Author's note: This story first appeared in Specs4ever's second eBook. Since it's been well over a year, now is the time to publish it on V&S. Merry Christmas!
It is the same dream every night. It is Monday, exactly a week before Labour Day 1995, a beautiful sunny day. Diane and I are walking back from school where we prepare for the start of our third year as teachers and on the way home she tells me that come May, I am going to be a father. The doctor has confirmed it and that’s where she went just after lunch. She says she didn’t want to tell me until she knew for certain. We walk entwined, happy as only those who are going to become parents for the first time can be, my hand on her belly.
Of course nothing shows after only six weeks but somewhere underneath my hand, deep inside her body, protected, sleeps our child, our future. Her skin is smooth, warm and the smell of her is so enticing. I stop her and take a photograph of her in front of a hedge of rose bushes. They smell lovely and I wish their smell would be caught on the film as well as hers. I still have the picture and look at it every day. If only we had known…
We are stopping by the opticians on the way home to pick up her new glasses. Diane is quite nearsighted and even if I’ve never been particularly fond of glasses, Diane has always managed to look stunning in them. In the past, I often asked her why she stuck with them and didn’t get contact lenses instead. She had always laughed and said that even if she could have tolerated contacts for more than the couple of hours she could, she would still wear them as she liked wearing glasses. She would then grab hold of me, look me in the eye mock-worriedly and ask me if I didn’t love her anymore because she wore glasses? I would smile and say I loved her whichever way, that she looked stunning with or without glasses and it was just that I found it so hard to understand. Just as hard to understand as that she had chosen me and had wanted to become my wife. We would then laugh and melt into a loving embrace.
Even by her standards, her new glasses are something special. She hasn’t needed an increase for a couple of years, but this time she had required an increase of –1½D to –12D. She has chosen an older frame in a very large eye-size by Rodenstock called Beate in a kind of peachy pink the optician was about to discard as deadstock. They are fitted with lenses in the new lightweight and high refractive index MR-8 plastic from Zeiss, so they are nowhere near as thick as her old ones are. They cost a fortune but as soon as the assistant helps her put them on to adjust them, I see that they are worth every cent of the $285 we are paying for them. If Diane was stunning before, she truly is to die for now!
As we step out into the sunshine, I take out my camera again. Diane is so happy! She immediately assumes a completely natural pose, then realises she is too close so she takes a few steps back, off the sidewalk and in front of a parked van. In the background I hear a car gunning its engine as I make the final adjustments to focus and composition. Diane smiles enticingly at me through the viewer, then in a flash everything changes.
Tires squealing, the driver frantically trying to brake his heavy old Cadillac and bring it back under control. It slams into Diane and the parked van. She is trapped between and there is no room for her lower body among the mangled wreckage. There is a surprised look in her eyes as she slumps over the hood of the Cadillac, then I’m there and lift her up. Blood is seeping out of her mouth as she coughs. She is dying before my eyes. She knows it. I know it.
‘Jake, take the glasses’, she manages to get out. Incredibly they are not damaged. She must somehow have thrown her arms in front of her face. I take them off her and put them in the inside pocket of my jacket. ‘How can we be rational?’, I think as I do.
‘Jake, I’m dying. Promise me you will find love again!’, Diane whispers as more blood comes out of her mouth. Laying across the hood of the Cadillac, supporting her as she takes her final few breaths. I can’t believe this is real.
A final effort. ‘Jake, promise. You will know when…’ The last breath leaves her body. She seems to shrink before me as her eyes which have held on to me with all the remaining force of her life lose focus and glaze over…
The dream never leaves me and I never wake, I cannot wake, until I have heard her last words and seen that final breath leave her body. As I cannot go back to sleep, I get out of bed and walk into the living room and the glass cabinet in which I keep her glasses and that final portrait of her in front of the rose bushes. ‘Promise me you will find love again!’, her voice echoes in my mind. ‘Jake, promise. You will know when…’ But when never comes…
By the time the police and ambulance arrived, it had been long over. I have no recollection of how they prised me loose from the mangled body that had once been my Diane. I have no recollection of the long months after when I was being kept heavily sedated. My first memory is of the smell of roses in the air. That was April 1996, seven months after the day my Diane had died and with her our child, and I remembered. Slowly as days and weeks passed, I became aware of my surroundings and the people whose job it was to put me back together. “And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”
But over the next year they did and one day I was well enough for my parents to come and take me home. That Fall in 1997, I went back to teaching, gradually. After the first year, I was ready to resume my teaching career but not in my hometown. Diane and I had only just started to get our home in order, but of course it had to be sold along with almost all our belongings. The only things I kept were my camera, the photos and her glasses, then I headed out west to Medford, Oregon.
Three years later, my life was almost back on track. I taught maths and physics at McLoughlin Middle School and had bought a small house on the southern outskirts. It may have been on the small side for a family, but it was plenty big to me. Most of my free time I spent up and down Interstate 5 visiting the various volcanic Natural Monuments. The first weekend after school had started, a couple of my new colleagues had taken me along for a hike to Roxy Ann Peak which is a 30 million years old 3,576-foot-tall extinct volcano just east of Medford with a great view. There I had found peace which is why I hared up and down I5. Shasta, Three Sisters, Mt Hood, Newberry, Crater Lake, Medicine Lake and the Lava Beds National Monument with those Native American rock carvings at Petroglyph point. Peace… But I never went to Lassen just across the state border because that’s where Diane and I had spent our final vacation together and that’s where our child had been conceived.
