Light metaphysical fiction, yes. Pretty realistic contemporary fiction, mmhmm.
Subversive romance. Reincarnation novel, yes. Spiritual awakening novel, sure.
But frankly, consider what life is like for an Essene soul cluster born into present-day,
who soon realize they have their more intimate relationships all mixed-up.
They hid their needs for decades. Then menopause happened and life hit the fan.
Now you have some rockin' good women's fiction.
A Breath Floats By
Author Thayne Hudson
The Twilight
Sometimes a breath floats by me
An odor from Dreamland sent,
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a something that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere.....
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know:
As though I had lived it and dreamed it,
As though I had acted and schemed it
Long ago.....
James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891
Excerpt taken from the spiritual walk of three wise women and two leading men...
somewhere in chapter two… life is out of control......
She patted her husband's hand then held on. “Sam, try to sleep some more. You won’t get much at the hospital.”
“You need to sleep more, Clara Rose, in case you have to play ambulance. You need your rest, more rest, not staying up late like you just did.”
“I will, I promise. I’ll be okay.”
“Then show me,” he challenged as he dozed off again. “Show me I can- I can-” The full white moon shone on the back of his grizzly head.
Show you what, Sam, she thought. You can leave? Convince you that I’ll be all right without you?
* * * * *
Sometime around noon the next day Lindsay barely steered her car over three miles an hour through the lake area. Every bone in her body complained from weariness. She could hardly tap energy to breathe. She checked the sunvisor mirror for a true assessment of how she felt. Her eyes were practically sightless with navy-blue stains beneath. Her dark hair hung wearily along her too flat face. But the cheeks were high and perky. Lovely as always, she thought. If only other parts of her middle-age physique remained so constant.
She parked the Crown Victoria on the southeast side of her house near Maimee’s front door. And she sat there, windows up, mulling an argument within herself.
Their first night of this, she realized. Coming home, alone, leaving him at the hospital for care she couldn’t give. And sitting here in the drive, knowing she had to sleep for both their sakes. But she just wanted to go back for him.
If she had gone to bed last night this wouldn’t be so difficult, she thought, angry with herself for her short-sightedness. She had to keep a balance here. She could have been fishing with Sam when he got off work. She couldn’t wait another few days? Just waited to transplant flowers and work out a business budget?
Lindsay practically crawled out of the car.
Maimee was basking in the sun on the tiny front porch of her miniature bungalow, flipping through a catalog in forty degree weather. Her Levis and tucked in sweatshirt presumably kept her warm. “I let your dogs out a couple times this morning,” she told Lindsay, some edge off her usual tone. “I would hope you wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh?” How? Lindsay glanced from her cottage to Maimee.
“You wouldn’t want those two horses peeing in your house,” she said gruffly.
“Thank you, Maimee, I entirely forgot to call anyone.”
“Well, you won’t ever have to as long as I’m here.”
“But… how?” Lindsay knew she locked the doors.
Maimee stood, stalking to the white door of her bungalow. “You don’t think I’ve lived next door to that place for forty years and don’t have a key by now, do you?”
“Well, that’s- that’s-” Nice? Lindsay contemplated saying. “That works,” she said instead.
Maimee scowled at her. “You want it back?”
“No, no, Maimee. It seems we’re going to need your help. Really, thank you.”
“You’ve got it.” She hurled her catalog inside and slammed the door. Turning to Lindsay, she shooed her toward the white cottage, her long spindly legs piloting her down the steps without her holding onto the handrail. “Now show me, where is the dog food. And tell me how many bucketsful they each get.”
Lindsay showed her around the mudroom where Garth and Susanna ate and explained that each dog got a mere two cups of dry food for breakfast, then two for supper. “Slow metabolism,” she said, and gestured to the food and water bowls on their bench tables built especially for tall dogs. “There’s always water in the bowls. Oh, and Maimee, please don’t ever let them stay out in the yard when you’re not right there. Newfs are a favorite breed for dog ‘nappers.”
“Any other pets?” she asked, and Lindsay faintly chuckled in her mind, imagining Maimee with the skunks.
“Oh, no,” she told Maimee, “I’ll be able to take care of them.” She was too tired to explain about Itty and Fern. Anyway, they used a litter box and would sleep through anything but smoke, lawnmowers, and vacuums. All she had to do was toss raw vegetables and nuts all over the floor in an emergency, and keep them locked in her bedroom. They wouldn’t miss her for at least twelve hours.
