The Lucky Cat Shop

by Debi Matlack

  “Where should we put it so the most people see it, you think?” Suddenly shy, he pointed to a small bare spot low on one side. I shook my head. “Nah, I think we should do this.” I reached into the center of the jumbled mess of papers and tugged them free, leaving a wide expanse of empty space at the perfect reading level. I laid these on the counter to peruse and thin later and tacked his notice up. “How’s that?”

  He nodded and smiled, getting braver since I was taking him seriously. His finger pointed out a detail on the flyer. “Rocket’s collar is different, I brought his leash so I could show people.”

  “May I see it? I can give people a better description after I get a good look.” He drew a length of red nylon from his backpack and handed it over. I only wanted to look at the leash, not get a psychic telegraph from it. Despite my preferences, a small vibration zipped through my hands as I took it from him. The red strap decorated with a ribbon embroidered with tiny spaceships sewn to it was replaced by flashes of walks in the woods, along the streets downtown, rides in a car. I could see a field in my mind, a big oak in the center with a stream running alongside. I gave the leash back with a small shudder. I now required large quantities of coffee, stat.

  The boy looked at me curiously. “You okay?

  “I’m okay. Is there a field with a big tree and a creek you go to with Rocket?” He nodded. “Check there. Maybe he’s still scared and went someplace he feels safe.”

  “I’ll tell my mom.” He darted for the door, paused and waved. “Thank you. Bye!”

  As soon as the door closed behind him I took an unsteady step to the barstool behind the counter and sat. My hands had a slight tremor, a vibration I could feel through my whole body. I was afraid of an oncoming wave of agony, but it never materialized. After several minutes of anticipation, I just felt a little vague and floaty. Coffee would put things right. I only hoped the dog was where I said he was, whole and healthy.

  Chapter 8

  As with any business, there were multiple problems with operating a store and living in a hundred-plus-year-old building. Unlike other businesses, however, not many of mine had to do with how good or bad sales were or how well the space was furnished. My problems stemmed primarily from my newly-acquired abilities. Curse was more like it.

  Various spirits aside from Poppy made themselves known to me in one way or another. The motion alarm went off multiple times in a row several nights in a row, at first jarring me from bed to creep downstairs with Poppy’s old Colt. After the third or fourth awakening that night I slept in a chair next to the control panel. On day five of almost no sleep, I had an out-loud conversation with an empty store at 3:30 one morning, threatening to find ministers, priests, rabbis, and holy men and women of every denomination I could Google to perform a mass exorcism. Things settled down after that.

  One morning I came downstairs and Ernie rocketed past me to claw at one corner of the storeroom. As he growled and swatted, I caught glimpses of a dirty, bedraggled man. The style of his clothing placed his corporeal existence somewhere in the 1930’s. He shrank back from the cat in flickering pulses, and his expression pleaded with me.

  “Cut it out, Ernie. He’s not hurting anything.”

  I finally flapped my hands at the cat and chased him into the front of the store. With a final flicker, like a faulty television, the hobo-image gave me a grateful smile and vanished, for good as far as I know. Maybe he just needed someone to see him, one more time.

  Other spirits weren’t so accommodating. The cemetery was just down the road and my name must have gone out on some newly-dead hotline, because the ghosts of the just-departed started showing up at the store, many of them confused about their change in status from alive to dead. Now I was some sort of ghost counselor? Great. Some accepted what I had to tell them, but some were downright demanding and refused to leave me alone, wanting me to perform various tasks they were unable to accomplish. Poppy showed up sometimes and dealt with these, but he was around less and less. Determined to have some peace, I went to a swimming pool supply store and came home with a pickup truck full of salt. This was spread in a thick unbroken ring around the shop. I used a lot less weed-killer for months afterward and a lot of my non-corporeal visitations stopped. But not all of them.

  One Saturday afternoon, Nilda Parmenter phased right through a customer perusing the series of large clocks I’d made from mismatched teacups and saucers. Until the previous week when she died quietly in her sleep, Nilda had been the pharmacist at Mann’s Drugstore. She had held a reign of benevolent tyranny over the town’s residents from behind her counter for over thirty years. When I left the hospital she’d filled my prescriptions and expressed genuine sympathy for everything that had happened. Despite, or perhaps because of her strong opinions and unsolicited advice, she was one of my favorite people in town and I was sorry to see her go. But, like Poppy, I guess she wasn’t really gone, not yet. The clocks stopped as she passed them on her way to me; the out-of-town lady shivered, glanced up at the air duct and rubbed her arms.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll go adjust the air. It gets chilly in the back sometimes.” Without waiting to hear what the customer said in reply, I beelined for the back room and slid the door shut. I turned to face the trailing spirit, who drew up short. My arms prickled with gooseflesh as I wagged a finger at her.

  “Miz Parmenter, you’re dead. You need to figure that out and move on. I can’t have every confused spirit from Pinehaven Community Cemetery harassing me when they don’t understand that they’ve died.”

