I THOUGHT ABOUT alcohol a thousand times a day, but every time I thought of it, the word no came leaping to the forefront of my mind. The word no became a soldier, a warrior of mythical proportions, there to protect me from myself and from any bottle of rum I might ever consider to procure. The soldier held his brilliant sword ready to swing it on my behalf against my weaker self. It was easy to continually implore the redundant no warrior to assist me. It was necessary and effective.
More than the warrior no, my greatest ally was focus, a near God. From Monday morning until life would end for me one day, I needed to stay focused on behaviors that would make me a better man: Running, writing music, staying out of my bedroom to work on my client notes, conquering my addiction to alcohol, ending the devil dreams, identifying the Two-Knock Ghost, developing my relationship with Christine and my children, figuring out something wonderful to do for Toby’s wife and their children, and developing more insights into the true nature of myself and humanity. These were the multitude of worthwhile ventures I needed to focus on. How many things I had to ponder that held more prominence than whether I should have a drink.
Soon it was Wednesday evening and my appointment with Dr. Banderas. Though I was not seeing him for his assistance in helping me conquer alcohol, I told him of my Thursday collapse immediately upon beginning our session. I explained to him that Toby had been my client and how I had solicited him to help me find Mary Bauer’s nemesis. I explained my guilt, although almost miraculously much of it had abated, and I told him of my visits with Christine and how they had helped me deal with my initially rampant angst.
“Marvelous,” he said after I had spoken nonstop through 25 percent of our session. “If Christine had not come and given you her love and support, you might have gone on a four day binge, right?”
“That’s what I felt like doing before she joined me at the condo.”
“It is wonderful that you now know that you have that depth of support because you will be fortified by it as you face the difficult work that lies ahead of you.”
It was a complete diversion from what we had been talking about, but I was so curious about his answer to my next question that I went right for it.
“Have you thought anymore about my Two-Knock Ghost?”
“I have,” he answered quietly while shaking his head. “And rather extensively I might add.”
I wondered what he could possibly mean by rather extensively, considering the details I had imparted to him were so limited. Two knocks here, two knocks there, hard knocks, soft knocks, frenzied knocks, always two by two and no showing of itself, not even for a single instant, ever. Countless intrusions on the outer peripheries, but never an entry. How could he have pondered that extensively?
“I held up what I knew about your Two-Knock Ghost as if it were a cup and I wanted to see it from every possible angle. I began looking at the cup not only as the actual ghost, but I factored in each back story you’ve ever told me about how hard it knocked, when it intruded, how many times it knocked, etc. Here are some of my hypothesis. Number one, the Two-Knock Ghost is particular to only you. No other of my patients has ever expressed anything close to being plagued by something like that. Next, there is a reason for its existence. Until now, you have always considered the knocks as precursors of impending doom. What if the knocks are a sign of good manners?”
“Good manners?” I was stunned.
“How many times would you estimate the Two-Knock Ghost has infiltrated your personal space?”
“Two hundred,” I answered.
“And it’s never come in?”
“Correct.”
“In my thoughtful meanderings about the possible intentions of this shy ghost, I have considered that the creature may be knocking in order to ask your permission to enter your dreams.”
I hung upon his every word. He had done it, not solved the riddle of my ghost, but he gave me a completely different perspective from which to look at Two-Knock. And it was both less frightening and spiritually refreshing. In fact, what he said might only have been one of countless possible clues, but it reminded me that sometimes the truth of something is the complete antithesis of what it appears to be. But Dr. Banderas had said it and suddenly I had something else to consider. A well-mannered ghost? Okay, but come on.
“Any other thoughts about it?”
“Yes. Do we both acknowledge the fact that most of the things that plague us as fears in our waking life and in our dreams are a direct result of situations that occurred in our youth?”
“I agree that for the most part that’s true.”
“Then let’s proceed. Is there anything you can remember about your childhood where someone tried to frighten you about ghosts? Before you answer, think very hard, take your time.”
I began scanning my entire childhood beginning with my first memory of falling off a large purple tricycle and bloodying my face on the concrete when I was about four. I recalled my school days, my friends, my teachers, who were usually nuns, and they never talked about ghosts except the Holy one. I thought about the camping trips with my parents and my Boy Scout buddies. Lots of ghost stories came up. Some of them were horrifying, sometimes a little funny while they were scaring the daylights out of me, but I never put any credence in them. They were just stories. I allowed them to frighten and amuse me in the moment then I moved on. I didn’t believe in ghosts.
“There’s nothing, Doctor.”
“There is something, Dr. McKenzie, and it’s our job to find it together. Now if there is nothing that you can recall then perhaps our strategy in how we perceive the ghost must change. Have you ever considered that the Two-Knock Ghost may want to help you, that it might be friendly?”
Well mannered and friendly? I kept the somewhat comical thoughts to myself.
“What do you think about my last hypothesis?” he asked after the silence between us lasted too long.
“I haven’t had enough time to analyze it,” I answered, telling the truth.
“Let me help you. By applying some principles of logic, I might help you see the ghost in a different light. Tell me, how long has the ghost been bothering you?”
“About four and a half months.”
“Earlier, you said that it’s made its presence known in your space over two hundred times, correct? So about 140 days, 200 visits. Has the ghost ever physically hurt you in a dream or in real life?”
“No.”
“But you’re afraid of it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because, most of the time I hear it, it’s accompanying a devil dream and it’s the most horrendous moment of my entire life.”
“But the ghost has not hurt you, correct?”
“But I know it will.” I answered his question like a frightened child.
“I must challenge your assumption, Dr. McKenzie,” he said intensely, looking every bit and more of his seventy-plus years.
“Right now you are projecting your greatest fears onto an entity you do not even know. You are fearing the unknown and have been doing so since the beginning. The ghost now knows that you consistently fear and reject it. If it ever had the desire to assist you in some way, but feels rejected by you, it may never get the chance to help you and it may keep knocking and annoying and frightening and haunting you forever.”
Boy, this guy had a vivid imagination. I was speechless. He saw it immediately as the first second passed when he finished speaking.
“I see you’re speechless,” he said after eleven more seconds had passed. “I must tell you that I have a reputation for getting my clients into this condition on numerous occasions,” he said with a twinkle in his eye and looking younger. “May I boldly suggest that you dig deeply within yourself to find your bravery? Then, once you have, you will be able to begin retraining your conscious mind to at least accept the possibility that the ghost is an ally and may want to help you and not hurt you.”
“I can see the logic in your thinking, Dr. Banderas,” I said reluctantly. “But the difficulty lies in the fact that your idea is 180 degrees opposite of what I’ve been thinking all along.”
“Therein lies the work that you will have to put in, Dr. McKenzie. It will not be easy for you to change your perception of your ghost, but the process of change is always started by a single thought. That thought doesn’t always have to originate with the person that wants to make a change. In this case, it has been I who has implanted the thought within you. Now, it will be your task to inculcate that concept into your thinking as something you embrace as viable. The next step will be to invite the ghost in when it knocks again. If it comes in, you will see it and know what it is and finally figure out what roll it has in your life. If it does not enter your dream, we will keep turning the cup and come up with new ideas and new strategies. I can assure you that my next ideas will be far less than 180 degrees from your rationale zone.”
