by Dyan Sheldon
His mother interrupts the catalogue of Herculean feats accomplished by Orlando’s brother before her husband can get started. “Oh, Bernard,” she says. “The boy’s been working all day—”
“And now he gets to play, Suzanne.” Her husband’s word is final.
Shooting baskets is not a form of father–son bonding for Bernard Gwinnet the way it is for some men. It’s training; training and making sure that Orlando isn’t slacking off. To Bernard playing is all about aggression, competition and winning – three things that don’t come naturally to this son. In the world of Bernard Gwinnet, as the old saying goes, nice guys don’t win ball games.
They shoot for half an hour. Orlando darts and weaves and hurls the ball at the hoop as if he means to take it off the side of the garage, keeping it from his father with the ferocity of a bear protecting its cub. “Good! Good!” shouts Bernard. “That’s the spirit!” Suzanne watches from the kitchen window.
After Orlando’s father finally leaves for work, his mother asks him to replace the burnt-out bulb in the hall that she can’t reach without stilts.
Orlando climbs up on the stepladder, thinking about how electricity can kill you when you least expect it.
“She’s all right, you know,” says Orlando’s mother. “She’s in Heaven, and she’s safe and happy.”
He looks down at her. “What?”
“Sorrel. I know you’ve been anxious about her, but you don’t have to be. She’s absolutely fine. And she doesn’t want you to worry. Not at all.”
It’s news to him that he was concerned about Sorrel’s afterlife. But, of course, his mother doesn’t know that if he were worried about Sorrel it wouldn’t be because he was afraid that she isn’t flapping her wings and playing a harp somewhere in the clouds, but because he was afraid that she isn’t.
“Right,” says Orlando. “Thanks, Mom. That’s good to know.”
“If that’s sarcasm, you’re not funny,” says his mother. “It is good to know.”
“So how did you find out that she’s happy and everything?” Not that he needs to ask.
Suzanne Gwinnet talks to God. She’s always been a churchgoer, but after Raylan died ten years ago, she started talking to Him on a daily basis. God is always reassuring. Raylan, too, is safe and happy and doesn’t want anyone to worry about him, but he does like his mother to keep in touch.
“I’ve been praying for her since— since she passed.” As if Sorrel had been walking down the high street and just kept on going. His mother takes the old bulb from him and hands him the new one. “And then this morning I was working in the garden when the most beautiful butterfly landed on my hand. It looked like a painting by one of those Frenchmen. You know what I mean? Colours splotched all over and kind of out of focus? It just sat there. That’s when I remembered how I always said Sorrel was like a beautiful butterfly. You remember that? And I realized it was a sign. A sign that she’s where she’s meant to be. That she’s all right.” A divine text message. “She wanted you to know.”
Only half teasing, he says, “How come she didn’t tell me herself?”
“Because miracles aren’t wasted on doubters.” Suzanne steps back as he climbs down from the ladder. “Because you don’t believe she could.”
That’s not the only thing he doesn’t believe. Orlando admires and respects his mother’s faith – it’s as generous and kind as she is, and has made it possible for her to cope with all the disappointments and heartache that God, in His wisdom, has directed her way – but he is a twenty-first-century boy who doesn’t believe in any kind of mumbo-jumbo. Mumbo-jumbo being anything not based on fact and reason. Mumbo-jumbo is superstition and wishful thinking; the beliefs people turn to when reality betrays them; the sort of thing you would have expected to hear by the flickering firelight in a prehistoric cave while the winter winds roared outside and the night hunters howled. And that includes angels and signs from God – and ghosts. A flutter of butterflies the size of a jet plane could land on him and Orlando still wouldn’t believe it was Sorrel messaging him through the dimensions of space and time. Sorrel could run beside him every morning and evening, her ponytail bouncing and her voice incessant, and he still wouldn’t believe her spirit had come back to haunt him. Indeed, he has put the incident when she did run beside him very firmly out of his mind. It was an aberration. No more than overexertion on a hot afternoon after a day spent sitting out in the sun. No more than the delayed effects of shock. A symptom of all the daily stress he lives with – most of which is called Dad.
