Chapter 47

Naomi called her parents once she regained her composure. They were happy to hear from her, but they had seen her just that morning. Naomi’s mother told her how well the yard sale had gone and who she’d seen. Naomi held the phone numbly as she listened to her relaxed and happy voice. When a couple of tears fell onto her lap, Naomi quickly said her goodbyes and hung up. She was home, and nothing had happpened. No time had passed, and no one had worried about her. She didn’t know if she would go insane or if she already were.

That night she dreamed that the unicorn stood before her, but instead of reaching out to capture it, she shook her head and backed away. She didn’t want the unicorn. She held up her hands to ward it off. She shouted at it to leave. The unicorn didn’t hear her though. She was not pure. The unicorn leveled its horn at her. She turned to run away, but the unicorn ran her through with its horn. She looked down at the horn sticking out of her breast and touched the point with her index finger. The horn pricked it and a single drop of blood was absorbed. The world began to swirl, and Naomi screamed.

She jerked up in bed and looked wildly around. She was in her bedroom but that didn’t seem right. She knew why. She'd become accustomed to stone walls, tall beds, and Yula’s cheerful good morning. Home did not feel like home. Naomi dragged herself out of bed. She was grateful that it was Sunday, and she wouldn’t have to worry about work. She didn’t think she could handle the bank. She wondered if she should call in sick on Monday. The idea strained her fragile mind. The idea of faking for a sick day seemed so mundane that her brain would implode with the inanity. Instead Naomi lounged around the house. She did a little cleaning, but neither the television or a book could hold her attention. She finally settled beside the front window and stared out. It was a sunny day, and people were going about enjoying the lazy afternoon. She watched people walking dogs, children playing, cars rolling by at sedate paces. The sound of lawn equipment droned quietly in through the closed window. She was startled when it began to grow dark. She realized that she'd been sitting there in a daze the entire afternoon. She hadn’t eaten a thing for lunch, and her stomach grumbled.

The phone ringing made her jump. She picked it up, and her mother invited her to their house for dinner. She thought about declining, but she’d missed them so much. She wouldn’t let her depression keep her from them. It was good for her to see them. She perked up some when she slipped into the house and called out to her family. Her father answered her from the living room, and her mother came out of the kitchen to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She still looked sad enough for her mother to ask if she were all right and to check her forehead. Naomi quickly told her she was fine and slipped away with the excuse of wanting to see Bobby. Her younger brother was still home for the weekend. He was staying for dinner and to finish his laundry. Naomi crept up to his old room where he was doing homework.

She knocked and stuck her head around the door. “Hey.”

Bobby looked up from his textbook and smiled. “Hey, come on in.”

“How’s life?” She flopped down onto his bed.

“Going okay. Would be better if I could miraculously memorize all these Chemistry formulas for the quiz on Tuesday.”

Naomi nodded and rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I had a weird dream. I dreamt I was married to this really scary guy who turned out not to be so scary, but I couldn’t stay with him because I had to get back home. I didn’t want to go home, but it was like that was the only thing I could do. If I didn’t go home, I wouldn’t ever see you guys again.”

“What’d you do, have a burrito before going to sleep?”

Naomi sighed and hugged herself. “I didn’t want to wake up from the dream.”

“Why wouldn’t you be able to see us ever again?”

“Because the guy was on another planet. If I stayed with him, I’d be too far away to even call and talk to you all. I was scared it would upset everyone if I left and never came back.”

Bobby’s eyebrows scrunched together as he thought about what she’d said. “Whoa, there’s like a lot of issues in there. Deep Jungian stuff. I mean I usually just dream about meeting Claudia Schiffer.”

Naomi rolled to her side to look at him. “You going to analyze me?”

Bobby grinned and shook his head. “It seems pretty obvious to me. You’re afraid to grow up.”

She propped herself up to better glare at him. “Afraid to grow up!”

