Moondance (39 page)

“Okay, well, when you land, let me know. I have to go. Hang in there, okay?”

Althea hung up. A few years ago, after Daniel disappeared from her life, Althea sent Daniel a letter. Six months later, he called her. Over the past few years, they had managed to forge a friendship of sorts. At first it was hard, and over time, Althea didn’t mind. Lately, though, it was as if he called at all the worst times.

• • •

AN EXOTIC-LOOKING BRUNETTE with a long ponytail and naturally rouged lips waved at her.

“We’ve missed you. Feeling better?” The woman spoke softly, and Althea whispered her reply.

“Still tired, but not contagious. No fever. Six days into antibiotics. I brought a mask.”

“Good.” The woman, whose name was Katrina, sat down at a computer behind a high counter.

“Any change?”

“She’s in and out. Not in pain.”

An older woman with white hair and a round, pleasant looking face stood up. This was Helen, Althea remembered. Her voice was louder.
Helen’s the cheery one
. Althea smiled.

“She’s in room 314 now. Over there.” Helen pointed. “No roomie right now. I expect she likes that.” Helen chuckled.

Althea put on her mask, and approached room 314. She hadn’t been here since she got the flu, though she had called every day. It felt longer than that. She pushed open the heavy door. It smelled like antiseptic.

“Hey it’s me,” Althea whispered, pulling a chair close to Sophie’s bed. Sophie was bald, and her face and scalp was stretched and trans-lucent. As Althea spoke, her eyes fluttered open, glassy, yet still piercingly blue. Althea wanted to kiss her on the forehead, but didn’t because she knew it wasn’t good for Sophie’s immune system.

Sophie was taking morphine for the final stages of uterine cancer.
Every day for the past few weeks, Althea imagined that she would wake
up to the call that Sophie had not lasted the night. Up until she got sick, Althea had been visiting Sophie every morning and night, before and after work. It had been hard, but manageable. Not like the first time Sophie was in the hospital.

That had been the worst. The cancer had come out of nowhere, and Sophie fought it tooth and nail. Althea had found it very difficult to watch.

Althea sat down in the chair. Sophie breathed steadily. Althea whispered to her.

“I need to talk. Can you understand me?” Sophie blinked her eyes once.
Yes.
They had set this system up when she was first diagnosed.
I’ll always want to hear what’s on your mind. Even when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll want to know. When I can’t understand anything, then I give you permission to pull the plug
. Althea had smiled. From Sophie, she expected nothing less.

Sophie was first diagnosed with cancer shortly after Althea’s return from Europe three years before. Shortly after that, Althea sold her condo and moved into Sophie’s upstairs apartment to help out. The cancer was already at a late stage. They didn’t expect her to live for more than a few months. After surgery and an aggressive round of chemo, Sophie went into remission, much to her doctors’ surprise.

“I have to share something with you, something I haven’t shared with anyone. I’m not sure what to do.” One blink.
Yes
.

“Okay. This week, I received some news which has come as a shock. If I hadn’t had been home sick, I would have missed it. Anyway, I have this information now, and I’m not sure what I want to do about it.” Althea told Sophie what she had learned. Sophie’s eyes remained on her, her breath even.

“I can only imagine what you think about all this. What you would say right now if you could.” Althea teased. “But whatever
you
think, I think it’s just shitty all around, and I’m feeling so many conflicting things, and it’s just lousy timing. With you and them and everything else on my plate, and me wanting to finish my book. I’m blocked.” Sophie’s eyes closed.

“Can you still hear me?” One blink.
Yes
. “Is this too much for you today?” Two blinks.
No
.

“I am blocked and I don’t know why. I’ve been blocked since before you came back in here, but I’ve been in denial about it. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. I thought I was close to finishing, you know, just a few days away. I told you that, remember? Phyllis was ready to give it a read. I was scared, but looking forward to it.” One blink.
Yes
.

“The weekend I thought I’d nail it — I felt high. The same weekend, would you believe, I actually put an ad on the internet?”

Sophie’s eyes blinked twice.
No
. If she had
been talking, it would have sounded like “Noooooo ...” While Althea was in Europe, Sophie had set up an internet ad for Althea without her knowledge. Althea discovered the ad after Sophie went into the hospital for the first time. She had been furious, but didn’t confront Sophie about it until months later, when Sophie came home.

“A dating ad, can you believe it? Even used the same handle you did. Althea1111.” Sophie’s eyes fluttered, blinking a dozen times. “Yeah, that’s funny, isn’t it? And I was optimistic even, laid it all out, everything, no holds barred. Have hardly got any responses. It’s enough to make a girl paranoid. Anyway, the same day I put the ad up was just before you came back in here — and instead of nailing my ending, I did nothing but pace around. And then you came back here, and then I got sick, then this
other
thing, and tomorrow, Celia’s coming into town and I can’t even imagine writing right now, let alone
internet
dating for Christ’s sake. It’s all too much.

You know, I sometimes wonder if I delude myself, wondering if anyone will care about what I’ve written, whether everyone will think that it’s silly, whether I’ve just set myself up for failure. Then I read it, and it’s not bad, you know, it’s okay, so I keep going. It was going so well.” Althea stopped, watching Sophie’s intravenous drip slowly.

“When I’m writing, I feel connected, it feels right, like a million brilliant shining lights, it’s like this euphoric channel. Then when I’m not writing, I wondered if I imagined it all.

And I ask myself: why have I created this? Why? I feel like there’s something else I have to do, that’s why everything’s happening now, but I don’t know what that is. I’ve turned myself inside out in the last couple of years, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve made any progress at all. It’s all such self-pitying crap, but sometimes I still feel it, you know?” Sophie’s IV dropped. Althea’s eyes teared, and her voice became choked. “I’ve been sick, and I’ve also been having crying jags since I found out this happened, it’s really intense, over the top, and when it happens it’s like everything slows down, my thoughts, my movements, and I just lay there for hours, feeling it, wanting it to stop, and when I finally get to sleep, I have really weird dreams.” Althea sobbed, the sadness coming over her, deep and familiar.

