Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
harbinger (n.): something that foreshadows a future event
Carly
“Oh good, I’m glad you’re up and at ’em, babe,” I say, hugging the phone to an ear while I lace my boots.
Much as I try to be mindful of our one-hour time difference first thing in the morning, Roger’s voice soothes an ache I didn’t know I was nursing.
“Well,” Roger says. “Up, yes. Not really at ’em yet, though. Everything okay, hon?”
“Yes. Fine, fine. Had your coffee?”
“Workin’ on it as we speak. How’s everything? Does the hotel have a good exercise room?”
“Yes, yes, just got back. But I need to tell you about my dream. I’d forgotten all about it until just now, when I was doing my makeup.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yep. Another weird one. But this one felt . . . different somehow.”
I pop open my pill organizer, remove the day’s vitamins and supplements.
Then make my best attempt at describing for Roger the broad country road of the dream and how vividly, boundlessly blue the sky was as I walked along.
And how, before my eyes, clouds as wispy as eyelashes gathered together and took on the form of angels.
I wish I could adequately describe for him how feathery these angels were. Like swans, but not.
“There’s a word for it,” I say. “Wispy and see-through. Starts with a g.”
“Gauzy? . . . Gossamer?”
“Or no, a c.”
“Cobweb-like?”
“Diaphanous!”
“That doesn’t start with—”
“Anyway, it looked like one of them was blowing a trumpet.”
“You heard a trumpet?”
“No, I did not hear the trumpet. I heard something else. Did I mention there was a lot of birdsong? And then . . . and then, oh honey, a voice. But here’s the thing. I felt it more than I heard it.”
“And it said . . . ?”
I draw a deep breath. “Ready? Courage, dear heart.”
“Are you . . . telling me to have courage, or . . .”
My poor Rog. I always do a ridiculous job of explaining these things. I wash down another pill with a sip of water. “No, no, babe, that’s what I heard. What I felt. Courage, dear heart.”
“Oh. Like in . . . ?”
“Yes, like in one of those Narnia books. I know it sounds preposterous. You don’t have to believe me, but I—”
“Of course I believe you.”
“Aww, thank you, sweetie. Is that the grinder? I’ll wait.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Roger says, when the rumble dies down.
“Anyway, as I’m watching this big blue sky, a jet appears, low and loud but arcing higher in the sky, like it’s heading west. And it bisects the row of diaphanous angels. Flies right through them.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes. But then you are with me, and we’re in our bathroom at home, and I’m standing at the sink complaining about my eyebrow pencil—you know, the one that has two ends, a pencil end and a brush end?”
“Okay, so we left the country behind?”
“Just wait. So then I say something complainy to you, like, ‘Every time I open this stupid thing to use the pencil end, I get the brush end. And whenever I want the brush end, I open it up and get the pencil end.’ This is a true frustration, by the way, honey. For some reason, the two ends of my favorite eyebrow pencil look exactly the same, so you never know which end you’re opening. ”
“Bad design.”
“Seriously. Doesn’t it seem like you’d have a fifty percent chance of opening the right end?
But no. Zero percent. What’s up with that?
So anyway, in the dream I’m super frustrated, and you say to me very calmly”—here I lower my voice to mimic Roger’s—“‘Try this. After you use it, put it back in the jar with the pencil end down every time. Or put the brush end down every time. That way, when you take it out, you’ll always know which end is up.’”
“This is one of your weirder dreams, hon.”
“Hang in there. So the next thing I know, I’m back on that country road, and it’s someplace all new to me, and there are trees, tall trees, and I’m walking, and there’s a field of yellowy grass—or maybe it’s hay, now that I think about it—and there’s a yellow bird on the fence, very pretty, and I stop to admire the bird, and then I realize that the gate to the pasture sits wide open. It’s like this open invitation.”
“That’s not so unusual, is it?” Roger says. “An open gate?”
“No, of course not. What’s unusual is this strong sense that I’m supposed to go through the gate. And I want to. It’s very inviting, this beautiful open field on the other side, and it occurs to me I’d like to do a million cartwheels all the way across it.”
Rog chuckles. “I haven’t seen you do a cartwheel in—”
“With good reason,” I say, laughing. “The point is, I’m compelled to pass through the gate. Okay, so now you have it. What do you think this means? Do I need to get my affairs in order? We probably should, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t think . . . were they pearly? Shiny? The gates.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There was only one gate. The plain old metal kind, like my folks used to have leading out to their pasture. The kind you find on a ranch.”
“Got it. Okay, well, did it feel like . . . another realm?”
“I don’t know. How would I know what another realm would feel like? No, not especially. I just know I was being invited into this broad new place.” I swallow my last supplement. “So, what’s your take?”
When it comes to analyzing my crazy dreams, Roger is a wizard.
“Let me give it some thought. And we should both give it prayer. But right off the top of my head, the part about the pencil makeup thing seems clear enough. If you keep doing something the same way you’ve always done it, you’ll get the same results.”
“Definition of insanity.”
“Right. So maybe if there’s a message in all this, it’s that there’s a new way of doing things that will bring you peace. But what do I know? I’m just one guy. Hey, anything else about the dream? Anything you didn’t mention?”
“Yeah . . . mountains.”