Grace, Grits and Ghosts

by Susan Gabriel

The cat looks at her, his tail swishing. She glances at her mother’s gold wristwatch on her wrist. “It’s not dinnertime yet,” she says.

  The cat jumps up again, forcing her to pet him. One day, two years before, he showed up at her back door, meowing as if he had simply come home for dinner. His insistence clouded her better judgment and she let him inside.

  Allison named him after the school she always dreamed of attending, before her father’s death had prevented such dreams. She was denied a college education because of lack of funds, though her sister, Melody, was still allowed to attend. Years later, after her mother died and their family attorney revealed the worth of the family estate, Allison nearly spit out the tea she was drinking: she could have attended any college in the world.

  Allison smoothes the cat’s whiskers. “Melody will be here soon,” she tells him. “Of course, you aren’t very fond of Melody, are you?” Allison smiles.

  The day before, Allison spied the neighbor girl petting Scotty out on the sidewalk. Later, Scotty sat underneath the birdfeeder in the girl’s side yard. Last evening he left a small dead wren framed in blood on the back porch stoop. Allison was so upset she yelled at him. It took several kettles of boiling water, poured carefully out the door at an awkward angle to remove the stain.

  The backdoor slams. Melody calls from the kitchen. Allison walks stiffly into the room. More and more she has begun to feel her age, 67 now. Old but still fit; she never misses a single morning of her calisthenics. She believes they are responsible for her outliving her mother by twenty years and her father by twenty-five.

  Her younger sister places two grocery bags on the kitchen counter. From the top of one of the bags Allison pulls out copies of this month’s Ladies Home Journal and Redbook magazines. She finds these publications mundane, but reads them anyway. Occasionally she learns a helpful hint to remove a particular stain, or a new recipe for peach cobbler, her favorite dessert. But she would much more prefer National Geographic or The New Yorker.

  Melody removes the usual things from the shopping bags. Allison’s weekly menu varies little, except for occasional ingredients to make a cobbler if peaches are in season. Allison eyes the groceries to make sure Melody hasn’t forgotten anything.

  “You should eat different things sometimes,” Melody says. “Variety is the spice of life, you know.”

  “I’m not like you,” Allison says.

  “That’s true, you’re not like me,” Melody is quick to agree. “Jack and I had some friends over last weekend and we grilled salmon,” she continues. “It’s good to try new things.”

  Allison turns to hide her grimace. I would sooner eat dandelions from the backyard than salmon, she thinks.

  On the second shelf of the cupboard, Allison places a small box of grits, her daily breakfast for as long as she can remember. Next to that, Allison stacks seven cans of tomato soup for the week, and aligns each label to face out. The remaining groceries are put away in their prescribed places. When finished, Allison smiles at her ordered creation like a child who has built an elaborate house of blocks. Wednesdays, when her cupboard is at its fullest, holds a satisfaction for Allison that few things do.

  Melody studies her own reflection in the small mirror near the kitchen door. A casual observer would never guess the two were sisters. Besides their difference in age and height, Melody has the look of someone who goes to the country club for Sunday brunch: her clothes are perfectly tailored, her hair professionally colored to cover any gray. In contrast, Allison’s hair is turning more gray every day, and she trims it herself when needed. She has worn the same outfits for twenty years; quality fabrics, built to last.

  Melody retrieves a flat, square gift box from her ample purse and hands it to Allison. Inside is a light green scarf, the color of pea soup, a color Allison hates. “Hmm,” she grunts, as if pleased, but wonders who she is supposed to impress with a fancy scarf.

  Allison was twelve when Melody was born and long resigned to her status as an only child. They shared nothing in common except parents, both whom had become much more patient by the time Melody—a blond, curly-haired cherub—arrived. The result was a confidence Melody possesses and Allison envies.

  “Do you need anything else?” Melody asks, checking her watch.

  “No, I’m fine,” Allison says, and in a way she is fine.