“Sophie, I thought I was finished with all this. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Sophie breathed evenly.

chapter 64

Three years before

ALTHEA’S TRAVEL FROM PARIS to Portugal got off to a rough start. Her plane had been canceled due to weather conditions and the next flight to Lisbon didn’t get cleared until four hours later. She spent most of the delay reading. By the time she arrived at her Lisbon hotel, it was almost midnight. The cab driver slowed on a narrow, cobblestone street and stopped in front of an unmarked door and a decaying wall, spotted with cracked blue and white tiles.

“Could you wait, I’d like to make sure I’m in the right place.” The driver nodded. Althea got out of the cab and examined the door. She found the buzzer, pressed it, and waited until the door unlocked.

Inside, the lobby was unpainted, dusty and dark, with a steep staircase. There were no indications of lodging here. It seemed deserted. She had booked Casa do Castelo on the internet, it had looked nice. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“Hello? Ms. Brecht?” A man’s voice echoed from the third floor and she could hear footsteps. She looked up to see a man in his thirties, wearing jeans, sandals and a faded orange sweatshirt. His English was slow and precise, with a thick Portugese accent.

“I got your message. Can I carry your bags?”

“Yes. Thanks for waiting. I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place.”

“Yes, it’s hard to see our sign. Sometimes I wait and people don’t arrive.”

“You mean they book with you and don’t show up at all?” The man shrugged.

“Those kind of people — it’s better they don’t stay here.”

• • •

FOR FIVE NIGHTS, SHE stayed at Casa do Castelo, which offered three affordable and lovely rooms just outside the walls of the Castelo Sao George in the center of Lisbon. The Casa occupied the top two floors of a building, with private apartments below.

Althea liked her room immediately — brightly colored sheets and single duvets, angled ceilings, two windows with views over the city, a newly renovated private bath and the smell of clean wood.

She slept in late the next morning, nestled in her down duvet. When she got up, Marco made her a breakfast of coffee and warm milk, ham, cheese, bread and fruit. As she sipped her coffee, she gazed out the large expanse of windows to the Casa’s three rooftop terraces. The windows were open and they could hear music and singing in the distance.

“Is there a holiday here today?” Althea asked. Marco shrugged.

“It’s a saint’s birthday, I don’t know. I’m not very religious.” Althea smiled.

“Me neither.”

“Where are you going after Lisbon?”

“South, to the beach.”

“The Algarve?” Althea shook her head and did her best to articulate her next destination.

“Zambuja —”

He finished for her. “Zambujeira do Mar. I’ve been to their music festival. When Portugese go to the beach, they go to Brazil. We can speak Portugese there and it’s cheap.”

“Have you been?”

“Yes, I visit a man there. He heals people.” Althea nodded, curious.

After breakfast, she walked up the narrow streets until she found the castle. The sky was dark, raining gently. The castle walls opened up into a grand, lush maze of worn stone, gardens, roaming peacocks and a spectacular, panoramic view. She found a stone bench, and gazed out over the sea, the city of Lisbon, the bridge, and the statue of Mary showing the way south to Zambujeira do Mar and the Algarve. She felt at home here.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure exactly who she was talking to. Daniel seemed far away. Her life seemed far away.

For the next few days, Althea walked the steep cobblestone streets of Lisbon in search of places to read the books Celia had given her. She sat reading at the outdoor cafes, on the lawns outside of churches, on benches outside of antique shops, on a gazebo in an expansive park. She read as she ate dinner at small canthinas, the local grilled fish and seafood cheap and succulent, and the wine plentiful, served in colourful ceramic goblets.

At night, she would write in her journal, starting each session with the image of her chest opening to the sky, and as she wrote, the intensity of her emotion was almost too much to bear. Kevin, Tori, George, Daniel, her life flashed in front of her, everything she had done and not done, the way in which she had lashed out in anger, scaring herself. Worse, the anger that she had had kept inside and not expressed. You know what depression is, right? Anger expressed inward. Michelle’s voice.

As the words spilled onto page after page, the pressure inside her ebbed and flowed. Sometimes she cried as she wrote, and at these times, she wanted the pain to stop. Instead, she kept going, and soon, the pain receded, transforming into a balm of healing release.

The last night of her stay, with her journal in her lap, she sipped port on the Casa’s highest rooftop terrace which housed well-tended orange trees. The three-level terrace was truly an oasis and very close to the highest point in Lisbon. Each of the three terraces were connected by an antique iron spiral staircase which circled around and when the moon emerged, her heart expanded, full of the emotions that fuelled her words.

Her feelings scared her. She hesitated.
Move into it
, she thought. “This is why I came here” she wrote quickly on an upward diagonal, starting at the center of the page, her emotions rising. “Around and round and round they danced, his hand like cold iron on the center of her back ...” she continued, and her pen flew over the pages, her heart dancing like the two images she created, seeking something just behind the moon.

How long did she write? The pages flew, and when she heard the child cry, she stopped, her heart skipping a beat. The cry was a forlorn sound, raw, filled with pain, a sound expanding the aching sadness within her. She looked up at the crescent moon, bright white tonight in the black Portugese sky. Her pen was poised over the page.

Marco’s steps echoed as he climbed the spiral staircase and joined her on the terrace. She looked at him with wide eyes as he topped up her port. His left hand moved to his forehead.

“The sound of that peacock drives me crazy,” he said and Althea laughed, tears streaming down her cheeks.