“Does anyone remember that name?”
“They remember that it’s called Thing-a-ma-something. That’s probably enough for Mom.”
“And it means people are talking about her,” Dad nodded. “That’s always high priority for Fiona.”
“She always did like that Oscar Wilde quote, ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’”
“The quote is ‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,’” my father corrected.
Have I told you he’s an accountant and a stickler for accuracy? I rolled my eyes at the correction, then chuckled because it was classic Dad.
“She should get that tattooed on her ass, it fits her so perfectly,” he continued.
I laughed, choking on my coffee. “Careful. If you make me laugh like that again, I may be joining you shortly in the afterlife.”
“My jokes are hardly killer ones,” Dad clucked. He continued to look around while I sipped my coffee. His eyes landed on a few objects that were arranged high up on a shelf. He furrowed his brow, confused.
“Is that new?” he asked, pointing. “That doesn’t seem to fit the rest of your store.”
I looked. It was a motley assortment of old milk cans and vintage liquor bottles haphazardly crowding the small space. “It doesn’t. I never ordered any of that for my shop.”
“Maybe that girl you have working for you – the one with the really big boobs – set it out?” He fought a grin but failed. Dad clearly enjoyed admiring Vanessa from afar.
I shook my head. I knew Vanessa’s work, and this wasn’t it. “This is Mom’s doing.”
Besides playing mom and busybody, she often tried to get me to sell more of her and Tom’s (but mostly her) antique and collectible finds in my shop. (In large part it was because I had more space. Their shop usually was cluttered enough to qualify for a hoarders TV show.
I pulled a chair to the display so I could step on it and check the prices. As usual it was expensive, since my mother’s sales philosophy was to mark it high, and if no one had the sense to barter the cost down, so be it.
I stepped back down and went to my office for some supplies. I returned to my counter, and began neatly printing out a new sign on a piece of bright orange posterboard. When I was finished, I surveyed my work. Satisfied, I went and taped the sign next to the shelf that held my mother’s items. It read:
All items on this shelf: 75 percent off.
I went to my back office to retrieve a box, then returned, removing most of my mother’s display and adding several new things from the items she tried to store in my shop when I wasn’t looking. She was always waiting for a chance to exhibit and sell them on my real estate.
“You’re playing with fire there, Poppy,” my father said, wagging a warning finger.
“I know she’ll see the sign and pitch a fit, thinking she lost money. There’s nothing there that’s marked as a giveaway, even at seventy-five percent discount. Plus, she dismantled a perfectly nice display to put her stuff up there – without my consent, no less.”
“She’ll be angry. Even though it’s a prank, she’ll remember it for a long time. Her memory puts an elephant’s to shame.”
“In that case,” I teased, “I’ll tell her it was your idea.”
He held a hand out to protest. “No! She’ll try to conjure me and punish me in some way. If anyone could find a way to trap a ghost in a jar, it would be her. And knowing her she’d store me in the container with one of her farts after she drinks beer and eats egg salad.”
I tried not to imagine my mother passing wind into a jar. Unfortunately, I failed. “I didn’t know ghosts could smell things.”
“We can’t, but she would find a way.”
I waved off his concerns. “I’m not going to say you suggested it. Don’t worry about that. You know full well that I like to mess with you a bit, and I like to mess with her a whole lot more.”
I knew I risked her wrath by playing this prank on her, but I knew at least for a while it would slow her efforts to try and bogart my shelf space.
“It’s easier for you,” he said. “You have some ability to match her magic.”
He was right, but he was also giving her too much power. At least I thought he was. Of course, it wasn’t exactly unmerited. He was right in that she had an extremely long memory, and that she could coax magic out of the most unexpected situations – especially when she was spurred by anger.
“You remember the keys,” he said.
I nodded. Several times, when she was still married to my father and didn’t want him to come home, all his keys became bent and warped. He couldn’t even start his car. When he finally made it to our house, none of his keys would fit in their respective locks.
“Ah, I’m sorry to say, but life was less chaotic after the divorce.”
“Yes, it was more peaceful,” I agreed.
“Then there was that time,” he continued, “where she said she didn’t even want to look at me, and all the lightbulbs went out.”
“And remember when she didn’t want Aunt Lindy to go to some party they were both invited to,” I said. “Aunt Lindy came down with that violent flu that she swore up and down only lasted until my mother called her at the end of the night to tell her how the party went.”
“See. She’s powerful.”
“It would be kind of cool to be able to do that, on her level,” I mused.
He shook his head. “You already can.”
I had my doubts about that, and waved off his comment. “I don’t ever get that angry,” I scoffed.
“No, you don’t. But you tend to be able to make things not happen. It always seemed to be sparked by your desire to not do something.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
“Remember when you didn’t want to make that speech for a public speaking class, and you lost your voice?”
I did remember that. “Yes, but I also remember getting laryngitis for two months. That didn’t exactly work out for me.”