Towards the end of my third year in Medford, I had gotten involved in a project to help disadvantaged kids. Because Medford was beginning to see a rise in drug-related crime and gang activity, it was thought that organised activities would help keep them out of trouble. Not all of them, sure. Some. As long as we managed to make a difference to even one or two out of every batch, it was worthwhile. The reason I had been drafted in was because my kids respected me as a good teacher, even if it would be to stretch the truth much too far to say I was loved. Also, my out-doors experience was ideal.
That summer in 2001, Jim McNaughton who taught PE at McLoughlin and in contrast to me was loved by the students for his cheery, no-nonsense attitude, and I were taking a group of nine 10- to 11-year old boys on a two-week hike to the Three Sisters area. We were going to sleep in tents and catch much of our food ourselves as we trekked through the park. On the fifth day we were below Broken Top and were going to stay there for a couple of days. I asked Jim if it would be ok if I made off to the summit overnight to have a closer look and as we had already set camp, Jim said it would be ok. As I was making ready packing my gear, I noticed one of the boys stand there looking at me. It was the quiet boy called Rob and if I remembered correctly, he and his baby sister had been orphaned some four years ago. His sister being only a few months old had been adopted almost immediately while Rob, who had been six at the time, had gone from one foster family to another ever since.
‘Hey, mister. Can I come with you?’, the boy said. Not rudely, but rather guardedly as if all he expected was an unkind rebuttal.
‘Sure! I’d love the company, Rob. Only it’ll be a rough hike and we’ll be sleeping somewhere up there.’ I pointed towards a point in the cirque just below the summit.
‘I can handle that. Is that the crater? It’s pretty big.’
‘It’s called a cirque and it’s where an old glacier carved away what was the crater and much of the south slope of the mountain.’
He was true to his word, he could handle it. He didn’t speak much, only to ask me questions about what we saw and seemed to file it away because he very quickly and correctly identified similar features further along as we encountered them. When we finally got to where we were going to pitch our tent, Rob was fascinated by the differently coloured layers of the rock wall that rose above our heads. I told him that the layers were called strata and that’s why this type of volcano was called a stratovolcano and explained how they had been created and why their colours were so different. Again, he seemed to take it all in. Rob was obviously a bright kid and I was sure that if it hadn’t been for his parents being killed, he’d never have become “disadvantaged”.
After we had pitched our tent, I cooked our dinner on the spirit stove. We got water from the snow that still hadn’t melted even if it was late June and then it was easy to heat the dry-frozen dinners. After we had eaten and washed up as best we could, i.e. scraped off the food with the large-grained snow crystals, we sat admiring the view to the south as the sun began to move towards the horizon behind the Sisters to the west.
‘I like it here. It’s quiet’, Rob suddenly said.
‘Me too. I go here or to any of the other volcanoes around our beautiful state just because of that.’
‘You married, mister?’
‘Please, call me Jake, Rob. No, not anymore. My wife was run over and killed in the street six years ago.’
‘My parents were killed in a car crash. Did you have any kids?’ I told him no and he left it at that.
I was woken some time during the middle of the night by Rob screaming in his sleep. I gently woke him but he rolled away into a corner of the tent, his fists balled up in front of him and a look of fury on his face. I realised I had to be very careful here, not because he could hurt me but rather the other way round. I pulled my knees up to my chin and put my arms around them.
‘Rob, I too have terrible dreams at night and wake up screaming…’ I could see that I had his attention even if his hands were still balled up into fists, protectively held in front of his chest.
‘Up here among the mountains is the only place I don’t have them so that’s why I get out of Medford as often as I can, even in winter.’
‘Why?’ I knew he wasn’t asking me why I didn’t have the dreams here but why I was having bad dreams. I told him that my wife Diane had died in my arms, that she had been terribly mangled and that our child had died with her. I told him that every night I dreamt about our last hour together and that I couldn’t wake until she again had died in my arms. I didn’t go into any detail, only the bare outline much like this. Rob had lowered his fists and was mimicking my position, knees to his chin.
‘I was in the car with mom and dad and Michelle. Dad was very dead, but mom was screaming with blood all over and Michelle was screaming scared. Then they came and took mom and Michelle away and that’s the last I saw of them. And they beat me!’
‘Who beat you?’
‘My foster parents because I scream at night. They want to get rid of me.’
My decision was made there and then. Rob would not go back to his foster parents, he would go home with me as his guardian. It was surprisingly easy. The social services took our depositions, then informed the Carters that Rob wasn’t coming back and that they would send someone to pick up his stuff. Rob went home with me and I’ve never had any cause to regret it. Pretty soon his nightmares stopped even if mine didn’t, and it wasn’t long before he called me dad, accidentally first, then by design. He was a very bright kid and did well at school, both academically and at sports.
The winter when Rob was 15 going on 16, that’s a little over seven years ago, I had bought an old, low-mileage –69 Dodge Charger with a 225 engine (not so much hard driving) so that he would have a car to drive once he got his learner’s license. We stripped it down completely, repaired all the bodywork and prepared it for painting, then we tackled all the mechanical stuff. Instead of the 225, we’d gotten a 440 and were rebuilding it into an R/T. By Easter we had gotten the paint job done and it was back in the garage, ready for assembly. In the meantime, we used my car for his driving lessons.
