Respite

Respite

        “The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.” – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

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        The parking lot exists and then the car, and then inside it: Seth. This may be the dream again, but there’s no telling.

        Everything is starting the same at least; he sits in the near-empty lot, inside his junk and trinket-filled car staring out the windshield and watching the pollen-infused water spill down the glass. The rain pelts the car that once inside one can hear it like tiny acorns dive-bombing onto the roof of his aged “magnum blue” four-door sedan.

The rain is now washing away the pollen that had accumulated over the short weeks. Before the rain, the pollen decorated his car with yellow dust from the blossoming of neighborhood trees. It’s easy to watch it now spread down the windshield and rest in a gunky and allergy-infused pile on his wipers. It was an almost satisfactory feeling to sit patiently and watch the pollen mix together and trickle down his windshield, a gross shade of mustard as the particles dissolve into the water, creating a sickening, vomit-solution of pollen granules and water molecules.

        It is here that awareness is rekindled. Instant recognition of the dreamscape is made, specifically of the building that seems to be surrounded by shadows. Water had spilled gross pollen away from the roof of the car and down the windshield. It repeated this process several times. This was it.

        This was the dream again.

       In the lonely parking lot, the magnum blue car with rust-bucket undercarriage and struts patiently rests. Its alignment with the parking spot somewhere in the third row of a stretch of empty spaces, column B, is crooked. A hurried parking job. A mad dash into the store. Late, again.

        Rain is a stupidly common metaphor for cleansing. It’s easy to hear him say these words, he said them so frequently. Everyone hates it when it rains in their dreams.

        There was that time Seth often recalled to Elaina. Whilst leaning back in the chair and looking to his left at Dr. Sherman in his drab attire and ethnic office, Dr. Sherman lauded over studies of dream translations.

        There were tribal masks, busts, paintings, and tiny statues of various people around the world throughout the therapist’s office. Dr. Sherman certainly considered himself to be worldly.

        “It would oftentimes be associated with renewal, rebirth, or even baptism.”

        Dr. Sherman would repeat each week when hearing about the parking lot dream.

        “Hard not to roll my eyes at the cliché” Seth responds tartly.

        Seth is in the car and once again entranced by the rain. The dream exists to bring this moment back up again, so it makes sense to revisit what brought everyone back to this day. The day in the rainy parking lot.

        The rain of course stops suddenly because that’s what things do in dreams when you acknowledge them. They cease to exist.

        Seth is getting out of the car and does not bother closing the door. The asphalt of the parking lot is wet and sparkling with an unmistakable smell, the one from when Seth and his brother Wyatt would run away from their mother and play in the puddles.

        Then (and now) he would play in the parking lot of the church house. His mother and Auntie Cam were inside for their weekly New Negro Literature club. He and Wyatt would escape the supervision of the children’s area, sneaking out the fire escape door in the coffee room, and together, hand in hand, would flee their imprisonment. They would squeeze their tiny bodies through the rusted iron bars of the cemetery and hold their breath as they ran past the graves, careful not to step on any. Wyatt would collect posies or sunflowers and dandelions off the graves.

        “They’re bouquets for the dead!” Seth would shout at his brother.

        Wyatt didn’t care. He’d make a bouquet for their Mamma.

     His naive brother’s curly hair was a deep brown and their mother allowed him to grow his hair out into a full-blown afro. Now grown, Wyatt’s head was shaved and his jolly rotund body wore it better than any hairstyle of his youth.

Seeing him now, one would never guess he would pick posies in a cemetery. He had a polished head with a thick-bodied and broad-shouldered appearance of intimidation. His laugh was a thunderous volcano of guffawing that devolved into girlish giggle fits and hissing between his teeth if the levity was encouraged long enough. His heart and should could not be gentler and though his external body was a mass of masculinity; his heart still belonged to the curly-haired boy squeezing through fences with his brother.

        Wyatt was standing there next to Seth when he married Elaina and the two of them had shared embarrassing stories about him over toasts the whole night.