“You were still green. You got the result you desperately wanted, though. You were protected from having to speak in public until the end of the school year and got away with writing an essay, which was what you were more comfortable doing.”
I thought on what he said. It did make some sense, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced.
He continued. “Also, remember when your mother decided you should socialize more with the children of some of the more prominent families in town? She signed you up for that Bible camp?”
I nodded. I also remembered not wanting to go.
“Then that storm kicked up the day she was going to drop you off there. It was so bad several trees were uprooted and there were a few live wires around the church. They had to cancel the camp.”
“They only postponed it,” I corrected him.
“Okay, but in the meantime your mother decided to let you not attend. She was convinced you’d somehow brought that about.”
I did recall her giving me several funny looks around that time.
“In my book, whipping up a storm trumps bending keys,” my father said.
Suddenly I was feeling a bit badass. “Well, what do you know? I’m an expert at ‘not’ magic. N-O-T. Get it?”
My father chuckled, shaking his head. “That was terrible.”
“Stick to running the store then? No future on the standup circuit?”
My father continued to look at the shelf, clearly still disturbed by my sale sign. “You’re not going to take that down? What if Vanessa sells some of them while you’re not here, and at the lower cost?”
I waved off his concerns. “Oh, that won’t happen. Mom’s due back from Vegas today.”
“Vegas?” My dad scratched his ghostly chin. “Did they finally get hitched, you think?”
That thought hadn’t occurred to me. “It would be nice. I’d rather they be together than apart.”
Dad grew silent.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s not that I want Tom, or anyone, as a new dad. It’s just that Tom seems to … um, temper Mom’s dramatic side, shall we say?”
Mom and Tom had a tumultuous history. My mother would break it off with him a couple times a year – at least at first. Then Mom would stir up more trouble – for me, usually – than ever. My college roommates had seen my mom arrive at the house we rented, suitcase in tow, on more than one occasion. Sometimes she’d stay for a day, sometimes for a week, and she’d party just as hard as any 19-year-old with a fake ID until she’d inevitably mend her rift with Tom. Usually this was after we went back to focusing on our exams, papers or part-time jobs instead of partaking in beer runs.
I kept hoping they’d tie the knot one day, but so far, they’d just been engaged – and sometimes disengaged – for many years.
“I’m not offended,” Dad replied. “She does seem to be in a good place with him. So, they’re due back today?”
I nodded. “Soon. They’re landing at the county airport and are probably driving back right now.”
Dad knew I still had questions on some other matter. “So, Poppy, tell me why you ‘called’ me to you.”
I blew out a sigh. “Well, yesterday a lady came in for a reading, and she got me wondering.”
I filled him in on the details about Marie’s daughter and how her son was still grieving.
“Does she think the girl’s ghost is around? Have you seen it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She seems to sense something of the girl, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“And you noticed the girl’s perfume, and saw ivy climbing the curtains?”
I nodded.
The perfume part wasn’t so unusual. The living can usually sense the dead by drops in temperature, or a familiar scent like a perfume, or maybe even a glimpse of shadow in a mirror. They’ll inevitably blame it on a trick of the light. That tends to be because they mostly can’t or don’t want to cope with the reality that ghosts exist. Call it intentional blindness. Fear of the unknown and all that is a powerful motivator.
“The ivy part is odd,” my father said.
“I thought so, too. I wondered if she was trying to communicate in some way, perhaps saying, ‘It’s me, Ivy,’ by showing her botanical namesake.”
“That’s a possibility,” my father agreed.
I started wondering if I could somehow communicate by making a poppy appear somewhere, as a sort of calling card. I cast the thought aside, figuring that was a spell to attempt later. Now I had to think of Marie, and Ivy.
“Do you think there’s some way to help sever the connection between the living and dead?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll look into it.” He seemed eager. He always did like having a little dilemma to research and solve.
“Do you have things like ghost internets or ghost encyclopedias?” I asked.
“There are spirit libraries, but I’d rather talk to some ghosts who regularly haunt the living. This sounds almost like that Dante guy who never forgot his Beatrice, except this kid is mooning over his sister. That was overkill, if you ask me, and this sounds like overkill, too.”
I felt inclined to agree. We weren’t always the most romantic of folk in our family. Not anything like that, at least.
He paused for a moment.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Something came to me.”
I began to press for details, but he cut me off with a curt wave of his hand. “Not now. It was just something far off, but I don’t think it’s anything – at least I hope not.”
My dad looked around my store, glancing at the calendar. “Ah, yes, school is back in session. I like to see what the college professors and the school teachers are teaching.” His shoulders sagged and he shook his head again, his expression pained.
“Uh-oh. What did you see now?”
“It’s the new math. I could do figures in my head, faster than some of my co-workers could do them on a calculator, and now … now there’s that damn new math. I don’t get it.”
I remembered seeing some examples of it on Facebook. It was confusing and I had decided I’d rather not think of it.
