by Mary Rickert
“Whatever do you mean?” Nan asks.
“Well, you know,” says Ruthie. “Home at last.”
MARIGOLD Marigold blossoms are used in broths as a tonic against winter’s wind and chill. The flower, rubbed on a bee sting, is said to bring relief. Marigold is known as a death flower.
Bay sits at the edge of her bed, horrified. Karl, her uncle? That, in itself, is enough to make her want to puke, and thinking he is dead doesn’t exactly make her feel better. What kind of uncle would he have been? She doesn’t think she’d like him. She doesn’t like him. It was sweet though, wasn’t it, the way he came to introduce himself, bringing a pot of marigolds for Nan? How horrible that he died right afterward. Who knows, Bay thinks, maybe he would be different if he lived. Maybe dying made him strange. Maybe he would have been a wonderful uncle. Bay tries to believe this, but finds it difficult. Karl? Dead? Her uncle? Wonderful?
She looks around the room, afraid of what she’ll see, though it’s just her room with its slanted ceiling. She walks over to look out the little window into the backyard at the shoe garden shimmering in the August sun. When she sees the shadowed figure near the lilacs, her heart beats rapidly. She is trapped in her life, this ghost-filled world. She leans closer to get a better look.
Oh, Howard.
As soon as Bay opens her bedroom door, she hears their voices rising from the kitchen and is surprised to discover that she is happy they haven’t left yet. She tries to decide how to act. It isn’t that she means to be deceptive, it’s just that she is feeling so many things; it’s hard to know what she feels most.
Nan, Mavis, Ruthie, and Stella sit crowded around the kitchen table, the pie Bay had baked earlier reduced to crumbs. They are laughing. Bay doesn’t know what’s going on. The laughter is a good sign, though she is annoyed that no one thought to leave a slice for her. They don’t even notice as she walks through the kitchen and out the back door.
How strange, Bay thinks, as if I am invisible, though apparently the pie wasn’t. It’s annoying that they ate the whole thing, but also, she feels sort of proud. “Bay’s Pies,” she thinks, imagining the name of her website, or “Pies by Bay,” but will pies be enough? She might need cakes. After all, as hard as it is to believe, not everyone loves pie.
Howard, sitting in the grass with his back toward Bay, turns at her approach.
“What’s up?” Bay asks, dropping to the ground like a puppet severed of her strings.
Howard is still wearing last night’s pants, the tie and jacket abandoned, the white shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up. He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s saying. “I’m going to Africa. With Mavis.”
“What do you mean? Mavis is staying here.”
“Don’t say anything to Nan until Mavis tells her. We talked this morning. She says she’s always wanted to go, and she figures it’s now or never. I’m going to be her companion, you know, to carry the heavy stuff, and when things get bad, I’ll stay with her.”
“What do you mean when things get bad?” Bay asks. “Are you dropping out of school? What about your parents?”
“They’re not going to be happy, but I have to live my life, you know? Things are going to get bad because of Mavis dying.”
Everything is changing, Bay thinks. The lavender looks leggy, like a giant spider blossomed with occasional purple. There is a scattering of leaves at the base of the lilacs, not autumn-colored yet. This morning she made an apple pie, learned what happened to Eve, found out the name of her birth mother, and that Karl is her uncle. And now this: Mavis is dying. Why didn’t Bay realize? It seems so obvious. She wonders how she missed it. It makes no sense. How could she see ghosts (supposedly) and not see what was happening right in front of her?
They sit together like two old friends. In a few weeks, Howard will be in Africa; they already have their passports. “She’s been renewing hers for years,” he says. “She always meant to go.” Mavis and Howard will be in Africa. Bay will be back at school.
Bay is surprised she didn’t immediately look her mother up on Facebook. For now, at least, it seems enough to know that she can. “Truth waits,” Nan said earlier. Bay realizes she’s glad it does. She’s curious, of course, but she doesn’t have to know right away. She’s almost positive she will look, eventually, but maybe not. It’s enough, for now, to know she can; she has a choice, unlike with the ghosts. Bay isn’t happy about them. She resents it even, but in the bright afternoon it seems more an inconvenience than a disaster. Maybe they’ll go away if she just ignores them. Maybe that’s what they’ve already done. After all, the not-drowning thing is good, and it is nice to be certain of the weather, she never gets caught unprepared. Finally, she sort of likes the idea of healing with cake or pie, though she is uncertain of the recipe.
