Just Like Heaven (6 page)

“I meant no disrespect,”
Roland
said with utmost sincerity.
He offered his hand.

Nick shook it
.
And a moment later
, he
found himself in a dark room with an IMAX type-screen straight ahead.
The woozy feeling in his head returned with only half the potency of the last trip. Perhaps the more he teleported, the more his body became familiar with the
sensation. Then again, he didn’t recall this dazed sensation in any other dream,
so why would it affect him now?
But if he was in heaven, he wouldn’t be able to feel any physical sensation, because in that
instance, his physical form would have remained on earth.
From now on, he would anticipate these trips and see if that reduced his lightheadedness.

Nick pointed to the movie screen. “We’re catching a flick?”

The screen flickered to life and an image of a bald baby, covered wi
th blood and amniotic
fluid, wailed as the doctor handed the child to a midwife who bundled it in a blue blanket and carried it away.

“That’s one disgusting baby,” Nick said.

Roland
turned to him. “That baby is you.”

Nick just shook his head. “Whatever, Colonel. I’m not really into watching home videos.
”
He turned around and looked up toward where the projection u
nit should be. But he couldn’t find a
glass window through which the film unspooled
.
“Do you have a remote? I like to fast-forward the boring parts.”

“
Yes, how could you remember yourself as a child?
How about this one?
”
Roland
snapped
his finger
s
.

Nick’s moth
er
,
in her late twenties,
had thick, dark rings under her eyes. Strands of blond hair had escaped t
he elastic
band that collected a mass of curly hair into a ponytail. L
ooking ex
hausted after coming home from
working a
shift
behind the counter
at McDonald’
s,
she
came into focus as
she bent over and picked up her five
-year old son. Her arms quiver
ed from his weight, but she hoist
ed him up and kissed his cheeks. “How was your first day of school, kiddo?”

He burrowed his head into his
shoulder, wiping at the spot she had kissed.

“Not so good, huh?”

He shook his head.

She nodded in sympathy.
“Tomorrow will be better.”

“Where were you? I waited and waited and waited and you didn’t come. You left me there. All alone.”

“But you were with other kids
.” Her face lit up. “Oh,
you missed me?”

“Mom, I’m a
big boy now. I’ll be as big as daddy in one more year.” He held up two fingers. Noticing that he’d miscounted, he said, “
Or maybe two years…
I’ll tell you when it happens, so you’ll know.”

Her grin broadened.
“Promise me one thing, okay? Don’t grow up too soon
. Would you do that
for me
?”

He offered a
small
smile and nodded.
“I remembered it’s your birthday today.”

“Oh, honey.
That means so much to me.
”

He nodded with excitement. “When do I get to open my presents?”

She laughed. “
But i
t’
s my birthday. Don’t I get any presents?”

“After I open them, you can see what I g
o
t. Oh, but you bought them for me, so you know what I got, right?” He gave this some deep thought. “I just like opening them. That’s the best part.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, buddy, but you didn’t get any presents. You’ll have to wait until it’s your birthday.”

“Oh,” he said,
disappointed
.

“Tell you what: if I get any presents, I’ll let you open one. How does that sound?”

“And I can have some birthday cake, too?”

“You can help me cut the first piece. Sound good?”

He threw his arms her shoulders in
a big hug.

“Come on,
Saint Nicholas.
I brought home some pizza and ice cream.”

The picture froze on his mother carrying her smiling son.

“How about that?
” Roland asked.
“
Do you remember that moment?”

Upon seeing that
vision of his mother, Nick
felt a flurry of emotions
: joy, sadness, guilt. He
was thirty-two years old…and he missed his mother. He felt tears building up inside him, but for wh
atever reason, they didn’t emerge
.
For that he felt grateful. But he still felt his facial muscles quivering, wanting to do just that.

“Or how about this one?”
Roland
said.

The picture revealed Nick’s father, a stocky man in his
early thirties
with glasses perched on his nose. He walked along a path at the zoo
and stopped
by
a clown who contorted
balloons into animals. Nick looked six years old.

The clown spotted Nick, and a wide grin appeared on his face. “How would you like an elephant?”

“I don’t want an elephant.”

“Well, how about a dog then? Do you like dogs? How about I make one of them for you?”

“I don’t want a stupid dog. And I don’
t like stupid clowns…
Mr. Stupid Clown.”

“Nicholas,” his father said, grabbing his forearm and jerking him off to the side. “That wasn’t nice. I want you to apologize.”

Nick folded his arms. “I won’t do it. I won’t.”