New material, I thought. I always liked new material. Whether it came from a comedian, a president, Christine, my kids, or in this case, my psychologist.
I knew Dr. Banderas expected a remark from me. He very much deserved it. He had put a great deal of thinking into my behalf.
“Dr. Banderas, I will go home tonight and begin thinking about everything you have suggested, I promise.” I was being 100 percent sincere.
“Dr. McKenzie, there is one more topic I would like to share with you. No matter how expansive and limitless the human mind may be, where so many aspects are unknown to one another, it may also be compared to a tiny box where everything is intimately related, even intertwined with everything else within the box. There is nothing random, nothing that stands alone. This is one of many dualities which exist in the human mind. In your specific case, I am considering your ghost, the devil, your seemingly inappropriate loneliness, your isolationist tendencies and lastly your drinking. I am curious as to what your mind will ultimately reveal to you about how these elements of your life are related, or if they are related at all.”
Dr. Banderas’s voice was fracturing as he spoke. I assumed he’d had a long day and was tired. During his last few sentences, the twinkle was gone from his eyes. His thoughts were deep and serious and when he spoke them, he looked every bit of the seventy-two years that he was. I noticed the lines on his face, deep furrows in some places. I wondered how he’d developed each of them. Were they the result of a half century of profound contemplation as he had been doing for me? Or had sadness put them there? Had his personal failures put them there? Or was it simply a fluke of genetics? I concluded that it was probably a combination of all these things and maybe more. I enjoyed looking at the man’s face. It was contemplative, intense, yet serene and kind. He had, only moments before, spoke of the dualities of the human mind and now I was considering the complex nature of his facial roadmap. In the next few seconds I searched the contour of his face. I felt honored to have chosen this man as my therapist. Then I spoke.
“I am impressed with your thinking on my behalf, Dr. Banderas. I have no idea what will come of it, but I promise I will consider every aspect of what you have told me.”
“That is all I can hope for sir,” he said.
There were a few more sentences that passed between us that Wednesday evening, but I’ve shared with you what was more important. Dr. Banderas had given me an entirely new perspective from which to look at everything that had been bothering me for a long time. Now, in good faith, and as directed, I would force myself to be open to his suggested possibilities.
I felt so comfortable in the lush jungle office that I didn’t want to leave. But when I did so, I put a smile on my face and shook Dr. Banderas’s hand. I was looking down to his eyes that were several inches below mine. He was smiling a little Munchkin like smile. His eyes sparkled with the knowledge that he had contributed something unique to my thinking. Even though I stood a full eight inches taller than Dr. Banderas, as I walked out of his office I felt myself intellectually and spiritually looking up to him as if he were a giant of a man.
Dianne was still working, obviously tired, but pleasant as always.
“Same time next week, Dr. McKenzie?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I wrote her a check, handed it to her, said good-bye and left, immediately heading for the Serenity Club. It was my first time to go there since last Wednesday. I had attended meetings Monday and Tuesday nights, but I had gone to a different venue, this one on Forty-Ninth Street North, much closer to my condo. I was afraid to go back to the Serenity Club because I thought that the memories of Toby would tear me apart and work against my sobriety. At the new place, there was a guy there with a big nippy dog. The first night I tried to pet it, but the dog growled, then snapped at me in the lobby. At break time, I watched the dog nip at six or seven people. It annoyed me. The next night the man with the dangerous dog was there again. I stayed away from them, but my curiosity kept my eyes glued to them. The dog nipped at almost everyone it passed. There was a viciousness about the animal and an “I couldn’t care less” attitude in the owner. I was appalled that the man was allowed to have the dog with him. It wasn’t a service animal. I didn’t want to speak up about it because I was the newbie. I decided Tuesday night when I left the Forty-Ninth Street meeting place that I would return to the Serenity Club no matter how I felt. I didn’t want to see that dog tear into someone one day.
As I drove to the Serenity Club, I enjoyed working on my approaches to my clients for Thursday. It was 8:30 already. The meeting started at 9:00. I didn’t have time for a relaxed dinner so I stopped briefly at a McDonald’s and grabbed a super-hot filet of fish and a diet Coke. But what I thought about most that night on the way to the meeting, even when I was contemplating my strategies to utilize with my clients, was how much personal work I had to do. There was unfinished business everywhere. In fact, it seemed as if my entire life was unfinished business. While I pondered that, I came to believe that my entire future life was unfinished business. But all of that was too immeasurable to fathom. I needed to focus on the here and now. I reasoned that I had two battlefields; one was practical, one was mystical. I couldn’t do anything about the devil dreams or the Two-Knock Ghost, but I could absolutely break down what had to be done on the pragmatic level. First, I needed to do whatever it took never to drink again. Second, I needed to figure out what to say to and give to Alicia Magnessun. Third, I needed to consistently increase my respect and affection for Christine. Fourth, I needed to be a more consistent and caring father. And lastly, I needed to put it all together, everything I would learn, and become a better psychologist and human being.
I decided as I found a parking space a block from the crowded Serenity Club, that over the next few days I would jot down a variety of ideas relating to Alicia Magnessun and present to her my final words and gifts within two weeks of Toby’s funeral, which had been scheduled for Saturday morning, nine days after Toby’s death. I wouldn’t miss the funeral for the world. Strangely, but unbelievably lovingly, Christine would call me at the office and ask me if I would like her to be at my side for the funeral. I would say yes, and we put our plan into effect, which included dinner and an overnight on Snell Island on Friday night.
But it was still Wednesday and I had to face being at the meeting knowing that Toby would not be there tonight or any other night ever. I knew a rum and Coke would take the edge off all my miserable feelings. I felt vulnerable as I thought that I would forever crave a rum and Coke. After a rum and Coke or two or three, they would always take the edge off my anxiety. My toughest job in my future life would be not to surrender to that nagging knowledge.
I didn’t speak at the meeting. It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say. It was because my story of Toby and Mary and Reubin, the shootout and my wanting to be friends with Toby, was too complicated, too convoluted. I listened instead to everyone else’s problems and there was escape and comfort enough in that.
I stayed through the entire meeting, my mind consistently wandering to thoughts of Toby’s wife and children and what kindness I could do for them. I made up my mind that I would never tell Alicia that it was I who had asked Toby to help look for Reubin Tatum. I decided that, based on the current popular phrase, “too much information.” In this case, I felt that revealing to Alicia that Toby was my client and friend, and that I thought that someday Christine and I, and she and Toby would probably have become friends, was enough. My greatest fear in regard to Alicia was that Toby had told her all about my request, and she would despise me from the announcement of my name at her front door.
