Twenty

 

Chandra knew she was falling but it happened so slowly that she didn't mind at all. She landed softly in a field of tall, dense grass. She imagined the ants silently crawling through the grass around her lugging objects here and there and searching for food. She imagined the worms digging around in the dirt beneath her and swore she could feel them move. The field was thick with life.

A few feet away from her Chandra could see a great white egret. Its neck swayed in an S curve. The bird looked at her before taking off clumsily in flight. Chandra rose and before she realized it, was chasing after it. Its white wings whipped the air carrying it further and further off the ground.

Chandra's bare feet pushed through the soft wet grass as she made her way towards it, but no matter how fast she ran she couldn't catch the bird. She jumped into the air to try to grab its great white tail and as she did her feet left the ground and she was flying. She was flying, but only for a brief second before her stomach lurched and she began to sink down to the ground.

As she fell towards the dirt, she glimpsed the bird flying towards the sun.

 

**

 

When Chandra awoke it was morning. It was duller than usual. She could hear the rain blowing against her window. Her fingers still gripped the smooth glass of the vase.

There was no message from her mother that she could recall. The whirl of the ceiling fan filled her head. She sat up slowly. She stretched her arms above her head, yawned and climbed down onto the floor. Crossing her legs and straightening her back, she let her eyes narrow into slits and focused on her breathing like Zade had taught her. This had become her new morning routine. She inhaled steadily feeling her belly expand then slowly let the air out. Inhale. Exhale. She tried to calm her mind, but still didn't understand what a calm mind was exactly. Filled with worry, she'd never experienced a calm mind though she had to admit it was getting better. Zade had taught her to worry less.

**

 

Chandra was late for work, but she didn't care. She parked her car at the far end of the parking lot in the shade. The rain had stopped and it was unusually hot for the time of year. When she got out of the car the humidity wrapped around her. She walked a few feet and could already feel the sweat start to collect in her armpits. She thought if she just walked slowly she'd be able to avoid sweating too much on her clothes.

"Want a ride?" Barney pulled up next to her in his golf cart.

"No thanks. I'm good," Chandra looked at him and smiled. Something she used to never do.

"You're in a good mood."

"Am I?"

"Considering you're almost fifteen minutes late." He loudly chewed a piece of gum.

"Am I?"

"Walking at this pace it'll be another fifteen minutes before you get to your office." The golf cart rolled slowly next to her.

"Why do you care?"

"I'm a nice guy. I'm just trying to help you out."

Chandra chuckled. "Thanks." She wiped the sweat off the back of her neck. "Maybe I'll take you up on that ride."

Barney stopped the cart. "Hop in."

Chandra got in the cart, sure to sit on the very edge of the seat. She still didn't want him to get the wrong idea. The cart lurched forward jerking her head back.

"Sorry," Barney said. His face went red.

Chandra had never known him to be embarrassed by anything. She glanced at his round stubbly face--the jowls sagging slightly with age. He was as human as she was and she'd never even considered that before. "Do you think dreams mean anything?" she asked him.

"Like dreams when you're sleeping?"

"Yeah. Do you think they mean anything? Maybe even predict the future?"

"I sure hope so 'cause the other night I dreamed I was doing Pamela Anderson," Barney laughed a little too hard. He pulled the golf cart up to the curb in front of the building.

Chandra was happy to get out. "Thanks," she said, rolling her eyes, as she turned to walk away.

"Wait," Barney called out to her.

Though she heard him, she kept walking toward the building, its shiny panes of glass welcoming her.

"Oh come on. I was just kidding." He jumped out of the golf cart and walked quickly to her.

Chandra turned around to look at him.

"Yeah, I do."

"You do what?"

"Believe that dreams can predict the future. That they give you ... What do they always say? A window to your consciousness?" He looked right into her eyes. "In my dreams, I always feel like I'm reaching for something that I just can't quite get. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes," the words caught in her throat. "Yes. I do."

"Good. I thought you would. I can see it in your eyes."

Chandra stood there like her feet were stuck in the cement.

"I didn't mean to scare you." He turned away from her and walked back the golf cart. His keys on his belt jingled. "I just had to tell you."

 

**

 

No one had noticed that Chandra arrived late. She spent the morning trying to look busy, but she couldn't get her mind off what Barney had said. Did everyone have this same reaching feeling in their dreams?

"Hey girl! What's wrong with you?"

Chandra looked up from her desk to see Renee standing at her cubicle door. Her brown hair now pressed perfectly straight.

"Just thinking." Chandra gave her a weak smile.

"Don't want to do too much of that. You might actually start getting some work done around here. We don't want that to happen. You'll make us all look bad." Renee shifted her weight in her pointy toed black pumps and scanned Chandra's cubicle walls.

