by Joe Coccaro
“Holy shit,” Carter said. “I’ll take that Scotch now.”
***
Rose clutched the little leather book close to her chest as she and Carter headed to the coffee shop. She seemed to glow. She stepped gracefully with her chin up and nose to the wind like a thoroughbred heading to the starting gate of a derby.
“Cyril is a nice man,” Rose said. “His story is astounding, absolutely textbook material. This could be a PhD dissertation: physical manifestations, recurring apparitions, evidence of anomalies.”
“No wonder Cyril gets hammered every day,” Carter said. “No wonder drinking is the national pastime in this crazy little hamlet.”
“I have a theory about Cyril,” Rose said. “I think it may explain his stridence. He is, I think, overcompensating because he’s actually a softhearted person. Cyril doesn’t want to appear as weak or flaky. He probably detests kooky Californians because he fears becoming one, in a manner of speaking. Cyril, like lots of strict conservatives, is comfortable in a world with one god, and a firm set of rules that, essentially, demonize those who challenge order. Experiencing a ghost so convincingly falls outside of Cyril’s neat little world of crystal-clear boundaries. Ambiguity bothers him. It’s messy, unsettling.”
“I think it has as much to do with the culture here,” Carter said.
Carter spoke about how Cape Charles, like most of the lower Eastern Shore, remains very insular. He almost sounded like a textbook. “Things change a lot slower here. Folks are more set in their ways because there is less of an outside influence stirring things up. Those who challenge belief systems are ostracized, essentially voted off the island like in some tawdry TV survival show. It’s like when archeologists discover tribes of people deep in the Congo. Isolated tribes live like they had centuries ago. When time is frozen, change is frozen out.
“I think that’s why so many of the true locals here, families that go back generations, don’t like people like me moving in,” Carter continued. “We bring new perspectives, religions, and political beliefs, which represent change. They see that as a threat. Remember what Darwin said?”
“What’s that, Carter?”
“Darwin said that survival isn’t based on being the smartest or the strongest. It’s based on the ability to adapt to change.”
“Whoa! How very scholarly, Carter. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks . . . I think. But now you explain something to me, Rose. Why is this ghost—possibly your great aunt Luzia—living in a hardware store? And don’t tell me it’s a coincidence.”
“It’s the woo-woo again. That spirit, whomever or whatever she is, lives here because she has a connection. There seems to be something about this place that either encourages retention in the afterlife or enables living mortals to perceive it. And I doubt she lives just in the hardware store. Single-domiciled spirits may be a misconception.”
Rose explained her theory, one that she and Malcolm had explored. “Spirits may not be stationary. It could be that they inhabit or frequent lots of places, just like the living. It could be that they migrate.”
“So, the same spirit poking people and showing herself at Gil Netters could be hanging out from time to time in Cyril’s hardware store. But why, Rose? Why not move on? And why is it that only certain people, like Jessep Greyson, experience these anomalies?”
“More people experience them than you might think, Carter. Many more would if they weren’t inhibited by conventional thinking. This place has a unique way of drawing down those barriers. You have to open the curtain to see who is on stage.”
***
Carter and Rose sat in the coffee shop shoulder to shoulder for the next hour continuing their discussion, which drifted from Kierkegaard existentialism to the lure of Harry Potter. What’s real and what’s imagined? What’s literal and what’s symbolic? What’s orthodox and what’s parable? They agreed that wars have been fought over such questions for centuries and without resolve. ISIS exists because of that conflict. American evangelicals despise agnostics for much the same reasons, both camps seeing peaceful coexistence as unattainable.
“We’re all a bunch of insecure savages,” Rose said.
The two nuzzled as they examined the crumbling pages of Luzia Rosa Douro’s writings, pointing to certain words they could decipher or interpret. They also perused the woman’s letters, which were not in envelopes or addressed. The writing in them was the same as in the rest of the diary.
“It’s Portuguese. Gotta be,” Rose said. “I studied Latin and Spanish, and I can make out some of this. I recognize a lot of these words in Spanish, but it seems like they’re used differently here. The word doce means twelve in Spanish, but here, in this sentence, it seems to be saying something else. We need an interpreter.”
