Authors: Mary Rickert
“He wouldn’t?” Bay asks.
“We’ll have him on his way in no time.”
How
is
it
possible
, Bay thinks,
that
my
Nana, who is, okay, weird, but much more normal than others realize, how is it possible that she not only believes in ghosts but thinks they
live
in
her
garden?
Bay feels herself blush, embarrassed on Nan’s behalf.
“How do you propose to get rid of him?” Mavis asks.
Nan waves her hand, pretending nonchalance so thoroughly she almost believes herself. “We’ll have a little ceremony. We’ll tell him to go to the light. We’ll tell them all to go. I have long suspected there are quite a few hanging around here. I should have done it years ago. It’s best for everyone.”
“But, Nana,” Bay says, “he isn’t a ghost.” She turns to address Mavis. “I don’t believe in ghosts. He’s just a boy. His name is Karl.”
Mavis cocks an eyebrow, but Nan slumps in her chair; she cannot stop herself from doing so. It is as if she is struck to hear the name again after all these years. “You need to stay away from him.”
Bay shrugs that one-shoulder shrug of hers, which always drives her Nana crazy. “Use both shoulders,” she’ll say. “Who shrugs like that?” Bay is almost positive she didn’t do it on purpose to get on her Nana’s nerves, which judging by the deepening scowl, it has.
“Just keep away from him.”
Mavis and Bay are both staring now, Bay looking hurt, Mavis with that knowing expression she gets. Nan sits up and assumes a smile. Goodness knows how far a false smile will take you! “As I said, we’ll have a ceremony.” She is pleased by the brightness in her voice. “Won’t this be fun?”
He
isn’t a ghost
, Bay thinks. She considers arguing her point, but her Nana is obviously upset, and Bay doesn’t want to ruin the special weekend. After all, she knows how she would feel if she and Thalia were separated for decades. Well, on second thought, she has no idea, though she thinks she’s starting to understand. Thalia has been so distant lately. Suddenly, Bay is filled with fear. Are she and Thalia already beginning the sort of separation that kept Nan and her friends apart for all these years? Thalia, Bay realizes, is the only person she can talk to about this. Thalia, who believes in ghosts, would find the notion of one in Bay’s garden thrilling. “Can I invite Thalia?” she asks. “To the ceremony?”
“Well, I don’t know…”
“Please. You have your friends.”
Nan pretends not to notice Mavis, standing behind Bay, vehemently shaking her head and cutting the air with her hand. “Oh, all right, as long as it’s okay with her mother.”
“Thanks, Nana,” Bay says.
Nan feels pleased, listening to Bay run happily up the stairs, the scent of apples trailing in her wake, but the pleasant feeling quickly dissipates. It’s disturbing, quite disturbing, actually, to think that Grace Winter (for who else would the old woman be) and Karl, who most certainly is dead, have been in contact with Bay; more than disturbing, dreadful.
“Why don’t you just invite the entire local community?” Mavis drawls. “We can have a bonfire. That’s always been popular for witches.”
“You’re not funny, Mavis. What am I supposed to do?” Nan lowers her voice. “Tell the child she can’t have friends?”
“Don’t be silly. Why can’t she have friends?”
If it weren’t for the fact that, after this weekend, Nan won’t see Mavis again, she would be quite annoyed with her. But how can Nan indulge in such pettiness when they will be dead soon?
Part
of
growing
old
, Nan thinks,
is
that
every
thought
of
the
future
becomes
a
funeral.
In fact, when she really thinks about it, Nan suspects she will be long dead before any trial. In spite of the dismal context, this is reassuring.
“You two should come see this picture!” Ruthie calls from the dining room.
“We need to talk,” Mavis hisses. “Somewhere private.”
Nan doesn’t see why. What is there to say? Further conversation is not on her agenda.
“I do believe I’ll take a nap,” Mavis says loudly. “Didn’t you say you were going to take a nap for that headache of yours?”
Nan nods.
Mavis points at her own mouth. “Speak up, so they can hear you.”