One day when we were assembling the engine I noticed that Rob was not his usual self. He was brooding over something. As usual, I said nothing but waited for him to tell me in his own good time.
‘Dad?’ (‘U-hm?’) ’I think I’ve found Michelle.’
‘You have?’ I put down the pistons and piston rings I had been assembling and fitting to the block and wiped my hand on a rag. ‘Let’s have a coffee or a Coke and tell me all about it’. I went inside and grabbed a couple of cans for us and tossed Rob one as we sat down on the porch.
‘Remember we went over to Yreka for a game in February, dad?’
‘Yeah, you scored four goals, right?’
‘Sure. Well, I saw this kid there, she was about nine or ten I guess, and I thought there was something familiar about her.’
‘Oh yes?’, I replied noncommitally.
‘Well, we were over there for an athletics meet this Wednesday and I saw her again. Some adult called her, then grabbed her and pulled her along as if she was a retard. I heard him call her Michelle and she said ‘aow-ouch’ as he grabbed her. Since they were the other side of the fence there was nothing I could do. But she has the looks of mom. I think. I’m sure it must be my sister.’
‘Son, leave it with me for the time being and I’ll look into it.’ Because of being involved in the project for disadvantaged kids, I have a few friends at the Social Services office whom I could ask to make discreet enquiries. To make a long story short, they found out that it indeed was Michelle and that the Social Services of Siskiyou County, California were considering an intervention as there were reports filed by concerned neighbours and school staff about possible domestic violence directed against her. The problem was that as she had been legally adopted, it would take a court decision to revoke that adoption and that might prove costly as well as take time. To our surprise, the Lorrimers were ready to give her up without much of a fight as according to them, she was obstinate and stupid if not downright retarded. Still the legal paperwork took both time and money, but on August 28th, that fateful date in my life, Rob and I took his Charger “R/T” the 45-minute trip to Yreka just on the other side of the state border to pick up his sister with Rob at the wheel.
The Lorrimers had been wrong, dead wrong. That little girl was as sharp as nails! It was they who were much too stupid to even begin to understand her. What’s worse than the beatings is that they had neglected her. It was Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children” all over again. She didn’t have a sufficient amount of whole and clean clothes, she was dirty herself and her hair tangled and unkempt. Also, it didn’t take myself and Rob long to realise that there was something wrong with her eyes as she didn’t seem to see much outside the car. She even had trouble seeing Black Butte rising over 1800 feet just under a mile away, much less the mighty twin peaks of Shasta and Shastina with a prominence of almost 10,000 feet, meaning they rise some 10,000 feet above the surrounding plain.
When we got home, the first thing we did was show Michelle her new room which Rob and I had decorated. She was ecstatic! She hadn’t had her own room before but had shared a smaller one with two other children. I knew what kind of people the Lorrimers were, scum of the Earth they are! They make a living by taking on foster kids and spend the money the social services pay them on themselves instead of on the kids. While Michelle hadn’t quite assimilated what had happened, that Rob was her elder brother and that she’d have a proper home from now on, how could she? It was going to take time.
Rob helped carry her bag in and she wanted to unpack it straight away but I told her to leave be as I’d rather throw away most of the rags the Lorrimers had provided. I told her that first thing tomorrow, we would go out together and get her new clothes, plenty of them but that at the top of the to-do list was to get her an appointment at an optometrists to check her eyes. She would get a proper haircut as well, I said, at a real hairdressers. Right now however, I wanted her to go and have a proper bath and put on some clean clothes as Rob was cooking our dinner tonight and I had a couple of telephone calls to make. After showing her the bathroom and everything, I left her to it and went to make my calls. Rob had put the car away and was busy in the kitchen.
Since I knew Stan Parrish, his eldest was in my class, I decided to call him about Michelle’s eyes. Kyle Parrish was at a troublesome age and had the reputation of being unruly and the class clown to boot. I’d spoken to them on a few occasions and they had called me at home, quite often and always outside their working hours.
‘Hi Stan, this is Jake Kendrick. Look, I know it’s outside working hours but as I recall you’ve called me quite often about Kyle, so I figured you wouldn’t mind. I have a bit of an optical emergency and I hope you can help.’ I told him about Michelle and how urgent I thought it was to get her eyes seen to. Stan was quite understanding and told me to bring her along at 9.30, half an hour before his regular opening time. I thanked him and said we’d be there.
Rob had made Bolognese. He’s really a good hand at cooking and everything else about the house. I’m a firm believer in kids helping out with everyday chores, especially boys as they would otherwise become a burden to future girlfriends and wives. A man shouldn’t be too lazy or too proud to help out! I helped him set the plates, then I knocked on the bathroom door to tell Michelle dinner would be ready in five.
As we sat down, Rob and I said grace. Michelle didn’t. Instead she asked us why we did. It was Rob who answered.
‘It’s not that we’re really religious or so. Dad and I say grace to remind ourselves that we’re lucky to have a nice house to live in and that there is food on the table, Michelle.’
‘Why do you call him dad? He’s not your dad. Our parents died in a car crash, you told me that.’
