Too Far Under (22 page)

I would have liked to explore her childhood
memories further, but time was short and we needed to move on with
what we needed to do before Lacey’s attempt to contact her mom, so
I said, “We need to be around some of your mother’s things so we
can focus on her and begin to feel her essence. Are her clothes and
jewelry still here? People’s favorite things take on their
essence.”

Lacey frowned. “Mom’s essence isn’t in her
clothes or jewelry,” she said. “We should go to her office. That’s
what she cared about. None of us has felt up to sorting through all
that stuff. I think Dad’s searched through it looking for a new
will, but otherwise it’s pretty much the way she left it.” She led
the way down the hall toward the back of the house, then up four
steps to a large kitchen and family room. Mirabel’s office was a
small room off the family room. Other than a big window that looked
out on the flower garden and wooded grounds behind the house, there
was nothing much to look at. The room was jammed with papers
everywhere—covering a wide desk that faced the window and stacked
in boxes on the floor. “Mom was always going to get this stuff
organized,” Lacey said sadly, “but she never got around to doing
it.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “Papers seem to
multiply in an office.” Then to move us along with the process, I
said, “Can you feel or imagine your mother in this room like she
used to be?”

Lacey laughed. “No problem. In my mind’s eye
I can see her sitting right there at that desk, talking on the
phone, sifting through a stack of papers. That’s how she spent most
of her time when she wasn’t off at meetings. I’d say this is for
sure the best place in the house to feel a connection.”

There was no place to sit in the office other
than Mirabel’s desk chair, which also held a box of papers. “Let’s
just sit on the floor,” I said. After we made ourselves as
comfortable as we could on the floor, she began to tell me about
Mirabel’s work in the community. But we were quickly interrupted by
a glaring Derrick standing in the doorway.

“What’s going on, Lacey? Why is Cleo here and
what are you doing in Mom’s office? Surely you could find a more
comfortable place in the house than this to sit and talk.”

I wasn’t any more pleased to see him than he
looked to see me. I hoped Lacey could give him a quick answer that
would satisfy him enough that he’d leave us alone.

“We’re in here because it’s the place that
most helps me feel close to Mom,” Lacey said. “Cleo’s going to help
me try to contact Mom today and I need to start out by being around
stuff that was important to Mom so I can get a strong feeling of
her.”

Derrick’s frown turned into a smile. “You
sure picked the right room for that, even if you do have to sit on
the floor,” he said in a much pleasanter tone. “Mirabel wasn’t home
much, but when she was, this was where you’d find her.”

Lacey didn’t smile in return. She just looked
up at him and said, “Dad, we need to get on with what we’re doing
here, so could you please close the door and give us some
privacy.”

He made no move to step out of the doorway.
No longer smiling, he said, “I’m glad to hear you’re going to
contact Mirabel. When you do, you need to find out something for
me. Your mother told me she’d kept her promise and made a new will
that left out the Scientologists. But I can’t find it. Vernon
handled all her legal stuff and he says he didn’t help her make a
new will. I think she did, but I can’t prove it. So you need to ask
her where it is.”

Oh, no. The will questions again. I thought
I’d already made it clear to Derrick that we weren’t going to give
Mirabel his messages.

Lacey jumped to her feet. “Dad I don’t want
to talk about this. Now you need to go.” She reached for the door—I
assumed to close it in his face. But he was blocking her way.

“You haven’t answered me, Lacey,” he said. “I
made a simple request and I’d like you to be courteous enough to
give me an answer.”

I was still sitting on the floor looking up
at them as they both stood facing off in the doorway. I considered
getting to my feet and joining them, but I couldn’t see anything to
be gained by involving myself in their argument—especially since it
was a discussion Derrick and I had already had. So I waited
quietly.

Lacey planted her feet right in front of
Derrick and leaned in, close to his face. “Okay, here’s your
answer,” she said in a steely voice. “No, no and no! I’m not going
to ask Mom about her will. That’s not what this is about. This is
for me to connect with Mom and talk to her about what I want to
say. I’m not your messenger. If you have questions about her will,
you should take them up with Grandad or try to contact Mom
yourself.” She snickered. “Of course Mom wouldn’t be likely to want
to do you any favors if she knows about how Judith has moved in
here and what the two of you are doing to Angelica. And I figure
she does know because dead people can see everything. So good luck
with finding out anything about her will.”

