13. GONE
MALACHI
A big wisher was an understatement.
First—See the Seven Wonders of the World.
Second—Take a hot air balloon ride with a beautiful view.
“A little vain aren’t you?” I asked as I dried my hair and read the third one over her shoulder as she sat on the couch.
Upon hearing me she hugged the book to her chest and looked at me wide-eyed. “When did you come down?”
“A custom-made gown?” I repeated her third wish and she stood up. She’d changed into a dark green knitted sweater, one of many she’d gotten from Joanna in town, that stopped right around her hips. Under it she wore thick black leggings and a pair of furry rainbow socks over that. Hiding the book she’d been writing in behind her back, she smiled as she mocked me.
“Is it too much for the great Malachi Lord? I tried to warn you.”
She knew it was a bit much, but I’d wanted her to ask for it all. “No. Go on. But please try adding something that can be accomplished on the day of your actual birthday.”
“Wish four,” she read aloud as she laid back down on the couch and I moved around to sit beside her. “Malachi Lord shall bake Esther Noëlle a vanilla birthday cake with chocolate icing.”
“Fine. Do you want twenty-three candles too?” I asked, sitting where her feet were. She wiggled her toes in her rainbow colored socks as she looked up at me and stared for so long I began to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. “What?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“It’s your birthday. Would you like me to not be nice?”
She didn’t look convince but continued writing while looking up at me every so often. “Wish five, Malachi Lord will wish me a happy birthday and thank all the people who wished him a happy birthday on his fan group.”
She had to push it. She was testing me…and this wasn’t something I could fail. So I took out my phone and turned the screen to face me. Sitting upright I hit record. “Hello… Lord Nation,” I snickered at that. “I am, as you may or may not know, Malachi Lord, and today is Esther Noëlle’s birthday. Esther…is…if you knew her personally you’d know that there is not one word that could quantify who she is. And while she drives me up the wall sometimes, I’m not ignorant to the fact that she has put in so much to this site simply because she loves my work. So today on her twenty-third, I would like to say thank you and happy birthday, Esther. And also I would like to thank all of you who wished me a happy birthday as well. I’m honored.”
Ending the video, I looked up at her and she frowned at me.
“What? It’s not grand enough?” I asked as I sent her the video.
“No. I just don’t know what to say when you’re being so nice.”
Rolling my eyes, I reached for her list but she pulled it away. “I haven’t finished!”
“Then finish!”
“Excuse me if I don’t want to rush a once in a lifetime chance to have anything I want. It’s a lot of pressure trying to think of stuff.”
She wasn't serious. “Fine, take your time, put down roots if you want to. I’ll go work on your cake.”
“You’re seriously going to make me one? Can you even bake?”
“Why make wishes if you don’t think they are possible? Do we have flour?”
She stared at me amazed.
“Alright. I’ll just check for myself then,” I muttered as I got up from the couch.
“Wish six: Malachi Lord makes a full course birthday dinner for me.” She tapped her chin with the blue pen in her hands. “Wish seven, we go ice skating on the pond…that way we can pick up things for the cake and dinner. Teddy’s make these cool skates. I really want one. Ohhh wish eight: you’re going to tell me more about your past lives…or maybe you don’t mind painting me? I mean honestly the world deserves to see your art, it’s so beautiful. Actually both. I’ll make that my ninth wish since you’re being so generous.”
I really hadn’t thought this through. I walked away from her but when I looked back, her head swayed back and forth and she grinned to herself…I wanted to smile. She wasn’t in pain…but I knew I was only delaying it.
I didn’t know the mysteries of the universe. I don’t know why I died and woke up as a new person with my former memories intact. I didn’t have visions, nor could I predict the future, and magic to me was another name for coincidence. I’d never seen anyone in my dreams. I never really dreamed per say. I remembered but I didn’t dream…until last night when I saw him. And just like when I’d woken up with all the memories of my past life I just knew. I trusted the feelings I felt and knew they were real.
Alfred was gone and that hurt. It burned worse than I’d ever thought it would but I couldn’t mourn him now. I couldn't show that pain because he and I both wanted her to have one day. One more day where she believed the sun was still shining even when it was pouring outside.
“Malachi?”
I blinked and refocused on her as she turned back towards me and rested her arms on the top of the couch.
“Have you been able to contact Grandpa? His phone keeps going to voicemail.”
Lie. Or say nothing which was still a lie.
Those were my choices.
“No.” It was the best I could do.