‘Yeah, sis. But it’s one thing to make a baby and another to bring up a child. You should have seen some of the people I had to stay with before I met Jake and he took me in. There was no call on him to do so only he felt it wasn’t right the way I was treated. They used to beat me because I had bad dreams. Jake’s given me a good home and helped me a lot. That car we got you in, well he bought it for me so I would have something to drive when I turned sixteen and then we restored it together over the winter. And that’s why I call him dad ‘cause he is to me even if he’s not my father. You’ll see.’ Clever Rob! He said exactly the right things.
Michelle turned to me. ‘Jake, is that why you take me in? Because I wasn’t treated right?
‘Well, yes, but not really. Even if both your brother and I really do hate the way you were treated. No, I took you in because Rob is your brother and you are his sister. Family should be together, brothers and sisters should grow up together under the same roof. You were too little to remember your brother, but he was six and remembered you. He’s been thinking about you every day and thought he’d never ever see you. He’s missed you like…, like blazes but we both realise it’s going to take you a while to get used to having a brother.’
The next morning we were up and ready in good time for the appointment. I had Rob drive us and he pointed out to his sister that was another reason he called me dad. Because Jake trusts me, he said. When we got downtown, Rob parked the car and we walked the rest of the way. Stan Parrish was as good as his word and let us in on the dot. He took Michelle with him while Rob and I waited.
When they came back, I could tell that Stan was upset. He showed me the prescription: OD –3.50, OS –3.25 and said it was a scandal that she hadn’t been corrected before. The poor girl would have had to strain her eyes to see anything beyond about five or eight feet, he said. And how she had coped in school he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
‘I’m just as upset as you are Stan’, I replied. ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg. Why do you think I stirred up hell to have this young lady released into my care?
‘You did the right thing Jake. I’m sorry I was a bit grumpy when you called yesterday. You say you picked her up in Yreka after work, right? Then you must have put her eyes at the very top of your list of priorities which is what I would have done myself. You are a good man, Jake Kendrick, truly good. No, there’s no charge for this young lady. No, I insist. You’ve done a lot for my Kyle above and beyond duty, and I guess you’re about to spend a couple of thousand more today, am I right?’
‘Something like that Stan, thank you very much. And don’t worry too much about Kyle. He’ll settle down within a year, he’s really a good kid at heart. Thanks! Say thank you Mr Parrish, Michelle.’ She duly did and Stan told her that she was a very lucky young lady with someone as nice as Mr Kendrick to look after her.
We then went over to the 1-hour service where I told Michele that we would get her two pairs in case one broke and that she could choose the first. She immediately went through, it must have been all but a few of the children’s frames in the store, trying them on and looking at herself in the mirror. She finally settled on a rather robust pair in a pink fade but very girlish all the same. I asked her why she had chosen those.
We-el, she said. They looked nice on her, they felt nice and comfortable and they seemed rugged enough not to break even if she had a fall or dropped them. I told her that since she was so responsible about it, I would let her choose the second pair as well.
‘So if I hadn’t chosen these but something silly you wouldn’t have allowed me to choose any?
‘No Michelle, I would have let you stand by your choice. Only I would have chosen a sensible pair for the second ones, one that you liked though. Now that you have proven that you can be trusted to choose wisely, you can have whichever pair you want. Even if it is a silly one.’
She went back to the chore of selecting a second frame, very happy. Even if she tried more daring frames, some even from the ladies’ rack, she settled on another sensible pair. This time an oval pair in black acetate.
‘Even if you said I could choose whichever I wanted Jake, I wouldn’t want a pair that broke if I had an accident’.
I paid for the glasses and we went over to the hairdressers. I thought Rob might have wanted some time off on his own, but he said he preferred to stick with us. Michelle was thrilled to have a proper haircut. I told her that since I knew nothing about cutting hair and hairstyles appropriate for young ladies, I would trust the judgement of the lady who was going to cut it for her. I told the young lady that we were waiting to pick up Michelle’s new glasses and that she should make allowances for that. When she had finished, Michelle looked very nice and the lady said that now the tangles were all gone, she could grow her hair long if she wanted to. Michelle asked me if she could and I replied, certainly. If she promised me she would wash it frequently and brush it out both morning and evening. From that day on, Michelle took excellent care of her hair.
We then went back to the 1-hour service. Michelle’s glasses were ready. As the assistant put them on for the first time, Michelle said ‘Wow!!! Is that what the world looks like!’. I told her she had to wait a few minutes before she could set off and explore it as the assistant would have to adjust them for a proper fit first. But the first thing she did once it was done was to throw herself into my arms and beckon Rob to come over for a hug. She was actually crying, she was that moved. But she still called me Jake when she thanked me. We then set about getting her a completely new wardrobe.
Again, she showed how sensible she was even if she was thrilled to bits. ‘Jake, I heard Mr Parrish say it would cost several thousand dollars. That’s too much!’
‘But honey, you will need all those clothes as the ones you have are of poor quality and, quite frankly, mostly worn out hand-downs if not outright rags.’
‘But I don’t need winter clothes and shoes right now, Jake!’ Rob was silently laughing as he listened to his little sister twisting me round her finger. I know she was, but I was letting her!
‘Can’t we just get what I need for the next few months instead? That way I won’t outgrow everything so quickly. And I get to go out shopping with you and Rob!’ She was skipping along now. And holding both Rob’s hand and mine.
‘You like that, do you sis’, Rob half-asked.
