When first she gleamed upon my sight,
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.
― Wordsworth
So where do we go from here?
If my life were a movie I would be inching toward the closing credits―the boy got the girl. But did he? Would Lillian, the girl in my dreams, now end―thaw and resolve into a mist?
This all seems so fantastical and melodramatic I can scarcely believe it's real. I feel like Montag in Fahrenheit 451 when he realizes the surrealistic effect of his deepest fears and dreams becoming real right before his eyes. In a dazed state he haltingly admits, 'This is happening...to me.'
But if Clare was Lillian then she was no longer in my dreams but beside me, and not as a glassy ghost but as a flesh and blood woman as desirable as Tess.
She was my outside looking back―I was the surface of her skin. I couldn't draw a line separating me from her―it would be akin to dividing between bone from marrow.
And even though I disclosed to her the secret of my life, there were still so many questions left unanswered.
I couldn't help recalling what Elias, my shrink, told me about my flashbacks and visions―he thought there was a deeper causal connection. So, I suppose Clare and I have more work to do in uncovering that cause.
While I was brooding on the significance of what just transpired, Clare had been silent too, obviously struggling to come to terms with her own part in this drama.
Suddenly, she spoke in her cultivated accent and it seemed to reverberate like an echo in the room.
"Do you believe in second chances, Marcus?"
I looked up, surprised at the question. "Yes, I suppose I do. That's been a recurring theme in my life."
"I think we're supposed to fulfill what Paul and Lillian left unfinished in their lives."
Her words frightened me. Part of me rejected the notion that we were continuing the lives of our ancestors.
But on the other hand, I was offended when Elias referred to Paul as my avatar. It made me feel that he trivialized or reduced Paul to being a mere construct of my unconscious―as if he were a two-dimensional figure, a projection of me in some computer simulation of reality.
"Oh, Please Love―my brain's swimming. I don't think I can process any more of this tonight."
She gazed at me compassionately and said, " I'm sorry, Marcus―I suppose I'm trying to make up for lost time while I was sleeping and completely forgot that you've undergone a brain trauma and I'm overtaxing you with these questions."
I laughed softly. "We can't solve these over-arching questions tonight―that's why we were given time, so things don't come at us all at once."
She mussed my hair affectionately. "I love you, Paul―er, I mean, Marcus." She blushed at the slip of the tongue, but I simply smiled.
"You see? And I thought trying to recover my memories was arduous―look at us trying to recover whole lifetimes."
"Point well taken," she smiled back. "But you should go home and get some sleep and I'll try not to invade your dreams."
"Just try not to startle me by appearing at the foot of my bed."
"Can I lie quietly beside you when you sleep?" She teased coquettishly.
I sighed audibly. "That would be a consummation devoutly to be wished."