by Madelyn Alt
Just the way she liked it.
I headed down the hallway toward the singsong sound of the girls’ voices coming from their room. Giggling, loud whispering that wasn’t really whispering at all, and squeals reached out to me. A lovely, sweet sound. I tiptoed up to the door, wanting to catch them unawares in the act of being themselves. There was something so innocent about it.
“No, Courtie. You can’t do that with your Barbie. Barbies don’t like their heads pulled off and stuffed under the pillow. It’s not nice.” Jenna, as usual. There was a pause filled with a little muffled mumbling. “Coco says Mommy used to do that to her Barbie dolls.”
“I don’t pull heads?”
“No, you should be nice to your Barbies. Fix their hair and make them pretty and stuff. That’s what they like. See? Like this.”
I peeped around the doorframe to see the two of them sitting across from each other on the little round rug in the center of the bedroom. They’d made a circle of their dolls around them, sitting as though they were a part of a camp sing-along. Jenna was looking up at a place on the ceiling. Little Courtney held her headless Barbie up and rocked her back and forth, making her dance.
“Coco says she never had a dolly that could dance so pretty. I want to be a ballerina, don’t you?” Jenna rose to her feet and lifted her hands above her head, doing a whirling-dervish of a pirouette. “They have pretty shoes, and pretty dresses. I want to be pretty. Like Mommy. Right, Coco?” The two girls smiled up at the ceiling again.
Aw, how cute! They shared an imaginary friend. Once upon a time, I had an imaginary friend that kept me company while I rampaged around the countryside, hung out in trees, buried myself in the haymow, and talked to the animals. Her name was Anna, and she always visited along with a funny purple elephant named Ethan. Ethan liked to chat even more than Anna, and sometimes he could be very opinionated. He was also partial to Grandma Cora’s raspberry pie. Together the two of them would whisper to me about the stars and the moon, the wind and the rain, and everything under the sun.
Funny, how wild imaginations seemed to run in families.
Off in the distance I heard the doorbell ring, so I left the girls to their fun while I went to answer it. Downstairs I opened the door to a pretty young woman with long, near-black hair that swirled heavily around her shoulder blades, and a trim figure that still somehow managed to be reminiscent of the Barbie dolls the girls were playing with. “Hi there,” I said. “You must be—”
“Libby Turner. Hi.” The young woman was struggling with an exquisite leather purse the size of an airline carry-on and barely looked up.
“Everyone’s upstairs in Mel’s bedroom. Do you need me to show you up?”
She shook her head and headed for the stairs.
The brownies I was baking smelled as though they were about done, so I went into the kitchen to remove them from the oven, then made my way back upstairs. Mel’s new arrival had closed the door behind her, which was fine with me because it excused me from being friendly.
The girls heard me coming this time. “Auntie Maggie! Come and play with us!” Jenna exclaimed.
“Play!” Courtney echoed. Short and sweet, just like her.
“You want me to play?” I sat down with them, cross-legged on the floor, feeling like an overgrown pixie.
“You want a Barbie?”
“I’ll take Ken.” I picked up the ultraplastic male, who was dressed to the nines in a fluffy fur coat, ski boots, and skis. I have been looking for the perfect male, but, well, hmm. “Where has Ken been? He looks like Santa’s favorite elf.”
“He was cold. Mommy likes air-conditioning.”
“Uh-huh. Well, it is kind of hot outside.”
“I like hot.”
Jenna proceeded to strip her Barbie, a tawdry superplatinum blonde who looked right at home with the extreme lack of clothing, and then began to dress her in a glittery lamé bathing suit I wouldn’t have put on a dog. “Wow, that’s quite the swimsuit. Where did Barbie get that?”
Jenna didn’t take her eyes off her studied attempts to dress the doll in front of her. “Her name’s not Barbie.”
“It’s not?”
She shook her head. “Huh-uh. She’s Margaret.”
Taken aback, I raised my brows. “Margaret, eh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What on earth made you name her Margaret?”
Jenna screwed up her face at the doll, thinking mightily. “Coco said that was her name.”