Any time Suzanne Gwinnet starts talking about messages from God or feeling Raylan’s presence or saying that she knows her son is well and happy, Bernard Gwinnet stops her with a “Don’t talk like a fool, Suzanne. Dead is dead.” And storms out of the room. But Orlando wishes he did believe – believed that Raylan, Ruben’s dad and Sorrel still exist. That Celeste’s mother is right and death isn’t the end; that his own mother is right and everything follows God’s plan, even if we don’t know what that plan is or could possibly be. And he’s never wished it as much as he wishes it now.
The afternoon turns into evening; the evening into night; the night moves on towards morning. The neighbourhood is quiet and dark, everyone asleep or watching TV with the sound down, the lights off and the curtains drawn. His father’s out keeping the county safe; his mother’s gone to bed. Orlando sits alone in his room, watching a recorded performance of “Revelations” by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Normally, he would be transfixed by the dancing, but tonight he keeps thinking about his mother’s butterfly.
The house creaks, the wind stirs the leaves, a dog barks somewhere down the road. Orlando stops the show, and yawns. He glances at his computer; it’s two a.m. Time to stop thinking about butterflies and get some sleep. And then a movement outside the window catches his attention. It looks as if there’s something in the oak tree, but it’s hard to tell what because of the light in the room and how tired he suddenly feels and the distance of the tree from the house. The son of a policeman, Orlando has been raised cautious if not actually suspicious. It’s probably a cat or something caught in the branches, but just to be on the safe side he puts his laptop on the bedside table and walks over to the window. He puts a hand to the side of his head and his face close to the glass.
And there is Sorrel Groober. Or what, through the window and fatigue and the darkness, looks like Sorrel Groober. She isn’t running now, she’s sitting cross-legged in the tree, as casual as someone sitting on a sofa and not at the thin end of a branch several yards in the air. Tonight she is wearing shabby jeans and a boy’s flannel shirt (the sort of clothes he always thought she wouldn’t be caught dead in) and eating an ice cream (a food she never ate, especially not, he assumes, at two a.m.).
Orlando’s first thought is: Whose shirt is she wearing? Did it belong to that jerk Mike Shoehorn? Or to one of the twins? His second thought is: Why would a ghost be eating anything? Ghosts don’t have bodies.
Never mind being haunted; he’s starting to spook himself. And so decides to open the window for a closer look, to see what’s really there. It may be because of a recent rain, but the window seems to be stuck. He presses the heels of his hands against the frame and pushes with all his considerable strength, straining and looking towards the ceiling. The sash finally gives, but when he sticks out his head there is no one there – nothing caught in the branches, no lurking cat. He ignores the little wave of relief he feels, shuts the window again, closes the blinds and turns back to the room.
Sorrel is sitting at his desk, the laptop now in front of her and back on, and her eyes on the screen.
He knows he shouldn’t talk to her, she isn’t real, but, as if some outside force has control of his mind, he hears himself say, “What are you doing here?”
She looks over. “What do you think? I’m doing some of the trillion things I never did before. Never ate ice cream. Never wore scruffy clothes. Never sat in a tree. What about you? Wh
at are you doing?” She nods to the computer. “I never knew you were into dance. How come you kept it a secret? This is some pretty cool stuff.”
“How the hell did you get in here?”
Sorrel makes an exaggerated um-duh face. “You don’t think I needed you to open the window for me, do you? I’m kind of non-corporeal these days. The physical laws that govern you don’t govern me.”
“I wasn’t opening the window for you.” So now he’s not just talking to her, he’s snapping at her as well. “I was opening it for me.”
“Oh really?” Sorrel smirks. “Going somewhere? Get yourself a jetpack since I saw you last?”
This is totally ludicrous. There’s no one else here, and even if there were (which there isn’t), Orlando certainly doesn’t have to explain himself to her. “You’ll have to get out,” says Orlando. “It’s late. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
“You should be tired the way you were shooting those baskets with your dad. He’s lucky you had a ball in your hand, and not a gun.”
“It’s a game,” says Orlando. “You play to win.”
