Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  I decided I’d start my new life—the one where I cook for my daughter and maybe occasionally guests—this morning, and got a box of Bisquick out of the cabinet to start making pancakes. I didn’t let anyone see that I had to read the ingredients from the side of the box. Who knew there were eggs in pancakes?

  By the time my cell phone buzzed indicating a text, I was more than ready for the interruption. Maxie had been offering cooking tips, and I was gullible enough that Paul had to tell me she was “kidding” when she suggested adding Tabasco. I pulled the phone from my pocket and was surprised to see a text from Mom. I’d planned to at least let her sleep until nine before I called to see how she was holding up with the snow.

  Naturally, when I opened the phone and read the text, just as Melissa wandered into the kitchen, it was indecipherable.

  It read: “frncs n jrr r hr fr brnch wnn sy hll.”

  Luckily, this time I had my daughter nearby, and simply handed her the phone to translate. “Easy,” Melissa said. “It says, ‘Frances and Jerry are here for brunch. Wanna say hello?”

  Frances and Jerry!

  I grabbed the phone from Melissa’s hand as she asked what was wrong. I ignored her and immediately called Mom.

  “Hello, Alison,” she said when she answered. “Isn’t this snow something? Our power went out a little while ago—I think the snow brought down a wire—and when Jerry came for brunch, Frances had decided to come along. Isn’t that nice?”

  I didn’t feel better about Jerry coming over anymore.

  “How did they get there?” I asked. “The snow must be up to their waists.”

  “Please, Alison,” my mother scoffed. “This is an active adult community. They had cross-country skis.”

  Now, I had no reason to think that Mom was in any immediate danger. Even if Frances had been the one who killed Lawrence, she was not aware I knew that. And I hadn’t seen any evidence that Jerry was involved, despite his rather menacing move toward me at the show the night before.

  On the other hand, I was scared to pieces for my mother, but I knew if I said something straight out to her about it, she’d react badly and Frances, then, would know.

  And I couldn’t get to Mom to help.

  “Mom, listen. Don’t react to what I’m going to say.”

  “Don’t react?” she said out loud. “What do you mean, don’t react?”

  This wasn’t going well. “I’m saying, after I tell you what I’m going to tell you, say nothing. No. Say, ‘That’s nice, dear.’ Can you do that?”

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  Paul floated down toward me. He looked concerned.

  “No, Mom. I wasn’t…Okay, listen. I’m going to say one more thing. And after that thing, I want you to say, ‘Okay, Alison.’ Don’t say it now. Here’s the thing I want to tell you: I think Frances might have had something to do with…”

  Suddenly there was that silence you get when the other end of a cell phone call has been disrupted. It was as if Mom had driven into a tunnel. I stared at the phone. I don’t know why people do that. It’s not like the phone is responsible for what just happened; it’s just that you can’t see the other person, and you have to stare at something.

  And I still couldn’t say anything upsetting in front of Melissa. But she was no fool and had sat down and put her hand to her mouth based strictly on my tone of voice.

  “What is it, Alison?” Morgan asked. “Is your Mom all right?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “She’s fine. The connection just gave out.” I looked toward Paul. He was glowering with concern. Even Maxie looked worried; she adores Mom. “Can you excuse me for just one second?” I asked Nan and Morgan.

  They nodded. Neither said anything. I looked at Melissa; she appeared to be holding back tears.

  I wasn’t fooling anybody.

  I spent much of the next hour on the phone. After trying to reach Mom six more times, my next call was to Lieutenant McElone, who would surely have forgiven my trespass under the circumstances, but I got put straight through to her voice mail. I left a message. Then I called the Manalapan police, under Morgan’s tutelage, to ask for a “status check” on a senior citizen. The dispatcher who took the call wrote down all the information but mentioned something about there being thirty inches of snow on the ground and suggested it might be awhile before they managed to get out to the complex, which also probably had not been plowed just yet.

