Wish Upon a Fallen Star: Average Angel

by Felicity Green

  “We actually had someone remove the roots and the stump when Allison moved in here. It bothered her that it broke up the lawn. It was like a scar, she said. Anyway, it's nicer now that we have an even lawn, right?”

  “Sure.” I sat down at the table next to him. “But I think I would have liked a big tree in the middle of the garden. An old oak. That sounds nice. For climbing or for sitting in the shade, leaning against the trunk, reading a book.” I actually meant what I said, even though it was the lead-up to my next question. “Why'd you cut it down?”

  He furrowed his brows. “Your mom made me. Actually,” he corrected himself, “she didn't want me to cut it down, but it was because of your mom. Once, she saw someone sitting in the branches, looking into our bedroom window.”

  Even though it was a hot day, I went cold all over when he said that. “Really?” I managed to croak. I took a sip from my dad’s iced tea. “Sorry, dry mouth,” I mumbled. “A real peeping Tom?”

  “Yes, imagine that. Naturally, I didn't want a repeat performance. The tree was quite close to the house. It could have been a burglar casing our house. I didn't want to take any chances. Although it was probably just some pervert. You know what's weird, though?”

  “What?”

  “Your mom always maintained that it had been a girl sitting in the tree.”

  ***

  That night, a knock at my door woke me up. First, I thought I had only dreamed it and tried to go back to sleep, but then I heard it again—a soft knock, but definitely a knock. I turned on the lamp on my bedside table, swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah?” I asked with a hoarse voice. No answer. I got up and opened the door. No one was there. It was dark in the corridor. I shook my head in confusion, still half asleep. I must have imagined it after all.

  Then I heard another sound coming from somewhere by the stairs. My eyes had adjusted to the half dark of the night, and I slowly moved toward the wooden staircase. At the bottom, there was a small figure. The moonlight shining through the windows in the living room downstairs illuminated the person’s light-blond hair and nightgown so that she was clearly visible as a white blob in the dark. Marie. She stood stock still and seemed to face the staircase, but I couldn't make out her facial expression.

  “Marie,” I whispered. “What are you doing down there?”

  No answer.

  I put my foot onto the first step. Marie turned her head, and her eyes were visible at the new angle. They were bright red. Before I could exclaim my surprise or do a double take, I inexplicably lost my balance and trod air instead of landing on the next step. The disorientating feeling of losing solid ground beneath my feet was a bit dreamlike, but I was rudely awakened when my butt landed hard on the edge of a wooden step and I bounced off, toppling headfirst down the stairs. I grabbed hold of the banister on my right and stopped my fall. Only then did I scream.

  I stopped screaming and sucked in air when I felt shooting pains coming on in my right thigh and shoulder. Someone turned the lights on, and I blinked.

  “Stella?” Allison looked down at me from the top of the stairs. She was in a nightgown, and her usually neat short hair stood up in all directions. “What—”

  “Stop,” I shouted when she moved to get to me. But I was too late. She'd already slipped on the top of the stairs before I could get the word out. She only fell on her behind and not farther down the hardwood stairs like I had.

  “Sh… oot,” she yelled and pulled a face.

  Now I saw Dad and Anna also appearing in the upstairs hallway. “Don't step on the top step,” I warned them. “There’s something slippery on it.”

  Allison pulled herself up by the banister, came down to help me up, and asked if I was all right.

  “Just a couple of bruises, I think.” I grimaced when I gingerly put weight on my feet. “Nothing feels broken or strained.”

  “That's lucky. What was that?” she asked Dad.

  He was already inspecting the top step.

  “How odd.” He scooped something up and smelled it. “I think this is hair gel.”

  “How did it get there?” Allison asked. “And why did you get up and walk down the stairs in the first place?”

  I shrugged. “I don't know. I heard a knock on my door, so I got up and then saw Marie downstairs—”

  “Marie?” Allison interrupted me. “Where is she?”

  I turned around. Marie was no longer there.

