The Undiscovered Country

by Kathleen Chamberlin

     She sat at the table, the sunlight streaming through the open curtains, the dust motes riding the currents of air. She paid them no mind. Instead, she watched her pen gliding across the whiteness of the page, each loop forming a letter, flowing gracefully into the next until miraculously a word appeared, elegant in the script she had perfected from practicing the Palmer Method earnestly. She preferred to use a fountain pen, feeling free to relax her grip and letting it rest easily in the hollow between her thumb and index finger, moving by the impulses her imagination sent to her fingertips. She liked to think of herself as a linguistic choreographer, her hand partnering her pen as it twirled and extended its point to create something concrete and beautiful. A dazzling sunset near the Cliffs of Mohr, perhaps or a dashing personality like her romantic hero, Winthrop Graham, but always something costumed in truth and beauty, like ballet, her interior voice providing musical accompaniment. Keats had said it succinctly: Truth and Beauty were equivalents.  If her words were beautiful in both meaning and appearance,  were they not doubly truthful?  And if she wrote the truth in her elegant penmanship, was its beauty not doubly enhanced? But what about those truths that were dark or brutal?  Did beauty fade or cease to be, overpowered by malevolent violence? Or was there beauty even in darkness, a beauty language could capture and elevate?

       These were the questions she pondered as she wrote her poetry and short stories, bifurcating her consciousness. They oversaw the process of creation, interlopers whose critical eye and swift judgment could reduce to rubble the artistry she was creating.  With each movement of her pen across the blue lined college-ruled notebook that was the fortress of her efforts, she sheltered within an edifice that showed clearly the battles and skirmishes of revision or abandonment, some ideas imprisoned in dungeons of incompleteness, wasting away in the recesses of her mind. Many had been hopeful that she would return to them, key in hand, carrying nourishment to give them the strength to enter the outside world. Some were languishing in dark corners, merely shells without any definite shape, unsure of what they truly were, waiting for their sentences to be handed down.

       She loved not only the places her imagination took her, more vibrant than the hues of Nature's palette as spring turned to summer and summer to autumn, but she also loved the physical act of writing. She rejected the idea of composing on a computer or tablet where one misplaced keystroke could send her creation to the limbo of ether that floated somewhere between herself and that cloud her son had spoken of. No. Her notebook and pen were tangible and they connected her to her creations in hieroglyphics easily recognized and understood, the only comfortable space in her current existence.

      She would awaken each day to follow the same routine: Out of bed by nine, then showering and dressing before finding a breakfast tray with a pot of coffee and cinnamon raisin toast, buttered and cut into triangles on her small table. Alongside it rested her notebook and pen. She'd nibble at her toast while letting her coffee cool and then she'd take a swallow, enjoying the warmth that trickled down her throat and jump-started her brain. She would open the notebook and uncap her pen, skimming segments of the previous day's efforts before choosing which story to continue. Her habit was to write for a solid hour or longer. She knew that 11:00 brought the doctor in his pristine white coat, name deftly embroidered in black thread over his heart, clipboard or laptop in hand, ready to begin the Interrogation. At least that was the way she thought of it. She was imprisoned here, sentenced to spend her remaining time on earth behind these walls, guilty of being old. She knew her memory had been failing but she didn't need memories to function in the present, she had argued to her son. 

     “What happens if you forget to turn off the stove? Or forget to take your meds? Or worse, forget you have taken them and take them again?”

     She fought off the inevitable for as long as she could, but when her reality merged with the fiction she had created during a successful writing career, she was left no choice. “All is lost,” she'd written on the first page of the notebook that waited for her in the room they had prepared for her, a room with neither a personality nor a soul, sterile in its institutional blandness. The only thing that was distinct about her room and distinguished it from all the other rooms on her floor was her name on the door.

     Writing had been Alice Jackson's salvation throughout the turbulent times in her life. She'd poured the anguish of her broken heart into countless poems, hoping to find the one incantation that would banish the hurt caused by losing her first love. Those she had kept hidden away, behind a pile of letters in a shoe box, remnants of her teenage years. She wrote strident odes and song lyrics protesting the war that had torn friendships apart and pitted her against her family. There was the poignant eulogy she had written as an op-ed, citing the many lives lost to her town, lives of childhood friends or their brothers and sisters. There was the novel she had written when she first suspected her ex-husband, Matt Preston, was having an affair. The wronged wife she'd created was far stronger than she was, and willing to face the world undaunted, albeit damaged. It was after the success of that book, and the advance for its sequel, that she served Matt with divorce papers, telling him she hoped he and his mistress would be very happy together and moved out.

