TWIN AMBULANCES TOOK us to a nearby hospital—St. Vincent’s. I rode with Aja in the back. Janet stayed with her father. The paramedics who examined Aja were dismayed. They could find nothing wrong with her. No logical reason why she had died. They kept apologizing to me, telling me how sorry they were that they hadn’t attended to her from the start. I told them it wasn’t their fault. They covered Aja with a white sheet, from head to toe.
I was in shock.
At the hospital Aja’s body was taken to the morgue. I managed to get ahold of Bart. I told him they wanted to perform an autopsy. That it was the law. That they needed to find out exactly how she had died. Bart told me to wait and he would call me back in a few minutes. When he did he told me that his lawyer, Mr. Grisham, had made an “arrangement” with the hospital and they would no longer press for the autopsy. I assumed money or favors had changed hands.
While Bart drove from Elder, Janet and I were treated by a couple of competent ER doctors. They set my nose back in place, taped half my face, and did an MRI on my knee. I hadn’t torn any ligaments but they said I’d need arthroscopic surgery to remove three large chunks of frayed cartilage. I was given a pair of crutches to get around and a bottle of Vicodin for the pain. I swallowed a couple of the blue pills but didn’t feel any better.
Janet’s broken arm was more serious. The ER doctors called in a specialist to operate. She ended up needing a metal plate and a host of screws to stabilize the bone. While she was in surgery, Bart arrived and obtained the release of Aja’s body. The two of us spoke briefly about what we should do next and swiftly came to an agreement. A local mortuary was contacted to bring her body back home.
The ER doctors performed a dozen tests on Bo.
They never did find anything wrong with him.
I rode back to Elder with Bart. We followed the white hearse from the mortuary. We didn’t talk much; I suppose there was nothing to say. But one thing was clear. Bart was not in the least bit surprised that Aja had died. His absence of shock, though, did nothing to alleviate his grief. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years since I’d last seen him.
“She told us before we moved here that the days of her body were numbered,” Bart said.
“Is that why she wanted to come here? Was there a purpose to her coming?”
Bart nodded. “It’s nice to think so. That the Big Person was kind enough to give the rest of the world a glimpse of who she was.”
I shook my head. “My classmates turned out to be almost too loyal. As far as I can tell not a single student gave the press a recording of what went on at the PTA meeting. And without proof that Aja could heal people . . . well, she’s already becoming just another fading headline on YouTube. Outside of Elder, I doubt anyone will be talking about her a month from now.”
Bart looked at me. “You’re forgetting one thing.”
“What?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You’re the one who will keep Aja alive in people’s memories.”
“Are you serious? How? And why me?”
“ ‘Why you’ should be obvious. You were closer to her than anyone. And that includes Clara and myself. And as to ‘how’ you’ll keep her story alive—I’m not worried about that. You’re a smart guy. You’ll think of something.”
It was dawn by the time we reached the Carter Mansion. Bart told the two guys from the mortuary to lay her body on her bed upstairs. They did so and left. And after spending a few minutes with Aja, Bart left me alone with her. But I could hear him down in the garage; I knew what he was up to.
It was peaceful to sit beside her, to be alone with her in the bedroom where we’d spent such wonderful nights, surrounded by the paintings and sculptures her father had made of her mother. She had on the same black slacks and white blouse she’d worn in LA. I tucked her under a woolen blanket Clara had knitted for her when they lived in Brazil and brushed her hair so that it spread over her pillow and down around her shoulders.
I couldn’t stop staring at her face. Honestly, I couldn’t believe she was dead. All the love I’d always felt in her presence, the power, the grace—they were still there. Her body may have died but was she dead? Sitting on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, staring at her serene expression, the idea seemed ridiculous.
Still, I couldn’t talk to her anymore and I knew I’d never hear her voice again. Nor would I ever hold her again. The Big Person inside her may have been alive, as unchanging as ever, but I was just a guy who loved her, a very mortal guy, and already I was beginning to miss her.
TV shows that deal with death and dying, along with cop shows and medical dramas, often speak about how quickly the human body decays. I was lucky Aja granted me one last miracle. The odor emanating from her could not have been more sweet. Her body smelled like a combination of daises and camphor, sandalwood oil and fresh air. I know it makes no sense but somehow she smelled like the dawn breaking outside her window.
Sadly, on top of the divine aroma, through a crack in her bedroom door, I caught a whiff of gasoline and knew it was time to say good-bye. One last time, I leaned over and kissed her lips.
“Thanks, Aja. Thanks for everything.”
I stood and, using my crutches, walked out of her room and down the stairs to the front door. Bart had been busy—the odor of gasoline was growing. Yet he had not overdone it. The fumes would burn off quickly and by the time the firemen arrived there’d be no trace left to say the fire hadn’t been caused by an electrical short. And if later Aja’s remains were found, then it would be up to Bart and his lawyer to talk to the authorities. Yet I had a feeling the police and firemen would find nothing.