“Well yeah! You meet this great guy who you could marry—“

“We were already married,” she interjected.

Bobby’s eyebrows rose. “Even clearer. You have this husband you love, but you leave him to go back to your mommy and daddy when you could stay with him and start your own family.”

“But I would never see you guys again!” Naomi argued.

“Oh come on Naomi, that’s nearly impossible in this day and age.”

She bristled. “We were on another planet.”

“Fine, say you met like the king of Mars who was perfect for you and wanted to marry you, are you saying you wouldn’t move back with him to his home world to be with him?”

Naomi looked at her brother incredulously. “No!”

“Why?” he asked smugly.

“Kids, dinner’s ready!” Their mother called.

Naomi rolled off the bed. “Because Mars sucks.”

Dinner wasn’t formal at the Tailor household. Elbows rested on the table. People happily ate with their hands. Food picked off and passed to others plates. Naomi dug into her plate with gusto. Yula’s cooking had been good, but she had no source for pasta so had never fixed spaghetti. Naomi caught up with her father. They hadn’t seen each other on Saturday like the rest of the family.

Bobby spoke over them to announce, “Guess what, if Naomi met the king of Mars and fell in love with him, she wouldn’t move there to be with him because she wouldn’t want to abandon us.”

Both parents stopped to absorb this piece of weird news. Their father nudged her with his arm. “That’s because she’s daddy’s little girl.” Naomi smiled thinly at him.

“If you were able to come back and visit, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to marry the king of Mars,” Naomi’s mother said.

Naomi rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t be able to come back.”

“But if the king were able to come here, and you were able to go there, I would think you would be able to repeat it.” Naomi wished this hadn’t become the topic at the dinner table.

“There would be no guarantee that we could. I could wind up stranded on Mars, and you guys would never hear from me again.”

“Yeah, but you said you loved this guy so why not be his queen?” Bobby asked wanting to prove his theory.

Naomi glared at him. He wasn’t taking the idea seriously. He thought this was just some hypothetical metaphorical argument when Naomi had already faced this decision and chosen.

“Why don’t we drop this? No need to have bloodshed at the table,” their mother said. Naomi looked at her plate and didn’t say anything beyond one or two word answers for the rest of the meal.

She was in the kitchen helping her mother with the dishes when the matter was brought up again. Her mother was at the sink washing while Naomi stood by with a towel. “You know the only thing I’ve ever wanted from you two is to know that you’re safe and happy, but I might give up the knowing part if the rest could happen.”

Naomi stopped drying the plate in her hands to look at her mother. “But if you didn’t know what good is the rest of it?”

Naomi’s mother turned to look at her. There was a frown on her face. “Naomi, I don’t know all the time if you’re all right. I had to start dealing with that the first day you went off to school. I had to convince myself that you were okay, and nothing bad would happen to you, and that hope was rewarded every time you hopped off the school bus and began jabbering about how your day at school had been. Then you went off to college and found your own place. I only see you now on visits. It was hard to deal with the fact that you aren’t living here anymore. I had to let you go, but I know you’re okay even if I don’t have hourly updates. I have to just have hope.”

“But what if the possibility of even visits were taken away?”

Her mother handed her another dish. “I would learn to deal with that too, and I would if you were safe and happy.”

Naomi looked down at the cup now in her hands and began slowly wiping it dry. She wouldn’t have been safe that was one of the reasons why Tavik had wanted to send her back, but she thought she could’ve been happy.

When Naomi got home, she dropped off Mom’s leftovers in the kitchen. She was struggling with the nasty realization that her family would’ve wanted her to stay with Tavik if their opinion had been asked. Naomi still had a niggling doubt that they wouldn’t have been so eager for her happiness if it had been on another planet, but that doubt had started out firmly in the majority of her mind and had been reduced to a pesky doubt.

She went to her living room to think but stopped short when she saw a mouse sitting in the middle of the room.

“Hello, Naomi.”

Continue to Chapter 48.