Chloe (10 page)

“You want to hear me say your father is alive?” Cleopatra
infers, jutting her jaw out as her brow creases with a frown.

Chloe spreads her arms helplessly. “If it’s the truth!”
Chloe insists.

“Well he’s not!” Cleopatra exclaims. Her lip quivers. She
seals her lips into a grim, feeble line. Her voice breaks. “He’s dead. Let me
spell it for you: D.E.D. I have just begun to accept that. You should too,” Cleopatra
ricochets back.

Chloe wants to rip her hair out for the maddening confusion
that is suffocating her. She is too distraught to correct her mother’s
atrocious spelling, no matter how much she knows it would cut her up to be
schooled by her. “If that is true, then I’m seeing dead people.”

Cleopatra inclines her chin. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Suddenly, Chloe wishes she had corrected her spelling. “I
saw him! I have pictures on ma’ laptop. I know what he looks like! It was him,
down to the last detail!” Chloe takes a moment to compose herself. “He knew the
day I was born and where,” Chloe supplies, chancing a step forward as though it
will help her cause. “He knew ma’ full name. If I was imagining him, how would
he know that?”

Cleopatra rolls her eyes as though the answer is obvious.
She gestures to Chloe, bracing the other iron fist on her hip. “Because
you
know. If he comes from your imagination, which he does, then he knows
everything about you.”

Chloe wilts. That is probably the first logical conclusion
her mother has ever come to in a time she needs her to be irrational. If Chloe
created this vision, then she is losing her mind. If she is losing her mind,
there is no telling what other things she has merely dreamed up. “It doesn’t
make any sense.”

Cleopatra combs her fingers through her thinning hair. “Your
father died on his way to the hospital,” she reminds her. “He wouldn’t know if
you were born on that day or days after. Remember? You know. It’s your
illusion, your mind creating whoever it is you think you saw. You saw what you
wanted to see.”

“I know what I saw!” Chloe insists, close to tears.

Cleopatra stalks across the room to their old wooden desk.
It is missing a leg and leans against the wall like a lame dog. She fetches out
a crumpled business card from one of the cracked drawer. She gives it to Chloe,
thrusting it out in front of her. “Here. This is the number for a very good
psychiatrist.”

Chloe balks as though she has been smacked across the face.
“I don’t need a shrink!” she stammers.

Cleopatra is undeterred and continues as though Chloe has
said nothing at all. “His name is Doctor Kenneth Ross. He helped me out once.
Go see him.”

Chloe had no idea her mother saw a shrink. She reasons that
it must have been to help her cope with losing Patrick. But if the man she saw
today was her father, then Patrick never died and Cleopatra never lost him. Why
would she see a shrink in that case? Chloe is thinking in circles. It is making
her dizzy. “I know what I saw!” Chloe persists. “I’m not crazy.” She shakes her
head.

Cleopatra shoves the card in Chloe’s hand bag. “Chloe, if
you don’t get some help, none of us in this house will ever have any peace.”

“
I’m
the problem?!” Chloe chokes.

Cleopatra folds her arms across her chest and squares her
boney shoulders, flexing her parental muscles for the first time in years. “You
have issues that need to be addressed.” She sounds like a different person.
Where is all this coming from?

Chloe laughs brokenly. She opens her hands and thrusts her
hands towards her mother. “Is that what you and Greg discuss when I’m not
here?”

“The day you were born, I had a decision to make. The
hardest decision I had to make in this life. And I did it alone. Your father
was not there. He was busy dying. Took me long enough to accept that. Don’t
torture me with your illusions.” Cleopatra exits the room. Chloe bangs her fist
against her head, shutting her eyes so tightly that she squeezes several tears
out.

•

The following evening, James sits alone in a dimly lit
restaurant with dark, rich walls and expensive decorations. He and Chloe come
here often, or as often as they can in light of Chloe’s schedule. Soft music
plays overhead. Outside, the sun is setting, splashing blazing colors across
the partly cloudy sky. He checks his watch. Instead of taking that rain-check
back at his house, James decides to spare his mother the work and
disappointment and take Chloe out to dinner.

