Soul Loss

by Amber Foxx

  Kate did recognize her, though. Hilda Davis painted abstract art and composed electronic music, creations she described as inspired by angels. She’d sold her work at the fair the last two years, and had not signed up yet for this year. Maybe after the meeting—Kate stopped the thought and made herself pay attention to what Hilda was saying. Work could wait.

  The artist’s voice was steady but weak. “I’ve been struggling this past week. Something strange happened.” Pausing, she rubbed both hands on the back of her neck. “Like my spiritual wires have been cut.” She let her arms drop. “I’m sorry. That’s as much as I can handle telling right now.”

  The group members shared their experiences coping with cravings or with loss of faith and Hilda listened, silent except to express her thanks.

  When the meeting was over, people broke up into chatting groups like a sober cocktail party, with the smokers going outside. Kate spotted Tim’s thicket of white-blond curls across the room. He was talking with two young men he sponsored, rounding them up to go out for coffee, no doubt. Kate had ridden with Tim. She would have a couple of minutes to catch Hilda before leaving for what Tim called “the real meeting.”

  Kate found the artist surrounded by a cluster of nurturing women.

  “I pray,” said one.

  “So do I, even when I don’t believe in what I’m praying to,” added another.

  “Chocolate helps, too,” said a third. They all laughed except Hilda.

  “You need a sponsor.” A tall, forceful woman in a linen suit sounded like she was about to take on that role. “Do you have one?”

  Hilda’s perfectly painted lips formed a tired smile. “No. I don’t even know what that is. I ... didn’t get sober in the usual way.”

  “You really haven’t been in the program, have you? It’s a wonder you made it so long. Your sponsor is someone you can call, day or night.” The woman handed Hilda a business card. “She helps you. She listens.”

  This woman sounded more likely to give orders. A sponsor like that could drive Hilda to drink. Kate cut in. “My boyfriend will probably take his sponsees out for coffee. We usually hit the Starbucks at Zafarano.” Kate could do a little twelfth-step work and remind Hilda to commit to the fair at the same time. “Why don’t we get our own table at the same place?”

  “Thank you. I don’t think I’ll go, but I do need to talk with you. I’ve been meaning to get in touch ever since this happened.”

  Kate was open about her alcoholism, but she didn’t remember telling Hilda. “Did you know I was in AA?”

  “No. I’d been meaning to call about not doing the fair.”

  No. Not another. Kate tried to sound more compassionate than alarmed. “Why aren’t you?”

  Hilda took a moment to accept phone numbers from some of the helpful women and then slipped away from them, closer to Kate. “Sorry. It’s the same reason I’ve felt like drinking. Can we step outside?”

  Hilda sat on the low stone wall that separated the narrow yard on one side of the church from the back of the bed and breakfast next door. A strong, cool breeze pushed Kate’s hair into her face and ruffled Lobo’s fur. Hilda’s hair didn’t move. Kate lengthened Lobo’s lead to its maximum and gave him permission to explore.

  “I was so relieved to see you,” Hilda said, her brown eyes wet. She dabbed a finger under her lower lashes, catching the tears before her mascara could run. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me, though. You were always so busy at the fair.”

  “Busy? Probably chain-smoking and biting heads off. As soon as I got sober, I thought I could rule the world.”

  Hilda put on a faint smile. “I noticed you haven’t lit up. Congratulations on not smoking.”

  “Thanks. But I’m still biting heads and ruling the world. It’s as hard to quit that as smoking and drinking.” Kate paused. A noisy, dressed-up couple emerged from a back door of the B and B, arguing. The woman stumbled on her high heels in the gravel. “What’s going on with you?”

  “The angels can’t reach me.”

  Dread of the plague hit Kate like wet clay. “Do you mean that literally?” Until now she’d thought of Hilda’s work as an interpretation of spiritual experience. “Like you used to channel them?”

  “I did. For ten years.”

  Ten years during which she hadn’t had a drink. This was more serious than not being able to do the fair. Hilda’s sobriety was at risk. “That’s amazing. You had one of those spiritual events—like that story in the Big Book—”

  “The what?”

