CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Delusion Solution
Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved

“You have to forget about this stuff, honey. He’s gone,” Lucinda consoled. Veronica and her sister had met Alexis at a small outdoor café downtown after Alexis, frenetically wound up about something she had to tell her, had called Lucinda and invited her and her sister out. Lulu et Cie, a quaint grill off Figueroa street in view of the classic Los Angeles Central Library building was their regular spot. Luckily it wasn’t too crowed.

Veronica, eating her Cobb salad and shaking her head, couldn’t believe what Alexis was saying. “I can’t believe you’re back into this stuff,” she said with a huff.

“Will you guys listen to me?” spoke the single-minded woman. “There’s something going on here. Finally, I’ve got this piece of information that might help me figure out what happened four years ago…”.

Veronica interrupted, “Yeah, but it’s pointless. Let’s say this Templar thing is what that guy was after. Don’t you think he would have found it by now?”

“Look,” said Veronica coldly, “I knew Sean too. He was a great guy but I’m sure he knew what he was doing. What if he doesn’t want to be found?” An uncomfortable silence swept the conversation but was quickly broken with, “What if he’s actually dead, Alexis? Then you’re wasting your time looking for a man who didn’t even care enough to call!” The Latina in her had reared its head. Alexis slowly began to weep.

Grief is an ordinary, hale and hearty reaction to loss. The book her father had given her as a gift claimed that healing from a loss involved coming to terms with the loss and its meaning in one’s life. She was having different feelings at different times--shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness and acceptance. She had been going back and forth from one feeling to another for the last several years. Just when it seemed like she was starting to accept the loss of Sean, she found herself feeling sad or guilty again. Although the pain she felt would lessen with time and as she worked through the sea of emotions she waded on, the trepidation of her grief and the thought of this enfeebling new state of mind never completely going away lingered in her periphery.

In the first days after her husband’s disappearance, she felt shocked, numb and confused; she couldn’t remember what people were saying to her. She felt dazed and as though she was going through life like a robot. Alexis began to think and act as though the loss hadn't occurred. Her denial didn’t wane as the shock wore off. Reality wasn’t breaking through. Her therapist had told her that it was normal to feel abandoned and angry in hopes of encouraging her to grieve.

After the first few weeks, she began to pretend things were like they used to be. She played memories over and over in her mind. Some nights, she’d feel his presence, think she’d seen him, or think she could hear his voice.

She found herself talking to Sean as though he was in the room with her. The full impact of her loss hadn’t hit her. Alexis had lost control: Depressed and hopeless, she inquired about bipolar disorder—to no avail. She was thinking things like "if only" or "why me." She would cry for no apparent reason.

Lucinda had noticed her starting to feel better in small ways. Alexis had mentioned that she’d found it a little easier to get up in the morning. Small bursts of energy during their conversations were a good sign as well. It took a while but she was able to get Alexis to begin to reinvest in other relationships and activities.

However, Alexis still felt guilty or disloyal to Sean. That, coupled with reliving some of her feelings of grief on birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and during other special times made it nearly impossible for her to check back into the life she’d started when she first met Sean.
Veronica’s tough love was the last straw. Questions of why she was tempted to follow up this Templar lead and her concern for her near total lack of sexual arousal overwhelmed the now sniveling woman. The idea of Sean doing this to get away from her, as her friend so succinctly suggested, knocked her over the edge. She placed her head on the table and quietly sobbed. Was she delusional? Had she really lost her mind?

Lucinda aimed her daggers at her sister. Although she herself had considered the possibility many times, she never laid it out the way Veronica had just laid it out. The women consoled Alexis, now embarrassed to boot.

“Honey, I’m sorry. That came out wrong,” said Veronica in much softer tone, “You know I love you. But you’ve got to shake this before it eats up the rest of your life.”

Alexis sat up and wiped her self clean with the napkin Lucinda offered her. She was in a place of complete surrender: A mental glaze came over her as her mind’s internal machinery, soon to ease her anguish, was set in motion. She tried to focus in the palm tree trunks on the other side of the street through the blur that was the traffic of cars on Figueroa. Desperate and powerless, she took comfort in the drone that she faintly recognized as her friends helping her to compose herself-- when suddenly it happened.

As she tuned the palm tree trunks out, she focused on a white and green Crown-Victoria taxi cabriolet that was cruising within the traffic of cars, but at a slower speed just in front of the cafe. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her as she saw the taxi’s passenger stare right at her: Sean in sunglasses and fedora! Her eyes grew to cartoon like proportions. Should she say anything? Was that who she thought it was? She slowly arose from the outdoor table and made towards the direction in cab veered off.

“Alexis? Sweetie? Are you alright?” asked Lucinda as she and her sister approached carefully.

“No one,” she responded.
_________________________________________

Alexis felt she was teetering on a precipice. What she had seen earlier that afternoon was viscerally real to her. Yet she was totally aware of her condition as one that may cause her to hallucinate. Her father, who she was on her way to pick up, had told her that, sometimes, it could take several years to release the heartache one holds for a lost loved one—especially when the circumstances of the loss aren’t conclusive. She knew that she could very well be experiencing a symptom of that release—living out his memory in order to exorcize him from her mind.

