It's a Ghost's Life

by Erin McCarthy

  “See you all next Thursday,” I said. “Until then, respect my privacy.” That seemed good enough. Polite. But decisive.

  “I’m ready,” I said, standing up. “I’ll get our coats.”

  “I think you’re getting good at this medium stuff,” Grandma said. “You sound very authoritative.”

  “You think so? Thanks. I’m definitely getting the hang of it.”

  Yeah. No, I wasn’t.

  Bingo proved that. Big-time.

  Ten

  I had zero intention of playing bingo because the regulars are too intense.

  My plan was to talk to all the ladies who knew Vera and see what was what with the big brouhaha.

  But the dead had a different plan in mind.

  On Thursday no one had wanted to acknowledge my “come on in for a limited time” offer to talk.

  Yet Friday night shenanigans were clearly universal even when you were dead. They were out full force and ready to party.

  “Who beat you up?” Grandma’s friend Shirley asked when we went into the basement at church.

  “I got punched walking to my car but I didn’t see who it was,” I told her. There was no sugarcoating it with these women. They wanted proof that crime was rampant and society was crumbling.

  “You can’t go anywhere alone anymore,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a gosh darn shame.”

  Marianne, who was still dying her hair the color of a Twinkie, pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Oh, dear. Bailey Margaret, your poor little button nose. It will never be the same.”

  My worst fear verbalized by Marianne. “The doctor seems to think it will be okay.”

  Marianne made a sound that indicated she didn’t believe it would ever be the same.

  Shirley made a similar clucking sound.

  I touched my nose self-consciously. My under-eyes were still bruised and my nose still swollen. I hadn’t thought it would be that bad to show my face at bingo but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “You look fine,” Grandma told me. “Stop touching your nose.”

  I dropped my hand. I got Grandma settled at the table with her friends and started running errands for them all, getting cards and soft drinks and nachos for Shirley. I was stunned at the sheer volume of processed food available at the snack bar, manned by middle school kids and their parents. The kids were mostly screwing around, the parents mostly frantic, yelling for a popcorn or a Skittles with the importance of an air traffic controller.

  The kid who handed me the nachos basically threw them at me, the jalapenos Shirley had requested flying off the tortilla chip pile with a spin of the little plastic container. I stopped them from rolling off the counter and onto the floor and scooped everything up into my hands. I turned around and almost collided with a priest with slicked-back hair. “Oh! Sorry, Father.”

  “You can see me?” he asked, and made a move like he was going to grab my shoulders.

  Oh, no. “Um…” I glanced around, trying to gauge what the reaction of other people around us were. There was an Asian woman smiling at me. Nothing else.

  “You’ve got a handful,” she said.

  I smiled back at her. “Bingo brings on the munchies, apparently.”

  She looked to be in her early thirties and she nodded. “I’ve got my grandparents with me and they have in a request for Dippin’ Dots. I feel like that is something to look forward to with age. You revert to the treats of childhood as your snacks.”

  “That is something to look forward to,” I said, most sincerely. “Have fun.”

  I walked away. The priest was following me. His form shifted as he got way too close to me. I realized that the cut of his pants and shirt, along with his enormous glasses, put him as having probably died in the eighties or early nineties. Being trapped at bingo for thirty years seemed like the very definition of purgatory to me.

  “Did you see the man?” the priest asked me, way too close to my ear for comfort.

  I shook my head to indicate no as I started setting snacks down on the table Grandma and her friends were at.

  He sounded manic. Very frantic. “He’s after me. The man who steals from the collection. I caught him.”

  This guy was creeping me out. I could feel his cold presence. It seemed to tease against my back, pressing through the thick wool of my sweater and tickle across my hair. This was the first time I felt like I could actually sense a spirit’s fear. It seemed like fear and isolation had driven him to a state of repetitive incoherency.

  “Did you see the man?” he asked. “He’s after me. Did you see the man?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I was supposed to say to banish spirits who were unwanted. I chanted in my head that he needed to respect my boundaries, that I couldn’t help him right now.

  “Why are your eyes closed?” a high-pitched voice asked me. “Are you high?”

  I opened my eyes and turned to Shirley, who was eyeing me with suspicion. “I’m not high, I promise.”

  “You know there’s a drug crisis going on right now.”

  “I know, but I can assure you I don’t have any issues that way.” I had a lot of other issues but that wasn’t one of them. “I just got dizzy for a second.”

  “Low blood sugar,” Shirley said with confidence. “Eat a Skittles.”

  “I think she drinks too much caffeine,” Grandma said.

  That was entirely possible. I had leaned forward onto the table wanting away from the priest so I couldn’t feel his presence. I darted a quick glance over my shoulder to see if he was gone. I jumped slightly. He was gone but Vera was standing there.

  “I miss these girls even if they are backstabbing biddies,” she said. “And that Shirley is a tightwad. She’ll never pay you for those nachos, just so you know.”

  I nodded, though I had never expected her to pay for them. It was meant to be a nice gesture on my part. “So what do you all think happened to Vera?” I asked the table of five women, cutting right to the chase. Bingo was due to start in ten minutes and once the balls rolled and numbers called, there was no talking.

