Invisible Touch

Invisible Touch

Chapter 15 ~ The Letter

It wasn't until the next morning that Ernie remembered the dream about his fellow airline passenger -- Mr. Sixby, Ernie had named him. Yesterday's paper was still sitting on a table in his grandparents' living room. Ernie picked up the business section and started flipping through it.

"Decided to become a big money tycoon?" his grandfather asked.

"Oh. No, I was just... The guy sitting next to me on the plane yesterday mentioned a company he was going to buy stock in," Ernie fibbed. "I was just remembering that I wanted to look it up when I got here."

And he found the name he was looking for. Ernie made a note of the previous day's closing price.

"Well, that's yesterday's paper," his grandfather told him. "Here's the new one. I'll toss that one in the recycling bin if you're done -- unless you're still reading it, that is."

"Thank you," Ernie said, and handed him the old news.

He opened up the current edition's business section. A -- D -- H -- There it was. Wow. Wow! Sixby had made a killing, Ernie saw. And that was just over the previous day's close. Ernie looked a little more closely at the listing. Wow, indeed. The price had gone up about thirty percent since its twelve month low price, whenever that had been. And then it had nearly doubled over night. He stared at the numbers and calculated. That stock was nearly 250 percent of what it had been at its lowest.

"I hope this guy got in when it was low," he said aloud.

"Did good?" his grandfather asked.

"Nearly doubled since yesterday," Ernie replied.

"Should have bought some yesterday," John said with a chuckle.

"Right," Ernie said.

He could have, he knew. He was curious enough to want to know whether his dream of Sixby's future was true. But he wasn't greedy enough to want to get in on it himself.

I'm so lucky, Ernie thought. With his trust fund, Ernie never had to worry about money. Anything he earned, or Kim earned, well that was just extra spending money for vacations, or whatever kind of lifestyle they might desire.

What if he were just some guy with no money and a nothing job, but he had these dreams that could make him rich. He was capable, he knew already, of seeing winning lottery numbers and hot stocks. It was easy to say he would never do that, because he didn't have to. But what if he wasn't set for life? Would he be able to resist the temptation? Kim had, it was her idea first to tear up that winning lottery ticket. That honesty, that integrity was something he loved about her.

Well, good for Mr. Sixby, he thought. Ernie hoped the gains were legitimate, not that he had any reason to doubt that they were. It was really none of his business, anyway.

"John, honey," came Betty's voice from her bedroom.

Ernie and his grandfather were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and talking and leafing through the sections of the newspaper. John put down what he was reading.

"Yes, dear," he answered, as he rose from the table.

He was gone for less than a minute.

"Wasn't sure which button to press," John told his grandson.

Ernie gave a puzzled look. "Button?" he asked.

"Push the wrong button and you'll have a full medical team breaking down the door," his grandfather replied. "That was embarrassing," he added.

It must have happened before, Ernie realized. Oops!

"Yeah, that was me," his grandfather confessed. "No emergency, your grandmother just needs help getting from the bed to her chair, is all."

"Oh, I can help her with that," Ernie offered.

"That's nice of you, but there's a bathroom stop along the way and..." John began to explain.

A doorbell chime sounded and Ernie also heard the beep of one of those keycard readers. Maybe "prison" had been the right word, Ernie thought. This place was incredibly secure!

"Come on in, the door's..." John started to say as he went to open it. "...some kind of possessed robotic device," he said under his breath.

In came a female orderly. She had the look of a weightlifter. His grandmother wasn't that heavy, Ernie thought, but he supposed there might be women who needed assistance from a woman, but who needed somebody strong to do the lifting.

John led her to where his wife was waiting. He returned quickly.

"Very nice girl," he said. "And strong, Ernie -- she could lift us both."

"It looks it," Ernie said, laughing.

"2000 Olympic team," his grandfather told him. "Russian weightlifter. I kid you not. Dead serious."

Ernie had watched the competitions and joked that such talents had to be a marketable skill. Well here was the proof.

Ernie laughed. "I believe you," he said.

It was just a few minutes before the hum of his grandmother's chair could be heard approaching the kitchen. Her orderly followed behind.

