Jumping (3 page)

I remember I turned and looked at him, feeling a chill creep up, starting at my legs. “At the foot of your bed?” I asked
.

“Yes. She said she was on her way but just wanted me to know how much she had valued our closeness, how much it had meant to her. She said, ‘And I want you to know you're never alone. We never are.’ Then she got up to leave, giving me such a smile.” He was smiling as he said it, gazing peacefully past the newspaper he was holding into the dining room beyond. I was paralyzed, afraid to look over my shoulder to follow his gaze, in case there was something there to look at. “Weren't you scared?” I asked, thinking of the dark house, everyone else unavailable in sleep, the vulnerability of bed. Of a dead woman showing up to tell you good bye
.

“What would I be scared of?” he asked. “It was Grandma.”

I stared at him in silence, still feeling scared in the broad daylight of the bright kitchen. I didn't try to explain to him that “scared” would be a sensible reaction. But this meant I had a son who saw ghosts, something I never expected. I could see the foot of his bed from my room at the opposite end of the short hallway. Was she going to come back, or was she really gone? What was a mother to do, a good mother?

She sat on the end of his bed and told him he was going to have a long and interesting life, and then she died the next day. He got comfort from the visit. In fact, he talked to his grandmother a lot, especially at night when he went to bed, discussing the events of his day with her. Duncan Robert and I talked of these things whenever someone in town died, too, wondering if they might get a visit from the deceased and wondering if we should share our thoughts with them. Usually we decided not to
.

“Couldn't the visits be created by his own imagination,” I asked, “driven by his need to maintain the connection?”

“You mean, him talking to himself? Sure, I thought of that. I guess you'd have to hear him tell it.” She smiles. “I could be counted as biased, though.”

“What does the story say to you about him, beyond the fact that he sees ghosts?”

“That he has access to something I don't, to a world beyond this one.”

“That he's special?”

“Yes. And sure I want my child to be special. Maybe I wouldn't have chosen this way, but he did.”

The second story is a bit more revealing of Duncan Robert's own belief system, and shows it in operation. It was also told to me by his mother, though Miles knew of it as well.

Duncan Robert had been helping his friend Dominic move out of his house and into an apartment for the summer. Four of them were going to share this apartment the summer before their senior year in high school. All of them had at least part-time jobs and were eager to be out of the nest. While carrying a load of boxes, Duncan Robert tripped on a pile of lumber by Dominic's back door, landing with his left forearm under him. He didn't realize for a day or two that it was broken, not until he went to his job as a waiter and tried to lift a full tray with that arm. He found he couldn't lift anything. I met him at the doctor's, since he was still under my insurance, and they x-rayed and determined the outer bone, the ulna, had a clean break right down the middle. They called it a ‘nightstick fracture,’ an uncommon isolated ulnar shaft fracture. It happens to cops defending themselves against an overhead blow. “It's unlikely to heal in that area,” the doctor said. “We'll need to do a rigid plate fixation to stabilize it so it can heal correctly. Let's put a cast on it while we're waiting to get the surgery scheduled in three or four days. We'll do a pre-surgery x-ray to make sure nothing has moved and do the surgery.” Duncan Robert resisted the idea of surgery, and the doctor got a little angry. “Non-surgical treatments are prone to complications and associated with mal-union and nonunion, with the break often recurring. That's a lot of unnecessary pain!” he sort of barked. Duncan Robert didn't argue, and the doctor put the cast on and we went home
.

