Mary

"Mom!" Mary said as the two women hugged outside of the old Victorian home. "God, I missed you," she said as they held each other close.

They pulled apart and stared into each other with smiles beaming across their faces as the past decade faded away. "I missed you, Mary," the older mother said, wiping a tear from her eye. "It's been too long."

Mary nodded before they gripped each other's hands tightly and entered the house where they both had grown together.

"It still looks the same," Mary said as she stared into her old bedroom.

Her mother smiled behind her. "We haven't touched it since you left. Your father wanted to turn it into an office, but I just wouldn't have it."

Mary turned around as the smile left her face. "Dad. How is he?"

Her mother struggled to keep the smile on her face. "They say it, uh, shouldn't be much longer. He..." Tears started pouring from her eyes. "But he's a fighter, Mary. A damn good fighter." Mary could only look away and nod in agreement.

Mary laid in bed that night staring into the ceiling, thinking of her father and mother. She could never think of them as separate entities, only as her father-and-mother. It was as if one half of a single person she loved was dying. She thought of the formative years, when her mother was her strength and her father was her hero. Then there were the struggles, when the three of them found so little that they could agree upon. Finally one night, after an especially rough fight where the words screamed ripped wounds that to the present left ugly scars, she walked out. But returning that day had wiped away all the sorrow, and left regret where the scars used to be. Her father wouldn't be around much longer.

She closed her tear filled eyes and tried to sleep. Then, just at the moment before she lost all consciousness, she heard a voice like silk whisper, "Mary," followed by a soft, cool breeze over her forehead. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed, gripping her blanket to her chest and staring into the darkness.

She vaguely remembered hearing her name being called in the darkness as a child. It was so vague that she had moved those memories into the realm of childhood imagination. And that night, between the trauma of returning home and watching her father die, she wondered if what she had just experienced was her imagination as well...

Just as Mary's mother had said days before, her father was a fighter. He hung on, without life support, for days longer than any ordinary person would have. But he was also mortal. And she seemed to know the exact moment that life slipped from her father's body.

The tears flowed freely from her eyes that night. The occasional sniffs were the only sounds echoing off of the walls. Then, when she closed her eyes, it came again. "Mary..." Then the breeze passed her forehead once again, expelling from her mind the will to sleep. She rose from her bed and abruptly left her room, never looking into the darkness behind her.

The soft mechanical sound of a movie projector greeted Mary as she descended the old wooden stairs of the house. She approached the soft, black and white lights coming from the den. She stood just outside the room, not wanting to disturb her mother, who was watching old home movies of the three of them together.

"You can join me, you know," her mother said without taking her eyes off of the screen.

"I couldn't sleep," Mary said.

Still without looking from the screen, her mother said, "This was at the Petrified Forest. Do you remember the Petrified Forest, honey?"

Mary sat down. "I was only, what, three at the time?"

Her mother turned her head and showed her moist and glassy eyes reflecting the light of the projector. "There are some things one never forgets, Mary."

A new scene appeared on the screen. It was Mary as a young toddler laying in bed crying. Sitting close to her was a young woman who Mary had seen in various pictures scattered throughout the cavernous hallways of the old house. "Why am I crying?" Mary asked.

"That was right after your little hamster Buddy died." Her mother laughed slightly. "Oh, you loved Buddy, and you just cried and cried and cried when he died. There was nothin' no one could say to cheer you up." She paused and wiped her runny nose dry. "Then, Aunt Rosa came along..."

"Aunt Rosa?" Mary said as she watched the screen. Her aunt whispered something to her, then blew gently on her forehead. No sooner than Aunt Rosa had stopped, a smile had formed on the young Mary's face.

"Oh, yes. She was you father's step-sister. She died when you were only five, from cancer, I think. Just like your father. It was so sad... Yes..."

Mary couldn't take her eyes off of the screen. When Aunt Rosa looked directly into the lens, it was as though she was still watching over her. "How did she get me to stop crying?"

Her mother smiled. "It was amazing, really. She had a beautiful voice, so I used to tell you that God wanted her to lead his choir of angels. Whenever you were sad or angry, all she had to do was use that sweet voice to say your name... Mary... then breathe sweetly across your forehead and everything was all right."

Tears streamed from Mary's eyes as her mother finished those words. From far away, she heard her name whispered once again and that sweet breeze brush over her forehead. She gripped her mother's hand tightly as she knew then that everything would be okay.