Spirits Revived (Daisy Gumm Majesty)

by Alice Duncan

  He looked a little abashed. Sam Rotondo. Big, rugged detective, whom I’d seldom seen discomposed, much less shy. Well, except for after he’d told me he loved me, and that had only lasted a second before he got mad again. I sighed.

  “I didn’t know your Margaret was buried here in Morning-side, Sam.”

  “Yeah. She’s over there.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Under that sycamore tree.”

  “This is a beautiful place,” I said inanely. I mean, it was a cemetery. How beautiful could it be?

  Actually, it was beautiful—but it contained so much grief, its beauty was marred somehow, at least for me.

  “Um . . . would you like a little time alone with Billy?” I asked, still being inane.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just . . .” He shrugged as his voice trailed off.

  Hmm. All right, so neither one of us knew what to say now that we were alone together except for Spike. Ergo, I decided to take matters into my own two competent hands. “May I see Margaret’s gravesite, Sam? I’d like to see it.”

  “You would?” He seemed surprised, which vaguely irked me.

  Unfortunately, Sam almost always irked me. That was probably my fault. After all, I’d not treated him especially well in times past. He probably expected a tongue-lashing every time we met.

  “Yes,” I said, suppressing my annoyance. “I’d like to see where she is. She’s not too far away from Billy, is she?”

  “No, she’s not.” He glanced down at Spike, who had begun leaping upon his trousers.

  “Spike. Down,” I said, recalling my manners and those of my dog.

  Spike lay at Sam’s feet. See what I mean about that obedience class? Even in his ecstasy, Spike obeyed me. Would that people did the same.

  “Well, come along then,” said Sam, as ungracious as ever.

  I let his surly comment go. No use provoking the beast. Sam, I mean. Not Spike. “Thanks, Sam.”

  He hooked his elbow for me to take, I placed my hand on his arm, and we set off for that sycamore tree a mere several yards from Billy’s grave.

  “Spike, heel,” said I as we started off.

  Spike, brilliant dog that he was—he’d placed first in his obedience class—heeled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  We didn’t speak as we walked to Sam’s late wife’s final resting place. Our silence wasn’t at all uncomfortable, as so many of our conversations had been. I no longer considered Sam the enemy. For sure, Spike didn’t. He was so happy to be there on this glorious day with the two of us, he pranced at heel alongside us as if he were dancing.

  Sam stopped in front of another gravestone, less elaborate than Billy’s, although it too had a filigree design on top. On it was written: “Margaret Mary Rotondo. b. 1893. d. 1918.” She’d been only twenty-five years old. The same age my Billy would have been last year if he’d lived until July. But I didn’t want to think about that.

  “That’s it? You didn’t want them to say anything else about her?” I asked Sam, thinking somebody involved in her burial had lacked imagination. I suspected Sam.

  I felt him shrug. “Didn’t know what else to say. I was . . . upset at the time, and there was nobody else around to help. Her family was gone, and mine was in New York.”

  After a pause, I said, “I can understand that.”

  “But you wrote a nice thing for Billy,” Sam said.

  Inwardly I preened a little. “I had to dig for that quotation for a long time.”

  “Which one? The one about him resting or the one about the good dying first?”

  Oh, Lord. I guess Sam didn’t read poetry on a regular basis.

  “I made up the one about him resting. The good dying first one was written by William Wordsworth.”

  “Hmm. Wasn’t he a poet or something?”

  Merciful heavens. “Yes, Sam, he was a poet. A famous one. The complete quotation is, ‘The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.’ ”

  His brow furrowed and he frowned. “What the heck does that mean?”

  “Sam Rotondo, if you aren’t the most—”

  “Don’t get mad. I’m serious. What does that mean, ‘the good die first’? And that ‘burn to the socket’ part. What does that mean?”

  “Well, I guess it means that life isn’t fair. That good people die young, and lots of bad—or less good—people live forever and wear out when they’re ninety-five or something like that.”

  “Kind of like, ‘Only the good die young’?”