Duncan Robert was quiet and turned in soon after dinner that night. I stayed up doing some mending. Before I went to bed, I went down the hall to check on him, to see if his cast was causing him any trouble sleeping. As I walked down the dark hall to his door, I could see light coming from under it, brightening the hall. The light wasn't steady, it was colorful and it fluctuated. I remember thinking, “What in the world does he have going?” I was thinking video game or the small old television of his grandma's, though it's a black and white. I knocked gently and receiving no answer, I slowly opened the door to peek in. Colorful balls of light were traveling around the edges of the ceiling. Each was a different color, about eight inches in diameter, and traveling fast. I caught my breath and looked at his bed. He was lying quietly, eyes closed, his right hand over the cast on his left arm. “Duncan Robert!” I called to him. “What is going on?” He opened his eyes to look at me and said, “What?” Then he went back to sleep. I sat on the floor next to his bed until the lights stopped. It all felt very peaceful. He stayed asleep. I put my hand on his cast, and it was warm. I didn't know what to think. I went to bed
.

The next morning, he had to leave for the restaurant, despite his arm. “I need the money, and there are still some things I can do.” I asked him about the lights. He looked at me as if I was crazy. “I don't know about any lights. I just fell asleep holding the cast and thinking of healing. My arm feels great. I think it's healed.” I gave him a kiss on his way out. “I guess we'll know Friday.”

That Friday, the doctor was all set for surgery. He wanted Duncan Robert to check into the hospital that afternoon for surgery in the morning. All Duncan Robert said was, “Let's do the x-ray.” They went into x-ray, and when they came out, the doctor was shaking his head. They had taken the cast off to do the x-ray, and Duncan Robert was rubbing his arm
.

“It's healed,” the doctor said quietly, looking at no one. “There's no sign of any break whatsoever. It's as if it never happened. I wouldn't believe it if I didn't have the first x-ray in front of me.” He looked at Duncan Robert. “I asked him what happened, but he says he doesn't know. Do you?”

“I have no idea. I'm as surprised as you are.”

“Well, somebody did something, because that fracture is gone. I'd like an explanation.”

“I don't have one,” I said and looked at Duncan Robert
.

He shrugged. “It healed.”

And then we walked out
.

She looked at me. “Don't ask. I don't know what it means. It's like seeing his grandma. There are things he does and knows that didn't come from me, so I don't know where they came from. Here's something with outside verification, and we still don't know what to do with it.”

“What did Duncan Robert say?”

“Nothing! He's better at accepting these things, not having to endlessly worry over them. He did say, ‘I knew I wasn't having surgery.’”

“I've heard of other spontaneous healings, though I don't hear of them often. Usually they're associated with a religious effort. I've never heard of this flashing light phenomenon.”

“Well, imagine seeing it in the middle of the night, happening over your son's head. If it hadn't felt so benign, I might have gotten more upset. But it just didn't feel bad.”

I was beginning to see a pattern emerge, of openness to alternate views of death and God. The parameters of a life that could permit a jump begin to materialize.

The third story is one that Miles told me. It involved Duncan Robert and Reggie, just after they'd finished high school, and a house-sitting job they had undertaken together in the next village over. Duncan Robert had been excited because they were sharing an adult responsibility for the care of a home, out of town, together. It was a new and empowering experience for him. They left town enthusiastic and determined to leave the place better than they found it so that they would be asked again.

“What happened in that house was a significant event for Duncan Robert,” Miles said. “He recorded it as a story in his journal and re-wrote it over and over in his effort to settle the effect it had on him. That was probably my influence—to write it in order to understand it. He had me edit it for clarity, along with punctuation and spelling. He was compelled to tell it and to work to capture it exactly, and he further refined the details each time he re-wrote it.”

When I heard Miles talk like this, I wondered if Duncan Robert was looking for a vocabulary that would be a faithful reflection of the alternative reality he experienced, even though he knew he was deflecting that reality as he did so, making it harder to believe. In other words, the better he captured it with his words, the better job he did of clarifying just how outlandish it was.

“It's a charming two-story cottage,” Miles said. “I've visited several times. It was built in the late 1700s and is still pretty much the same as it has always been. Duncan Robert's story began the first morning of their weekend stay there, when he was in the upstairs bathroom, brushing his teeth.”

Toothbrush in my left hand, I reached over with my right hand to open the small casement window to the side of the small sink. Pushing the window out, I looked down over the sill, expecting to see the large backyard vegetable garden
.

