Daisy Gumm Majesty 06-Ancient Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  “And you think she’ll listen to him?” I asked, hearing the hope in my voice, mainly because I didn’t think I could cope with another session at Mrs. Pinkerton’s place any time soon.

  “She’d better,” said Vi with conviction. “That girl is a menace. In fact, she isn’t even a girl any longer. She’s old enough to know better than to get into trouble the way she does.”

  I sniffed. “Maybe, but don’t forget she’s a rich person. She doesn’t have anything useful to do.”

  Vi pursed her lips. “She was doing something worthwhile when she was with the Salvation Army. She even got you to teach that cooking class earlier this year at the Salvation Army.”

  I shuddered involuntarily. “I’d rather not be reminded of that.” That class had been a disaster. The only reason the entire Salvation Army didn’t burn down was the Flossie kept a close eye on me, and the book from which I took the dishes we made, Sixty-Five Delicious Dishes, was so simple, even I couldn’t ruin them. Well . . . actually, I had ruined one, but it wasn’t while I was teaching the class, so nobody who mattered ever found out about it.

  “Nevertheless, she was being useful. I don’t know why she ever left that church.”

  “I don’t either. I hope Missus Pinkerton takes everyone’s advice about speaking with Johnny Buckingham, although I don’t hold out much hope for that.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “Stacy’s really stepped in the sh-mud this time. Missus P might decide to talk to the devil himself if she thinks it will do her daughter any good.”

  “I think Stacy’s already too well acquainted with the devil to do Missus Pinkerton any good. She’d be better off talking to Johnny.” Stop it, Daisy!

  But Vi didn’t take me to task. “You’re right. I hope she does.” She passed a plate loaded with roast pork to Sam, who handed it to me, who handed it to Pa. That’s how we worked things at our house.

  Since I knew I was next on the food chain, so to speak, I said, “Just a little for me, please, Vi. I’m not awfully hungry.”

  Vi gave me a squinty-eyed stare. “You’re wasting away to nothing, Daisy Majesty. You need to eat. You’re becoming downright gaunt.”

  Gaunt? Me? Good heavens. “I’ll eat. I promise. I’m just not awfully hungry.” A brilliant excuse struck me. “I had cookies and tea with Missus Pinkerton.” Okay, so I’d just lied to my wonderful aunt. It wasn’t my fault the thought of food made me sick to my stomach, was it?

  “That was hours ago,” said Vi. “You clean your plate tonight, young lady.”

  I saluted my aunt. “Yes, ma’am.” What the heck. I could sneak pieces of pork to Spike if I felt myself in danger of exploding. Spike even liked Brussels sprouts, bless him. I used to. Until Billy . . . well, never mind.

  “Get along with you, Daisy,” said Vi. She said that a lot, and I’d never quite understood what it was supposed to mean.

  I watched with dismay as she heaped my plate with roast pork. Oh, dear. But I’d deal with it somehow.

  She finished serving the rest of the family with pork, and we passed the side dishes around: mashed potatoes, gravy, Brussels sprouts, some of Vi’s feather-light dinner rolls and butter. She was an amazing cook.

  Then Pa said a short prayer—we didn’t go in for long, involved blessings, but preferred to eat our meals hot—and we all dug in. Everyone but me. I toyed with my pork, cutting it into small pieces. I ate a few bites when I felt the eyes of my aunt or my mother on me. And I downed three whole Brussels sprouts and about a tablespoon of potatoes with gravy. I passed on the dinner rolls, hoping nobody would notice.

  Good old Spike had a great meal that night. If my appetite didn’t improve soon, he’d be fat as a pig.

  After supper, Ma and I washed up while Aunt Vi went to the living room to relax and read the newspaper, which she never had time to read in the mornings. It was only fair that she get some time to take it easy. Heck, she cooked all day long. And Ma and I didn’t mind washing the dishes, mainly because neither of us could cook a lick and didn’t want to learn.

  “You didn’t eat much, Daisy,” my mother said, her voice severe.

  “Did too,” said I, sounding and feeling like a chastised child.

  Ma heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what’s to become of you.”