Bay lies back on the grass. After a moment, Howard joins her. Together they lie side by side, not speaking, watching the clouds drift overhead, like two old friends who no longer need to fill the silence.
ELM The elm tree is a symbol of communication, love, letting go, and freedom. Don’t stand under elm trees; they have a habit of dropping heavy branches without warning. An elm tree marks the crossroads leading to the fairy world. Elm wood was traditionally used for coffins.
Because Halloween falls on a weekend this year, Bay has an entire day free of the distractions of school to think about what the night might bring. Ever since she’s found out about her talent, she’s expected the haunting to begin, though it still hasn’t. Strangely, she is surprised to discover that mixed with her fear is a vague feeling of excitement. Hope, even. Maybe it won’t be horrible. Is it possible it would even be kind of fun, as Thalia (sworn to secrecy) says it will be?
The only experience Bay can claim so far is poor old Miss Winter, who didn’t say a thing when Bay saw her, and Karl, who she hasn’t seen since the night of the Flower Feast when he whispered to her while she was asleep. She still isn’t sure she believes he’s the same boy who died in front of her house. After all, there certainly can be more than one person named Karl in the world. Sometimes she thinks that the Karl she knew just moved on to wherever he was going. In fact, she thinks there’s a good chance that’s what he told her. Though that was a dream and probably doesn’t count.
The Halloween ghosts made of old sheets, tissue paper, and webby fabric, dangling from porch railings and tree branches, mock Bay with black eyes and gaped mouths. “You want us,” they seem to say. “Are you sure?”
She is not. Yet, there is something exciting, Bay thinks, in believing she will be able to communicate with the dead. Weird? Yes, but maybe weird in a good way. She doesn’t know. How can she know?
She goes into town with her Nana for chocolate chips, eggs and butter, gummy worms (though Bay has outgrown her taste for them years ago, they seem to give Nan such pleasure), M&M’s, red licorice (another favorite of Nan’s), and the ingredients for beef stew. Bay is thinking about becoming a vegetarian but decides not to say anything about it yet, because she loves beef stew.
On the drive home from the store, they point out vibrant leaf displays to each other, as though the season’s change is street art. After the groceries are brought into the house and put away, Bay announces she’s going to take a nap. Nan, who is sitting at the computer table in the kitchen, says they’ve gotten an email from Mavis and Howard, with a photograph attached.
They stand in front of a split-rail fence, the sky blossomed behind them. Mavis is wearing one of her turbans, bright orange, pinned at the front with something that looks like glass. She is wrapped in a purple shawl that covers much of her dress, which is long and reminds Bay of the leaves, dyed as it is with all the shades of fire, including the faint bit of blue at the center of a flame.
“She looks good,” Bay says. “I think she’s getting better.”
Beside Mavis stands Howard, handsome in a simple T-shirt and khakis.
�
�What’s it say?” Bay asks.
“Eat. Play. Drink. Sleep. Repeat,” says Nan.
“That’s it?”
Nan nods.
Bay laughs. “Mavis must have written that one; Howard would say more,” she says, yawning loudly as she goes up the stairs.
“How are you?” Nan types, then backstrokes out the words. If Mavis wanted to spend her last weeks recording every aspect of dying, she would have done so. Instead, Nan writes a cheery account of the Halloween preparations, the carved pumpkins perched on the porch, the bowls filled with candy.
How dark the afternoons are; it isn’t too early to light the candles, and she better get the stew started, or they’ll be eating at midnight. With a grand gesture, a sweep of her hand as though conducting a symphony, Nan clicks the cursor and sends her response to Africa.
“Yoo-hoodle, anyone home?”