Standing on the front porch, Bart handed me a single wooden match. I was surprised to see him smile. “What is it?” I asked.
“In her will Aja left everything she owned to you. Besides the money, that includes a half interest in this house. If you light that match, you’ll be several million dollars poorer.”
“Does that bother you?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
“Good,” I said, striking the match on the top of a nearby wooden post, watching the tiny flame flare bright, before I tossed it through the front door and onto one of the many expensive rugs spread throughout the house. The fire ran from us in half a dozen different directions. A gust of smoke forced us back.
Within minutes flames were pouring out of both ends of the house and again we were pushed away and had to jump in Bart’s car and head to the end of the driveway. There we got out and watched as geysers of flame shattered the mansion’s many windows and leaped toward the gray sky. Fortunately the house was isolated. We were two hundred yards from the blaze and still we could feel our cheeks burning.
“Good-bye, Aja,” I said as I stared at the inferno. At some point Bart took my hand and I thought I heard him utter a few last words. But what they were I could not say, lost as I was in my own thoughts.
• • •
Ten years have gone by since I met and fell in love with Aja. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say I’ve spent the better part of that decade trying to figure out who she was. I suppose like most people I like to think the years have granted me more insight—not just into Aja but into life itself.
Yet I’m afraid, even after all this time, that Aja remains as much a mystery as when I first saw her sitting in the park across the street from my old high school, picking flowers and staring at the students as they walked by in the hot summer sun.
Writing about the time I spent with her has been very satisfying—therapeutic in its own way. It’s caused me to recall with razorlike clarity moments that the years had begun to blur. It’s also caused me to feel her near me. That, I think, is what’s most precious about her story. Because simply reviewing what she said or where she went or who she spoke to or even what miracles she performed doesn’t begin to convey who she was.
Of course most people will say that’s crazy, especially when it comes to her miracles. They’ll say that healing Mike Garcia and Lisa Alastair and Barbara Kataekiss—and others we don’t even know about—was what made Aja unique. Just as the miracles Christ performed in the Bible are what caused Christianity to become the most popular religion on earth.
That’s fine, I say. I still think I’m right. Aja was much more than the person we saw walking around and living in Elder. She said it herself many times. She wasn’t the body. She wasn’t the mind. She was none of those things we like to think about when we stop to remember a person.
But that said—how are we to remember her? Even more important—for those who never met her—how are we to imagine her?
Fair questions that deserve reasonable answers.
I only wish I had the answers to give.
But let me come back to that in a minute.
Two months after Aja died, after the nasal sound caused by my broken nose had vanished, I flew back to Los Angeles and rerecorded “Strange Girl.” The song was released too late to take advantage of the holiday season but it managed to get decent play on the radio and rose as high as number ten on the Billboard Chart. Paradise Records asked me to cut a full album. I asked if I could wait a few months. My grief over losing Aja had yet to diminish; if anything it was getting worse. Richard Gratter said no problem, he understood, take all the time you need. I don’t know why I was surprised when he refused to take my calls when I called him four months later. But hey, that’s the music business. You’re lucky if you get one shot.
Yet my music career was far from over. After graduating from Elder High, I left town with my acoustic guitar and bummed around the country, playing short and long gigs at whatever clubs would hire me. I didn’t have a manager—Janet had gone off to Harvard—but I got by. Although “Strange Girl” never became a major hit, it quickly developed a cult following. That one song became my calling card. And since I refused to live off of Aja’s money—I gave it all away to charities—the song literally fed me for years.
Still, no major labels came knocking.
Maybe it was my voice, I thought. Maybe it was my face. Whatever, I eventually decided I could make more money writing songs for existing stars rather than trying to become a star myself. And that’s what I’ve been doing up until this day. I’ve written exactly one dozen top-ten hits. Naturally, outside of the business, no one knows my name. A funny thing about the celebrities I write for. They like to take credit for everything they sing. Actually, they insist upon taking credit. I’m well paid but I never get invited to walk the red carpets.
That’s okay. I get to do what I love for a living.
I can’t complain.
After graduation, Mike and Dale moved to San Francisco and got involved in the health food industry. They started a company that sells herbal formulas that are supposed to do everything from increase a person’s IQ to make Viagra a thing of the past. I tried their products but didn’t notice much. Then again, what do I know? They’re making money hand over fist and they’re lucky. Because Mike married only two years out of high school and his wife quickly popped out four kids.
I played at Mike’s wedding; Dale was his best man. And the male actor Dale was with that day—two years ago I heard they got married. I was in Europe at the time, playing mostly London clubs, and didn’t make it back for the ceremony. But I just heard through the grapevine that Dale and his partner are close to adopting a child.
