“Okay, fine. If that’s what you want,” Shirley said in a huffy manner when I told her of my arrangement with Brian.
“So I guess you and Brian are an item now? Fast work, Lori.”
She took off for the parking lot ahead of me before I had a chance to explain; not that I would have known what to tell her. I had the feeling my next ride in her car would not happen without some significant groveling.
Brian stood in front of the Mustang, leaning against the hood. “Are you late for everything?” He asked as I approached.
“I happen to be right on time. You’re early. Nice car,” I replied.
“It’s my brother’s. He’s letting me borrow it while he’s in the army.”
“The army?”
“Yeah, you know, soldiers, uniforms, guns. He’s gung ho about that kind of stuff. He enlisted two months ago. It’s a thing in my family, starting with my great grandfather. All the men enlist in the army. The Mayfield men legacy, my mother calls it.”
Brian walked around to the passenger door and opened it. “Hop in.”
I must admit, I was not accustomed to such chivalry. I managed to thank him as I sat.
“Now,” he said as he got behind the wheel. “Where to?”
I pretended to think for a second though I already knew. “Are you familiar with the Read’s Drug Store on Fifth Street?”
“Am I?” Brian put the key in the ignition and turned it. The motor rumbled to life. “I practically live there.”
“What’ll it be? My treat.” We sat in a booth at the drug store’s lunch counter. We had the place to ourselves, no privacy issues here.
“In that case, I’ll have a chocolate milkshake,” I said.
A waitress appeared in front of us. She couldn’t have looked more bored if she had tried.
“The lady will have a chocolate milkshake, and I’ll have a vanilla malted.” Brian smiled at her, but her ice refused to break. She grunted and left without saying a word.
“That’s why I come here so often,” Brian said. “The service is exemplary.”
I giggled a bit. I guess you could say I liked his sense of humor. Finding humor in a teenage boy was not an everyday occurrence.
I decided to start at the beginning. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me where you lived before you transferred to Poplar. Tell me if I just met you yesterday, or if I’ve known you from years ago, because right now, I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“Neither am I,” he responded. “But I’m sure I would have remembered you growing up. I lived around here earlier, on Elm Street on the east side, near the steel mill. And you?”
“Where I always have, Roseland Drive, on the west side.”
He slapped his hand on the table. “Okay, that settles it, we weren’t neighbors. If you knew a boy named Brian, it wasn’t me.”
“I remember the boy in the refrigerator, Brian,” I said as calmly as possible. It wasn’t easy. The two of us as neighbors would have been the only scenario that made sense.
Brian looked around. We were still the only two in the soda fountain area, but I understood his reasoning. Our conversations had a tinge of craziness about them lately.
He leaned forward. “I think you were the paper bird that led me to him.”
There are moments in time, I’ve come to find out, that change a person forever. A moment that once it takes place, there’s no going back to the way things once were. I thought then, when he said those words, that he might have known more than he was telling me, or that he might be figuring it out as he went along, much like me.
We had journeyed from separate starting points but had somehow come to the same destination, the land of the paper sky. Now it was my turn to talk. It was a relief to know he would not think me crazy by the time I’d finished. His one sentence about the paper bird had convinced me of that. I was frightened, but in a weird way I was calm too. He knew me, maybe not then but now, in this drug store booth, I felt as if he was an ally who could be trusted with what I had to say.
I told him about my dreams, about the talk I had with my mother. Our milkshakes came but I didn’t touch mine until I had finished talking. He left his alone too. When I was done, the very second I stopped talking, he smiled and I knew my mother was right. He was one of us.
I believe it was on that afternoon, in that Read’s soda fountain booth, that I really began to like him; it was something I thought might happen eventually, just not so soon. His smile wore me down, but the clincher was the way he understood me, the way he
believed
in me. If he was swayed by anything I said, he didn’t show it. In fact, quite the opposite; he validated my dreams with his own, dreams he had known forever. The paper sky had visited him in his childhood, and had stuck around for a while as he had grown. It had been a while since his last one - a couple of years he thought - but he still had a vivid memory of them.
The differences between our dream landscapes were subtle but significant. His had all taken place in his backyard. He had yet to see the smoke man, the scarecrow, and rather than just the one paper bird, he had seen many, a flock of them at times. And then there was this: when I told him my mother’s first name, his eyes almost popped out of his head.
“My mother knew her,” he told me. “She talked about her from time to time. They were friends.”
