Awakening

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  That this shabby little cottage in this shabby little town was ever home to her mother catches her by surprise all over again. Somehow, she forgot for a few minutes that this isn’t just Odelia’s home.

  Calla sniffs the air again and is relieved to note that the floral scent has vanished just as abruptly as it materialized. Maybe it was her imagination; they were talking about flowers.

  “Jacy! Come on over here and meet my granddaughter!” she hears Odelia call, and looks up in dismay. She isn’t in the mood to meet— A gorgeous guy her age?

  With his glossy black hair, black eyes fringed by lush lashes, and olive complexion, he looks a little like Billy Pijuan, a friend of hers at Shoreline. Billy’s Cuban. Maybe this guy is as well, with those exotic looks. He’s tall and lanky, dressed casually in a gray T-shirt and shorts.

  Calla’s hand lifts to smooth her windblown hair as she glances down to make sure she didn’t dribble Coke on the front of her white top on the plane. Nope, all clean.

  “Calla, this is Jacy Bly. He lives across the way.” Odelia points vaguely at the grassy green. “Jacy, this is my granddaughter, Calla—the one I was telling you about.”

  Uh-oh. What could Odelia have possibly told this guy about her?

  “Nice to meet you,” Calla says politely, and sticks out her right hand, the way her mother taught her to do whenever she’s introduced to someone new.

  “You, too.” Soft-spoken Jacy grasps her hand, and Calla nearly gasps. A current of—what, electricity?—seems to have shot up her right arm.

  Okay, that’s ridiculous. But she didn’t imagine it. Her arm is still tingling as he releases her hand. Maybe it was static electricity or something?

  She looks at Jacy to see if he seems jolted, but it’s impossible to read anything on his beautiful, enigmatic face.

  “Want to come in and have some lemonade with us, Jacy?”

  “No, thanks,” he tells Odelia. “I have to go.”

  Calla does her best not to turn her head and stare after him as he walks away. “He seems nice,” she says casually to her grandmother, watching her open the door—which, Calla can’t help but notice, wasn’t even locked.

  “He is nice. Come on in.” Odelia holds the door for her.

  Stepping over the threshold, Calla immediately sees a steep flight of stairs. Uh-oh. Instant flashback to what happened back home . . . to what she found there at the foot of the stairs when she walked in the front door that day after her social studies final.

  Mom. Long brown hair tousled around her head, matted with clotting blood. Neck twisted. Eyes open. Vacant. Gone.

  No, don’t think about that. Just focus on where you are right now. The past is in the past.

  She follows Odelia from the foyer into the next dim, cluttered room and looks around. Painted woodwork, chintz furniture, worn plank floors, rag rugs. A collection of odds and ends: a plastic white box fan, a metal TV tray, some kind of driftwood sculpture, a lamp whose glass base is filled with shells. Stacks of magazines are everywhere. Books line built-in shelves as well as the mantel and the small entertainment center that holds the modest television and stereo. There are a few sore-thumb heirlooms here, too—a gilt-framed oil landscape, an ornate coatrack, a stately grandfather clock. The windows are open, but the place still smells musty—kind of like the old books Calla buys at the library’s annual sale back in Tampa.

  It’s as impossible to imagine her sophisticated mother in this setting as it is to imagine a sleek calla lily growing in that jumbled garden alongside the porch.

  She can’t help but think wistfully of their sun-splashed Florida home, with its contemporary furniture, central air, cool tile floors . . .

  No. Don’t think of the floor.

  She closes her eyes to block out the vision of bright red blood pooling on the light-colored tile in the foyer.

  A freak accident, the police said. Mom slipped or tripped at the top of the stairs, smashed her head open on the hard wrought-iron railing, and was probably knocked unconscious, meaning she never realized what was happening. What happened was that she broke her neck when she landed on the ceramic-tile floor in the foyer below.

  The idea of Mom slipping—or tripping—is so bizarre that Calla still has trouble accepting what happened. Mom was the most coordinated, graceful, sedate person on earth. How could it have happened?

  “So, obviously, this is the living room,” Odelia is saying. “Through here is the kitchen.”