  I didn’t respond to that remark because I didn’t know what to say. Anyhow, I didn’t know what was to become of me, either. If I didn’t regain at least a modicum of my spiritualist vigor, I might be waiting tables at the Castleton Hotel’s fancy dining room soon.

  After I’d dried and put away the last dish, Ma and I took off our aprons, hung them on their hooks, walked back through the dining room and betook ourselves to the living room, where we saw that Pa and Sam had set up the card table and were playing gin rummy.

  My heart gave an enormous lurch at the sight. It used to be that Sam, Pa and Billy had played gin rummy of an evening after supper. But now there were only the two of them left. My eyes filled with tears, and I made an abrupt about-face and retreated to the kitchen again.

  “Daisy? Are you all right?”

  It was Ma. I said, “I’m fine, Ma. Just wanted to get . . . something from my room.” Fortunately, I remembered the library books I’d checked out earlier in the day and amended my statement. “I mean the car. I went to the library today.”

  “Oh, did you?” Ma was pleased. The whole family liked to read.

  “Yup.”

  “Did you find anything for me?” Pa asked, his attention diverted from cards for the moment.

  “Sure did. I’ll be right back.”

  Our house had a side door leading to a porch, and I’d parked the Chevrolet in the drive right there in front of the side porch. Glad I’d remembered the books, which I’d shoved into the back seat earlier in the day, I climbed into the machine and gathered them in my arms. Then something inside me seemed to crack open and, laying my head on the top book in the stack, I broke down and cried and cried.

  I don’t know how long I was in the car ruining library books when the back door of the Chevrolet opened again. Darn it! I hadn’t wanted anyone to catch me.

  “Move over, Daisy,” Sam’s gruff voice commanded.

  I was so startled, both by the command and the fact that it had come from Sam, that I did what he told me to do. “I . . . I just couldn’t stand to . . .” My voice gave out.

  “You couldn’t stand to see your father and me playing cards when it used to be the three of us. I understand.” He put a hand, rather tentatively I thought, on my shoulder.

  Wiping my face with the back of my own hand, I glanced at Sam, who looked blurry through my tears, and said merely, “Yes.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “I remember what it was like.” Then, shocking me profoundly—I wasn’t yet accustomed to Sam being a good guy in my life—he took out a neatly folded handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Wipe your face.” He eyed the books. “And then wipe the books. If you want me to, I’ll take the books inside while you go and wash your face.”

  Astounded, I wiped my face and the books. “Thanks, Sam. Um . . . that would be very nice of you. To take the books in while I try to recover, I mean.”

  “Happy to help,” he said. And, as I waited for him to add something snide or cutting to his announcement, he picked up the books and left the Chevrolet.

  Boy, you just never knew, did you?

  Chapter Seven

  I never got the chance to thank Sam properly for rescuing me that night, because by the time I felt well enough to rejoin my family, it was bedtime. Then, of course, I felt guilty and decided maybe I should visit him at the police department the following day. He’d hate that. I’d visited him there before, and he always took umbrage. But that day, I’d be there to thank him, and that was different, wasn’t it?

  The telephone rang as I sat at the breakfast table with Pa, mulling over the problem of Sam and pretending to eat the delicious egg-and-potato casserole Aunt Vi had created for our delectation.
She was already at work at Mrs. Pinkerton’s house, and Ma had gone to her job, so it was only Pa and me. And Spike, of course. There had been hundreds of time during the last five years when Billy, Pa and I had carried on lively conversations at the breakfast table.

  That morning, Pa read one section of the newspaper and I pretended to read another one as I secretly fed portions of my eggs and potatoes to Spike. I took a sideways glance at him and noticed the indentation in his sides where his waist used to nip in didn’t nip as much as it used to. Shoot. If only for Spike’s sake, I simply had to stop feeling sick at the thought of food.

  Rescued by the telephone—although I feared it meant another call to Mrs. Pinkerton’s house—I got up to answer it, saying lightly, “It’s got to be for me.” Our telephone hung on the kitchen wall, so it wasn’t a long walk.

  Pa chuckled. “I’m sure it is. Good luck.” He knew what a pain in the neck Mrs. Pinkerton was.