“Are you hungry?” Nan shouts.
Mavis rolls her eyes as Ruthie, Stella, and Howard exclaim from the dining room that they couldn’t eat another thing. “Say you’re going to take a nap,” Mavis whispers.
“Well, I think I’m going to go take a little nap,” Nan shouts. “Oh, yes. I will go to take a nap now.” Nan, unlike Mavis, always was a poor actress.
They go up the back stairs together, passing Bay’s room, with her door closed, and the story room, where Ruthie slept, the door left slightly ajar. Glancing into it, Nan is surprised by the mess. Frothy piles of summer-colored clothes litter the floor and cover the bed. The dresser and bedside table are crowded with flower-filled vases. Is there more than one garden vandal lurking about? The last thing Nan sees, and she’s sure she must be imagining it, a trick of the light, a confusion of shadows as she reluctantly turns to face forward (at her age one has to be careful) is a chocolate cake, poised atop a large stack of books, fairy tales, if Nan remembers right, the old copies of Grimm and Andersen though of course it can’t be a cake; it must be a hat.
Nan follows Mavis down the hall, past the pink room, which is the one Mavis is using, to Nan’s room, where she immediately closes the window and draws the drapes. The old house stays cool on hot days if she remembers to block the heat this way. She should have done so in the parlor and dining room as well, but she’s too tired to attend to it now. She eyes her unmade bed. There is something so depressing about an unmade bed.
“What are you doing?”
Nan is tempted to respond with Mavis-like sarcasm but settles on transparency instead. She straightens the quilt and fluffs the pillows, then sits, thinking that’s where she’ll remain for the conversation. But once there, she can find no good reason for not lying down.
“Are you taking a nap?”
“I just need to close my eyes, Mavis. We can still talk.”
After a moment, Mavis tells Nan to scoot over, which she does, though it is no longer the easy maneuver of her youth.
“We have to send that boy to the light, or wherever he must go,” Nan says. “Mavis, I don’t want Bay to speak to him under any circumstance.”
Mavis sighs. Nan opens one eye to look. Why hasn’t she noticed before? Mavis looks quite unwell. “Are you—”
“There’s something you need to know,” Mavis says. “You aren’t falling asleep, are you?”
“No,” Nan lies. “I’m glad you’re here, Mavis. It can be difficult enough to send one ghost toward the light, much more the three we know of, and all the others besides.”
“What three? What others?”
“Well, there’s the boy, Karl.” (Nan hopes that Mavis, so close on the narrow bed, doesn’t notice the shudder his name induces.) “And Miss Winter.”
“Grace Winter?”
“I’ve actually suspected for a long time, but I never had proof. Strange things happened. Candles blown out on windless nights, fires roaring in the hearth going suddenly dead, doors held shut as though locked, that sort of thing.”
“But, Nan—”
“And then there’s Eve, of course. I don’t want her talking to Bay.”
“That seems unlikely, since you said she can’t talk.”
“No, no, you’re not paying attention,” Nan says. “She can talk. Why wouldn’t she be able to talk? She just won’t talk to me.”
“I have to tell you something.”
Nan feels the slightest tremor, reminiscent of that long-ago sensation of sleepovers and sharing sweet secrets. “I have something to tell too,” she whispers. “You first.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
She tries not to judge, but how could Mavis let herself go like this? Nan cannot believe the mess she’s gotten herself into, only to discover that she must deal with it all alone. Eve, with her tragic death story, would shock Bay, and Karl could destroy her world, though Nan is almost positive he remains ignorant of the facts of the matter, which is to her advantage, of course. Apparently even Grace Winter has shown up for the party, and why wouldn’t she betray Nan, who betrayed her so horribly? How will Nan deal with all that needs to be done? Obviously, Bay will have to accept her own ghost-filled life, but Nan can’t bear the thought, she won’t bear it, of Bay being damaged by Nan’s half-dead past.
She pats the bed until she finds Mavis’s hand. How strange it is that Mavis (Mavis!) would have this old woman’s hand.