"Thank you very much, Helga," Betty said.

"You are most welcome, Mrs. Maxwell," Helga replied. "This the button to call me," she said, pointing to the button marked "Helga" on the chair's control panel. "You call me whenever you need a lift, OK?"

"I certainly will," Betty said.

"Helga, this is our grandson, Ernie," John said. "Ernie, Helga."

Ernie rose from his chair, but stayed where he was to avoid shaking hands.

"Very nice to meet you," Ernie said. "And thank you for taking such good care of my grandmother."

Helga smiled. "Oh, it is my pleasure," she said. "My pleasure."

Ernie truly enjoyed the time with his grandparents. His grandmother sat down to breakfast and Ernie drank more coffee. They talked about his new home in New England. It had been a long time since his grandparents had been there.

"It's a beautiful place," Ernie told them. "Kim and I went up to New Hampshire in October. No sales tax, you know. Well you would have thought they were giving money away. We hadn't planned on staying the night, which was a good thing because the two words we saw the most that day were "no vacancy."

"But there was plenty of parking at the malls in Nashua. We did some shopping and then drove west a little way -- it didn't take long before we surrounded by the most beautiful scenery we had ever seen. The trees, the leaves, the color -- it was beautiful, just beautiful."

Betty had a serious look on her face. She tried to force a smile, but it wasn't working.

"Oh yes, it is beautiful," his grandmother said. "We haven't been up there in -- gosh, it's been..."

John was already performing the calculation. "Must be about 37 years by now," he said.

"We went and looked at Harvard and Dartmouth," Betty continued. "Your mother, though, she wanted to stay home. You didn't get that traveling gene from her."

Traveling gene. He would have stayed home, too, Ernie thought. It was love that took him away from them.

"I suppose not," Ernie finally said. "You don't have to talk about..."

"No, it's OK," she said. "I probably keep it in too much. She would be so proud of you, Ernie -- just like we are -- so proud of you."

"Thank you," Ernie said. "I wish I could have known her. But from everything Mrs. Appleton told me, I think I do."

"Lots of stories?" his grandfather said.

"Not just that," replied Ernie. "She told me that to know the two of you was to know my mother. She said that if you took the two of you and combined your looks, and then added up your hearts, and your brains, you had my mother."

"I hope you know how much I've always appreciated what you both did for me, raising me just as she would have, just as you raised her. Thank you," he said simply.

"You have, son," his grandfather said.

The rest of the day was exhausting, emotionally. Ernie heard new stories about his mother, things she hadn't even know her parents knew. They looked at photo albums. They looked at her scrapbook.

She was a beautiful girl. She was smart, she was hardworking. He was lucky all these years to have such great grandparents. Suddenly he realized how lucky he was that Maggie was -- still was -- his mom.

At about dinner time, there was a knock at the door and the doorbell rang. No chime from the keycard this time, Ernie noticed. Betty answered the door.

"Pizza delivery," the visitor announced.

He was wearing an Italian placemat inspired generic pizza company uniform decorated with the Chalet Village logo. He carried two pizza boxes.

"I didn't order any..." she said.

"I'll take those," John interrupted. "Thank you very much!"

He had a DVD case in his hand.

"What is that you've got?" his wife asked.

John set the pizzas up on the coffee table in the living room. He brought some soft drinks and a pitcher of water from the kitchen and set glasses on the table to go with them.

"This is a little surprise I'd nearly forgotten about," John replied to his wife's question.

He fiddled with the television and put the disc into the attached player. He poured drinks and served pizza to himself and the assembled audience of two.

"Just before Maggie died," John explained, "I sent our old home movies away and had them transferred to video tape. Almost twenty years later, I had it all converted to DVD."

The disc began playing. The images were from black and white movies. And they weren't perfectly clear, but they didn't need to be. A little girl rode her bicycle up and down the street. She kept going in and out of the frame as the camera operator panned about.

"I bought this camera in 1965," John said. "In June, I even remember. Super 8 was brand new. Very high tech. Maggie was eight and a half."