I thought about what amount of money I would give to her and the children. That seemed the easiest part of all. With the insurance money I had received from the deaths of my parents and grandparents, I had become fairly wealthy at a young age. And with Christine’s keen mind and the thirty years of ongoing assistance from her father’s keen financial mind, we had doubled our holdings a few times. I didn’t want to make her feel like I was giving it to her as if she were a charity. On the other hand, I didn’t want to arouse suspicions in her either, that I might have had something to do with Toby’s death and I felt guilty. She would have been 100 percent correct about my second line of concern. I prayed to God to let her be ignorant of this one fact of her husband’s life. God forbid that my showing up at her home would hurt her more. Then I felt my shame and worry urging me to take a drink of rum and Coke. Just one. I could control it. The pain I was feeling right now wasn’t that bad. A few ounces of ice cold rum and Coke would make it all better. These thoughts passed through my mind in their entirety until I thought: “And yeah, a single drink right now could ruin your life. Is it really worth it, no matter how cold and tasty and comforting it might be?” Of course I answered no. But the thought of thirst had to be replaced. I decided that on the way home I would stop at a 7-Eleven, buy a tall drink glass, no matter what it cost, fill it with ice, then buy however many small bottles of apple juice that it took to fill that soda glass. Now I was craving freezing cold apple juice. I had beaten back one of my demons again. I wondered how many thousands of these mental skirmishes I would have in my future; then I thought about the tree.
My mind had been cluttered with thoughts moving faster than clouds on a windy day that I hadn’t thought of the live oak until the meeting was almost over. Immediately, I decided I would go to see it this night. I was surprised a few minutes later, when actually leaving the meeting, two or three people said hi to me in a very friendly way and that two different people unbelievably said to me something to the effect of, “We haven’t seen you for a few days.” I was touched that people might have missed me. Then I wondered what they might be thinking and may have already said about Toby.
The short drive to the live oak was, for the first time, heartbreaking. Seeing it was worse. Before I got out of the car I was overcome with emotion, dropped my head to the steering wheel and cried the heaviest tears I had in decades. When my waterworks ceased, I got out of the car, leaned against the right quarter panel and gazed at the tree that had made its way into my dreams. It was so broad, so stately and majestic as it continued to spread itself out over the street and three neighbors’ homes. It was all that I had left of Toby—something spectacular that he loved. Why should I feel so sad? The tree was still here, enriching the lives of everyone who saw it. I should be thankful that Toby thought enough of me to show it to me. I was being uninsightful thinking that the tree was all I had left of Toby. I had all the memories of our talks. I had helped him begin AA and to feel that he was gaining control over alcohol. Most of all, I instinctively felt that he knew that I was his friend. And I knew in my heart that had he lived, developing a friendship with Toby outside of the office was something I would have not been able to deny.
Someday I would show Christine this tree. If there was an opportunity, I would show each of my children. And the tree would add more people to the list of lives it had enriched. After my initial sadness here tonight, I began to feel joy again for being able to look upon such a powerfully beautiful living thing. Once again, inspiration flowed from the tree into my being. The inspiration was encouragement to be a better man, to be stronger, to broaden my horizons, to conquer my demons and to help others conquer theirs.
Nine minutes later I was enjoying the apple juice drink that I had fantasized about during the meeting. It was wonderful. Over all, I thought I had a pretty good day. I worked, helped people there, had a great session with Dr. Banderas, attended all AA meeting, did not have a rum and Coke, saw the tree, and was unwinding my day with icy apple juice on my drive home. I was feeling confident that I would enjoy a demon free sleep and wake up refreshed for my Thursday morning run. I was wrong again.
The first few hours of my sleep were indeed peaceful. Then the devil boldly intruded. This time Lucifer was a cruel Nazi guard and I was a frail Jewish prisoner of war in an unknown concentration camp. Both the devil and I were in a courtyard, completely devoid of any other people. I was locked in a stock, my hands and head sticking out in front of a wooden grate that was latched so I couldn’t escape. The back half of me was on my knees on frozen earth. I was shirtless and shivering as falling snow settled on my back and hair. The devil guard was standing before me with a whip.
“It has come to my attention that you have sought help from outside the camp in order to facilitate the termination of your imprisonment here.”
Though it was a dream, I concluded quickly that he was referring to my seeking counseling from Dr. Banderas.
“Yes I have,” I said as cockily as I could muster.
“That is unacceptable Prisoner 92719. For that you must be punished. Ten lashes with a whip.”
Already the cold was unbearable. I felt my eyelashes begin to freeze. Though I had acted cocky a moment before, I wondered how I could possibly endure ten lashes from my jailer. The devil walked behind me sneering. He raised the whip. My body tightened and I clinched my teeth. As the Prince of Darkness began to swing the whip toward my body, I heard a pair of frenzied knocks. “Goddamn it, not now!” I said at the same time the whip lashed my back. Upon the strike, the whip had curled around my ribs and reached the middle of my chest. My skin was torn from me and I could feel the bloodletting quickly from my wound.
“Why now you asshole?” I yelled at the Two-Knock Ghost, directing more anger toward it than toward my purveyor of pain. “Do you want to come in and join the fun?” I had fallen back to my same old way of thinking.
A second whip strike. This time my breath was stolen completely from me as fresh skin was ripped from my body again.
Then came two more knocks. I screamed a blood curdling scream, partly in complete fear and frustration and partly to frighten Two Knock away. My head lowered as far as it could toward the ground as my dream body felt more pain than when the devil began to eat my face many nightmares ago. My soul was crashing into its deepest ever pit.
“Come in,” I said, barely audible while questioning whether I could live through eight more strikes from the whip, remembering Dr. Banderas’s advice. “I have nothing left with which to resist you. Come in and reveal yourself. If you’re evil, then you can assist the devil and finish me off right here, right now. If you’re a friend, I need you now more than ever.”
I screamed with excruciating pain as the third strike ripped across my spine. Instead of staying down, my head snapped upward toward the gray sky. Suddenly, a warm wind blew the snow away and a single illuminated and glowing gold and yellow door appeared in the southeastern sky above. I maintained my fixed gaze, fully expecting an army of Satan’s Nazis to come running through it. I knew the devil enjoyed big productions. Why not now? He turned to look, but not as if he expected to see what was happening. The door burst open and a man and woman flew through it with incredible speed. They were dressed in white leotards like the ones Olympic gymnasts’ wear, and they headed straight for the Prince of Nazis. They landed firmly on the ground, their backs before me, and with the rage of angels, began beating the devil unmercifully. Satan was helpless beneath the pummeling. As the onslaught of punches continued, all of the devil’s blood splattered away from the wild couple, so their garments remained pure white during their entire attack. Then the woman bent down and picked up the whip. The man had punched the devil into a submissive position on the earth. He had weakened the demon, enough that he was able to hold it to the ground by forcefully pushing down upon his head. Then the woman began snapping the whip across the earthbound devil’s back. I saw him writhing in agony with every strike, his head raising up enough that I could hear his screams.
