by Murphy, R.
“No, I’m not,” I replied calmly. “I just haven’t found the right way to contact him. But when I figure it out, I’m going to try to persuade him to come back. This place just isn’t the same without him. He was a fun person to have around.”
“He wasn’t a person at all,” Katie ground out from between clenched teeth. “He’s a ghost, remember? After everything Angie went through to get rid of him you’re trying to get him back? Why? Isn’t your life nice and peaceful without him? Aren’t you having a good time with David? Roz, you’re freaking me out here.”
“‘Nice and peaceful?’ ‘Nice and peaceful?’” I sputtered. “Try ‘boring,’ Katie. I’ve spent the past few weeks cooking and cleaning like a crazy person. David’s so busy at the winery I hardly ever see him. So much for your theory!”
“David’s working to make extra money so you two can have a good time together in New York. I swear, Roz, sometimes you can be so dense.” Katie took a few deep breaths to calm down. I could hear them over the phone.
“Besides,” she continued, “how would you even find Bob? He could be anywhere in the world on another assignment. How are you going to get to him?”
“I don’t know, Katie. This morning I noticed a mist swirling on the lake at dawn so I thought there might have been a ghost ball going on. I went to the lakefront and yelled his name for a while but nothing happened.”
This time there was such a long pause on the phone I started to worry. “Katie? Katie? Are you still there?”
The tightness in Katie’s voice told me she still spoke through clenched teeth. “Let me get this straight, Roz. You saw a mist on the lake when you got up this morning so you went outside at the crack of dawn and started screaming for Bob?” She paused to take another deep breath. “Just help me understand why you would yell for him in the fog?”
I repeated patiently, “I thought it might have been a ghost ball, like the one Bob and I went to last Christmas.”
Katie continued in her deadly serious, calm voice. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned the ghost ball to me before, Roz. What’s a ghost ball?”
“It’s kind of a long story.” I sighed. “I thought I’d already told you about it. Sometimes, when the fog settles in on the lake, you can see columns of mist swirling around inside it. Those are ghosts, dancing. The balls don’t last very long, because the fog burns off, but Bob took me to one last year. Fred and Ginger danced, and Glenn Miller conducted the orchestra for a while. Katie, it was the most perfect time of my life. I even met the ghosts from Brebeck Winery, but we didn’t get a chance to talk much. Things kind of dissolved after a while.”
“Roz, you’re killing me here,” Katie moaned. “How could you do something like that?”
In retrospect, I realize that Katie was asking a theoretical question. At the time, though, I thought she wanted an explanation. So I said, “Well, Bob and I went together, for one thing. And he gave me this ring . . .” My voice faded. Huh? The ring. I hadn’t thought about that ring for months. What happened to it? Did Bob have it?
“Hey, Katie, I just remembered something I need to do. I’m going to run, but I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“What?” Katie squawked in protest. “What do you have to do? Roz, what’s going . . .?” Her voice faded as I pulled the phone from my ear.
“Love you!” I shouted at her, just before I disconnected. “Now where the heck could that ring be?” I muttered as I hiked up the stairs to my bedroom. “This is where I remember having it last,” I said, slowly twirling in a circle as I looked around my room. I sank into my easy chair, the same chair I’d woken in the morning after the ghost ball. Stan had been banging at my front door, I recalled, asking me to help with Mary, who had died during the night. What else? I poked at my memories. I’d been naked. That I remembered, of course, since I’d been wearing nothing but moonlight at the ball. In my mind, the different silks and satins I’d worn that night slithered around my body again. Oh, yes. It started to come back to me. The tiara, my dresses, the music, the dancing . . . How perfect it had been.
I shook myself. Roz, focus! You’re trying to remember the morning after, when Stan banged at the door. I had a vivid image of me wrapped in my quilt, sleeping in this same chair. “I know I never had that ring when I woke up,” I muttered to myself. “It was too big. Maybe it fell off once I came back?”