One mystery solved. Brian
was
one of us, or at least he experienced similar dreams to mine. That satisfied me. If I was speeding toward crazy town, I had a few cars riding my tail.
We sat in the booth long enough for our bored waitress to pay us another visit, telling us that, even though no one sat near us, we must buy something off the menu to continue our stay.
Brian dropped me off at my front door at 4:30. My mother’s car rested against the curb. Good. She was next on my two-person interrogation list.
I small talked Brian for a minute or two before he got out and walked around to my door. He opened it and held out his hand.
“I think you and your mother should have a talk. I know I plan on talking to mine,” he said as he helped me out of the car.
“That’s my plan,” I responded.
“Alright then,” he said. “See you in school tomorrow.”
I don’t know what I expected, but after our drugstore confessionals, I wasn’t prepared for such an abrupt ending to our afternoon.
“Come inside with me. Tell my mother what you know. I think she’d like to hear your side of it.” It was all I could think to say, but it was truthful. I wanted his validation.
“Can’t. My dad needs my brother’s car for work. His Pontiac’s in the shop and his shift at the mill starts at five,” he replied.
“He works at the steel mill?” I asked.
“Doesn’t every father in town?” Brian slid in behind the steering wheel. “Tell me in the morning how it went. We’ll compare notes. See ya.”
He took off like a shot, without so much as a forehead kiss to remember him by, and I felt a rush of loneliness as I watched his car vanish from sight before I turned to my house. I saw a movement at the second floor window, my mother’s bedroom. She spent most days in that room since my father died. Sometimes, when I walked by the closed door, I could hear muffled sobs coming from within. I never disturbed her. Four years had come and gone since his accident and she still mourned him.
For the longest time after he had died, I felt anger. I was mad at him for leaving us alone. I thought he had abandoned us. Eventually, as I grew older, I realized the truth and forgave him for leaving us.
Accidents happen, Lori
, my mother told me.
Accidents happen
. But in her room sometimes, even with the door shut tight, I would hear her scolding him.
You should have been more careful. You had a wife, a daughter. You needed to be more careful.
And once, just once that I remember, when I listened at her bedroom door, I heard her say something else. Something I didn’t understand at the time.
You let the darkness inside you, Adam. You weren’t strong enough. You let him win.
I waited until the next morning, as we ate cereal together, to tell my mother about my conversation with Brian.
“How strange you found each other,” she said to me. “Or maybe not,” she added after some thought.
I surprised her when I brought up Brian’s mom. Yes, they were friends, through the ordeal they shared together.
“The paper sky shaped our youth. You can only visit there through dreams, but it is real enough. You can be harmed there.” My mother hesitated before she continued. “You could die there. Don’t think you’re safe because you are dreaming. You’re not.”
“When I was in that place,” I said. “I saw beauty all around me, and then I saw the scarecrow and everything changed. I felt afraid, alone and afraid.”
“You weren’t alone.” My mother took my hand.
“Is dad there now? You told me dad was the paper bird in my dream. Is he still alive in the paper sky?”
Her hand gripped mine tightly. “No, Lori, he’s not alive there, but a part of him is; his soul perhaps. Those who have gone before, those with the sight, live on in the paper sky, not as they were here, but changed into something pure, something perfect. It seems that you and your friend, Brian, see them as paper birds. I think in that manner he still lives.”
Her eyes filled with tears. They ran down her face freely. She never brushed them away. “I believe they act as our protectors, but they may be trapped there also, waiting to be set free.”
She abruptly released my hand and stood.
“We’ll talk more another time.” She kissed my forehead. “I’ll be home by dinner.”
It was the last time my mother ever talked to me about the paper sky. I never had the chance to ask her the one question that I didn’t have the courage to bring up at the time. Did the smoke man kill dad? And if so, how?
It was a question that would never be answered.
My mother died two weeks after our talk in the kitchen.
She died in her sleep.
I moved in with my aunt and uncle and, as fate would have it, I became a neighbor of Brian Mayfield. He lived two blocks away.
Brian came to my mother’s funeral. Porter’s Funeral Parlor was crowded with her friends, and I had my share, too. Barb and Shirley were there all three nights of the viewing, crying along with me. But it was Brian who gave me the most comfort, he and his mother.
They were the first to arrive at exactly three in the afternoon on September 28th. I stood at the casket looking down. My mother looked so peaceful lying there in her favorite dark blue dress. She wore the braided necklace I made for her in the sixth grade and gave to her as a Christmas present that same year. In the years that had passed, I never once saw her without it around her neck. Her hands clasped together at her waist and her wedding ring glimmered in the lamp light, another item she never removed.