Upon the sixth of the woman’s whip strikes to the devil’s back, buttocks, legs, and feet, the devil Nazi summoned enough power to push himself off the ground and out of his holder’s hand vice. But instead of attempting to fight back, the devil arched his back, throwing his head toward the still open and glowing door and screamed a defeated whale. My imprisoned body actually felt the sound waves from his cry. Then he vaporized.
The woman dropped the whip and walked proudly to the man. He took her hand as she helped him stand. They embraced as if celebrating a victory, then capped it off with a gentle, slightly lingering kiss. Then they turned and began walking toward me. It was my parents.
“What the …?”
“Robert, you finally let us in,” my mother said while flashing her beautiful and long missed smile.
“Mom! Dad! What are you doing here? I’ve never dreamed about you before. Why are you here now?”
“We have much to tell you son,” my father said as he opened the stock which entrapped me. “But we can’t tell it all to you now.”
He lifted my abused body out of the stock and placed me on the ground with my head in my mother’s lap.
“The place where we come from has very specific rules and we only have a moment here now before we’ll have to leave.”
“But you only just got here,” I said while acutely feeling the pain of my injuries.
“We can come back again, Robert, if you’ll only let us in when we knock,” my mother said. She was touching the wounds on my chest and shoulders and when she did so, the torn and battered skin miraculously healed.
“Let me help you son,” my father said, as he gently turned me over so my mother could heal my back.
They were younger than I was, in their late forties—the exact ages they were when the drunk driver killed them. And my dream self was fifty-five. The same age as my real self—the dream observer.
“Did you come from heaven?” I asked as I sat myself upright to the right of my parents.
“Not exactly,” my father said.
“We haven’t seen the light yet,” my mother said matter-of-factly. “We know we will, but we’ve got unfinished business with you. When that is completed, we can advance to the next level, whatever that might be.”
I felt so lucky and safe near them. I leaned over and hugged my mother first.
“I love you, Mom. I’ve missed you. Thank you for saving me from this nightmare with the devil.”
“You’re welcome, Robert. That’s what we’re here for. By the time we say our final good-byes, many questions will be clarified for you.”
I stood up, walked to my father and extended my hand to help pull him upright.
“You look very handsome and studly in that uniform, Dad,” I said as I hugged him tightly, “Like a superhero.”
“I’ve always wanted to be that for you, Robert,” he said as he kissed my neck.
“Is that it now, for my devil dreams? Have you two finished him off?”
“We don’t know that for sure, Robert,” my father answered. “What you dream about is partly a mystery of nature. No one can ever say for certain what you will dream about tomorrow night.”
“We can only assure you that we will be back again until we have told to you what we must,” my beautiful mother added. I had forgotten how wonderfully lovely she was and how handsome a couple she and my father were.
“Just let us in the next time we knock,” my father said with a smile.
“And stop being afraid when you hear us knock,” my mother said, mock scoldingly.
“I will, Mom, I promise. But why …”
“We have to leave, son. We’re being beckoned.” My father always called me son. My mother never did. It was always Robert.
“Do you have time for a kiss good-bye?” Both my parents said yes simultaneously. My mother kissed my left cheek and I kissed her right. That was our kiss ritual in real life. My lips had never touched my mother’s lips. A moment later, my father kissed me on the left side of my neck where the shoulder starts to jut out. He blew a long and tickling fart sound. Then I kissed my father on the right side of his neck, blowing a loud and tickling fart sound as well. That was our kissing ritual. It saddened me to remember that the last time I had said good-bye to them this way was thirty-one years ago.
Then they held hands as they turned away and floated upward through a now blue sky to the still golden glowing open door. When they passed through, the door closed and faded away.
I could not believe what had just happened. Both my dream self and my observer self—the real me—were in shock. The Nazi prisoner was totally woundless. He was wishing he could have completed the question he was asking when his parents announced their ascension. It was going to be, “But why do you only knock twice when you want to come into my dreams?” But he had not because time did not permit. He stood there wondering about what had occurred. But he felt remarkably soothed by his parents’ appearance and completely hopeful that they would return again quickly. The dream ended and a few minutes later I awoke. Instantly, I felt everything my concentration camp character had felt, not as if it had been a dream, but as if the events had really happened to me.
I dismissed trying to dislodge my waking self from my dream self. Things were complicated enough and I began the process of sorting through the dream with my conscious questions.
“Where had my parents come from? Why had they not aged? What more than by combating the devil on my behalf and telling me they loved me could my parents have to reveal to me?” They had been the most open communicative and forthright people I had ever known. My parents were the Two-Knock Ghost?
The questions, that could only be answered by my parents, kept coming relentlessly. Though they seemed endless and wanted to dominate my day, I had to dispel them and work with my clients and call Christine and Dr. Banderas and tell them what had happened. As I ran this morning, I felt lighter and happier than I had in years. And I thought it odd that I truly believed that what my parents told me in a dream—that they would return and tell me things of import—was the truth, not merely isolated dialogue from a random dream.
When I returned to the condo, I played the last song that I had written for Christine on the piano, showered, and shaved and headed for the office.
I was absolutely ecstatic when I greeted Amanda who was sitting at her desk looking resplendent in a red dress with black trim at the bottom, the pocket and the edges of the short sleeves. All the way to the office from the Beaches of Paradise, what I thought about was how lucky I was, how bright my future could be.
Amanda reminded me of my schedule and even though it was almost 90 degrees outside, I said yes when she asked if I wanted hot chocolate. Then immediately I thought she must think I was an odd duck because of that little quirk.
The day went smoothly, as had thousands of similar days before this. I equated the experience to the movie, Ground Hog Day. It was nothing special, just my typical day with few deviations. But today my highlights were my two phone calls. The first to Dr. Banderas at noon, and the second to Christine at 5:30. I was fortunate enough that when I called Dianne to ask if Dr. Banderas would speak with me, she asked him and he had said yes—even though I was interrupting his in-office lunch.
“Hello, Dr. McKenzie,” he said pleasantly. “It is interesting that you are calling me the day after your appointment. What has happened that you wish to share with me?”
“Dr. Banderas, I took your advice and let the Two-Knock Ghost come into my dream last night.”
“And what did it turn out to be?”
“It was my parents.”
“So it was not something malevolent?”
“On the contrary, they absolutely saved me from incredible pain in what started out as a horrendous devil dream.”
He asked me to describe the dream in detail, which I did. When I finished, I asked him what he thought.
“It was a beautiful dream. It took courage for you to finally, if not somewhat reluctantly, invite the ghost in, not knowing if its intent was to harm you. By doing so, you have taken a giant step forward in your recovery. I’m not sure that I believe in ghosts, but I believe in dreams. And in this case, I believe that Two Knock will return and reveal more. And if it does, you must tell me every detail because the facts of your dream may alter the way I perceive the universe.”
“I never expected you to say that.”