  “The original AA book. Or it might have been in one of the other books. Anyway, this man prayed to have the desire to drink removed, and this light full of love showed up and his prayers were answered.” The story had bothered Kate, so she couldn’t forget it. Miracles were too capricious for the God of her understanding. “I never met anyone that actually happened to.”

  “You still haven’t.” Hilda looked down at her hands. “I didn’t pray.”

  “The angels just showed up?”

  “I must have done something to attract them but I don’t know what.” Hilda rubbed the wall as if studying its texture. “I was a landscape artist, living in Taos. Professionally successful, but my marriage was failing because I was in a heavy party scene. I came home drunk at three or four in the morning—nothing unusual—but this time my husband had locked the doors with those little chains. I yelled and tried break them off the door. Finally a neighbor came over and took me to his house to sleep on the couch. The next day Rob kicked me out.”

  “That could make a drunk hit bottom and ask for help. Even in the back of your mind.”

  “It didn’t. I got a hotel room. I was so upset and hungover I just lay on the bed and cried for about an hour, feeling sorry for myself. I blamed Rob, not my drinking. My only plan for the day was to get smashed as soon as I could stop bawling, but when I sat up to go down to the bar I got knocked back flat. I thought I was having a stroke or something, even though I was only thirty.”

  “You didn’t pray at all?”

  “No.” Hilda closed her eyes, and her hands turned up as if to receive something. “The room turned into pale blue light. It broke into shafts like a forest of crystals, and beings of light were moving through this forest.” She opened her eyes, vibrant and alive with the memory. “And the music. Tones. Chants. Something like bells. Not played on instruments, though, but on sound waves themselves. The voices were so pure they were beyond human. The colors shifted like the aurora borealis and the angels danced between them like light between leaves. One of them sang a single long note and I fell asleep. Not wanting to drink.”

  Hilda smiled sadly and dropped her hands to the wall. “Rob still divorced me, of course—he could hardly believe I was sober or that I’d seen and heard angels. But they stayed with me. I learned to channel their music into electronic sounds. I painted their world. It changed my life, my art. Everything.”

  “But they didn’t heal you. You want to drink now that they’re gone.”

  “Desperately.”

  “What happened to make them leave?”

  “I don’t know. I was at the Secrist Gallery when they sold one of my angel prints. I don’t always get to meet the people who buy my work, but when I do I like to share something about the angels with them, so they get a glimpse of what’s behind my art. By the time I finished talking with the woman who bought this one, they were gone. They’ve always been in the background even when I wasn’t immersed in a vision, but when she walked out the door with that print I was as empty and isolated as when I was about to drink in that hotel.”

  Kate saw a chance to test Jamie’s plague idea. “Do you remember the customer’s name?”

  Hilda frowned. “No. I’d never seen her before. She was very young. Pretty. Looked like she could be a model. I think her name was something unusual, but unusual is sort of usual around here.”

  Shit. It was a plague. “Dahlia? No last name?”

  “Oh my god. Yes. How di
d you know?

  Kate hesitated. Talk of contagious soul loss might be too disturbing for someone struggling to stay sober, or so bizarre Hilda wouldn’t believe her. “She came to me for fortune telling. She didn’t like my reading. I was too unspiritual for her.”

  “She thought I was very spiritual.” Hilda’s hand explored the wall again, rubbing a stone. “We talked quite a while. She’d been through a personal tragedy and she was fascinated by the angels, especially by the way they had helped me. Maybe I connected them with her too well and they left with her.”

  “If they did, she didn’t keep them. There was nothing like that anywhere near her.”

  Hilda’s eyes flashed a hint of hope. “Do you think they could return, then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Could beings that showed up uninvited, took over an artist’s life, and then vanished really be angels? Kate wasn’t religious, but she thought angels would be more reliable than that. Whatever these spirits were, though, Hilda seemed to need them. “You should do the fair this year if you still have CDs and prints to sell. It might attract them back to you.”

  “You make it sound like I’m their agent.”