  The diaphanous old woman, dressed not in her funeral clothes but the sensible shoes, polyester slacks and tabard she wore every day to work gave me a stern look. What are you babbling about, young lady? I just came by here after work to see your store. Your grandpa sure is proud of you.

  Now I was confused. “Miz Parmenter, you can’t work at the pharmacy, you’ve passed on.”

  Pish posh, there’s still plenty for me to do, even if I’m not physically there. What would Old Mr. Mann do without me? But I do understand your position. I’ll do what I can to pass the word.

  I was taken aback. Trust Nilda Parmenter, in her infinite practicality, to have a better handle on my situation than I did. “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

  Not to worry, sweetie. You’ll find your feet. Now, back to work. With that she turned and faded.

  Well, then. I shrugged and went back out to the store. And sold three of the teacup clocks to the lady from South Florida.

  The visitations from the dearly departed came coupled with my odd waking visions, both of the occasional aura and when I forgot to brace myself when touching an unfamiliar object. I started to research my symptoms, if that was even the right word. What I did know is what happened to me wasn’t normal. Most people with head injuries had dizziness, trouble remembering things; I got the whole psychic enchilada. All in all, I would have preferred memory loss.

  I learned the ability to know an inanimate object’s past, through touch, was called psychometry. Still the word simply didn’t convey the scope of what I experienced, especially when it took me by surprise, like the letters in the trunk, even the dog’s leash. I could smell the air, see the surroundings, just as if I were there myself. But I also felt the emotions of the other people who had handled the items, their strength depending on how long it was in their possession, how attached they were to it, as if each person had left behind an imprint of themselves, like footsteps on a beach. The oldest were often the most easily overlooked, sometimes they hadn’t had enough time to sink in and the waves of subsequent handling washed away the traces. Let me tell you though, some of those impressions were downright fossilized.

  In the interest of making my life as peaceful as possible, I researched more, shall we say, non-mainstream ways of layering protection on my building and myself. I made good on my threat to get a priest in, though to perform a blessing, not an exorcism. That helped a little. A pagan group performed a full moon ceremony in the parking ar
ea and alley out back. I checked out books from the library on pagan and Eastern religions, witchcraft, magick. I looked up anything I could think of that dealt more directly with spirits from the afterlife and whatever else may be out there than the traditional Bible Belt admonitions of ‘suffer not a witch to live’ and ‘Devil, begone!’ Such books were a bit scarce in a small Southern town, so thank God for the internet. I acquired a few of these volumes as inventory, always reading before offering it for sale. The idea of alternative religions always appealed to me and had helped drive a wedge between me and Poppy. He was firmly on the side of Jesus Christ and any opinion I had to the contrary met with glowering disapproval if not outright condemnation. But now, despite his occasional appearances, Poppy remained mum about my choices in reading material and philosophy. Maybe being dead offered some perspective.

  A long rectangular room lay beneath my apartment stairs and I sketched out a space for myself. Not a living space, but a retreat, my very own Cupboard Under The Stairs. The contractors had finished it simply as storage, drywall and white paint, the ceiling tapering down to the floor at one end, growing tall under the landing, echoing the shape of the stairs above. This left me with two wedge shaped blank walls and a long narrow floor. I thought about which way the building faced and realized the short end was east. A perfect spot for an altar. I considered it all for a moment, then headed out into the store. I chose a small table from my inventory that probably once held a telephone or decorative object. This went at the low end.

  As I perused the empty space, an image kept popping into my mind. A symbol I had seen in various forms that translated across multiple faiths and beliefs. One version of it appealed strongly to me and I had acquired a few silver pendants. I scurried back out to the store to grab one, a pencil and a stepstool. In thirty minutes I had the basic sketch of a massive Tree of Life, roots and branches intertwined in a Celtic weave, forming the whole image into a large circle that covered the whole southern wall. Staring down at the floor, I quickly drew the same image there to fill the room from side to side. This circle was only six feet or so across, but my mind was already designing a tile mosaic layout that would make the image permanent. The idea of what amounted to a psychic safe room was foremost as I drew. I completed the circle and stepped inside. A subliminal buzz I hadn’t even realized was present dulled as I crossed into the design. I couldn’t help the relieved sigh that welled out. Now if there were only a way to get that design under the whole building, I’d be set.

  Chapter 9

  Business improved, with more live customers than dead ones. I set up an online sales system, getting buyers from all over and settled into my new life. Everything was fine until Mike showed up one afternoon. I guess he’d taken up Poppy’s vacated office as family harbinger of doom.

  “Maeve, we need to do something about Poppy’s house.”

  We were alone in the store so I felt no need to curb my tongue. “What’s this ‘we’ shit, white boy? As I recall, Poppy left the house to you and your family.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just sitting out there, going to seed. I know if I do something with it, you’d want to be involved.”

  “Do something? Like what?”

  Mike shrugged, getting frustrated with me, I could tell. “Taking inventory, cleaning it up, picking out stuff we want to keep.”

  “Why? You planning to sell it?”

  Mike sighed and narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t want to let it fall down with nobody living there.”

  “You can’t sell it, Mike.”