  “Kind of, I suppose. I think that one’s from Euripides. He said something like, ‘whom the gods love die young.’ Which doesn’t make any sense to me. If any god ever loved Billy, he sure put him through hell before he let him die.” I pondered some of those pronouns, but I needn’t have. Sam understood.

  “Yeah. I agree. Like Margaret. She was good, and she got tuberculosis. What kind of reward is that for being good? Like Billy got shot all to hell and gassed. I can’t see a reasonable god allowing stuff like that to happen.”

  I was beginning to feel blasphemous, so I fell back on one of my Methodist fundamentals. With a shrug, I said, “God gives us the earth and everything on it, and it’s up to us to do with it what we will. Neither you nor I began that stupid war or created consumption. The fact that neither Margaret nor Billy deserved their fate is a man-made thing, not God’s fault.”

  “Huh. In Billy’s case, maybe. People didn’t create the tuberculosis bacillus.”

  I sighed. “Too true. I don’t know what the answer is, Sam.”

  “I’m beginning to think there isn’t one.”

  How depressing. “I’m afraid you may be right.”

  Spike took that moment to break his training and make a running leap at a dawdling bird. Fortunately for all of us (except Spike) he missed the bird. He’d actually snapped a sparrow out of the air once, in our back yard. Shocked everyone, especially the bird, which didn’t survive the experience, poor thing.

  But at least he broke the melancholy mood pervading Sam and me. “Spike! Come!”

  As much as he didn’t want to, Spike came. I knelt down. “Good boy. What a good boy you are!” Effusive praise for an erring pet, but that was part of the training. If I were trying to teach him a new behavior, I’d give him a treat for his compliance, but in this case Spike was happy with praise. Dogs are so much better able to deal with life than we humans. I mean, if a dog is sick or unhappy, he goes and lies down somewhere and rests. He doesn’t dwell on the evils of life or how crummy he feels.

  Mind you, I don’t know that for a certified fact, but I’d noticed that if Spike couldn’t eat something or play with it, he’d just ignore it and go do something else. We humans like to brood over our grievances and suffer and moan and groan. Heck, after Billy died, I’d nearly starved myself to death. Not on purpose. But I couldn’t seem to eat. Harold told me I looked skeletal. Me! Daisy Gumm Majesty, who has deplored my unseemly curves ever since the “lean and boyish” look for women became fashionable.

  A year later, I’d regained some of the weight I’d lost, but not all of it. I suppose that was a good thing, since I have to look ethereal for my job, and makeup and somber clothing can only do so much. Nobody wants a robust spiritualist, after all. The only problem with my weight loss was that most of my clothes had to be altered, but as I’m so good with a sewing machine, even that wasn’t much of a big deal.

  Sam broke the silence that had settled over us after Spike had made his break and come back. “I’m glad we didn’t have kids, Margaret and me.”

  I looked up at him sharply. “You didn’t want children?” I’d always envisioned Billy and me with three children. Two boys and a girl, and the boys would protect the little girl and make sure nobody ever hurt her. I’d had an older brother and an older sister, and neither one of them had protected me, but a girl can dream, can’t she? Besides, my dream didn’t last past the first year of my marriage to Billy.

  With one
of his characteristic shrugs, Sam said, “Well, sure, I’d have liked to have kids, but I sure wouldn’t want to rear them all by myself. My job takes all my time. I’d probably have had to send them to my parents in New York City, and how nice would that have been? My parents don’t need to raise any more kids, and my kids and I wouldn’t even know each other.”

  “Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “I’d hate to have someone else rear my children. I don’t know about your folks, but mine have enough to do without raising a brood of other people’s children.”

  “Mine, too. My dad still works as a jeweler. And my mother has a ton of grandchildren at the house all the time. My sisters’ kids. I have three sisters.”

  I’m not sure, but I think Sam shuddered slightly. I almost laughed. “Three sisters must have been a strain on you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “I remember you told us your father was a jeweler. Somehow, I always think of Italians as owning restaurants and Jewish people owning the jewelry stores. Stereotypes don’t always work out, do they?”