  Even though she and her sister have never been close, Allison looks forward to Wednesdays, to Melody delivering her groceries. She puts on the teakettle to boil and places two aged porcelain teacups and saucers on the kitchen table. They are heirlooms from their English grandmother’s tea set and are brought out only for special occasions.

  Melody sits and emits a sigh, as if she hoped Allison had forgotten their ritual. She opens her purse and applies a fresh layer of lipstick that Allison realizes she will later be washing off the cup.

  “Jack says we should talk about the house.”

  “Jack?” Allison asks, checking the flame’s consistency beneath the water on the stove.

  “You do remember Jack?” Melody asks, a touch of sarcasm in her voice. Ridicule was also their father’s forte. He often teased Allison that she was not worth a whit as a Whitworth.

  “Of course I remember Jack,” Allison says, although at times she wished to forget him.

  Whenever Jack comes to the house he runs his fingers over the antiques and picks up things on her father’s desk, as if to determine their value. After he leaves Allison wipes off his fingerprints and opens the front windows to air out the smell of his stinking cigar.

  “This old house is falling down around you, Allison. It needs repairs. We need to get workers in here.” Melody sips the tea and leaves the lipstick signature. “At the very least it needs a new furnace.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the furnace,” Allison replies, pulling her sweater close.

  Her breathing goes shallow at the thought of workmen underfoot. They would track in dirt from the outside. It’s hard to keep the house clean as it is. She forces herself to breathe deeply, remembering an article from Redbook that suggested this discipline when dealing with everyday anxiety.

  “I can’t stay long,” Melody reminds her. She taps her artificial painted nails on the table that they used to sit at as girls.

  As they sip tea together, Allison listens to the details of Melody’s life—her volunteer work at the Methodist church, Jack’s law practice, and her continual dissatisfaction with her friends. Melody is her own solar system. Allison nods, a willing captive in her orbit.

  Later that night, while Allison stands at the kitchen sink washing the last of her dinner dishes, a familiar squeak announces the opening of the front gate. She quickly dries her hands and steps into the shadows of the entryway. It is the girl again. This time she doesn’t knock or speak, but simply opens the mail slot and drops an envelope inside. Allison doesn’t move. It is as if a grenade has dropped at her feet and the slightest breath might cause it to detonate. The girl crosses the street again and disappears behind the hedge.

  Scotty circles the envelope and sniffs it before returning to his perch on the coffee table. Several ticks of the clock later, Allison carefully opens the letter. Inside is a note neatly printed on lined paper in the girl’s handwriting:

  Dear Miss Whitworth,

  We are learning how to write personal letters in my class and for homework we are to write a letter to someone. I picked you. I hope you don’t mind.

  Sincerely,

  Elizabeth Fletcher Owens

  Below the girl’s large cursive signature is a drawing of a cat.

  Allison’s face flushes. She can’t remember the last time she received correspondence. Perhaps the last was from her Aunt Gwen, commending her on her unceasing devotion to her mother during her illness. Allison looks out the window again. Should she answer the girl?

  Still flushed, Allison walks into the study and searches her father’s desk for paper. In the bottom drawer she finds Whitworth stationary. She sits at the larg
e roll-top desk and reaches for the fountain pen she uses to pay her bills. She writes in perfect script the words: Dear Elizabeth Fletcher Owens.

  The open drawer, having once contained her father’s cigars, still smells of sweet, pungent tobacco. The smell brings his memory into the room.

  Don’t encourage the girl, she hears him say. What will she want next? You’ll never get rid of her.

  Allison imagines an onslaught of Girl Scout cookies and raffle tickets descending on her and the girl knocking on the door at all hours. She crumples the piece of paper, walks into the kitchen and throws it in the trash.

  “Yes, better to nip this in the bud,” Allison says aloud.

  Scotty stands at the kitchen door and meows his desire to go out again. Allison unlatches the dead bolt and opens the back door just enough for him to slip his slender body outside. Another gift that she’ll have to clean up awaits her.