“Fat chance of finding one around here,” Carter said. “Wait a minute! I take that back. Thin Lizzy! Someone told me she’s fluent in Romance languages. She’s a teacher. And I think she’s French. We were dancing at Gil’s last—”
“Dancing with a woman named Thin Lizzy? My perception of you is starting to change, Carter Rossi. You’re a bit of a playboy. You had me fooled.”
“It’s Luciana, actually. And it was just a dance. I barely know her.”
“Wait a minute. I sense something,” Rose said.
At that moment—that very second in fact—a teaspoon flew off the table just as Luciana walked into the coffee shop, silk scarf flowing from her long thin neck, sunglasses the size of a billboard, lipstick as red as Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
“What in the hell?” Carter stood as the spoon skidded across the floor.
A waitress wiping the next table picked it up nonchalantly. “Happens all the time,” she said. “It’s just the woo-woo. I’ll bring you another.”
“Carter, sweet man. So nice to see you.” Thin Lizzy leaned over and kissed him—on the lips.
“Ah, Rose. This is Luciana.”
“Just call me Lizzy. Everyone does.”
CHAPTER 18
AT THE COFFEE shop hours earlier, Rose had invited Lizzy and Carter to the Topp Kat for grilled shrimp, kale salad, and a buttery summer chardonnay from Chatham Vineyards a few miles up the road. Rose was a closet wine connoisseur and had even studied oenology and viticulture as an undergrad at Cornell. She had wanted to be a sommelier—a master sommelier—someone with a wine palate so evolved that she could not only discern with a few swishes of juice the varietal and origin of a wine, but from which cutting of grapes it was harvested and precisely what year.
Attaining that imprimatur had been far too demanding, a skill that was 75 percent learned but 25 percent inherited through DNA. Very few, in fact only a few dozen worldwide, possessed the almost freakish ability to taste the soils from which grapevines drew their sustenance. With that acknowledgment of her wine-tasting mediocrity, Rose Portman had switched majors and studied psychology.
“Welcome aboard the Topp Kat, my leased home on the sea.”
“Very nice,” Lizzy said. “Much more interesting than renting some duplex.”
“Agreed. Wine?”
The two women seemed to bond instantly. They ignored Carter, who sat in a deck chair thumbing through a Vanity Fair while the ladies sipped their golden steel-barreled chard, peeled crunchy jumbo shrimp, and talked about their favorite museums in Paris and London. Both had a crush on Hugh Grant and gushed about the Louvre. Carter felt like a dolt. The most interesting Francophile experience he had had was eating at a French restaurant in Disney World and spending a weekend in Quebec with his ex-wife, his now lesbian ex-wife. I guess that’s kinda French, he thought and chuckled.
At the coffee shop, Rose and Carter had explained their quest to Lizzy and showed her the writings they had obtained from Cyril. Lizzy had affirmed immediately that Luzia Douro’s words were in Portuguese and that she would happily interpret.
“I usually teach Spanish, French, and some Italian, but Portuguese is still very much within my grasp,” Lizzy had said. “This
will be fun.”
Lizzy had taken the writings home, studied them, made notes, and then gussied up for dinner with her new friends. She was excited to see the bachelor Carter again, but more intrigued by the pretty woman Rose Portman.
“You look Portuguese,” she told Rose. “Your skin is so beautiful. Dark, but not brown. And your hair—lush sandy blond. God to have hair like that, so thick and wavy. Those eyelashes are to kill for. And your lips are so full.”
Is she hitting on Rose? Carter thought. He noticed Lizzy’s nipples harden through her thin white V-neck. For Christ’s sake.
***
They were on their third bottle of Chatham by the time Lizzy started sharing her notes and thoughts about Luzia Rosa Douro. Lizzy explained that she had read everything written, including the letters, and then tried to imagine Luzia in the context of Cape Charles in 1918. Lizzy knew more than a little bit about the town’s history. In addition to teaching Romance languages, she was a history buff and admitted to being enamored with the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. She adored the actresses Gloria Swanson and Marion Davies.
