Vanessa found herself standing on her small balcony
overlooking the City’s Bay Area as the locals referred to it. Her apartment sat
atop one of the many small hills that sheltered the bay. She stood there a long
time hardly aware of the slight chill that came wafting in on the ocean
breeze. As she looked out at the waters
of the bay, she wondered if somewhere across its vast expanse her mother could
still be waiting for her. She suspected that the distant shore was further than
simply crossing the pacific to Asia.
Silly
girl, she chided herself, you have a mother and a father and siblings here, in
the flesh. Some homeless man wonders into your life and spins a wild tale and
you are ready to abandon wall you know and have known and believe him? What was
wrong with her? This wasn’t who she was or rather who she had thought she was.
But then she had thought she was someone else, not some child who had to be
adopted by the couple who took pity on her. Why couldn’t her mother just have
continued to withhold that information from her? She really didn’t need to know
the truth, what was more she probably could have lived the rest of her life
without ever knowing the ugly truth.
Am I
ready?
That’s
what this man called Quest had asked hadn’t he? No, he hadn’t actually said that
where she could hear him. Had she simply imagined seeing him on the street
minutes before he had walked into her office and turned her perfect life upside
down? Why is this such a problem? She was a rational, intelligent being- there
was no proof other than this thing he had called a memory was anything than
some kind of hallucinogenic hypnotism that that charlatan managed to carry off-
Who was she kidding? Even her rationalizing what happened today at the office
was not working on convincing her that it had not happened. It seemed no matter
how she wanted to remember it or rationalize it or explain it away; her mind
would not accept it. What was more, her heart knew the truth and it still ached
with the knowledge.
There
was no way she should believe this man but there was no way she could deny what
she had felt. How cooed she reconcile this? She would turn to the two people
who she had always turned to- they had always had the answers she had sought.
Yes, she would ask her parents, if anyone could explain this her parents could,
they had to know what had really happened-right? That’s what she would do.
6:30
pm, phone call.
“Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Vanessa?”
“Yes, Mom, it’s me.”
Her mouth clicked her tongue. “It is I dear…I don’t know why
we sent you to school sometimes.”
A kind of exasperation that could only be described as the
majority of her relationship with her mother.
“It is I, Mom.”
“Yes, dear, I can tell it IS you.”
See, Vanessa thought, this is why she was prone to be an
emotional mess.
“It’s nice of you to call dear.”
“I am sorry about earlier today, it’s just that I was- well
it’s just that;”
“It’s all right dear, I figured it was another of those
dropped calls that Verizon is always going on about on TV.”
And there it was, the way her mother dealt with all stress-
blame it on the rain or dropped cell phone calls.
“Mom.” It was a simple statement, but loaded with subtext.
Her mother did not miss it either.
“What is it dear? Are you okay?”
She wanted to say:
well I just broke down and cried like a lost child this afternoon for
the first time in her life- that she could remember. But she didn’t, no,
instead she plowed on ahead.
“I’m fine, but-“
“You don’t sound fine.”
Vanessa had an image of herself
screaming in silent frustration and hurling the phone out of a college dorm
window where it landed on the associate dean’s car and cracked the windshield.
That had been awkward, though the Dean had been very understanding after
Vanessa told him about the phone call, in fact she had laughed and asked her
politely to have Vanessa’s father write him a check.
“Mom-“
“You aren’t coming done with something are you? That would
be inconvenient with the party tomorrow night and all.”
“Mom.”
“Maybe we should get your father on the line- he is the
doctor here, he should be able to tell what it is if you tell him all your
symptoms.”
Could she afford another phone? She looked at the handset in
her palm considering the distinct satisfaction of seeing it shatter against the
wall of her condo. No with her luck she would miss the wall and it would fly
out the window and wipe out the neighbor or a small Mexican population down in
4G.
“Mom!”
“There’s no need to yell, Vanessa.”
Had she yelled? Apparently she had.
“Sorry, I;”
“Well you should know better.”
“Mom.”
“What is it? What is so important that you have to
interrupt?”
“I need to ask you an important question about-“
“Oh? What about?”
Why could her mother hear herself- here she had interrupted
Vanessa for the umpteenth time! Take a deep breathe Van and try again she told
herself. She even counted to three.
“I need- I mean, Am I-“
“Are you what?”
She screamed in her own mind in frustration.
“Dammit Mom!”
“There’s no need to swear, Vanessa.”
Dammit, dammit, dammit to all ends of Hell. This was harder
than she had ever guessed and her mother was not helping the matter with all
this nervous chatter.
“Vanessa, you ought to be ashamed, I have never heard you
swear that much in all your days-“
Apparently she had not just thought that all that.
“Crap. Why can’t I?” She hung up by slamming the phone down
on its cradle. For a moment she considered stomping around the room before the
ludicrousness caught up with her and she sat down on the floor and hung her
head. Crap! Crap, crap, crap and double crap! What is wrong with me? I can’t
ask her this over the phone. Years had shown or rather should have shown
Vanessa that her mother was lousy handling anything over the phone. Her mother
was not allowed to take telemarketers calls because of this.
Oh shit! I just hung up on Mom!
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