  “Marie?” I called. “Where are you?”

  “Have a quick look in her room, Anna,” Dad said.

  “No, she was right here,” I insisted as I wandered downstairs, wincing at every step.

  “She's not in bed.” Anna's squeaky voice confirmed my claims.

  “Marie, honey, where are you?” Allison shouted with an edge of panic in her voice.

  Suddenly, we heard crying. The sound came from my right, from the kitchen. I hurried in there, Allison on my heels, and switched the lights on.

  There was Marie, in her nightgown, crying her eyes out.

  Allison kneeled down and took my sister in her arms. “Shh. It's okay. Mommy's here.”

  “I woke up and didn't know where I was,” Marie sobbed.

  “She must have sleepwalked,” Dad said behind me. He and Anna had come down as well.

  “But how does that explain the hair gel?” I wondered out loud.

  “Marie, honey, did you put hair gel on the stairs?” Dad asked in a stern but gentle voice.

  Marie lifted her head from Allison’s shoulder and looked genuinely confused. Her eyes were red from crying, but not the shiny fiery red I had seen earlier. It must have been an optical illusion. Marie was genuinely upset; anyone could see that. This was not an act. And anyway, I had no doubt in my mind that Marie would not be capable of thinking up and playing such a vindictive, mean trick—not on me or anyone.

  My parents must've come to the same conclusion.

  “Let me clean up that mess before another accident happens,” Allison said.

  Dad picked Marie up, while Allison got out the cleaning supplies. I found an ice pack in the freezer and put it on my shoulder, which still hurt like hell.

  Allison cleaned the stairs and was uncharacteristically quiet. It occurred to me that she was the only one in our house who used hair gel. It must have occurred to her too because she went into her and Dad's en suite bathroom before coming back down.

  She showed us the tube of hair gel and looked at us with pensive eyes. “It's near empty. I only bought it last week.”

  Marie was almost asleep in Dad's arms.

  “Maybe she did it in her sleep,” he suggested quietly.

  Allison just raised her eyebrows. “Let's all get back to bed for now.”

  Dad nodded. “Let's put Marie in with us, Alli, and maybe the mystery of the hair gel will be solved tomorrow. Let's just be glad that nobody got badly hurt.”

  No, not this time. Little did we know that this was going to be just the start.

  6

  The next day, which was my day off, I stood in front of Mrs. Mancini’s house, clipboard in hand, and knocked on the door. At breakfast, we had all still been pretty rattled about Marie’s sleepwalking and the mysterious hair gel incident. My dad and Allison had been too distracted to wonder about why I’d asked the name of my old music teacher’s mother. With Dad doing the taxes for half the population of Average and Allison working at the town hall, they knew the names and relations of most families in Average between them. Allison remembered Mrs. Mancini when I mentioned that she had lost her husband a while back. She did ask why I wanted to know but was too preoccupied with getting some cereal down Marie’s yawning mouth to even listen to me mutter something about running into her and Mrs. Meyers at the diner.

  Finding out the address was a simple matter of looking it up in the phone book. In order to get her to talk to me, I had fallen back onto my marketing research idea. Lonely old ladies were always glad to talk to someone, and Mrs. Mancini
would be only too happy to let me in. I already pictured myself sitting at her kitchen table, eating freshly baked cookies, while a sweet, round, gray-haired grandma type was chewing my ear off about the good old days. Boy, was I wrong.

  The door opened only as far as the security chain allowed. “Yes?” a gruff, curt voice asked.

  I only saw a glaring brown, heavily made-up eye and pursed pink lips through the gap. “Um, could I speak to Mrs. Teresa Mancini?” I asked, a little bit rattled. I had assumed she lived alone. Or was this the wrong house after all? Teresa had been the only Mancini in the phone book.

  “That’s me. What is this regarding?” She was definitely not getting any friendlier.

  “Um, I would like to ask you a couple of questions if I may.” I hadn’t thought this through. I hadn’t even come up with a fake company name or anything like that because I had assumed I would be invited in immediately.

