The Invited

by Jennifer McMahon

  The woman from my dreams is speaking now, trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear the words. I lower my face closer to the bowl. I can smell the alkaline scent of the black dye. My breath is making the water ripple slightly, distorting her image.

  The woman in the water speaks urgently, though without sound. Her eyes bore into mine. She’s got something in her hands, something I can’t make out at first; then the image clarifies, the object comes into view.

  It’s a gun. A handgun. Small and silver, like the one Sam owns.

  Sweet Melissa. That’s what he calls his gun. Silly, to name a gun and to name it something you might call a lover. It gives a strange power to the object, imbues the cold metal with warmth, with emotion.

  Sam is out plowing the fields now, but he’ll be home by suppertime. If Miss Vera pays me well, we’ll have a nice roast tonight. No pasta primavera with Alfredo or Cajun rice and beans—giving a dish a fancy name doesn’t make it fill your belly more or disguise that it’s a cheap meal, that we couldn’t afford better.

  No money for meat, but there’s always money for Sam’s bourbon. He sees to that.

  He isn’t a bad man, Sam. Just a man who’s run out of luck. Out of choices. Last year, we sold off thirty acres to pay the back taxes. Now we’re underwater again.

  I hear Sam’s voice, clear as a church bell in my mind (though I know he’s out plowing the east fields, getting ready to plant the corn).

  Finished, he says.

  We’re all finished.

  I glance down and see my own reflection in the rippling water, but there’s blood on my chest, blooming like a flower.

  I gasp, totter backward, nearly falling out of my chair.

  “What is it?” Vera asks. “Is it my Alan?”

  “Yes,” I say, sitting up, collecting myself, looking back down at the front of my sweater, which is clean, spotless.

  “He came to me with such force, it caught me off guard,” I tell her. “He really loves you. He misses that cake you used to make.”

  A guess on my part, but I’m good at this, and the smile on Vera’s face shows I’ve gotten it right again.

  “Oh!” she cries. “The brown sugar cake! Heavens, yes! I haven’t made that in ages! I think I’ll go home and make some this afternoon.”

  “He’d like that,” I tell her, daring another look down at my bowl. I see only my own dim reflection. “He’s smiling at you. Can you feel him smiling down at you?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I can.”

  She reaches into her patent leather purse, pulls out forty dollars and passes it to me. Then she grabs another ten and slips it into my hand. “Thank you, Ann,” she says, her hand dry and powdery in my own. “This means so much to me.”

  And at moments like this, I think, Is it so wrong, what I do? Lying, pretending, inventing small fictions based on little flashes I may or may not receive? I see how happy I make Miss Vera, the spring in her step as she hurries out the door to make her cake, and I think, I am doing good work. I am shining a positive light on the world.

  * * *

  . . .

  I’m busy making dinner in the kitchen when Sam comes in later.

  “Daddy,” the children chirp, crowding him like hungry birds. I see that even though it’s not yet five, Sam’s been drinking. He totters on his feet, leaning this way and that, trying to correct his balance, to remain upright. He’s got a bottle stashed in the barn. One in the workshop, too. They’re all over, so he’ll never be thirsty.

  “Don’t pester your father,” I tell the children. “He’s been working all day. Go on in the living room. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”

  They mind so well, my children.

  They’ve learned.

  Learned to be a little fearful of their daddy, to keep their distance when he’s drinking.

  Once they’ve left, I look him in the eye. “Everything okay?” I ask. I hate how timid my voice sounds. How quickly I turn into a little mouse around him.

  And he laughs. He laughs a bitter, mirthless laugh, and his hot bourbon-fueled breath fills the kitchen, turns the air into a dangerous, combustible thing. All we’d need is a match and we’d all go up with a bang.

  He staggers out of the kitchen, bumping against a chair, hitting the wall as he careens around the corner toward our bedroom. I hear him in there, opening drawers. Maybe he’s putting on his pajamas. Maybe he’s tired and sick and sick and tired and just wants to lie down, wants the day to be over, mercifully over.

  But then I hear his footsteps move into the living room.

  And Jason, he says, “Daddy, what’re you doing with Sweet Melissa?”

  And there’s that laugh again, that empty haunting laugh that fills the hall as I start to run, run from the kitchen toward the living room, over the carpet; I’m going faster than I ever have in my life, past the door to the cellar, the bedrooms, the bathroom with the leaking faucet, and into the living room, where Sam is standing by the mantel, holding his little silver pistol. His laugh turns into a hum, a little song, and at last I can make out the words:

  “Finished,” he says. “We’re all finished.”

  I step toward him, hands outstretched. “Sam,” I say. “My darling.”

  And he raises the gun and fires.

