Come Alive Ch. 28

The shaking grew violent and everything around him began spinning; feeling nausea and vertigo coming on he closed his eyes, reached out with his hands to let his senses reassert some semblance of control, then he felt Pinky's huge, rough hand on his arm and he looked up at her.

She was working rapidly now and had just finished wrapping a new tape around his arm, but he could see concern in her eyes this time -- for the first time -- and suddenly he felt scared. She leaned back then and he knew she was reaching out -- but for who?

A shimmering blue sphere appeared, then a green one, but before their appearance really had a chance to register in his mind they were gone, replaced seconds later by first dozens, then literally hundreds of golden bubble-like spheres that quickly drifted down onto the bed, in milliseconds covering both Clyde and Taggart completely. He tried to keep his eyes open but they burned now, like his eyes had filled with soapy water, then it became hard to breathe. He felt the inward panic of looming suffocation and reached out with his hand...

Pinky took it, but then he felt a hot pinch on his forearm, just like the pain of an injection -- and then he remembered the Old Man's gentle laughter. He struggled to hold onto consciousness but he felt everything falling beyond and within a white-hot veil, and the last thing he was aware of was swallowing hard and, for some reason, wanting to cry.

+++++

When Tracy came into Henry's stateroom she found him lifeless on his bed and began CPR, then she remembered he had an auto-defib unit on the wall in his head and dashed for it. She opened the unit and attached the leads then fired the unit...

+++++

He opened his eyes, tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Everything looked and felt so familiar, impossibly so, and he pinched his eyes and shook his head, trying to knock the spinning cobwebs from his mind.

"It's my old bedroom," he said, "and I'm on the island." He sat up and felt the cool breeze coming in off the Pacific and realized he'd slept with his window open again, but then he saw his physics homework on the desk and groaned in defeat.

"Damn, I forgot...I didn't finish it," he said as he walked over and looked at a problem on the conservation of linear momentum that had stumped him for hours the night before. He looked at his alarm clock and sighed, then picked up his textbooks and the rest of his homework and put them in his book bag -- before he realized he hadn't showered and went off to his bathroom. He stood under the hot water trying to wash the remnants of the dream from his mind, something about his grandson living on a distant planet, and he laughed at the absurdity of the images that came to mind.

He dried off and dressed, then remembered they had a game that afternoon and that he was supposed to wear his practice jersey to classes today. 'The pep rally, Dufus! Remember?' he said to himself for the umpteenth time. He shook off the ritual pre-game jitters that always came for him while he dressed for school, then he heard his mother in the kitchen and his father down the hall in their bathroom, an ancient electric razor mowing the stubble on the old man's face again. He picked up his book bag and headed downstairs, lingering scents of hot pancakes and crisp bacon pushing aside all his worries about botched homework and the teams' rivalry with Huntington Beach High.

"Hi, Mom," he said as he bounced into her kitchen.

"Good morning, Bright-eyes. How'd you sleep?"

"Oh, you know, up-tight -- as always."

She put a plate of pancakes down on the table in front of him and he smiled as his dad came in and sat at the head of the table.

"Have a rough night, Sport?" his father said.

He shrugged.

"I could hear you tossing and turning all night, at least until I finally dropped off."

"Sorry, Pops. Big day today?"

"No, nothing out of the ordinary. Finish that problem?"

He shook his head. "No, but I got Benson for study hall this morning. I'll get it before class."

"Well, okay, but you know the deal...bad report card and you stay home for Christmas."

"I know, I know," Henry sighed.

"Speaking of," his mother interrupted. "Did you go ahead with the airline reservations yesterday?"

"I did indeed, and reservations at the Crillon, too."

Which caused her to smile as she set a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon in the table. Henry waited for his father to take some, then he put some on his mother's plate before he finished off the rest.

"Got your books ready?" his father asked as he stood and put on his jacket.

"Yessir."

"We picking up Claire?"

"Yes, if that's not a problem?"

"Well, it hasn't been for the last ten years, so let's get going..."

He kissed his mom and headed for the door, then he turned around: "You coming to the game tonight?"