“Weird,” she muttered to herself. “This project he’s working on…no, but even then he’d still call no matter what. Hopefully he’ll make it back in time to have Thanksgiving with us.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat I replied, “Us? Thanksgiving? No thank you. I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon enough.”
“Apparently the Grinch woke up early, this year!” she muttered rolling her eyes. “I’ll be adding Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us to my list.”
“Come on,” I said hoping to distract her. “We need to go grocery shopping and then we can go skating.”
“But my list—”
“Keep working on it. You’ll have time to think in the car,” I said as I walked to where our boots and jackets were hanging from yesterday.
“Car? When did you get a car?”
“I always had a car. It was taken in for repairs after my accident,” I said as I reached for her knitted scarf and placed it around her neck before I shrugged into my jacket and stepped into my boots.
She read over her list with a serious expression while she waited for me. “Maybe I should ask for a car?”
“What happened to that special power where a yellow car just appears in front of you if you wave your hand in the street?” I mocked and she made a face at me.
Patting my pockets, I glanced upstairs. “I forgot my wallet I’ll be right back.”
“Oh! Can you get my phone? I plugged it in by my bedside table. Thanks!” she said.
“No cars,” I told her as I rushed up the stairs.
“Your motorcycle then?” she asked and I nearly stumbled which caused her to laugh. “You said anything, right?”
I knew she was messing with me so I decided to mess with her back. “Sure. Once you get your motorcycle license.”
“What?” She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t think I can?”
Yeah okay. Good luck with that. She’d nearly broken my rib cage with how tightly she hung on to me.
I just made it to the door of my room when the doorbell rang.
“I got it!”
My stomach dropped as the hair on arms and at the nape of my neck rose. I didn’t know why but I just knew that she shouldn’t open the door and so I ran, almost leaped, down but it was too late. She’d already opened it. And there, standing in the frame of the door, dressed in his uniform with a bouquet of white lilies in his hands, stood the blond-haired snake himself.
“David?” she asked a little less cheerfully than she usually did, as if she was annoyed to see him and I was grateful for that at least.
He handed her the lilies and said, “I just wanted you to know, if you needed anything I’m here.”
“What? Thank you. You didn’t have to do all of this for—”
“Her birthday. We get it,” I said coming up to her. I glared at him telling him to leave. Hoping there was some…any redeemable quality about him. Sadly, there was not.
“It’s your birthday? I’m so sorry your loss—”
“SHUT UP!” I hollered at him.
And he jumped but she didn’t as she read the letter attached to the flowers. “Sorry for your loss? What loss?”
She looked up between us.
It was then that the fool, the inconsiderate intrusive ass of a human being, realized what he’d done. He looked to me for help and I had none to offer. Instead I wanted to kick him down the stairs hard enough to ensure that he never got back up.
“Malachi?”
I looked to her and the fear in her eyes. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. The flowers dropped from her hand as she ran. She ran towards the couch and reached for the remote control I doubt I’d ever touched and turned on the television.
“Esther—”
“Breaking News: IPN has just confirmed that Alfred Benjamin Noëlle, the famed screenwriter, director, and filmmaker, of such movies as Rise Son Rise and The Father of the Faithless, and longtime civil rights activist, passed away this morning at the age of seventy-three—”
“Ugh.”
She shook.
She took a step back and stretched out her hands switching between the channels in the hopes that it would somehow change the news. And when she realized that each channel held his name with the numbers 1944-2017 under his name and on his pictures the sound that came from her body as she tilted forward didn’t sound human.
“AHH! UGH! AHH! OGHH!” She screamed until she wasn’t strong enough to hold herself up any longer.
She screamed as she fell to the ground and I grabbed her as I tried to hold back my own tears but it was like trying to hold on to fire. Still I didn’t let go even as she hit me.
“You knew!” She screamed trying to break away. “YOU KNEW!
She slapped and smacked and dug her nails into me and I was more worried that she’d hurt herself so I let go and she ran. She ran towards the door and out into the white of the snow.
“Esther!” I called as I ran after.
She was at the bottom of the stairs when I got outside. David, the devil himself, was already at his car, unwilling to do anything because he was a coward.
“Esther!” I called once more as she slipped on the snow and ice-covered path while running towards the cabin. She picked herself up but slipped once more before she made it inside.
“GET OUT!” She grabbed the first thing she could, which was her lamp beside the couch and threw it at the door. I ducked and the light bulb exploded as it hit the ground behind me, leaving only the metal part intact.