‘Yes! I love it. This is the best day of my life! The world is so beautiful now that I can see it again and I’ve had my first real haircut and I am getting lots and lots of new clothes and I get to go out with people who don’t yell at me and grab me hard enough to give me bruises!’ She was so extraordinarily pretty in her new-found happiness that Rob and I looked at each other over her head and smiled. It meant just as much to Rob. He silently mouthed a ‘Thank you, dad! I really do love you!’
After we had finished shopping, it had cost me almost exactly 2,000 dollars, glasses and haircut included, we packed away our boxes and bags in the car. Then we went to a diner where Rob and I had New York strips. Michelle only wanted a pizza. Going out to a proper diner was another first for her.
When we got home, we brought everything into her room and helped her pack it away. Little Missy went quite bossy and decided exactly where she wanted us to pack away everything. She looked just like a school marm with her glasses perched on her nose, hand held aloft and decisively pointing with her index finger to where we were to put everything. Rob and I let her boss us without a word of protest but were both silently laughing inside. We saw how happy she was!
Once finished, we got another hug from Michelle who was completely transformed once she had changed into one of her new dresses. I told her that I expected her to change her underwear every day, never again expected to see her wear dirty clothes and to put all dirty clothes in the hamper and that she was expected to help out with the washing just as both Rob and I did. She looked at me as if I was demanding of her what was self-evident and she proved that so it was.
It turned out she was like that. Head screwed on right, quick to learn and ready to take responsibility for herself even at the age of ten going on eleven. She settled in quickly and it wasn’t long before we were functioning as a family of three but she never did call me anything other than Jake, or sometimes Mr Kendrick in front of strangers. She even surprised me by washing and neatly packaging away everything she had outgrown, then telling me that she wanted me to give it to the disadvantaged children I was helping. Eventually her black glasses went that way too but not her pink ones. She was going to keep those for ever she said.
Three years later it was as if Michelle had lived with us forever even if Rob had gone off to Uni last Fall. Michelle had quickly caught up with and then easily passed her classmates so she was moving up a year. She has grown a lot and is no longer the cuddly little girl of ten she was when she moved in, she is a young woman. To mark this, she wanted to have a new pair of glasses fit for a young woman and not the girl’s glasses she had worn up to then. She has had several increases to her prescription and now wears her –6D prescription in a very large eye-size, I think it’s a 54-14, retro-style black cateye glasses that make her look incredibly saucy. I’m going to have to keep an evil eye out for yowling tomcats, I have…
The day school closed for the summer break, I found her standing in front of the cabinet. I had already told her who the woman in the photo was and that it was her glasses that were in front of it. There’s something unusual in the way she stands in front of the cabinet and looks at my shrine to Diane. After a couple of minutes she becomes aware that I am standing there, watching her. She blushes.
‘Oh hello, Jake. I didn’t hear you.’ I smile at her.
‘Jake, can I ask you something? It’s really, really important.’ I nod, still smiling.
‘Jake, I know these are her glasses but may I please try them on? Please?’
I unlocked the cabinet and handed her the glasses. She took off her own glasses and put them on the table. Then, reverently, she puts Diane’s glasses on and slowly turns to face me.
‘Do I look like her?’ This is no mere 13-year old child asking, gaily and innocently. She knows how much this is costing me, she wants very much to look like Diane, not for her own sake but for mine, and is afraid to have asked too much of both herself and me. Afraid to shatter the confidence.
I force myself to look at Michelle wearing her glasses and evoke the spectre of my dead wife. ‘Both yes and no, Michelle. Diane was Spring but you are Autumn. Her face too was oval but not quite as oval as yours. Her nose was sharper and her lips while as generous as yours were slightly wider. But the eyes, God help me, the eyes are the same.’
Michelle looks at me, her head tilting slightly to the side. There is no amusement or pleasure in them, only sadness which only makes it worse. I can feel my eyes starting to brim.
‘Thank you Jake’, she says softly and removes the glasses, again almost reverently, before she carefully replace them in their proper place in front of the black-and-white portrait. She gently closes the cabinet door, locks it and presses the key into my hand but does not let go of my hand.
‘Jake…?’, she asks, hesitantly. ‘Will you let me wear them once I am eighteen?’
I look down at her peering myopically at me, she has not yet put on her own glasses.
‘And will you please take me camping the in the middle of July? To Lassen…’
‘Michelle…’, I begin.
‘I know Jake. I know it is asking a lot. I know how hard it is for you. But it is terribly important to me. I’ll understand if you say no and I’ll accept it, but please, say that you will?’
She is right, I do not want to. But at the same time I can tell it is very important to her. It has been 15 years, isn’t it time I tried to lay this particular ghost to rest? I finally make up my mind.
‘Yes Michelle, you are right. It has been so long that there is no logical reason not to. Yes, we shall go camping to Lassen in July.’
Michelle puts her now long and delicate hands on my shoulders, goes on tip-toes and kisses me very gently on the lips. ‘Thank you Jake’. She then goes over to the table and puts her own glasses on again. She kisses me goodnight, then disappears into the bathroom.
I stand in front of the portrait. I cannot go on hugging her much longer, Diane! She is fast becoming a young woman and so God help me, I am beginning to react to her. Help me Diane! She is such a sweet young thing and I am such a sad old thing. I want her to be happy, to grow up happy and safe. Help me Diane!