Gritting his teeth, his father said in a harsh tone, “If you don’t get back over there and apologize right now, I’m going to thrash your behind. And then afterwards we’ll come right back here, and you’ll apologize. Now which is it going to be?”

Nick looked into his father’s eyes. “I won’t apologize. You should apologize.
You did the bad thing. I saw it. You should apologize.”

His father, clutching his son’s arm so tightly that Nick’s arm turned white, swung toward the clown. “I’m sorry for my son’s behavior. And I guarantee that he’ll be sorry soon enough.”

The clown, glancing down at Nick lifted his eyebrows in sympathy as he regarded the boy, but nodded at the man standing opposite him.
The picture froze on that image.

“What was that all about?”
Roland
asked.

“I
was a being a brat.”
Nick never forgot that moment: the first t
ime he’d stood up to his father. The day before
,
he’d caught his dad kissing another woman. He’d spent the day in a solemn mood, uncertain how to confront his father about the issue. A
fter
lashing
out at him
, Nick felt ashamed
of his behavior, because before he’d found him cheating on his mother, he’d always
regarded
his dad
as
someone
to emulate:
a
strong
, smart, and
caring man
.
Refusing to follow his father’s instructions felt wrong, and he almost hoped his father had carried out his threat
to give him a beating
(he didn’t), but
he hated that something inside him
refused to carry
out his father’s wishes.

But
the truth tore him up inside, because he didn’t wa
nt to tell
his mother. At the time, Nick
didn’t understand why she would feel
terrible if she learned the truth,
but he only knew that he felt betrayed. And since his mother was older and smarter, he instinctively knew that she would
take it much harder than he did.

So he never told her about that woman, or any of the others he later found out about, which only
increased his guilt and persuaded him to love his mother that much more, while convincing him to turn his back on h
is father, no matter how much his dad
tried to charm his son back into his
life. Even worse, because Nick ha
d loved and trusted his father so mu
ch, from that moment
forth, he
had a difficult time trusting…himself. As his father’s son, he feared that one day he’d meet a wom
an he’d want to settle down
with
and
end up cheating on her. For that reason,
w
henever he sensed that a woman he’d spent time with became attached to him, he’d break it off with her.

“Is that all?
” Roland asked.
“
Nothing more to it than being a brat?
”

Nick shook his head.
Why did he want to revisit his past? What could be gained from drudging up
memories
?
After his brother passed away, he made a point of living in the now; don’t look forward, don’t look back. Live
for today.
But even if he wanted to gain some perspective, why would
he want to
do so
with a complete stranger – in a darkened room
, no less
?

He had to admit that everything looked incredibly authentic.
Then again, many dreams
often seemed ultra-real. And like this one, they often
didn’
t make sense.

It occurred to him that he couldn’t smell anything. A
nd he’d only now noticed that he hadn’t breathed in quite a while.
But did he really need to breathe?
He looked down at his chest. It didn’t rise and fall. Anxiety kicked in. But he didn’t feel as apprehensive as he would have thought.

He needed to rela
x and pull himself together. He
controlled this dream. He simpl
y needed to go with the flow while
remain
ing
in control at all times – just like in real life.

Another depiction fo
rmed on the screen: a seven-year old Nick drew i
n a
notebook at his desk, while kids buzzed around the
class
room, talking and la
ughing over each other’s voices as they
dropped
Valentine’s Day cards onto desks belonging to their secret crushes.

Nick reached in his backpack and
withdrew a pin
k envelope with the name, Ruth
, on the cover. He took a deep breath, got up, stepped into the aisle,
and
set his sights on the desk one row to his right and two seats up. He hurried over, almost bumping into someone,
and
pitched
the envelope on
Ruth’s desk before zipping
back to his desk. He grabbed his pencil and contin
ued doodling until he saw Ruth
, a studious redheaded girl with freckles
–
and the most unpopular girl in
class –
return to her seat.

He watched
as she opened the card he’d placed on her desk
.

A smile formed on her face.

It made Nick grin. He lifted his head, full of pride, no l
onger interested in his artwork, as he watched her reaction.
 

She read the note. And her grin turned into a frown. Hesitating for a moment, sh
e turned her head as
though expecting to
find
a
creature
creeping up on
h
er. She caught sight of Nick a
n
d
her frown deepened as she
spun around
toward the front of the class.

The en
thusiasm in Nick’s face di
ed. He looked as though someone had just told him that Santa Claus didn’t exist.

“That must have been tough,” Roland said.

“Happens to everybody,” Nick said.
“No big deal.”
But o
ver the next five or six years, each time he approached a girl, whether or not he actua
lly liked them, he expected a
frown to appear whenever he’d opened his mouth to say hi.