     When she met Elliott Harmon at a book signing, she felt the surge of passion stirring. Just as she had as a teenager, discovering love for the first time, she composed hauntingly beautiful love poems about him, never imagining that her feelings were reciprocated. That was until she came to her next book signing and brought her an iced coffee, one cream, one sugar.  As their romance blossomed, she didn't write much, her daily life exploding with joy. When she and Elliot welcomed first Kevin and then Kenneth into their lives, she wrote a little about them, but she was too busy enjoying her life to pick up her pen to write another novel.  Life was writing her story now, she had said, so the characters she had sketched out using all the writing organizational tools available, were tucked away on a bookshelf.

     That was before the accident that had nearly killed her. Alice could still return to the moments before the accident when she sat alone in this room by the window. It had been such a happy day. The sun had broken through the rain clouds and there was Kevin, smiling and begging her to let him ride shotgun, “just this once” as they celebrated his graduation from Middle School. She had tousled his hair and said, “Okay, just because today is special,” and climbed into the back seat with Kenneth.  “It's you and me, kiddo, backseat drivers for the duration.”

     They has been so proud of Kevin and the awards he had won. Elliot had welcomed the opportunity to talk to Kevin, seated next to him, and bask in his accomplishments. She remembered how bright the sun was and how she pointed out the sparkling reflections in the drying puddles to Kenneth. She remembered seeing the car speeding toward them: a dark red Mustang convertible,  a handsome man at the wheel arguing with the woman next to him. All at once, she realized they were on a collision course, with no means to avoid it. What happened next unfolded in slow motion. The woman's eyes grew wide, her mouth opened in a scream. The handsome man turning too late, slamming on the brakes, his face etched with horror. She threw herself across Kenneth just before the impact sent their car catapulting across the intersection, going airborne after being hit by cars unable to swerve away from them. Their moment of joy exploded amid the smoking remnants of crushed metal. One indelible, unalterable action had severed her from the life she had known and transformed her to an anguished and desolate widow robbed of her firstborn son. When she woke to the rhythmic beats of monitors in a hospital bed, she knew she would hear bad news by the looks of sympathy and concern on the faces of each nurse who quietly took her pulse and blood pressure, monitored her pain medication and recorded their findings.  When she learned of her loss, she was inconsolable.  But Kenneth had survived. Her physical injuries healed, but she walked around shell shocked, hollow and disbelieving. She held on to Kenneth with fierce protectiveness, lest he be taken from her, as well.

     She joined support groups and went to a grief counselor. During one of her sessions, her therapist had suggested she try to write about the accident, as a way to assuage the pain. She had resisted at first, but then it occurred to her that she could change the outcome.  She could simultaneously write of their survival and give them immortality.  So, she made a few attempts. 

     The red Mustang merely cut them off, Elliot raging at the driver who flipped him the bird while Kevin screamed “Asshole!”  In this incarnation, she had scolded both her husband and her son, saying “Language!” as they drove on, unscathed, to the restaurant.  In another version, the two cars narrowly avoided colliding, but the driver's look of panic as he jerked on the steering wheel gave her little comfort as this version of reality left her white-knuckled, with her heart pounding. The final draft included the collision, all the sounds of skidding tires and metal scraping and crumpling accompanied by the ear-piercing screams she had emitted, as the landscape changed places with the sky and the car cartwheeled across the intersection, landing on its roof. In this version, however, it was the occupants of the red Mustang convertible who died, while her family survived. She told her therapist that writing had helped her manage her grief and when she felt that grief tugging at her, she would read the story of their survival, her own happily ever after. It was this practice that paved the way to her undoing. She had begun writing a parallel life for herself in which she and Elliot grew old together, traveling to all the destinations they had put on their bucket list.  The boundary between the two worlds slipped the day she told Kenneth she and Elliot were planning another trip. Kenneth's alarm was immediate.

     “Mom,” he said as gently as he could, “Dad's gone, remember?”

     “Gone? Where? He didn't say he had any plans for today,” her confusion clear in her voice.

     Kenneth's wife spoke up. “You asked him to pick up milk from the grocery store,” she said, warning Kenneth with her eyes not to contradict her. “He should be back soon.”