  I was surprised to hear Harold Kincaid’s voice on the other end of the wire. “Daisy Majesty, you were supposed to call me after you left Mother’s, but I’m not calling to scold you. You performed a miracle yesterday!” he said without even a “good morning” to start off the conversation.

  “I did?”

  “You did. Mother has refused to bail Stacy out, and she’s not going to appear in court when Stacy’s arraigned this morning, either. What’s more, she’s visiting the Salvation Army Church today to have a chat with your friend Mister Buckingham.”

  “Good gracious.”

  “You could say that. What’s more, according to your pal Sam—”

  “He’s not my pal,” I said instantly, interrupting Harold.

  “I don’t know why not. He’s not such a bad man. You could do worse.”

  Speechless, I held the receiver away from my ear and stared at it for a second or two until I heard Harold’s sharp, “Daisy! Are you listening to me?”

  Snapped back to attention, I lifted the receiver to my ear again. “I’m sorry, Harold. I . . . dropped the receiver.” Lie, lie, lie. Sometimes it seemed all I did back then was lie to the people I loved.

  “I said Detective Rotondo told me Stacy’s probably going to get three months for her antics this time.”

  “Three months? You mean three months in jail?”

  “Right-o. Three months in the Pasadena City Jail. It’s right there behind the police department. I’m so proud of Mother, I’m taking you to lunch today, because it was you who made her stand up to my rotten sister.”

  “Um . . .” Oh, God. More food I couldn’t eat.

  “Lunch,” said Harold firmly. “I’ll pick you up at one.”

  Hmm. Maybe by one, since I couldn’t eat my breakfast, I’d be hungry. Based on the experience of the past month or so, I doubted it, but at least if I went out to dine with Harold, I wouldn’t be contributing to turning my formerly slim and trim dachshund into a tugboat.

  So I said, “Thanks, Harold. It’ll be good to see you under circumstances more pleasant than yesterday’s were.”

  “You betcha, kid.”

  “Got a date for lunch?” Pa said after I’d replaced the receiver. He knew what Harold was—that is to say, he knew there was no romantic link between us and never would be—but Pa, unlike Billy and Sam, didn’t seem to care.

  “Yes. Harold says he wants to take me to lunch as a thank-you for getting his mother to see reason as far as Stacy goes.” I sat in my chair with a thump. “Sam told Harold he thinks she’s going to be sent to jail for three months!”

  Oddly enough, I found myself struggling not to feel sorry for Stacy, who had been, until a year or so ago, the bane of my existence. Well, along with Sam. Heck, even after she’d joined the Salvation Army, she’d still managed to plague me in one way or another.

  “No more than she deserves,” said Pa, who’d always taken a dim view of Stacy’s antics.

  “I guess you’re right. It’s just difficult to imagine somebody my age—and a female, to boot—being locked in the jug.”

  Pa shook his head and turned the page of the newspaper. “Act like a crook, get treated like a crook, rich female or poor male. Most of the time, anyway.” Pa knew as well as I did that rich people could get away with bad behavior a lot more easily than poor people could.

  “I guess you’re right.” Since Pa’s attention was otherwise engaged, I seized the opportunity, whipped my plate off the table and carried it to the kitchen sink. I heard the newspaper rattle and feared Pa had lowered it to look at me.

  “I hope you ate that wonderful breakfast your aunt prepared.” Pa’s voice seldom sounded severe as Ma’s occasionally did, because he was too much of a softy. That morning, however, I detected a definite hardness of tone.

  Fortunately for me, I’d been able to scrape my plate’s remains into the sink before Pa noticed, so I turned, smiled and showed him my empty plate. “See? I cleaned my plate.” There. I didn’t even have to lie that time. He couldn’t see what was left of my breakfast lying in the sink, from which I aimed to scoop it up and throw it away.

  His eyes narrowed. I braced myself. Pa wasn’t one to lecture, but he sometimes had a word or two to say about the behavior of his children. “Daisy, I know you miss Billy like fire, but you aren’t doing yourself any good by starving to death.”

  “I’m not starving to death!”

  With as stern a look as I’d ever seen on his face, he said, “Go take a good look at yourself in the mirror, Daisy. Your aunt is right. You’re wasting away.”