“And it helps with the stress,” says Sorrel. “I did yoga to de-stress from living with my mother. So I get it. Your dad’s not exactly the Dalai Lama, is he? Meryl the Peril’s pretty intense, but your dad could stress out a tree.”
Orlando pulls down the bedcovers. “I want to go to sleep. Now.”
He might as well have saved his breath.
“But you weren’t mellowing out this afternoon. You were angry because he made you play. So here’s my question—” she leans towards him— “if basketball isn’t a release, what is?”
“You leaving five minutes ago.”
She makes a face. In your dreams. “It’s funny, you know, but I always figured you really liked basketball. I guess ’cause you’re the big basketball star. Only you don’t, do you?” She gives him a knowing smile. “And it’s not the only thing you don’t like. Something else you kept quiet about. I mean, everybody knows my mom made me nuts, but you never said anything about your da—”
“That’s enough.” He snatches the laptop from in front of her, shuts it down and puts it back on the bedside table. “I’m turning out the light. I’m going to bed.”
She shrugs. “So be my guest.”
Orlando switches off the lamp and gets into bed. He closes his eyes, but he knows there’s no way he’ll ever sleep. He’s too wound up now; so wound up that he could swear he hears Sorrel breathing in the corner. Is she watching him? Is she going to stay there all night? He reaches over and turns on the bedside light. There’s no one at the desk.
Of course there isn’t; ghosts don’t breathe.
It’s the sort of Sunday afternoon that makes people abandon their TVs, computers and home-improvement projects to be outside. Protected from the sun by glasses, creams and hats, they flock to pools and beaches; parks and picnic grounds; backyards and decks. Tennis, boating, white-water-rafting, hang-gliding, golf, mountain climbing, abseiling, even weeding; they’ll do anything – as long as they do it under that big blue sky. Music, laughter and the smoke from scores of barbecues fill the air. It seems as if the whole world is out of doors and having a party. Celeste is in her room.
Celeste’s room – or her side of it at least (Astra’s could only be described as a mirror image if the mirror has been shattered into hundreds of pieces) – is organized and tidy, if idiosyncratic – rather like Celeste herself. There is a shelf of books, a shelf of CDs and a small collection of vinyls (given to her by her father). The clothes in her chest of drawers are all neatly folded; the clothes on her side of the closet neatly hung, the shoes underneath them lined up on a metal rack. Each of her knick-knacks has its own place and is regularly dusted. But there are strings of fairy lights around the window and crisscrossing the ceiling over her bed, and the walls are decorated with the framed sheet music of some of her favourite songs rather than the usual posters and prints. The effect is personal and homey (as opposed to Astra’s effect of chaos and destruction). Right now, Celeste is sitting on the floor, playing a song on her guitar. This is how and where she spends most of her free time. Keeping well away from her mother and her sister. She doesn’t feel bad for avoiding her sister – Astra is always in a mood, and it’s rarely a good one. She does have guilt about avoiding her mother, but the truth is that, though this is something she would never say either silently or out loud, she doesn’t always feel like being around Lilah. Her mother has a knack for making Celeste feel that she’s bound to do or say the wrong thing – or already has.
The family shopping trip was something of a disappointment for Lilah, if not an outright failure. Celeste, as was noticed, never really got into the spirit of it. Astra was excited and chatty once they got to the mall, but Celeste was quiet and bored. She kept her mother and sister waiting outside the changing room for so long that Astra nearly fainted with hunger and Lilah began to worry that the absence of Sorrel has actually made Celeste more selfish than she’d been, which wasn’t what she’d expected. To top it all off, Celeste, who usually listens to her mother’s advice, bought not just one item that Lilah had advised her against but four, paying for the extra three herself. “I’m sure you know best,” Lilah told her with a smile, making it clear that Celeste didn’t.