  The brown eye looked more and more suspicious. “What questions?”

  “Um, just about what your hobbies are, how you spend your time.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” The eye turned away, and she was about to close the door on me.

  “I’m from the government,” I yelled desperately. It was the only thing I could think of that would make a wary person like her talk to me. Maybe she would if she thought it was something official.

  Mrs. Mancini hesitated. “From the government?” she asked incredulously. “You hardly look old enough. What business does the government have with me? I pay my taxes like the next person.”

  “Well, not exactly the government,” I said, amending my answer when I realized how ridiculous I sounded. “It is a government survey I’m conducting. I’m actually employed by the town hall. You’ve been especially selected,” I added. Maybe flattery would get me inside if nothing else would. I was right on the money.

  “Hmm. Especially selected, you say?”

  “Yes, we would be particularly interested in your opinion.” I just ran with the ass-kissing thing.

  “On… hobbies?”

  I hoped the color didn’t show in my cheeks since I was getting a bit flustered by my mistake. Of course that didn’t quite fit with the answer I had given her earlier.

  “About recreational activities of our eld… more mature citizens,” I said, backpedaling. “And how we could improve opportunities on our end.”

  “Do you have some sort of identification?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you have an ID that proves you are indeed a town hall employee? Or a card or something? I don’t just let anyone into my house, you know.” She began to bristle when I didn’t answer.

  So close. But she seemed the type of person who would diligently remember me, and I had just pretended to be someone employed by the town. I wouldn’t really be able to pretend to be someone else in order to get to know her. And if I didn’t get to know her, how was I supposed to find her a partner?

  Here goes nothing.

  “No, unfortunately not, but you’re welcome to call the town hall to confirm I work there. My name is Allison Martens.” That was risky. What if she got Allison on the phone or asked what I looked like? Or what if she asked about this non-existent survey? But I didn’t want to waste this opportunity and start from scratch.

  “Okay, hold on.” She closed the door on me, and I stood there like a lemon. The more time that passed, the more nervous I got. I was about to run away, when Mrs. Mancini opened the door again and took the chain off.

  “Come in,” she said, not very invitingly. “I can spare five minutes.”

  Mrs. Mancini looked nothing like I had imagined. She certainly didn’t look like any of my grandmothers—and I kind of had three of them, so that made for a pretty good sample selection. I already knew she wasn’t the cookie-baking type just by looking at her. She was really tall and stick-thin, but with broad shoulders like a man’s. In fact, her stature and her prominent facial features—beaked nose, big teeth—paired with all that makeup and fake-looking, back-combed black hair would have made her look a bit like a transvestite if her clothes hadn’t been so severe. She wore an old-fashioned-looking, ankle-length black dress, buttoned up right to her neck, where a white lace collar sort of strangled her throat.

  She did look old but not wrinkled, so it was almost impossible to guess her age. Her forehead was suspiciously smooth, considering her habit of narrowing her eyes. I suspected Botox.

  Mrs. Mancini had no similarity with her daughter Mrs. Meyers, who was small, pretty, and feminine. My doubts returned as to whether this was the person I had been looking for.

  “Let’s start with some biographical data if you don’t mind.” I made an attempt to corroborate her identity after she asked me to sit down on the couch in the living room and brought me a glass of water without asking what I wanted to drink. I did my best to sound professional even though I felt I was about to be swallowed by the overstuffed, rose-patterned couch, which was covered in about a million cushions, while Mrs. Mancini took a seat on an antique-looking wooden chair opposite me. “According to our records, you are widowed and have a daughter.” I looked at my clipboard as if it actually had this information on it instead of the printout of the wish list underneath blank pages of paper.

  “Two daughters,” Mrs. Mancini said. “But my eldest, Elenora, doesn’t live in Average anymore, so you don’t have her registered.”

  I just nodded and pretended to make a note. “Any other family around?”