        Not every motion of the dream is recognizable. There is one that comes to mind that takes place in the church. He sees Elaina balancing her composure as she cries. Elaine is holding the chunky Wyatt’s hand. The brother is beside her and openly weeping as if there were a competition of who can express their grief the loudest. They are seated in a front pew of the church in South Carolina, the family church. This could be the funeral of his mother… but Elaina is in a beautiful black dress, the one she had picked out to wear to a dinner party in June for his award from the children’s hospital. They never went. Why was that?

        Stepping outside the church and looking into the woods next to the lot, the woods beside the cemetery the boys would play in are the hazy shadows of an undefined dream. Within this collision of realities is the surreal image of the younger versions of him and his brother, fleeing the church. These two are playing tag around the cemetery in the drizzle while the rain collects puddles on the hot June pavement of the lot. It wasn’t like the petrichor of a hot and dry Arkansas where he and Elaina attended undergraduate school.

No, this was the sultry and sticky summer rain of South Carolina that filled your nostrils. Looking back to his sedan and the church his past disappeared in a fissure of once-in-a-lifetime moments and dwelled on memories.

         The sun is peeking out of the grey clouds and shining its light onto the hood of the automobiles that now filled the lot. The sun reflects off the hood of a silver Mitsubishi and stings light directly into the eyes. He’s walking to the car now and the light forces him to squint and suck air in between his teeth.

        Remember the dreary humidity, and the smell of hot pavement, only recently poured on? Remember how it gives the air an almost artificial fume?

         He breathes deeply in and out, looking around him at the previously deserted parking lot, now slowly filling more and more before his very eyes as cars seemingly appear into place, rocking back and forth as they settle into their place between the lines.

        With the exhale of air, there’s the recollection of his mother’s perfume. Elaina always said he could smell it from a yard away when the wind blew right, even over that scent of the heavy, wet, summer Carolina air that overpowered so many of his memories.

        Elaina found the perfume when they and his brother were going through her things after her death. Elaina asked what it smelt like and Seth couldn’t put it into words. Wyatt, always the poet, simply stated that it was the smell of an altruistic woman with confidence and class. A good Christian heart. Elaina liked that description and the two boys, laying on their mama’s bed and flipping through photographs, regaled her with stories of the sturdy woman who was their mother.

        The parking lot now has that thick humidity where the droplets could still be in the air, hanging loosely and floating about, and taking in a breath was akin to sticking your head into a full sink and just sucking in water. It made your lungs and the back of your throat feel heavy and damp. This sensation is recalled as is the memory of Elaina’s terrible story. The children’s hospital ball. It had been a way to honor their finest doctors and donators and it had been canceled when one of their most celebrated medical professionals was killed in the rain.

        Seth is going to look over his right shoulder and as he does so, the supermarket he had visited three months prior to get a bottle of champagne, resurfaces in a most volatile way, in place of the church. He’ll also spin his head to the car to see if he can find his cell phone. He will and he’ll stretch his arms out to reach the car door, which is uncomfortable in the suit he is going to be in.

        It was the grey suit, the one his mother had picked out with Elaina, but was too afraid of telling them it fit improperly. He always avoided wearing it because the arms of the jacket didn’t quite fit him correctly, and everything felt tight in his armpits.        

        He intends to take the jacket off and does so, throwing it into the car, and with visible frustration continues on to yank the phone off the charger and stuff it into his pants pocket. Finally, he will shut the door so he can go into the supermarket and get the champagne.

        It’s easy to notice now that Seth’s pants, belt, button-down, and powder-blue shirt, all match which meant the day leading up to the dream was probably not too chaotic. It wasn’t often that the dream even got the belt to match. This was a nice brown leather belt and there was no telling where he had acquired it. The shoes, a chocolaty brown similar to the belt, he had gotten as a birthday gift about two months into his job. It was probably one of his sisters-in-law who gave them to him. Or maybe it was the nephews.

        His blue sedan would have to continue to loiter in the parking lot a while longer as the basis of this dream was vetted out. These dreams, particularly this one, were often unorganized, and although lucid dreaming was a trait in his family, this clairvoyance within the other-worldly scenarios allowed for deep and personal introspection.

        These parts of the dream were inconsistent. The memories were always the same, but it was the filler in between. Sometimes there was Seth and other there was only a person in a strange hoodie. The man in the hooded sweatshirt would stoically stand in the rain, behind a yellow jeep, and watch the interactions in and around the blue sedan.