"You know it!" she said enthusiastically. "I hear scouts from SC and Berkeley are going to be there tonight!"

He rolled his eyes as another wave of acid roiled his gut. "Thanks. I needed that."

"I'll see you there!" she said, blowing his father a kiss as they walked out the door.

It was just a few blocks to Claire's house, but true-to-form Edith was out there waiting with her sister and he groaned. His father pulled up in front of their house and Claire hopped in and slid across the back seat, making room for her sister but keeping a wall of books between them -- as a barricade. Henry turned around and looked at her, her beauty -- as it always did -- taking his breath away.

She'd started to look more and more like Olivia de Havilland this year -- which wasn't so surprising as the actress was some kind of second aunt once removed, or something like that -- and like de Havilland Claire was as brainy as she was beautiful. She'd taken the full SATs her sophomore year and aced them -- a solid 1600 -- and already Princeton and Yale had sent offers her way, so things were looking up.

But his score hadn't even been close. With 1480 on his first try he might make it into Berkeley or USC, but his first choice, Stanford, would probably remain out of reach -- and no one had to remind him that the Ivy Leagues would sneer at his 3.8 GPA. But football might make the difference, or so his father liked to say, and though there was some truth to the notion it left a bitter trace in his mind.

"I've got to hit study hall this morning," he said to Claire -- doing his level best to ignore Edith. "I just kept messing up the order of operations and the results don't look right."

"Oh? Let me take a look," Claire said, and after he dug the papers out of his bag he handed them over. She scanned his work and smiled. "Nope, you got it."

"What?"

"You've just to erase what you have there now and put what you had originally, then you're there."

"Always go with your first answer, Hank," his dad admonished. "And don't forget this little lesson when you retake your SATs."

He took the homework back and looked at what he'd erased. "So, the answer is 93.7?"

She nodded. "Just don't forget to put FPS down. You know how Benson loves to zing you for little goofs like that."

"And they do on the SATs, right Hank?" his father added, nailing him one more time before they got to school.

He opened her door and helped her out, taking both their book bags, then he went to the front door and leaned in. "You going to be there this afternoon?" Henry asked his father.

"I might miss the first quarter, but I'll try to be there for the kickoff. Coach say any more about letting you have a go at fullback?"

Henry nodded. "I memorized all the runs, so I'm ready."

"Well, son, this would be a good night to strut your stuff. I'll see ya there."

"Okay, Dad. Later."

He took Claire's hand and they walked in and put books in their lockers, Henry still doing his best to ignore Edith, when the first bell rang and they headed off to their classes.

+++++

Henry stood by the window, Claire's hand in his, looking at the TWA 707 waiting for them out there on the ramp, the huge Trans World maintenance hanger just across the north-south taxiway framing their view. He turned and looked around for his father -- and couldn't find him in the crowd -- until he spotted him coming out of the head and walking over to Claire's father.

Then the gate agents called the flight and boarded the first-class cabin first, so their parents waved then boarded the aircraft. When coach was called Henry made sure Edith went first, then hand-in-hand he and Claire walked out the Jetway and up to the forward boarding door, and he smiled at the stewardesses as they stepped into the cabin. Their parents were in the last row of first-class, and the three of them were in the bulkhead seat literally right behind his mom and dad. Boarding didn't take long and soon enough the doors were closed and engines began spooling up.

Edith had been pestering him for days about taking the window seat and he'd gladly given it up so long as she promised to keep to herself during the flight and Claire had, thankfully, taken the middle seat -- so a flight in relative peace was a real possibility. Still, no sooner had The Pest taken the seat did the nonstop blather started...

"All I can see is engines," she snorted.

"Good reason to close the shade and go to sleep," Henry snarled.

"I'm not sleepy!" The Pest screeched, her whining chant easily drowning out the Pratt & Whitney turbofans idling on the other side of the thin layers of metal fuselage.

"Why am I not surprised?" Henry growled, but Claire gently squeezed his hand, in effect asking him to lay off and not be so mean to her little sister.

He tapped her fingers with his, letting her know "message received" -- and while he rarely thought about such things he marveled at how fundamentally attuned they were to each other.

"I don't like this," Edith wailed.