Lacey’s voice had risen to a shrill, almost
hysterical point by then. Her agitation was not at all the right
preparation for her upcoming contact session. I finally decided we
needed to get out of there and get her calmed down. So I stood up,
put my hand on her arm and spoke slowly and firmly to Derrick.
“Look. I told you that the Contact Project is not a messenger
service. You need to back off now and let Lacey do this the way she
wants to do it.” Before he could reply, I turned to Lacey and said,
“Come on. We need to go now.”

Derrick held his ground in the doorway,
blocking our way. “Listen, Lacey,” he said angrily. “If more than a
third of your mom’s money goes to Scientology, we’ll all be in
trouble. Maybe you don’t care for yourself, but if you care about
Angelica as much as you say you do, you’ll want to find that new
will. So for once in your life stop being selfish and think about
what’s best for the whole family.”

Could Derrick really be in such a dire
financial situation? He sounded desperate. I began to wonder
whether he might be deeply in debt.

Lacey put her hand on his chest and pushed
him. “Move,” she said. “We need to go.” He looked angry enough to
push back or maybe even slap her, but he got control of himself and
stepped back out of the doorway. We hustled through and headed down
the hall to the front door.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Lacey,”
Derrick yelled after us. “I thought you cared about this
family.”

“I care more about this family than you do,
Dad,” she yelled back. And before we closed the front door behind
us, she leaned in and took her parting shot. “I’m beyond
disappointed in you, Dad,” she screeched. “You don’t care about
anyone but yourself.” She slammed the door shut.

In the driveway, I turned to her and said,
“I’ll meet you at my office. Do your best to calm down while you’re
driving there. Don’t think about your dad and how you’re mad at
him. Think about your mom and how much you miss her.”

Lacey nodded. “Sorry,” she said, “he just
…”

“No more about him,” I reminded her. “Let’s
go now.”

We each got in our cars and drove off toward
my office. Whew! What a state she was in. The time we spent in
Mirabel’s office was pretty much a disaster as far as setting her
up for the contact process. If she was going to have any chance of
reaching Mirabel, I needed to help Lacey smooth out and quiet her
mind.

Back at my office, I took Lacey for a walk
over to Boulder Creek. Autumn is a great time of year at the creek.
The water level is lower than in summer, but the sun dancing off
the reds and yellows of the leaves reflects in the water below
creating a soft leisurely space. I love to sit on a bench
overlooking the creek, soaking up that tranquility.

I found my favorite bench and suggested to
Lacey that we sit quietly and relax for a few minutes. Then I said,
“It would be helpful for you to think about your mom for a bit
before we go to my office and use the apparition chamber. Try
focusing on a time when you and she were in synch, enjoying each
other. It doesn’t have to be recent. Does a time like that come to
mind?”

Lacey sat quietly for a few minutes. Her face
softened. She said, “I remember my sixteenth birthday. Mom wanted
to have a special day with me—which was a huge surprise, since she
was mostly too busy to take off a whole day to be with me or any of
us kids. My birthday is in March. She let me skip school—another
huge surprise—and we went skiing at Winter Park. It was one of
those spring skiing days that comes right after a heavy snow.
Sunny, not very cold, bright blue sky, no crowds. We had some
terrific runs and we ate lunch outside on the deck of that food
place at the top of the mountain. It always amazes me that you can
ski and the sun is warm enough to be able to eat outside. We sat
there eating pizza slices, relaxing in the sun, laughing at a
couple of snowboarders talking about the spills they’d taken in the
morning. It was one of the most fun days we ever had together.”

“A wonderful memory,” I said. “Can you think
back and picture your mom on that day? Remember how she looked,
what she was wearing, and like that.”