Ohhhhhh. Coco. I hid the smile that threatened and tried very hard for the solemnity a serious chat with a four-year-old required. “Coco did, huh? And who is Coco?”
Jenna shrugged and went about her business. The gold lamé swimsuit with the Totally Eighties frilled shoulder was soon joined by a black pillbox hat, complete with veil, and a green faux crocodile attaché case. Over-the-knee dominatrix boots rounded out the lovely ensemble.
She held the doll up to me to show me the full effect. Disco Barbie had nothing on Margaret. “Mm. Very nice.”
Courtney wasn’t paying attention. Her dark head was bent over the doll she was trying to rehead. I closed my hands around hers and guided her through it. “What’s your dolly’s name, Courtie?”
Her response was immediate. “Poopy,” she said, using her Barbie as a hammer to whack the Ken doll I was still holding.
“Ah. Did Coco name her, too?”
Jenna heaved a long-suffering sigh. “No, Auntie Maggie. Courtie needs to go poopy.” She got to her feet and held out her hand. “Come on, Courtie, I’ll take you.”
The two of them toddled off toward the bathroom, leaving me to follow along behind like an awkward third wheel. As I was passing by Mel’s room, I noticed the door was open a crack.
“So, someone actually hung a dummy out there to threaten you?” I heard my sister ask. I slowed down and paused for a listen.
“Well, my husband. But yes. Left it right up there for everyone under God to see.”
Realization struck. Turner. Libby Turner. Ding-ding-ding. I felt a shiver run through me at the synchronicity that somehow seemed to be present in my life of late. But at least the figure hanging from the conveyer system at the feed mill had only been a dummy. It wasn’t real. There was consolation in that.
“Who does Joel think did it?”
“I don’t know. To tell you the truth, it scares me.” Libby’s voice again. “I mean, we knew people weren’t happy about the rate increases. Of course, everyone complained about the need for modern processing techniques,” she said, bitterness creeping in, “but when it came to footing the bill, I guess we were supposed to just eat that cost ourselves.”
“What do you expect, Libby? You’re dealing with a bunch of hick farmers for clientele.” Margo. Why did that not surprise me?
“I know, but . . . I mean, they’re in business for themselves, too. They know what it takes to stay afloat these days. I don’t understand why they can’t accept that we have all been hit by this economy. I mean, Joel works day and night up at the feed mill, and there I am stuck at home, wishing we could’ve afforded that pricy security system and scared half to death that the next disgruntled farmer is going to stop at the house while Joel’s at the office.”
“I heard it wasn’t just a dummy.” That must have been Jane. She’d been so quiet, I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“What was it?” my sister demanded, excitement in her voice. “Spill! Libby, if you don’t tell us, Jane will. Won’t you, Jane?”
There was a pause, and a sigh of resignation. “Well. A note was found with the dummy. But Joel says it’s nothing to worry about.”
“And what did it say?” Margo pressed in a quiet, unassuming way. Quiet and unassuming bordering on Machiavellian anarchy.
“Margo Dickerson-Craig, you aren’t thinking about whispering this into your husband’s ear, are you?” I’d always thought Jane was a little out of step with the girls in Mel’s circle. Perhaps she was better matched than I thought—s
he did seem to have a streak of the instigator in her.
Margo laughed merrily, a sound I had heard all too often in high school, and which still made me cringe in dislike. “Jane, I’m hurt. Just because my husband edits the Gazette doesn’t mean I pass on everything I hear.”
“No, you can’t!” Libby exclaimed. “Joel wouldn’t like it if it got out. He’d never forgive me.”
“Libby. Honey. We all know Joel will forgive you anything. Don’t be so modest about your powers of persuasion.” Her laugh trilled again. So mocking. Didn’t her “friends” hear that? Didn’t it bother them? “But seriously, Libby. You and Joel need to sell. That place is the last feed mill in the county, and with all the upgrades? You’re sitting on a gold mine. And then you don’t have to deal with all the headaches. Just think. You could retire and spend the rest of your life traveling to exotic places. Get out of this one-horse town. I know I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“You know the mill is Joel’s life, Margo. It’s been in his family for generations. He’s not going to sell.”