Chandra had tacked up pictures in the past few weeks, something she hadn't done before because she'd always planned on leaving. Pictures of her father, Zade, her and her father, her and Zade and old snap shots of her mother were now scattered randomly on her walls interspersed with vintage postcards she found at a garage sale.

"Nice to know you're thinking of sticking around," Renee nodded towards a group of pictures on the wall above Chandra's desk.

"I'm not really. I just got tired of the blank walls."

"That took a long time. I thought you were just one of those minimalists."

Chandra closed the file she had on the desk in front of her. "You ready for lunch?"

"Of course."

They went to a little Vietnamese place on the corner. They ate lunch there often. It was cheap and Renee thought the food was good for her diet. Though she didn't need to be, she was always on one. Her slender arms looked as though they might snap. Her eyes were slightly sunken.

"So?" Renee asked searching through her purse.

"So what?"

Renee retrieved her cell phone and placed it on the table in front of her.

"Expecting a call?" Chandra asked.

"I'm always expecting a call." She picked up her phone and pressed a few buttons then put it back on the table. Things hadn't worked out between her and Craig to say the least. In the end, she'd gotten too clingy or at least that's what he'd said. She could see how that was true. She did call him everyday and maybe that was too much for someone you weren't really dating.

"So how's it going with Zade?"

"Good," Chandra couldn't help, but smile when she thought of him.

"Yeah." Renee glanced down at her phone.

"Very good." Chandra felt her mood shifting, but she still couldn't get her mind off what had happened in the parking lot that morning. "Do you ever remember your dreams?"

"Some of them. Why?"

"I was just wondering." Chandra picked her napkin up and started to unfold it slowly. "What do you think of Barney?"

"Barney?"

"The security guy in the parking lot."

"At work?"

"Yeah. Barney."

"Why?"

"He's strange, isn't he?" Chandra asked.

"Yeah. Is he still trying to ask you out? What a loser!"

"He said something to me today that seemed like he knew ..." Chandra trailed off.

"Knew what?"

"I don't know. Do you ever feel like you're reaching for something that you can't quite get to?"

"Like what?" Renee asked, though she'd spent her whole life reaching but never quite getting anything.

The restaurant was full. People at the tables all around them chatted loudly. Others came in and seeing that there were no empty tables promptly left again. The waitress came over with two bowls of hot noodle soup. She placed them on the table in front of them.

Renee immediately started dumping bright red chili sauce into hers. Chandra started heaping bean sprouts into her bowl.

"What did Barney do to you?" Renee asked.

"Nothing. It's unimportant." Chandra picked a bean sprout from her bowl with her chopsticks and put it into her month. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"You're full of interesting questions today. Ghosts, huh?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but ..." Chandra couldn't believe she was getting ready to say this out loud to someone who wasn't Zade. "It may sound strange, but sometimes I think I see my mother around the house."

"What?"

"I mean sometimes it feels like she's there."

"So do you see her or do you just feel like she may be there?"

"I guess it's more of a feeling."

"I think that's normal to have at times--especially with family. And you live in the same house. When I was young my grandfather lived with us. He had Alzheimer's. He died when I was sixteen. After that I swore he was in the house with me when I was home alone. I knew he wasn't really, but there was a feeling I got. Sometimes I swore I could smell him. He always smelled of cigar smoke and menthol. Sometimes I'd walk through patches of that smell in the house, like he'd just left the room." Renee used her spoon to stir the red sauce into her soup then tasted a bit of the broth.

"I smell my mother's perfume around the house. She's been gone for years. Why am I suddenly smelling it now?"

"I don't know." Renee took another spoonful of broth. "Maybe she has something to tell you."

"That's what Zade said."

"So Zade knows about ghosts?"

"He knows about a lot of unexpected things."

"Full of surprises, huh? That's not usually a good thing."

"I think it is this time."

"So what did he tell you to do about this problem of yours?"

"He told me to ask her what she wanted."

Renee nodded, "That makes sense. Did you do that?"

"I tried, but it didn't quite work out. I fell asleep."

"Um. I guess you should try again then."

"When did your grandfather stop haunting you?"

"I don't know if I'd really call it haunting, but it stopped when I moved out. I went away to college and the feeling stopped. Even when I went home to visit I didn't feel it anymore. It just stopped. I always thought that maybe he was just hanging around because he didn't realize he was dead yet. He did have Alzheimer's after all." Renee picked up her chopsticks and grabbed a bunch of noodles with them. "I was glad it stopped. It was kind of creepy. I loved my grandfather, but we were never very close. I didn't want him hanging around after he died." Renee laughed.