     The answer seemed to reassure her, but Kenneth realized it was time for someone to take responsibility for Alice’s daily care, something neither he nor his wife could provide. So here she was, her name printed out in black letters on the door to her room: ALICE HARMON, and on a sheet of paper under it, the names of her physician and her son with their phone numbers to be called in case of emergency. 

     If her daytime hours were regimented and predictable, the nights were a wild cacophony of voices melded to an ever shifting kaleidoscope of images. Each dreamscape was vivid and detailed, reminiscent of the decor in a Poe tale. There was the teenage boy she had loved and lost who lounged against the hood of his car, those warm brown eyes and wide smile an invitation, his voice as earthy as she remembered. She also encountered her first husband both before and after he had proved himself a cad. They would drive to an illicit assignation, filled with alcohol fumes and sex. Intimacy with him, even in dreams, left her puzzled and tawdry when she awoke the next morning. Every so often, her parents made an appearance and she would find herself still cleaning out their house as she had more than 25 years ago, explaining to them that they could no longer stay in the house because it had been sold. And, she would add, as painful as it was to hear, because they were dead. There were dreams where her cellphone wouldn't work and she was stranded, threading through unknown streets and forbidding towns.  At other times, she sat alongside Eliot, feeling loved and, above all, safe. When she climbed to consciousness from those dreams, she was bereft. She would close her eyes and try to recapture those moments before they were lost to the dismal reality of the four walls of her room.

     Last night had brought one of those happy dreams and she was sitting at her table, notebook closed, pen capped, staring out the window when her son arrived.  He kissed her on the top of her head.

     “Hi Mom. It's Kenneth. I stopped by to see how you were doing.”

     She tilted her head to look at him and felt a tremor in the recesses of her memory. This face was familiar as was the name, but was he really there? Or was it another assault on her sanity? She stretched an aged arm out to him, allowing her fingers to touch his cheek, gliding down to cup his chin. Then she smiled. 

     “I know you, don’t I? You're someone important to me but I can't remember your name.”

     “It's Kenneth.”

     “Kenneth,” she said, trying it out to see whether the name was familiar to her lips. “I think I wrote a story about a young man named Kenneth.” She frowned. “Or maybe I had a son named Kenneth.  That’s who it was. He was such a handsome boy. Sadly, I haven't heard anything from him in a long time. Kenneth, or maybe it was Kevin.  He resembles you, too. Do you know him?”

     “I am Kenneth, Mom.”

     “Of course, you are! You don’t have to remind me. Goodness gracious! Do you think I could ever forget my own son?”

     “Don't you feel like writing today?”

     “Maybe later. Right now, I want you to arrange for me to have my hair done. Will you do that for me, dear?”

     “Whoa, do you have a hot date? Anyone I know?”

     “As a matter of fact, you do.” She smiled. “Your father is taking me to a wonderful restaurant he’s been to. It’s called The Undiscovered Country—very Shakespearean--and it sounds out of this world! Oh, and I’ll need my nails done and I want to wear my periwinkle blue dress, the one your father likes. Will you make sure?”

     “Of course, Mom. I’ll let them know at the front desk.” 

     Kenneth stayed his usual half hour, the time it took for Alice to lose her foothold in reality and slide into fabulation, a term he learned that described that fantasy world his mother retreated to with greater frequency.  Today, however, she held on.

     “I’m so looking forward to seeing your father tonight. I want to look my best. You won’t forget about the dress, will you? It’s a special occasion, you know. It’s our anniversary.”

     A look of pleasure illuminated her face as she continued. “I remember thinking that he had saved me. That he gave me everything I could ever imagine wanting. I loved him very much. I’m going to make sure I tell him that tonight.”

     “Give him my love as well,” Kenneth managed to say. Then he hugged his mother, conscious of how fragile she felt in his arms, and went to the front desk to convey his mother’s wishes.

     Early the next morning, Kenneth got a phone call telling him of his mother’s passing. He drove to the nursing home, his mind a hive of competing thoughts. When the doctor took him to her room, Kenneth saw a single white rose resting on her open notebook and her fountain pen was uncapped, as if she had been writing when she died. Kenneth capped the pen and picked up the notebook.

     “Dear Son,” it read. “Dad said to tell you, he loves you and he’s come to take me home. We’ll watch over you. Love, Mom.”

* * * * *

Kathleen Chamberlin is a retired educator living in Albany, New York. Her writing has appeared in both print and electronic journals and in several anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Soul: Attitude of Gratitude. She enjoys gardening, genealogy, and grandchildren.