Part 1
"So, ummm... are you going to tell me about it?"
" ... I'd rather not."
"Must've been pretty bad."
I only nodded and kept my face down, looking into my bowl as I chewed.
"You really can't tell me?"
"I just wanna forget about it."
" ... Alright. Do, uh... do you often have nightmares like that? Strange dreams?"
"Not really. You?"
"Sometimes. I used to have nightmares about my mother. It's to be expected, I guess."
I silently and wholeheartedly agreed while I continued to eat.
"You had
me
scared for a little while there. You wouldn't stop shaking."
"I'm just glad you were there."
"Me too. You know what, though? You're right. You should just put it out of your mind. People always do sooner or later anyway, don't they?"
"Yeah."
"We've got nothing to be down about, things are looking up. We're gonna be okay, sweetie pie."
I looked up and smiled in reply, trying to enjoy hers while I harboured some pretty serious doubts about that prediction.
Part 2
I was constantly on guard for rats, always thinking I was seeing them in the shifting shadows of the halogens while I worked. It made it hard to think but, after meeting Marie, I wanted to stop thinking aloud and the mindless work I was doing seemed to provide the right opportunity. No, Marie's disturbing, whispered conversations with her 'friend' weren't at all lost on me.
Something else that wasn't lost on me was how fortunate I was to not get thinking about the encounter the night before, to be able to allow Mum's company to take it away from my mind like her presence always did, even if she
was
the source of my troubles. I couldn't have hacked it. There was just no way that I could have assessed that meeting with Marie while her younger, spitting image sat in front of me, calling me 'sweetie pie'. In the cellar, though, there was ample time to think, distracted as I often was by rat shaped shadows at the corners of my eyes.
I now had a theory as to why Mum's behaviour didn't seem to match up with any known mental disorders, but as strong as the theory appeared to be, I resisted it. It mostly came from a person who was anything but sane, no matter which way one cared to cut the cake, and that's why it was still just a theory, one I didn't want to even entertain. That, and because that theory suggested that I was part of a line that passed on some... thing. Demon possession? In any case, the incredible theory scared the hell out of me and I was pretty anxious to stick both Marie and Mum into some kind of Psychiatric slot in order to disprove it. I called it 'the Jedi theory'.
The evidence supporting the Jedi theory, first of all, was that damned dream where Marx told me to check the shoreline and how that odd moment on the sidewalk in front of the old man that night convinced me she was right, leading me to Shoreline Residential Facility. I was finding it a lot harder to chalk that up to weird coincidence after my visit with Grammie Marie, however, I could also argue that I'd naturally feel that way after a very disturbing encounter with a deranged lunatic. My instincts, though, told me otherwise.
Second was the way she knew which of her daughters I belonged to by my smell. I couldn't explain that away and the fact that Mum smelled 'something' when I got home didn't help, even though that could be easily explained away by some draft coming through the window from the pulp mill, the refinery, docks, etc.. She was originally from Saint John (the tide brings us back) and it was very possible that some smell she'd experienced from childhood was still around town and who knew what it could be? But my instincts told me I could ignore those safe, sane explanations, told me with no uncertainty that she smelled Marie on me, and having no explanation at all for Marie's talented sniffer...
Third was Audrey and Maureen, but especially Audrey. They were both afraid of her. I had no doubt of that and neither did I doubt their implied expertise and experience in their field. Maureen felt the same way as her co-worker, she just wouldn't admit it, and her co-worker sure did have some pretty concrete opinions about what was
wrong
with my grandmother, didn't she? Audrey's claims about nightmares of Marie weren't in any doubt within my mind either, not after the night before, and this meant that there was reason to believe her other claims as well. That is unless Audrey and Maureen, two experienced, professional caregivers, were as crazy as their residents and their objectivity had been compromised. My instincts doubted this.
Fourth, those damned eyes. Nothing one could put their finger on, nothing to them that would allow a person to point and make an actual description, just that implied darkness. There was no explanation for this that I could think of and my instincts were very clear about how they felt about this, as they were concerning...
Fifth, she fucking bewitched me. She could have gouged my eyes out with a paring knife if she'd wanted to, I never would've seen it coming. It was an extreme, theoretically advanced version of Mum's eyes and the way people seemed to react to them at times. There was definitely no rational explanation for point number five and it was, in fact, the strongest supporting evidence of the Jedi theory.
Everything else could be explained away. For example, Mum could well have heard her mother use the affectation, 'sweetie pie', when she was a girl, probably with my dead grandfather Walton. The fact that Marie did drink regularly when she was younger didn't really prove anything of the Jedi theory, despite the commonality it showed. Marie's ageless beauty wasn't entirely uncommon, no more than Mum's, and neither were striking family resemblances, no matter how striking they sometimes were. It happened.