  “This should be interesting,” Vera said. “I wish I had a drink for this.”

  “What do I think happened to her?” Patricia asked. “I think she got drunk and fell in the snow. She was always a bit of a booze bag.”

  “A booze bag?” Vera asked, indignantly. “I have always been a woman who could handle her liquor. Just because Patricia is a teetotaler doesn’t make me a booze bag.”

  “But why would she go outside?” I asked. “That just really puzzles me.”

  “Maybe she thought she saw a man,” Marianne said, and they all snickered.

  “I think she mixed up her pill days and got loopy,” Grandma said. “That’s easy enough to do. She probably thought she was going into the laundry room when she was actually going outside.”

  “Who the hell does that?” Vera asked. “Even high on pain pills I’m not blind.”

  “What does anyone know about her neighbor? Do you think they could have pushed her outside and stolen her pills? There is a drug crisis going on right now. Shirley’s right.”

  Shirley paused with a nacho midway to her mouth. “Well, that sounds shady. Were pills missing?”

  “They were scattered all over.”

  “People on drugs will do anything,” Marianne said, nodding her head. “It’s possible. Us elderly ladies living alone are such obvious targets, it’s terrifying. That’s why I have a security system.”

  “But if he was her neighbor, she probably just let him in,” Grandma said.

  “None of them know anything,” Vera said, waving her hand.

  “He’s after me,” the priest said, reappearing behind Shirley on the opposite side of the table.

  An elderly woman was shuffling past and she stopped and stared at me. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why don’t you help me?”

  Oh, boy. Another ghost. I guess it made sense that in a church basement there would be quite the collectio
n of the dead. Lots of funerals upstairs.

  “It’s just a shame,” I said, generically, hoping that covered everyone in my presence.

  “Vera lived a good life,” Patricia said. “I don’t see the shame in that.”

  “Besides, she was a class act, leaving us money,” Marianne added.

  “Damn right I’m classy,” Vera said.

  The friendly woman I had spoken to earlier smiled at me and slid into the seat next to Shirley. “This is the first time I’ve ever met someone like you,” she said. “My grandparents and I have been here… I’m not sure how long. But a long time.”

  The cute lady with the bob and the sweet smile was dead? That was a bummer. “I’ll get back to you on that,” I told her, making direct eye contact so she would know I was talking to her.

  “You’ll get back to me on whether I’m classy or not?” Vera asked. “I see,” she added, sounding miffed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Shirley asked. “Are you saying it wasn’t right for Vera to leave us money?”

  “Of course she isn’t,” Grandma said. “She got money from Vera too!”

  “I don’t understand,” the Asian woman said.

  “He’s after me,” the priest said.

  “You need to help me,” the old lady said.

  There were way too many people talking. My head felt like it was on a swivel and all their comments were jumbling together.

  I was contemplating claiming I had urgent diarrhea and running out of the room when they called the start of bingo.

  “Shh!” Patricia said, even though no one living was actually speaking.

  “U sixty-nine,” a man’s voice came from behind me. I didn’t even need to turn around to know that was Ryan. I knew his voice and his infantile sense of humor.

  I swiped one of Grandma’s Skittles and chewed it so I didn’t say anything out loud that would make me sound insane.

  But when the priest said, “He’s after me,” again and Vera started running commentary on Marianne’s orange lipstick, I couldn’t stop myself.

  “My office hours are on Thursdays,” I said. “Three to six p.m.”

  While the bingo ladies all looked at me like I was bananas, the Asian woman nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

  Hopefully she could tell time and what day of the week it was. Otherwise she might appear at four in the morning while I was sleeping. I was also assuming that she could find me, but I suspected it was more like she could follow me now that she had made contact with me.

  My house was getting more crowded by the minute.

  Patricia was stamping away on her ten cards with a vigor that belied her age. “Bailey Margaret, can you get me a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.” I stood up and gave a small gesture to Vera to follow me. “What do you think?” I murmured under my breath.

  “About what?”

  “Any suspects?” I looked like a mad mutterer but I didn’t care.

  “From these girls?” Vera shook her head. “Not a chance. None of them knew they were getting any money from me. Plus, none of them drive solo anymore.”

  Good point. “Excellent. My list is getting smaller.”

  Until the next day when I went to the courthouse and pulled Vera’s will. There it was. A list of fifty names. I took a picture with my phone and sighed.

  I could cross off the bingo ladies, myself, Alyssa, and Grandma. That left forty-three names. I didn’t even bother to look at them. I didn’t want to get overwhelmed.

  Researching that was going to have to wait until Monday. I had a date with Jake to assemble Grandma’s new bedroom furniture.

  Because that’s what our Saturday night fun was now.

  Woo hoo.

  “Hello, is this Richard Robertson?” I asked, using my best important-person voice.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “This is Bailey Burke, a friend of Vera Rosenbaum.”

  “Oh, dear, yes. Poor Vera. It’s hard to believe she’s gone. I wish I could have seen her one last time.” His voice was gravelly and a little shaky.

  “From what everyone has told me, she meant a lot to you and vice versa.”

  “She was my soulmate. The only girl for me.”