  “Sorry. That’s not how I meant it.” But almost. Kate spotted Tim with his sponsees waving to her from the sidewalk at the front of the church. Hastily, she took out her business card case and dropped it. Lobo picked it up and Kate handed Hilda a card. “Think about it. At least it can sustain your career.”

  Hilda nodded and forced a faint smile.

  “And go to as many AA meetings as you can stand, too.” Kate shortened Lobo’s lead. “That’s how people without angels get sober.”

  “Can I call you as a sponsor?”

  “Me? I’m kind of young, and I’ve never sponsored anyone before. Are you sure?”

  “I don’t want to try to explain my story to ...” Hilda examined the other card she’d been given. “Joan.”

  The pushy woman in the linen suit. “No. I can see that.” Tim’s frequently struggling sponsees called him at all hours of the night. Kate didn’t want that kind of relationship with Hilda—or anyone, if she was honest with herself—but she did want her in the fair, and didn’t want her stuck with Joan or relapsing into drinking. “Then I guess I’m your sponsor.”

  “Thanks.” Hilda hugged Kate. “I’ll only need you until I get the angels back.”

  Chapter Eleven

  A small package lay on the porch when Mae came back from an early morning run. As she climbed the front steps to get it, the mesquite tree groaned and creaked, swaying over the carport. She’d happily overlooked the tree’s condition until Jamie had pointed it out. Now it bothered her. If there was anything scary or worrisome in the world, leave it to Jamie to find it. A lizard scrambled out of what he’d called the devil’s arse crack.

  Mae picked up the box. It had been sent overnight from Asheville, North Carolina, and had probably come late yesterday afternoon. Taking the tree-free route out the back, she’d missed it.

  She peeled off her five-toed barefoot shoes, brought the package inside, and opened it. The contents included a worn copy of Goodnight Moon, a pair of gold earrings shaped like dogwood flowers, a matching pendant on a gold chain, and a notecard with dolphins and doves on the cover mingling in an unlikely Escher-like flight.

  Naomi had written: “These are Lily’s favorite things from high school that she left behind, and her favorite book from when she was little. Harold said you didn’t make contact with her well through Cara. I’m not surprised. Lily hated Cara, but he wasn’t around enough to see that.

  “Lily and I had some challenging times, but I want to make things right with her now, and hope she’s not in trouble. She wouldn’t tell me if she was, but I would reach out to help. I’m praying that the Universe and the Great Goddess will bring the best to all of us. Peace and blessed be, Naomi.”

  Running her fingers along the worn edges of Goodnight Moon, Mae recalled reading that story to her stepdaughters when they were little. The memory of being a mother pinged a tiny hammer against her heart. Lily, who threw the kitten and insulted her mama, had been Naomi and Harold’s baby once. Their little girl.

  Mae took her crystals and Lily’s things out to the back steps. The view there always brought her a sense of solidity and serenity. In the early light, Turtleback Mountain was full of black shadows and bright lines of red rock. She chose her grandmother’s amethyst for clairvoyance and turquoise and aventurine for protection, and then asked whatever guided her to make sure she journeyed wisely.

  Holding Lily’s childhood book in one hand and the crystals in the other, Mae let her thoughts clear like silt settling in a pond, and directed the journey. Why isn’t Lily calling her parents? I need to see if she’s in trouble they should know about.

  The tunnel that signaled a vision drew her into a living room with new-looking furniture. A slim blue-eyed man in his mid-thirties with thick dark hair, a short beard, and brown-framed glasses, sat on the floor, leaning back against the base of a couch, surrounded by a child’s toys. Harold, before middle age had added weight and subtracted hair. A little girl around three years old toddled up carrying Goodnight Moon.

  “Silly-Lily.” He drew her onto his lap. Their blue denim legs stretched out in a stack. “It’s not bedtime yet. That’s your bedtime story.”

  “I like the animals.” She opened the book and stroked one of the odd cat-like beings in its illustrations.

  “Okay.” Harold held the book, his arms around her. “We can make up a new story for the little animals. A daytime story.”

  “Can we?”

  “Sure. If we turn the pages back to front, it can be a story about waking up.” He turned to the last page of the book. Lily smiled blissfully and rested back against her father. The image faded.