“That’s one reason I moved over here when my husband left me,” Lizzy confessed. “I love these old houses. Sometimes, at night, I walk the town trying to imagine this place when it was booming. I walk by the old Palace Theatre and its marquee. I try and imagine how people dressed going to the movies, what they ate, the kind of books they read and music they listened to. I imagine what it was like seeing people from the big cities come and go through the ferry boat and train stations. It must have been magical. Sometimes in the summer, when I walk the streets alone at two or three in the morning, I can see things.”
“What kinds of things?” Rose asked.
“You know, things that used to be here back then.”
“You see people, Lizzy?”
“People and cars, and animals . . . the old houses lit. Figures rocking in chairs on porches.”
“Aren’t you frightened?” Carter asked.
“No. The opposite really, Carter. It’s comforting. It’s like I’m walking in another world but without ever really leaving this one.”
“Do the people on these walks ever say anything?” Rose asked.
“Not in words, Rose, but more like expressions. I see them speaking to each other, but I don’t hear words. They mostly don’t seem to see me. It’s like I’m invisible. But, sometimes, one of them will look at me and smile.”
“Almost sounds like you’re dreaming,” Carter said.
“Sort of, but I know I’m awake. I can feel the sidewalk on my feet or the wind from the harbor. Sometimes I’ll hear the foghorn of a ferry, or music from an open kitchen window, usually swing music or a piano concerto. It’s very soothing.”
Rose refreshed Lizzy’s wineglass and her own. She ignored Carter. “How long do your walks last?”
“That’s the weird thing,” Lizzy said. “The walks themselves sometimes take an hour, depends on how far I go. But when I check the time when I get back to my apartment, only a few minutes since the time I left had passed. Very weird! Did you guys ever see the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner? You know, the ‘build it and they will come’ movie. There is that scene where the Costner character, while walking the streets, meets the old doctor, who had died years earlier. They just walk and chat as if both are living in the past. It’s very dreamy, but very real. You just quickly drift back in time almost without noticing.”
“Wow!” Carter said. “How cool would that be? Maybe I could meet Shoeless Joe Jackson.”
“If I could drift back in time I’d want to meet someone other than a crooked baseball player,” Rose needled.
“And who might that be, Miss Hoity-Toity?”
“My great aunt, Carter. Who else?”
“Let’s see if I can help you with that,” Lizzy said. She reached for her notes.
***
For the next hour, Lizzy acted as narrator, reading sentences Luzia Douro had written presumably nearly a hundred years ago and filling in gaps with speculation. Like a detective, Lizzy was building a case. She created dots and then connected them with shreds of fact intertwined with circumstance. She started by telling Carter and Rose what they already knew, that Luzia was in Cape Charles waiting for her lover, Douglas Kinard III. She wrote of their fleeting affair in France, her trip across the Atlantic escorted by Navy ships, entry into the New York Harbor, and train ride to the Eastern Shore. The ocean voyage was frightening as seamen stood watch on each deck peering through binoculars for U-boat periscopes hunting for targets. Luzia felt overjoyed and relieved to have finally arrived in Cape Charles, where she stayed in a boarding home owned by the Kinard family.
“There are several beautiful passages where Luzia writes about her golden ruby ring. She wore it on a necklace so it would remain close to her heart. Listen to this line: Meu lindo anel de ouro. Eu uso isso no meu coracao. The rough translation is ‘My beautiful golden ring. I wear it on my heart.’ ”
“The ring!” Carter about leaped from his chair. “The ring was in the bank security box, probably in the vault. She went back for the ring.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Carter,” Rose said. “That ring was her only tangible connection to Douglas. It’s all she had of him, a symbol of the promise he made to her. It’s why she kept it locked away in the safest place she could find. I’ll bet my great aunt checked on that ring constantly. I’ll bet when the bank caught fire, she ran in to fetch that ring.”