  “Just my daughter Lucy, her husband, and my unfortunately very badly behaved grandchildren.”

  “Oh. That's nice, I imagine, having family around.” I was trying to draw out the feeling lonely thing. After all, Mrs. Meyers had said that her mother was lonely. I had hoped Mrs. Mancini would say something about cherishing her family but wishing for more social contacts. But apparently, she didn't even care for spending time with her family.

  “Oh, no. I detest those children. Boys. Always dirty, always grubby hands. They are not welcome in my house anymore since that awful incident with some of my precious figurines.”

  I looked around and knew immediately what she was talking about. Every surface—mantelpiece, end tables, shelves—was covered with porcelain figurines, each set out on its own doily.

  Mrs. Mancini picked one up from an end table within her reach and held it up. It was a little girl with a straw hat and blue dress, holding a basket of flowers in her arm. “These are expensive. Meissner.”

  I just stared at the figurine, not knowing what to say. I just hoped my face didn't betray my thoughts. I thought it was awful. Pure kitsch.

  “Have you heard of Meissner porcelain?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. When I shook my head, she stretched her pink lips into what I read as a self-satisfied smile, the only one she had given me so far.

  I cleared my throat. “Okay, so you’re a collector?” That was something. Maybe I could work with that. I didn't know what the chances were of finding another figurine collector in Average, especially one who was male, but maybe it was good enough to have a similar passion in common. Collecting was a passion, whether one collected stamps, baseball cards, figurines, or whatever else.

  “What other hobbies do you have?” I pressed.

  “Hobbies?” Again, the eyebrow arched. “This is not a hobby. Most of these were brought over by my grandparents when they immigrated here. They’re heirlooms. Unfortunately, my grandchildren haven't proven themselves worthy of inheriting them, so I might have to take them to my grave. In any case, I certainly don't have time for hobbies.”

  It seemed as though an old widow without much contact with her family should have a lot of time on her hands. The assumption must have shown on my face.

  “I have always maintained an impeccable household. Just as I was taught by my mother. And I have not started to neglect my chores after my husband died.”

  I looked around again. The living room looked tidy and just so. “If you don't mind, would you tell me what you did t
oday, for example?”

  “Friday is dusting day. I dust.” With all those figurines around, I suspected dusting would take all day.

  “I also have my hair done at three o'clock. That is my standing appointment.” She gave a meaningful glance at the clock. It was two p.m. now. “Afterward, I will go to the grocery store, and then I'm going to make cannoli for the church bake sale tomorrow.”

  “You’re active in church?” I leapt at that morsel of information. “Baptist or…?”

  “Saint Joseph,” she corrected. That was Average's Catholic church.

  “Then you probably spend a lot of time with your friends from church? Other… mature ladies? Do you go for a cup of coffee or play cards or the like?”

  Now she raised both eyebrows. “Certainly not. I do my duty as a member of the community. It is not a social activity. It is church.”

  “Um. Of course, but—”

  “I still fail to see how this is relevant for… What did you say your survey was on exactly?”

  “Oh, um, you see, I was interested in this because if your activities are church-based rather than something our own senior citizen committee is organizing, I wondered how much demand there is for us to organize anything at all.”

  “I see.” She furrowed her brows, and her forehead remained suspiciously unlined. “I certainly don't need anything organized for me.”

  I could see that. “So for instance, you would go to, say, a Saint Joseph church dance and wouldn't much care for one organized by us?”

  “A dance?” She pursed her lips. “I don't attend such frivolous activities.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I'm afraid this is all the time I can spare.” Mrs. Mancini got up. “You want my opinion, and I am happy to give it to you. There are not enough parking spaces in town. You can spend some money on that instead of subsidizing bus passes or organizing activities. I intend to drive my own car and am perfectly capable of it. You needn't assume every citizen over the age of sixty is too senile to drive and has to take the bus.”

  “Uh, thanks. I’ll make a note of that.” I attempted to hoist myself off of the sofa. “Okay, thank you.”