  * * *

  An unmarked white van is parked in front of the Whitworth house across the street. Old neighborhoods in Atlanta have a number of large gothic houses similar to this one, mixed in with smaller ranch styles like their own. As she did hundreds of times as a girl, Beth cuts through the hedge and crosses the street. A well-dressed older woman stands on the front porch. The same woman who visited the elder Miss Whitworth every week for as long as she can remember.

  “I’m Beth Owens,” she says, by way of introduction.

  “Melody Whitworth.” The woman offers a limp handshake.

  “I'm home from college on spring break. Is everything okay?” Beth glances toward the van.

  “My sister died in her sleep last night,” the woman says, her eyes registering no grief. “The coroner was just here.”

  Beth leans against the porch railing, her knees weak. How can the death of someone I’ve never even met have this effect? she thinks.

  Two men emerge from the house, each wearing black jackets and matching pants. A zippered black bag lay on the gurney between them, the remains of her neighbor for twenty years and a woman she’s never seen. Balancing their load, they descend the porch steps and lift the body gently into the van. Beth watches them drive away, her gaze holding until the van turns the corner at the end of the street.

  “The coroner said she died peacefully,” Melody Whitworth says, as if this matters to her. She brushes a piece of chipped paint off the banister and narrows her eyes, perhaps making a mental note the house will need painting before sold. “Is there something I can help you with?” she adds.

  “No, I was just a friend,” Beth says.

  Her eyebrows float above her glasses, as if doubting her sister had any friends.

  “When I was younger I wrote her letters and put them in there.” Beth points to the brass mail slot on the ornate wooden front door.

  “Oh, you must be the little girl. Wait, I have something for you,” she says, as she goes back inside.

  While Beth waits, she remembers the first time she ventured onto this porch. Like that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where Scout and Jem touch the door of Boo Radley’s house, she dared herself to approach the old mansion. She isn’t sure why she felt the need to liberate Miss Whitworth. Except back then she read a lot of stories about princesses locked in towers.

  Melody Whitworth returns to the porch and places an elegant wooden box in Beth’s hands that smells of lemon oil. “You should have these,” she says.

  Surprised by the heaviness of the box, Beth balances it on the porch railing in order to open it. Inside are stacks of her letters, circled with rubber bands, an index card marking each year.

  “She kept them all?” Beth asks.

  “They obviously meant a lot to her,” she answers.

  “I had no idea,” Beth says.

  The woman hesitates, as if deciding how much to share. “My sister had agoraphobia,” she continues. “Doctors came to the house at first, but eventually they all gave up on her. She used to get out more when she was younger, but after our parents died. . . .” Her voice fades.

  A heavy silence follows, as if their conversation has become agoraphobic, too.

  “I’d catch her watching me sometimes, and I wanted to help somehow,” Beth says. “To be honest, I think Miss Whitworth is why I decided to study psychology. I’m a junior at Agnes Scott,” she continues. “I’m on scholarship. Otherwise my parents could never afford it.”

  “I imagine you’ve guessed who the anonymous donor was for your scholarship,” Melody Whitworth says.

  Beth pauses to make the connection. Why didn’t she figure it out sooner? Her eyes mist.

  “All this time I thought I rescued her, but it seems she rescued me,” Beth says, her words soft.

  Seconds later, Melody Whitworth pulls the front door closed and locks it with a key. She tests to make sure it is secure, the tarnished mail flap rocking on its hinges.

  The End

  To die would be an awfully big adventure. - J.M. Barrie

  The evening starts with indigestion and ends with me floating near the ceiling looking down at my body in the bed.

  This must be what they call an out-of-body experience, I say with a chuckle. As a Southern Baptist, I always hated those New Age nuts.

  My wife Abby shakes me and cries: “Don’t you dare do this to me!”

  While on the phone to 911 she stops crying long enough to take my wrist and search for my pulse. When she can’t find one, she starts crying again.