“But I could’ve sworn it was...” she mumbled to herself in her car as she approached the parking structure of the Tom Bradley International Airport. She hadn’t seen her father in months. She had to get a grip. She wanted to tell her dad about the completion of her book with a smile. She was entering LAX and very proud of her total lack of anxiety about that, in and of itself. After all, perhaps this phantom sighting was a good sign. Maybe it meant she was finally grieving. She fixed herself up in the visor of her car and made her way towards the busy building.

She had bought a bouquet of flowers for her father, who was returning from a visit to Paris, and had not, as yet, written anything on the attached card. Alexis entered the terminal and looked about for a table like surface. The airport, servicing destinations all over the world, was bustling with the excitement of tourists and the emotional charge of loved ones departing and arriving from far away destinations and long-term separations.

She knew she had plenty of time before her father could clear customs and the such. To the left was a counter full of white telephones and a picture directory of local hotels and shuttle services. The counter was bookended by the entrances to the male and female restrooms, the only restrooms located in the lower “arrivals levels” of the terminal.

A group of Korean tourists, lead by a vivacious Malibu Barbie type sputtering directions loudly in Korean, slowly made their way towards the exit and slowed Alexis down as she made her way towards the counter. After what seemed like a cattle drive was over, she reached the counter and rested the bouquet and its attached card on it.

She reached into her coat pocket for a pen and, as she did, noticed a smidgeon of graffiti on the wall directory directly in front of her. She pulled out the pen and leaned down to write a little welcome back note when she saw it: a postcard with the picture of a beautiful bottle shaped island covered with green trees had all of a sudden appeared next to the bouquet. The caption read Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. It was definitely not there when she laid down the flowers not three seconds ago. She quickly looked around to see if perhaps someone had accidentally dropped it while passing by but saw no one.

Alexis, with some hesitation, flipped the postcard and read what was written on it. She gasped and covered her mouth.

I Miss You—

She froze. The letters were, without question, written in Sean’s scrawl. The air and sound of the international terminal seemed to dissipate. Her heart rate rose considerably at the sight of the writing. She found herself breathing heavily. This could not be happening. She thought that there must be an obvious explanation to what was going on.

Alexis grabbed the portentous postcard and began to walk the length of the airport. She was glad to be surrounded by so many people. Her fear was soon going to become uncontrollable and she knew it. Then, a thought stopped her.

She turned around and spotted the counter where she found the postcard, noting the men’s restroom was less then two steps away from where she was about to write the bouquet note. It wouldn’t have been impossible for Sean to have dropped the note off, in disguise, and dart into the men’s restroom.

It was during this contemplation when she caught a glimpse of her countenance in the reflection of a stranded aluminum carryall cart—her visage contorted and wrapped around its handlebar.

“It must be happening again,” she spoke to herself. She was rationalizing—a sure sign that she recognized may lead her down the wrong path, away from the healing she badly craved. She needed to sit and calm herself.

She focused her thoughts and began her self-hypnosis protocol. When she first began, she needed quiet spaces, free of distraction, in order to get comfortable and calm. Now, after nearly three years of practice, Alexis had learned to find peace in many different settings. She began to relax by closing her eyes and imagining waves of relaxation flowing through her body—paying particular attention to specific muscle groups and concentrating on relaxing them, group by group. She would think of stress as "flowing out" of her every pore. When the noises around her began to subside, she opened her eyes and fixed her gaze at a specific point—in this case, the giant arrival/departure bulletin board that overshadowed the entire terminal.

Now, the relaxation would deepen. She told herself that she was becoming more and more tranquil. Finally, she began to focus on the suggestions she’d previously chosen and "embed" into her mind—short phrases that helped her balance her mental state when things seemed to get out of hand.

Her father’s flight was delayed and an hour had now past since the bizarre events took place. Alexis had managed her reaction and was now herself again. She decided to walk the terminal again. Slowly, she sauntered about and noticed the richness of culture that crawled within this giant structure. She would hear snippets of conversations in differing tongue, mellifluous tones and rhythms of language that kept her mind off what was lurking beneath.

As she walked by a bank of some twenty payphones, one of them rang. She thought to herself that perhaps it might be some poor person probably dialing the wrong number.
“Hello?” she answered.

The deep, garbled, and what sounded like male, voice on the other end said “Alexis?”

“Yes?”

The caller hung up.

Alexis was stricken with alarm. She instantly let go of the phone and stepped away from it. To her left was a chunky boy licking his Popsicle. To her right, a group of nuns dragging their rollaway suitcases were walking towards the exit. What was happening? Who was messing with her?

At that moment, a hand grabbed her shoulder. Alexis screamed in terror bringing nearly the entire terminal to a halt. She twirled around to see her father standing back and in shock.

“It’s me, sugar,” said the handsome man, “it’s daddy.” Now distraught, Alexis pushed her father aside and dashed towards the terminal’s exit looking urgently for a clue. She saw no one. She started scanning the building for someone with a cell phone but so many people were using cell phones that it was of no use.

Her father caught up to her. “What’s going on Alexis? Are you alright?”

“No, dad. I’m not. I’m not alright,” she said as she fell into his embrace and began to cry with fear.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, 23, 24, 25, Epilogue