  Saying that I knew a murderer was in the house with my mother would probably have been construed as hysteria, leading to someone being sent to my house instead of Mom’s, so I refrained from making that statement. Again, as per Morgan’s instructions.

  Nan and Morgan began trying to get in touch with some of his statewide connections to see if there was some reason Mom’s cell phone wouldn’t be answering other than the one I was trying not to think about. But the state police had been mobilized to deal with the unexpected blizzard, and his friends were hard to reach. I told the Hendersons I was going upstairs to think, but Melissa and I both knew why we were heading to her room. We never questioned it, never said a word; we just both got into the dumbwaiter and pulled our way up.

  Paul and Maxie were already waiting when we got there. Paul was pacing in thin air and Maxie, galvanized by anger when someone she cared about was in danger, flew about the room like she’d had too much Ritalin and helium at the same time.

  “We don’t know it was Frances,” Paul reminded me.

  “Yes, we do. And Jerry may be in on it.”

  “If it’s either of them, whoever it is has no reason to cause your mother any harm and won’t do anything with the other one there, anyway,” Paul insisted

  “Do you think…” Melissa was trying hard to come up with an alternative way to ask her question. “Is Grandma all right?”

  “I don’t know yet, Liss, but we’re going to find out.” I looked up at Paul. “I’ve got to get out there. I don’t care about the snow.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll never make it. The highways are closed. There’s no safe way to…” He stopped. And looked up at Maxie.

  “What?” I asked.

  Paul chewed on his lower lip a moment, then nodded, as if he’d won an argument with himself. “If you can’t make it through the snow, maybe you can get there over the snow,” he said.

  Clearly, he was ranting. “I don’t own a pair of skis or snowshoes, Paul,” I told him gently. “I live at the beach.”

  Paul’s tight smile was one-sided. “No. I’m saying maybe you can travel over the snow. By air.” And he looked at Maxie again. “Do you think you could?” he asked her.

  Maxie stopped bouncing off the walls—literally—and sized me up. She shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” she said. She turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  Their plan was starting to dawn on me, and it was not the kind of dawn one generally welcomes in. “You’re not suggesting that Maxie carry me all the way to Mom’s, in the…by the…”

  “Out the window,” Maxie said. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you nuts?” I asked. “How do you even know you could—” Before I could get out “lift me,” Maxie had scooped me up and I was coming into close proximity with the ceiling. She helpfully stopped a few inches short of full-on collision.

  “Any questions?” she asked. “Let’s go. Your mom’s in trouble.”

  This was sounding disturbingly realistic. “People will see us,” I said. “They’ll see me, anyway. How could I explain flying all over Monmouth County?”

  Maxie planted me back on the floor and changed her clothing in a blink, like always. Except now she was wearing a huge trench coat, much too large for her, and she wrapped it around me. “Can you see your mom, Melissa?” she asked.

  “Just her shoes and the top of her head,” I heard my daughter say. It’s amazing how little you can see and hear when engulfed by a trench coat. “Scrunch down, Mom.” I did. “Yeah, that’s better. It’s just her feet now.”

  “We can handle it
,” Maxie said. “Let’s go.”

  “Will you stop with the ‘let’s go’?” I demanded. “Nothing happens to you if you drop me. I have to think about this.”

  “I don’t,” Liss said. “I’ll go.” She started reaching for her snow boots.

  I disentangled myself from the trench coat and faced her. “You most certainly will not,” I said firmly. “I’m not letting you fly anyplace. Besides, what are you going to do when you get there?”

  “Save Grandma,” my daughter insisted.

  “You’re staying here. Man your cell phone.” I looked at Maxie. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Thirty-one

  I put on as much outerwear as would fit inside Maxie’s Harpo Marx trench coat but insisted on facing out. I wasn’t going to fly to Manalapan with my eyes closed. Not all the way, anyhow.

