Imaginary Friends

by John Marco

  Art and Janet Akorman lived on the outskirts of Mill Valley in a small yellow bungalow, festooned with Christmas lights that didn’t plug into anything. Their short driveway was plowed halfway across the front and side lawns, revealing a dozen cars, trucks and pieces of farm machinery in various states of repair lined up beside a quonset-hut style garage three times bigger than the house. Two black labs and four shih-tzus greeted them noisily when they pulled up and Lucky leaped into the passenger seat at once, barking furiously and paddling his tiny paws on the dashboard until George was afraid he would set off the air bag.

  “All right, all right, just a moment.”

  He caught the diminutive dog around the middle with one hand and, opening the driver’s side door, set him carefully down on the ground. Art and Janet’s dogs were all friendly, and George no longer worried about Lucky getting eaten, stepped on, or bitten. Led astray into some hideous dead skunk or raccoon was another matter however, and he eyed the pack of dogs sternly before exiting the car behind Lucky.

  “Don’t roll in anything,” he warned them. “That’s a new dog coat.”

  Labs, shih-tzus and chihuahua all ignored him.

  Art Akorman was a heavy-set man in his mid sixties, his brown hair long ago gone to white. Of an age, he and George had become good friends in the last two years, and he could always be counted on to dredge up an old story about the families or offer a bit of practical advice on how to survive in the country.

  As Molly launched into her sales pitch, George settled into the large, blue sectional that Art and Janet’s kids had bought them for their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a contented sigh. By his calculations, after the girls had finished selling their chocolate bars and he and Art had finished catching up on the latest news out of Mill Valley and Greenville, it would be just about noon, and Janet would invite them to stay for lunch. Friday was meatloaf night at the Akorman house, and Saturday noon was meatloaf sandwich day. George loved Janet’s meatloaf.

  Removing Lucky’s coat, he accepted a coffee and a plate of warm oatmeal cookies and settled back with the dog on one knee and the cookies on the other. He supposed he could get used to selling chocolate door to door, he mused as Lucky began to stare intently at the plate. If he had to.

  Events played out exactly as he’d expected. Seated around the kitchen table, George surreptitiously watched Molly eat lunch with the rest of them— meatloaf sandwich, carrots from Art’s garden, and nine day pickles that Janet and her daughter Lisa had laid down last summer—and wondered if her food was imaginary as well. He supposed it would have to be. Assuming that both Art and Janet knew that Molly herself was imaginary, he marveled at how easily they interacted with her as if she were just another one of their dozen or more grandchildren.

  Every now and then, he would take a peek at Rose. The girl sat eating quietly, seemingly engaged in the conversation, but her eyes were wide and dark, and George realized that he had never actually seen their true color since he’d met her.

  Two hours later, lighter by half a box and with Lucky’s belly tight and round from too much meatloaf, they pulled out of the Akorman’s driveway.

  Rose carefully tucked their money into a ziplock bag, then glanced expectantly at Molly.

  “Great Auntie Maude’s in Mill Valley,” Molly answered thoughtfully. “But she’ll be down for her nap right now, an’ Uncle Kevin won’t be home from cut-tin’ wood with Uncle Brandon an’ Uncle Fred yet.”

  “Yes, but your Auntie Bev should be home,” George supplied. “She doesn’t baby-sit on Saturdays.”

  Both girls gave him an identical look of calculated greed.

  “Auntie Bev’ll only buy two bars,” Molly explained patiently. “Uncle Kevin’ll buy at least six.”

  “I see.”

  “And the sooner we sell out . . .”

  “The sooner we go home, yes, I understand.”

  “Great Uncle Charlie’s place is up Greenbush Road. We could go there first an’ then swing around to Great Auntie Maude’s, an’ after that Uncle Kevin should be home.”

  George nodded. “Great Uncle Charlie’s it is then.”

  Greenbush Road was more of an isolated dirt lane than an actual road. Large, mature maple trees loomed over the car, creating a soft, thick canopy despite their lack of leaves. The flat sides of the road had been plowed back to the edge of the well-cared-for cedar rail fence that separated the verge from the fields beyond, and George nodded approvingly.

