Love Over Matter

by Maggie Bloom

  I pull the doll out and give it a once-over, flashes of my marathon knitting session racing through my mind. When I made this thing, I was hoping to raise George from the dead just long enough to bare my soul (because a zombie boyfriend is not exactly on my bucket list). Now I’m praying it might stop Mr. Smith from bumping up against George in the great beyond.

  I’ve only successfully employed this tchotchke once, and that was to rouse Haley from a Robitussin coma when she had the flu. And I’ve never tried it on a virtual stranger, but . . .

  I lock my gaze on Mr. Smith’s head—or slightly above it, to be precise—at the spot where, if he were an angel, his halo would hover. This is where I get the best read of a person’s aura, a.k.a. the wiggly field of energy surrounding all living things.

  Mr. Smith’s aura is even sicker than his complexion lets on: a pool of dusky grey, flecked with bursts of twinkling, snow-white light—the sign of imminent death.

  The buff guest hoists Mr. Smith from his wheelchair with an overgrown arm; meanwhile, I begin pinching the doll between my thumb and forefinger, making it perform fast-motion sit-ups.

  Come on, come on, come on, I plead. Cough it up.

  “They’re on the way!” someone squeals, referring to the emergency personnel.

  Ian paces by the doorway, his palm clamped over his temple, his eyes searching the lot for the ambulance.

  The lump in the center of my forehead, which has been sinking toward my skull since the day after our treasure hunt, suddenly starts stinging. I ignore the pain and keep pumping away at the voodoo doll’s stomach.

  Twenty feet off, the maybe-paramedic grasps Mr. Smith from behind, plants a serious fist in his abdomen and thrusts.

  I pump.

  He thrusts.

  I pump.

  He thrusts.

  My head stings.

  And burns.

  I pump.

  He thrusts.

  I pump.

  He thrusts.

  Then . . .

  Pop!

  The doll’s midsection goes soft, and Mr. Smith chokes a ragged breath. By the door, Ian’s posture turns rubbery.

  “What’re you doing?” Haley demands from my side.

  I slip the doll back into my apron and struggle to my feet. “Huh?”

  “I saw you, you know.”

  “Yeah? So.”

  She throws an arm around my shoulder. “You think it worked?”

  “He’s breathing, isn’t he?”

  Mom blows by us and rushes the entrance, props the door open for the paramedics, who are just wheeling up out front, lights blazing and sirens whining. The frantic twittering of voices, which had blurred into a stream of white noise during my intervention, seems to escalate. A wave of exhaustion washes over me, and I drop cockeyed into a chair.

  Haley flops down beside me, a ghost of a smile on her blackened lips. “It’s kind of ironic, huh?” she says, jerking her head toward Mr. Smith.

  I think she means his almost dying at a benefit to save his life. “I guess.”

  A female paramedic storms into the restaurant, a walkie-talkie barking from her hip. In her wake scurry her trim, bearded partner and Mom, literally wringing her hands. “That’s right,” Mom chirps, directing the trek from the rear. “He’s over there.” She wags an arm through the air. “Just past my . . . my banana tree.”

  Of course, my mother would mention that fake, dusty monstrosity. I roll my eyes and tap Haley on the knee. “We’d better go help.”

  Her eyebrows pinch together. “What for?”

  Maybe she’s right; the paramedics seem to have things under control. Then again, Ian looks like he could use a shoulder to lean on. “I’m gonna go . . .” I say. Haley shoos me off, her mouth twisted into a smirk. I don’t like him, I want to tell her. Not that way. Instead, I say, “Why don’t you check on the guests? Try to calm them down.”

  I rise and start heading for Mr. Smith, but then I catch Dad summoning me to the kitchen with a nervous head bob.

  I abruptly change course, nearly spinning out as I shift around Mom’s silk ficus. “What’s up?” I say when I get within my father’s orbit.

  “Is he okay?” Dad asks, his nose twitching and eyes darting.

  My heart clenches like it did when Mom got sweaty and collapsed on the lawn. “Sure,” I say with a nod. “Disaster averted.” I give him a reassuring grin.

  He puffs out a tense breath. “Thank God.”

