We Are the Light(57)

“Majestic’s answer to Michelangelo,” Darcy used to say.

During our last night together, just before the movie began, I remember holding my wife’s hand and staring up at the Grand Viewing Room’s ceiling, only instead of opera, it was Christmas music playing. When I think about it now, I hear Ella Fitzgerald singing her version of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Darcy always loved the First Lady of Song. I remember my wife’s warm lips lightly touching my cheek. In my memory now I smell peppermint, because that was the flavor of lip gloss Darce was wearing when she was transformed into an angel.

During our nightly swings on Darcy’s hammock, Jill keeps saying I don’t have to attend the premiere if I don’t want to. Even though—like I said before—she already bought a dress and rented me a tuxedo.

“We could go away. Book a place somewhere. Disappear for a bit,” she’ll say, and there’s a part of me that wants to do exactly that, even though I realize I owe it to everyone to rise to the occasion and lead the charge to reclaim the Majestic Theater.

“I have to make a speech,” I say to Jill.

“No you don’t,” Jill says. “Especially if you’re not ready.”

“Ready for what exactly?” I’ll say, and that always makes Jill go silent.

What do you think, Karl?

Am I ready?

When I get really honest with myself and drop down deep within—this often happens when I meditate or try to go back into my dreams and continue them, like you taught me—I hear a very soft noise that I can’t identify. Sometimes it sounds like wind rushing through trees, only it’s far away. When I concentrate and try to listen harder, the sound will rise up and get closer, until I’ll begin to make out what exactly it is that I’m hearing. I’ll get closer and closer to mentally placing the sound, but just before I do, some defensive part deep inside hauls off and kicks me in the metaphorical psychological nose, bringing me right back to the everyday humdrum, where I can no longer hear anything within me at all.

And I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to finally hear whatever this noise within me is when I walk into the Majestic Theater’s Grand Viewing Room and sit down next to the black sash that will mark the last seat in which the human version of my wife ever rested. I’ve been told that Mark and Tony replaced the upholstery of every chair in the theater, so there is no possibility of anyone being retraumatized by bloodstains or anything like that. But when I try to visualize reentering that space, every centimeter of my skin begins to tingle and every cell in my body starts vibrating. Then I’ll start worrying about hearing that mysterious noise locked deep within me.

When I’m being honest with myself, I kind of know that the hidden sound—whatever it may be—is powerful enough to kill me dead, only I don’t think I’ll grow wings and turn into an angel and fly up toward the white light. It’s more likely that the earth will begin to quake and the ground below my feet will open up and I’ll fall down into the glow of lava and magma and smoke and a hell that I’ve never been able to imagine before.

There’s a part of me that’s hoping for that, again, if I’m being honest, and why not at this point? There’s a part of me that feels we deserve some sort of eternal punishment.

Is that strange?

Or is that just part of the human condition, Karl?

What would Jung say?

Maybe Other Lucas really will show up again and win the day?

Wouldn’t that be nice.

I’d like you to be there if Other Lucas makes an appearance, but I wouldn’t want you to see me fall deep into damnation.

I feel like there are things that I haven’t been able to tell you in these letters. I’ve wanted to tell you. I just don’t remember everything. There. I’ve told you part of it. That’s a first step. But how can I tell you more, since I can’t exactly remember what happened?

I have nightmares now.

Jill rushes in to wake me up whenever I start screaming in the middle of the night, but I can never remember what I was dreaming about, no matter how hard I try.

I kind of feel like this might be my last letter to you, Karl. Especially if you don’t attend our monster movie premiere. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve written you one letter for every person killed at the Majestic Theater last December—except for Jacob Hansen. This is the seventeenth letter. I had planned on writing eighteen, but I don’t believe I’ll have the time or emotional energy to accomplish that before our big night. And I also don’t really think you’re going to attend our premiere. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, I’m not allowing myself high hopes.

If my letters were the least bit worthy, you would have written me back by now, right?

Enclosed with the tickets is a photo of your wife’s name as it appears in the in-memoriam section of our monster movie. I had Tony take it. You’ll see I made sure they spelled it correctly—L E A N D R A J O H N S O N—which is the least I could do for my favorite Jungian analyst.

In closing, I want to say that no matter what happens at the premiere—or to me afterward—you’ve really helped me. I looked forward to our Friday-night analysis sessions more than you probably ever realized. They made me a better educator, friend, son, and husband.

I often didn’t see my progress. And I’d even sometimes say things like, “Am I being taken for a ride, Darce? I don’t know. Is it worth all the money we’re paying?”