“Mindy? Are you okay?” It was her mother, her voice
betraying bits of accent from her native Italy.
“I’m fine, mom. It’s just a fly. I killed a fly.”
“There’s someone here to see you,” said the voice on the
other side of the door, sounding more as if she were asking a question than
giving information.
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
“It’s Dave. He wants to talk to you. He’s come all the way
from Wisconsin.”
Mindy froze. She wasn’t ready to talk, had no desire to try
to explain what she couldn’t understand.
“I don’t want to talk to him. Not now!”
“What’s the matter, Mindy? What happened to you?” Mindy
recognized her mother’s sad voice, the one she sometimes used when hoping to
elicit pity. But there was no affectation in her mother’s voice now, Mindy
heard the legitimate concern.
“I’ll be okay. I just need to work through a few things. I
just need some time to myself.”
There was a moment’s silence before her mother resumed.
“He’s come a long way, Mindy. He just wants to talk to you.
It might do you good.”
Mindy was about to become insistent in her attitude, but
stopped herself short. She had no desire to put her mom through anything more
than she already had, had no desire to have a war of wills with her.”
“Okay,” Mindy said, “send him up.”
Dave soon appeared, acting in that self-conscious way he
had, attempting to dance around whatever negativity she might possess.
“How are you, Mindy?”
“Okay. I’m okay. I just have to deal with some things by
myself.”
“I know it’s been hard. We’ve been through some unbelievable
things, had to accept realities we’d rather not have to deal with—“
“You think that’s what this is all about? Because I’m
scared? Damn right I am, but I’m not scared of what will happen to me, I’m
afraid of what I’m capable of doing.”
“I miss you, Mindy. Maybe you’re having doubts about
yourself, but I trust you. Doug too. He’s worried about you, so is Izzy.”
“Yeah, well Doug may trust me, but I don’t. I don’t trust
what I’m capable of doing. I don’t trust the whole situation. And I don’t know
if I trust Doug, either.”
“You haven’t answered any of my calls or texts. I was
worried.”
“I told you, I need to be alone, to figure things out. I
don’t trust myself. I wouldn’t have let my mom let you in, but I…”
“You what?”
“I was afraid to argue with her. Afraid that if I disagreed
with her too strongly I would just alter her thoughts until she did what I
wanted.”
The look in Dave’s face showed compassion that longed to be
shared, but Mindy had no strength for that. She needed to distance herself from
him and everybody else she cared for, was afraid of the connections she would
make.
Dave paused for a moment before speaking, looking around the
room at the items of her past. He had been her older brother’s friend, had
never really been in her room before. She felt exposed, as though he was
reading her past and her vulnerabilities in the items that were in her room. He
had penetrated deep into her sanctuary, and she would have got angry if she
trusted herself to permit such a reaction.
“I know what you’re worried about. You have a power and
you’re afraid to misuse it. But nothing’s really changed. You’re still the same
person, you’re just a little larger, that’s all. It’s like becoming a grownup:
it’s scary, but you have to do it. You can’t run away from who you are. You
can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Mindy said, and she permitted
herself to tap into her anger slightly. “You have the ability to see things in
your dreams. You don’t have to worry about others, you just have to worry about
yourself.” No, it was not anger, it was passive aggressiveness, a way of being
cruel while insisting to herself that she did not have the power to hurt.
“Power is what you make it Mindy. As soon as I tell others
what I see in my dreams, they become involved in my problems too. I’m
responsible for others, responsible for my actions, just like you. You have to
be thoughtful and cautious. You must use every bit of knowledge and wisdom and
emotion, everything you are, to make sure you don’t abuse it, that you use it
in the right manner. But you can’t deny it. You can’t pretend you don’t have power.”
“Yes I can. Just watch me.”
“You’re part of this world. You can’t cut yourself off from
it. You have love, perspectives, desires. You can’t let them go to waste. You
can’t sit on the sidelines for fear of getting hurt.”
“You think I’m worried about getting hurt? No, I’m worried
about hurting. I’m worried about using my abilities wrong, of using them for
personal gain, or using them without realizing I’m using them at all.”
“I know, Mindy. And I know it’s hard. But it’s what being a
grownup is about. There are a lot of people walking around in the world afraid
to come out of their chrysalis, afraid to be the person they have the potential
to be. But the world isn’t going to be what it can be if those who have the
power to change it stay in their childhood
bedroom in their parent’s house.”
This angered Mindy, and the anger she had not permitted
herself before she now allowed to surface. Her temper had always been her
relief valve, and it felt good now to allow it to rise up in her.
“What the hell do you know? Did you even come here by
yourself or did Doug send you?”
Dave looked uncomfortable. “I’m on my way to see a
performer, a balancing act, in Indiana. But I came here because I care for you.
You’re not being honest with yourself if you don’t realize that.”
“Get out!” said Mindy, restraining herself from screaming
only so that her mother wouldn’t get involved. “Get out,” she repeated, and
Dave made his way slowly towards the door. She didn’t know at that moment if
she was actively walking him towards it or if he was going under his own will,
and she didn’t care: either way, she was proving that she was right. She didn’t
want him to be there. No, that wasn’t true. She wanted him there, she just
didn’t want to deal with reality, didn’t have the strength to look her
predicament straight on. She just wanted to hide, to live in a world of her own
making, filled with stuffed animals and frilly drapery.
Before Dave left, he turned to her and said, “I love you
Mindy. I love you and I need you. We all need you. Yes, Izzy and Doug and the
others, I don’t care if you want to hear that. Hell, maybe the whole world
needs you. You’re a part of it, even if you don’t feel like you want to be. In
the end you’re going to realize that. You don’t want to look back at life and
see all the times you could have been a part of it and weren’t.”
Dave left and Mindy slammed the door behind him. He was
always too quick to give in, Mindy thought. She turned and fell on her bed, a
jumble of emotions she was too afraid to iterate. Around her sat a variety of
stuffed animals, glaring at her the unique personalities she had created for
them. But they were merely items of cloth with plastic eyes. Whatever emotional
links she had with them were merely the creations of her mind. She looked at her
stuffed penguin she had named Percy, one of the oldest and dearest possessions
of her childhood. The wear he exhibited demonstrated the amount of time she had
spent with him. She stared at it and familiar emotions welled in her as all the
personality she had invested in it came to memory. But it was only her
imagination that had given life to Percy, he had no real or life of his own.
She felt betrayed by that, felt betrayed by the fact that she could care so
much for him and yet he would never love her back. All these years she had
pretended that he was an old and dear friend. All these years she had believed
in a friendship that never really was. Even as she grew old enough to put aside
such ideas, she never really denied such feelings. She may have put childish
ideas behind, but she could never go so far as to deny them. She simply put him
aside, but the story still existed in her somewhere. Somewhere deep inside of
her was still that child who believed, and the best her adult self could do was
to not think about it.
But now she was face to face with her childhood
friend, and she felt betrayed by the idea that he would never love her back,
that it was he who pretended, that it was he who abandoned her. Anger welled
again as she felt as if someone had ripped away from her a childhood friend,
but she realized there was no one to be angry at. And that’s when the anger
turned to grief, as she realized her absolute powerlessness in the face of
life. Whatever power she had, it would never get her her heart’s desire.
Whatever power she had was more likely to hurt than help. But, after all, it
was not really her power she was afraid of, it was her lack of it.
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