  “It seems the plow has been by,” he noted.

  Molly shook her head. “No, that’s Great Uncle Charlie,” she explained. “He has a plow on the front of his lawn tractor. In the summer he keeps it all mowed down.”

  “Ah.” George had noticed this before. Half the ditches in the county were kept to golf-course height by old, retired men on lawn tractors.

  Wondering absently when he was going to find himself half a mile down his own road on a brand new John Deere, George turned into a well-plowed driveway beside a green mailbox painted with flowers that read: “Charles and Peggy Geoffries.”

  As at Art and Janet’s house, half a dozen dogs gave them a noisy greeting when they pulled up to the old, brick farmhouse at the end of the drive. They parked beside a long line of trucks and old cars, some of which were up on blocks while others showed the signs of more current use, the dogs swirling around them like a swarm of furry bees.

  Unfamiliar with these dogs, George held Lucky high up by his shoulder as he left the car, but both Molly and Rose greeted them happily. Rose fished a dozen chocolate bars from the back, and together, they made their way through the muddy, snow-filled farmyard as a pair of cats peered suspiciously at them from the top of the neatly stacked woodpile. The stone and timber barn and half a dozen outbuildings and silos were much closer to the house than was legal in this day and age, and George guessed their age at more than a hundred years.

  The man who met them at the door was close to that age himself.

  Charles Geoffries was a thin, white-haired man of ninety, his lean frame bent and his large hands gnarled and swollen from arthritis, but his blue eyes sparkled as he spotted the girls. Accepting a kiss from each of them, he listened gravely as they introduced George and explained quickly how he fit in to the family tree, then ushered them into the covered porch.

  The cloying aromas that always lingered in old, old farmhouses enveloped them at once: damp stone, wool rugs, moth balls, furniture polish, and woodsmoke overlaid by baking bread and just a hint of kerosene. George breathed it in with pleasure as he removed his boots, then followed the girls into the huge county kitchen.

  As at Brandon’s farmhouse, the kitchen was the main center of activity. A woodstove sat in one corner with a wood-burning cooking stove at the other and a more modern kerosene heater peeking out from beside the fridge. A large harvest table dominated the middle of the room, with a dozen mismatched chairs covered in hand-crocheted seat-covers around it. A wooden china cabinet and sideboard covered in lace doilies and figurines stood against one wall, and a well-worn couch draped in a brilliantly colorful afghan sat along the other. Charlie’s wife, Peggy, a round woman with pale gray eyes and a warm smile, paused long enough to say hello before returning her attention to the dough she was kneading. Half a dozen children ran about from the kitchen to the dining room and back, while the sound of a television filtered in from somewhere in the depths of the house.

  Peggy shook her head. “That’s our two boys, Doug and Vernon,” she explained. “They do the milking for their dad these days, but you won’t get them in here, not with the game on.” She turned with a frown as the sound of angry lowing joined the sounds of barking outside. “Tyler, go tell them dogs to shut up, will you? They’re upsettin’ the cows.”

  “Ok, Gran!”

  A boy of about ten pounded out the door, yelling the names of various dogs at the top of his lungs.

  “Now,” she said as Charles gestured at George to make himself comfortable on the couch before plugging an
ancient kettle into a wall outlet that seemed just as ancient. “Why don’t you help me here, Mackenzie Rose, while Molly tells us about those candy bars of yours.”

  Time passed quickly in the warm kitchen. Children came and went, fetching beers for their fathers in the sitting room or eggs from the hen house for their grandmother. George joined Charles for a cup of tea and a scone, listening to Molly’s now familiar speech and quizzing his hosts on their place in the family. Charles had been born in 1912 and Peggy in 1914, and between them they had a wealth of stories and lore that made his head spin.

  Finally, as the winter sun began to set, sending strips of sunlight and shadow across the room, the old, mahogany clock on the sideboard began to chime half past four, and he stood with an expression of real regret.

  “We should be getting on,” he said shaking hands with Charles. “But this has been wonderful. I very much hope I can come by again with my notebooks. I’m writing a personal history of the families, and I would love to hear more, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Charles nodded. “You’re always welcome.”

  “What’s your phone number?”