“Still . . . after that and the fistfight with that Cullins man that you told us about last month . . .”
“Wait—I didn’t hear anything about a fight!” Mel protested.
“Joel didn’t report it. Bad for business. Besides, it was just tempers flaring. You know how men are.”
“Do you really think it’s wise to let something like that go? I mean, what if it was the same person this time around?”
Jenna called me from the bathroom then, so I didn’t get to hear Libby’s response. I couldn’t help wondering if Tom knew about the fight. It wouldn’t be the first time someone around here had swept something ugly under the nearest rug. Something they found embarrassing. Something bad for business. Or at the very least, bad for their digestion.
It was, after all, the Hoosier way. Or was it just human nature?
Jenna had run the sink full of water, and Courtney had her hands plunged in almost to her armpits. Thank goodness for short summer sleeves. Somehow they’d managed not to slop it down their fronts and all over the floor yet. “And what is it that you girls think you’re doing?”
“Look, Auntie Maggie! They’re swimming!”
“Swimmin’!” Courtney echoed jubilantly.
“Courtie, no! Margaret has to go first. She’s oldest! Coco said so!” Jenna pushed Courtney’s doll away. Instantly I saw a determined expression I knew only too well crop up within Courtney’s round face as she stared defiantly up at her older sister. “And besides, Coco says—”
“No! No Coco. See, see.” And with that she pointed a pudgy finger in my direction.
See who? Me? No, not me. Behind me. I turned and glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find one of Mel’s guests patiently waiting to use the bathroom. Libby, maybe, or even Jane. Not Margo, though—patience was never her style. But nobody was there.
Confused, I reached over their heads and pressed the lever that would drain the sink. “All right, girls. Out of the bathroom. Come on.”
“But Auntie Maggie!”
“No buts. Your mom wouldn’t want you playing in here.”
“Swimmin’!” Courtney said, huffing out her lower lip.
“Out.”
Grumbling, muttering, and casting under-the-breath chicklet aspersions back at their favorite auntie, the girls shuffled off down the hallway. When they were safely ensconced in their room once again, with Courtney secure in my arms, I said, “Now, girls. Why don’t you tell me who Coco is, hm? Is she a friend?”
“Coco says you know who she is. She shouldn’t have to tell you.” Jenna smirked.
Great. A smart-alecky imaginary friend. What were the odds? “I would have to see her to know who she is,” I countered, logicking them at their own game.
“She says you could see her if you tried. She talks to you, too, but you don’t listen. You never listen.”
A prickle of nervousness began in the palms of my hands and traveled up my arms. “What did you say?”
Jenna was digging through a plastic tote box for yet another wardrobe change for Margaret. “Not me. Coco. Coco says you don’t listen to her, and she wants you to.”
“I don’t know who Coco is. I know you’re talking to her, but I don’t see her.”
“She’s right there.” Jenna pointed at a chair that had been pulled away from the little tea table in front of the window.
“There’s no one there, Jenna.”
“There is! She’s sitting right there, and she’s nodding her head.”
I glanced over pointedly—nothing there, nothing and no one—then pointedly back at Jenna. And that was when I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye, as my gaze shifted over, I saw a shimmer. A miragelike shimmer in front of the sheer white curtains, with a few tiny, silvery, flickering sparkles of light twinkling here and there for the space of a second. The briefest of visions . . . and then it was gone.
My mouth had fallen open. I snapped it closed, and bit my lip instead.
“Cee Cee!” Courtney cried, pointing at the closet. The deep, dark closet. The door had come open about six inches. “Cee Cee, Cee Cee, Cee Cee, Cee Cee . . .”
Realization struck. Cee Cee, not See, See. As in a name, not a verb. “Cee Cee’s in the closet?” I whispered, because I didn’t have breath for anything more.
I rose to my feet, Courtney’s repetitive chant reverberating in my brain as I made my way on tiptoe, between clear plastic tote boxes, Barbie paraphernalia, and stuffed animals, over to the closet. All the while thinking: This is a new house, only a couple of years old. It can’t be haunted. It really is just an imaginary friend or two. Kids have had imaginary friends forever. It’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. To be. Afraid. Of.