  “If someone sees a flash of eyes flying around, they’ll think they had the sun in their face or something,” I said by way of justification. Maxie didn’t care which way I faced as long as we left immediately.

  Paul gave me a few last-minute instructions on what to do once we arrived at Mom’s and told me he’d stay with Melissa and her cell phone if texting was necessary. I told Liss for the millionth time about 911, like she hadn’t known that since she was four. Then I told her to stay in her room until she heard from me and to tell Nan and Morgan that I’d decided to brave the drive in the Volvo. I didn’t tell her how to explain to them that I’d managed to get to the car without going past them, which wasn’t technically possible. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

  I knelt down to talk to her, although that’s not really necessary anymore. “Don’t you worry about your grandma,” I told her. “She’s one resilient lady.”

  “What’s resilient?”

  “Tough,” I said. Then I gave my daughter a very tight hug, sucked on my teeth to force back any tears that might have the audacity to try and appear in my eye and stood. I nodded to Maxie. Paul opened the window and the storm window on the rear side of the house, where I was less likely to be spotted from the ground.

  Maxie wrapped her arms around me. As I held the trench coat tight, I felt my feet leave the floor. I no longer had control over the direction in which my body was traveling, because out the window surely wouldn’t have been my first choice.

  But that’s the way we went.

  For those who have never flown thirty feet in the air over central New Jersey while being held by a ghost, let me try to describe the experience for you: The first thing that struck me was COLD! That lasted a full minute, and I realized that under the trench coat, Maxie was still in a T-shirt and short denim skirt.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” I shouted at her. The wind was brutal up there. Maxie laughed.

  “One of the advantages of being dead,” she said.

  We traveled toward Route 33, which was the way I would normally go to Mom’s. It would be about twenty miles as the ghost flies. It didn’t look like the real central Jersey I knew, anyway. Everything was covered in unexpected snow and a lot of it, and only the most hearty of homeowners was already out and shoveling or snow blowing. The rest were probably sitting at their breakfast tables, stunned and trying to shift into action mode. The empty streets were better for me, so I was glad for the laziness of my fellow shore denizens. We were up high enough to be above regular houses and power wires but not office buildings and the like. So far this was not a problem, but Maxie would have to dodge some buildings when we got as far as Red Bank or so.

  After I got over my initial vertigo, the trip was sort of enjoyable in a touristy sort of way, but I was anxious about Mom, frustrated by our snail-like pace and also freezing off various parts of my body. Our progress was very slow. “I’ve never tried it without a car before,” Maxie said. “This is the best I can do.” We were traveling about as fast as if we were running to Mom’s, which would take hours.

  But then the otherwise-empty streets offered up something that was as welcome a sight as I’ve ever seen: a plow. I pointed down, and Maxie saw the plow pushing its way through the streets, covering people’s parked cars with even more snow to shovel off later.

  “I have an idea,” I told her.

  Maxie started to descend, and as we got lower, I could see the plow more clearly and started to laugh. “What the hell is so funny?” Maxie asked.

  “It’s too perfect,” I told her.

  We set down about twenty yards from the plow, and I waved my arms as it approached. Sure enough, it stopped, and Murray got out of the driver’s seat.

  “I’ve got to plow all these streets, Alison,” he said. “Don’t have time for nonpaying customers.” Murray was really good at being single-minded, but then he couldn’t possibly have handled more.

  “Murray, my mom is in danger. Drive me to Manalapan and I’ll pay you double for my plowing.”

  He didn’t skip a beat. “Won’t matter. You don’t pay, anyway.”

  I didn’t have time for this. “Look. I don’t have my wallet with me. But this is a matter of life and death. I’m telling you straight out that I’ll pay you twice what you usually get, and you can have the money as soon as we get back.”

  “I have to get all these streets done, and the parking lot at the Foodtown.” This wasn’t a bargaining tactic; Murray was trying to avoid doing something he was being asked. It was a reflex with him.

