Meredith tried to say that she promised, but she was sobbing too hard to speak. Then, just as a glow seemed to grow and pulse around Ben, as if he were lit from behind, he suddenly reached out both hands to Merry, pleading, and she nearly stepped forward to take them.
But rougher hands grabbed her around the waist and hauled her backward. She looked up as the light against the stainless sky was absorbed into the sun—up in icy altitudes where she could not go. Why did people think of heaven as up there? It was possibly right here, and hell, too. It was possible that it was never far away. Sasha was a representative of one reality and Ben another. Merry finally turned. There was Mallory, who held her twin against her shoulder, patting her as one of their parents might.
“Merry, I’m sorry. I knew you’d nearly give up at the last moment. Anyone would. And I couldn’t let you go,” Mallory said. “I knew there was a chance.”
“I don’t think he would have really taken me away.”
“You were all surrounded by this glare. I almost couldn’t see you.”
“I think that’s the deal,” Merry finally said, exhausted as though she had run upstairs for hours. She said, “I feel as though I haven’t breathed. Not really.”
“I’m so sorry, Mer.”
“Me, too. I don’t know how much yet.”
With Mallory’s arm under her own, Merry stumbled toward Drew’s truck, where he sat in the driver’s seat, a Mets ball cap pulled down over his eyes. Mallory opened the door and the peppery, oniony locker-room smell of Drew’s old car twined around her like the bonds of her life before Ben. She lay back as Drew put the truck in gear and turned around.
Then suddenly, she sat up.
“Stop!” she shouted at Drew. “I have to get something off the Highlands’ porch. I almost forgot.”
“Oh, fine,” Drew said. “If it’s a big gray pod that’s going to crack open in the attic and devour my parents, I’ll be okay with that. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
With Mallory behind her, Meredith slowly climbed the Highlands’ porch. At first, she could see nothing unusual. Then she spotted something in the old rocking chair at the far end of the porch. Ben’s jacket. She held it to her face, rubbing its worn softness against her cheek, inhaling the soapy, piney Ben scent, wondering how long it could last, if it was already vanishing. She turned to the windows and waved at the Highlands, whether they were there or not. Even if they couldn’t see her, it would not have surprised her if they knew.
Back in the car, Meredith laid the coat over her like a blanket and put her hands into the pockets. Her note on yellow paper with the lines from the poet whose name she couldn’t recall, who married the man her parents tried to separate her from, was gone. But there was a scrap of paper. It was one of the last lines from Romeo and Juliet, and it said, “O, thinkst thou we shall ever meet again?”
Ben, Merry vowed in her mind, I won’t say goodbye. I’ll say, “Ben, see you later.” No one really dies who’s remembered. The years will spin away, and I don’t know what will happen in my life. But I’ll remember you Ben. I’ll remember you. I promise. I promise.
Drew turned the corner toward the sun. Merry closed her eyes.
She would put the scrap of paper in her memory book, with her photos and her little-kid cheerleading certificates and ... and the ribbon she wore today in her hair. She imagined someone finding it one day and finding it hard to believe that Mom or Grandma was ever so young—as she sometimes found it hard to believe that her own mother or grandmother had been young and barely brushed by life, as Merry was now. She would hang the coat in her closet and, she suspected, touch it every day for a year, and then forget it and someday find it like a diamond earring that had rolled away, with that much incredulous, nearly painful delight. As she pictured that, the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile.
Mallory turned to sneak small glances at her sister. She seemed to be asleep, but her hands kept exploring and stroking that old jacket.
And Meredith smiled, all the way home.
THE ANCESTORS
It was midsummer, at the family camp high on Crying Woman Ridge, when Meredith finally summoned the courage to tell her grandmother all about Ben.
As usual, they had their private conversation when everyone else was swimming, and Grandma had asked Meredith to help her strip corn for the pot that was already boiling on its iron hook above the fire pit. Potatoes were turning black and flaky among the coals, and soon everyone would come tromping up the steps.
No one outside Tim’s family knew what Grandma Gwenny had said to Sasha that day at the hospital. But there were moments when Tim called his mother “Tiger,” in reference to her willingness to battle on behalf of her own—though she slapped away his teasing with a flick of her hand. When everyone had gone for a swim, Merry seized her moment.
“Grandma, I know that most of us only thought about Owen last winter, but do you remember, before he really got sick, asking me if I was I was constipated or in love?” Merry asked, nearly smiling at a memory she thought would always make her cry. The air was punctuated with early fireflies, although, blessedly, the mosquitoes that adored Merry and Mally’s necks and backs seemed to avoid them at the camp. Grandpa said it was because of the wintergreen he had planted all around the six cabins and the entrance.
Grandma’s nod was somehow moody. From the town below came the sweet, mournful distant sound of a train whistle, the sound that awakened a person at night and made her yearn for something she didn’t even know for sure was out there. Gwenny didn’t say anything. She simply tucked her feet up under her on the bench and kept carefully stripping the leaves and silk from the corn. Merry wondered how many women Grandma’s age could curl up in a chair like a teenager; clearly the yoga Grandma took every Sunday after church at the community center was doing her good.
Finally, Merry said, “Well, I was in love. I think I still am.”
Grandma said, “Yes. That’s clear.”
“There’s a big problem, though,” Merry began and told Grandma everything, including how much she had wanted, on some level, to join Ben in the beyond. She told her grandmother about the light that exploded between them when they tried to touch and the moment in the cemetery when the light was as bright as a sun on the ground.
“Well, Meredith, as a woman, I’m sorry for you that you didn’t get to be with him as a lover. So far. But as a grandmother, I’m glad that fate got in the way,” Gwenny said.
“Do you know the Highlands?”