Before Nan can respond, Ruthie pushes through the kitchen door, bringing with her the scent of stew rising from the large cast-iron pot she carries in her hot-pad-gloved hands.
“There you are! I hope you can help,” Ruthie says. “I got carried away and made an enormous amount of beef stew. Enough to feed an entire… Nan, are you all right?”
Nan wonders why it has taken her so long to realize the truth about Ruthie. At first there was just all the business with Bay, and the past that existed between Mavis, Ruthie, and Nan; after all that was straightened out, there was so much activity, first with Mavis and Howard going to Africa, then with Ruthie announcing her plans to buy the old cabin down the road. “For a melody,” as Ruthie said over and over again because, seriously, who would ever want to live in such a rundown little place? Though it fixed up very well. Nan was kept so busy she almost didn’t get the bulbs in before the ground froze. It must have been all the distraction that prevented her from seeing clearly.
“I’m just going to set it on your stove. I’ll turn the heat on low. That should keep it simmering. You and Bay can eat whenever you’re ready.”
“Don’t you want to stay?” Nan asks, hoping Ruthie will decline.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly. There’s so much to do. You know, for the little monsters and the like.”
“They don’t really come out this far,” Nan says. “I thought Bay would have told you.”
“Oh, well.” Ruthie looks up at where the wall meets the ceiling, then out the window over the sink. “I left the fire going. I didn’t plan to be gone long. Besides, I still have to carve my turnip.”
Her turnip? Nan is tempted to ask, but determines not to be distracted. “Ruthie, I’m surprised you celebrate Halloween. Isn’t it, you know, against your beliefs?”
Ruthie can’t seem to help herself. She giggles, a light, airy sound like bells.
“Why did you say all that?” Nan asks. “When you first came in August? Why did you say all that stuff about exorcists for witches?”
Ruthie reaches into the bowl of gummy worms for a long red one with green, blue, and yellow markings.
“Why did you lie?”
Ruthie acts like she hasn’t been caught at all. She sucks on the gummy worm, letting it dangle from her mouth, lifting the lid off the kettle with one hand and reaching for a wooden spoon with the other.
“Ruthie,” Nan says, using the tone she used to employ with Bay when she was younger and had done something wrong.
Ruthie looks sideways at Nan. Then, apparently seeing something definitive in her expression, sets the spoon on the spoon rest, puts the lid back on the pot, and removes the remains of the gummy worm from her mouth. “Nan, you know how it is. We can’t just go around revealing what we are. It upsets people. It causes trouble. Why do you think my husband tried to poison me? And at first I wasn’t sure. You understand, don’t you? I wasn’t sure what you and Mavis believed, and then, after a while it was just kind of fun to see what I could get away with.”
Nan sits back with a gasp. Of course. It all makes so much sense now, except—“I could never tell you were lying. That’s the thing I do best.”
“Oh, well,” Ruthie says, “a little kitchen magic is a remedy for that. Didn’t you notice all the lemon?”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, Nan, I know you have lots to talk about, but I have to get going. This is a big holiday for me.”
“Well, yes, of course,” Nan says, but she is so stunned she doesn’t even wonder what Ruthie’s plans are, exactly, until she has already kissed Nan on the cheek and walked, humming, out of the kitchen.
The simmering stew fills the room with an enticing, earthy aroma. Nan decides to have just a little taste, but after dipping the spoon into the large pot several times, she ladles a small bowl for herself. Why is this so delicious? Potatoes, sweet onions, carrots, hunks of tender meat, salt and pepper, of course, but what is the secret ingredient? She can’t figure it out.
Of course! Of course Ruthie would use kitchen magic to cover her lies. Nan wonders what all those lies might have been. How could Ruthie not realize how much soup she was making? How can she not have noticed all the potatoes being peeled, the carrots scraped, and the rest? No, Nan thinks, spooning stew into her mouth, savoring the flavor, the fact is that Ruthie got away with so much because she let everyone believe she was simple. What a clever disguise.
Nan places the empty bowl in the sink, resolving to save her appetite for later. It’s time to mix together the batter for the chocolate chip cookies so they’ll be ready for baking tonight when she and Bay sit around the kitchen table, pretending someone might actually come for treats this year, and not just for tricks.