“So that’s your latest discovery, huh? I’ve seen a bit of it online, and I don’t get it much myself.”
“How are your books, by the way?” Dad asked, referring to the store’s accounts ledgers.
“I balanced them a couple days ago, and all looked good, but I could always use a double check.” I had no propensity for math, and as far as I was concerned, there was no greater magic than QuickBooks and online banking. If he wanted to indulge his love of numbers crunching, I would never dream of depriving him – and yes, helping myself a bit in the process. “You are more than welcome to have at it.”
His face brightened. He loved math and statistics. Checkbooks. Balance sheets. Payroll. Doing taxes. Budgets. Calculating tips. Tracking mileage. He loved it all. He was detail-oriented, whereas I seemed to have turned out more like my mother, relying more on instinct. “You don’t mind?”
“Sure. I had a good tourist season and have been pretty busy since the last time you were here. An extra set of eyes wouldn’t hurt. Knock yourself out.”
He rubbed his ghostly palms together. I set my coffee down and walked to the small office behind the display wall that stood by my cash register and counter. I opened the ledger for him, since he didn’t have much success handling physical matter. Now and then he could snuff out a candle or make a pencil roll across a table, but he wasn’t really poltergeist material. He just wasn’t angry or emotional enough to propel solid objects.
He followed and hovered slightly over my desk as I opened the book and fired up my computer. “Do you prefer hard copy or the computer,” I asked. “I know you’re old school, but I notice you’ve been getting more into computers lately.”
“Leave them both up for me. I’ll look at each.”
“Okay. I’ll go back out front and mind my business. Come get me if you need something.”
“Sure.”
I went out and puttered a bit throughout my shop. I wondered how long it would be before he had questions. I was pretty good at keeping track, but he always found something.
“Poppy.”
I knew it. I set down the feather duster I’d been holding and ventured to the desk. “Yes, Dad.”
“Your handwriting is a mess,” he said, pointing toward my ledger. “Is this a four or a nine?”
I leaned over and squinted, uncertain for a moment. “It’s a four. I think. Or maybe a nine.”
Dad tsked at me and pointed to a pencil on the desk. “It should be a nine. Fix that now before you forget. And fix those nines there, there, and there,” he said, showing me where to make corrections.
“Does it all balance out, though?”
“Yes. But really, you should be careful to write your numbers more legibly. Keeping track is important.”
I had the urge to protest, but as I looked at the questionable nines, I realized my printing left something to be desired.
“I know you want to argue, because you are your mother’s daughter,” he smirked, knowing it would irk me. “But you also know I’m right.”
“Yes, Dad,” I sighed. I erased the murky entries and made neater numerals. I knew I had to do it then, or else he’d haunt – well, nag – me about it until I relented. He was pretty easygoing, until something switched on his OCD tendencies. Bookkeeping was one of his biggest triggers.
“Now, we’re good. I’ll update your computer spreadsheets, too.”
“Wait? How will you do that? Can you zip inside the machine or something?”
“Nope. I’m just getting better at handling physical items. It’s nothing major, mind you, but I can tap computer keys – especially newer ones since the keyboards are so easy to type on now. Remember the old typewriters where you really had to pound the keys to type somethi
ng out? I also can operate smart phones when I concentrate. Ha! They should put that in a commercial!”
I smiled as I watched him get fired up.
With that, he dimmed to the merest hint of a shadow and began tapping my computer keyboard. “It’s easier if I go invisible or fade out some when I do it,” he explained. The keys danced up and down as he depressed his ghostly fingers and I saw numbers appearing in the cells of the spreadsheet.
“Awesome, Dad. You’re hired. Knock yourself out.”
3
I turned to walk out of my office and continue with my chores, but nearly jumped out of my skin when I spotted a man standing right outside.
I gave a shriek of astonishment, which surprised Dad. He bolted from his spot, the force of the shock caused him to tip my office chair back and send it hurtling toward the wall as he zipped into invisibility. I calmed myself as I looked into a pair of lively hazel eyes, round with surprise.
“Oh God! You scared me!” I gasped, clutching my hand to the space above my heart.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.” He tentatively extended a hand out toward me. He was fairly tall, probably in his mid-twenties, with a lanky frame and blond hair setting off a handsome face. His demeanor was casual; I had the impression little worried him. I caught a whiff of beer and something musky, but I didn’t think he’d been drinking, however. It must be his beverage of choice much of the time.
Gathering my wits, I smoothed the front of my shirt and did my best to put on a poker face. “That’s okay. I was just doing some accounting and mumbling to myself. You know how that goes. I tend to do that while balancing the books.” I started in his direction, herding him back into the store. “Let’s go into the shop.”
He took the cue, but his eyes were curious as he craned his neck back into the direction of my office. I could see the wheels turning.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he repeated, his face suddenly split by a wide grin that I knew was meant to set me at ease. “I should have called out, but I heard you speaking to ...”
Giving Up the Ghost Page 3