        Why is this version of the dream so bland?

        It’s hard not to ask. Turning away from the car reveals Elaina, grinning the mischievous and salubrious smile she was known for.

        “What are you smiling at?” he’ll playfully ask.

       She will squeak a laugh and open the car door to his sedan, passenger side. She is going to be wearing a blue tank top with a nice brown vest over it, some kind of faux-tribal designs were threaded into the vest. She wears a distinct brand of designer jeans that should normally cling to her shapely legs but are now sticking to her like a second layer of epidermis from the rain. Her entire slender body, from her jeans to her beautifully long and luscious hair, will unavoidably be drenched. The hair will be sticking to her head and shoulders.

A black dress has been draped over the seat and Elaina flings it into the back so as not to get it wet. He will be inside at this point and with rapid movements clear the seat for her. He will move her purse while she flops down into the seat, the wetness gushing in her jeans and as this sensation would to most anybody, it will make her face contort and her spine be filled with chills and the squeamishness of dampened clothing.

        “I hate getting caught in the rain.” That is going to be her muttering with a half-grin and shutting the door. There will be a continuation of mouthing some words to him about what had happened earlier that day. He will want to ask her to explain again. He will always hope she says it again. He never did get a chance to hear what she had to say.

        There was something left inside. He’ll want to get out and get it, she’ll fight him to stay and they’ll laugh at the ludicrousness of going in and out of a torrential downpour, but he won’t give in. He will return to the market. He will be standing outside the car and turning to her, waiting for her to realize he is intently staring at her despite the rain.

        She will only smile back at him and as she reaches into her glove box, she’ll keep that wily smirk. As always, out comes the paint marker, something she always kept on her for what he assumed was some girlish purpose probably stemming from her high-school graduation.

The rain will do the natural thing rain does as it plays off the hood of the car like wooden drumsticks on a snare. She is soon writing something to the glass of the passenger window. Her smile will have shifted itself into a clever sneer and once he bends to the window the recognition will strike. This will be probably the millionth instance of reliving the horrible day exactly as it happened.

Seth is now going to lift his hand to tap on the glass.

        Suddenly a severe pain erupts inside his chest. Then he will fling his head back in wild agony and he is going to try to protect his chest from whatever is happening to it. The same thing that has happened to him every time. To his horror, as he pulls his hand away, a puddle of blood starts to form on his shirt.

        Like a pendulum swinging back, she is destined to look up from her writing, her smirk turning into a frigid expression of disgust and terror. Watch now as her hand goes to her mouth, not her eyes, as if to mute the sounds of anxiety and emotional pain she is feeling. A nauseous sensation is going to overwhelm her. As he stumbles forward, his bloodied palm slaps against the window and as he struggles to stay on his legs, his hand and his body slip to the pavement from the grueling pain.

        Seth always tries to reach out to her, but every time he will suddenly he begins to sink down to his feet. At that moment the car then seems to be washing away in the puddles, further away from him, as if caught in some kind of current, and soon she, the car, and the dream are being pulled far, far away from him.

        Elaina jolts upright, screaming his name and with a deep sweat soaking their sheets. She covers her mouth to stop from screaming and instead whines into her palm, choking back tears. She turns to see the picture of him in a nice grey suit, arms around two children in wheelchairs smiling and giving the camera a thumbs up. Beneath this picture is an award given to doctors in pediatric cardiology.

For incredible efforts of compassion and professionalism.

        She knows no rest anymore and she instead reaches out to the framed photograph she keeps on what was his side of the bed stand. Seth holds her and smiles at the camera on her graduation day. Her in the maroon gown and his arms wrapped tightly around her. He wears the baby robin’s egg blue shirt and the banana yellow tie she loved him in.

        Elaina grunts as she looks at his clock. 3:07 AM.

She puts her hand over his place on the bed. It was as it had been for just over three months now. Empty and cold. He was gone and all she had left were the memories they shared and the dreams where she could see him again.

After taking another small, plastic, cup of NyQuil, she flopped back into her pillows and waited for exhaustion and medication to overwhelm her so she could return to the rainy parking lot once again. Maybe this time she could convince him not to leave the car.