Diane?!?
But there is only silence…
******
On the 21st of July, we pitched our tent just off the path on the foothills of Brokeoff Mountain and cooked our dinner on our spirit stoves. As the sun set and the almost full Moon rose over the horizon, we sat watching the beautiful landscape bathe in a pale, almost golden light.
‘Haven’t you ever wondered why I never call you dad, Jake?’
Yes, I had wondered at that. Rob and I had been close, very close, and it hadn’t taken him long to start calling me dad. But Rob and I had never been as close as Michelle and I are. I nod.
‘I know I should have. You have been so wonderful to both of us and mean so much to us and you really deserve to be called Dad. But there’s something inside me that tells me that it would be wrong, very wrong. Don’t ask me why, I just know it.’
She is sitting just like her brother Rob used to, arms wrapped around her legs with her chin on her knees, looking to her right, away from me, so I can see the bend in the path through her lovely, large retro cateye frame.
‘If we walk past that bend and then turn right after a couple of miles there’s a small path, almost invisible. If we follow that almost to the tree-line, there’s a small glade that overlooks the valley. Will you take me there?’
My heart is racing, I’ve certainly never told her, Rob or anyone else of that glade or what happened in that glade fifteen years ago to the day tomorrow. ‘Why?’, I manage to ask.
‘Because that’s where Diane conceived, isn’t it. I would like to see it.’
‘Michelle, I have never ever told anyone and Diane never did. So how did you know? Are you Diane, reincarnated?’ I am shocked, horrified, intrigued, yearning. All at the same time.
‘No Jake, I am Michelle. But I remember it. Why do I remember it? I also remember dying, I was wearing those glasses and we had just picked them up at the opticians and I was going to have my photograph taken. But I don’t remember you. It scares me, Jake, really scares me. Will you tell me what happened that day, what you always dream about? I need to know.’ She has moved over and snuggled up close for comfort. Her hands are cold and they hold on to my free one, pressing it to her right shoulder.
So I told her all, not just the short version that I had fed them previously, but all. From the moment Diane came back from her doctor’s appointment and told me the news, how I had taken that photograph of her in front of the rose bushes, how we had picked up her new glasses and how radiantly beautiful she had been. How the old Cadillac had skidded out of control and how Diane had died in my arms. Everything! Even her final words to me. Michelle is crying now, her hands on my shoulders and her head on my chest as I hold her to me as I finish my tale in the mental institution, waking to the smell of roses.
‘Oh, Jake! How bitter, bitter, bitter sad! I’m so sorry for you it’s breaking my heart. It’s so unfair!’, and she cries even more.
‘It is so many years ago now’, I reply. ‘I’ve already shed every tear allotted to me in my lifetime. Years ago. For years, there was a huge hole where my heart was supposed to be, but having first Rob and then you has opened up a window through which the sun shines again. Having lost everything, I’m so grateful to have found two such wonderful people such as you and your brother. I really do love you and to me, you are my children.’
‘Jake, promise me that you will take me to the glade! Please? I don’t know why you must, only that it is terribly important.’
That night we curled up together in the tent, but no snickering! Please! Both of us needed the assurance of another human being close to us and we both slept well into the morning. It wasn’t until well into the afternoon that we got to the glade. I point out the spot where Diane and I had made love and our child had been conceived. Michelle went over there, but surprised me when she asked me to stay where I was. She stopped just short of the spot I had indicated, then went down on her knees, almost as reverently as if in church, no, more so, and touched the deer-cropped grass with the palms of her hands. It was almost as if she was channelling energy from it. I sat down as I usually do, hugging my knees with my chin on top.
After a few minutes, Michelle joined me. She sat down in front of me, facing me, not by my side as she usually did and she sat down on her legs with her hands on her knees, the same way Diane sometimes had when there was something she had to tell me.
‘Jake? I have something very important to tell you so will you promise to listen?’ I nod. ‘Jake, remember how I told you I’ve always felt it was wrong to call you dad? Well, I think I know now. Even when I was a little girl, long before I met you, I’ve always known I had been set aside for something special. And when you and Rob found me and took me home it was so wonderful to have a family at last, to have a father and a brother and to be cared for. But there was always something more and that’s why I couldn’t call you dad even though you really, really were and did deserve it. But I couldn’t as you were always more to me than just dad. You are who I am set aside for, you are the man who will marry me’.
It was a statement of fact, a fact stemming from incontrovertible conviction. Even if every convention I had been taught by my parents, by the church, by society, screamed that this was wrong, a deathly sin and eternal damnation, I held my peace because what she said balanced this in my conscience. Even if it was just a girlish fancy or crush, I had to listen to her, to take her seriously because to her this was overridingly important. To quash it would be to trample her into the ground and that would be a crime greater than my eternal damnation. And it wasn’t simply a girlish crush as she certainly wasn’t being coquettish and did nothing that could be interpreted as inviting sex.
‘Jake, I know I am only a little girl of thirteen and it’s just under a year since I had my first period. But how can I know all that I do know? When you told me how Diane had died it is as if I opened my eyes and saw you for the first time in the memory of dying and I know what more Diane intended to say…’ Michelle is crying now, tears flooding down her cheeks and I move forward to take her hand but she snatches it away.