I jumped out of the chair and ran my hands in the cracks between the cushions. Nothing. I pushed the chair around and got down on my hands and knees to check the carpeting underneath. Nothing. I continued on all fours around the room, patting the carpet everywhere. Maybe I vacuumed up the ring during my cleaning frenzy? Would it still be in the vacuum bag? Forty filthy minutes later, hands as black as a coal miner’s, I knew the messy answer: No.
After a thorough wash, I headed back to the bedroom. This time I tore the bed apart—linens, mattress cover, dust ruffle—and examined everything minutely, and then threw it all in a corner. Finally, after two hours of ripping the bedroom and my vacuum apart I saw, between two slats on my empty bedframe, a dull glistening from the air-conditioning vent underneath the bed. I stretched through the bedframe and wiggled the vent. The ring rolled out, as if it had just been sitting there waiting for me. I snatched the gold band eagerly and studied it, somehow reluctant to put the circlet on.
Rosy gold blossoms peeped from beneath hand-carved leaves of green gold. Tiny diamonds twinkled in random, unexpected places. Heavy for its size, this ring carried the weight of centuries of owners, and I remembered how I’d had to curl my fingers to keep it from falling off. Now that I had the ring, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so I put it on the dresser where I could glance at it while I put my bed, and my bedroom, back together.
For some reason, without Bob next to me, I didn’t want to put on that ring. I didn’t like it. Which struck me as odd, because I’ve almost never met a piece of expensive jewelry I didn’t like. This one gave me the creeps though, even if it might eventually lead me to Bob. So instead of wearing the gold band, I put the ring in an empty jeweler’s box, put the box in my pocket and, after reassembling my bedroom, went downstairs for dinner and a glass of wine.
The phone rang as I defrosted a chicken tetrazzini dinner. Liz, a bubbly blond and one of my three Manhattan roommates-to-be, wanted to know if I’d like to join my other roommates for cream tea at The Plaza.
“We’re making reservations for three o’clock on Friday, before we spend the weekend in rehearsals. Can you join us?”
“Sure,” I said, checking my dinner in the microwave as I talked, “count me in for The Plaza.” Now that I had committed to this weekend, I’d do it right. No pinching pennies moping in the hotel room for me.
“Don’t forget your bottle of wine for the room,” Liz reminded me.
“No way. It’s the first thing I put on my packing list,” I responded. “I’m thinking I’ll bring some of my favorite Royal Egret semi-dry riesling. Sound good?”
“Perfect. I’m looking at a reserve gewürtz myself. And I’ll bring a corkscrew. How much fun! Every night we’ll have cocktail hour in the room with a different wine.”
Liz’s effervescence infected me. “We’re going to have one heck of a fun weekend, aren’t we?”
“Sure are. I’ve got to get dinner on the table for the kids, so I’m going to run, but I’ll see you at chorus Monday.”
“You bet. Have a nice weekend.”
The microwaved beeped just as I disconnected, so I flicked on the radio and sat down to my reheated casserole. This money situation was getting serious, especially now that I’d committed to adding a few fun options to my weekend. Tea at The Plaza. A Broadway show. The opera. Dinners out. Yikes. Maybe I could sell something? I scanned the kitchen and the living room while I picked at my uninspiring dinner. Not much in the house with any special value, except to
me. And I doubted I could make enough money at the winery even if a job did come through. Dismal thoughts preoccupied me as I washed up my dishes, wiped down the counters, and gave the floor a quick sweep.
To add insult to injury, guess what I had on the agenda that evening? Figuring out my income taxes. Yup, me and Uncle Sam would be dancing the taxpayer tango tonight. I gathered all the tax documents I’d collected over the past weeks and headed to the computer. First assignment: Find a tax program that would let me file federal taxes for free. After a little online research, I found a reputable site and settled in for a long night. I’d have to pay to file state taxes in Tennessee and New York, but it didn’t look as if they would cost too much. Now the big question: Would I have to pay taxes? Since I tried very hard to be conscientious about paying estimated taxes on my freelance income, I hoped I’d break pretty close to even, maybe even get a miniscule refund.