Maimee headed out the mudroom door. “Get some sleep before you drive back to the hospital. He needs you to be rested with what he’s going through.”
Lindsay did have another question, but Maimee was gone. How did she know about Sam at the hospital, and that the dogs even needed out? Lindsay stood there, watching Garth and Susanna eat. The extracurricular information line was pretty active around Koontz Lake. Impossibly active, she thought, remembering how Mr. Marshall knew she wanted a price on the complex. Goodness, what if she ever really said anything to someone, or, heaven forbid, her actions were worthy of gossip, goodness, the ideas that would come out of that information.
Maimee opened the door and stuck her springy-haired head back inside. “By the way. There’s a crazy lady who lives here at the lake. Have I mentioned her yet? Don’t think so ‘cuz those dogs shook me up. Now she is gonna be able to help you. She will find all the artists you need for that old antique mall. Now I know I mentioned that mall closing! Don’t no one floating around here tell me I didn’t.”
Surreal, Lindsay thought, too tired to ask as she watched Maimee stalk away from the door.
A brief impression of her great-uncle cast over her dulled senses, so much she thought he was beside her for a second. She always thought of Uncle Herron as ancient and spry. He had to meet ninety-two year old Maimee Storganaff. No no, she would chew him up.
* * * * *
She was in her bedroom when she actually felt the first breath of the spring day float by her. The change of weather, surely. She felt the change for certain.
Lindsay realized her change of life hadn’t hit the fan as harshly as this spring's life transformation that swept them ever closer to Sam’s death. She stripped to underwear and fluffy socks and crawled into bed at noon, hoping Sam’s hospital tray reached him by now......
Weary enough to be less wary than ever in the last three decades, she tried to pray not to dream but only fell face downward into an engulfing sleep, cringing, just waiting...
A wide-eyed gray seal skidded through the doorway and onto the rug making her two lounging Newfoundlands raise their heads to grumble. Even both her skunks lifted their tails. They saw the seal! But goodness, she was dreaming if that creature was in her bedroom.
She struggled to open her eyes but hypnotizing light suspended her. She was surrounded with heaven thrilling tones, and to make life more dismal, outlandish women wandered through her new cottage. One of the two in long dresses was singing… the one with turquoise eyes. A skinny older woman wore shorts. Another tiny one with sleeves torn off her flannel shirt was pulsing a beat on a flat leather drum.
Cranky Maimee slammed in the front door and thumped through with the cottage key on a neck chain. The scrawly cat on her shoulder clung to her floppy gray hair as the old woman slammed her exit so hard Lindsay jerked awake.
Goodness!
Certain the front door actually slammed, she bolted off the bed landing in front of the French doors to the living room where she faced only one of the four cottage entrances.
Nothing, except that unusual cluster of light bubbles she never could swish away.
She crouched low and hurried to the window, screening her near nudity with the white lace sheers as she ducked behind the towering wardrobe. But no one was in the yard.
She whimpered, cringing from the icy cold in her spine, waiting.
Had they even gone?
Then a breath... almost a breath floated by.
It was happening all over again. After thirty years.
But two gigantic black dogs rested on the bedroom rug watching her with great interest. Grinning, they wondered if she would open the door and let them out? Or go to the mudroom and feed them. Lindsay realized if someone had been in her cottage, or even a presence of someone was in here now, she would be informed. But the dogs were unperturbed.
Goodness, she knew the problem. She didn’t actually pray. She went back to her room, understanding fully the expression of ‘shaking in one’s own skin.’
She had slept three hours, just enough to actually feel awake, but her forehead felt full of socks, her stomach a nest of moths. Yawning repetitiously, Lindsay dressed without taking a shower she was in such a hurry to return to Sam. Fresh lingerie, her charcoal boucle’ skirt and black yarn cardigan. She rolled black stockings to her knees and slipped on the black mules.
The phone rang when she was brushing her hair, thinking she needed to warm soup, she was so famished. She checked caller identification and thanked heavens it was Daniel and not Gooee. She answered in her bedroom, slumping on the edge of the rumpled bed.
“Did you eat?” Daniel asked, and she told him nothing since dinner last night. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m going to have something for you when I get there in ten minutes. Hey, I’ll drive you back over. We’ll take your car to bring Sam home.”
He worked midnights last night but there he was, a few miles from Koontz Lake, near the truck stop perhaps. Her headache vibrated and she finally thought to agree with him and tell him good-bye.