  The last time she bawled like this was when our dog Loretta died. She loved that mutt. At the time I remember thinking: I hope she grieves this much for me when I’m pushing up daisies. I guess that’s exactly what’s happened. I am gone. A daisy pusher. Just like Loretta. Except Loretta got cancer and for months we took her into the vet for chemo even though it didn’t do any good. I think we tortured old Loretta at the end, when we should have just let her go. But there’s no problem letting go this time, at least not on my end. No blaze. No glory. No prolonged goodbyes. No goodbye at all.

  What’s weird is that I can still see and hear things—the end of my life playing out like a movie on Netflix streaming, with only a two-star review. Then our two Springer spaniels, Wynonna and Naomi, bark and sing like they always do at sirens. When an EMS van pulls in front of our house, Abby lets the dogs out into the fenced backyard so they won’t jump all over the two paramedics, a man and a woman, who look like they’ve been up all night drinking double espressos.

  The young woman—our daughter’s age—takes my wife into the hallway and tells her that they’ll do everything they can, but her job is to stay calm. Abby has never been calm a minute of her life. I have the therapy bills to prove it. So I’m not sure it will work, but it’s a nice thought.

  Still hovering in the corner, I say: Sweet Jesus, am I really dead? I’m only fifty. Prime of life, for Christ’s sake. Then I look around to see if I’ve taken His name in vain. But nobody seems to be keeping track of sins or calling roll in the clouds and there’s no white light to walk toward. No sunset to fade into, either. Instead, it’s like those dreams where you show up to an empty classroom and realize you’ve missed the final exam of a class you forgot to attend.

  Can we rewrite this scene? I say to the guy in charge, but there is no response.

  The other paramedic has acne and a vine tattooed around his wrist, the initials J.C. intertwined with the leaves. After taking out a stethoscope, he listens to my chest and then puts two fingers on my neck before he rips open my pajamas.

  “Why don’t you guys ever exercise?” he says to me.

  Before I have time to explain how busy I am at work and how the bad back doesn’t help, he takes out those paddles you see on television and turns up the voltage and says, “Clear,” even though there’s nobody in the room except him and me.

  After the jolt, nothing happens, but he does it again and then again, like he’s thinking third time’s the charm. Then he whispers, fuck, like he really hoped it would work.

  My wife turns on the waterworks agai
n, but I can’t take my eyes off the man in the bed with the big belly who has suddenly gone belly up. Needless to say, if I’d known my existence would deep six at four in the morning, two weeks after my 50th birthday party, I might have done some things differently, like actually taken care of myself.

  We threw a big bash out in the backyard for friends and family from all over the country. I made my famous barbeque ribs with all the fixin’s and we had a keg of beer. Everybody wore black, and dozens of black balloons were tied to the deck. Then our three grown kids arrived driving an old hearse—as a joke, of course—complete with an empty coffin in the back and my youngest son dressed as the grim reaper.

  Oh, God, the kids are never going to forgive me for this. They’ve been on me for years to quit smoking and lose weight. But I couldn’t imagine a life without a cold Bud and fried chicken with milk gravy like my mama used to make.

  Meanwhile, I’m wearing the pajamas my wife gave me for Christmas last year with Papa Bear monogrammed in red on the front. I remember thinking when I opened the present that I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in these pajamas and here I am. Dead. Curtains for Papa Bear, who has cashed in his chips and bought a farm in Tennessee he never wanted. All the while hoping for another chance at life, because it’s way too soon to roll the credits.

  Gullah Secrets

  The land is living. The waterways and marshland along the South Carolina coast are living. The oak trees are living. For me, everything I touch, everything I encounter is alive. Even my Gullah ancestors, who some would say have gone out with the tide of time, remain present, and speak to me. The Gullah spells are as much a part of me as the breath that fills my lungs. To protect the people I love from bad things that might happen to them, I mix potions. For some time now, I’ve been getting the message that an ill wind is blowing in. I’m not sure when. I’m not sure how. But something is coming. The tea leaves show it. The wind whispers it. The voice of my ancestors confirms it, and I will get ready for it the best I can.