White Rabbit Chapter 42

42.

            “I hope their decision is not to go,” Delores said anxiously while Lady Goodyear tried to console her. When her mother called she didn’t give Delores any indication as to what they had decided. Delores was being driven to the train station to return to Maine in Lady Goodyear’s old museum-worthy car. Delores had no idea what it was; she knew only that it was old, gold and expensive. She felt like Holly Golightly for a moment, for only a moment, then she felt like Sylvia Plath again with her head in the oven. Thomas and Phillipe were in the front and she and Lady Goodyear were in the backseat. Phillipe was being very cordial and trying to make pleasant conversations that were going nowhere. Delores stared out the side window. She took a puff of her inhaler. A restored red Mustang drove by and she felt worse. Today her mood told her that it is better not to love than to have loved and lost…

            Lady Goodyear didn’t say anything. She knew better. She rubbed Delores’ leg consolingly.

            “But if they do…” Delores continued.

            “No, Delores. You shouldn’t ever assume the worst until the worst sits on you.” She didn’t tell her that Denmark could be wonderful. She left it at that, at what it was. She patted Delores on the leg. “How do you feel?” She asked.

            “Not so well,” Delores admitted. “My stomach is in knots.”

            “You must relax, darling. You must relax. You have a special gift that you will realize soon. You are not of this world, Delores. Not of this world.” Nothing much else was said.

             Train…

            Same stops as before: Woburn; Haverhill; Durham; Exeter; Dover; Wells; Portland…

            A lady sat next to her talking to her about God. She was armed with pamphlets. A Jehovah’s Witness. She told Delores confidently that there is no Hell. Delores smiled politely. Good to know, she replied.

            “Are you interested in God?” she kept on.

            “Sure. As interested as anyone, I guess.”

            “I guess?” The woman repeated.

            “Yeah…I guess.”

            The woman smiled deviously. “So Delores is it better to have loved and lost or not to love at all?”

             The train was indifferent to their conversation. All she could hear besides for the sound of the lady’s voice was the swooshing of the wind, the soft unzipping of the rails. It kept on.

            “Excuse me?” Delores looked at the lady. The lady didn’t appear to be a Jehovah’s Witness so much anymore. She looked like a cross between an Avon lady and a porn actress.

            “I lied. I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness, hardly the type.” She withdrew a cigarette from a small silver case with a snake etched on it and put it to her lips. “I must admit to you that is a front. A way to introduce myself, sort of. I might have said I was selling Tupperware if this was 1980. I don’t know.” Flick. She lit the cigarette and slid a small window open casually. Smoking was not allowed. She didn’t seem to care. “Smoking is a nasty habit,” she said between drags, “Don’t ever start, Delores.”

            “How do you know that I don’t already?”

“I know.”

“So who are you? Or what…?”

            “Did you really think I was a Jehovah’s Witness? I mean, do I look like the type, really?”

            “No, ma’am.”

            “Oh, cut that shit out now, Delores. Ma’am?”

“Sorry...”

“Never mind.” Long puff. “Well, what if I was to tell you that I could make you forget everything bad in your life? Well, for the most part. Your heart is broken. That’s apparent.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. But you don’t have to feel it anymore. You can forget and start over. Erase him, Delores. Like that.”

            Delores closed her eyes. “But I love him.”

            “Of course, Delores. I know that you do but…”

            “So why would I want to forget?” She rubbed the Eiffel Tower pendant between her thumb and her first finger. She closed her eyes and put her head back. The lady leaned closer to her and whispered into her ear.

            “He’s gone, Delores. And you are going. Imagine starting over. Having another opportunity with no broken heart. With nothing wrong. No defects. That, Delores, is true freedom.”

            “How do you know me?”

            She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to answer. Delores knew but maybe she didn’t want to admit it. “Imagine not feeling the heartache. Simply erasing it…”

            “I used to cut so I could feel,” Delores replied weakly. “Why would I voluntarily stop it?” She asked the question but she would do anything to forget. When she was numb she wanted to feel but when she felt she wanted to be numb. A first love is memorable but the first real heartache is worse and is like a permanent stain, a bad scar from something awful, a birth defect. The train swooshed along indifferently still. The lady sat the pamphlets with Jesus on them off to the side on a seat between her and the open window. Rain streaked across the glass.

            “Tout le monde est remplaçable,” the lady said boldly. She smiled. The train rattled.

            “Non,” Delores drank soda from a small plastic cup. Some generic lemon-lime soda.

            “Bottoms up!” she smiled.

             One last drink.

            “You know my favorite part of Alice in Wonderland,” the lady finished her cigarette, dropped it, and rubbed it out with the toe of her designer shoe, size seven on the floor of the train. “It’s when Alice wakes up and realizes the whole goddamn thing had been a dream. A dream! So I ask myself, as you may ask yourself, was it a dream or did she just excuse it as such because of logic and reason. And I ask myself is this a dream.”

            “Next stop Wells...” the automated voice announced. 

            The lady stood up grabbing a bag. “My stop.”

            “I don’t want to forget,” Delores said resolutely. “My answer is no."

            “Too late. You already drank the serum. Everything that happened in the last year will fade until you no longer remember.”

            “You tricked me…”

“Could have been worse. Could have been cyanide.”

Delores panicked hopelessly looking at the empty cup. “That isn’t what I chose!”

“We chose for you.”

“You’re CIA?”

            “Not exactly. But you won’t remember it in a few days so it hardly matters,” sympathetically. “Goodbye, Delores. Fare thee well,” the lady disappeared. Delores slumped down into her seat helplessly. She was the last piece. Everyone else involved forgot and so would she.

            The next night at dinner over three plates of beef stroganoff, one minus the beef, and three red wines, Delores’ mother broke the news. They were moving to Denmark. Delores’ head rattled and she ran out the door to the woods behind her house not knowing what was to happen or half of what had already. She only knew there was a him, someone, and she didnt want to go.