  CHAPTER 28

  Olive

  AUGUST 23, 2015

  “Dad,” Olive said through the dust mask she was wearing. They were tearing down the old plaster and lath wall in her bedroom, and the air was thick with dust. It was funny, because she’d spent all day yesterday helping Helen and Nate finish putting up new drywall in their house. Today they were starting the process of taping and compounding. And here she was, tearing down an old, perfectly good wall. It was the one they’d thought they were keeping, but Daddy insisted they redo it anyway—that it would look funny to have smooth, new drywall on three walls and bumpy old plaster on the other. She’d told him it was fine, preferable even, to keep the old wall (she even suggested accentuating the difference by painting it a different color), but he insisted. “Your mama always says ‘No point doing a job if you’re not going to do it right.’ ”

  And who was she to argue with Mama?

  Olive was determined to work quickly, to hurry up and get her room taken apart so they could put it back together. It was taking forever. They’d had to put her room on hold while they tore out the bathroom wall and redid the plumbing, which had begun to leak. Then her dad decided they really needed to paint the living room, and they’d gotten two coats done before he announced that the color was all wrong and Mama wouldn’t like it at all, so they’d tried a paler shade of blue, which he said wasn’t right, either. Olive put her foot down, insisting that they had to leave the living room and go back to working on her bedroom. If her dad wouldn’t help, and just abandoned the work like he had with so many other rooms before they were done, she’d finish it herself. She’d been camping out on the lumpy living room couch since before school ended and needed the sanctuary of her own room back. She could live inside a house that was a construction zone if she just had one finished place to take refuge in, one room where everything was in its place. An eye in the center of the storm.

  “What’s up, Ollie?”

  “I’ve been thinking. You know, about—” She hesitated, not sure she could go on. Knowing this was the one subject she wasn’t supposed to bring up, the thing that hurt her father the most. But she had to. She needed to know. “About Mom. About how things were just before she left.”

  He clenched his jaw. He did not wear a mask when he worked, so she could see the muscles working under his taut, unshaven skin that was now coated with a thin layer of plaster dust. He looked like a ghost.

  “Yeah?” he said, holding the sledgehammer, ready to swing again, but waiting now.

  “I remember how she was gone a lot. Did she ev
er tell you where she was going, who she was spending time with?”

  “No, Ollie, she didn’t. And when she did tell me, it was real vague. ‘Out with Riley’ or ‘friends,’ that sort of thing.” He paused. “Part of me knew she was lying. But I didn’t want to face the truth.”

  “What truth is that, Dad?”

  He scowled, shook his head. He wasn’t going to say it out loud.

  “But what if that wasn’t the truth? What if that was all just rumors?”

  “Drop it,” he said.

  “But, Dad, what if that’s not what happened? What if she—”

  “She would go out with one set of clothes on and come back in another!” Daddy’s eyes blazed. “She’d tell me she was with Riley when I knew damn well she hadn’t been because Riley called the house looking for her, wondering if she wanted to go out. There were nights she didn’t even bother to come home at all, Ollie. I’d catch her sneaking in at dawn. How else do you explain it?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ollie. I’m really sorry, but it’s the truth.”

  “I talked to Sylvia—you know, Mom’s friend who tends bar over at Rosy’s—and I know Mama spent at least one night over at her place.”

  He turned back to the wall, ripped off a chunk of loose plaster with his hand. “Is that right?”

  “Sylvia also said something about a club Mama might have been a part of. Do you know anything about that?”

  She considered mentioning Dicky Barns but decided that was a lousy idea—she already knew what her daddy thought of Dicky, and she thought that might just send him off on a rant and that wasn’t the way she wanted this to go.

  “She was probably talking about a dance club or something,” he said, sounding kind of disgusted. “Loud music, cheap well drinks. Your mama loves places like that.” There went his jaw again, tightening, like he was clamping something between his teeth, holding it tight.

  Olive remembered how sometimes Mama and Daddy would go out for a date night: dinner at the steak place in Barre, sometimes a movie after. Sometimes they’d go out to Rosy’s to watch a Red Sox game on the big screen or meet up with some of Daddy’s friends from the town team after a softball game. Daddy used to play on the team but didn’t anymore because of his bad knee. But she couldn’t think of a single time they ever went out dancing or to a place that called itself a club. Those trips were reserved for Mama and Riley’s nights out. Or Mama on her own, meeting up with other friends. Other boyfriends maybe even, if you believed the rumors.

  Olive shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what Sylvia meant.”

  “Well, your mama never said anything to me about any club. She’s not exactly a joiner kind of person, know what I mean?” He turned back to her, looked her in the eye.

  Olive nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. Her mom had never volunteered to help on field trips or to make brownies for the school bake sale. When Olive had begged to join the Girl Scouts in third grade because her best friend, Jenna, was in it, her mom had said no. “What do you want to go and do that for, Ollie? Sitting around making macaroni necklaces and selling cookies with a bunch of girls in identical uniforms, competing for badges. Groups like that, they’re just training kids to lose their individuality, to be like everyone else. That’s not what you want, is it?”

  Olive had shaken her head then. But it was a lie. Secretly, part of her did want to be like those other girls, to blend in, to feel like she belonged.

  Mama was her own person. Her own unique individual who spun and glittered and shone when she walked into any room. But Olive just wanted to blend in, to disappear in the scenery.