Though it is only afternoon, it is almost November, and the gloaming comes early. Nan likes the cast of light that others find uncomfortable. She creams the butter with the sugar, adds the vanilla and the eggs, stirs in the dry ingredients. She pours in extra chocolate chips. “You can’t have too much chocolate,” she says, wondering if anyone is listening.
She hasn’t tasted ash since the weekend of the Flower Feast. Bay says there aren’t any ghosts around, but Bay is still learning to manage her talent. Nan doesn’t think she can give much credit, at this time, to Bay’s assessment of the spirit population. An hour ago, Nan might have found this odd, but that was before she discovered her own weakness in assessment.
She puts the cookie dough into the refrigerator, and places the dirty dishes in the sink beside the soup bowl. She’ll do the dishes later. Now she’s going to light the candles. They keep the front light on, a signal for trick-or-treaters to come, though they never do. Well, the tricksters come, of course. Nan turns the kitchen light off. The flames flicker for a moment and settle back. She goes throughout the rooms, Nicholas weaving between her feet, which slows her considerably.
When the downstairs glows with golden light and the shadows move across the walls, Nan returns to the kitchen, happy to find Bay sitting at the table with her legs tucked beneath her, holding her own small bowl of stew.
“I’m just having a little,” she says. “This is the best ever.”
“Ruthie made it. She made too much and brought over the extra.”
“Ruthie was here?”
Bay has developed a deep affection for Ruthie that Nan is happy she no longer has to monitor.
“When did Stella get here? Are we having another party?”
“Not Stella. Ruthie.”
Bay looks into her small bowl and sets it, too hard, on the table.
Nan is worried for a moment that Bay is upset, but her expression is completely placid. The girl just hasn’t learned her own strength yet.
“No, Nana,” Bay says. “I know Ruthie made the stew, but I’m asking about Stella. Where is she?”
“I imagine in the city,” says Nan. “Working on her book.”
“But she was just in my bedroom. I was talking to her.”
“You were…” Nan sits down so suddenl
y, she thinks it was only lucky she landed in a chair. “What did she say?”
Bay shrugs, that old one-shoulder shrug of hers. “I was half-asleep. She was saying the same things she said that night. She said to make sure to tell you and Ruthie and Mavis that she never blamed you. All of you were a light in her darkest hour. I guess she’s happy rewriting her book.”
“You never told me she said that.”
“I did, Nana. Didn’t I? I meant to, at least. Nana! Do you think Stella’s got multiple personality disorder or something?”
“No,” Nan says. Where does the child get such ideas? “Think, Bay. Did she say anything else?”
“Where’d she go, anyway?” Bay peers around the room as if expecting to find Stella hidden in the shadows. She lowers her voice. “I know you guys made up and everything, but she still makes me kind of nervous.”
“How did she look? What was she wearing?”
“She looked, well, you know, how she usually has such cute clothes but sometimes wears that big old dress for some reason. She was wearing that. I’m really surprised she likes it so much. It doesn’t look good on her at all, it’s so old-fashioned and—” Bay stops in midsentence, looking up at Nan, wide-eyed.
Nan hesitates; how will Bay react? It would be easy enough to lie. Well, not entirely easy, it would have to be quite a good lie. Nan reminds herself that she has already rejected any notion of interfering with Bay’s power.
For some reason, Bay can’t say the word, ghost. She can barely think it. It’s like it has suddenly grown claws, or something. “She didn’t look like…she didn’t look dead,” Bay says.
Nan nods, but clearly she is distracted. “She said she never blamed us? Did she really say that?”
“Yes,” Bay says, feeling not the horrible fear she had worried about, but happy to deliver this message.
If anyone had asked Nan how she would respond if, through magic or circumstance, she would learn that Eve forgave them a long time ago, she would have thought she’d hardly respond at all. It’s one thing to be forgiven by someone else, another to forgive yourself, she might have said. But now that it’s happened, she has placed her hands over her face, as though shielding her eyes from a terrible brightness.