  “There are plenty of Jewish jewelers in New York City. But other folks get in on the business, too. And all sorts of people have restaurants. Have you ever heard of Delmonico’s?”

  “Yes. I’ve read about it in books. The National Geographic said Delmonico’s changed the way America eats, and that everything before it opened was either boiled or fried. But now, thanks to Delmonico’s, we’ve expanded our taste buds, or something like that.”

  “Delmonico’s was opened by a couple of Swiss brothers.”

  “Really? I guess I missed that in the article. The name sounds Italian.”

  “It might be Italian, but the Delmonico brothers were Swiss.” I heard the scorn in Sam’s voice.

  “Well, how should I know?” I asked, feeling defensive. “I don’t know very many Swiss people. Or Italians, either, for that matter.”

  A year and a half or so ago, I’d met a German woman who was trying to pass herself off as a Swiss, but I’d found her out. I was going to have her deported, what’s more, because I generally loathe all things German because of the war. But the poor girl hadn’t started the stupid war any more than I had, and she’d suffered from it, too. I ended up calling upon a very rich friend, and we managed to get Hilda Schwartz and another German boy asylum in the good old US of A. Another case of stereotypes toppling, I suppose. I shook my head, thinking you couldn’t depend on anything anymore.

  “Why are you shaking your head?” Sam asked, as if he thought I doubted him. “It’s the truth. The Delmonico brothers were from Switzerland.”

  “I believe you. I was just thinking about . . . something else.” Sam didn’t approve of anyone circumventing the law, even for a just cause. One more reason we often clashed.

  “Huh. You were thinking about that German girl in your cooking class, I’ll bet.”

  Startled, I said, “How could you know about Hilda?”

  “I don’t know about Hilda. I know about you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Always trying to save the world. That’s you. The world isn’t worth saving, if you ask me.”

  “Don’t be so cynical. The world is just the world. It’s the people on it who do all the good and evil things. Neither Hilda nor you nor Billy nor I were in any way responsible for that reprehensible war. The blasted so-called leaders of our various nations were the ones who started it. And that guy who shot the Archduke Ferdinand, but I think he was only an excuse. I think the Kaiser and his cohorts were just looking for an excuse to take over the world. Stupid Kaiser.”

  “Yeah. Well, it didn’t work.”

  “They’ll try again.”

  “Now who’s sounding cynical?”

  I heaved another sigh. “You’re right. War sure changes everything, doesn’t it? Look at all the young folks now, the ones who are left, I mean: not believing in anything, drinking and smoking and dancing and thinking ‘what’s the use?’ It makes me sad. And mad.”

  A lopsided smile creased Sam’s face. “I’ve heard you rant about F. Scott Fitzgerald before.”

  “Right. All the bright young things with too much money and no goals, going to parties and contributing nothing. Like Stacy Kincaid.” I felt like spitting as I spoke her name. “The rest of us have to work for a living.”

  “Well, she’s still doing good works for the Salvation Army now, so you can’t kick about her any longer.”

  “Huh,” I said, borrowing a grunt from Sam. “I bet it won’t last. It didn’t last before.”

  Stacy had actually joined the Salvation Army before this latest foray into doing good works. Her conversion that time had lasted long enough for her to recruit me to teach that wretched cooking class. Then she’d slid back into her evil ways, got picked up in a raid on a speakeasy, hit one copper and kicked another one, and actually had to serve time in jail. During her first stint in the Salvation Army, her mother had been appalled. Didn’t think the Salvation Army was right for her pampered daughter. If she’d been saved by an Episcopalian, Mrs. Pinkerton would have approved, I’m sure.

  However, after Stacy’s last fall from grace, poor Mrs. Pinkerton was willing to do anything to help her daughter stay on the straight and narrow path. My personal opinion on that score was that if Mrs. P. had smacked Stacy’s hind end several times when she’d misbehaved as a child, she wouldn’t be such a pain in the neck today. By the time of the cop-slapping incident, it was far too late for such reasonable measures as childhood discipline.

