Morning was the better time. She lit the match, touching the flame to the small candle’s wick, and it took, wriggling with new glow. Since Max’s death last year, Sarah kept a collection of his belongings gathered around the candle – his watch, wallet, phone, the pen found in the pocket of his jeans. She added his favorite Matchbox cars, Pokemon cards, an old school pencil whose eraser was worn down to its nub. Every morning, as the grim winter sky emerged from the night’s darkness, she went to her candle, sat with her son’s things. She did not pray. She sat in silence and attempted to quiet her mind.

She put on a yoga video, did a quick session, rising up in sun salutation, the highlight of her day. She sipped her coffee on the reading porch, forced her eyes on the newspaper. See, she told herself, other people lose their people, too. 

She took a hot shower, lingering there, staring at the white wall as the water scalded her back. She dressed, brushed her teeth, blow dried her hair, remembering her mother’s criticism, “When are you going to cut that hippy hair of yours?” each time she smoothed it back into a grey pony tail.  She no longer bothered to make her bed, a useless custom from her life before. Passing her son’s old room, she touched the door, but did not open it. That was something she did at night, when the insomnia cranked up, when she would crawl onto his bed and cry herself to sleep. The morning was her one chance to behave like someone normal, someone who had not been shattered by loss. 

Since Max died, Sarah found all of her therapy clients’ problems ridiculous. 

 “How was the weekend?” she asked. Lisa Holbrook, her first appointment of the day, responded with her litany of small slights. How the husband was late picking the kids up for soccer, how she could hear the husband’s lover in the background of a phone call, how the husband’s mother didn’t know they were separated. Sarah thought to herself, how could this Lisa, whose children were alive and well, waste her life crying over this stupid man and his infidelity? 

 “And how did that make you feel?” Sarah asked in her forced calm therapist’s voice. She repeated these words every day.  She no longer cared what the answers were, how anything made anyone feel, she cared only about getting through each appointment. 

She wrote all of her session notes, then put on her sneakers for the evening walk of the dog, Benny, Max’s dog. Then there was dinner, some kind of vegetarian soup. She avoided alcohol at all costs, knowing the dangers of being sad and drunk. Then, Jeopardy. She didn’t call out the answers as she used to with the family. She just sat mesmerized by the vibrant blues and yellows of the screen, the sounds of buzzing and ringing, the relentless Jeopardy theme song. She thought how strange it was that Alex Trebek, after all of that time, was gone, and the show just continued without him. He had seemed so absolutely necessary. 

Before bed, she lit another candle at Max’s altar and did her meditation app. She took half of a sleeping aid, laid down, tried to read, felt drowsy, relaxed into it, hoping she would have the dream again, the dream of the woman with the apron, in the barn, holding the picture. 

***

She’d been there before, each step an effort, forcing herself forward into the small room that smelled of mildew. A coldness overtook her body as she noted the concrete floors, the wooden slat walls, the window which offered some openness, some nondescript view from the left.  Everything was unclear, dim. She felt a deep need for light. She wanted to wake up, get out of there. 

The figure took shape in the corner, a woman snapping the ends off beans. She wore a house dress and a faded apron. Her hair, set in an old-fashioned curlers kind of way, was dark and contrasted with milky skin. Her shoulders drooped in a hunch. This time, she stopped working, looked straight at Sarah. 

“Who’re you?” she said. 

Sarah introduced herself, asked the woman’s name. 

“Lacey. Lacey Cagle,” she said.

A chair emerged from the shadows. Sarah shivered, sat down. 

“Do you know this is a dream?”
“A nightmare, I’d say,” Lacey snapped.

“I don’t think so,” Sarah said. She glanced to the ground. The picture of the boy.

 “Who’s in the picture? Is it my son? “ Sarah asked. 

“Your son?” Lacey said, her face twisted.

“Yes, mine,” Sarah said. 

“This here’s my dream,” Lacey said, “And it’s my boy, Tim.“

***

Sarah considered how many days the sky could be a wall of grey clouds, how long the air could have that same bite. She wondered how it could possibly turn to spring at some point. She let her garden go to pot last year – she didn’t do the leaves -the place was a mess. 

She lit her candle, started her day, sensed the lingering disappointment that the picture in the dream was not Max. She was as silly as one of her self-absorbed clients. Not everything is about you, not even your own dreams, she self-scolded.

She picked up Max’s wristwatch, the silver one they gave him for his high school graduation. She half expected it to be stuck forever on the day and time he died. Instead, it was frozen on some weird, random time. The time of someone else’s loss. 

During yoga, drips fell onto her mat, tears. Maybe it was time to call Agnes. The last time they’d spoken, Sarah had blown up, said she’d had enough of Agnes’ stupid pseudo-psychology.