  * * *

  I met George Brooks by a puddle behind the rear wheel of a box truck, the day his family moved into Willow Crest, the up-and-coming neighborhood to which my parents had, two years earlier, scrimped and saved enough money to relocate Haley and me.

  “What’re you doin’?” I asked him through the gap in my six-year-old teeth.

  He pushed a stone around the puddle with a twig, paused to fix his ponderous brown eyes on me. “None of your beeswax.”

  I rose a few inches from my crouched position and glanced over my shoulder, my mother’s watchful form still in sight. “Can I try?”

  A doubtful tsking sound burst from his lips. “You don’t know how.”

  I rocked on my heels, folded my arms over my knees. “I do so.”

  The freckles seemed to rearrange on his face. “You can’t,” he told me flatly. “I made it up.”

  We went silent for a while, the way old married folks sometimes do. “I’m good at stories,” I said eventually, his game of stone maneuvering entrancing me.

  “Oh, yeah?” he replied, sounding intrigued but skeptical.

  I shot him my know-it-all nod. “Uh-huh.”

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  My first lie: “Seven.”

  He grimaced. “Nuh-uh. You’re too small.” He gave me an appraising once-over. “I bet you’re five, at the most.”

  “Well, you only look four,” I said (my second lie), my face flushing and my eyes stinging with tears.

  “Don’t cry,” he told me, the confrontational tone disappearing from his voice. He tapped my shin with the twig, then held it up as a peace offering. As I accepted, he said, “I’m George, by the way. And I’m eight, not four.”

  I twigged three stones to the edge of the puddle, where I strung them together like pearls. “I’m Cassandra,” I informed him. “But people call me Cassie. Or Cass, for short. I have a baby sister, Haley.” I waited for him to dish the dirt on his siblings, but he just fell back on his palms like a crab and started kicking at the truck’s enormous tire. “You got a sister? Or a brother?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m adopted.”

  I wouldn’t have known what adopted meant, except that six months earlier, my parents had deposited Haley with a babysitter and trucked me to a matinee showing of Annie at the discount movie theater. For weeks afterward, I was convinced (and terrified) that Mom and Dad would die, leaving me to scrub floors and starch sheets at the knee of the devious Miss Hannigan. “Since when?” I asked, thinking of Annie, who was older than George when she found her “daddy.”

  “Same as you,” he said with a shrug. “Since I was born.”

  I wanted to tell him it was okay that he was adopted; it didn’t matter to me. In fact, it was more than okay. It was neat and cool, and it gave him something in common with a movie star. But I couldn’t put this into words, so instead I asked, “Wanna play jump rope?”

  He crinkled his brow. “Jump rope?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shy smile. “You can be the swinger, and I’ll jump.”

  “Got a rope?”

  * * *

  A wild squawk from Clive jolts me back to the task at hand: cleaning his cage, a job made harder by the fact that I’ve pimped his nest. “Oh, behave!” I chastise, my bird-friend hopping and pecking around the carpet and occasionally dipping under my bed. I withdraw the last branch of his forest, run a feather duster over it (ironic, I know) and set it aside. Most people probably wouldn’t devote so much attention to a rescue crow, but I can’t
help feeling obligated to make Clive as comfortable as possible, especially after what happened to Clive-ina (that’s what I call Clive’s poor, deceased mate, God rest her feathered soul).

  It takes me another five minutes to pry the wood-chip-covered newspaper from the bottom of the cage, Windex the bare plastic to a scratchy sheen and reline it with comics. (I like to think that one day Clive will learn how to read and appreciate my sense of humor.)

  I’m in the midst of sprinkling cedar over Snoopy when bang! bang! bang! goes my door, heralding Haley’s arrival.

  I shoo Clive into his barren hovel. “What?” I say, agitation rising in my voice as Haley whips up beside me. I stare past her at the gaping door, unable to stop myself from sighing.

  “What’re you doing?” she demands, matching my irritation. She taps her foot and nibbles at her pinkie, her fingernail squeaking between her teeth.

  I freeze her with a serious glare. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  My sister would do well to lose the Elvira hairdo, G.I. Joe footwear, and Marilyn Manson wardrobe. Because, honestly, she’s a walking cliché. “Huh?” she says blankly.

  “What do you want?” I grouse, my head involuntarily cocking.