* * * * *
Lindsay took the dogs outside before Daniel arrived. She remembered the planted perennials and walked over to snoop for clues, arms folded around her, hands tucked inside the sleeves of her black cardigan. This afternoon there was a light layer of straw over the flower bed and little plastic markers sticking in the black earth. She checked closer and found the flowers correctly labeled.
She heard Maimee calling the dogs in a harsh whisper loud enough to be heard from next door, and Lindsay pretended she didn’t notice. The dogs were at the south gate watching as Maimee placed her scrawly gray cat on the hood of the old Buick. Low in its throat the cat distinctly said, “Cwadow.”
“Here’s Cwadow,” Maimee told Garth and Susanna slyly. “Get Cwadow, get him.”
Garth coiled his upper lip like he would just like to do that. His tongue flopped out of his mouth, slapping his nose purposefully, a promising gesture.
“Garth-” Lindsay warned.
Maimee dropped a cardboard flat of dirt and stems over the fence. “Here’s a bunch of achillea for your garden,” she said gruffly. “It’s flathead yarrow, grows a foot, all colors. Don’t have any more room for them.”
“Maimee, thank you,” Lindsay said, pleased. She looked over at the dug earth. “Maimee, do you know anything about these flowers being planted yesterday?”
“Good you got some straw on those. They would’ve been shocked by the freeze coming again.” She walked away.
* * * * *
Daniel brought her a Hardley's sliced beef sandwich with potato cakes. His idea of the best restaurant, besides Kel’s Steak House. Lindsay ate in the car, speeding west on Highway 30. She wadded the wrappers in the empty bag, then, with one finger, reached over and touched Daniel’s brown plaid jacket.
“What?” he asked, and gave her a grin that tipped sideways.
“Just checking to see if I’m awake.”
“Hey, why?”
“Today seems kind of surreal.” The second time she had used that word in a few hours, she thought. “Things just keep happening without me asking. But-” she took a deep breath, looked out the side window at flat scenery on the merely functional highway. “But, if anything was surreal, I wouldn’t be tripping all the way back to a hospital an hour and a half away when my husband is dying. Surreally, I would have had the foresight to move close to a hospital!”
“There are hospitals out here. Plymouth, South Bend, LaPorte, Valpo-”
“Sam just wants that one. And I didn’t think beyond my needs.”
“Sure you did. You got him to the lake to fish, didn’t you?”
“We need a pontoon now. He slipped on the bank under the bridge yesterday.”
“Wooden bridge?” Daniel asked, grimacing, and Lindsay nodded, murmuring, “Mmmhmm,” so that Daniel laughed, no matter how much empathy he had for his friend. “Big thunderhead could have stayed on the bridge,” he said. “Oh well, he would just fall off that, or the pontoon. Not your fault he’s all left-footed.”
“He will probably be released when we get there.”
“That’s good,” Daniel said. “Hey, what was going on that they kept him?”
“You know,” she squeezed her eyes shut against the reality of the answer. “They just don’t know. He won’t allow surgery. He won’t go beyond blood work, an ultrasound or scan. Or an MRI. And oh no! Definitely not another biopsy of any kind. The specialists are searching practically blind as to what anything is now. They can only observe.”
And she was angry with Sam. But she couldn’t blame him either.
“Daniel, ever since I met him, he has said he would never have chemo. Never. And nothing for life support. He said it once a year, I swear, just so I wouldn’t forget.”
“He told me too. It’s been real important to him.”
“There must be a way.”
Sam was being kept over night. He slept so soundly from the moment they got there that after five hours Lindsay and Daniel left a note for him. So she wouldn’t disturb him, she whisper-kissed his cheek and they left.
* * * * *
The Crown Victoria streaked the long, dark highway home. Lindsay realized her inane chattering was getting on her own nerves. She drifted into silence and rested her head on the seat to watch the lights of homes vanish behind them.
Daniel’s warm hand gently circled hers, offering support. No words compared as he held her hand like he had so often over the years. His energy pounded into her.
Almost forty minutes of screaming silence passed. If she touched his face?
Wondering was pointless. Daniel would pull back, he would be the strong one for them tonight, he would give them another day or year to contemplate choices. ‘Never taken in a hurry,’ he said once. Life is always best taken as each moment is right for a person.
‘We’ll know when we’re right,’ he had told her nine years ago.
“Lindsay, if it’s all right, I’ll sleep upstairs in that extra bedroom you made up.”