John was adjusting the focus now and fiddling with the lighting controls. Soon the image became clear again. Maggie put down her bike and approached the camera. She looked right into the lens, as if she was trying to see the future viewers of the film. Suddenly the image disappeared.

"They were short films back then -- three minutes or so," John recalled.

The next scene began. Ernie recognized Betty and Mrs. Appleton immediately.

"Know who that is?" his grandmother asked.

"You haven't changed a bit," Ernie told her.

And she really hadn't. The hair had grayed, but that face was unmistakable. And when he saw his mother and his grandmother together, the resemblance was uncanny.

Helen Appleton was just like he remembered, too. She must have been almost fifty when the movie was made, and he had known her in her seventies and eighties. It was creepy how much she looked then like she did when Ernie knew her.

Everybody waved for the camera. Another scene change.

In the audience, Betty waved to Ernie. "I'm taking the pictures now."

Young John Maxwell. Not a bit different from the one that sat across the room.

"How old are you here?" Ernie asked. He hadn't wanted to inquire about the ladies' ages.

"I was 38 years old that year," his grandfather replied. "Boy, was I hansom fellow!"

"I can see now where my mother got her brains," Ernie teased.

They watched a while longer and the first disc ended.

"Thank you," Ernie said. "I hope I never know how hard it was for you to watch these old movies. But this has meant so much to me."

"It's been wonderful, John. I thank you, too," Betty added.

The rest would have to wait for another time. It had been a long day -- but a happy one, for everybody.

Ernie couldn't wait to phone Kim and tell her about his day.

The next day, after breakfast, Ernie noticed that the toilet paper holder was a little wobbly.

"I could fix that," he offered.

"You're such a good boy," his grandmother said.

Somebody was supposed to come over and take care of that on Friday, but that was OK. It was nice to have Ernie around and helping out.

After he finished his project, it was almost time to leave for the airport. The car would pick him up soon.

"I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer," he said.

"Any time you come to visit, we're happy to have you as long as you stay," his grandfather told him with a smile. "And then off with you."

There was a knock at the door and then the doorbell rang. That was funny, Ernie thought. The taxi wasn't supposed to pick him up for another half hour.

"Special delivery," came a voice from the outside.

It was Kim's letter! He would be home in a few hours, but she had sent it by overnight mail to make sure he would get it. He opened the outer envelope and a regular sized one was inside of it. He opened it carefully to protect the lumpy contents. There was a construction paper heart inside. Kim had used a marker to write "Kim + Ernie" on it. And there was a handwritten letter that Ernie couldn't wait to read.

"My dearest," Kim wrote. "This short time apart already feels like an eternity. I can't wait to talk to you on the phone tonight. We've been friends for so long that it's hard to remember when I did not love you. With all my heart and soul, Ernie Maxwell. Life is short and filled with roads to travel and work to do and careers and all kinds of things. And I don't know what the future will bring, but I do know who will be right here in my heart."

Ernie was in tears as he read this. The heart was in red marker, just like a school girl would write in a love note. He felt warm all over. It was just like one of the hot flashes he would get when he touched somebody. He was touched, all right. And he felt the same way.

"I love you," she continued simply. "I love you, I love you, I love you," and she wrote it a hundred times. "I can't wait to see you!" And she signed it, "Yours forever, Kim."

There was a lump in his throat when he finished reading. There was no hiding it from anybody.

The car was arriving and he gave his hugs and said his goodbyes. He hated leaving his grandparents again, but he would come back soon. And he had a message he needed to deliver to someone 850 miles away.

Ernie handed his suitcase to the driver and slipped into the back seat. He was all smiles. He was so in love, too. Did she know how much? He read the letter again as the car headed for the airport. And all of a sudden, his vision began to blur. This was quite unexpected, he thought. He sat back and wondered what, and who, he would see.

It was a pink dream. Happiness. But whose future was this? The image came slowly at first, and then became sharper -- crystal clear. It was Kim he was seeing. But how? And then he saw the man she was with. It was a strange thing to see, like an image from one of the movies he had been watching the night before. And the more he concentrated, the more he realized, as the two figures embraced and kissed, that the vision he was seeing was that of Kim and himself.

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