‘No Jake, I have to finish this.’ Her voice changes eerily as her eyes focus on Eternity. “‘Jake, take the glasses’… …‘Jake, I’m dying. Promise me you will find love again!’… …’Jake, promise. You will know when the time comes. Please, don’t reject her Jake.’
This is surreal. In front of me, a 13-year old girl is speaking to me, not with the voice of my dead wife but in her own, and she’s saying it exactly as I remember it! Every inflection, every nuance, every cough, every fought-for breath. Reject her? How can I? Even if this is all hallucinations on my part, I can’t destroy this little girl and trample her! To her, this is real and must be absolutely terrifying! She is reliving the death of my Diane from the inside and not, as I mercifully do, from the outside, and from what she has already told me, it’s not the first time. Not by a long chalk! There are only two explanations: either she is a psychic, a mind reader with direct and deep access to the innermost recesses of my brain that are hidden even from me! Or in some wonderful and mysterious way, this is actually a message from beyond the grave. Diane is somehow communicating with me and pleading with me on Michelle’s behalf. Goddamn our social conventions and thank God I never adopted her as I had wanted to!
‘Michelle, when you asked me if you could try on Diane’s glasses, were you really saying that when you are eighteen, you will marry me and that you want to wear her glasses then?’
An almost frightened whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, you have already told me, but not in as many words, that you do realise what the situation is, that you are just shy of fourteen and that we would have to wait until you are eighteen, or I would be sent to prison – for life as I’d probably be killed in prison, that’s what they do to child molesters – and you would be placed in foster care again.’
‘Yes Jake, I realise all that. But I will wait. You know that I don’t want to and that my whole body screams out for you. I am a woman now. Even if I am very young. And I know why you haven’t hugged me like you used to do, you’re afraid that you too would feel the same way and embarrass me and all that. I’ll wait!’ She is biting her lower lip in exactly the same way that Diane used to when she was uncertain or hurting and needed reassurance.
‘Michelle dearest. To me four years and three months will pass quickly, but to you it will be an eternity. And…’ An illogical thought strikes me. ‘…how can you wear Diane’s glasses? They are so much stronger than yours?’
She gives a little laugh and smiles. ‘Don’t worry about that Jake. You’ll see that when the time comes, they will be just perfect for me even if they are exactly twice as strong as my present ones are. But Jake, they will only be strong enough for a few more years then. If even that. Would you mind that very much?’
I shake my head, not quite understanding. I’m not exactly stupid, but this girl is sometimes terrifyingly intelligent, much more so than I am.
‘What do you mean, Michelle? Are you saying that your eyes are likely to deteriorate because it’s hereditary or are you suggesting that you’re making yourself more myopic because you want to?’
‘Yes! From what Rob has told me, my mother was very near-sighted and she’d just had new glasses because of me when she died. Rob says he thinks mom’s glasses may have been a little stronger than Diane’s, so it’s practically certain that my eyes will grow much more nearsighted than this. But Jake, I am not going to take any chances. I am going to work hard at increasing my prescription so I’ll be certain that Diane’s glasses will be perfect when we marry. You will marry me, won’t you Jake?’
I cleared my throat, theatrically, then took Michelle’s now outstretched hand and got down on one knee. ‘My wonderful, beautiful, strange and sometimes frighteningly intelligent Michelle Fischer, will you honor me by becoming my wife on Saturday the 11th of October in the year 2014, the day after your 18th birthday?’
‘Yes, Jacob Eugene Kendrick. I happily accept your offer and will marry you on that date. Until that happy day I promise you that I will be your obedient ward and daughter in everything and especially in the eyes of the world.’
Then she is in my arms. ‘Uh, Jacob? Would you mind very much if I made my eyes really bad? I mean much worse than Diane’s were?’
‘Why would you want to do that, Michelle?’
‘Because I really do like wearing glasses. I love the feeling of my eyes getting slowly worse until I have to have them checked again and get a stronger pair. Just so much stronger that it is apparent to everyone that my new glasses are stronger and the world grows so brilliantly clear again. And I want to go on doing this until my eyes are so bad that no other boy or man will ever want to look at me because of my thick glasses but you will look at me and love me because of them.’
‘Darling Michelle, I don’t need you to wear thick and strong glasses to love you. In fact, I think that you look perfect just now in your big, black cateyes with the slight cut-in at the edges. But you do have a point! There’s bound to be a lot of young wolves howling around you over the next few years because you look so incredibly beautiful and sexy and if we don’t fit you right away, one of them may carry you off and all I can do is to give you away at the altar.’
‘That will never happen Jake! I am true to my word and you and I will be married on Saturday, October the 11th 2014.
After our secret betrothal on the shoulder of Brokeoff Mountain, the sad remnant of Mount Tehama, once the largest of all the Cascade volcanoes, we went home. It’s appropriate that we begin to build our future from the ruins of our broken lives on the ruin of that broken giant. Michelle told Rob when he came home from Uni later that summer where he just had finished his first year of education in medicine and psychology, and he came straight to me.
‘Dad, Michelle just told me that she is marrying you when she turns eighteen. Is that true?’ I had wondered how Rob would take it, in fact I had been more than a little bit apprehensive. His smile and happy countenance put me immediately at ease.
‘Rob, I am very happy to say that it is. It really shouldn’t be possible for a man of 41 to fall in love with his 13-year old ward and she with him with what is not a childish infatuation. But it is what has happened.’