Closer and closer I crept, while the fine hairs on my arms rose to attention. Courtney kept babbling about Cee Cee, but at least it was at a more manageable volume. I blocked the sound by sheer dint of will and stretched my fingers out to touch the door.
I’ll prove there’s no one there. No monsters in the closet. No boogey . . . women. Just clothes and shoes and . . . dead space.
At the exact moment my fingers connected, the door to the hall slammed closed behind us. Three voices rose in a shriek of surprise loud enough to raise the roof. One of them sounded awfully familiar.
Oh, yeah. It was mine.
Chapter 4
The girls jumped at me, and I welcomed the contact. At least it was human. Coming from the hall I heard a door open and hurried footsteps approaching. The girls’ door swung inward, crashing against the doorstop behind it. Leading the charge was Lady Madonna herself. “What—on—earth—is going—on?”
I yanked myself back to the land of the living. “What are you doing out of bed? You know what the doctor said—”
Mel held up her hand. “Never mind that now. What was all the screaming about?”
And just like that, Madonna Mel turned into Mama Bear Mel of the snapping jowls and slashing claws. Behind her, her posse had gathered, all of them staring at me. I juggled the girls in my arms. “Melanie, go get back in bed, please. Nothing is wrong. The door slammed. It scared us. That’s all.”
She frowned at my brief explanation. “The door slammed.”
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“No. I didn’t. So the door slammed, Maggie. So what? What was so scary about that anyway?”
“Well, I don’t know . . . it . . . No one was near it.” It sounded lame, even to me. But I hadn’t been mistaken about the sudden heaviness that had crept into the room, the sense that we were not alone, and I certainly hadn’t imagined the conversations the girls had held with their “imaginary” friends.
“Oooooooooh. Poor widdle Maggie. The wind slammed the door and it scared widdle you?” She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “So, what is this really? Your idea of a joke?”
It wasn’t the wind. The windows were closed—the AC was on. And it definitely wasn’t me.
&
nbsp; “It was Coco, Mommy.”
Jenna’s quiet declaration stopped us all. Distracted, Mel blinked and shifted her attention to her oldest daughter. “Coco? Who’s Coco?”
“Mommy! You know. Coco. My friend I told you ’bout.”
Mel glanced at me. I shrugged. Which wasn’t easy, being loaded down with two cute yet surprisingly weighty little girls. My shoulders were killing me.
“Coco slammed the door to get Auntie Maggie’s ’ttention.”
If there was a universal hand symbol for imaginary friend, it was beyond my ken, and I couldn’t think of any other way to tell Mel what I believed in front of the girls. Only . . . was that really what I believed? Or was there more to Coco and Cee Cee than met the eye?
Behind us there was an audible click, followed by the unmistakable hum as the TV turned on. Mel and I glanced over, certain we’d find Courtney with the remote in her hand. But the remote was on top of the TV housing. No one was near it.
And then as we watched on, the TV began to drift through the channels. When the flickering stopped, I caught my breath. On the screen was a goofy bird, bouncing off the edges of the screen, a-whooping and a-hollering: “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs . . .”
“Oh,” Mel said in a quiet voice that was not anything like her usual. All the color seemed to have drained from her face, and she began to sag against the wall.
“Oh, jeez!” I rushed over to her and jammed my shoulder under her arm for support. Margo surprised me by following suit on Mel’s other side. Together we managed to get her over to one of the beds.
“Mel? Melanie? Are you all right?” I rubbed her hands between mine. “Come on, honey, wake up. Jenna, can you go get a bottle of water from the refrigerator for your mommy?”
Jane, who had been standing quietly by this whole time, stepped forward and held out her hand to Jenna. “I’ll take her. Courtney, do you want to come with us?”
“I’ll go, too,” Libby said, taking Courtney by the hand.
Mel’s eyes had rolled back in her head. “Margo,” I said quietly, forgetting for the moment that she was my sworn enemy and mostly evil, “could you run and find a clean cloth, wet it with cool water, and bring it to me here?”