  The old man just laughed. “Never had no phone,” he said. “Didn’t want the ’lectricity neither, but the boys insisted about, oh, goin’ on twennie years ago now. No, you just drop by whenever. We’re usually home. We’ve got years of old photos that nobody’s touched for a decade or more. You’re welcome to go through ‘em. There’s some of your grandmother as a girl. Her an’ her sister Elsie used to pick strawberries in our north field every summer. Thought I might marry Dorothy myself, but she went and fell for a city feller,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Course, I’d already tipped my cap at the prettiest girl in the county by then.”

  Peggy cast him a fond look tinged with mock severity. “Best keep to that story, Charles Douglas Geoffries, if you want your supper tonight,” she warned him. “Now, Mackenzie Rose, I’ll think we’ll be having . . .” she glanced at Charles a moment. “Two bars. One for the children and one for the adults. No arguments, old man,” she admonished as Charles opened his mouth to protest. “You’re not supposed to have candy at all with your diabetes. Be thankful I’m letting you have any.”

  Charles stood with a sigh. “Come on, I’ll walk you out,” he said. “An’ just maybe I might have a coin or two in my pocket to buy a couple more bars,” he whispered, winking at the girls.

  The farmyard seemed dark and cold after the warm kitchen. The cats had disappeared, and even the dogs seemed less interested in barking at them as they made their way back to George’s SUV. Handing Lucky to Rose, George buckled in, then headed back up the long farm drive.

  “It’s getting late,” he noted. “Perhaps we should call it a night.”

  Daniel was able to take the girls out selling the next day, so George spent Sunday catching up on the bits of freelance writing he had contracted for the local paper and getting as much of what Charles and Peggy had told him into his computer as he could remember.

  Monday morning dawned cold and damp, the cloudy sky threatening another storm. He’d just finished jotting down a dozen or so questions he wanted to ask Charles and Peggy when a knock at the door made him jump. He glanced worriedly down at Lucky curled up in the dog bed beside him, and the chihuahua opened one eye with a uninterested expression.

  “Some guard dog you are,” George admonished as he pushed his chair back and stood with a groan. “You usually bark at bumblebees and hummingbirds.”

  The dog yawned impudently at him, then tucked his nose under his paws and went back to sleep. Wondering at this unusual behavior, George went to the door.

  His Cousin Jerrold stood on the step, and George blinked at him in surprise. Of all the Mynakers, Jerrold’s gift was the strongest. He’d never been out to George’s before, and, although George was not surprised that he knew where to find him, he was surprisedthat he had. Jerrold rarely went farther than the A&P parking lot, where he spoke prophecy and sold rope out of the back of his truck.

  Now Jerrold shook his head, his long white beard waving across his faded, black coveralls, when George invited him inside.

  “I was just up to Art’s place for a brake line,” he explained, jerking one large, grubby thumb in the direction of his old half-ton Ford. “Just thought you might like to know; Charlie Geoffries died early this mornin’.”

  The funeral was held at the tiny, funeral home in Mill Valley. As was the case in rural communities, most of the families came to the visitation held the day before. As he made his way through the small viewing room, George spoke briefly with Art and Lloyd and Albert, nodded to Brandon and Fred, standing with their families at the open back door, where they could talk and smoke at the same time, then stopped before the open casket surrounded by flowers.

  Charles Douglas Geoffries lay on the white satin dressed in a black wool suit some decades out of date, his gnarled hands placed across his chest and his Legion tie pin and World War II medals prominently displayed. George stood, staring down at him for a long time, mulling over lost opportunities, when he heard a harsh cough beside him.

  “He was a fine man.”

  He turned to see Brandon and Fred’s grandmother, Grace Geoffries, standing, leaning on her cane, beside him. “We were at school together,” she continued, looking down at Charles with a fond expression. “Him an’ me and Peggy, Clifford Mynaker an’ yer Grandma Dorothy, Willie an’ Eula-May Frawst, an’ a few others. They’re all gone now. I’m the last of ’em.”

  George felt a sudden, cold, tingle run up his spine as the Mynaker gift, so diluted within him after a full generation away from the county that the Sight barely even colored his dreams, began to stir.

