A Symphony of Cicadas Read online

  “You mean the drugs?” I asked.

  “Yup. I started out with the best of intentions, cutting my meals in half and avoiding all foods that made me want to binge. I began taking walks around my neighborhood and riding my bike everywhere. I even began to see some weight loss. But you know how the teenage years go. Someone introduced me to speed, and I realized I could lose weight even faster while also experiencing this incredible adrenaline rush. With that came my liquid diet of tequila. And soon I was on a constant high with whatever I could get my hands on. I traded one addiction for another.” She took another bite of food, this time chewing much slower before she washed it down with a drink of soda. She then looked at me and grinned. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I love it here so much, because of the food. It’s my favorite part. I can eat whatever I want and never get sick or full, or even fat. And I can actually enjoy my food because there’s no guilt. I think it makes it taste even better that way.”

  I looked off to the lights of the Ferris wheel as it turned its lazy rotation against the darkening sky. The blinking red, yellow, and blue held their own slow beat, beckoning me with a hypnotic pulse as they went around and around. I held Jane’s hand and felt only the slightest pull as we left the feast of junk food and found ourselves sharing a seat at the top of the ride looking out across the whole of the carnival.

  At the highest point, the park looked like glowing embers. We could hear the faint metal sound of the roller coaster whipping around the tracks, screams echoing in an ebb and flow of fear mixed with delight. Carnies called out from unseen games, their words not quite audible to us as they got lost in a sea of noise. The whole carnival was alive, filling us with that void in our afterlife, feeding us the heartbeat and pulse of blood we were missing as we pretended to be a part of it all. In the distance I could see the spirits of those who had passed, rising and falling into the night sky, plunging against the stars while holding dozens of balloons.

  “I think I could stay here forever,” she said, and I agreed.

  We studied the view in silence on our slow journey around the wheel, catching our breath at the jump in our bellies as it picked up speed, and taking in the gusts of air that rushed past our cheeks and through our hair. I closed my eyes and leaned back, reveling in the moment of being off guard, out of control, and at the whim of the ride. But in the back of my mind was John, his unshaven face and sad eyes staring back at me in abandonment. Even further behind him was Joey, his evaporating image haunting me with the knowledge that I still hadn’t found my son. I opened my eyes and looked at Jane. Her eyes were still closed as the wind whipped her short hair away from her face. A small trail of tears was traced from her eyes into her hairline, the constant rush of air pushing it back from her face instead of down her cheeks. I realized the Santa Cruz carnival was her escape, where she hid from all the demons that haunted her in life and followed her into death. It was here that she was able to leave them all behind, even for just the moment. But did we ever really get to leave behind these hurts that ate at our souls while we were living? Judging by the emotional stream on her face, I guessed not. I took her hand again, and she opened her eyes and smiled at me. The tears evaporated as if they never existed.

  “I can’t really stay here forever,” I told her, and I saw the slightest quiver in her smile before she squeezed my hand.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I have to find my son,” I told her.

  “He’ll find you when it’s time.”

  “I need to stay with John,” I whispered. Her smile was wistful.

  “I know,” she repeated, whispering the words back to me. We let the weight of that statement hang between us in the moment. I knew I was willing myself to be weighted down in the afterlife by focusing on the living. I was beginning to understand even more what Aunt Rose had described to me, the addiction that takes place when surrounded with those we loved in life, and how much heavier it became with time. I knew that on this Ferris wheel I was being presented with a choice – to walk away or to run back into the addiction. I knew that I was making the wrong choice. But I didn’t care. I realized that no heaven was truly perfect unless I could see John’s face every moment of the day.

  “What happens when he moves on?” she asked me, and I flinched.

  “Then I’ll be happy for him,” I lied. “I only want him to be happy.”

  “Then let him live,” she pleaded. “The longer you stay with him, the longer it will take him to recover from the loss of you.”

  And in that statement, my decision was sealed. I didn’t want him to recover from me. I wanted him to miss me every day, just as I missed him. Jane sighed when she saw the shift in my face.

  “You know where I’ll be if you need me,” she said, squeezing my hand again, this time in defeat. I smiled back at her, grateful for her understanding.

  “I wish we had been better friends in life,” I told her.

  “We’re friends now.”

  I looked away, peering past the carnival where the darkness of the mountains met up with a purple sky peppered with stars. I could feel the pull inside of me as my mind turned to John, but I realized I needed more time. I glanced back at Jane, but she had already left. I swung to my side, lifted up my feet, and stood up. Placing my foot on the metal bar that separated me from the open air below, I took a deep breath in and exhaled.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said to no one, then pushed off with a jump into the air.

  Nine

  To my surprise, flying proved to be effortless. I had thought for sure I would start out with a plunge to the earth and gain a few bumps and scrapes along the way. But instead it felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if I were made for flying. I held my hands out at first like Superman, looking down on the world that was streaming below my soaring body. But I soon realized it didn’t matter which position I held myself in as I ascended through the air.