Lilah, however, is a professional saleswoman; faint heart never clinched an important sale. And so, rather than discourage her, those small acts of rebellion have made Celeste’s mother even more determined to break what she considers the unhealthy hold Sorrel Groober had over Celeste – and, apparently, continues to have. Her attempts to separate them when Sorrel was alive didn’t succeed, but she has no intention of being defeated by someone who is dead. Time to let go. And so Lilah has encouraged Celeste to get out more. Using a gentle combination of bribery and guilt, she persuaded Celeste to accompany her to one party, two barbecues, a church fair, a brunch and the Skidmore and Pulaski Real Estate Boat Ride – events where she knew there would be other teenagers (though nothing came of any of them). Not nagging, of course, but suggesting (often and a lot), she convinced Celeste to invite Orlando and Ruben over to watch a film (Ruben couldn’t make it and Orlando fell asleep). Today Lilah is using a different technique.
Celeste is singing softly to herself when the door to her bedroom opens and her mother steps in, smiling. Like most of us, Lilah Redwing has a smile for every occasion. This is her selling-a-house-that’s-been-on-the-market-for-two-years-and-has-mould-in-the-basement smile. The technique she’s using today is deceit. “What are you doing, darling?”
This is another reason why Celeste doesn’t always want to be around her mother. What does she think she’s doing? Celeste is tempted to say, Sitting on my bed, playing my guitar. “Just messing around,” says Celeste.
Lilah’s smile intensifies. Besides the mould in the basement, there are raccoons in the attic. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready, darling?”
“Ready?” echoes Celeste. “I’m sorry, are we going somewhere?”
Her mother laughs. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Really, you girls…” She shakes her head. The things mothers have to put up with. “I know I told you. Iris Moon is coming to lunch.”
Celeste frowns. “Iris Moon?” She should have known there was some reason Lilah is home on a Sunday; it’s usually her day to see her friends if there aren’t any houses to be shown.
“Yes, Iris Moon.” Lilah’s laugh is like a picture over that damp patch on the wall. “You must remember. She’s quite an important figure in the community. I just sold her mother’s house over on Old Mill Road?”
Celeste rests the guitar across her lap, trying to coax this memory out of the corner where it seems to be hiding. The name Iris Moon is familiar, possibly because she’s such an important figure in the community – but not because Celeste knew she was coming for lunch. “You did?”
“Yes, I did. Remember? ‘It’s still Summer,’ I said. ‘It’ll be winter soon enough so we should take advan
tage of this beautiful weather to eat out on the patio more.’” She pauses for a second. “And socialize.”
Socialize. That sounds ominous. Iris Moon, Iris Moon, thinks Celeste. What is she not remembering about Iris Moon? “I guess I thought you meant you were having lunch with her,” lies Celeste. “Not me, too.”
“Nonsense. I was very clear. It’s an occasion. Astra’s invited Winnie. And Iris Moon is bringing her sister who’s visiting from DC with her son. And I bought all that lovely food at Barbieri’s.”
“You did?” Her mother never buys lovely food at Barbieri’s. You could buy a sheep for what they charge for a pound of shrimp salad. Maybe two sheep.
“Yes, I did. I told you, it’s an occasion. Iris Moon’s sister is in the government. It’s not every day we have someone to lunch who knows the President.”
“Or even every other day,” says a voice unheard by Lilah.
Celeste catches her breath, and moves her eyes to the left. Sorrel is sitting on her desk in lotus pose. She is not dressed to meet someone who knows the President; she’s dressed to meet someone who repairs automobiles. With effort, Celeste manages not to smile.
“Besides, darling,” says Lilah. Coaxing. “You know it was never meant to be just me and Iris. I am doing this for you.”
Celeste focuses on her mother again. “What?”
“For you,” Lilah repeats. “I’ve arranged this all for you. I’m sure I told you.”
Sorrel groans. “What do you want to bet this is about the nephew? You’re lucky it’s not legal to sell daughters, or you’d’ve been gone long ago.”
And that’s when Celeste remembers what she has been told about Iris Moon – or at least one of her relatives. Iris Moon’s nephew is in college, pre-law, and doing extraordinarily well. He has political ambitions.
“So the nephew’s coming to lunch, too,” says Celeste. Which explains all the lovely food from Barbieri’s – and why Celeste was never told about it.