“We are all each other’s teachers, Dr. McKenzie, as you probably already know. But I am certain that your parents will return because they always returned when you did not invite them in. They never gave up before. Why would they give up now, when they finally made contact? It will be the sum total of what they tell you that will influence you so much that it may change your life. And as you reveal the facts in their most minute detail, that is what may alter my perception of the universe as well.”
“I promise I will keep you abreast of any dream I have of them, Doctor. And thank you for making me feel like everything I tell you is fascinating and important to you.”
“It is, Dr. McKenzie. Each tiny piece of the puzzle that is your dreams is fascinating. But what picture will be revealed when the puzzle is put completely together is what we both anxiously await.”
“Thank you, Dr. Banderas.”
“You are the utmost welcomed, Dr. McKenzie.”
He sounded kind, but I also detected a bit of tiredness in his voice. I wondered for a moment how hard he worked. If he put as much effort and energy into each of his clients as he did for me, he would have every right to be tired. Thinking deeply of the right things to say to people when they are in mental distress or agony can be exhausting. Dr. Banderas was a strong and gentle soul. I could feel the weight of his ponderous mind, which was not unlike mine. I felt we were kindred spirits. He was intelligent and kind. I respected him and genuinely liked what I could see of him as a person.
After I hung up the phone, it was back to work for me. But no matter what I did, the predominant thought in my mind was when will my parents return to my dreams. The answer didn’t come soon enough.
Monday night came and went, no dreams of note. Tuesday night was the same. Wednesday nothing, except for my meeting with Dr. Banderas.
I was very excited to see the man who had suggested that I invite the Two-Knock Ghost into my dreams. After a playful interaction with Dianne, I entered my psychologist’s plush office. Dr. Banderas stood as I entered. He held his hand out to shake mine as I strode across the room.
“Success,” he said, as we squeezed palms. “A good beginning, that’s what I like.”
“It’s a start for sure, but I wonder where we go from here?” I asked.
“We wait,” he answered, “patiently and appreciatively of what they have shared with you in their first visit. I don’t think you can hustle ghosts along,” he said with a twinkle in his eye and a slight smile cracking onto the right side of his shut lips. “They live in their own time and space and we must respect their comings and goings, as they obviously have their own unique agenda.”
I enjoyed listening to how this man articulated his thinking. For somebody who had told me he didn’t believe in ghosts, he sure seemed to know how to show them courtesy.
“I am the psychologist and you are the client in this relationship, but I am extremely excited to hear what your parents have to tell you, hopefully in the very near future. I don’t think I’ve told you this yet, but sometimes when I’m finished dealing with a client with an interesting case, I dream some kind of dream directly related to it and sometimes I wake up thinking about the facts and circumstances of a case and often lay in bed thinking about it. I’ve lost thousands of hours of sleep over the years because of this reality.”
“I hope you don’t lose too much sleep over my case,” I said with a twinkle in my eye.
“On the contrary, Dr. McKenzie. I hope I do. Your case has become one of my favorites ever, and now the dream ghost has revealed itself and it’s friendly. When I think about my cases during the day, I am always distracted by something or someone, Dianne, a phone call, an emergency. But when I lay in bed and think about things, I am rarely distracted except maybe for my dear wife getting up to go to the bathroom. I even gave a nickname to that type of rumination. I call it, ‘wee hour thinking.’ And I want to assure you that though I have lost sleep, I have not lost those hours. In fact, I have gained something because most of the time I do my best work while lying flat on my back in bed during ‘wee hour thinking.’”
“What have you gained, Doctor?” I asked, feeling intense curiosity.
“Mostly insight, insight into the minds of my clients, sometimes my own mind and often into the nature of the human mind in general.”
We talked like that for the rest of the hour, like two men getting to know each other piece by complicated piece. The more he spoke, the more I drifted into that space of wanting the man to be my friend. There was nothing new, nothing earth shattering in our conversation. The predominate theme was his encouraging me to be patient about my parents’ return. Also, he encouraged me to be joyful about my dreams and my life in general because not merely one breakthrough was about to happen, but many.
I trusted him and I bought his encouragement and superimposed it upon that which I was producing for myself.
Then Thursday night, nothing in the way of notable dreams.
Finally, it was Friday. I knew Friday would be exciting. Mary Bauer was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. I couldn’t wait to see how she was feeling after our last intense conversation.
When she came into the office, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ten years she had aged in the last several months were gone. Her cheeks were rosy and her skin was sun-toned, as if she had spent hours on the beach in the past few days. She was smiling and pretty. The sad scowl which had zapped her of her natural good looks since I had known her had been vanquished by a blithe spirit from within her.
Dr. Banderas’s jungle had influenced me and I had recently purchased seven plants from a greenhouse on Central and about Sixty-Eighth Street. They were the first things she commented on as she almost bounded through the door.
“Wow, Dr. McKenzie! Your plants are beautiful. They really liven up the room.”
“Thank you, Mary. You look marvelous. To what can we attribute this change for the better?”
“When you told me that Reubin Tatum was gone forever, I took that to heart, Dr. McKenzie. Each time I thought about that and felt better. Then, every time I thought about the rest of Reubin’s gang being gone forever, in a cell, I felt better still. I have much to thank you for. You have given me my life back.”
A sharp pang of pain hit my stomach and immediately I thought of the soothing effects of rum and Coke. I had given Mary her life back, but I had cost Toby his. For a moment I continued looking at Mary Bauer squarely in the eyes while slowly nodding my head, but not hearing what she said. When she seemed to be finished with her next spoken paragraph, I guessed at what to say to her next.
“How have these improvements in your happiness level influenced your relationship with your husband?”
Mary Bauer was a shy, private person. What she said next surprised me.
“We made love two times this week. Both times it was filled with tenderness and passion. And it was I who initiated almost all of the passion. It’s not that my husband had become disinterested in me. It’s that he had become tentative in his approach to me because he knew I was hurting emotionally. I knew that I had forced him into that behavior and I wanted to make it up to him. I felt safe with him, loved and adored by him, and I felt free to give of myself. It was the first time I’d felt that way in a long while. I feel like you’ve helped me to reclaim my marriage too.”
Another pang hit my stomach. I had helped Mary Bauer to reclaim her marriage, but I had caused the destruction of Toby Magnessun’s. I wished I had a bottle of rum and Coke in the office, so as soon as Mary left, I could take a drink and put a Band-Aid on the massive guilt wound that I had. It was yet another of those thousands of skirmishes I knew I would have in my battle to stay sober. I quickly dismissed my desire for alcohol and tried to replace it by feeling some joy that Mary and her husband were mending.
“What about the cruise?” I asked.
“We’re going. I won’t have anything to worry about while we’re gone. We’re so excited.”
She was ebullient. I was genuinely happy for her.
“Dr. McKenzie, there is one thing that is bothering me. It’s new and it’s extremely difficult for me to tell you.”
“If you really don’t feel comfortable, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I know that Doctor, but I have to.”
She paused and swallowed hard.
