A Stubborn, Persistent Illusion …Part 13 ...Caught Between Flesh and Spirit

I don't believe you’re dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you’re not dead to me. And never will you be.
—Alice Walker

Clare

I’m sitting in the parking lot outside the pub waiting for Clare to show up, although what I’m going to tell her I haven’t yet decided.

Some truths will be said, namely that I spent part of the afternoon conversing with my dead wife—not in a seance, or a darkened room, but in the familiar surroundings of a basement apartment we once shared.

Other things will be left out, such as my fear that I’m trapped in some mediaeval morality play where Clare is the Voice of Reason and Elaine, the Repository of Divine Knowledge who acts as my Beatrice, the ideal woman, guiding me through Paradise.

But why you might ask am I reluctant to disclose everything to Clare? Well, let’s just say, T. S. Eliot was right when he said, human kind cannot bear very much reality.

I mean, I can’t—can you?

The way I figure it, life is a dream and anybody who is absolutely certain, certainly doesn’t know what life means.

My inner musings are interrupted by the arrival of Clare.

Once again, I exit the car to meet her and she ends up in my arms—my faithless arms.

It's an insane situation, really—I’ve just been contemplating resuming a relationship with my dead wife while feeling guilty that I’m attracted to Clare who’s very much alive.

Conflicted? I think that term just about sums up the story of my life—oh, and guilt-ridden as well, because I’m hurting both women because I’m unable to come to a decision.

We enter the pub and sit at our usual window booth—even my use of the possessive makes me wince, because I’m not sure if there even is a we or us, let alone an ours in our upside down relationship—perhaps, just a shared affinity for flirting with temptation.

Clare, as usual, is patient and and orders pizza and draft beer as if it’s comforting going through the rituals of everydayness.

I want to tell her she looks lovely but it doesn’t fit the occasion—I mean, we’re here to anatomize Elaine, and to autopsy my excursion into the afterlife and its implications for me, or for us—or, who knows?

Nobody can say for certain, and that’s the damnable thing about paranormal experiences—as I said before, they give me heartburn.

Once the waiter drops the beers and departs, she curls up in a corner of the bench seat like a cat and I almost expect her to purr.

She seems so damn comfortable being here with me as if we’re on a date—which we aren’t—I almost feel this is the explanation for why she continues to meet me at the most inopportune times.

Another reason for feeling guilty, but I push that aside.

“So, were you able to meet with Elaine?” She asks.

I take a sip of draft and nod, stalling for time while I figure out how much to tell and leave out.

“It was Elaine all right. I was so overcome seeing her I couldn’t talk. She thought I was suffering from a touch of heat stroke, but hell, the temperature was only in the sixties. Still, I played along.”

“How did she react to seeing you?”

“That’s the strange part—she didn’t recognize me, although I think she sensed an affinity. She kicked into nurse mode and got me a cold compress and a glass of ice water.”

Clare’s forehead furrowed. “That’s weird all right—inviting a stranger into her house and playing nursemaid.”

I don’t know why, but I felt defensive.

“It was typical of the way Elaine always was," I explain, "—caring and trusting of strangers. She wanted to go into nursing but when we got married that sort of got pushed to the wayside.”

“I see,” Clare frowned, and I know she didn’t.

“I don’t get it, Clare. I mean I not only saw and spoke to Elaine, but hell, she’s living in our old apartment decorated in the same style and with our old furniture.”

“It is a mystery,” she conceded.

For the first time I began to sense Clare might be doubting my story as if I had concocted an elaborate ruse to trick her for some arcane reason.

But the moment I thought it she said, “But come to think of it, Jake didn’t seem to remember you either.”

I knew then she believed me.

I continued my tale.

“But there was a moment of recognition with Jake when our eyes locked—and the same kind of thing happened with Elaine as if she sensed some kind of affinity.”

I left out the part about the current of passion I experienced with Elaine, and her, for that matter, not wanting to compare goddesses’ mythology.

“Maybe that’s what happens when souls return,” Clare mused, “they bring familiar things with them in their wake.”

It was a brilliant insight and struck me as being so perceptive I wanted to lean across and spontaneously kiss her, but the waiter arrived with our order then and saved me from more guilt.

© 2019, John J Geddes. All rights reserved

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