Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

Calliope clasped her daughter’s hands and looked deep in her eyes, like a hypnotist. “Rachel, you are not . It’s just terribly sad and terribly confusing…”

“Well, I’ve been acting pretty strangely lately! Maybe I should — be — on an antidepressant or something.”

“We can certainly investigate that. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I don’t know if anything will help.”

“Just talking about it helps — a lot. Believe me.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, sweetly chiding. “How would you know?”

“I have a little bit of experience in that area.”

Rachel shook her head tearfully. “Everything is a tumah —”

“What is this tumah , darling?”

“Mama, I can’t get clean! Haven’t you ever felt like that?”

“‘Out, out, damn spot,’” she intoned, like a schoolteacher. “But there is no blood on your hands, Rachel! There just isn’t . You know, sometimes there’s a difference between the truth and what a child perceives to be that truth.”

“Mama…did you know there’s a moth that feeds off the tears of elephants? Human tears, too — I read about it in National Geographic . It pokes the poor thing’s eye just so it can drink the tears. What kind of world would have such a thing?”

“Darling, please—”

“And there’s a bug — they call it a burying beetle. It digs the ground out from under dead things and buries them. I saw a picture of one, digging the grave for a mourning dove…” Rachel stood, unable to go on. She wanted to throw herself in the water, but her mother chased her down and held fast.

“No, baby! No!” she shouted as Rachel seized with tears, straining toward the maliciously indifferent surf. Calliope steered her back to the car, cloaking the frail, shivering shoulders in the blanket as if she were a princess — a mourning dove — who had launched her dead on a floating litter, toward unforgiving seas.

Ursula Sedgwick

When Taj Wiedlin hanged himself, Ursula took it as a sign for her to go. She went to Travel Shoppe and booked a deluxe sleeper — that’s what Sara did when she visited her mom. Ursula wouldn’t have felt safe on the road. She never got around to fixing the Bonneville, and besides, it was too big a target. They changed trains in Portland and began the journey east.

The cars were uncrowded. Ursula befriended a porter, a kind, fiftyish Captain Kangaroo — looking man. He was married, from Red Wing.

“Chanhassen,” he echoed, a little unsure, then scratched his head. “That’s a suburb — boy, I should know that place. Relatives there?”

“Sort of. What’s the weather like now?”

“Well, it’s going to be a pretty hot Fourth of July, I’ll tell you. June, July and August are generally humid.”

“My friend told me Bob Dylan was from Minnesota.”

“Hibbing. Oh, we have many famous people. Loni Anderson, Roger Maris, the rock singer Prince — though my daughter tells me he doesn’t call himself that anymore.” Samson shifted in his sleep. “Lots of writers, too,” said the porter. “Sinclair Lewis — he wrote Main Street —and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby .”

“They made a movie out of that.”

“Sure did. That was Mia Farrow. There’s a woman who’s had nine lives.”

“And nine children, at least.”

The porter thought that was funny. With a glance at the baby, he asked about her husband. Ursula said she was separated. “That’s a shame,” he said, tickling Samson’s neck with a finger. “ You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?”

“He’s actually a boy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry — never could tell them apart, even my own. You know, you really ought to go to one of the fairs while you’re there. Best in the world. And come the Fourth…”

“County fairs?”

“Granddaddies of ’em all! Oh my, I’d guess St. Paul has the biggest fairgrounds in the whole country. There’s Forest Lake, Pine City, the Cokato Corn Carnival. ‘Princess Kay of the Milky Way’—that’s a beauty pageant. Win, and they carve your face in butter.”

“I’m not so sure I’d like that.”

“When I was a boy, they had midways: sideshows and tattooed ladies, weird stuff in formaldehyde jars. Things are a bit different now — well, they’re a lot different. Biggest entertainers in the world come by to sing. Garth Brooks, Tony Bennett. Anyone you can think of.”

“Maybe I’ll take my friend’s mother. She lives in St. Cloud.”

“Oh, she’ll take you —we don’t like to miss our fairs. She’ll have you baking cakes and riding a greased pig.”

“Well,” Ursula said, standing with the sleepy boy in her arms, “I guess we’ll be taking a nap.”

“He’s got a head start on you.”

“It’s contagious.”

The bottle fell from the seat to the ground and the porter retrieved it. “That’s a real pretty watch,” he said, noticing it on the thin wrist as he handed the bottle back.

“It was a gift — an unexpected one.”

“Best kind. Anyhow, you go ahead now. I hope I haven’t talked your ear off.”

“No, I liked it. Hope you’ll talk some more.”

“You just let me know if you need anything,” he said, “with the baby and all. I’ll bring you dinner in your berth, if you like.”

Ursula weaved the clacking way back to their compartment. She locked the door behind her, closed the shades and lay down with Samson. They were still in Montana, with Malta, Glasgow and Wolf Point to go — then Williston, Stanley, Minot, Rugby, Devil’s Lake, Grand Forks…St. Cloud. Sara’s mom’s was the third stop into Minnesota. Ursula thought maybe she would just drop the baby off. She’d been so full of hope at the start of the trip, sure that the Mahanta would meet her at the Temple because of her tragedy — then certain he’d lay healing hands on Samson’s eyes and help him see. Now, the bottom had dropped out. What arrogance! Hadn’t her friend said the Mahanta wasn’t well? Who did she think she was with her false charity and selfish expectations, her profane misjudgment of the Light and Sound of God? Sri Harold Klemp was not put on this planet to lay hands on anyone , let alone at their convenience. She’d been so controlling; it was time to let go. There was nothing to do but fall asleep and hope the Living ECK Master would guide her.

She dreamed of her daughter. Tiffany waited at the Temple of Golden Wisdom and told her mother to follow. “Once you’re here,” she said, “we’ll cry a river of tears. And when our tears dry up, we’ll come back to Earth to live again.” When Ursula awakened, it was night. She went and found the porter.

“Well, that must have been a good nap.”

“Is it too late for supper?”

“I kept yours warm,” he said, with a wink. “I’ll bring it to your room.”

She stood between sleeper cars, and the cold bit the tops of her cheeks. A man passed through and nodded. Ursula thought she saw a vast body of water out there in the dark. She wondered about it — too early for Devil’s Lake. She looked at the watch the woman from the mortuary gave her that day in Century City. It was a Tiffany: that’s how Ursula knew her daughter was reaching out. They belonged together, and now was the time. If they did return to Earth like she said in the dream (Ursula secretly hoped they would journey to a different plane), her only wish was to be far away from all the people and places that had hurt them. She stuck out her wind-clipped head and inhaled. How nice it would be to start fresh, to come back as anonymous passengers on a train — or summer cotton-candy eaters at a county fair.