  Calla forces her eyes open and follows her huffing and puffing grandmother through an archway. Dark-green-and-white linoleum, white metal cabinets with silver handle pulls. What’s visible of the countertop is pale green; most of it is obscured by canisters, appliances, a row of cookbooks and one of cereal boxes, a mug tree, a couple of empty vases, pens, paper, more magazines. The outdated fridge and stove are green as well, but they’re more of an olive color. And yet another shade of green twines its way across the ivy-patterned wallpaper.

  “Half bath here”—Odelia jerks open a door just long enough for Calla to spot a powder-blue toilet and matching sink in a tiny room with blue-and-silver foil wallpaper—“and this is my room.” Odelia leads Calla through an open door into a bright room whose walls are mostly glass windows on three sides.

  There are no curtains or shades, and the walls, trim, and ceiling are painted beige. On the floor is nubby neutral wall-to-wall carpeting, and the room is surprisingly—for this house, anyway—devoid of clutter. The only furniture is a trio of wingback chairs that seem oddly placed, all facing each other in the center of the room. On the lone table, at arm’s reach, are a box of tissues, a couple of candles, and a tape recorder.

  “This is your room?” Calla asks. “But where do you sleep?”

  “Oh, it isn’t my bedroom. That’s upstairs. Come on—I’ll show you yours, too. You’re going to be in your mom’s old room.”

  Mom’s old room?

  Calla immediately forgets about the one they’re in and dogs her grandmother’s footsteps back through the kitchen to the stairs. Predictably, the treads are worn and they creak as Calla and her grandmother ascend. Odelia is panting with exertion by the time they reach the second floor, where the ceiling is so low that Calla would be able to touch it from her tiptoes. The bare floor planks are wider, darker, scarred with age. The layout is simple: there are three doors off the upstairs hall. One, straight ahead, leads to a bathroom—Calla can see the edge of a clawfoot tub through the open door. But she isn’t interested in that.

  Nor is she all that interested in Odelia’s room, to the right. She barely glances at the patchwork quilt–covered double bed; another overflowing bookshelf; and formal, antique-looking furniture that could only have been inherited, as it clearly isn’t Odelia’s style.

  Finally, it’s time to cross the hall to the opposite door, which, unlike the other two, is closed.

  “This is where you’ll be.” Odelia reaches for the knob. “If you want privacy, close the door and I promise I won’t come barging in on you.”

  “Er—thanks.”

  “But if you don’t mind company, leave it open, and I’ll know I can pop in. I was thinking it’ll be nice to have someone to talk to around here for a change.”

  Calla nods, eager to see the room. Odelia is taking her sweet time opening the door, and it’s all she can do not to bounce up on her toes to peer over her shoulder as it cracks open.

  “I have to warn you, I haven’t changed a thing since your mother left. Mostly because—in case you haven’t noticed— I’m a sentimental, lazy old pack rat.”

  Then so are Dad and I, because we don’t want to change anything of hers back home, either, Calla thinks. They made an unspoken decision before they left to keep everything of Stephanie’s intact, right down to the last newspaper left on the kitchen table, folded open to the half-penciled-in daily word puzzle she loved to do. Neither of them could bear to put—much less throw—away anything Mom had touched.

  “When I found out you were rea
lly coming to visit, I came in here thinking it was time I cleaned it out—but I just can’t.” Her grandmother’s voice wavers, and Calla looks up to see tears in Odelia’s eyes.

  Unnerved, she looks down at her sandals. If Odelia loses it, she will, too. And she doesn’t want her emotions to start spilling over again, isn’t ready to go back to cheeks that are raw and stinging from perpetual salt and moisture, eyes that feel as though they’ve been boiled, the constant headache that accompanies incessant crying.

  To her relief, Odelia inhales deeply, exhales, and manages a little laugh. Calla dares to look at her and sees that she’s smiling as she gestures for Calla to step into her mother’s room.

  “At least Stephanie wasn’t as messy as I am . . . how she ever got to be so organized and tidy, I’ll never know. Anyway, I do dust in here, so you won’t be sleeping with the dust bunnies, in case you were worried about that.”