Shelly . . . it’s hard to talk about Shelly. Only a year after Elder High released us into the big bad world, she entered a liquor store late at night in New York City where she was attending NYU and stumbled upon a holdup—a messy one. It appeared at the start that the owner didn’t mind handing over his money, but the instant the robber turned to leave, the owner went for a shotgun he kept behind the counter.
The owner got off one shot; the robber two. The robber’s first bullet hit the owner in the shoulder, which threw off the man’s aim. When the owner did pull his trigger his shotgun was pointed at Shelly’s left leg. The blast came close to amputating the limb; it definitely ruptured her femoral artery. Shelly bled to death before the ambulance could arrive.
The robber’s second bullet struck the owner in the hand. The man made a full recovery, while the robber escaped with fifty dollars in cash. Dale, Mike, Janet, me—we all returned home for Shelly’s funeral. It was good to see everyone again, especially Janet, but it was a grim affair. I was told Shelly had finally met a guy she was wild about. Actually, I met the guy; he was at the funeral. Everyone said how much he looked like me.
I still think about Shelly every day. It makes no sense but I seem to care more about her now than when she was alive. But I don’t blame myself for what happened to her and I have no regrets about how I treated her when we were in high school. Aja taught me a few things. One was that guilt had nothing to do with love.
My parents, they divorced. They split up right after I left home. My mom kept the house and remarried within a year. Another wedding I played at. My stepfather—he’s all right. He doesn’t talk much, which is never a bad thing.
My dad, he remarried as well, twice. The first time was bad. The woman was coming out of a marriage too and the double dose of rebounding made them both sick of each other before the honeymoon was over. But the third time was the charm for old Dad. He’s happy; at least he acts like he is. Yet it does worry me that he just happened to buy a house around the block from where my mom lives.
Janet, being Janet, finished her undergraduate degree at Harvard in three years instead of four and got accepted into their prestigious law school and naturally graduated number one in her class. The girl who said she had no interest in money took a job on Wall Street and is currently making more cash than she can possibly spend. More impressive, to me at least, is the fact that she’s married to a guy who’s at least as smart as her and she has a baby daughter named . . . Aja.
Janet and I keep in touch online. She says she sees her father at least once a year, although less since her daughter was born. I always tell her how happy I am for her. But when it comes to Bo I keep my mouth shut.
To my surprise Janet admits she still goes to therapy to deal with what happened to her as a child. Indeed, she started seeing a psychologist only a month after Aja died. In my mind that doesn’t take anything away from the miracle Aja performed on her. Aja opened the door so that Janet could see the truth. No one could have asked for more.
Yet I still don’t know why Aja healed Bo. Did the fact that she’d seen her own mother killed in front of her play a role in what happened that cold and dark night? If that’s true then it means she ignored Janet’s request; that she didn’t let the Big Person decide whether Bo should live or not. That the Aja we knew, the one we could see with our eyes and hear with our ears, simply decided to lay down her life for him, probably for Janet’s sake.
Or else it’s possible Aja wasn’t influenced by her personality; that the Big Person was fully in charge from start to finish. I lean toward this belief because only moments before Bo was healed it was obvious the Big Person was in control.
Now, looking back, I realize that every word that came out of Aja’s mouth during those tense moments had been aimed at Janet’s wound. That the phrases Aja chose meant nothing to her. They were simply finely crafted sounds spoken aloud to pluck a splinter from Janet’s heart.
But if Aja didn’t act on her own volition, if she was wise enough to set aside her personality and let the Big Person decide Bo’s fate, then why did she die? I think the answer is simple. So simple it’s near impossible to believe.
I think healing Bo killed Aja because Bo was already dead.
The guy was just lying there, not making a sound.
He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see him breathing.
A life for a life. Is it so impossible to believe that Aja had the power to raise someone from the dead? She said on several occasions that she was one with the Big Person. And who’s to say the Big Person does not operate by certain karmic rules—necessary rules that keep the scales of cause and effect balanced. For example, perhaps for Bo’s body to stand up and walk away, Aja’s body had to lie down and breathe no more. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Aja never said she was His daughter. Perhaps she could raise a person from the dead but only once.
I never got a chance to ask her the answer to that riddle.
And I know the answer shouldn’t matter.
Yet it still bothers me.
I’ve never spoken to Bo since that night.
Hell, this is no way to finish a tale of Aja’s brief but beautiful life. She deserves so much more. I should be talking about how great she was. About how much I loved her. About how much she loved everyone. But that’s the problem with trying to describe a girl who kept saying she was no one.
In Advaita, the system of yoga that Janet believed best described Aja’s internal state, they often call the Big Person the Brahman. And they say the Brahman cannot be described by words, only by negation. “It’s not this. It’s not that.” I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I’d have trouble hanging out with a master or teacher who answered every question I asked by saying, “That’s a good question, Fred. Unfortunately, there’s no answer to it.”