“I want this to be my last session with you. School’s out, summer’s almost here. I’m feeling better. My husband and I are going on a cruise soon. I don’t want to think about pain anymore or negative things, specifically, my problems. I didn’t have any therapeutic problems before Reubin Tatum. I was very happy. I want to be that woman again. I know I can access her now. You’ve helped me so much and I thank you for your kindness, logic and consistent encouragement. But I want to look forward, not back. You helped me to move off the horrible spot that I was stuck on. I hope I’m not hurting your feelings by wanting our sessions to end Doctor, but you understand why I’m thinking this way, right?”
She was speaking with a profound fusion of intensity and sincerity, and though it was a difficult moment for her, I could see the strength and confidence of the old Mary I had never seen, emerging.
She would never know the great loss that had been incurred in order to deliver to her the comfort she deserved.
“Of course I understand, Mary,” I said after what might have been too long of a pause. “I’m proud of how far you’ve come so quickly. If you’re happy, then I’m happy. If you’ve made up your mind already, about all I can offer you is to be here for you if you ever need to return for any reason.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said, apparently relieved she didn’t get an argument from me.
We talked out the rest of our final hour with rather superficial conversation. It was actually highlighted by Mary’s telling me of five new dresses she had already bought for the cruise. She regaled me with glorious details about colors, patterns, lengths and cuts. She spoke quickly as she described the clothes she couldn’t wait to wear for her husband. She told me that she wouldn’t show him the outfits before she wore them on the cruise. She wanted them to be a surprise. She was giggly as she spoke. All I could do was sit there and watch in amazement at her reacquired joy.
When she departed my office, I felt sad and lonely, the way a person often feels when they finish a good book they took their time reading. I usually felt similar to this when a client reached the end of their time with me. And I wanted a drink. When I was drinking, I never thought about alcohol during my working hours. But now, because I hadn’t been drinking—except for my one collapse—it seemed that with every twinge of negative emotions, my body was overcome with cravings for liquor.
I picked up the phone and called Christine. Fortunately, she was at work on a break and able to talk. I asked her if I could take her to dinner, maybe to Lee Gardens, the Chinese Buffet on Fourth Street. She said yes and I immediately felt better.
That night dinner was wonderful. We knew all the waitresses and the hostess, and they knew both of us by our first names. I told Christine about my dream and how the Two-Knock Ghost finally came in and that it was my parents. She listened with interest to every word. She asked me also, if I had any stumbles during the week and I told her no. She smiled.
Throughout the night Christine and I were affectionate with each other. In the car and on the short walk into the restaurant, we held hands. Inside the restaurant we got a booth and decided to sit side by side. There, the affection continued. Often I would rest my hand on her leg and equally as often, she would rest her hand on my leg. It was almost as if we were a young couple again.
I would listen to stories about her job as intently as she would listen to details of my life. The smooth flowing of the equality of our sharing was so wonderful that at one point during dinner my eyes welled with tears as I thought about it. Everything I had ever wanted in life was wrapped up in this tiny woman sitting next to me. Christine noticed my eyes.
“What’s the matter, honey?” she asked tenderly.
I simply shook and lowered my head as my eyes closed.
“You’re happy right now, aren’t you, Turf?” There it was again, my old nickname. And a greater flood of emotion came upon me forcing tears from my eyes like parallel rivers of liquid emotion. I nodded my head yes this time. As Christine reached around my neck and hugged me tightly before kissing me lightly on the neck, the way my father did, but without the funny sounds.
After dinner, during which we consumed at least 30 shrimp each, I drove Christine the short ride back to our home on Snell Island. I parked the car in the driveway and accompanied my wife to the front door and right into the house. We did not need words between us to ask and answer whether I would spend the night with her. It was understood between us in an inner space that was never wrong.
We brushed our teeth at the same time, then Christine put on a pretty pink teddy, and I put on a pair of solid blue cotton pajamas. We were in bed within thirty seconds of one another—Christine first, then me. I snuggled up behind her, curled my body around my resting sweetheart, then brought both my feet up, so they were playing with hers. We were cozy beyond belief. There were no covers above us. The air conditioning was set at the perfect level. We were together and tender, two people who’d had interesting and tiring weeks. Within three minutes and without a word having been spoken or a single kiss being shared. That is how we fell asleep.
Sometime during an undisturbed night of quality sleep, the real excitement began. Thankfully it wasn’t a devil dream. I hadn’t anticipated having one because they were extremely rare while sleeping with Christine. My favorite live oak appeared. It was recurring in its most recent position as the centerpiece of the tranquil rustic scene. The tree was in front of the creek that ran through the entire scene and the grass was the green of a million emeralds and the sky was a cool blue and cloudless. The white swing was hanging from the tree’s lowest branch, and I was sitting on it pensively. I was holding my notebook from work, working on what to say to tomorrow’s clients. All of a sudden like a thunder blast from a clear blue sky it broke the moment of tranquility I was enjoying and scared me for an instant. Two knocks, that’s all it was. The sounds of the knocks had been augmented by some unknown power, but this time I knew what it was. I looked to the sky where I heard the knocks emanate and said, “Come on down,” in an announcer voice, like they do on The Price is Right. In a moment the golden glowing door opened and my parents passed through, this time floating down to where I was sitting on the swing. They stopped and stood before me smiling sweetly, my father carrying a large picnic basket, the kind that opens at both ends. My mother spoke first.
“We thought you might be hungry, honey, so we brought a picnic lunch to share while we all chat.” I jumped off the swing while my mother pulled a sheet, the same cream color as I wore in my dreams, out of the basket and spread it on the ground. Then each of us sat on it as Mom and Dad took out my favorite foods one by one. I was so happy to be there with them, but one thing was very strange. It was weird being older than them. No one said a word about that. The fact that I had aged and they hadn’t was just accepted because I was still living life on earth and they had obviously been in a place where you didn’t age. Because of that, we accepted each other for the way we were, but it did raise my curiosity about where they had been all these years and where did they come from these two welcomed visits? Because of my wondering, I asked them my first question.
“Where have you been, Mom and Dad—heaven?”
“Not quite, Robert,” my mother answered softly. “We’ve been in a place called Respite. It’s a lovely place where people who have unfinished business with their children or other loved ones go.”
My father spoke next. “Respite is a place where people who have caused damage unwittingly to their children and loved ones wait for their loved ones to become in crisis mode because the damage becomes too much to bear.”
I was shocked. “Are you saying that you and Mom caused me damage?”
“We are, Robert,” my mother said softly. “We’re here now to reveal what we did to hurt you.”
“But how did you know you hurt me? I honestly don’t remember anything but good things that passed between us.”
“We always tried to be wonderful with you, Robert, but we were not perfect parents,” my mother continued.
“But how did you know you hurt me? Was it some kind of mutual spiritual awareness? Or was it a person from Respite who told you?”
My father gently took over the conversation as the three of us began eating barbeque flavored fried chicken, corn on the cob, coleslaw and baked beans—everything tasting exactly the way those foods tasted when Mom made them while she was alive.