  She drops onto my bed, bunches my pillow into a ball and tucks it under her chin. “Opal, uh . . .” she says, trailing off for a few beats, “. . . she, um, needs you to . . .”

  I roll my eyes. “When?” I ask, knowing what my sister’s friend wants: a supernatural favor.

  She grins sheepishly. “Five minutes ago?”

  chapter 4

  Opal Madden lives in a converted church (formerly Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian) with her golf-pro stepfather and fragile, often intoxicated mother, a washed-up soap opera actress.

  “You’re lucky it’s Monday,” I tell Haley as we coast to a stop in Mom’s Prius, my lack of a driver’s license endowing me with a paranoid eye twitch, “and the restaurant’s closed.” I pop the shifter into park. “If we get caught,” I add, channeling a last-minute surge of adrenaline, “your head’s on the chopping block, not mine.”

  She wiggles a hand under her cape (on top of everything else, she’s in Dracula mode today) and withdraws a small bottle of clear liquid. I don’t recognize it until she spins it around, revealing the half-peeled bourbon label. “Here you go,” she says, tossing the holy water in my lap. “I thought this might help.”

  I shut the car down. “How did you . . . ?”

  She smirks. “I have powers too, you know.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Remember when you used that stuff on Dad?” she asks with a twirl of her dye-damaged split ends. “And he thought the coffee maker was on the fritz?”

  I fight a smile. “That was pretty funny. But it got him in for a physical, didn’t it? And once his lab work came back okay, Mom stopped freaking out about the possibility of him dying. So it was a win-win.”

  “That’s true,” Haley allows, her gaze fixed on the front door of Madden’s House of Worship.

  I sense something moving inside and, sure enough, Opal’s svelte, pale face appears, framed by a stained-glass-bordered window as if she’s a religious icon or one of the living portraits from Harry Potter.

  “Action!” I spout, a performance on the horizon—at least on the part of Opal’s mother.

  Haley unbuckles, and I stifle a laugh. My sister is a knot of contradictions: head-banger music and death gear, safety belts and white-light altruism.

  We traipse over to the church’s entrance, Opal’s knobby arm, followed by her slim-to-nonexistent profile, slipping out to greet us. “Sorry,” she begins, her eyes sandpapered- and puffy-looking, “but I didn’t know who else to call.” She gives a faint snort-sniffle.

  “Where is she?” I inquire, as if I’m an old-timey doctor making a house call, which I sort of am.

  “The bathtub,” Opal says with a resigned shake of her head.

  “Anyone else home?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” wonders Haley.

  “Fix her,” I say, surprised by the certainty in my voice.

  Opal kicks the base of the door, nudging it open. “Come on in.”

  * * *

  The interior of the Maddens’ house is the demented love child of a souvenir shop, a disco, and a bag of cotton candy (think psychedelic pastel colors, swarms of fringe and beads, herds of ceramic elephants poised to stampede).

  I step over a pile of tattered People magazines and trail Opal and Haley into the bathroom, a voluminous space with two stalls left over from the Saint Andrew’s days and, behind a translucent screen, a Jacuzzi tub. “Mom?” Opal says softly as we approach. “Are you awake?”

  A garbled string of nonsense fills the air, the best translation of which, by my ear, is: What do you want? Just go away.

  “I brought someone to see you,” coos Opal. She gives Haley and me the stop sign with her palm, then slinks behind the screen.

  More gurgled syllables: Get out of here. I hate you.

  I clear my throat. “Mrs. Madden? It’s me, Cassandra McCoy. Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  Opal’s mother and I (and George, too) worked on an Easter production of Alice in Wonderland at the Milbridge Community Theater three years ago. George did set design and construction; I was in the wardrobe department; Mrs. Madden played the Queen of Hearts. (I even sewed the skirt for one of her costumes.) “Stupid people, always botherin’ me,” her slurred voice snipes.

  Geez, and I’d thought she’d taken a shine to me.

  “Mom,” whines Opal, “you don’t feel good. Cassie’s going to help you.”

  I elbow Haley and mouth: Is she naked?

  My sister shrugs and wrinkles her face.

  I clutch her shoulders and deliver an encouraging shove. “Check for me.”