It is so like Sandra to keep Chloe overtime when Chloe has a
prior engagement.

Chloe rushes in from work, led by the hostess. She starts
taking her hair down from the ponytail at the base of her neck and hurriedly
combs her finger through her hair. James wonders if she knows how gorgeous she
is. She sits opposite him.

“Sorry,” she says with a fleeting smile. Her explanation is
brief and precisely what he expected. “Work. Extremely hungry.” He has already
forgiven her. It is impossible to stay mad at Chloe.

They take up the menus and open them, scanning through the
options. James has already done so upwards of five times since he sat down. He
could probably recite most of the first page from memory, but he pretends to be
interested and search for what he already knows he is ordering. A waiter comes
over and pours some rich sparkling red wine in their glasses. He then pours
some water from a silver pitcher in another glass. The waiter smiles and walks
away, leaving the bottle of wine behind in an ice bucket to chill.

James can tell there is something on Chloe’s mind and it is
bothering her deeply. They pass the first few moments with mindless chatter
until they stumble unceremoniously onto the subject of Chloe dashing out of
church on Sunday. James is not sure how to react when Chloe finally tells him
the reason.

“I saw him James. Talked to him.” When James does not
immediately respond, Chloe assumes, “You think I’m crazy too.”

James fumbles with what to tell her. Nothing Chloe could
ever do could push him away or scare him off. She is stuck with him. “Can’t
wrap my mind around it… but no. You’re perfectly sane,” he assures her,
coupling his words with a confident smirk. At least, he hopes she is perfectly
sane. Otherwise, he will be “Living the Vida Loca” for the rest of his life…

Come to think of it, that might not be so bad.

Chloe shakes her head. She replays the conversations with
her mother and the phantom who claimed to be her father.
He’s dead. You’ve
been lied to. The truth will set you free. You want the truth? I don’t blame
you Chloe. Your father died on the way to the hospital.
“Don’t know about
that.”

James takes a breath, but reconsiders his reply. He decides
to change tactics. “If the man you saw wasn’t your father, then who was he?”

Chloe’s head throbs. “Ma’ father is either alive or I’m
going nuts.” Chloe closes her hand around her glass, slick and cold with
condensation, and drinks some water.

“Everything is going to be fine,” James tells her again,
reaching across the table and taking Chloe by the hand. His thumb sweeps across
her skin consolingly. It gives him a great excuse to touch her.

Chloe takes her hand back, combing her fingers through her
hair. “Don’t know about that either. I see the darkness coming.” It is an
ominous prediction and one James does not think is completely necessary.

James is stung by her standoffishness. He wrestles with the
thick tangle of devotion inside his chest. He would never give up on his love
for Chloe, but the thought does cross his mind at that moment. Wryly, “Life is
just another poem to you, isn’t it?”

Chloe shakes her head. “Poems are just fragments of life,”
she negates.

James is uncertain how to interpret that. “You haven’t
written anything in a while,” he points out.

“I write every day,” Chloe counters. “That’s what writers
do. Just nothing worth going public. Fragments—” Chloe looks at her glass of
white wine. She blanches. She takes the bottle and looks at it, also white.
Chloe’s memory reels.

“What is it?” James wonders aloud, disturbed by the lack of
color in her face.

“This is white wine,” she whispers.

James blinks, his brows knitting together. He begins to
slowly nod. “Ravenswood,” he adds. “Great brand.”

Chloe’s mouth opens, but she cannot immediately formulate
words. She shakes her glass again, more adamantly this time. “The waiter poured
red wine.”

James’ eyes narrow. “I was here when he poured the white
wine. Complimentary wine is
always
white.”

Chloe sets the bottle aside and buries her face in her hand.
“I must really be losing ma’ mind.”

James surveys her skeptically. “We should order,” he
suggests, in a hurry to change the subject. To explain it away, “Hunger can
make you see things.” James signals for a waiter to come over.

Chloe is still staring at the bottle of wine. “Need to find
out what’s going on, James. I’m taking a day from work tomorrow.”

“Sure you want to do that?” James asks, surprised. She
cannot blame him. Chloe has never taken a day off of work before.