‘Oh, to hell with those old-fashioned morals! Dad, I really and truly am very happy for you. For both of you! Michelle told me everything about how it happened and how you lost Diane. It’s going to be very interesting to learn about it at Uni. But really Dad. Will you let me give her away at the altar?’
‘Rob, I had counted on you being my best man but of course I’d be delighted and I’m sure Michelle would love it!
‘Why can’t I be both? Thanks dad! And dad, please take her to bed, only be very careful about it. You can’t expect her to wait for four years, that’s just not fair on Michelle.’
I promised him that I would take his advice under very serious consideration and that IF we decided to accept it, we would be exceedingly careful as we were both fully aware of the dire consequences. No matter what, these two strays had turned into equally remarkable and wonderful young people.
******
For the next four years, Michelle did keep her promises and then some! She graduated from High School when she was only sixteen. I told you she was frighteningly bright but she really worked hard at it as well. She even had time for a year at University. True to her word, her eyesight had become just bad enough for her to be able to comfortably wear Diane’s glasses in time for the big day.
Rob had finished all his basic courses and had his BA in psychology with only a year left of his medical studies. How he had managed both, I have no idea, but he is almost as bright as his sister. He is staying on for a few more years in order to finish his post-grad studies and research. A little bird has whispered in my ear that his doctoral thesis will be titled “Teenage Love. Infatuation, Romance or Foundation for Marriage?”. I have no idea whatsoever where he could have gotten such a preposterous idea from.
It wasn’t until the very end of the summer that rumour stated that Assistant Professor Kendrick – perhaps I should explain that when I had returned to teaching, I had dropped down to teaching Middle School but soon graduated back to High School from where I had been recruited a few years later to the Teaching Academy – had finally found love to the disappointment of many unmarried ladies of a similar age who had tried in vain to awaken his interest, and that he was rumoured to be wedding a teenager. Some even said that he was going to marry his now 17-year old ward, but that was quickly dismissed as nothing more than vindictive and evil slander.
When the news finally broke in mid-September, there was a bit of a scandal but there were plenty of witnesses, including my friends in the Social Services, that could swear to that there had been no improprieties of any kind – unless kissing one’s children on the cheek and sleeping under the same roof could somehow be construed as child molestation. However, to protect my reputation and stop any malicious rumours in their tracks, Michelle insisted on being examined by a doctor on her 18th birthday to prove there had never been any improprieties in our relationship and made the fact of her intentions publicly known well in advance. Perhaps not so surprising then that the entire student body of Medford sided with myself and Michelle as I was considered to be a very good teacher as well as popular and had continued working with the Social Services-funded programme for disadvantaged children. More surprising was perhaps that almost the entire teaching establishment, albeit far from everyone as some will believe what they wish in the face of irrefutable evidence, turned out on our side. By the time October came round, the hubbub had died down.
We celebrated Michelle’s 18th birthday quietly at home as the wedding preparations took all our time. My one official gift to her was to open the cabinet and take out Diane’s glasses. I ceremoniously took off her present –11 high-index glasses and placed Diane’s, now Michelle’s, Rodenstock Beate glasses on her nose to the applause of Rob and Jim McNaughton as well as any passing angel that might possibly have taken the time to make a house call.
In the end, Michelle and Rob had decided that they wanted him to give her away. Instead, Jim with whom I had formed a formidable partnership within the project as well as a solid personal friendship – he too liked to restore old cars for a hobby amongst many shared interests – was going to be my best man.
The church was packed and I was glad to have Jim’s sturdy presence by my side as I waited by the altar. Finally the doors opened and Rob marched in with his sister on his arm. He is a handsome young devil and it won’t be long before some lucky girl snares him. But my eyes were all on the most beautiful bride I have ever seen. She did not walk, she defied gravity as she glided gracefully down the aisle on the arm of her brother, almost as if she was pulling him along in her eagerness to get to my side. The sunlight coming in through the windows caught her glasses under the veil and sent sparkling reflections that enhanced her beauty and mystery manifold. I am sure Diane walked with her.
Finally she was at my side and the veil was lifted from her face. She was so radiantly happy that there were almost tears in her eyes. Even though the veil of tulle had been lifted, the crystal veils remained and I felt myself drowning as my eyes fell down that well and she smiled. Her gentle pressure on my hand steadied me as the padre began his peroration. I do not recall much of our exchange of vows and rings other than the shatteringly euphoric feeling of finally having married my bride, my adorably unique Michelle.
Whether Michelle is Diane returned or not is moot. There is enough of my beloved Diane in her, but there is also so much that is pure Michelle that she is more than either on their own. As I look at my beautiful bride looking at me through those wonderful old Rodenstock glasses I know that the time has come as Diane said it would. I will be happy again, no, I am happy again, the memories of my life with Diane no longer hurting but a necessary if sad prelude to life with Michelle. As I kiss my bride and lovely wife I distinctly hear Diane inside my mind:
‘I’m so happy for you Jake! And for Michelle. So proud of both of you that you did not allow yourselves to be tempted during the past four years and so very, very happy that she has not jumped the gun! I know that Michelle will conceive this very night and you will name her Diane, won’t you?’
Then Diane is gone and all that remains is now and our future life together.
Statistics: Posted by Zennia — Fri Dec 25, 2015 5:44 pm