“Are you, um, doing it?” Renee asked. Effie turned her head to us, revealing that her eyes were closed and nodded affirmatively.
“Okay, next room,” Effie said moments later.
“That was it?” Renee asked.
“What vere you expecting? I vas to rise up like the vitch in Vicked?”
“Kind of,” Renee said, laughing.
Effie began making her way to the kitchen where she stopped dead in her tracks. “They’re here.”
“Who, the ghosts?” I asked.
“No, the caterers for your party,” Effie said. “Of course, the ghosts.” She began clapping again, then froze. “This is veird.” You know that when a ghost-buster who sounds as if she’s from Transylvania claims that something is “veird,” it has to be off-the-charts bizarre. “This has not happened to me before.”
“What hasn’t happened?” Renee asked eagerly.
“One of these ghosts is very pushy. Usually, they clear out when I clap and do my incantations, but this one says she vants to talk to you. The man says it’s time to go, but the voman is yelling now. She says she vill go novhere vithout first speaking to Lucy. She’s very pushy. She seems to be in a very bad mood.”
“What?!” I gasped. “She called me by name? She said she wants to speak to the owner of the house, or did she name me specifically?”
“She says ‘Lucy,’” Effie said.
“The ghost said she wants to speak with Lucy?” I asked, incredulous.
“Do you know a Rita and Arnold?” Effie asked.
“Oh my God!” escaped from my lips. “Look, I know Renee said she wanted more drama, but I’m happy just getting rid of the ghosts. I don’t need a whole production to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. The magazine’s paying for this anyway, so don’t feel like you need to —”
“Rita asked if you vant a glass of pink vine to settle your nerves,” Effie said. This was unbelievable. My aunt Rita always had a bottle of “pink wine” open and poured herself a tall glass after a day teaching kindergarten, saying that it settled her nerves. How did this Effie woman know that? Is this sort of stuff on Google? Was her son blogging? How did Effie even know about Rita? As I continued my silent questioning, Effie said Rita was coming through her.
“She’s what?!” I said.
“I knew this would be good!” Renee chirped.
“Lucy, mamaleh, don’t be alarmed,” Effie said, now sounding distinctly like my Aunt Rita. Rita always told people not to be alarmed. She never said, “Don’t panic,” or, “Stay calm.” It was always, “Don’t be alarmed.”
“Okay, Effie, the joke’s over,” I said.
“Effie’s gone now,” Effie — or Rita — said.
“Please stop,” I begged. “This really isn’t funny.”
“Don’t be alarmed, Lucy. I only want to tawk to you about this ghost-busting nonsense. Why can’t Arnold and I stay put? We’re very comf’table here and now you come along and try to get rid of us.” Renee interrupted and asked if I knew who this was. “Zip it unless you want another turned ankle,” Rita said.
“Aunt Rita!” I yelled, now fully accepting that my aunt was the one spooking my house. It was Rita who walked with a limp after she was afflicted with polio as a child. She was more than a tad cranky and shopped compulsively. As wholly incredible as it seemed, clearly it was my Aunt Rita who was causing all of the trouble with my home and its guests. “If you wanted to stay here, why have you been abusing everyone?! None of the artists have been able to create a thing since they’ve arrived. Every woman who’s visited has left with a limp. Interesting women have become crazed shopaholics. Why would you wreak such havoc on the place if you wanted to stay?!”
“That’s my way, mamaleh,” she said. “I wanted a place that reminded me of home and my home had a cranky woman who limped. You know I couldn’t stand being forgotten, so I decided to give a little piece of myself to yaw life. I tried to live inside you for a while, but you weren’t crabby enough. Limp or no limp, you were always too damn happy. Same with that friend of yaws, Robin. But Jacquie, now there was a body ripe for the taking. And she could really hang in there with my shopping sprees. It hasn’t been all bad. You haven’t appreciated the home repairs Arnold’s been doing?”
“Uncle Arnold’s been working on the house?!” I asked, incredulously.
“He was always handy,” Rita said.
“What about the breaking glass?” I asked.