“Esther—”
“Stop calling my name!” She wiped her face as she grabbed her purse, and threw her things inside. “You knew! That’s why you were being so nice! You knew! And you wanted me to just…how did you know?”
She paused. Her face was covered in tears and her hair was sticking through her hands. Her brown hands were now red and bleeding from her fall. But she didn’t look at me.
“I woke you up. I was with you up until we went to get ready. But you’ve been acting odd since you woke up…my grandfather? Did he call you? Did he say something to you last night?”
“No.”
“STOP LYING! Ahh!” She screamed again as she put one hand over her chest and the other over her mouth. Taking a deep breath, she looked to me. “You’re lying. How did you know? Why aren’t you shocked? He was… perfectly fine! This is some kind of mistake! There has to be a mistake—”
“He…was sick.” My voice cracked but I pushed on. “He’s been sick for a while. He didn’t want you to see him…die.”
“Stop talking.” She lifted her hand up to me. Her eyes seemed darker, hollow, as she stared back at me. She was a silent for almost a two full minutes before she spoke again. “You never had a book for me,” she whispered to herself. “I’m here…not to help you but so…so…ugh…he could…he…he could die alone? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“He had tuberculosis…the end stage is bad. He wanted to spare you—”
“Tuberculosis? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?!” She put her hands to her head once more. “He was fine! I spoke with him two days ago! He was fine!”
“He went for treatment—”
“WHY DO YOU KNOW THIS?!” She grabbed the things from her bag and threw it at me. “I’m his family! Me! I’m his granddaughter! WHY AM I HEARING THIS FROM YOU?”
I couldn’t answer that question and she began to hyperventilate.
“Esther…”
She backed away from me shaking her head. “This whole time…this whole time I was just being babysat? You were doing this for him? You were watching over me to keep me from going to my grandfather? You let him die alone!”
“He asked—”
“What about me?! WHY? Why isn’t anyone asking me?! Uhh…” She reached up to her throat unable to breathe.
When I came to her she backed away but I reached out. Not caring that she held on to me, I placed my hands on her shoulders I put my face in front of hers.
“Breathe. Esther. Just breathe.” She wasn’t listening to me. She was giving in to panic. Putting her hands on her face I made her look me in the eye. “I know it hurts—”
She slapped my hands away once more and slowly sank to the ground and curled into the fetal position as her tears rolled off the side of the nose while she tried to breathe. Laying down beside her she said three little words I never thought I’d hear.
“I…Hate…You…” she said in between breaths.
Hate me but live. I thought as she kept sobbing.
ESTHER
Was the wooden ground that I now laid upon cold or was it me?
I couldn’t feel anything.
I just sang. “Baby it’s cold…”
“I've got to go away...”
Through the streams of my tears I noticed him laying down beside me…singing with me. I tried to wipe away my tears but they fell even more. Everything…all the time he’d spent with me…all the things we’d shared. It had all been for my grandfather’s sake. He’d gotten to say goodbye. He’d gotten to…to be there for him, while…while I just played around.
“I hate you.”
“Sing with me anyway.”
I didn’t. Instead I made a wish. “I wish you’d bring him back. Bring him back, Malachi.”
“I can’t. If I could, I would, but I can’t.”
I needed to go.
I should have never come here to begin with.
I should have never left him.
The moment I did. He was gone.
Pushing up off the ground, I stood up. “Take me to the airport. I wish…I wish to never see you again.”
MALACHI
She didn’t look back when she got on the plane.
I stood there watching as they ripped her ticket stub. I wanted to get on that plane with her. But her wish had stopped me. And so I just stood there.
“This is the final boarding call for Flight 2331 to New York. The final checks are being completed and the captain will order for the doors of the aircraft to close in approximately five minutes time. I repeat. This is the final boarding call for Flight 2331. Thank you.” The attendant called at the gate but I just sat there and stared out the window at the plane.
“Sir? Sir, this is your flight, isn’t it?” she asked.
“No.” Rising, I moved from the chairs to the window. I was hoping I’d see her again, but knowing I wouldn’t, I did my best to accept that. Turning around, I walked away from it all.
In the end…I hadn’t been able to do anything for the either of them. Walking into the bathroom I entered the stall, closed the door, and pushed against the walls until my knuckles were red and I sobbed. Just like that…Alfred was gone…and I wasn’t able to do anything for her.
I’m pathetic.