“I thought these were supposed to be my golden years,” Nan says. “I didn’t expect them to be so tarnished.”
Mavis’s hand lifts beneath Nan’s. Well, Mavis never could stand intimacy. But she is not trying to end the touch, only reverse it. Mavis pats Nan’s hand and says, “I thought I would have beautiful white hair but no wrinkles.”
“I thought I would be wise.”
“Oh, but you are,” Mavis says, “all old women are terribly wise.”
“And cute,” Nan says, because she especially hates that word.
“I thought there would always be someone to go to dinner with.”
Nan sneaks a look at Mavis, who has taken on a disturbing, corpselike appearance. Is Mavis lonely? Whoever would have imagined it?
“We didn’t know,” Nan says. “How could we guess what our lives would be like?”
“I really thought I would move to Africa.”
“Oh well, maybe you will. You’re not dead yet.”
They lie side by side on the small bed, not holding hands exactly, but touching fingers.
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt,” Mavis says.
Nan thinks of the pain in her feet, the ache in her legs, the headaches, how her skin sometimes feels pricked with needles.
“I thought there would always be someone who loved me.”
“Oh, there is,” Nan says. Just like that, she realizes it’s true. In spite of everything, and all the years, Nan still loves Mavis.
“That’s a nice thing for you to say,” Mavis murmurs.
How tired Nan is of the past. After all, what are the hurt feelings of an old woman? Just another thing that passes, and there is so much that passes as time goes on, that life, which once felt like an eternally replenished cup, is emptied until only the essential remains. The heart, Nan has discovered when relieved of the burdens of hate and anger, can be quite buoyant.
Mavis, always an untroubled sleeper, is already snoring softly. How are two old ladies going to fight dark forces, send ghosts to the light (or wherever; she doesn’t actually care where they go, so long as they leave, though truth be told, she has no real idea of how to make this happen), keep Ruthie distracted, two teenage girls entertained, and get dinner on the table besides? It is too much to do and too much to think about.
How
can
Mavis
fall
asleep
at
a
time
like
this?
Nan wonders, and so thinking, her mind drifts toward all Mavis is capable of, the memories torn like the flowers in Nan’s garden, the peppery scent teasing, until she finds herself longing for the full aroma, the perfume of their innocence that last summer.
***
They gasped when Eve came out of the cabin, dressed in orange, her lips a deep red. Brazen. “What? Do I look bad?” she asked, her smile collapsing.
“Oh my Lord, no.” Ruthie broke the silence to go to her, passing Nan with a swish of petticoat, and perfume of Ivory soap. “You look beautiful.”
“You do. You look so beautiful,” Nan said as she, too, rushed to embrace Eve. They were always hurrying to hold her close, as though she needed to be reassured of gravity.
“You look fine,” Mavis said, standing there in her white dress, with her slash of signature red lipstick, which no longer seemed extraordinary. “What’s everyone waiting for?” She turned toward the path in the woods, and they followed, because of course they always followed Mavis. They followed her into the forest, torches lighting their way, the air scented with skunk cabbage, the dusty aroma of burnt moth wings and ferns, the scent of the end of summer, monkshood, virgin’s bower, hellebore, the wild wood, the mineral scent of water, the smoky scent of fire.
Ruthie has kicked Bay out of the kitchen, and she isn’t sure what to do about it. She wishes her Nana could explain, but she has been napping all afternoon! Ruthie says this is understandable. “It takes a lot of energy to get ready for a whole houseful of guests. Let her sleep. I’m enjoying myself. Ever since my son left, I haven’t done much cooking.”
Bay has observed, mostly among her schoolmates’ parents, that there is a mysterious system of offer and decline. People offer to do and give, and it is up to the intended recipient to refuse. There seems to be a certain number of times (two? three?) before the once-insistent giver happily rescinds. Bay noted, years ago, the stunned expressions of mothers when Nan bypassed the polite decline for immediate acceptance and said, “Why yes, it would be lovely if you could transport the girls both ways.” (Her Nana hates to drive.) When Ruthie tells Bay to stay out of the kitchen, she is happy to fall on her Nana’s example rather than argue the point. While it’s true Bay might want to be a chef when she grows up, she doesn’t want to start now. There is too much going on; she’s afraid of missing some new excitement. “Just let me know if you need help,” she says.