Instead, I was looking out on a small, carefully manicured garden from another time and place, a time closer to the origins of the house. I could see flat green fields extending far beyond the boundaries of the garden. Within the garden, I could see people strolling, dressed in clothes from that other era, talking quietly as they stopped to examine the flowers and blooming shrubs that were there now. Closest to me were a man and woman, and the first thing that caught my attention was the woman's slowly twirling parasol. It was shaped like a small white gazebo with a tassel on top. It competed in size with the swaying side bustles of her skirt, which stopped just short of her ankles, leaving her small feet exposed. I followed the flat panel of the center of her dress up to the bodice, which was fitted tightly to her narrow frame, forming slight wrinkles at each rib. The print of her dress was small enough to be almost indiscernible, but looking closer I could detect violet-colored flowers edged in pale green.

Further up, I could see her neck and the lower half of her face, both powdered white, and her narrow tinted lips. As her lace-gloved hands shifted the parasol, I got a profile view of a tower of tight blonde curls topped by a tiny-brimmed straw hat, adorned with deep purple grapes, shiny red miniature raspberries, overlaid with a trailing of honey suckle vines that bobbled at her slightest movement. Fascinated by the combination of the hair and the hat, I wondered how both were attached—the hat to the hair, the hair to her head. My attention could not have left her if the man had not moved to take her arm, guiding her toward another display of flowers, and the couple stopped, now directly beneath my window.

Before I could do more than get a quick glance at the man's muted yellow waistcoat and matching knee-length pants, I froze. She was lifting her head to bring her slightly slanted blue eyes to mine. I turned my head and looked at her, through the opening between the small glass double doors of the casement window, my hands on the round knob handles, my toothbrush clasped tightly, toothpaste suds in my half-opened mouth, dribbling down to my blue and white striped Eddie Bauer pajamas. I hung there, breathless, between worlds. Could she see me, I wondered, without comprehending how I could see her. She stopped, her lips slightly parted, her eyes not fully catching the sight of me.

Whether or not she saw me, I saw her. I saw directly into her eyes. I didn't think I could break my gaze away. She looked away first, turning to her partner, searching his face questioningly. Still, I stood, toothpaste suds dripping down my chin, bare feet feeling the cold tiles of the bathroom in this world. A breeze through the window lifted the ends of my hair. I saw the same breeze gently move the tassel on top of her parasol. Both of them turned their faces up toward my window and then away. My eyes didn't connect with hers again. He held her arm, steering her along the path. The parasol again hid her face from my view. I stood there a moment longer, watching them. I looked out at the larger scene, seeing a flock of birds rise from the far field and move low over it. Finally, I closed the window, leaning my head against it for a second, quieting my breath, wondering if I would open it again.

“When Duncan Robert did open the window again,” Miles said, “all was normal outside, the usual vegetable garden there, along with the owner's cat, lying in wait for unsuspecting birds. Duncan Robert didn't know how to understand what he had seen or why he had seen it; all he could do was record it.”

When I commented on the quality of Duncan Robert's writing, Miles said, “Duncan Robert would never have considered himself a writer. He was just recording what he saw, like a court reporter would record what he heard. The incident changed Duncan Robert, though. The best way I can describe it is to say that it matured him in some way. He seemed more thoughtful, more introspective, even, than before.”

I asked what Reggie had thought. He said, “Well, Reggie, like the rest of us, didn't know what to think. I know she had some other-worldly incidents herself over the years, but she wasn't given to talking about them. She didn't question or doubt Duncan Robert's experience, which I think must have meant a lot to him.”

“I guess it's pretty elaborate for an hallucination,” I said. “How would you explain it?”

“I have no idea. There are spiritual writers who call it a ‘bleed through,’ from one time and place to another. They say they've been written about for centuries—comparable to what people saw in crystal balls—pasts, futures, what-might-have-beens. I don't know the whys. I just think it says something about his sensitivity or his willingness to experience.”