Lizzy gave Rose a hug, both women dabbing each other’s tears with napkins, both laughing a perfect blend of joy and sorrow. Carter felt left out.
“What about Kinard’s family?” he interrupted. “Any mention of them, Lizzy?”
“No, Luzia never mentions meeting members of Douglas’ family, only that she was treated well by the staff who ran the house. ‘A ajuda me tratou bem.’ ”
“Not surprised,” Rose said. “The snobby Kinards probably just ignored what they saw as a problem, or maybe they didn’t know she existed at all. Douglas may have arranged all of this secretly.”
Based upon dates on letters and entries, Luzia had remained in Cape Charles for nearly two years, Lizzy continued. She showed Carter and Rose the most recent date she had found: February 13, 1920. In that entry, she wrote about a friend she had met at work, that she had adopted a stray cat she named Mateus, and that she gravely missed her sister and family in Portugal.
“Mateus. Interesting name,” Rose piped. “That’s the name of a popular Portuguese rosé wine.”
Lizzy said that she had looked for any reference to Navy Ensign Douglas Kinard arriving, but found none.
“That’s because he was dead,” Rose said. “He was killed aboard the USS San Diego. The Germans torpedoed it when it was in the New York Harbor. Carter and I think the San Diego may have literally crossed paths in the New York Harbor with the passenger ship Luzia was on before it was sunk. How ironic is that?”
“That’s extraordinary,” Lizzy said. Her eyes glistened as they peered into Rose’s pulsing pupils.
“Do you think Luzia knew that Douglas had been killed?” Carter asked.
“Like I said, I didn’t see any references to that in her letters or diary,” Lizzy said. “But I can tell you this: Douglas’ death was publicized. I called a friend of mine at the library in town and asked them to do an obituary search. Sure enough, there were tons of stories about the attack on the Navy ship. It was big news. A few days later, the men killed—I think there were four of them—were identified and articles were written about them. My library friend found a long obituary and picture of Douglas Kinard in the Norfolk Morning Star newspaper, the Portsmouth Ledger, and a local newspaper called the Cape Charles Gazette. They called Douglas a hero, named immediate family members as survivors and said—get this—that he was engaged to be married to Sylvia Mae Hoffler, daughter of a wealthy German businessman who owned a fleet of barges that delivered timber to the railroad.”
“That two-timi
ng prick was engaged to someone else!” Rose leaped from her deck chair and heaved her wineglass over the side. “That bastard!”
Lizzy stood and gave her newfound friend a consoling hug. She placed Rose’s head on her shoulder and caressed her thick, sandy locks. Carter broke in.
“Ladies, question: If Douglas’ death was plastered all over the newspapers, then why didn’t Luzia just leave? Why stay here?”
“Christ, Carter! It’s obvious. Because she didn’t know,” Rose said.
“How could she not know? You said it was in all the local papers. The Kinards were well known and even owned a place here. It would have been big news: Local rich kid killed in submarine attack on American shore.”
“She didn’t know, Carter, because she didn’t speak or read English,” Rose said. “Remember? She’s Portuguese. I doubt she could have had a conversation with anyone. Why would she even bother to look at a newspaper she couldn’t read? Duh! I thought you were a hotshot journalist. No wonder you got into financing.”
Carter sat and took a long draw on his chardonnay. “Don’t vent on me. I didn’t kill the guy. I didn’t cheat on Luzia. Christ! I guess when one guy screws up, we all do.”
Lizzy’s cork popped like a fifty-year-old bottle of champagne. “Men are selfish pigs. Given the choice between their dicks and the truth, they always choose their dicks. Women are dying all over the world because of breast cancer, but there’s no cure. But when men’s dicks go limp, guess what, the drug companies fix that. Alakazam: Viagra! That poor woman.”
Carter had to admit that young Douglas had been a bit of a cad. “But maybe, just maybe, his intentions were honorable,” Carter said. “Maybe his plan was to return to Norfolk, tell his parents that the engagement to Miss Hoffler was off, and introduce them to his beautiful Luzia.”