  I passed birds at high velocities, their thoughts mingling with mine as I came close to them. They saw me as just a speck of light, I realized; the vision presented to me earlier in the forest making much more sense. With their direction, I knew when to move up or down to travel with the air current, and when to turn so I was on the right path. But getting lost didn’t worry me. I had all the time in the world, or rather, the lack of time’s existence. I didn’t know how long I had stayed at the carnival. To me it felt like just a few hours had passed. But judging by the green tops of the trees and the fresh moisture in the air, I could tell the seasons had changed from a long and dreary winter to a hopeful spring.

  Images of our familiar neighborhood flashed from the minds of the birds that flew around me, popping at me like the scattered pages of magazines. I descended from the air, passing the few trees that lined the streets before touching my feet to the sidewalk. I walked the last few steps left toward our apartment complex; its gray cement adorned with windows dressed in iron bars looking back at me in cold contempt.

  I never liked this place. Inside we had made it a home, the photos and warm colors brightening up the tone from the busy world outside. But outside it was dirty and riddled with angst. Our neighborhood stood on the edge of the Tenderloin, the streets lined with those out of luck who carried their belongings with them at all times. It was a rare day in life when I didn’t have to step over a sleeping body to climb the stairs or wasn’t asked for a cigarette despite the fact I hadn’t smoked a day in my life. Bags of trash overflowed into the streets, at times forgotten by the city waste management as the rats took turns tearing them open and grabbing what they could for their home. Blocks away were the adult bars where girls danced on stage for money, and patrons drank more than they should to drive home safe. They parked in our neighborhood, and I’d often see them stumbling back to their cars and groping for their keys, hitting the metal trash cans on the side of the road at ungodly hours of the night before driving off. Some were even too drunk to drive. I’d pretend to ignore their passed-out body at the stee
ring wheel as I’d leave for work in the morning, hoping they were only sleeping and not, in fact, dead.

  On this afternoon, one of our regular homeless inhabitants sat next to the stairs of our apartment, staring straight ahead as his dog slept at his feet. In life I had ignored him, so repulsed that I had to live near these people with their mental problems and affinity for booze. But this time his thoughts prodded at my mind despite the fact that his face looked blank.

  So hungry, he repeated in his mind, and I felt the way his stomach churned inside of him. Beside him lay a wrapper that held a half-eaten sandwich that looked to be weeks old. He picked around the rotting parts with care and placed it in his mouth. On the outside, he didn’t seem to mind eating the spoiled food. But I felt his disgust at the way it tasted, eating it only so his stomach didn’t rip in half. I brushed away my repulsion as I experienced every ounce of his affliction, just as I brushed away my shame for my lack of compassion towards him during my life.

  Sensing the old man’s hunger and thoughts, it dawned on me that I could feel the thoughts of anyone. The only thoughts I had heard were those of the birds and cicadas – but only when they projected their thoughts to me. To actually feel what people were feeling, to see what was hiding behind their words… The possibilities in this tiny detail of the afterlife seemed to make up for everything else that was just outside my grasp in this existence.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the inside of our apartment, feeling myself pulled within the cold walls and away from the starving man outside our steps. In an instant, I was surrounded by blaring music. I opened my eyes with a start.

  The house was in total disarray. It looked as if the dishes hadn’t been washed in weeks, maybe months, and they overflowed from the sink to the countertops and all across the dining room table. Clothes were slung over the back of the couch and on the floor, some of them clean and never folded and others still sporting the stains from a full day of construction work. I wrinkled my nose at the smell that wafted through the apartment, a mixture of garbage and air freshener creating an odd bouquet of odors.

  I could sense that John wasn’t in the apartment. But someone was there; probably Sam, judging by the awful noise coming from the stereo. I walked up the stairs and turned the corner. The closed door to Joey’s room stared back at me, daring me to come inside. I was curious if they had kept the room the same, or if it was now being used for something else. I didn’t want to know yet, and focused instead on the source of the loud music.

  Sam’s room was overflowing with clothes and papers, and he lay on the bed with some girl I had never seen before. They lay in an intimate embrace amidst the chaos that surrounded them.

  “Come on, Lacey,” he whispered between messy kisses while his hands searched out the buttons of her pants. “My dad isn’t supposed to be home for a few more hours.” She found his hands at her waist and pushed them away.

  “Not yet, not now,” she said, pulling away. “I can’t.” I could feel his frustration bubbling inside him, even as he tried to appear understanding. His thoughts groaned, pounding the walls of his brain as he saw another opportunity to lose his virginity wash down the drain.

  “It’s okay,” he told her, stuffing his frustration in an effort to not ruin it for future attempts. He smoothed his hand through her hair to keep it from falling into her eyes. She smiled up at him as she moved to lie in the crook of his arm. They both closed their eyes, drifting into sleep despite the heavy beat of the music that screamed around them.

  I left them like that, moving away from Sam’s room to face Joey’s door once again. Reaching forward, my hand moved through the door to a room I couldn’t see. I took a deep breath and walked in.

