Too Much Happiness

world so much more than I do but at least I can give you this information-the Truth-and in telling you I have seen them, I hope that it will make your heart lighter
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    Doree wondered what Mrs. Sands would say or think if she read this letter. Mrs. Sands would be careful, of course. She would be careful not to pass an outright verdict of craziness, but she would carefully, kindly, steer Doree around in that direction.
    Or you might say she wouldn’t steer-she would just pull the confusion away so that Doree would have to face what would seem to have been her own conclusion all along. She would have to put the whole dangerous nonsense-this was Mrs. Sands speaking-out of her mind.
    That was why Doree was not going anywhere near her.
    Doree did think that he was crazy. And in what he had written there seemed to be some trace of the old bragging. She didn’t write back. Days went by. Weeks. She didn’t alter her opinion, but she still held on to what he’d written, like a secret. And from time to time, when she was in the middle of spraying a bathroom mirror or tightening a sheet, a feeling came over her. For almost two years she had not taken any notice of the things that generally made people happy, such as nice weather or flowers in bloom or the smell of a bakery. She still did not have that spontaneous sense of happiness, exactly, but she had a reminder of what it was like. It had nothing to do with the weather or flowers. It was the idea that the children were in what he had called their Dimension that came sneaking up on her in this way, and for the first time brought a light feeling to her, not pain.
    In all the time since what had happened, any thought of the children had been something she had to get rid of, pull out immediately like a knife in her throat. She could not think their names, and if she heard a name that sounded like one of theirs she had to pull that out too. Even children’s voices, their shrieks and slapping feet as they ran to and from the motel swimming pool, had to be banished by a sort of gate that she could slam down behind her ears. What was different now was that she had a refuge she could go to as soon as such dangers arose anywhere around her.
    And who had given it to her? Not Mrs. Sands-that was for sure. Not in all those hours sitting by the desk with the Kleenex discreetly handy.
    Lloyd had given it to her. Lloyd, that terrible person, that isolated and insane person.
    Insane if you wanted to call it that. But wasn’t it possible that what he said was true-that he had come out on the other side? And who was to say that the visions of a person who had done such a thing and made such a journey might not mean something?
    This notion wormed its way into her head and stayed there.
    Along with the thought that Lloyd, of all people, might be the person she should be with now. What other use could she be in the world-she seemed to be saying this to somebody, probably to Mrs. Sands-what was she here for if not at least to listen to him?
    I didn’t say “forgive,” she said to Mrs. Sands in her head. I would never say that. I would never do it.
    But think. Aren’t I just as cut off by what happened as he is? Nobody who knew about it would want me around. All I can do is remind people of what nobody can stand to be reminded of.
    Disguise wasn’t possible, not really. That crown of yellow spikes was pathetic.
    So she found herself travelling on the bus again, heading down the highway. She remembered those nights right after her mother had died, when she would sneak out to meet Lloyd, lying to her mother’s friend, the woman she was staying with, about where she was going. She remembered the friend’s name, her mother’s friend’s name. Laurie.
    Who but Lloyd would remember the children’s names now, or the color of their eyes. Mrs. Sands, when she had to mention them, did not even call them children but “your family,” putting them in one clump together.
    Going to meet Lloyd in those days, lying to Laurie, she had felt no guilt, only a sense of destiny, submission. She had felt that she was put on earth for no reason other than to be with him and to try to understand him.
    Well, it wasn’t like that now. It was not the same.
    She was sitting in the front seat across from the driver. She had a clear view through the windshield. And that was why she was the only passenger on the bus, the only person other than the driver, to see a pickup truck pull out from a side road without