“I don’t have a choice,” Chloe states gravely. Something is
clearly amiss in her mind. A Waiter comes over and takes their order.

•

The following morning, Chloe pays a visit to the Department
of Health. She emerges into a large grey room with small cubicles dividing up
the staff. It smells of hand sanitizer and printer ink. Chloe waits impatiently
at the reception counter. A few people wait behind her.

Chloe rings the bell a second time. A short, stocky woman in
her 50’s walks out of her cubicle. She is preoccupied with a stack of papers
attached to a clipboard. She has a lap that looks like it could accommodate
several little children and a strong, round, plump face. Chloe looks at the
name on her name tag.

Her name is Pearl.

“What can I do for you ma’am?” the woman asks with a
lackluster tone of voice, sifting through papers pinned to her clipboard.

“I need to get a death certificate,” Chloe states
resolutely. She hopes this will not take long. She is brimming with confusion
that will never be allayed unless she can find answers here. How hard can it
be?

Pearl sighs. “Name?” the woman recites mechanically as she
turns the computer chair on the opposite side of the counter and lowers herself
into the leather cushion. She swivels towards the keyboard. “Relation to the
deceased?”

Chloe clutches the ledge of the reception counter, coming up
on her toes and straining to see the computer screen. “Patrick Taylor,” she
says quickly. “I’m his daughter.”

“And your name?” Pearl wants to know, keying the letters in
all caps into their search system.

“Chloe Taylor.” Chloe raps her fingers against the counter.

Pearl goes on the computer and types, her fingers fluttering
effortlessly over the keys. She enters the data. She waits.

Chloe starts to bounce up on the balls of her feet. She
purses her lips, biting on the insides of her cheeks. “How long is this going
to take?”

“Good question,” Pearl mutters with her eyes glued to the
screen, jaded by how accustomed she is to the sluggish system response. They
wait some more. The computer finally beeps. Chloe’s heart climbs into her
throat. Pearl sighs. “Not seeing that name ma’am.”

Chloe’s eyes widen, her blood chilling at the foreboding
words. She wonders if she heard her correctly. That is not possible. “Are you
sure?”

Pearl turns the computer screen as much as she can,
gesturing towards the “no results” error message plastered across the screen.
“I don’t argue with technology.”

Chloe’s mind reels for a logical explanation. Hastily,
“Everybody who has died in the past 25 years is on your system, right?”

Pearl blinks unenthusiastically, as if she can tell
precisely where this is going. She shakes her head. “No ma’am. We got computers
only last year. They are not fully updated yet.”

Chloe finally lets herself exhale.
Of course.
That
must be the reason. “Ma’ father died 24 years ago,” she supplies, secretly
searching for a book of records on the ledge below, which she assumes Pearl
will go for next. But Pearl falls far short of her expectations.

“In that case…” Pearl swivels her chair towards a file
cabinet which she yanks open. The hinges produce a metallic shriek. She fishes through
tabbed folders for a moment. As though she remembers that her quarry is not
there, “Oh.” Pearl shuts the files cabinet and starts fishing around under her
desk. She finds a document box, lugs it up onto her lap, and opens the lid. She
removes a three page application form from a folder in the box and hands it to
Chloe with a dull smack on the countertop.

“You need to fill out this form and submit it with a valid
form of identification and proof of address. Expect a waiting period of 10
business days for the results,” she explains lackadaisically.

Ten business days? That is practically two weeks!

Chloe’s elation shatters. Ten days seems like a lifetime
from today. She needs answers
now
. It is a matter of her own sanity. It
is literally a matter of life and death! She fights to keep her voice even. “I
can’t wait 10 days,” she insists.

Pearl shrugs, as though there is absolutely nothing she can
do. “Do you have any idea how many death certificates are accumulated over 24
years?” Her eyebrows rise, hanging from the strings of her own limitations.

Chloe, unsatisfied with that answer, retorts with, “You
should have a proper filing system.” There is no reason to blame Pearl, but
Chloe’s frustration is flavoring her judgment. Death certificates are important.
The department should take better care to keep its records and their filing
systems up to date. In any other big city, Chloe is certain the same
information could be gleaned in one keystroke.