Hours ground by as I sifted through tax documents, charitable and business expenses, plugging numbers into the software. Slowly I saw the ‘estimated refund’ number in the upper right corner of the screen grow. Could it be? Would I actually get a refund this year? And maybe even a refund large enough to pay for my New York weekend?
Even though I know I’m a very blessed person, I don’t seem to get a lot of lucky breaks when it comes to money, so I doubted the refund number as I saved my work and called it a night. I wouldn’t let myself get excited about it until I’d rechecked all my calculations in the cold hard light of morning.
Chapter 4
The Old Lady and the Lake
Early March
Here’s how I knew spring had finally arrived at the lake: instead of snow every day, I now had rain every day. And the mud that went with it. Mildness softened the air now and then and winds often whipped the waves into whitecaps. Mists rose off the melting snow. Since the clouds skimmed low over the lake, I still lived in a land of fogs, but with an occasional hint of warmth now.
With all the rain, and the snow melt, the level of the lake started to rise. At first I didn’t worry too much. My house had stood there for twenty years, after all, and it hadn’t been swallowed by the lake yet. Still, one morning while looking out the window evaluating the lake’s height, I made a mental note to keep my eye on the situation and maybe ask Stan for his advice. If anything, living out on that narrow peninsula, he risked more damage from high water than I did. I noticed the water covering up more inches of his property every day.
After breakfast, I went upstairs to resume working on my taxes, double-checking every entry I’d made the night before. After two hours hunched over my computer I had to believe the results: not only would I get a refund, but my check would be large enough to cover a nice, frivolous Easter weekend in Manhattan! “Woo-hoo!” I yelled, waving my arms in the air in front of my computer screen.
I printed out all my tax forms. I’d had no idea the Herculean tasks of carrying two mortgages for a while and then running a home-based business would ever have paid off like this! Now I could really enjoy myself in New York!
I phoned David to tell him the good news. “Do you have plans for dinner tonight?” popped out of my mouth when he picked up the phone.
“Who is this? Mona? Mary Lou?” he responded.
“Very funny, smart guy. I have some great news!”
“What’s up?”
“I just finished my taxes and for once I’m going to get a refund. A decent one, enough to pay for my trip to Manhattan. Hurray!” I yelled. “How about I treat you to dinner tonight so we can celebrate?”
“I’d love it. Can we make it tomorrow though? I told Alex I’d help him tonight. We’re going to work late and finish bottling some of his riesling. I don’t want to let him down.”
“How late will you be there?”
“I think we’ll be working at least until seven. That’s what time we wrapped up when we bottled the semi-drys. Besides, Alex has some sort of Chamber of Commerce meeting tonight so I’m pretty sure we’ll be done by then.”
I paused, silently reviewing timetables and logistics, then said, “That doesn’t seem too late. I could meet you at the winery and we could take separate cars to a restaurant in Southport. How about that new Greek place? People say good things about it.”
“Greek? Interesting choice. I haven’t had Greek food since I left Rochester. I used to love it. Sure, why don’t you come to the winery about seven? We’ll probably be wrapping up by then, and I can introduce you to Alex.” He continued with enthusiasm, “And congrats, sweetie! Look how, after all these weeks of worrying and fretting about paying for that trip, the answer just falls into your lap.”
Glancing at the mounds of paper decorating my desk, I commented in a wry tone, “I don’t know about the ‘falling into my lap’ part, but you’re right, it is strange how the money just appeared. Weird how that works sometimes, isn’t it? I’m never lucky with money, and now this just happens. I will never understand how the Universe works.”
“Nobody does, but it almost seems as if you’re supposed to take that trip to the city, doesn’t it? ‘Meant to be,’ as they say.”
“I suppose you could look at it that way, couldn’t you?” I said, still studying the piles of paper littering the room.
I heard someone yell David’s name in the background, and he said, “Let’s talk about this more tonight. I’ve got to get back to work, but I’ll look forward to our date at seven. Later, sweetie.”