  “But surly not Peggy,” he said in a small voice, somehow knowing the answer even before he asked it. “I met her last Saturday. Didn’t I?”

  “Did you?”

  He nodded weakly.

  Grace gave a slight, one-shouldered shrug. “Charlie was a Geoffries,” she said simply. “An’ one of the strongest I ever knew.”

  “And Peggy?”

  “Died of the cancer in 1973.”

  “But she seemed so real,” he protested, feeling as if his head were wrapped in gauze. “How do their sons feel about . . . no wait,” George paused as he saw Grace’s expression. “The boys too?” he asked.

  “Yep. Dougie died in Korea. Vernon rolled his tractor a few years later. Charlie quit farming after that. Didn’t have the heart to keep goin’ with nobody to leave it too, I guess.”

  “So Douglas and Vernon never had any children either?”

  “Nope.”

  George shook his head with a wondering expression. “I met them all,” he said. “Peggy, Douglas, Vernon, their children, cats and dogs and . . . cows and chickens. It was. . . . nice. It was . . . comfortable.”

  “I dare say it was. Old Charlie had years to perfect it while the farm fell to ruins all around him. Kevin tried to get him move in with him an’ Bev, but he wouldn’t have any of it. You can understand it, I suppose. Why leave the life you want if you can make it seem as real as if you were really livin’ it.”

  George stared down at Charlie, his lips pursed in thought. “He had blue eyes,” he said after a time.

  “Hm-hm.”

  “No, I mean all through our visit, his eyes never went dark. Your eyes, the families’ eyes, they always go dark. Even Rose’s.” He turned to see Rose and Molly standing quietly beside their parents. No, beside Rose’s parents, he amended.

  Grace shrugged again. “Like I said, he was strong. Likely, he carried the illusion over to his eyes so he wouldn’t ever be reminded that Peggy an’ the boys were really gone, not even in his mirror when he shaved in the morning.”

  She turned. “I saw him Sunday, took a pie over an’ had a nice visit with him an’ Peggy.”

  She cast him a sharp glance when he stared at her. “Don’t you look at me like that, George William Prescott. Peggy Geoffries was one of my best friends. I was maid
of honor at her wedding, an’ she was matron of honor at mine. I missed her. I still do. An’ like you said, it was comforting. Charlie had a gift. A strong gift.”

  George shook his head, unsure of what to say as Grace turned away. “Now I’m headin’ home,” she continued. “I’m an’ old woman an’ I’m wore out. I’ve buried too many friends an’ family over the years.” She jerked her head in the direction of a wooden box sitting on a side table. “Charlie wanted you to have those,” she said. “They’re all his old photos. Said he was glad he had someone to leave ’em too. It gave him some peace at the end. You take care of ’em.”

  She hobbled away, and after a moment, George made for the table.

  The box, an old apple crate, held about a dozen cracked and faded leather and cardboard photo albums, neatly labeled by month and year. On the top was a single black and white picture of two young girls in calico print dresses and straw hats standing in front of Charlie’s stone and timber barn. The writing on the back read: “Dorothy and Elsie, 1928.”

  The visitation began to break up about an hour later. Charles would be interred until spring in the small mausoleum on Blind Duck Island where most of the family had been buried since the first of their line had settled there in the seventeen hundreds.

  As the sun began to set, George followed Brandon and Fred outside, blinking in the cold, December air. Daniel and Tanya were standing by their Pontiac, talking to Kevin and Bev while Rose and Molly drew pictures in the snow with dried teasels a few yards away, and he wandered over to them, smiling as a pair of blue eyes and a pair of black eyes looked up at him.

  “Hello, Uncle George,” Molly said solemnly.

  “Hello, Molly; hello Rose.” George turned to the quieter of the two girls with an earnest expression. “You know, Molly is a very good illusion, Rose,” he said gently. “One of the best I’ve ever seen.”

  She nodded.

  “I tell you what,” he continued, “if you come by, say . . . after Jeopardy,” he added with a smile, “I’ll buy another dozen bars. But will you do me a favor? Will you give the sales pitch yourself, because I’ve never heard you speak and I’d like to.”