  I wasn’t going to mention I didn’t think the same held true for Vera. “It seems like a very passionate relationship.”

  He gave a rusty laugh. “That’s a great way to put it. So, you’re a friend, you say? What can I do for you, young lady?”

  I paced the kitchen, hoping Grandma couldn’t hear me from the other room. “I was talking to Stanley about you and Vera still being close and I was just wondering if you knew the contents of her will before she died. Her niece and nephew are quite upset.”

  “Gold diggers,” he said emphatically. “Both of them. What do they know about sacrifice? Do you know how Vera got her money?”

  I had assumed through her marriages but mostly her family. “Her parents, from what I understand.”

  “Exactly. Her father got out of Germany way ahead of Hitler’s rise to power. He saw the writing on the wall and left money and power and property behind to start all over in New York in the diamond district. He worked his behind off and made a fortune. What do those two knuckleheads know about sacrifice or hard work? Vera’s sister gave them everything and they still want more.”

  Interesting. I had suspected the “knuckleheads” were greedy, but here was an outside opinion verifying that. Richard had nothing to gain or lose from being honest. “That’s a shame. Your son doesn’t seem that way at all.” Stanley was definitely pretentious but he seemed like he had his own success and money.

  “Who, Stanley? Money definitely isn’t what motivates him.”

  I couldn’t read the tone of his voice.

  “Have you spoken to Stanley recently? I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.” I hadn’t tried, but that was beside the point. “When did he get back to LA?”

  “No reason to be worried. I’ve heard from him every day. He’s a good kid that way. We didn’t use to be close but I’ve tried to repair our relationship the last few years.”

  “So you’ve seen him?” This wasn’t really getting me anywhere. I didn’t know how to ask the right leading questions. I needed to take a class on interrogation. Right after I learned how to be a medium.

  “No, he’s still in Cleveland. He said he wanted to stay to help settle Vera’s affairs.”

  That was interesting. “Oh, how nice of him. Is he still at the Ritz?”

  “I believe so, yes. He does love the Ritz.”

  That seemed in direct contradiction to him saying Stanley wasn’t motivated by money. Personally, in three meetings it had seemed to me Stanley liked the finer things. But I guess there is a difference between enjoying material possessions and being motivated by them.

  “Thank you for talking to me. I appreciate it. I’ll give Stanley another call.”

  “Do you know what my favorite memory of Vera is?” Richard asked, out of the blue.

  The Oscars in ’63? I coughed into my hand. “I’m sure you have quite a few.”

  “Oh, I do, but my favorite memory of her is one night we had gone to Whiskey-a-Go-Go. That was all the rage then and we were much older than a lot of the other partiers. Vera laughed about it, said that these girls were wasting their youth on doing blow mostly nude.”

  There had to be more to this story because this did not sound particularly romantic. “Uh-huh.”

  “So we left because honestly I only had eyes for Vera and it was getting comical. We drove up into the Hills and hiked through the canyon about fifty yards, carrying a bottle of gin. We sat down and stared down at Los Angeles and I told her that I want every moment to be that like, because it was perfect. We felt alive, and in love. And she told me, for her, every moment was like that. That she disdained the mundane and embraced each moment in and of itself as excitement and perfection. That’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

  I mean, it was. But I’m a
practical girl raised in a practical town by practical parents and grandparents. It all seemed well and good to feel that way when you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. But it’s hard to imagine steel workers thought every moment was exciting. Or the women who had to empty trash bins inside motel rooms.

  For most people, I figured life was pretty even with notable highs and lows.

  “That is beautiful,” I said, because what else could I say? Bully for Vera?

  I did think there was merit is appreciating life, the time you have, the people you get to spend it with. For sure. So in that regard, I was being truthful.

  Richard was just getting warmed up. It seemed he either was lonely or everyone in his life was tired of indulging his favorite subjects of Vera and boozing back in the sixties and seventies. He talked about pool parties, all-nighters at Frank Sinatra’s place in Palm Springs, getting smashed at the red-carpet premiere of Mary Poppins (I mean, what? Who did that?), and doing the dirty with Vera under a stairwell in a hallway at the Chateau Martmont, pre-surveillance cameras.

  If that’s what it took to “feel alive” I was okay feeling half-dead because yuck. Under-the-stairwell sex was not my thing and I didn’t think Jake would ever want that either.

  At some point, Richard seemed to realize he’d strayed into “indelicate territory” as he called it and apologized. “I’m sorry, young lady. I’m not at a poker game. Forgive an old man for indulging in days when I could move without creaking. Nowadays my only excitement is when they serve cheesecake at lunch.”

  “Cheesecake is pretty exciting,” I said. “I have a sweet tooth. And I don’t mind. I appreciate your stories. That’s why I enjoyed spending time with Vera and my grandmother.”

  After we hung up the phone I sat there, biting my lip and pondering a world where there were no cell phones and people didn’t frown on smoking. Probably a good thing I hadn’t been alive then. I would have been a chain smoker, let’s be honest. As it was, I fought the urge to reach for nicotine whenever I was stressed, though I had to give myself props for not vaping in recent weeks with all the chaos of Mom’s heart attack and Vera’s death.