  “Why not?” He set his jaw and I suddenly felt a strange sensation. This was almost the same conversation I’d had with Poppy right before he died except this time I was on the old Man’s side. And now I think I understood why the old man had been so adamant about not letting go of the building. If Poppy had been attached to the store, I was attached to that house and property.

  “Because it’s our home, Mike. We grew up there.”

  He shook his head with a wry smile. “I thought you’d be all for letting go of things we don’t need.”

  “But we do need it.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know it’s a bad idea to sell it. Maybe we can go fix it up, use it on the weekends, holidays. It is right by the lake and all.”

  Mike’s smile deepened. “I thought you might say that.”

  “Sneaky bastard. You’re as bad as Poppy.”

  “Thank you. Pick you up tomorrow morning?”

  “Not before sunup.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  Aside from gathering a few items when I moved into the store apartment, I hadn’t been to the house the day Poppy died. I expected to feel his presence there but it was quiet. He seemed to choose his comings and goings so maybe he decided to give us some peace while we worked. Karen brought cleaning supplies and scrubbed while Mike and I sorted things. The house had been occupied by four generations of MacAllisters, so there was a lot of stuff to go through.

  The big attic fan roared, sucking air through the windows, drawing the scent of Karen’s soaps and the sound of the kids playing in the front yard into the crammed space at the top of the wobbly fold-down ladder. I passed boxes down to Mike until all that was left up there were a few pieces of furniture that would have to be dismantled to get them down. A break for lunch allowed us to perch among the many boxes and listen to the kids speculate what might be contained within. Christopher was hoping for Tonka trucks. I wouldn’t have minded finding some of those myself. The fact that contemporary Tonka toys were no longer made from steel disturbed me greatly but anything Mike and I had played with was probably long since destroyed. We weren’t particularly gentle with our toys. Deanna thought there should be some dresses and dolls that she might want. I hated to disappoint her, but if she thought there were hand-me-down dolls and accoutrements from my time in the house, she was mistaken. She was much more of a girly-girl than I had ever been. I was always outside, up a tree, in the creek, wandering the woods. Maybe an ancestor had stashed some dolls up there; if so, I knew nothing of it.

  It was all going to go someplace; not one box was going back up those rickety ladder steps. Baloney and chips consumed, the kids got bored waiting for us to start opening boxes. I actually intended to haul most of it to the store and put it in the back so I could go through it one box at a time. I felt sure these boxes wouldn’t hold any nasty surprises, not like that trunk had. That thing was still in the back room at the store, under a chuppah cloth that I had liberally salted, a large wooden cross from a deconsecrated church leaning against it. It seemed to glower in its corner like only a malevolent piece of luggage could. I hoped that these items, simmered in the family stew as long as they had been would only offer me a tingle of kinship.

  Mike handed me an empty box and shoved me toward my old room. “Go get the rest of your crap. I’ll get the old man’s stuff packed.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came and I shut it again instead. It was weird being back in Poppy’s house after such a long absence. My recovery, the store renovation and work had kept us all busy. Now the house seemed like it belonged to someone else, and we were just the maintenance crew, tidying things away. But the view from every window, every smudge on the wall, every creak of the floor triggered a memory that I was loathe to abandon again. The clear-out would eventually be a good thing, but right at that moment, I was six years old again and homesick, even though I stood in the middle of where I grew up. Mike reached out and tousled my stubbled hair, only just long enough now to be able to manifest some other configuration than prickly.

  “I know.”

  And somehow he did. Even though he had no clue that I ‘saw’ Poppy from time to time, Mike still understood that we needed that conclusion, some sense of closure that came from cleaning up and gathering up someone’s no-longer-needed belongings. God alone knew if we’d ever get any kind of closure in his murder. The spot on my head
throbbed once and then was cool, like a phantom hand lay gently over it. Poppy was here and he accepted what we were doing and everything was okay again.

  As summer took hold with a vengeance, we sold one of the commercial properties Poppy had left to us. It was a vacant single story building across the right side alley from the shop, a much smaller building than mine. The Lucky Cat Shop took up the better part of what passed for a block in this town. Letting go of the extra parcel seemed the right thing to do. I already had my business going and Mike was content as the owner/manager at the auto parts store.

  Right after school let out, the sold sign was replaced with a sign that declared ‘Coming Soon! Yellow Submarine, Groovy Soups and Sandwiches.’ By July, remodeling had begun. It had been a Mexican restaurant in the past, so there wasn’t much that needed done to bring it back into operation as a sandwich shop. The bricks were painted a bright canary yellow, in accordance with the name; I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It did make for a great navigational point. Turn right at the gaudy yellow building, parking in the back.

  The first of August was the grand opening and I was curious. I had met the new owner once or twice. Carrie Steiner was excited by the prospect of having her own business, having left everything behind in Illinois after her husband died. She was a little plump, a bit matronly, but as enthusiastic as I had ever seen anyone be about completely uprooting their life and plunking it back down in a nowhere town in Florida. Carrie was downright bubbly, she cared passionately about everything and everybody and it simultaneously amused and irked me. I was probably the youngest curmudgeon in town since my Poppy had been this age.