“Sarah! Thank goodness!” Agnes exclaimed. 

Sarah told her about the thick wall of clouds, the tears, the dream. She repeated something she hadn’t said in a while, something she obsessed about in the beginning. 

“What did I do? What did I do to make this happen? It must have been me,” she said.

“Nothing,” Agnes soothed, “You. Did. Nothing. It just happened. These things happen.”

Sarah had heard this reason before. This weak, senseless, useless reason. She held back, resisted the urge to hang up on her oldest friend.

***

Lacey swept the floor, dust blew up around them.

“What happened to your son?” Sarah asked her. 

“It’s a shame, a real shame. He run away. For good. My fault,” Lacey said. 

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah whispered into the cold silence.

“What happened to yours?” Lacey asked. She stopped sweeping, stood in the settled dirt.

Sarah avoided the question, thinking Lacey might not understand Max’s death. 

“Are you always here-in this barn-working?” she asked. 

“Yeah. Tim left, sos I stay here mostly. Roy’s in the house,” Lacey said, jerking her head to the left. 

“My husband left me after our son died,” Sarah said. 

“Huh,” Lacey said, holding her broom, her eyes hardened pools.

***

Sarah drove to the park downtown where the junkies lurked. Max was found under a tree nearby. His friends thought he was sleeping, but he was dead. She passed a cluster of skinny-looking young people laughing around a phone. If it weren’t for their boney limbs and stringy hair they could have been any kids. They could be going to college in the fall, maybe they were in college. One of the kids looked up. Sarah kept her head down, walked a little faster.

“Hey, lady? Hey!” he shouted.

Sarah’s heart pounded in her chest.

She stopped. “What?”

“What are you doin’ here? Not safe. You should get outa here,” he said.

“Did you. Did you know my son, Max Todd? He died. Overdosed. Last year,” she asked, out of breath.   

“Oh man, I think I hearda that. I’m very sorry. Very sorry. You go home now, lady. You take care,” he said.

Sarah moved in a little closer. He stiffened, stepped back.

“Can I hug you?” she asked.

“Awwwwww,” one of the women in the group behind him wailed.

“Uh. Okay. Okay,” he said.

She stepped into the stranger’s arms, stayed there for as long as she could, inhaling the faint scent of detergent on his ragged tee shirt.

***

“My son died because he purposely took too much of a drug-like a medicine-kind of. We didn’t really know he was doing it. We chose not to I guess. But there were signs,” Sarah told Lacey.  “Why did Tim go?”

Lacey closed her eyes for a moment, the hand holding the picture limp in her lap. It had pencil on the back. 

“May I see your picture” Sarah asked, still hoping it would have something to do with Max. She’d wake up and Max would be alive.

 Lacey handed it over. The young man, photographed sometime in the 1920s, wore pants with suspenders and a cap. 

“He’s handsome,” Sarah said.. 

“He had enough of Roy’s boozin’ and beatin’. That’s what it was. He asked me to go with him, but, I was stupid. Chicken. Yup. My own darn  fault.” She stopped there, stood up, wiped a clouded window with a rag.

***

Sarah flipped through her many photo albums, examining the past, searching for something. Inside, there were photos of birthday parties, camping trips, holidays. Nothing unusual. But, there was also something unexpected, something she had forgotten existed: the joy in their faces. She put her glasses on, held the photos close, squinted.

***

The barn smelled of manure. Sarah scanned the space for signs of animals but saw none. She sat at the table and told Lacey about her visit to the junkie park.  Lacey sat quietly, smoothing her apron. Sarah assumed her dream-friend did not quite get it.

“Can we leave this barn? Can we go somewhere else?” Sarah asked. 

Lacey clutched her picture. “But not the house,” she said. 

“No, not the house,” Sarah said. 

Lacey swung open a small side door, a grey landscape rolled forth. They walked together into the cold, Sarah half expecting to fall into some swirling abyss. The frosty ground held strong beneath her feet. She inhaled the sharp air, was grateful to escape the persistent smell of dung.

***

The next morning, the weather improved a bit, Sarah brought her yoga mat to the backyard, moved through her vinyasa flow in a tentative light, under budding trees. She imagined teaching Lacey, smiling as she wondered if she could switch out her house dress for yoga pants. How do dream friendships work? she wondered. She was grateful to have yoga, meditation, the internet, a job, even a divorce.  She wanted Lacey to have these things too.

***

A strong breeze blew through Lacey’s yard. The picture of Tim flew out of her hand. She ran to catch it, but it disappeared. The sunlight fell though Lacey’s trees, the weather vane on top of the barn turned. The two women moved forward, held onto each other, walked slowly to the edge of the property.

– Maggie Iribarne