“Yes. Less than some others, more than some others. I knew David and I knew Ben.”
“Why was he here then, Grandma? Why did I love him and why does he love me?”
“I don’t know. I can only guess that he was here because his physical body came home, although not on this plane, and because his mother was on the verge of death. Clearly, he hadn’t crossed over.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Highland would let him.”
“Maybe not.”
“Grandma, I did want to be with him. If there’s a life after this one, I would almost go ...”
Grandma Gwenny got up and crossed over to the verge of the ridge, looking down on all her children as they sent bright drops into the faltering sun. As she had as a girl, as a young woman, as a mother. As Brynns would always, at least as long as Gwenny knew. Something more important than the sturdy wood of these cabins bound this family. Gwenny didn’t think it was brains or beauty or even tolerance or talent. It was the loyalty that comes of appreciating the small things people have.
“Meredith,” she finally said, coming back to the fire, “you have a better head on your shoulders than to even think about that. You proved it when you had the chance. And your sister was right to pull you back. That’s what a twin does. But I know what the feeling is like, to want to join the other.”
“Vera?”
“Yes, Vera. And someone else.”
“If death is a transition to another world, better than this one ...”
; “Meredith, what would happen to you in that other world?”
“I’d be with Ben. I was supposed to be with Ben in this world.”
Grandma Gwenny said slowly, “Do you think each of us has only one love?” Slowly, she slipped each ear of corn, twenty-four in all, into the huge bubbling cast-iron pot. They would use the water later to put out the fire.
Merry thought for a moment and finally said, “Yes. And no. Can you go on loving someone when you love someone else, with all your heart? ” Merry asked. Her grandmother nodded. “Do you believe Ben was real?”
Grandma got up. “I have no doubt that he is.” She picked up the shawl she’d been sitting on and draped it around her shoulder as the sunset brought a slight chill to the air. Then Grandma looked back at Meredith.
“You know, I loved a boy before Grandpa. I loved him my junior and senior year in high school. I loved him as I thought I could never love anyone else. Perhaps I did love him as I could never love anyone else.”
“Why did you end it?” Meredith asked.
“I didn’t. He died. Like your Ben.”
“How?”
“He died in the Korean War, Meredith.”
“I’m sorry,” Merry said. “But I can’t imagine you with anyone but Grandpa.”
“So you see what I mean,” Grandma Gwenny said. “I’m not saying I don’t love Kevin still. I always will. But life had other plans for me. And for him. I’m not saying that your love wasn’t real, or that there wasn’t a reason for you to have loved him. I don’t know what it is. I’m just saying wait and see. You are so young.”
“What about Romeo and Juliet?”
“What about them? ” Grandma asked. “Why is this play taught to every high school and college student as the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies? ‘For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’ There’s a reason. The real meaning is that even real love can cost a sane person her reason. And no one who’s young, pardon me, Merry, really has all her reason yet.”
“I’ve heard more poetry in the past month than in the rest of my life combined.”
“Good for your memory,” Grandma Gwenny said. “Does your sister know? All about this?”
“Yes. She’s been with me every step, Grandma.”
“Imagine how it would have been without her,” Grandma said. Meredith did think. For all those months, so often she had simply wished Mallory would ... disappear, that she could be frozen in time standing still with some sort of psychic remote control. But now, she realized that Mallory’s dear, sour, earth-bound ways had saved her, kept her tethered to a real world Meredith wanted to reject. “Did you get angry with Mallory? Did you think she was trying to stand in your way?
“I don’t know. I might have. I was trying to prove that Ben was here, that he was real ...”
“Now do both you and your sister think he’s here and that he’s real, even though he might have passed over a long time ago?”
“Yes.” Then a thought popped up. “Kevin! You named one of your children Kevin.”
“I’ve always thought it was a good, strong name.”
Meredith thought about heaven. Would this Kevin be there? Would he like Grandpa? How would they share, if they did share? Would everyone find a way to rejoice?
Thirty-five years later, Meredith would remember that night, when she was fifteen, as her firstborn son, Benjamin Brynn Vaughn, graduated from the University of Chicago Medical School.
The occasion would cause a big stir. Benjamin was the first of the grandchildren. Campbell and Tim were brimming with pride, along with their sisters and brothers and Mallory’s husband, as well as all five of the twins’ combined offspring—young men and women themselves. Adam was there with his wife and son and Owen with his wife and daughters, Mary and Melody, just a slight variation on the names of the older sisters he adored.
Watching and beaming, also, were Grandma Gwenny and Mrs. Highland, who had become great friends, although not, as Grandma said, on this plane. They congratulated each other and the boy’s namesake, Ben, who was sometimes a young boy and sometimes the teenager who had loved Merry long ago and loved her still.
And there were other witnesses too, Brynns and Vaughns and Highlands from hundreds of hundreds of years before. They had attended every wedding, helped usher every new baby into the world, stood close to every hospital bed as human life ebbed, as the bright light dissolved and the newcomers learned that heaven was not so very different from human life—minus all the wondering.
They welcomed every family member with abundant love and joy and recognition, as ancestors always will.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Dorothea, a psychic medium who spoke to me of crossing over, and Dr. Elliott P., professor emeritus of psychology, who shared with me his experiences with Munchausen syndrome. I thank also Ben Schrank, the best pal a manuscript ever had, and always, Jane Gelfman, agent best pal, and my beloved friend and coworker, Pamela English. No words can describe your influence on my words. Thanks also to you, my reader, for welcoming Merry and Mally into your hearts, and my children—Rob, Dan, Marty, Francie, Mia, Will, and Atticus—for putting up with me.
March, 2009,
Savusavu, Fiji
Jacquelyn Mitchard, Watch for Me by Moonlight
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