“Listen, I’m new at this. I wasn’t perfect in life, why should I be in death?”
Then switching voices, Effie’s mouth began to move again. “Hello, sweetheart. Don’t be too angry with Rita.”
“Uncle Arnold?” I asked. This was too bizarre, even for my family.
“You have termites in the attic,” he informed me.
“Why are you two here?” I asked.
Switching back to the voice of Aunt Rita, Effie continued, “Why not here? You love the place, why shouldn’t we?”
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “Effie, this is obviously some sort of scam you’ve got going. So, you can do impersonations of my aunt and uncle. It doesn’t mean I buy any of this.”
“Listen, big shot,” she snapped. “When you were born, Arnold hung a mobile over your crib when my brothah couldn’t figure out how to do it. Too smacked up to figure it out.” Smacked up? “When you visited us in Merrick, you ate Kraft Macaroni and Cheese at every meal and liked it extra milky. When you were in fourth grade, you confided in me that your teacher, Mrs. Fried, didn’t like you and I told you that you only had to be with her for the rest of the year, but she had to live with her miserable self for the rest of her life. Convinced now?”
Holy shit.
Renee nudged me after my body froze. “Y’okay, Lucy?” she asked.
“This can’t be true,” I whispered.
“You must have left a little room for the possibility if you were willing to bring in Effie,” she reminded me. Effie was now sitting at my kitchen table with her face buried in her hands, muttering that they had to leave. She seemed to be using her normal voice, but she appeared drained and frail. My aunt could do that to people. Then switching back to my Aunt Rita’s voice, she said, “We promise to behave, mamaleh. Arnold and I agreed that we’ll be quiet from now on. I’ve had my fun.”
“It was fun for you to sprain my ankle?!” I asked.
“I said I’ll knock it off!” she shouted, making me feel guilty for asking the question. She was a pro at that, too. “Where are we supposed to go?!” Rita said, sadly.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here. Your presence is a distraction, to say the least,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was carrying on such a ludicrous exchange. “Why don’t you go to South Florida with Aunt Bernice? No one will notice another two dead people there.” There was no response. “Aunt Rita?” I called, looking around. I didn’t know why I was looking around since I never actually saw her and I wasn’t fully convinced that any of this was real. Effie began shivering and her eyes bolted open.
“Are you okay?” Renee asked as she made her way over to warm Effie with her arms.
“That’s never happened before,” Effie said.
“Come on, Effie,” I said. “You can knock it off now. Earl put you up to that, didn’t he? It was a good one, really,” I said, laughing. “But you can come clean now. How did you know all that stuff about my aunt and uncle?”
“They have gone” was all Effie said.
“I know,” I returned. “She died last year and he went a few years earlier.”
“I mean your house has no more spirits. They have left,” Effie said.
“This is so cool,” Renee said, making her way to the fridge. She took a pitcher of lemonade and began pouring it into three glasses for us. “Do you think Jack wants some?”
“Renee!” I shouted. “Forget about the lemonade. I want to know how she pulled this off. Come on, Effie, the joke’s over. It was funny, but now I want to know how you
did that!”
Effie wiped her brow, clearly fatigued. “It has never happened like this before. Never do spirits use my body like that.”
Turning to me, Renee said, “You said she was pushy.”
Effie continued, “Never do customers complain after their house has been cleared. Be happy. You have clean house and you have story for the magazine.”
So that’s what this was all about. Earl had instructed Effie to make a dramatic presentation so I would have good material for my article for Healthy Living. He always struck me as more ethical than that, but these magazines survive on advertising dollars which depend on sales, so every magazine does what it can to attract readers. In any case, I didn’t believe a bit of what had just occurred, so I would not be able to write an article about it for Earl. He would just have to send his freak show to another writer’s house. As sleazy of an editor as he turned out to be, he was still a pretty nice guy and wouldn’t give me a hard time about my being unable to write an article on the house-clearing. Besides, I had a dozen new ideas for articles and wanted to get started on writing them as soon as I could. Perhaps I’d even skip fireworks that evening and start drafting ideas.