  “I wasn’t worried about that,” Calla murmurs, and looks around.

  The room is bright—not as bright as the back room downstairs, but sunlight splashes through windows on two walls. It falls in moving, dappled patterns across the hardwood floor and braided rug in shades of rose and sage. From here, Calla can see the glistening blue water of Cassadaga Lake.

  She turns back to the room, wanting to take in every detail, trying hard to picture her mother here. It isn’t easy. Mom’s style is much more contemporary than this.

  The walls are whitewashed beadboard halfway up and striped wallpaper the rest of the way, in shades that match the rug. The furniture is strikingly similar to the bedroom set Calla picked out a few years ago when she redid her room back home, and she has a sudden memory of her mother commenting about that.

  She had said something like, “I had the same kind of bed when I was a little girl.”

  To which Calla, feeling prickly, had retorted, “Please, Mom, I’m not a little girl.”

  No, but she feels like one now, and has ever since that horrible day when she found herself motherless.

  A lump pushes its way into her throat, and she fiercely swallows it back down, focusing her attention on the details of the room. The bed is white iron, a twin, not a queen like Calla has at home. The dresser and nightstand are both painted white and rubbed off in a few places—the same distressed effect of her furniture back in Florida. But this stuff is authentically worn. Calla’s set was purchased new—cottage-shabby-chic, the saleswoman called it.

  “It’s very popular right now,” she told Calla and her mother, who, come to think of it, was wearing a faraway, nostalgic smile. Was she thinking of her girlhood bedroom? Missing this house in Lily Dale, missing her mother? Calla will never know now.

  “I stitched this quilt myself.” Odelia runs her fingertips over the patchwork squares that cover the bed. “I made it out of all her little-girl dresses.”

  Calla’s eyes widen, and she steps closer to examine the various fabric patterns. Green-sprigged yellow rosebuds on a pale pink background, a red gingham plaid, powder blue and white pinstripes, an off-white eyelet.

  “These were all my mother’s clothes?”

  Odelia nods, looking dangerously misty again behind her pink cat’s-eye glasses. She turns to the window and jerks it open, muttering something about it being stuffy in here.

  Calla smiles, imagining wrapping herself up in that quilt tonight. Maybe it will feel almost like a hug from her mother.

  No. Of course it won’t. Nothing—certainly not a quilt, and not even a real hug from her father, or her grandmother—could ever come close to bringing the kind of comfort she’d find in her mother’s embrace.

  She turns away from the bed, momentarily blinded by tears. She brushes them away quickly, and she can see again. Her gaze falls on a couple of framed photographs on the dresser. She steps closer and sees dated snapshots of her mother—younger, smiling—with various people she’s never seen before.

  Later, she’ll ask Odelia who they all are, and hear the stories behind the pictures. Maybe she’ll even ask her grandmother about that awful fight she had with Mom, and the reason they were estranged all these years.

  Something about the lake.

  But what?

  Right now, Calla is simply too overwhelmed to even think about it.

  There are a couple of magazines on the nightstand. Calla checks the date on the top one—Mademoiselle—and finds that it’s more than twenty years old.

  Not surprising. Odelia said she hasn’t touched anything in this room. And judging by the stacks downstairs, Calla wouldn’t be surprised if there are decades-old magazines there, too.

  “I’ll set the clock for you.” Odelia gestures at the reddish orange digital numbers on the bedside clock, which are flashing 12:00. “Do you have a watch on?”

  Calla shakes her head. She forgot the little bag containing her jewelry, including her cherished Movado watch, a gift from Kevin, back at home, along with a few other things she could have used. Like books from her summer reading list and tampons and her favorite coral-colored nail polish. It’s not like she saw a super drug mart right around the corner, either.

  “We lose power a lot out here at this time of year, whenever we get a bad bout of wind and rain,” Odelia is saying. “I used to keep that clock set, but I stopped bothering years ago.”