 

**

 

 

Chandra tapped Zade's door with her foot instead of knocking. The plastic handles of the grocery bags cut into her hand. He was quick to answer.

"You're here," he said. Then looking down at the bags in her hands, "... with groceries," he continued. As he bent down to take the bags from her, he kissed her cheek. "Someone let you in?"

"Yeah. Someone was coming out when I got here and he held the door for me."

"This is a surprise." He turned and walked into the apartment.

"I thought I'd cook us something nice for dinner." Chandra followed him in. The apartment was dim. All the curtains were closed and a few thick, white candles with wax spilling down their edges burned on saucers around the room. "Expecting company?" Chandra found herself asking. She'd meant it as a joke, but the edge in her voice made her sound jealous and suspicious.

Zade flipped on the kitchen light and sat the groceries on the table.

"I was meditating." Zade started taking the groceries out of the bag and putting them on the bar. A single bright red pepper, a jar of artichoke hearts, a jar of sun dried tomatoes ... "Have you been doing the mediation I taught you?"

"I try every morning, but it hasn't been very successful. My head is too full of thoughts. I can't focus on anything. I usually just end up feeling stupid and stopping."

Zade smiled showing his perfectly straight white teeth. Chandra imagined him in braces as a teenager, although he hadn't worn them. His entire family had been blessed with perfectly straight teeth. "You don't need to clear your mind right away. If a thought comes into your head let it. Let it come in and be there a moment. Then let it go."

"Easier said than done." Chandra leaned into the bar.

"Let's try it now."

"I'm hungry. I want to start cooking."

"It'll only take a few minutes." Zade walked around the bar and into the living room. He stepped onto the area rug that lay in front of the futon and sat down on the floor. He was so tall that seeing him get down on the floor like that always seemed to be a bit of an effort. He seemed to struggle with where to put his spindly legs. Though Chandra knew that he sat on the floor all the time, she still wanted to rush over and help him. "Come on," he said, motioning to her. "The sooner we get started, the sooner you'll eat."

Chandra kicked off her flats and stepped onto the soft woolly rug. She lowered herself slowly to the ground beside him, crossed her legs and leaned her back against the futon.

"Just sit comfortably," Zade said. He made a few adjustments to himself. Then he placed his hands one on top of the other just below his belly. He took a deep breath in, then forced the air out like rushing water. "The most important thing is the breath. When you get distracted just come back to the breath. Maintain deep focused breathing."

Chandra tried to get comfortable. Her pants seemed to be yanking at her upper thighs. She grasped the fabric at the thigh, lifted up one butt cheek and tried to pull the fabric down towards her knee. When she was done, she tried to sit comfortably again, but the situation with her pants seemed to have gotten worse. She squirmed a bit more, tugging wildly at her pants. "Sorry. My pants were twisted."

"Are they better now?"

"Yeah," Chandra replied. Her pants were still twisted, but she just wanted to get on with it.

"Good. Now half close your eyes so you have an unfocused gaze."

"Unfocused gaze? What's that supposed to mean?" Chandra tugged at her pants again.

"Soft focus. Don't really look at anything. Just look straight ahead with everything out of focus."

She continued pulling at her pants.

"Your pants are still a problem?"

"They're fine." Chandra just wasn't in the mood for this.

"Forget the unfocused gaze. Just try closing your eyes and focusing on your breath." Zade could tell she didn't want to do this, but she never really seemed to want to. He needed to show her this desperately and didn't want to wait until she was ready anymore. He just wanted her to understand this piece of him.

Chandra closed her eyes and placed her hands against her belly like Zade had. The edge of the futon pushed into her back and her pants squeezed her thighs.

"Now concentrate on your breath. Breathing in and out. Make your breath your center."

Chandra wasn't sure how to make her breath her center, but was sure that she knew how to breathe in and out. She'd been doing that successfully all her life. So she just tried to focus on that. The air forced its way through her nose. The sound of it in her head was like holding her ear up to a seashell. In--the cool air rushing into her nostrils, she could almost taste it in the back of her throat. Out--the warm air rushing out, her stomach collapsing in on itself reminding her of her hunger. She closed her eyes and found herself relaxing into her steady breath.

The memory of a trip to the zoo with her mother came to Chandra's mind. She must have been about four years old at the time. It was one of her earliest memories. Like Zade had told her, Chandra let the thought in. The pink cloud of cotton candy she ate from the stick, the manatee in a giant tank like an underwater elephant with no legs, the parakeets landing on her shoulders in the bird exhibit. She breathed in and out, the lilac perfume mixing with the sweet carnival smells, her pigtails brushing her shoulders, the sun darkening her neck, the breeze tickling the back of her knees. She breathed in, the air filling her lungs, pushing down into her empty stomach. She exhaled and squeezed it all out.