Part 2
It was late and Jenn had finally drifted off to sleep. She had not been sleeping well since she had moved to their new house. Every night she dreamed so many dreams that by the time she was supposed to get up in the morning it felt as if she had actually been awake all night. Many of the dreams were weird and inconsistent, but every night at least one, if not more, were about their old house. In fact, as time went on the dreams about their old house increased.
This night was no different. She saw herself in her old house not too long after they had moved into it. She saw herself take a breath and sit down in the wing-back chair. It was placed in a slightly different place that day for some reason—probably the kids had moved it when they were trying to build a fort. It was their time machine fort, the remains of which were scattered on the floor. She put both feet up on the chair, with her knees near her chin. Her feet were cold and she tried to warm them with her hands. Then she thought she smelled something funny. Turning slightly, she sniffed the wing of the chair. She didn’t smell anything and leaned awkwardly into the wing of the chair. She rested there for a moment. Jeff would be home from work soon, the kids were in bed asleep finally, and she had a sense of relief.
Then it was gone. For no reason a sudden, sharp, stab of emotional grief struck her soul. It hurt so badly it took her breath from her and then all of her strength as though the pain made it impossible for her to hold her head up. She began to sob into her hands, forgetting her cold feet. Laying into in the fetal position in her chair she tried to think. What was she sad about? Why was she crying? She had absolutely no idea. She cried more. It felt like someone had died, like nothing would be the same.
Jeff bounded through the door home from work. He stopped short when he saw Jenn sobbing. Something terrible happened? The kids? He felt something in the pit of his stomach sink and drag him down and he said, “Jenn what’s wrong?”
“I have no idea! I promise, I don’t understand it.” She kept weeping. “Everything was great and then suddenly this feeling.” He gave her a hug and the moment faded into other images of the house, sometimes real sometimes not. There were piles of laundry, and dishes, and kids building time-machine forts complete with a control panel of dates and times. But it was located it deep down in the attic. Except their old house didn’t have an attic.
Then she saw another moment years later. She was stepping through the front door. It felt like it had been a week since she left the house. She had rushed out barely getting dressed correctly after getting a phone call from her mother. The living room was arranged completely differently. The wing-back chair had been reupholstered to match the decorations. Its new normal placement in the room happened to be what had been the odd placement from the time kids had pushed it around to make their fort. So, now it was in the exact placement as it had been years before. Jenn sat down in the chair, pulled her knees to her chest and kicked off her mismatched flip flops. She turned her head to lean into the wing of the chair.
Her big brother was gone. She hadn’t really stopped the whole day, and now it seemed something real about it all hit her at once. She felt her heart in the middle of her chest aching as though it was actually physically injured. Then she felt this little crack or pop, not unlike pouring hot water into a cold glass. It shattered into a thousand little pieces like the shattered safety glass on her brother’s truck. It felt like the shards of her heart slowly expanded outward like an explosion in slow motion. “My heart is actually breaking,” she thought. The ache was unbearable. And then suddenly, the pain subsided for a moment, as though someone else took the pain and held it for her keeping her from breaking completely. Who could take that grief? Her grief? Who could possibly understand? Who could ever KNOW what she was feeling?
As dream continued, Jenn saw both of the scenes together—like on a split screen—then slowly they merged as though one was superimposed on the other. She saw the younger Jenn fold herself into the same position and place as the older grieving Jenn. She had taken her own pain? Who else would understand that pain but herself? How though?
The images began to fade into more strange moments of kids playing and grieving for Uncle Chris. Then the control panel and the laundry and the dishes and the attic swirled around again. She felt joy and pain and then she heard the house call her, “Come-back. Come-back.” The call came faster: come-back- come-back-come-back. Then it began to change from a voice to a sound: come-back- come-back-come-back.
Ugh! It was the sound of the alarm going off. It was 5:30 am and time to get up. She fumbled with the clock, its loud buzzing was now sounding less like “come-back- come-back-come-back” but it still seemed to mock the tears that were streaming down her face. It wouldn’t turn off! In uncharacteristic anger and impulsiveness, she hurled it across the room and smashed into several pieces as it slid down the wall. Jeff waked in from the bathroom, looking rather confused.
“You might want to pick up that radio alarm clock you wanted on the way home today” she said calmly.
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Copyright 2018 J. A. Goggans
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