but one, that for reasons I couldn’t explain, confirmed my
suspicions that I was at fault for Matt’s death.