Aside from all this, I knew a little more about Sheila. Marie claimed she wasn't a "real Jedi", which made me wonder all the more as I lugged a full bucket of moist dirt/mud to the window. After hoisting it up to the sill and taking a cautionary look around for rats, I headed back to the bank with an empty pail in return, mulling these things over.
During our thirty minute lunch break, while the ten of us sat in a line on the warm sidewalk with our backs to the wall, I had no real useful answers that I didn't have before my visit with Marie, however I at least had my wild, unsubstantiated and likely un-provable theory. This, of course, presented a problem, especially for someone like me.
You see, if the Jedi theory were at least plausible within known science, I would then have had a direction to go in with my little investigation into how best to keep my promise to Mum. But it wasn't like that, was it? It was like being asked to believe that 'Bigfoot done it.'
"You been quiet today," Andy noted.
I continued chewing, looking out to the street before I turned to him, swallowed and asked, "How do you define the word, 'Science'?"
" ... Evolution? I hear people say they believe in science instead of God, so..."
"Okay. If you wanted to find out for sure, if you
had
to, how would you? What method would you use?"
" ... Science."
"A tool to prove a tool?"
"I dunno, I guess."
"Science
is
a tool. More like a tool
box.
It's what Humanity has always used in one form or another to understand the world around them. Pure science is the proper application of all the tools in your box in an honest search for truth, or understanding. It's an exploration."
" ... O-kaaay?"
"So, when we gather evidence and begin to speculate, drawing lines between the dots and guesstimating about where the missing dots of evidence
should
be, making the lines draw a picture you believe is there based on current evidence, you have a theory. Such as the theory of evolution."
"Riiiiight."
"Once we believe in a theory, we start gathering evidence in order to support it rather than on the basis of truth and exploration; we're no longer using science. Not pure science, anyway. But that's what modern science has become. It's easy to see why, I guess."
" ... And... why's that?"
"Because some possible truths can be personally disturbing, even while defying evidence and, for all the world, can sound like silly bullshit, much the same way a lot of Atheists think of the possibility that a creator exists."
"Yeah, but that's just another theory."
"Yup. And in between is pure exploration. Or speculation, take your pick."
"So, what's your point?"
" ... My point is... What happens if pure science leads us from in between to a point where it looks more and more likely that God really does exist and that evolution and Atheism was only ever a fool's paradise? What do we do then?"
" ... Start believing in God?"
"Yeah, but people would still resist. We've been run through the modern school system and truth is what we're told, not what we know. We'd resist because we want to hide in what's not beyond our scope of imagination, our ability to conceptualize with our technology, our science. I mean, how do we progress once that stuff is no longer useful, right?"
"Change our science?"
" ... I suppose, yeah. We'd have to embrace the theory of God, not as a theory so much, but... an understanding to work towards. A hunch. Like detectives do on TV. And then... say we find out God really does exist with all the evidence you'd want and that everything taught in school and society was dead wrong for sure? What if we even find out He's not what anybody thought He was based on what any religion ever told us, if He's something none of us ever could have imagined? Then what?"
"That's easy, dude. That's when we get ready to start dealing with some pret-ty fuckin' heavy shit."
" ... Yeah. And hope that we can."
A little less than ten minutes later, I was watching him steal glances at me out of the corner of my eye as we waited to be the next ones to crawl back through the window and into the cellar. Just before I went to get down and crawl through feet first, he took my elbow.
"Do
you
believe in God?"
" ... It might be a good idea."
I caught him glancing at me off and on for the rest of the day, he as silent as I was while we worked. If he knew that the subject matter of our conversation was only an analogy, if he had any clue of what was really on my mind, or even how I'd used him to replace my own little friend in my musings...
When I crawled out of the cellar for the last time that day at five, I had a direction. I would embrace the Jedi theory as mystery and investigate the unanswered questions that surrounded it as honestly as I could like a good detective. As frightening and also ridiculous as the prospect was, I had to take it seriously while always leaving room for the possibility that it was as foolish as it appeared, as it had to be. In any case, I was at a loss for any other direction and my instincts agreed.
I walked straight home, refusing to mumble under my breath about it, reminding myself that I had a vested interest in keeping it together. Or resisting the possible trappings of the thing that Marie said lived and grew within me.
Part 3
"Do you like the movies, Mum?" I asked lightly over supper.
She looked fantastic again in a short, off-white, snug sweater that buttoned up the front, but not so high as to hide her impressive cleavage. She also wore her gray, stretchy casual pants with a nice pair of black high heels, her hair and makeup somehow done to incorporate sexy and chaste at the same time.
"Well yeah, you know I do. Don't you remember all those movies we watched together when you were, um,
grounded?"
"No, I mean the theaters. Do you like going there?"
"I used to when I was a girl. We saw all kinds back then."
"Yeah? Any notables?"
"Hmm. Aside from the obvious, that being
Star Wars,
I liked