  Calla looks past the clock to a little wooden chest. Its carved top is intricately scrolled in a floral pattern. Calla wonders if the bell-shaped blooms are lilies of the valley, her mother’s so-called favorite flower.

  “That’s her jewelry box,” Odelia informs her, and Calla is struck by a painful memory of the emerald bracelet—the one she lost in her mother’s grave.

  “It’s nice.” It would be nicer if it were etched with calla lilies. “Where did she get it?”

  “I have no idea. She probably bought it somewhere when she was in high school—or maybe younger. I don’t remember, exactly. There’s nothing valuable in it, I’m sure . . . just trinkets and costume jewelry, that sort of thing. But whatever there is, you can have.”

  “Really? You don’t want it yourself?”

  Odelia smiles wryly and shakes her head, her gold chandelier earrings jangling with the movement. “Not my style.”

  “Well, thank you . . .” Calla trails off, uncomfortably aware that she can’t bring herself to call her grandmother “Grandma.” Or even just “Odelia.” Certainly not “Nana,” which is what she called her other grandmother.

  No, she doesn’t know how to address this woman with whom she’ll be spending the next few weeks, so she keeps settling on nothing at all.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Calla lifts the lid and is surprised when tinkling music spills out. She hears the sharp intake of Odelia’s breath and her muttered, “That’s odd.”

  “What is?”

  “That the music is playing. I never wind that thing. I haven’t done it since . . . in years,” she finishes softly. Sadly.

  For a moment, they listen to the delicate notes as the melody winds down.

  “What is it?” Calla asks. “That song, I mean?”

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “It just sounds kind of familiar. But I don’t know where I heard it before.” She looks down at the neatly organized contents of the jewelry box. Each satin-lined compartment is filled with earrings, bracelets, necklaces.

  Mom always did love jewelry. But the real thing. The contents of her jewelry box back home in Tampa have been placed in a safe-deposit box while they’re away. Someday, her father said, it will belong to Calla. Just like this.

  But all she really wants is the lost emerald bracelet her mother gave her before she died.

  The music has faded to silence; she starts to close the lid of the music box. As she does, she catches sight of her reflection in the mirrored panel in its top.

  Somebody is standing just behind her.

  She gasps and spins around, only to see that no one is there, and Odelia is already halfway out the door into the hall.
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br />   “I hope you’re hungry,” Odelia calls, “because I’m making my specialty for dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs.”

  Calla doesn’t reply, just stares at the empty spot where she could have sworn somebody—not her grandmother—was just standing.

  She didn’t just see the human face, its features like those of an out-of-focus photograph; she also felt it. An unmistakable presence.

  And now she feels a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the window Odelia just cracked open.

  Is Odelia’s house haunted? Or is it Odelia herself who’s haunted—if there is such a thing?

  Calla remembers the woman she saw at her mother’s funeral—the woman in white, who was there one minute, gone the next. Her grandmother was with her when that happened, too. And what about the unexplained, overpowering flower smell outside?

  Terrific. Odelia might not just be a harmless, eccentric old freak. She might be harboring ghosts, as well—spirits who hover around her like flies on a pig.

  But people can’t be haunted. Can they?

  Who knows? Calla is pretty sure that she saw someone just now in the mirror. If Odelia isn’t haunted, her house might be. Inside and out. But . . . what about the lady at the funeral?

  Simple. The cemetery is probably haunted as well. It makes more sense for ghosts to hang around their graves than anywhere else. Not that Calla is sure that what she saw was a ghost, either time. One thing is certain, though: it wasn’t her mother’s spirit. That, she’d recognize beyond a shadow of a doubt. The woman in the cemetery in Florida was a stranger, and the face she barely glimpsed just now didn’t seem familiar, either.

  “Do you want to help me in the kitchen, or rest a little while before we eat?” Odelia calls as she begins to creak her way down the stairs.

  “I’ll help you.” Calla hurries uneasily after her grandmother.

  That’s strange. It seems to be a good twenty degrees warmer in the hallway.

  Feeling as though she’s being watched as she heads toward the stairs, Calla can’t help but wonder what she might see if she dared to throw a backward glance over her shoulder.