"What don't you like?" Claire asked.

"The window. I don't want to sit here."

"Where do you want to sit?" Henry asked.

"Your seat. Now!"

As they hadn't started their pushback yet, Henry opened his seatbelt and stood, then he helped Edith into the seat before switching, one of the stewardesses immediately getting on the PA and asking him to take a seat -- which caused more than a little grumbling from the first-class section.

"I can't get this thingy fastened," Edith cried, her hands flailing about now, and Henry leaned over Claire and just managed to get her strapped in as the jet began taxiing.

"Anything else, Edith?" he growled.

"I want a Pepsi!"

"Edith, they serve Coke on TWA, not Pepsi," Claire sighed.

"I want a Pepsi!"

"Well," Claire added, "I hope you brought one with you." And with that Claire took her little airline pillow and placed it on Henry's shoulder, then she leaned into him, placing her head on the pillow with a deep sigh.

"You sleepy?" he asked.

"Yeah, I have been all day."

"Want to skip dinner?"

"I don't know. Depends on what they have, I guess."

"Okay. go ahead and rest. I'll wake you when they come around."

"You know what I like. Just get me something easy to handle."

The brakes squealed loudly every time the jet stopped, which was often as they were in a long line of aircraft waiting to take off, but then their turn came and he looked out the window as the Boeing turned onto the runway. The engines ran up a little then cut back to idle for a second, then they began to roar as the pilot applied full takeoff power -- and Claire squeezed his hand this time...hard.

Then the rush down the pavement and they were in the air, flying over a bunch of abandoned streets then the beach, and a minute later the jet made a smooth turn to the right, to the northeast, and steadied up on the new heading as they climbed high into the fading light of day. Claire soon eased up on his hand, and a few minutes later he heard her breathing deeply, apparently sound asleep. She twitched a couple of times, then came a violent spasm of some kind, and that one worried him, enough so that he went forward and asked his mother about it.

+++++

Seven in the morning on Christmas Eve found them at the Gare Saint-Lazare waiting for the train to Le Havre and Henry had wrapped himself around Claire, trying to ward off the penetrating dampness of this cold December morning. His father had gone for coffee, leaving his mother to sit there beside them, and he could feel a gently rising tension in his mother's presence beside her, too.

His mother was, of course, an internist, so she had picked up on all the signs even before Claire had. The wayward wince here and there. Sitting in a chair at dinner and grimacing. Then she and Claire had disappeared yesterday afternoon...no warning at all...just gone. And when they'd come back from -- wherever -- his mother had put Claire to bed and told him to let her sleep, and he knew better than to challenge his mom when something like this was afoot.

Yet Claire had insisted on joining their traditional excursion to Honfleur, because, she'd said, that making it to the Christmas Eve service at the little chapel off the harbor was something she had to do this trip. And then she'd told him it was important.

"Important? What do you mean?"

"I can't explain it, Hank. It's something I feel, maybe like a shadow that shouldn't be there? Or maybe I'm standing in a shadow? Sorry...I just can't put my finger on it."

"That's okay, baby. You don't have to explain yourself to me." Now she was by his side trying to stay warm, and each time she trembled he held her a little closer. And each time he felt her slipping farther and farther away.

Their train pulled up to the platform -- apparently direct from the yard and freshly cleaned -- and when the doors slid open he helped her into a window seat and slipped his jacket over her shoulders...

...and all the while Edith stood back watching his every move...

Because she knew something important had happened. Important...and bad.

+++++

She knelt in the chapel after the service concluded and he remained there by her side, not at all sure what was going on but certain of his place in this evolving little universe. She was praying, her head down and her eyes closed, and he looked at her -- now feeling more than a little amused. Claire had always said she was an agnostic, yet the few times she'd spoken about religion he'd kind of figured out she was really more an atheist. God was, she'd always maintained, the real villain in this movie -- and she wasn't going to let Him get away with shit. "If there's a God," she'd told him more than once, "me and Him are going to have a few choice words when I get up there."

Presupposing things like heaven and hell exist, he'd always wanted to add -- yet he never did. He couldn't. He loved her too much to rock the boat. Hell, he knew he loved her too much, period. His love for her was all-consuming, so much so that the idea of her heading off to some Ivy League college was becoming a source of real angst.