  His bed was still unmade, the video game controller I had taken from him now placed on his pillow. Almost everything lay as he had left it, right down to the dirty laundry that spilled out of his laundry basket and his backpack with papers falling out of the pockets. But along with Joey’s mess were numerous boxes that took up much of the remaining space. I peered in one of them and my heart sank when I realized it was all of my things. Everything I had ever owned was now hidden away in a box of cardboard, locked up in a room so that the ghosts of memories would cease their haunting. I did a quick inventory of everything inside the rest of the boxes and saw my favorite coffee cup, the dress I had worn on our first date, the tattered blue robe I wore every morning before getting dressed… Even my wedding dress was in the room, though it hung from Joey’s closet instead of being stuffed as a wrinkled mess into one of the boxes. I felt a pang of regret when I realized that John had to see the dress for the first time after I had died. It hung there now in innocent perfection, as if waiting to be slipped over the head of a girl with a mind full of hopes and promises. The only thing amiss was a small square of fabric, about three inches in length, missing from the hem of the skirt. I looked a little closer and could see the rough edges of a crude cutting job.

  Despite the music that still blared from Sam’s room, the click of the front door was unmistakable to my heightened sense of hearing. John was home. I was at his side in an instant as he walked into the house and grimaced at the mixture of mess and noise that greeted him.

  “Sam!” he shouted. He tried to be loud enough to be heard over the music, but it was no use. He sighed and hung his jacket on the doorknob of the closet, unwilling to push aside the shoes and stacks of unopened mail blocking the closet door so he could open it and hang the jacket inside. He thumped up the stairs, his lack of energy adding cement to his weighted feet. “Sam, can you turn that down,” he said as he neared the room, freezing when he saw that Sam wasn’t alone. The two of them woke with a start. Lacey sat upright and pulled her sweater back over her bare arms. John started to say something, his face a mask against the thoughts reeling in his head. But he closed his mouth and turned towards his room, shutting the door behind him. I could hear every question he left unspoken. How could they? How old is that girl? How would Rachel handle this? What am I supposed to do?

  In Sam’s room, Lacey put her shoes back on and grabbed her backpack. “I really should go,” she apologized, and Sam nodded in agreement. Inside he swore at his dad for ruining the slim chances he still had of getting in her pants. But he covered it up by giving her a brief hug and helping to carry her things to the front door.

  “I’ll talk to you tonight,” he said, giving her a light kiss before closing the door behind her. Then he bounded the stairs by two and slammed his own door, locking himself in his room.

  At his desk in his own close-off room, I saw John wince at the sound. I tuned into him, taking special efforts to sense everything he wasn’t saying out loud.

  He was aware of the irony, a whole apartment of space and this was how they spent their time. He was ashamed at how he’d let the apartment go, allowing the two of them to live like dogs in their own filth. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had cooked dinner for the two of them, both of them left to fend for themselves when it came to mealtimes.

  At least there was still food, he thought to himself. At least I’m still going to the grocery store to make sure we have something to eat.

  It was as if a light went on inside him, and I wondered if it was because I was standing next to him with my hand as close as I could get to his body. He got up and opened the door to his room and went downstairs, gathering the clothes that lay on the stairs he passed. He created several piles in the room, separating the mail and the clothing, and gathering all the dishes into a consolidated mass of dishes and cups. Filling the sink with hot water, he worked at the glued-on food of each plate, rinsing them clean and placing them in the rack next to the sink. When it was too full to hold any more, he dried them and put them away, then started over on the diminishing pile next to him.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked behind him, startling John as he stood immersed in the hot, sudsy water.

  “You scared me,” he said, but Sam stood emotionless and unapologetic. “I’m tir
ed of the filth. I’m just straightening up.”

  Sam watched him without speaking, his dad’s back to him as he continued to wash dishes. I could see the wheels turning in his head, and I was cast into the feelings of a fifteen year old boy full of more anger than he knew what to do with. For months his dad had acted like he had died with me, choosing to be absent as a father even when he was physically in the apartment. This sudden act of waking up from wherever he had disappeared to confused the hell out of Sam. He didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful to have this glimpse of his old dad. He wanted to confront him on it, ask him who the hell his father thought he was, say everything he wanted to say in the past six months about his dad having been a vacant vessel. But instead, he grabbed a towel off the counter and began drying the wet dishes John had placed into the rack.

  John turned to him and smiled at Sam, grateful for the help. The two of them finished tackling the dishes together before moving on to the rest of the house and putting it back together. The music still blared upstairs, but it served as a beat to move to rather than a force to move against.

  Later, they both sat down at the table, eating the first homemade dinner they’d enjoyed since before my death. John chewed on the words rolling around in his head, questions he didn’t even know how to ask. I could hear Sam’s thoughts as his dad figured out the right thing to say in a situation like this.

  Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask.

  “So who is she?” John asked, and Sam slumped in his seat in defeat.

  “No one,” he mumbled, pushing at his food with his fork. “Just some chick.”

  “She seemed more than ‘just some chick,’ Sam. Is she your girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s her name?” John prompted. He took another bite of food and waited, trying to appear casual even as the rest of his questions pushed to be first in line. I could sense that one opening in the conversation would cause them all to come spilling out to the floor, drowning John and Sam in the confusion of puberty, growing up, and experiences that could change a life forever. But Sam remained tightlipped, choosing now to remain silent as if the question had never been asked.