‘Sweetie’ again. I could get to like this. I put down the phone and gathered my tax documentation to label it and stash it away. Even though I’d submitted my tax returns electronically, I wanted clean and straight-forward paper trails in case—God forbid!—I ever got audited.
Lately I felt like I’d specialized in documentation: three tax filings and two enormous America Wins! entries. Other authors, like Ernest Hemingway, write about dramatic war-torn lives full of drinking and bullfights. I might be perfecting the drinking part, but replace bullfights with paperwork, and battling bankruptcy instead of Franco, and you’ve got my writing métier. No legacy of children will remain after me, but I’ll sure bequest a boatload of paperwork to mark my place in this world.
After sorting, stapling, labeling, and filing, I stood for a moment with empty hands. Of course, images of Bob drifted into my mind. Why did I always think of him when I was at loose ends, or between projects? I tried to shove the thoughts away, and went outside to monitor the ever-rising lake instead. I noticed Stan in thigh-high rubber boots, wading in the water around his house, and hurling large rocks from the shallows onto his lakefront. He must have been working for a while, since I counted at least twenty substantial rocks littering his beach. After watching him for a few minutes, I put on my coat and boots and slogged along the shore to his place. Stan saw me coming and waved.
“Can I ask a dumb question?” I said when we got within talking distance, me on dry land and Stan ankle-deep in churning water.
“Sure, if you don’t mind that I keep working while we talk. If I stop moving I’ll freeze, and I need to get more done today,” Stan answered.
“Well, that’s kind of my question. What are you doing out there?”
Stan stretched down and shimmied his rubber-gloved hands into the silt around a football-sized rock. After heaving it onto the lakefront twenty feet to my right, he observed, “You’ve seen how the water’s getting higher, right?”
“Sure.”
“If the water keeps rising, and with all of the rain and melt-off we’re getting, it will, it’s going to wash off all the shale on my lakefront and I’ll be in big trouble. But if I can cover up some of the shale with these big rocks, these rocks will protect my shoreline and I might not get flooded.”
I looked around, noticing the composition of Stan’s beachfront for the first time. Tiny bits of shale made up the property, with no gra
ss or ground cover to hold the pebbles in place. A wall built at the edge of his land comprised of the substantial rocks he dug out of the water could form a breakfront that would absorb most of the destructive pounding of the waves if the water rose. A bitter, frigid task.
I tried to imagine another way to accomplish the same results without spending hours standing in churning, icy waves. “Couldn’t you buy something, maybe like cement blocks, to build a breakfront?”
“Too much money when I can get these rocks for free,” Stan responded, moving constantly through the waves while scanning for buried stones. “Besides, you can’t build permanent structures in the lake without a permit.”
“But won’t you run out of big rocks eventually, after you pull them all out?”
“Nah, the lake always pushes things around, and the currents keep uncovering new rocks. You just have to grab them when you see them, before they get covered with shale again.”
Reluctantly, I shifted my gaze from Stan’s lakefront, with its stub of a sturdy protective wall, to my own beach with, metaphorically speaking, its naked lakefront butt hanging out and getting spanked by the waves. “So, Stan, do you think I should, uhhh, do something to build up my own lakefront?” I asked, dreading his answer.
Stan paused his slow rock-searching shuffle through the shallows, straightened up, studied my beach situation for a moment, then said, “It wouldn’t hurt.”
Ahhhhh, nuts. I was afraid of that. Another one of those homeowner situations where everybody except me knew what to do, and how to do it. Some people are meant to live in apartments or condos, hiring professionals to maintain their homes, and I freely admit I am one of those people. What I know about fixing lakefronts, roofs, heating systems, retaining walls, gutters and holding tanks could fit onto the head of a pin, with room left over for a thousand dancing angels. I’d never seen an ad in the yellow pages for ‘Lakefront Builder-Uppers’ either, so I was pretty sure I was on my own.