In her hands were a rosary, and a fresh flower I picked from the garden soil, still warm from the autumn sun.
I talked to her - not with sound but with thought - private words I wished I had said when we talked in the kitchen, or in my bedroom at night when I found it hard to sleep. I remembered the many times her hand brushed the hair from my face.
Your hair is ornery,
she would say.
It falls across your face on purpose just to annoy me.
I cut it for you, Mom. Last night I cut it so it wouldn’t fall across my face. Aren’t you proud of me?
I leaned closer because there was something important I needed to tell her and these words had to be spoken. I didn’t want her to take my tears with her but I couldn’t stop myself.
When I rose, a woman stood next to me.
“I’m Brian’s mother, Lori,” she said.
I turned my head to her. She wasn’t much taller than me. I could see Brian in her face as she stared at my mother, and something else. She looked familiar. I was sure I had seen her before.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Likewise,” she replied, and then something happened that led me to believe I was once again in a dream.
She reached down and took my mother’s hand in hers.
She closed her eyes, and I saw her lips move.
“Your mother has something to tell you, Lori.” She placed her other hand in mine.
Colors, so many colors, and a sun so bright it hurt my eyes. I stood on a hill overlooking a town that time had forgotten. Houses made of wood on dirt roads on which carriages driven by horses traveled. I thought it might be a place from centuries before. I must have traveled back in time.
No, wait, in the distance a building I had seen before, a building I recognized by its shape, by the smoke flowing from its many chimneys. The steel mill, looking much the same as I always remembered it “It’s Clarksdale, Lori,” Brian’s mom said from somewhere close by. “As it once was.”
Now she stood next to me. It’s funny how you notice the little things. She was taller than me and yet her shadow, from the sun to our back, was much smaller than mine.
“I should introduce myself. My name is Charlene, but you can call me Charly, with a y.”
Charly
, I said to myself. An odd name for a woman, and yet… “Have we met?”
“Oh, yes. Several times. I knew you as a child and as an explorer.”
“An explorer?” I felt a little dizzy. Did she sense it? Her arm wrapped around my shoulder.
“It takes a while to acclimate oneself. Deep breaths, Lori. Deep breaths.”
The sky spun around me and I went down to my knees. “Close your eyes. It will pass,” Mrs. Mayfield said from somewhere above me.
“Where’s my mother? Why did you take me from her?” I asked.
“She is here with you,” came the reply from above.
I opened my eyes and she was. Her casket rested in front of me, among the grass and flowers. I leaned into it and rose to a stand.
“It’s closed,” I said. “Why is it closed?”
“Open it, Lori.” It was my mother’s voice, and I turned to see her next to me, where Mrs. Mayfield had stood.
“Open it for me.” She wore her favorite dark blue dress and the braided necklace I had made for her. A rosary hung from one hand; in the other she held a flower freshly picked from a morning garden.
She knew that I would rush to her. “Don’t come to me, my love, for I am made of nothing but thought, and I would vanish into the paper sky at the slightest touch.”
She smiled at me. It would the last time I saw her smile, but I remembered it through all that came after. Her smile was my guide through everything that came after.
“You need to release me.” She nodded at the casket. “Open it, Lori.”
I pressed my hands against the wooden lid and lifted. It opened with a hiss as if sealed for a long time. I looked inside.
A paper bird lay there, bright white against the deep red interior. The bird raised its head and looked directly at me. A strong wind blew across the hill and the bird lifted into the air, lifted up until it was level with my face.
“You are not a caretaker, nor are you a guardian. You are the chosen one, the girl of the paper sky.”
My mother’s voice surrounded me. “Listen to Charlene. She will guide you through the maze, you and Brian.”
“Brian?” I whispered the question although I already knew the answer. “He is your counterpart. It will take the two of you to succeed.”
The paper bird shuddered from a fierce gust of wind but held firm in the sky. “It is relentless, but we will keep it at bay until you’re ready, even if it takes years
.
”
The colors of the sky brightened. “It knows we are here. I must go now. Remember we’re always with you
.
”
A paper bird appeared in the distance behind her.
“Adam.” The word soared around me. Adam, my father’s name, and the last word my mother spoke.
The bird lifted high into the air and turned to face the town, and the steel mill beyond.
Adam. And when the two birds joined in the paper sky, I returned to the funeral parlor.
Deep breaths, Lori. Deep breaths.