  “Nuts, Pa. I was too fat before. I’m just having . . . a little trouble eating as much as I used to, is all.”

  He shook his head, and I could tell he despaired of me, which made me want to cry again. Nuts. How come life was so blasted hard?

  Nevertheless, I decided that the whole world couldn’t be wrong about my altered appearance, so after I washed up the breakfast dishes, I decided to do what Pa had suggested, and took a good gander at myself in the bedroom mirror. Spike, bearing with him his expanded waistline, trotted along with me, probably in the hope of getting more food. I stripped to my combinations and stared at myself. Then I frowned.

  “Heck, Spike, I don’t think I look so darned skinny. I look like I’m supposed to look.”

  Spike snuffled, and I frowned down at him.

  “I do, too. All the fashion magazines claim ladies are supposed to have a slim and boyish figure these days. I’ve never had one until now.”

  My image in the mirror did make me think, though. It had only been a little over a month since Billy’s funeral. I had no means of weighing myself, but I had to admit that I did look kind of, maybe, possibly, the least little bit gaunt. My cheeks seemed to have caved in somehow, and my eyes looked back at me from hollows I’d never noticed before. The faded gray day dress I’d popped on that morning hung on me kind of like it did on the clothesline out back after it had been washed.

  “Oh, brother. How can I eat if food makes me sick, Spike?”

  Spike wagged his tail. I swear, if that dog couldn’t actually talk, he sure could communicate. What he was telling me then was that he’d be more than happy to help me out, and that if I didn’t want my food, he’d be delighted to eat it for me.

  “But you’ll only get fat, Spike, and then Missus Bissell will never forgive me. And neither will Missus Hanratty.”

  Spike took that opportunity to sit on his hind legs and wave his paws at me. I caved in, plunked myself down on the floor and hugged him. “I do love you very much, Spike. And so did Billy. I think you were the very best present I ever got for him.”

  With a lick on my chin, Spike agreed with me.

  I tried to gussy myself up a bit for Harold. I didn’t need another lecture on how skinny I was getting from Harold, of all people, who was supposed to be one of my best friends. My choices were limited since I was still in mourning, the weather remained hot, and I hadn’t felt like sewing lately. But I managed to find a lightweight navy blue suit with a long, straight jacket that went qu
ite a way to disguise the fact that I actually had a waist by that time. Not to mention ribs that stuck out like a skeleton’s. With any luck and a dab of powder and paint, Harold wouldn’t notice the change in me.

  Then I recalled that he’d seen me only the day before.

  But he hadn’t said anything then, and it wasn’t like Harold not to tell me when I looked like hell—not that I ever did. As a rule, Harold only complimented me on my attire. I was a darned good seamstress. I also, as I’ve said once or twice already, kept strict tabs on the fashion magazines for the sake of my image as a spiritualist. None of your nonsensical Gypsy-type trappings for me, thank you. I not only dressed to perfection, but I’d studiously cultivated the pale-and-interesting look—and that was even before I’d begun avoiding daylight like Count Dracula. I’d also mastered the art of wafting. I tell you, I was good at my job.

  At least I had been.

  But I didn’t want to think about that. The doorbell rang at about five minutes past one, and Spike and I raced each other to get to the front door. I didn’t want Pa to have to bestir himself. While Dr. Benjamin had recommended him taking walks with Spike, he still had a bum ticker and I didn’t want him having any heart attacks on my watch. After losing Billy, I couldn’t even bear the thought that Pa might be next.

  “Spike, sit,” I told my dog. God bless the dog, he sat. It was no fluke that he’d come in first in Mrs. Hanratty’s dog obedience class. “Good boy. Stay.”

  Spike stayed. He was such a wonderful dog.

  I opened the door, said, “Hey, Harold,” and stepped aside so he could enter the house.

  He did. Then he said, “Daisy Majesty, you look like hell.”

  As he bent to pet Spike, whose tail swished across the floor like a dust mop, I felt like applying the sole of my foot to Harold’s hind end. “Thanks a lot.”

  Harold straightened. “I’m serious, Daisy. You’re not eating, are you? You must have lost fifty pounds.”