“When we died, son, we saw a white light. It wasn’t a brilliant light, but it was the only one we saw, so we followed it. We passed through an unusually lit vortex that was comprised of all the colors of the spectrum. We passed it thinking that this was the eighth wonder of the world, or the first wonder of the world beyond. We were both traveling through the rainbow vortex at the same time, holding hands because we had died at the same instant. We were just lucky to be traveling through the vortex together, I guess. All of a sudden the vortex slowed our speed little by little, until it deposited us on a white cloud that was strong enough to walk on. I was certain we were in heaven because everything I was experiencing was really cool and the laws of physics didn’t apply.”
Then my father spoke again. “A hundred feet ahead of us was a great white wall that looked like it might be the outer enclosure of heaven. But directly in front of us was a huge golden gate with a giant gold knocker on the right side of the gate. There was no place else to go. There were only clouds at the base of the white walls. We walked to the gate, knocked with the knocker the way we always did when we were alive. First, I banged it once,” my father paused and looked at my mother.
“Then I banged it once,” my mother said.
“The gate opened immediately,” my father continued, “and standing on a cloud waiting to greet us was an angelic man I thought for sure, for a moment, was God. He said, ‘Welcome to Respite McKenzies.’ He explained to us what Respite was and explained what we had done to hurt you and expressed his confidence in us that we could rectify the situation when the time was right. Now is the time.”
My father had said so many things that brought questions to my mind, but the thing that he had spoken that intrigued me the most was when he said that he had knocked with the knocker once and that Mom had followed doing the same thing. Two knocks coming upon Respite. Two knocks before saving me from the devil. Two knocks today. Countless two knocks that I had ignored or that had frightened me to death.
“Dad,” I asked with an incredulous look upon my face, “why always the two knocks?”
“Son, when I was in basic training in the air force, I was taught to only knock once on my drill instructor’s door if I needed something. Knock once and wait. No matter how long it took for someone to answer that door, knock twice or more when you became impatient and you would have to face embarrassing repercussions from one or more GIs.”
“When I returned home after my tour of duty, I told your mother that story. She liked it so much she said …” He paused for a moment and he smiled at her as she finished his sentence. “Everywhere we go that we have to knock, why don’t you knock once and I’ll knock once. That will be one of our own things.”
“And that’s what we did from that day forward until the night we died,” my dad said.
“Don’t you remember that, Robert?” my mom asked.
“I have no conscious memory of that guys,” I said sincerely. “None.”
My mom had brought apple juice for the three of us. Before I was born, it had been my dad’s favorite drink. He got my mom into it. She liked it and when I came along, I loved it too. Time was passing slowly in the dream. My parents and I were enjoying a real picnic. There was only joy and one answer already to one of my deepest mysteries. There were no menacing clouds or lightening, no devil in sight. I was thinking, “I dare him to come into this loving scene after my parents kicked his ass in the concentration camp.” My father spoke next, as I took a drink of cold apple juice.
“The main reason we are here to see you, son, is also the main of two reasons why we were assigned to Respite instead of heaven. Your mom and I made a bad decision in regard to you when you were a very little boy. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time, but we weren’t. We found that out when the Gate Keeper explained it to us.”
“What was it, Dad? I don’t remember you or Mom ever doing anything to hurt me.”
“Son,” my father said softly, “when you were two years old, your mom and I had a baby girl. We named her Lena in honor of your mother’s grandmother who had the same name. Lena was about two months premature. She was the tiniest of infants, and she was born with a serious heart defect. But she was a fighter and against all odds she was allowed to come home to us when she was six weeks old. We put her in a crib in your bedroom and it worked out well because she was a well behaved baby and maybe too because she was weak, she usually slept through the night and didn’t disturb you. From the first moment we brought her into your bedroom you were fascinated with her.”
The tag team conversationalists that my mother and father were switched to my mother.
“You would go to the side of the bassinet and stand there for the longest time watching her. Then you wanted to rub her head and face and we both taught you about her soft spot and that when you touched her you had to be extremely gentle, almost as if your fingers were feathers. You would spend hours in that room with her, fascinated with her breathing, her falling asleep, her waking up, why she cried, how she moved her tiny fingers. From the time we brought her home there was no doubt that you spent more time with her than any other person. You doted on her as much as a two-year-old boy possibly could. You even asked us if you could feed her and we taught you to sit on a chair outside the bassinet that was the perfect height for you and you would hold that bottle in her mouth and sit there like a statute until the bottle was empty and you would call out for Mommie.”
Dad’s turn.
“But Lena was a weak baby. She had to go into the hospital for periodic procedures. When she was gone, you would spend long periods of time in your room. You would look at Golden Books then you’d get up to check the bassinet to see if Lena had magically reappeared. Then you would color and after a while you’d check the bassinet. You might play with your toy instruments or your big Tonka truck or your small Tootsie Toy cars that were from my childhood. But no matter what you were doing, you would always stop yourself and check to see if Lena had returned.”
“When your mom would finally carry Lena home from the hospital and put her in the bassinet, you would become the happiest little boy there ever was.”
Then my mother said, “While Lena was away at the hospital you would always ask us, ‘When that little baby coming home again?’ And as the first year passed completely by you started asking, ‘When that baby gonna come outside and play with me?’ But Lena was so sick because her heart problem never got better and never went away. A few days after Lena turned one and you were just slightly past three, we had to take Lena in for another procedure. This time her weak little heart couldn’t take it. She died and never came home again.” Mom’s eyes welled with tears even after all the years removed from Lena’s death.
Dad continued when he saw Mom’s tears, “But that didn’t stop you from asking about your baby sister. Time after time, day after day, you would ask, ‘When that baby coming home again?’ No matter what answer we gave you, your questions never stopped. Shortly after Lena died, your mom and I decided to take the bassinet, all her clothes and her precious toys out of the room and put them in storage in the attic so you wouldn’t think about her so much. But you still continued asking. One time we told you that Lena had gone to heaven and you asked, ‘What’s heaven?’”
“We talked it over between ourselves and decided about three months after Lena died never to talk about her again, because we knew that even though you were merely a little boy, you were hurting over the absence of your sister. You asked about her for over a year. Every day you would go into your bedroom and sit on your bed reading or playing with Linkin Logs or your Erector set for hours.”
Dad’s turn again.
“I’d go in your bedroom to see what you were doing in there so long. You’d say, ‘I’m waiting for Lena to come home.’ So I’d ask you to come outside and play baseball with me. You’d always say yes. Then we’d play catch and I’d pitch a baseball to you and you got pretty good at throwing, hitting, catching and fielding. When you were three, four, five we would play in our backyard, but after you were six, I promised I would take you to the ‘big boy’ park. That just happened to be Mark White Park—right across from Bridgeport’s famous quarry. Then on an unused diamond, I hit thousands of ground balls and fly balls to you. And every once in a while we’d hear them blasting in the quarry and we’d feel the ground tremble beneath our feet. Do you remember that, Robert?” my father asked proudly.