  “You sound like you don’t want Stacy to be a good girl.”

  “She’s not a good girl. She’s a pill. I feel sorry for her mother.”

  “Her mother is half her problem.”

  Exactly what I’d been thinking. I gave in with good grace. “I know. But Mrs. Pinkerton is such an . . .” Shoot, it sounded crass to call my best customer an idiot. “Well, she’s not a very effective parent.”

  Sam let out a shout of laughter that probably had the inhabitants of the Morningside Cemetery turning in their graves.

  “Sam! This is a graveyard, for Pete’s sake!”

  “So what? You think the residents are going to object? Margaret loved a good joke as much as anyone, and Billy would have laughed harder than I did if he’d heard you say that.” His attitude sobered. “If he could have laughed at all.”

  There it was again. The damned German mustard gas that had ruined my husband’s lungs.

  I said, “You’re right,” and had to grab a hankie.

  “Please don’t cry, Daisy. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “It’s all right, Sam. I’ve been crying ever since Spike and I got here today. Can’t help it. Billy’s life and death just seem so . . . unjust. You know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” He hesitated for a minute. “Say, Daisy, would you like to go out to dinner with me one of these days? I’d like to take you to that new restaurant in town. The Japanese one.”

  “There’s another Japanese restaurant in town?” I sniffled and tried to wipe my tears away with my hankie. I felt like a fool, crying in front of Sam, although, God knew, I’d done it before.

  “Miyaki’s, or something like that. It’s on South Los Robles.”

  I blinked a couple of times to get the world back in focus. Then it was I remembered Sam’s declaration of love almost a year earlier, and began feeling shy. In front of Sam Rotondo, of all people. I swear.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Sam rolled his eyes, another characteristic gesture of his when in my presence, and one that invariably irked me. “I’m not planning to ravish you, for God’s sake. I just thought you might like to have dinner with me one evening. That’s all. Hell, I’ll take the whole family if that’ll make you feel better. God knows, they feed me often enough.”

  That was true. “I didn’t mean . . . I mean, I didn’t think . . . Um, what do Japanese people eat, anyway?”

  I thought I heard Sam mumble “Christ,” u
nder his breath, but I’m not sure. “Rice, I think. And probably lots of other stuff. Some of the guys at the station have eaten there, and they claim it’s good.”

  “Well . . . sure, I’d like that, Sam.” Then I started feeling guilty because I’d be enjoying a new cuisine and leaving the rest of my family home alone to dine on Aunt Vi’s fare. Not that Aunt Vi isn’t the world’s best cook. It’s just that . . . Oh, nuts. It’s just that I’m crazy, I suppose.

  Sam heaved one of the huger sighs I’d ever heard. “I’m going to invite your whole family, Daisy. Just so you won’t feel guilty. Is that better?”

  I squinted at Sam. “How’d you know what I was thinking?”

  “I know you, Daisy Majesty. Believe me, I know you.”

  Well . . . maybe he did, at that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  We couldn’t dine out at the Japanese restaurant (which was, indeed, called Miyaki’s) the next day, which was Saturday, because I had to conduct a séance at Mrs. Bissel’s house that evening. Mrs. Bissel is the woman who gave me Spike when I rid her basement of a ghost.

  I know, I know. I wouldn’t believe me either if I heard me say that. And in truth, the invader of her basement wasn’t a real ghost—if there is such a thing—but merely an errant girl. But Mrs. Bissel didn’t have to know that, and anyhow, the job garnered me not merely a big bonus, but also Spike. Mrs. Bissel, you see, breeds and raises dachshunds. Her primary goal in life is to have one of her dogs entered at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City one day. She’s rich, of course. The goal most of the rest of us have is to survive from day to day, but to each her own.

  At any rate, Sam came to dinner (again) on Friday night after we met in the cemetery, and he propounded the Japanese dinner as a treat for the whole family. Naturally, I then felt guilty about spending more of Sam’s money than he’d originally intended. Some days I felt guilty about living. Maybe everyone does.