  Staying as much in the trance as possible, Mae traded the book for the jewelry. She dropped inward again. Lily, now in her mid-teens, stood in the same kitchen where she had practiced ballet and abused the kitten, arguing with Naomi. The girl wore her abundant hair up in a twist, and was dressed in a pink oxford shirt, khaki pants, and the dogwood jewelry. She looked country-club compared to her mother, who wore a long, crinkly paisley skirt and a faded blue T-shirt.

  Lily said, “You think a straight-A student is taking pills? I’d be a bum like you if I did that.”

  Naomi’s cheeks flushed. “I’m not a bum. I have chosen to live simply.”

  “And I have chosen to live well.” Cool and hard-voiced, Lily leaned back on the refrigerator and crossed her arms. “I’m in a much more profitable business than your old woo-woo bookstore.”

  “Lily. Your father would give you any money you need. You just have to ask.”

  “I like earning it my way.”

  “If you got caught ...” Naomi twisted handfuls of her skirt, her eyes pleading. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I do.” Lily’s voice skimmed the surface of a laugh. “I learned the ropes from the guy who sells you weed.”

  “Hoby doesn’t deal pills.”

  “I started small with him.” Lily moved over and hoisted her narrow bottom onto the counter next to the coffeemaker. “Now,” she tilted her head and slightly narrowed her eyes, the corners of her mouth lifting, “I’m fucking a pharmacist.”

  Naomi’s mouth opened. A short, loud inhalation, followed by silence.

  Lily kicked the cabinet with a steady, aggressive rhythm. “I decided a long time ago that I was not going to be like you, some slobby old hippie with no taste and a fat ass, living off her husband’s money and playing poor as some stupid fashion statement.”

  “What happened to you?” Tears leaked from Naomi’s eyes. “I tried to raise you to be kind. To be caring.”

  “You dragged me to that silly fake pagan thing if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s not fake, Lily. I truly worship.”

  “Your Goddess is like church folks’ God. All the same bullshit. People go through a bunch of words and
kneeling or a bunch or songs and dancing to get in a good mood, and they call it being spiritual. I help people get in a good mood, too. I just don’t pretend it’s holy. Okay? Everything’s a drug. Religion is a drug. Your fucking simplicity is a drug. And you use drugs. So pardon me for being strong enough to make some money off the rest of you.”

  Lily dropped lightly to her feet and swept out the back door. Naomi crumpled onto a chair, sobbing.

  The scene dissolved and another emerged. Lily had changed her look, resembling the goddess of the grape more than her high school self. Her hair hung free and she wore a flowing dress tied with a green silk scarf around her hips as she danced in a bar with another woman. Athletically trim with long silver hair and an excess of turquoise jewelry, Lily’s companion moved her tight-jeaned hips and rolled her head in a blatantly sensual way. Lily regarded her with indifference.

  The band was loud but good. The singer’s voice nearly knocked Mae out of her altered state. Jamie was singing Joplin, eyes closed, rocking and writhing, lost in the blues.

  When the song ended, he shook hands with one of the musicians and jumped off the side of the stage furthest from Lily. He staggered on his landing, caught his balance, and headed for the door.

  Lily stood still, watching him leave. At the start of the next song her partner slithered into another suggestive dance, but Lily shook her head. She drifted to a table and sat with a short, middle-aged woman whose skin had the sagging look of a plump person who’d lost weight too fast. The woman gazed sadly into the space where Jamie had been while Lily slouched beside her with adolescent sulkiness. The too-much-turquoise woman joined them. The vision closed.

  Bewildered, Mae stared at the mountain’s red-brown ridges. She trusted the Sight to show her what she needed to know, but she didn’t understand how this journey could have done that. Lily had been a sweet normal child who loved her daddy, and then a mean-spirited teenager who sold drugs. No psychic needed. Her parents already knew that, and the change in their daughter must have hurt them deeply. Mae had seen that unhappy scene for nothing. The final vision was superfluous as well. Jamie would call Naomi and Harold when he woke up, if he hadn’t already done so when he left the bar.