“No, you listen, Stephen. God, how can you be so heartless? It’s not a dream I keep having about Rose, it’s a fucking nightmare, and sometimes I wake up from it and realize the nightmare is real. She’s gone, just like my mother. She’s never coming back, but her sad, lonely life still haunts me. I was all she had, and then when she was gone, it was like she never existed. I’m terrified I’ll end up the same way, but at least I had you, though now I’m not sure I ever did . . . It doesn’t matter now.” I calmed down while Stephen remained silent. “It doesn’t matter now because I don’t want you. I’ll tell you why I’ve been listening to Bob on the train. It’s because he’s right. I’m all I’ve got.”
I began crying but made certain Stephen couldn’t hear me. Then he finally said in the calmest voice, “Well, I guess that’s it then, Kate,” indifference seeping through every syllable.
I swallowed. “Tell me the truth. Do you really think you love me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think by now you should know.” My voice cracked.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“So that’s your answer?”
Without waiting for him to respond, I hung up, feeling more stupefied than sad. The tears had stopped. I was shocked—not that I was losing Stephen, but that I had wasted two years of my life with someone who didn’t love me. I guessed my reaction meant that I wasn’t in love with him, either. Stunned, I stared at a tiny crack in the wall for several moments until I heard three rapid knocks. A shiver ran through me before I hopped off the bed and ran to the door, swinging it open dramatically. There was an older man carrying a tray. Had it been Jamie, I might have jumped into his arms. “Your dinner, ma’am.” I stepped aside and let him set the tray on the small dining table in the corner of the room. “Truffle mushroom risotto and a bottle of our 2009 Pinot Noir, compliments of Chef Mark Struthers and R. J. Lawson.”
“Oh, right!” I laughed maniacally, making a crazy cackling sound. The day had really gotten to me. The waiter gave me a frightened look as he opened the bottle of wine and proceeded to pour a glass.
“Enjoy, ma’am,” he said and then hurried out the door. Once he was gone, I plopped onto the bed again as the tears began flowing once more. I thought about Stephen and tried to conjure up one truly happy memory with him besides him fucking me on the washer in the basement, which could hardly be deemed as happy. In retrospect, our time together was mediocre at best.
Rose never liked him; she had said he was cold fish. I thought about the dream Stephen referred to in our argument. Shortly after Rose died, I began questioning my life so deeply that it started to unnerve me. Not having any family or knowing where you come from can make you feel like you don’t exist.
I would look in the mirror and not recognize myself. I would say, “Who am I?” over and over, and the feeling, the anxiety of not knowing the answer, would send me into a panic. I wished I’d asked every question I could think of before she died, but I didn’t. There were just a few pictures and a tiny bit of information that I knew about my parents and grandparents, but it wasn’t enough to imagine their lives. In my mind, if they didn’t exist then I didn’t exist, and it was when I started believing that to be true that the dreams began, those tiny whispers that sent me reeling.
Rose’s funeral was closed casket, but in my dream it was open and she was lying there, looking nothing like herself. In my dream she wore white, a color she never wore and a dress she certainly did not own and one I definitely did not bury her in. It looked like a wedding dress with lace sleeves and a satin bodice, but Rose had never married—like my mother, she lived a solitary and mundane existence. I walked toward her and could feel someone else’s presence next to me, but I didn’t know who it was. I leaned over and stared at Rose, lying there lifeless and appearing much younger than she had been in reality when she died. She had long brownish-red locks that tumbled over her lace-clad shoulders in the most angelic way. Even though she appeared to be about twenty years old—much younger than I ever knew her—there was an obvious sense that the body lying there was my Rose.
When I turned to look at the figure standing next to me, something stopped me, an invisible force. It was one of those dreamlike moments when you try so hard to do something physically, but your body won’t let you. I felt paralyzed. All I knew was that the figure gave off a peaceful and soothing presence. I wondered if it was my mother or my father or God. Looking back down into the coffin, I noticed a tiny movement, and then the motion became more pronounced. I leaned in closer. Rose’s mouth was moving, but I could tell she was having trouble. I knew it was wired shut, the way a body is traditionally prepared for burial. Her eyes bolted open as wide as could be, and she was violently moving her lips, trying to open her mouth; it was horrifying. She’s alive! Help her, I kept shouting, but my voice made no sound. She finally pried her lips apart. Her expression was urgent. She was desperately trying to give me a message, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. All I could hear was the sound of heartbeats, and that’s the moment when I would always wake up.
Every time I had that dream, I would wish for one more second. I would replay the scene over and over, wanting so badly to decipher what she was trying to tell me. Her dead body lying there in a casket trying to speak to me was the most frightful vision. Still, I wished I could get an inch closer, just to hear her, because I knew it was a whisper. Even terrified, I knew it was a whisper that would change the course of my life forever, if only I understood what the message was.