Chapter Thirty
Three weeks later, I’d pitched, sold, and written three magazine articles and drafted an outline for my next book. When I spoke with Earl, he was so earnest about not being responsible for Effie’s production that I felt guilty for making the charge. “Lucy, we’re friends,” he said, hurt. “I would never trick you like that for a story. I would never trick anyone for that matter.”
“Come on,” I said, lightly. “I’m not angry. I just want the truth. How did she know all that stuff about my aunt?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m sorry you don’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with Effie channeling your aunt.” He then moved on to talking to me about the story on holistic healing for pets. Earl did not scramble to convince me he was telling the truth, which convinced me that he was. It seems the less people try to convince you of their sincerity, the more they actually did so. I had a friend who worked at Macy’s in college and said you could always tell the people who were returning stolen merchandise because they talked too much. Their story went on just a bit too long. The legitimate returns simply placed the items on the counter and waited for their money back. Honesty was quiet whereas guilt was fidgety.
“Earl, I’m going to ask you this one more time, and I want you to know that if you tell me you put Effie up to pretending to channel Aunt Rita, I will not be mad,” I promised. “There will be absolutely no hard feelings. Do you understand?”
He sighed. “Okay,” he said. I knew it! I knew he set this whole thing up. There was no way my Aunt Rita and Uncle Arnold were living, um, not living at my house and possessing the guests. Thank goodness the world makes sense again. Crazy editors, I can understand. Earl continued after he sighed. “I’m getting a little tired of this conversation,” he finished. What? “Okay, I’m getting tired of the conversation”?! Earl’s delivery remained steady. “When you’re ready to talk about the piece, gimme a call. In the meantime, I’ve got an issue to put to bed and a lunch date I’m already late for.” Before I could apologize, he hung up.
August was thick with humidity. Every step I took felt as though I had gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe. I stayed indoors where it was air-conditioned much of the day, and went to Renee’s pool to swim with Adam. As I sat at the kitchen table overlooking the guest cottages, I was amazed at the difference a few weeks made. I sipped at a sweating glass of iced tea and watched Maxime and Jacquie playfully interacting with each other. The formerly depressed artist was actually tickling his formerly bitchy wife, and she seemed delighted by it though she was swatting him away as she laughed. Maxime had completed several ink sketches of his wife and, remarkably, Jacquie and Chantrell together. The women seemed utterly unaffected by their past love triangle. Or perhaps it wasn’t so past and it had taken on another incarnation. Whatever had transpired among the three of them was more than I needed to know. As long as there was peace at home, I was happy. Chantrell came to sit outside and play her cello, and Jacquie waved to her brightly. I overheard Maxime thank Chantrell for her suggestion of using diluted mud to create “earth ink.” He ran inside the house and returned with sheets of white paper that he showed her. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see what he’d made, but could surmise that he was showing her what he’d done with his new medium. Chantrell’s eyes lit when she saw it.
Jacquie caught me watching their interaction, but instead of yelling at me as I’d grown to expect, she waved her arm for me to come down and look at Maxime’s drawing. She pinched her thumb and index finger together and kissed them to tell me how magnificent she thought they were. The day after Effie came to visit, Jacquie became a new person. Rather, she returned to her old self, the woman who had walked through our doors on Valentine’s Day with red wine and reminiscences. A few days after the de-spooking, Jacquie knocked on my door and asked if we could talk. She apologized for her behavior and explained that she and Maxime had an extremely stressful few years where they acquired more debt than they could possibly handle. Jacquie believed this is what caused her disposition to sour and apologized profusely. Their financial situation had not improved, but something inside her had, she explained after she promised to be a more gracious tenant.
As the three were looking at Maxime’s new work, Randy came outside in his bare feet and cotton shorts. As I reflected on the last three weeks at the house, I realized that Randy hadn’t broken a single glass object since the day Effie visited.