“I don’t want you sneaking in here.” Ruthie sounds stern but looks so sweet, smiling and wearing an apron patterned with peonies as big as cabbages, that Bay doesn’t mind being scolded. “Use the front entrance the rest of the day,” Ruthie says.
Which is what Bay does, wandering in and out of the house and restlessly around the yard. Eventually, she feels sleepy. Maybe it’s the heat, or the boredom. Maybe she should have insisted on helping Ruthie in the kitchen after all, though it doesn’t seem like a good idea to try now. Nan would probably say Bay is tired because of all the growing she’s doing. “It takes a lot of energy to grow bones,” Nan likes to say.
Delicious smells waft from the kitchen into the upstairs hallway when Bay walks to her bedroom, only to discover Stella sprawled across the bed. “What is she doing here, anyway?” Bay mumbles as she backs out of the room. “Where’s Thalia going to sleep?”
Bay tries to decide if the bed shortage is good reason to wake Nan, then scolds herself for not acting her age (always running to her Nana like a baby!) when she remembers the tent. Thalia is nervous about sleeping outside, but nothing bad happens around here, except a few car accidents caused by taking the curve too fast. Bay goes downstairs and starts toward the kitchen with its access to the basement (where the tent is kept) but stops short. She stands in the hallway, inhaling the wonderful aromas: onion, butter, and curry—she thinks she has these right—and chocolate. It’s definitely chocolate, one of the best scents of all, even better than the lavender her Nana loves. In fact, there is also a scent, faint but distinct, of lavender, though that doesn’t make sense. Maybe the aromas from the kitchen and garden mingle in some previously undiscovered way, at just this juncture in the hall.
Bay might have stood there a good deal longer, enjoying the kitchen smells, had Mavis not come down the stairs, wearing a bright gold dress with long sleeves belling out at the wrists, carrying the heavy odor of too much perfume.
Flowers’ Doom
, Bay thinks.
“What are you doing, Sage? You look… What—is that—smell?”
“Ruthie’s cooking.”
“It reminds me of something,” Mavis says, her bracelets clanking when she gestures. “What? I can’t remember, but it’s a good memory, I’m sure. Where’s Nan?”
“Taking a nap.”
“Still?”
“Maybe her bones are growing,” Bay says, immediately feeling ridiculous when Mavis’s eyebrows, darkly drawn on her pale forehead, rise like the antennae of a giant insect.
At the sound of someone moving in the upstairs hallway, Bay feels unreasonably excited, as though her Nana has just returned from a dangerous trip, but it is Stella, not Nan, stretching as she comes down the stairs.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” Stella says, her cheeks pink, her short brown hair tousled. “I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t usually sleep like this in the middle of the day. I felt like Dorothy, you know, in
The
Wizard
of
Oz
? Remember that scene where she’s walking through the poppy field? I felt like that, but now I’m wide awake. Maybe this would be a good time to talk, Mavis. About, you know, Eve.”
Mavis responds with a grunt.
Stella’s little mouth in the midst of a frown repositions into pursed lips. “Oooooh, what is that smell?”
“Ruthie’s cooking,” Bay says. “No one’s allowed in the kitchen.”
Stella closes her eyes and inhales deeply, reminding Bay of the yoga teacher who came to her school last year, the way she breathed so loud that it was inevitable she be mocked for it. Later, she made things worse by talking about the “spirit” of yoga, which Karen Hander’s mother says is a cult.
Mavis edges closer, inspecting Stella the way someone might study a sculpture in a museum. Stella’s expression, for a moment rhapsodic, turns sour. She opens her eyes and, apparently startled by Mavis’s proximity, steps back.