She finished her prayer -- at least he assumed that's what she'd been doing -- but then she took his hand in hers and turned to look in his eyes.

"I want you to bring me here next year, okay Hank?"

"Yeah, sure," he'd said then -- not knowing what was going down and what the next year was going to bring to all their lives.

"No, I mean it, Hank. You've got to promise me."

"Okay Claire, I promise."

She'd stood then, but before they left she'd walked up to a wooden sculpture of the crucifixion behind the little alter, and there she'd simply looked up at the man there and stared into the gaping maw of his sacrifice. He'd stood behind her a little and it hit him then...the meaning of his promise to her...and then he felt his world bending and twisting out of shape for the last time in his life...

+++++

But the year passed.

And the next thing he knew he was in the very same chapel, only this time with a small urn in his hands -- instead of Claire's hand. She'd told him what to do, what she wanted, and all he could do was agree with her because she'd become a pure force of nature the last few months of her life.

He'd written to the parish priest about her wishes and he was ready for her, and for him, and after their traditional Christmas Eve service Henry had waited for the chapel to clear, then the priest had joined him.

"Are you ready?" the priest said when he came up to Henry.

"I think so, yes."

+++++

"Hank, I want you to take me down to the point, to the Jardin des Personnalités. Take me to sea by the point and spread my ashes there."

"Okay."

"Not on the rocks. I want you to take me into the sea..."

"But, Claire...why?"

She'd looked at him for the longest time, then put her hand on the side of his face. "Because if I'm in the sea then I'll always be close to you."

+++++

It was December and the water was ice-cold, so of course, he brought along a shorty wet suit and had changed in a public restroom near the park, then the priest and both his families walked out to the point.

The priest said a few things then took out a piece of paper and addressed all of them...

"Claire sent me a letter before she left us," the priest began again, "and though addressed to me there are things said that need to be shared, so if you will excuse me I will try to convey to you what she said to me..."

Henry hadn't known this was coming and suddenly felt very unsure of himself.

"She told me that Henry will be an explorer, a very lonely explorer, and that all of you must accept that about him...

"Edith, she wanted me to tell you that you should try to respect what Henry meant to your sister...

"And Henry, while you should be prepared for anything, please remember that her love for you will always be there to protect you..."

"What?"

"That is what she told me, Henry. You should go now, take her now and let her rest..."

+++++

He carried her -- and the little urn that held her now -- out into the sea, and as water filled the space between his skin and the neoprene it warmed a little, enough to make this whole thing a little less jarring, he thought. Stones underfoot fell away sharply and a gentle current tugged at him, pulling him away from land, but he had always been a good swimmer so he didn't think too much about it. Holding the urn just out of the water he side-stroked away from the rocks, keeping his eyes fixed on the lights of Le Havre a couple of miles across the river until a few minutes later he was well away from shore.

"I'm afraid I don't know what to say right now, Claire," he said after he stopped swimming and began treading along with the current. "I feel empty inside, like my life without you has no meaning anymore. Is that so wrong of me?"

He struggled to remove the top from the urn and then held it high over his head, then he began shaking her ashes into the sea. He could hardly see now, his eyes filling with tears too long repressed, but then he saw her remains floating on the inky surface and he moved his hands through the chalky stillness until she finally began to drift away from him.

He held his hand up in the moonlight and saw remnants of her on his skin and overcome by the sight of her like this he spread her ashes across his forehead and then through his scalp, all the while crying and wanting nothing more than to just let go and drift out to sea with her...

+++++

"Can you see him? I've lost sight of him," his mother said to Claire's father.

"I think I see him, but I'm not sure anymore. He's got to be a half-mile out there now, maybe more."

Edith was standing there, close to the edge of the water, and she understood exactly what was going on. "He wants to stay with her," she whispered.

"What?"Henry's mother said. "What did you say, Edith?"

"He wants to stay with her. He's not coming back..." Edith said, but right then she threw off her coat and dove into the river, and she began swimming in the direction she'd last seen Henry...