“I do,” I said thankfully with a warm smile upon my face.
While my dream father—half of the Two-Knock Ghost—seemed to relish his memory of our ball playing, my mother chimed in.
“After about three years, we thought that you had forgotten Lena. You behaved like a perfectly well-adjusted little boy, who was growing into being a wonderful young man. But the Gate Keeper told us we were wrong, that you had pushed your pain regarding Lena deep into your sub conscious, that someday it would catch up to you and cause you immense grief. We were explained that when your time of pain arrived, that would be our time to come to help you.”
The three of us had finished the main part of the meal and we were enjoying Mom’s famous lemon meringue pie.
Dad continued, rather ominously. “Son, there is one other reason why we are here and it is not pleasant. Through all of your boyhood we sent you to Catholic school. From first grade through fifth grade you attended St. Anthony’s at Twenty-Seventh and Wallace. In the summer between your fifth and sixth grades, we bought a house on Thirty-Second and Low, only four short blocks from our Union Avenue house but from sixth through eighth grades you were enrolled in St. David’s on Thirty-Third and Emerald. Do remember those facts, Robert?”
“I do,” I said once again, as a river of memories from each school came flooding into me.
“The problem was your second grade nun, Sister Mary Timothy. She was a very devout, overly zealous, utterly unhappy and punitively oriented teacher. She was always talking about the devil, teaching her students about how the devil was always watching you, relentlessly stalking you, always tempting you to turn away from goodness to the Dark Side, long before Darth Vader.”
“How did you know about Darth Vader? Didn’t you die before Star Wars came out?”
“We did in fact, but the Gate Keeper allowed us to see what was happening on earth from time to time. It was like watching a news reel for your mother and I. But back to Sister Timothy. She used to have special little classes for the girls only and special classes for the boys only. God only knows what she told the girls, but you would come home and tell us what she told you and some of it was pretty disturbing to us. Here’s some of the things she told you. If you masturbated the devil would punish you. If you had sex before marriage, the devil would punish you. I didn’t even know if you were old enough to know what sex was, but she taught you about Lucifer none the less. She told you that if you got divorced, or hurt your wife, or if you became a drunk, the devil would find horrible ways to punish you. You would come home and be absolutely terrified of the things about the devil and his brutal punishments that Sister Timothy would tell you.”
“We almost went to speak with her on a couple of occasions,” my mom said, “but at that time of our lives we believed the nuns spoke the true words of God like the priests did. As we grew up ourselves, we began to think that might not be the case. We found so many things we began to believe were inconsistencies. One of them occurred when we realized that when a movie was too brutal or too frightening or both, the Catholic Church might condemn it so you wouldn’t go to see it. But there was never a limit on what the nuns and priests could preach to you about what the devil and the fires of hell could torture you with for eternity. Your father and I came to believe that stories of the devil and hell could be infinitely more damaging to the psyche of a young child than practically any movie. Threatening someone’s one and only eternal soul as a young child by a creature as hideous as Lucifer could stick with a child for the rest of his life.”
The rotational conversation continued when my dad said: “By the time we realized these what we believed to be awareness, it was too late. You were growing into a beautiful young boy and Sister Timothy was long gone. We thought you had outgrown her scare tactics. But when we died and went to Respite the Gate Keeper told us we were wrong. He told us that what Sister Timothy told you, not once, but scores of times, had hurt you deeply and would catch up to and damage you even more deeply later. He very lovingly told us that we should have admonished Sister Timothy the first time she ever frightened you and you came home and told us about it.”
“Quickly, the years went by. We had asked the grandparents and the older folks in the family never to speak of Lena again and no one ever did. It was as if Lena had never existed.”
“So we hoped,” Mom added contritely. “But she had existed, and that’s where we went wrong.”
The real me couldn’t believe what was happening. The dream me couldn’t believe it either. The Two-Knock Ghost was my parents and they were explaining why I was so screwed up, under my favorite tree while sharing my favorite foods. Beyond that, I believed that this was the most dialogue I had ever experienced in a dream. I was certain that I would remember all of it, just as I remembered notes I had dreamed then woke up and played them on the piano. But was what they were telling me true? Or were they just spoken words without meaning. It was after all, a dream. How could I prove or disprove any of it? I was fighting to cling to every fact so I could begin to research everything tomorrow. Certainly it would be easy to check the birth records for a Lena McKenzie born in Chicago in mid to late 1950. I was born in Luis Memorial Hospital. There was not any reason, I assumed, for my mother to choose a different hospital for her second child. And finding whether Sister Timothy was my second grade teacher would be a snap. No doubt the mammoth Chicago Archdiocese would have that record somewhere.”
“How did you like the meal, Robert?” my mother asked.
“It was wonderful,” I answered. “But the conversation was better. Besides, how did you prepare all that stuff in Respite?”
“We have a great deal of tiny little miracles there, Robert, especially when we appear in a dream. That affords us a great deal of flexibility in our cooking process. Almost anything is possible.” He had a wry smile on his face as he often did when he tried to make me laugh. I smiled. That was it. As soon as I did so, my mother’s happy face was replaced with immediate sadness.
“We have to leave now, Robert,” she said softly.
“Will you come back again?”
Dad answered, “That depends on you and how you handle the information we’ve shared with you and whether the Gate Keeper tells us our work here is finished. It’s been a wonderful blessing to see you, but your mom and I are excited to see what lies beyond Respite.”
“I understand completely, Dad, but if I get to see you two again, that would be a true blessing for me.”
Cleanup of the picnic site was fun to watch. Mom opened the top of the big picnic basket and one by one things started lifting themselves in slow motion, as if in a Disney movie, and placing themselves neatly into the basket. As I watched, I thought that the only thing missing from the scene was accompanying music. I thought of the song “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and played it in my dream mind as the eating utensils floated weightlessly into the basket. The finale was the folding in on itself of the cream colored sheet, which had been placed on the lush grass to hold the food. My music ended perfectly as my mother closed the lid. Then she came to hug me and we gave each other our perfunctory kiss on each other’s cheeks, then my father came over and hugged me while we blew fart kisses on each other’s necks with our lips and laughed hysterically when we did it. Strange, I always thought of my father as an extremely sophisticated man, but not when we were making fart sounds on each other’s skin. Then we quickly switched sides, blew some more fart sounds, and laughed even more the second time.
“I love you, son,” he said, still smiling.
“I love you, Robert,” my mother said elegantly.
Then each of them grabbed a handle of the picnic basket simultaneously and began floating backward slowly toward the golden glowing open door that rested in the southeastern sky.
“I love you both,” I said from the depths of my soul, knowing that they had sacrificed years of eternal bliss for the opportunity to help me when I needed it the most.
The Two-Knock Ghost was gone. Perhaps never to return, behind a door that I could not access no matter how diligently I might try. How I wished that I could see them again, if only for a moment, to tell them what I had done with their information. But now it was my turn to find out if what they had told me was the truth or merely the absurd fiction of a dream.