The time had come to admit the truth. The bizarre reality was that my house had been haunted by Aunt Rita and Uncle Arnold. Though completely illogical, it was the only explanation. As wonderful as it was to have a house filled with laughter, art, and peace, I couldn’t help feel a bit guilty about evicting my aunt’s and uncle’s spirits. As a child, when I visited their home, they never sent me back to Anjoli’s when I misbehaved. Rita had offered to change her ways. Maybe I should have given her a second chance. Where would they go? What would they do? Is tomorrow another day for the dead?
As Adam and I drove to Renee’s house to swim, my cell phone rang. After I answered, I didn’t hear anything. “Mancha, is that you?” I asked. I heard nothing, not even Anjoli talking in the background. “Mother!” I shouted. “Anjoli, are you there?!”
“Hello, darling,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
What can she do for me? Who was this impostor?
“Mancha just called me,” I said. “I guess he was calling to say hello.”
“Darling, I have some very exciting news about the baby,” she began. “Are you sitting down?”
“I’m driving,” I told her. “What baby? Do you mean Mancha?”
“It is about, well, the dog formerly known as Mancha,” Anjoli said.
“Mother, what are you talking about?”
“Darling, don’t get all wound up. I have only good news to share,” she said. Then nothing.
“Okay, what is it?”
“First, J.Lo has been completely healed of her hair-pulling disorder.”
“Jennifer Lopez has a hair-pulling disorder?”
“That’s the second piece of news, darling. When I saw that J.Lo had finally stopped chewing on her paws, I took her to the vet immediately, and he said that she was a girl all along! Isn’t that a hoot?! Naturally I went out and bought the cutest pink rhinestone collar to go with her new gender. When the KAT girls saw it, they told me about this pop star, Jennifer Lopez, who goes by the nickname J.Lo, who once wore an engagement ring with a pink stone. So I figured it was a sign that the baby’s true name was J.Lo.”
“Okay, back up a minute here, Mother. The dog stopped pulling his fur out of his paws, so you decided to take him to a vet?”
“The only time to see a traditional doctor is when you’re well, darling.”
“And he told you Mancha is a female?”
“J.Lo, darling. Her name is J.Lo.”
“You didn’t notice that she was female before? I mean, wasn’t the absence of a penis your first clue?”
“Oh no, darling. J.Lo was fixed, so when I thought he was a boy, I figured they had simply cut his penis off during the procedure.”
“They don’t cut the —” I sighed, exasperated. “Never mind. Well, it’s a good thing he, um, she stopped the fur-pulling.”
“Now I can start thinking about dog shows again, darling! It’s funny. I think J.Lo is happy that we know she’s a girl now. She holds herself a little different now. She’s got a little more attitude.”
“So it sounds like you’re getting along better with your neighbors,” I said.
“They are the sweetest,” Anjoli returned.
“I thought that was the problem.”
“They’ve grown on me. I’m giving a talk on skin care at the house on Thursday night. They say I’m an inspiration. You know how I am. If I can inspire just one person, I have to do what I’m called to.”
“Skin care is your calling?”
“Don’t be ludicrous, darling. I’m not so one-dimensional. My calling is total beauty. Skin, hair, clothing, make-up — the full package. Darling, that reminds me of something I need to discuss with you. It’s a bit heavy. Are you sitting down?”
“Still driving, Mother.”
“I went to see Kendra last night and it was devastating.” Kendra is one of my mother’s oldest friends. They shared their first apartment together in Greenwich Village in the late fifties, before my parents met. They went to poetry readings, dance performances, and lectures together. They were inseparable. Kendra was Anjoli’s maid of honor, and when Kendra’s husband came on to Anjoli, she turned him down flatly. She told me that Jim was not her type, but she couldn’t fool me. Even at twelve years old, I could see that Jim was an extremely handsome and successful guy. That was exactly Anjoli’s type. The part of her that declined the invitation was the teaspoon of decency that kept her from screwing her best friend’s husband. Kendra now had cancer. Not the kind of cancer where you go in for surgery and chemotherapy, then fight your way back to health. The kind of cancer where you’re in a hospital bed at home, waiting to die. “She wasn’t even conscious,” Anjoli sniffed. “And tubes in the nose, a needle in her arm. She looked horrible.”
The Queen Gene Page 20