It’s time, I think, to throw negation out the window.
Granted, Aja was shrouded in mystery, but despite what I said earlier, I do believe she gave me and my friends a glimpse into the Big Person by the life she led. She was the only person I ever met who was a hundred percent genuine, absolutely sincere. She never once said something that didn’t sound true; and somehow, no matter what the situation, she always said the right thing. And she was the most humble human being I ever met.
The most caring, the most loving, simply the most. . . .
What guided her from behind the scenes may have been too vast for anyone to comprehend, but at least I got to enjoy her as a normal girlfriend. When I kissed her lips, I felt cherished. When we touched, I got aroused. And when we made love I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven. Yeah, sure, she may have been sent to earth by the angels but she was the most passionate female I ever met.
I was lucky she was my first love. Lucky and cursed. I mean, I was just looking for a girlfriend to have sex with and fate handed me a goddess with galaxies inside her. Talk about scoring. But the flip side is how do I replace her? As a one-man band traveling the fifty states, I’ve met all kinds of women. Occasionally, if she’s kind enough, cute enough, I may even feel a crush coming on. But then I wake up in the morning, after dreaming of you know who, I roll over in bed and open my eyes and reality hits home. And I’m back on the road again.
Only one in three hundred million people are struck by lightning twice in one life. I read that somewhere. Those are slim odds, and I know the chances of finding another Aja are just as remote. But I don’t worry about it, not like Janet, Mike, and Dale worry about me finding someone else to love.
They’re still my best friends. The passing years haven’t changed that. They care about me and I still care about them. And they fear I wander the country lost, always searching to heal the hole in my heart that Aja’s death caused. They don’t understand what her death meant. Back then, I was in such pain, even I didn’t understand. When she touched me, all I felt was an unlooked-for moment of relief. I hadn’t a clue that I was witnessing the last of her miracles.
I’d like to go step by step and explain exactly what happened.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened.
That’s what’s wrong with miracles. They make for great bedtime stories if you’re religious and they can still be impressive to watch even if you’re an atheist and can’t believe what your eyes are seeing. Just don’t try putting them under a microscope.
I should just say what happened that night.
Looking back on it from ten years later . . .
When Aja was dying and she touched my heart and said, “It’s okay. You will be okay. I will be with you here. I will always be with you. I promise . . .” I was never the same afterward.
I’m not saying she gave me a dose of universal bliss. I was in agony when she died and months later I was still in pain. But a part of me changed with her final touch—permanently, deep inside—and I think it was because she put a piece of herself inside of me.
If you don’t believe me I can’t say I blame you.
But what I can say is that as my grief passed I became more and more aware that Fred was not who I was; or rather, that Fred was not all I was. To put it another way—in the center of my heart a diamond that I never knew existed began to shine. English has no words for the gem but I’ve no doubt that one day her final gift will lead me to the Big Person.
That said, I know most people will think Aja changed me into a “believer.” That’s not true—what she did was much more sublime. She erased my “disbelief.”
It took me ten years but I finally felt it was time I wrote about Aja and fulfilled my purpose for being on earth. I say that as a joke, of course, but not totally. I’ve never forgotten that night she told me I was an angel and that I’d come to this world for a reason. Meeting her, falling in love with her, telling her story—these things have given my life more meaning than anything else, even my music.
To write Aja’s story, I finally came home to Elder. And I’ve written about her while sitting in just one spot—on the ground where the Carter Mansion used to stand, before Bart and I burned it down. I assumed before coming home that the area would still show signs of scorching. But such was not the case.
Now, either the ash from the mansion acted as some kind of superfertilizer or else Aja’s ashes had fairy dust in them. It’s hard to believe but the plot of land where the house stood is now covered with a surprising variety of trees: birch, oak, maple, elm, fir. None are fully matured but they’re still fairly tall, especially when you consider they’re only ten years old.
While writing this book, their leaves and branches were wide enough to provide me with plenty of shade from the hot sun. And I should mention a flower that’s growing wild over the plot of land. Daisies, there are daisies everywhere. Romantic fool that I am, I often think they’re just waiting for Aja to return to pluck them.
It’s interesting to contemplate that what remains of Aja’s physical body is here on this land. Perhaps that’s why, occasionally, when my mind is still, I’ll draw in a deep breath and feel I can smell her again. Not as she lay silent on her deathbed but as she smelled when she was alive in my arms. For an instant I imagine I hear her voice, a word or two, spoken in my ear. It’s then I realize how lucky I was that I knew her and that she was my girlfriend.
I know most will see these final words as the sentiments of a guy who continues to grieve over a long-lost love. I can’t lie, I still miss her. Yet I’ve finally realized that what she tried to tell me at the start, and at the end, is true. She really was beyond this changing world. She was forever. And even though I still long to hold her again, I know she is always with me.