  “Do you have any idea how special you are, Ollie?” Mama had asked her one night, not long before she went away.

  Olive had shrugged, thought, Not me. I’m not special at all, but she didn’t want to contradict her. Mama was sitting on the edge of her bed, tucking her in even though Olive was too old to be tucked in, really.

  “Some people, they have magic in their veins. You’re one of them. You and me both. Can’t you feel it?” Then she reached down and touched the necklace, the I see all necklace, and smiled real big.

  * * *

  . . .

  Now Olive stared at her dust-covered father, knew she had to keep going, that he might know something, might be carrying some crucial piece of the puzzle around without even realizing it. “Do you remember the necklace Mama wore all the time then? The silver one?”

  “I think so, yeah. Why?”

  “Did you give it to her?”

  He sighed. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Do you know where it came from?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Ollie. It was probably a gift, I guess. Maybe he gave it to her.”

  Olive swallowed hard. She didn’t need to ask which “he” Daddy was talking about. It was the mystery man, the other man, the man Mama supposedly left them both for.

  But what if it wasn’t true?

  “I think it would be best,” Daddy said, “for you to forget all about that necklace.”

  Olive could feel the silver pendant against her chest. She wanted to reach up and touch it but didn’t want to give Daddy any clues.

  “I think you’ve got other things you need to be concentrating on right now.” He looked at her, his brow furrowed like he had a bad headache coming on. “School starts next week,” he said at last.

  “I know,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. She’d been trying hard not to think about it.

  “Things are going to change around here this school year.” He was breathing harder now, his face red. He looked like a man ready to stroke out. “You think you’ve been fooling your old man here, but you haven’t. I’ve gotten the calls. The letters. Your report card. I know how much school you missed last year. How many assignments you missed. You passed ninth grade by the skin of your teeth, Ollie. I even went up and had a meeting with the principal and your guidance counselor.”

  “What?” she gasped.

  “They understand that last year was tough for you. That there were extenuating circumstances. But things have to change, Ollie. This year they won’t be so easy on you. They know you can do better. I know you can do better.”

  “Daddy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  He shook his head slowly, like his neck was sore and his head was so, so heavy. “I don’t want apologies. I just want to see that this year it’ll be different. That you’ll go in there and bust your ass. Make up for last year. You’ll go in there and make your mama and me proud.”

  He looked at her, eyes rimmed with red.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Know what else?” Daddy said now, the sledge swinging in his hand like a heavy pendulum. He wore his stained leather work gloves, so worn that his index and middle fingers poked through on the right hand. “I think you should stay the hell out of Rosy’s. I don’t want you talking to that Sylvia Carlson anymore.” He spat out the name like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Stay clear of her. She’s half in the bag most of the time. If there was any clubbing going on, Sylvia probably put your mama up to it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sylvia’s the one who introduced your mama to—” He stopped himself here, his face reddening under the pale layer of plaster dust.

  Olive finished the sentence in her own head: Him.

  Him again. The man Mama ran away with.

  She almost asked the question that came into her head then, the question she’d been asking herself again and again since she’d found her mama’s necklace: What if that’s not what happened? What if Mama didn’t run off with some man she’d met in a bar?

  But the answers to those questions were almost more difficult, more painful to imagine, than thinking that her mama had been unfaithful, had a boyfriend on the side whom she took off with.

  “Let’s get back to work,” Daddy said, turning fr
om Olive, swinging his hammer as hard as he could into the wall, sending the plaster flying, smashing right through the thin wooden strips of lath. He pulled his hammer back, hit the wall again and again, with so much force, so much anger, Olive thought he might bring the whole house down around them.

  FLOORS AND TRIM

  CHAPTER 29

  Helen

  SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

  “Are you sure about this?” Helen asked as she followed Riley through the door of the old Hartsboro Hotel. Everything about this felt strange and slightly dangerous. There was no way the old Connecticut Helen would have let anyone drag her to a creepy run-down hotel to sit with a bunch of strangers and try to make contact with the spirit world. It seemed like the opening of a bad horror movie.

  The sign in the front said that it was an antique shop now. They stopped in the lobby, beside the old front desk, like they were waiting to check in, waiting for someone to pass them one of the old keys that still hung on hooks on the wall.

  “Like I said, it can’t hurt, right?” Riley told her, voice low. “Dicky hosts these spirit circles every Wednesday, and they’re open to whoever comes by. Maybe if Hattie or Jane or Ann has a message, they’ll be able to get it to you through the circle.”

  Helen was hesitant. She was still struggling to figure out the logic of all of this, because it seemed like if something was going to happen, wouldn’t it happen back at the house? The house and the objects in it were what drew them back. How was coming to some dusty old hotel five miles away from the bog, where you had to pay twenty bucks to sit around in a candlelit circle with strangers, going to help? But still, she was desperate to make contact again. Since she’d seen Ann’s spirit for that brief moment a few weeks ago, there had been nothing.