“You do bear a remarkable resemblance,” Mavis says.
“Thanks? People say we could be sisters.”
“I hardly think so.” Mavis claps her hands, one loud clap. “Come along.”
Stella and Bay exchange a look that suggests neither of them care to take orders from Mavis, but because there is little avenue for escape, they follow her out the door to the backyard, which Bay notices has been restored to some semblance of order, though it still has a messy quality about it, a few errant shoes in the middle of the grass, as if caught in the midst of fleeing.
Well, no wonder Nan needs a nap
, Bay thinks, feeling guilty for having abandoned the job.
“This is where we’ll have the ceremony.” Mavis gestures broadly at the yard. “Just in case.”
“A ceremony,” Stella says. “What kind of ceremony? I didn’t know anything about a ceremony.”
“In case what?” Bay asks.
“A sudden downpour. Or any reason why we might want to get inside quickly. For the autumn equinox.”
“The equinox isn’t for another month.”
Mavis turns to assess Stella with narrowed eyes. “For a young person, you are really stuck in your ways, you know.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
Mavis laughs, nodding as she reaches up the long bell of her sleeve to remove a cigarette and matchbook. She places the cigarette between her bright red lips, turning away to strike the match.
“I wanna talk to you,” Stella whispers. “Somewhere private.”
Bay nods, pretending nonchalance, as though she is one of those girls frequently pulled aside for whispered conferences, used to being considered someone whose opinion matters. Mavis, who seems to have forgotten all about them, stands with her face tilted up to the blue sky, where a rising snake of gray smoke lingers overhead. Stella turns toward the house, but Bay pretends not to notice and walks farther into the yard, beyond the lilacs, through the pampas grass, and into the small clearing, Bay’s special place she’s shared with no one, not even Thalia. Bay doesn’t know what came over her to share it now. Stella seems entirely unappreciative as she follows Bay into the clearing, brushing her legs, complaining about a sticky web. When she looks up, she wrinkles her nose and asks, “What is that smell? That’s not a skunk, is it?”
Stella scans the clearing, and Bay looks too, imagining what it must be like to see it for the first time. A small blue butterfly hovers over the wild honeysuckle, and the sunlight laces through the weeping apple trees’ gnarled branches that arch above the patch of tamped down grass, sheltered on all sides. “You wanna talk here? Doesn’t the smell bother you?”
Loneliness,
Bay thinks. That’s why she never shared her secret place with Thalia. What if she reacted like this? What if she didn’t understand that this small patch of grass matters to Bay? She doesn’t think she could stand how lonely that would make her feel. She shrugs.
What
smell?
“This could be nice, I guess,” Stella says as she sits on the grass. “You know, if you had a little table and some chairs back here.”
Bay has been noticing the smell much of the summer, though it seems worse today. Is the forest dying? Her Nana says, years ago, this used to be a real forest with deer, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, mice, and birds, the population greatly diminished when they built the subdivision, a project that took many years, and even now isn’t finished but abandoned, a few houses occupied, but with yards unseeded.
“I’m not the outdoors type, myself. You seem like you enjoy it, though. You seem like you have a nice life. It seems really…normal.”
Bay smiles, what she hopes is a normal smile, not overly eager, merely courteous. She thinks of her Nana wearing that stupid walnut wreath in the front yard, where anyone can see her, or her muddy clogs to town, once to school to watch Bay in a swim meet, not meaning to doom her as strange, though that’s what happened. And really, in spite of this, Bay wouldn’t trade her Nana for anything. Thalia once even said she wished her mom were like Bay’s, which would probably mean more if Bay hadn’t said she wished her Nana was like Mrs. Desarti, who wears lipstick and high heels, and whose idea of making dinner is opening the Chinese take-out cartons. In reality, Bay is almost certain, neither would trade mothers. What is that thing Nan sometimes says? “Love has thorns?” Yes, that’s it. For the first time, Bay thinks she understands.
“Obviously,” Stella says. “I mean who wouldn’t?”
