Night Travels

by Lynn Bechtel

She calls every day, my younger sister. I don’t always answer. I can’t reach the phone or my supper tray has just arrived or I’m too tired. Today I answer.

How are you? she begins. I can hear the worry in her voice.

Fine, I say, fine.

I want to say I’m not fine, this isn’t living, these endless minutes in this bed, this room, this fog, but I don’t. She’s so far away.

The phone is small, a shiny orange wafer that gets lost in my hand.

Where are you? I ask.

At work. Lunch break. Cheese and crackers today. She showed me her office once, on a long-ago trip. I remember stairs and a window looking out at a street full of rooftops.

I got my hair cut today, I say. Everyone says it looks nice.

The phone is so hard to hold; I grip it tightly and my hand spasms.

She’s talking now, a flow of words, one sentence then another, static smothering the sounds. I hear “home” “office” “photographs” “Tashi.”

She says “Tashi” again and I can feel the lean feline body, smooth fur, the vibration of a purr.

Is Tashi OK? I ask.

I think so, she says. Your neighbors took her in when you first got sick. Remember?

But you said something about Tashi, just now.

I found a photo, Peter with Tashi on his shoulder.

As she speaks, I remember the day I took that picture, Peter, my love, bent to his desk, Tashi perched, both turning to look at me as I raised the camera, quickly snapped husband, cat, late afternoon light slanting into the room.

And I remember our house with its low ceilings, winding staircases, and long sloping hallways, the view of the garden out the studio window, the apple tree spilling fruit, the honey locust tree and freshly mown lawn, husband and cat walking down the path toward me.

I wake sometimes in the night and my bed is in the studio at the top of that house and I can see the garden under a full moon, the shadow of the honey locust tree, smell the cut grass, hear Peter’s footsteps.  

I keep this to myself. I told her once about my night travels. Dreams, she said. Delirium. And I said yes, you’re right, but I know it’s real, know that I leave this room, these walls, and my bed takes flight.   

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Lynn Bechtel is a writer, editor, gardener, reader, knitter, and novice meditator. She lives in western Massachusetts where she writes essays and short stories and the occasional poem. Her work has been published in journals including Entropy, The Sunlight Press, and The Berkshire Review and in the anthology grief becomes you.