Revived Spirits (15 page)

“So you want me to lie to Adam’s parents?” Mom has pulled up to one of Wilder’s three stoplights and uses the opportunity to give me a look.

“It’s not a lie to say we’re related to Minnie. We’re related because we all have the Sight.”

Mom sighs. “Well, if it’s not a lie, it’s stretching the truth to a pretty fine thread.”

I find myself near tears again. “But if you tell them the whole truth—that I want Adam to come along to a ritual where there’ll be ghosts and blood and who knows what, they’ll definitely say no, right? And I’d feel so, so much better with Adam there.”

Mom pulls the car into our gravel driveway. Once it’s parked, she takes my hand. “I know it’s hard to explain your life when it’s so different from other people’s. It’s a hard line to walk. It’s important to be as honest as you can, but you don’t want to tell everybody everything because some people wouldn’t understand.”

“Adam’s mom is pretty understanding, though.”

“She is. Let me sleep on this, and I’ll try to figure out the best way to ask her. Now give me a hand with these groceries.”

Granny is sitting at the kitchen table staring intently into a mixing bowl.

“Mother, what on earth are you doing?” Mom says.

Granny looks up from the bowl, her eyes glazed. “I was breaking eggs for that custard you wanted me to make for tonight. I broke the first egg, and well,
you’uns
just come look.” She points inside the bowl where two small yolks are nestled side by side. “It was a double-
yolked
egg,” Granny says. “That’s powerful good luck. I thought it might be a sign about what’s gonna happen on Saturday night. But then”—she points to the third yolk in the bowl, which is larger than the other two and streaked with red— “I cracked another one and it was bloody, which is powerful bad luck. Now what do you figure this means?”

“I guess it means things could go either way.” She doesn’t sound too concerned. She’s already moved away from the bowl to start putting away groceries.

“What good is an omen if it just tells you things could go either way?” Granny picks up the bowl and dumps the yolks down the sink. “There
ain’t
gonna be no custard. I’m done breaking eggs today.”

“That’s fine, Mother,” Mom says, closing the freezer door. “We bought some ice cream. We can have that instead.”

After Granny has walked off muttering, Mom tosses me the head of iceberg lettuce. “Tear this up for the salad, would you?” She turns to the counter and starts chopping squash a little more aggressively than seems necessary.

“Are you mad at that squash?” I ask.

“No,” she says and chops a little less harshly. “I just get nervous sometimes. About Dave. That one day he’s just going to decide I’m too weird and your granny’s too weird and this house is too weird—”

“But he’s been here before, and he was fine.”

“I know,” Mom says, dumping the squash in a pot and starting to chop an eggplant. “But if he just comes here every once in a while, the weirdness is a novelty. If he were to be around more, maybe he’d get tired of it.”

I think back to when I was first making friends with Adam, how nervous I felt about what he’d think of Mom and Granny and the house. “How much have you talked to him about the ways we’re different?”

“I’ve talked to him about the Sight, and he’s cool with it. But I’ve never told him about Abigail or other spirits, or about how feared we are in town.”

“Weren’t you just saying that it’s important to be as honest as you can?”

Mom turns around and gives me a smile that’s a little sad around the edges. “That’s one of the joys of parenting. When your own kid spouts your own advice right back at you.” She pats my shoulder. “You’re right. I should practice what I preach.”

When Dave shows up for dinner, he’s carrying a bottle of wine and three roses: a red one for Mom, a pink one for me and a yellow one for Granny.

“I don’t remember the last time somebody
brung
me a flower unless it was for me to crush it up and make a potion out of it,” Granny says, looking down at her rose. “Rose hips make good tea, though. Soothing.”

“I wanted you to put the rose in water, but not make tea out of it,” Dave says, giving Granny a little half hug. She grins, which she doesn’t do often.

Soon we’re gathered around the table eating ratatouille and brown rice and salad. Mom and Dave and Granny are drinking red wine, and Granny, whose cheeks are getting a little rosy, says, “The first time I had wine I wasn’t but nine year old. But I didn’t know what it was. Mama was making blackberry wine, and I found the mash and thought it was blackberries for a cobbler. I snuck and eat some and fed some to the pig I’d made a pet out of, and we both got drunk as skunks. I got a whipping as soon as I sobered up, but I could tell Mama thought it was funny.”

“Did the pig get a whipping too?” I say, laughing.

“No,” Granny says. “But a few months later we ate him.”

I’m afraid Granny’s words will upset Dave since he’s a vegetarian, but he laughs and says, “Well, you got off easier than the pig, then.” He raises his glass to Granny. “It’s better to be beaten than eaten.”

When Mom laughs and play-slaps Dave, I can see how much she likes him, maybe more than likes him. And I know she needs to tell him every weird detail about herself and our family so she’ll know he likes her, too, in spite of it all or maybe because of it.

“Well,” I say, scooting my chair back. “I guess I’d better excuse myself till it’s time for dessert. I need to start my homework and visit with Abigail.” As soon as I say Abigail’s name, I shoot Mom a meaningful glance. She looks down like she’s interested in her empty plate.

As I’m walking down the hall, Dave asks, “Is Abigail a friend of hers from school?”

I’ve given Mom an opening if she wants to use it.

I’m almost finished reading the assigned chapter in my history book when Abigail scratches at the closet door. “Come in,” I say.