  “You can put my house off until tomorrow. Just please, Murray, I have no other way to get there, and she’s really in trouble.” I told him the whole story—well, a condensed version of it, anyway—and it seemed to work. Murray looked determined as he pulled on his Phillies cap. “Climb in,” he said. Indiana Jones and the Snowplow of Doom.

  Before Murray could rethink his decision, I was in the warm cab of the plow and Maxie was standing—yes, standing—in front of me. “That’s easier,” she said. “You could stand to drop a couple of pounds, you know.” I couldn’t even answer.

  As we drove away, Murray asked, “Hey, Alison, how’d you get here, anyway?”

  “I flew,” I told him.

  He nodded. That’s Murray.

  Even with the plow attached to the front of his truck, Murray had to stop occasionally to get through especially heavy drifts. “We’re lucky,” he said. “It’s a dry snow. Powdery. If it was slushy, it’d be harder to move.”

  Not that this wasn’t fascinating, but I was anxious about Mom. “Just keep going, Murray,” I said. “Don’t stop.” He looked determined and plowed on through.

  I pretended I was talking to Murray but looked directly into Maxie’s eyes. “I don’t understand why you were upset with me,” I said.

  Murray droned on again about how unreasonable I was for not wanting to pay him for doing nothing, but I was really listening for Maxie’s explanation: “I did all this great work to find out about Dr. Wells and your dad and everything, and you were getting all the credit,” she said. “I want people to notice.”

  “Credit isn’t the issue,” I said, and Murray began talking about how he was a cash business, but he’d take a check if he had to.

  “I know,” Maxie answered. “But I don’t have that much I can do these days. When I help, I want to get recognized for it.”

  I mulled that over. Sometimes I act like Maxie doesn’t have feelings because she acts like mine are unreasonable. I could make an effort. “That’s fair,” I said.

  “Good,” Murray agreed. “I’ll bill you when I get back to my office tonight.” That didn’t sound good, but I was in no position to argue now.

  Maxie, meanwhile, smiled and held out a hand, which I touched when I was pretending to brace myself on the dashboard. My hand went through hers, of course, but it was the gesture that counted.

  Then we both went back to staring worriedly through the windshield, waiting for the entrance to Whispering Lakes to show up.

  It did, finally, and I guided Murray and his plow—which was helpful, since indeed, the community’s service clearly hadn
’t arrived yet—to the front of Mom’s unit. We passed a utility truck along the way and saw two technicians working on a power distributor. In front of Mom’s house, I thanked Murray again and got out of the truck, leaving behind Maxie, who didn’t have to worry about trifles like solid objects in her travels.

  “I’ll come with you,” Murray said. “I’ve got a gun in the glove compartment.”

  A gun? Would it come to that? My mind went through about fifty scenarios in a second, and some of them were pretty grim. I nodded. “We’d appreciate it,” I said. Maxie nodded her agreement.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Murray said.

  “My mom and me,” I answered. “Thanks.” Murray and I trudged through the heavy snow and made it to Mom’s front door. There were two other sets of boot prints leading to the threshold and two pairs of cross-country skis leaning against the outside wall.

  Frances and Jerry.

  I took a breath but not a long one because I was in a hurry. Murray stuck the pistol into his coat pocket and grunted. Manhood at its finest.

  “Let’s brace ourselves for what we might see,” I told Maxie. But she was gone. Again, doors and such things don’t stand in her way. I didn’t hear anything from inside when she got there and chose to take that as a good sign.

  “I’ll be fine,” Murray said.

  I worked the lock quietly in case someone was inside and tried hard to open the door with very little sound. It swung into the living room, and I looked inside. There were no lights on, which made sense given the power outage.

  Sitting on the couch were Frances and Jerry, drinking coffee. The rats! How could they just sit there and smile at each other after what they must have done? And where was Maxie? I had expected to see her taking the place apart in her fury.