  She skids to a stop, shoots me a glare and whispers, “Jerk.”

  “Just do it,” I reply, shooing her off with a flick of my wrist.

  She shakes her head and sighs, twists around the edge of the screen. Her torso freezes as if she’s stopped breathing.

  “So . . . ?” I murmur.

  “Ick.”

  “Is it that bad?” I ask, tiptoeing up behind her.

  “See for yourself.” She whips backwards and rushes one of the stalls. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

  I don’t have much of a choice. As my head rounds the screen, a noxious whiff of decay overwhelms me. “What’s that smell?” I can’t help muttering, even though the question is ultrarude.

  Before anyone answers, I glimpse the source of the stench for myself: three days’ worth (give or take) of rotten, half-eaten snack foods—melted ice cream oozing out of a bloated container; a bouquet of disposable cups, each holding an inch of spoiled milk and the remains of a nibbled peppermint patty; a brick of Swiss cheese, hacked off at weird angles and balanced, exposed, on the grimy soap dish.

  Inside the tub, Mrs. Madden is scrunched into a ball, her mouth gaping, a muffled snore pulsing through her airways.

  Opal recognizes my disgust and, once again, says, “Sorry.”

  I pat her arm and smile. “Don’t worry about it. The Moondancer looks like this every night.” (Not really, but it does get pretty messy sometimes. And if it makes Opal feel better . . .)

  “Wake up,” Opal says, poking delicately at her mother’s shoulder.

  Mrs. Madden’s lips clamp together. She bolts upright, a dazed look clouding her eyes. “Erm . . . ur . . . grrm . . .”

  In the distance, a sloppy spitting sound is followed by the whooshing flush of a toilet. I chance two small steps toward the Jacuzzi and hover a few feet over Mrs. Madden’s head, observing her aura, which is a striking combination of black and gold—and the black is winning, a fact that doesn’t surprise me given the state of this bathroom, not to mention Mrs. Madden’s hair, which is such a snarled, schizophrenic mess that a family of sparrows could take up permanent residence. “Hey there,” I say in a
n even voice.

  She dangles her arms over the side of the tub. “What do you want?”

  “Mom!” squeals Opal. “Cut it out!”

  A machine gun spray of gold in Mrs. Madden’s aura dazzles my vision. I blink away ghostly spots from behind my eyelids and fix my gaze on her papery-looking fingers, which are cracked and red, raw to the point of bleeding. “I heard you were sad,” I say, the statement a lie only in the strictest sense, “and that you needed someone to talk to.”

  “He left me!” she declares in her Hollywood voice. “And he ain’t never comin’ back!”

  Opal gives a dismissive shake of her head. “It’s a fight, that’s all. Happens once a week.”

  I argued with George too, I think. The brother-sister kind of needling. Until that last awful fight . . .

  “Would you guys mind, uh, leaving us alone?” I ask Opal and Haley (who’s a bit shaky post-retch).

  Mrs. Madden grimaces. “I don’t know you.”

  “Yes, you do. I made your costumes for Alice in Wonderland.”

  Haley grabs Opal’s forearm and tugs her out the door.

  I squat beside the tub, my feet sinking into a mound of damp, musty towels. For maybe a whole minute, I don’t say a word. Instead, I study the worry lines—deep, sorry furrows—that crack Mrs. Madden’s face like faults through an earthquake zone. “How long have you been in here?” I ask eventually, my gaze stuck on the flowy arms of her sheer housedress.

  She shifts to a kneeling position and drops back against the tub, a tendril of stray hair matted to her lipstick-caked mouth. “What time is it?” she asks with a squint.

  I search the walls for a clock but come up empty. “Three thirty?”

  “Saturday?”

  “Uh-uh.” I give a nonchalant shrug. “Monday.”

  “Oh.” She peels the hair away from her mouth. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”

  I flash my cheerleader smile, though I’ve never shaken a pompom in my life. “Come out of there,” I say, extending a hand to help her over the side. Clumsily, she latches on to me, her bony fingertips pinching my bicep. “Good,” I say, once she’s steadied on her feet.

  She loosens her grip on my arm but doesn’t let go. “You’re Cassandra McCoy,” she says, studying me with violet eyes that have gone suddenly clear.