She opens the door a crack, peeps out, says “
Peekaboo
!” and then flounces in. “Hard at work?” she says, surveying my schoolbooks scattered on the bed.

“
Kinda
. I was just finishing my history.”

Abigail looks at the page I was reading about the stock market crash of 1929. “Look at this. You’re just halfway through the book, and yet when this happened, I’d been dead a long, long time.”

“Dave’s visiting tonight,” I say, in part because I want to distract Abigail from talking about her death.

“That’s nice to hear,” Abigail says. “Are he and your mother still happy?”

“Yeah. But Mom’s nervous. She thinks once Dave starts coming around more, he’ll see how strange we really are and get spooked.”

“I’ve never liked that word, ‘spooked,’” Abigail says, stiffening. “I don’t think any spirits like it.”

“I apologize,” I say. “What I meant was that Mom’s afraid that if Dave finds out too much about us, he’ll get scared away.”

“Well, I think your mother underestimates him,” Abigail says. “But then, I’m a romantic at heart.”

“I hope you’re right.”

I turn back to my homework while Abigail reads one of the silly teen fashion magazines I buy for her.

“Miranda!” Mom calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Time for ice cream! Why don’t you bring Abigail down with you when you come.”

“Things must’ve gone well.” I grab Abigail’s hand mirror and set it on the floor.

“An ice cream social with your mother’s beau,” Abigail says. “How delightful!” She points first one toe, then the other over the mirror and corkscrews down until she’s inside it.

When I carry the mirror downstairs Mom and Granny and Dave are sitting in the living room. Dave stands and walks toward me, his eyes on the mirror. “So...she’s in there?”

I nod.

“May I see?” He holds out his hands.

“You won’t be able to see her, but if you look in the mirror, she can see you.” I hand it to him.

He holds up the mirror, and for a second I’m in his thoughts.
I can’t see anything but my own reflection, but if Sarah says the ghost girl is in there, she’s in there.
“Hello, Abigail,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“How do you do,” Abigail answers. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” I report her words back to Dave since he can’t hear her.

“Amazing,” he says, handing the mirror back to me.

“You’re sure you believe she’s there?” Mom says when Dave settles back on the couch with her. “You don’t think we’re crazy?”

“Of course I believe she’s there. Just because I can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. I believe in embracing mystery. As Hamlet says, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

Methuselah the parrot, perched on Granny’s shoulder, squawks, “To be or not to be! To be or not to be!”

“The bird knows Shakespeare,” Mom says, smiling.

“Which makes him smarter than any of my students,” Dave says, grinning. “So Miranda, your mom says you’re going to be taking an important trip with Abigail on Saturday.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m pretty nervous.” I think how it’ll make me feel better to have Adam there, and I wonder if it’ll make Mom feel better to have Dave there too. “Would you like to come with us?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Sure,” he says. “As long as your mother doesn’t object.”

Mom’s smiling and looking at me in genuine surprise. “Of course I don’t object. I’d love for you to come along. Miranda, does Abigail mind if Dave joins us?”

Abigail says, “The more, the merrier,” and I deliver her message.

“Well,” Granny says, “if everybody’s done being polite, I wouldn’t mind eating some ice cream.”

The sun is sinking in the sky, and Granny is packing an enormous amount of food for our nighttime road trip. Early this morning she sent one of our hens to the big coop in the sky, and so there’s fried chicken along with biscuits, honey, apples and molasses cookies. “You’ll need your strength,” she says, taking a jug of goat’s milk and a jug of lemonade from the fridge. “We all will.”

I don’t know for sure what my mom said to Adam’s mom, but whatever it was worked. We’re a tight fit in Mom’s car with Mom and Dave up front and Granny and Adam and me in the back. I hold Abigail in her mirror on my lap.
Both the males on this trip are chattering and excited to be going along on this adventure, but the females—whether woman, girl or ghost—are quiet and tense. We know the stakes are high, how terrible it will be if something goes wrong.

Dave breaks the tension a little by teaching us a game where you take turns pretending to be a famous person and everybody has to ask you “yes” or “no” questions to figure out who you are. Dave is really good about picking famous people Abigail will know. She guesses Charles Dickens right away, but she doesn’t know the movie star Adam is pretending to be.

Granny is totally hopeless at the game which isn’t surprising since I’ve never seen her so much as read a newspaper. She’s a walking encyclopedia of herbal healing, and she can see deep into people’s minds. But if you ask her who the current President of the United States is, she has to stop and think about it for a minute.

Once we’ve passed the tiny downtown of
Needmore
, Tennessee, and have turned down a winding country road, Dave says, “You’re sure this is the right way?”

“It is,” Granny says. “She’s ready for us.”

“This is wild,” Adam says.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I say.

I have a heavy feeling in my stomach like I’ve swallowed a rock, and I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on Abigail’s mirror. I look into it to find Abigail fidgeting with her curls. “Abigail, are you okay?”

“I’m terrified,” she says.

In other circumstances the thought of a terrified ghost might be funny. “I’m terrified too.”

“It’s not too late to turn back,” Mom says.

I look at Abigail in the mirror and try to imagine how much it would hurt never to see her again. “Yes, it is.”

Mom parks the car near the bluff where Minnie’s cabin sits. She hands out flashlights, and we start the climb, looking out for roots and rocks that might trip us up. When the hill’s especially steep, Dave offers Granny his arm, but she says, “Don’t worry about me, son. You’re the flatlander. You watch out for yourself.”