“Definitely,” she said. “Mom had a fabulous
down ski jacket that I always loved. It was a black and white
Spyder that she used for hiking and snowshoeing as well as skiing.
Mom was always physically active and in great shape until the last
few years when she got such bad arthritis. So, yes, I can still see
her in that jacket and her black ski pants schussing down the hill
with her hair blowing in the wind and a huge grin on her face.”
Tears welled up in Lacey’s eyes and she sat silently for a few
minutes. Then she said, “We didn’t have nearly enough good times
like that, and now it’s too late.”

We sat by the creek for a while longer before
we walked slowly back to my office. There I took Lacey into the
apparition chamber. I have it set up in a small windowless room,
just big enough for the four-foot square mirror on the wall about
three feet above the floor, and the easy-chair inclined backward
that sits in front of it. The mirror and the chair are surrounded
by a black velvet curtain that creates a small booth so the sitter
can gaze into the mirror and see only a pool of darkness. The only
illumination comes from a fifteen-watt bulb in a small
stained-glass lamp behind the chair. The theory behind this is that
throughout history people have reported seeing visions in
reflective surfaces such as clear pools of water, polished brass
cauldrons, crystals, and mirrors lit in the midst of blackness. The
apparitions appear as the viewer gazes into the clear dark
pool.

I asked Lacey to remove her watch so she
wouldn’t be focused on the time, then got her situated in the
chair. “Take some deep breaths and relax,” I said. “Try to clear
your mind of everything except thoughts of your mother, and then
gaze deeply into the mirror. Don’t try to rush it or make something
happen,” I cautioned her. “Just be here. You can stay as long as
you want. I’ll be right across the hall in my office if you have
any problems. When you’re done, just come out and we’ll talk.”

I work hard not to expect or even hope for
any particular outcome when a client is in the apparition chamber.
Once they are in there, it’s their process. Whatever happens,
happens. I use the time to work on patient charts, insurance forms,
or whatever projects will keep my mind occupied.

So once Lacey was settled, I went across to
my office and started working on my notes for the class I would be
teaching on Friday. I was deeply involved in reading an account of
double-blind experiments designed to investigate whether mediums
can contact the dead, when I heard the apparition chamber door
open. I got up and went out to the hall. Lacey ran up and squashed
me in a big hug. “She came! Mom came! I saw her. I talked to her.
It was amazing!” Lacey’s words tumbled over themselves in her
excitement.

I hugged her back and waited quietly until
the cascade of disjointed words stopped and she released me. Then I
said, “That’s wonderful, Lacey. Let’s go sit in the counseling
room. I’ll get you some water and you can tell me what happened.”
She followed me into the room and sat on the sofa, looking a bit
dazed, but happy and more relaxed than I’d ever seen her. I brought
her a glass of water and sat across from her in my usual wing
chair. “Tell me about it,” I said.

Lacey sighed then began speaking softly. “I
sat there for a long time, just thinking about her like you said I
should. But I couldn’t see anything in the mirror and I was getting
discouraged. Then all of a sudden I heard her voice. She said,
‘Take your time, Lacey, and think about what you want.’ That’s
something she often used to say to me, so I thought maybe I was
imagining her voice. But I looked up and there she was in the
mirror, just sitting there looking out at me. I was so happy to see
her that I started crying. She said, ‘Don’t be sad for me. Don’t
cry. I know it’s hard to imagine, but I’m fine.’ I tried to tell
her how sorry I am that we didn’t get along better before she died,
but she started fading away when I was saying that.”

Lacey stopped and took a big gulp of water,
then set the glass down on the table in front of the couch. She
grabbed a tissue from the box on the table and blew her nose. I
waited to see what else she had to say.

She sat for a few minutes looking off to her
left as if trying to recollect something. “Could you get me some
paper and a pen?” she said. “I want to make some notes before I
forget any of what Mom said to me.

“Of course,” I said. I got up, walked down
the hall to my office and brought her a pen and a pad of paper. She
began scribbling furiously and kept at it for about ten minutes.
Then she looked up. “Okay,” she said. “Now I can finish telling
you. When Mom started fading away, I yelled at her not to go yet,
that I needed to find out what had happened to her in the hot tub.
She came back and somehow stepped right out of the mirror and
hugged me. I could really feel her. Does that usually happen?”