Bay, used to tuning out Thalia’s constant stream of chatter, suddenly realizes Stella is talking and has been for a while. Reluctant to assent to something unknown, Bay assumes an expression of interest, her eyebrows raised, her gaze steady.
“People change, I get that. We aren’t, none of us, any one thing, right?”
When Stella frowns, a small heart-shaped furrow appears in her forehead, which Bay studies closely. She wonders if any hearts appear in her own face when she frowns; she wishes one would, it’s very pretty. She’ll look in the mirror later.
“Then there’s time, of course,” Stella says. “I mean, I’m not who I was at eighteen. I’m sure you’re not who you were as a kid. I get it. I can see how sweet she is, but that doesn’t change what she did.”
Clearly, Bay has lost track of the conversation. She has no idea who or what Stella is talking about.
Stella cranes her neck to look over her shoulder, as though there might be spies hiding in the apple trees. “I know she doesn’t seem like it, but that might be a trick, acting sweet, though maybe she really is now. She used to be dangerous. I mean, I think she outgrew all that, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you. One thing I know for sure is you are innocent.”
“Who are you talking about? Who’s dangerous?” Stella better not be talking about Nan. Stella better not be one of those witch haters. Not that Nan is a witch, because she isn’t, but some people who think she is are really mean about it.
Stella exhales the name as though it is too bitter to have in her mouth. “Ruthie.”
Ruthie? Ruthie, of the heavenly pancakes, mixed-up words, and sweet smile? Ruthie who brought a chocolate cake with her on the plane? Ruthie, who at this moment, is making dinner for everyone? Dangerous?
“You have to take this seriously.”
“But, Ruthie is—”
“I’m not saying she’s dangerous now. Obviously. I wouldn’t be here if I thought so. When she invited me for this weekend—”
“Wait. What? Who invited you?”
Stella bites her lip. “I wasn’t supposed to say. She doesn’t want Mavis or Nan to know. See, that’s what I mean. I like Ruthie. I like her a lot, actually.”
“Why would she invite you if she has something to hide?”
“I know, right? I mean, how does that make sense? I feel like there’s something really obvious I’m not seeing. They’re so secretive. That’s why I thought we should talk. I thought you could help. As my grandma says, ‘little pitchers with big ears,’ and all that.”
Bay doesn’t know what Stella is talking about. What do pitchers have to do with ears, anyway? She has an idea, however, that she’s being insulted. She’s pretty sure she’s the “little” in that saying, which makes her feel stupid. Stella isn’t trying to be her friend, after all.
“Have you noticed how they won’t really talk about Eve?”
Bay opens her mouth to object, but closes it without making a sound. It has been Bay’s experience that when confronted with accusations, the best defense is often silence.
“I mean, we looked at some old photographs, but it’s not like anyone told me anything I couldn’t tell from just looking at them myself. ‘Here’s a picture of Eve in her bathing suit. She liked to swim,’ you know? I mean, come on!”
“Well, if you don’t know anything about Eve, why are you writing a book about her?” Bay asks.
Stella exhales loudly. “Okay, here’s the thing. I wasn’t writing about Eve. Not at first. I was just going to write about my grandma, you know? She’s getting old, and well, you know. I thought it might be research for a novel, or something. Then, when I lost my job—”
“You lost your job?”
Stella purses her lips and nods. “But that’s not the point. It might even be a good thing, all right? I mean, I kept saying I wanted to be a writer, but when was I even writing? Not much, let me tell you. Grading freshman comp is actually soul sucking, just so you know.”
“Why’d you lose your job?”
Stella shakes her head. “That’s not the point. Where was I? Okay, I thought I’d write this family memoir thing, or maybe a novel, and there were always stories, you know, family stories about my grandpa and his brothers and sister, and their dad, and Eve’s mom, who also died young—very
Grapes
of
Wrath
, if you know what I mean.”
Bay shrugs. She’s not sure she’s following, though she does enjoy the feeling of being confided in.
“So you see,” Stella says.