The Lovely Shadow (30 page)

I had not decided what I wanted to do with my
life after graduation, but I was fairly certain that it had nothing
to do with chasing dead people around trying to pull splinters from
their toes so they could have a happy afterlife.

Miss Lilly must have seen my discomfort for
she dried her hands on a dish towel and placed her hands gently,
but firmly on my shoulders, forcing me to look her in the eye and
said, “Child, don’ be afraid of you gift. You not ready yet, but
one day you be ready, an’ when dat happen’ you gonna be doin’ de
greatest ting a man can do with him life; helpin’ de helpless with
problems dat have eternal consequences.”

I was not completely convinced of my desire
to hang out with ghosts for the rest of my life, but I did take a
liking to the concept of a purposeful existence that helped others
to find rest for eternity.

Eternal blessing seemed to me to be a much
grander concept than simply feeding a poor man. Feeding a poor man
was a blessing to that man, no doubt, and a noble endeavor that
should not be overlooked; however, when you bless the living, the
blessing can only last for a season. The hungry man that you fed
will be hungry again the following day.

If you are able to bless the dead, however,
the life span of that blessing is eternal. It will not be a moot
blessing in a day, week, month, or millennia. It will bless them
forever.

I thanked Miss Lilly for her answers and for
my pep talk as we finished up the dishes. I gave her a kiss
goodnight and excused myself to go to bed. I had much to consider
and was already weary from having considered so much that day.

I met June in the living room and kissed her
goodnight as well and went off to take a shower and go to bed.

I stopped by my bedroom on my way to the
shower to grab some pajamas and noticed a very faint trace of a
familiar rose smell in my room when I entered. My heart leapt into
my throat and I looked excitedly around the room with expectations
of seeing Rose standing somewhere.

My heart sank, however, as my scan of the
room revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I figured that the hint
of scent was likely just a trace that had been left behind on the
note I’d pulled from my dictionary and left on my table.

I grabbed my pajamas and headed for the
shower, chastising myself for being so foolish. I really needed to
come to terms with the fact that Rose either did not ever exist, or
if she had, she was long gone.

After my shower I felt even more tired than I
had before, so I had planned on going straight to bed; forgoing my
usual habit of reading in bed until I grew sleepy. As I entered my
room I saw the note still sitting on my night table and figured I
had better stow it back into my dictionary before I managed to
destroy it somehow.

I grabbed it up and was halfway across the
room to my dresser when I happened to glance at it and notice new
words written on it.

I was so surprised by the discovery that I
dropped the note and let out a small holler of surprise. I
recovered quickly and dived for the note so I could read it
properly.

Pas Rose. Je suis Elle… J'ai été en
attente.

“Not Rose. I am Elle… I have been waiting.” I
translated out loud.

The words were written just below the
original message in the exact same neat, feminine, and flowing
script. Looking at it filled my mind once again with images of an
indistinct female form, flowing and dancing, indeed undulating in
an expression of pure beauty that inspired longing rather than lust
to fill my heart.

I was confused about the message however. It
appeared to make no sense. I carried the note back to bed with me
and stared at it for a long while, trying to decipher its
meaning.

After awhile I grew too sleepy to think
clearly and was not any closer to grasping the meaning of the note
than I had been when I started, so I laid it on the table and
clicked off my lamp.

Just as I was drifting away into the realm of
dreams I was struck with the note’s meaning. It was a direct answer
to questions I had asked aloud earlier that day!

Just that morning as I lay on my bed I had
whispered aloud “Where are you, Rose? Where did you go? I want to
see you once more.”

The note was a response. Her name was not
Rose, it was Elle, and she had been waiting! I sat up in bed,
suddenly feeling less tired, fueled by the sudden knowledge that
Elle was not a figment of my imagination, and she was not gone.

But waiting? I couldn’t for the life of me
figure out what she had been waiting for. I tried asking her what
she’d been waiting for aloud, hoping that since that tactic had
worked once it might very well work again.

I got no direct response. I waited for nearly
half an hour for some kind of contact, but none came. What did come
was the return of my fatigue, and I finally drifted off to
sleep.

The following day seemed to be a harbinger
for the rest of my summer. There was no response from Elle, and
there were no earth shatteringly weird events that rocked the
foundations of my world. The day was mundane and nothing at all
unexpected that happened that day; or for the rest of the
summer.

Throughout the summer I had taken up the
habit of leaving a pad of paper and a pen on my night stand, and
tried asking Elle many questions every night before I went to
sleep, but I never got another response on my pad of paper.

I was disappointed, of course, that I got no
reply, but somehow I had the impression that she was hiding, just
beyond the limits of my ability to notice her, and she was
listening. And with that idea in my head I was able to comfort
myself with the hope that I was still developing a relationship
with her.

I knew that if I had tried to tell anybody
about my evening habit of talking to someone I believed to be
listening, but who was hiding and who was either dead or
non-existent, they would assume I was crazy. But I had long ago
made up my mind that I would never be crazy, and had already self
analyzed my behavior to death and decided that I had more than
enough evidence in the form of two notes to justify and validate my
behavior.

Louie popped in regularly through the summer,
sometimes completely visible, most of the time, however, just as a
shadow. Sometimes Miss Lilly was aware of his presence and
sometimes she wasn’t.

Often Shadow Louie would make gestures to me
indicating his desire to remain unnoticed, and he would just spend
the entire day following Miss Lilly around without her knowledge,
rubbing her shoulders or with a hand on her back, evidently
blissfully content just to be in her presence.

Louie had mastered the art of object
manipulation early in his second life and I often sat at the
kitchen table with him playing cards. His company was always a
pleasure to me, though I suspect that he cheated at cards, because
I never beat him—not one time.

And so the summer of 1997 drew to a close.
Only one day from the whole summer had seemed extraordinary to me,
but there had been joy and pleasure to be found in each and every
day of the summer, and as school started up again I was happy to go
back, knowing that I had managed to make the most of my break and
had fully conquered the summer.

Two full years passed before I had any
encounters with Elle again. By that time I had almost begun to
believe once more that she was simply a figment of my
imagination—an amazing, lovely figment—but a figment
nonetheless.

School had continued to progress wonderfully
during those two silent years. I excelled in every course,
including mathematics, and found myself on the honor roll over and
over again.

June and Miss Lilly were constantly telling
me how proud they were of me, and though I pretended to be tired of
their praise and was continually telling them it was unnecessary, I
secretly loved every single syllable of it.

I loved them both so much and appreciated all
the love and blessings they’d poured on me over the course of nine
years that I truly loved to make them proud. It was not in
arrogance that I loved their praise, but a feeling that I was in
some small way paying back a certain measure of their kindnesses to
me by making them proud.

On my sixteenth birthday Miss Lilly baked me
the most wonderful cake I had ever eaten. It was truly a piece of
Heaven on earth and I was almost reluctant to share any of it with
the ladies who had saved my life and my sanity and had made me into
a better person.

After the four of us finished supper and cake
at the dining room table (Louie had decided to join us for the
celebration) June asked me to go out to the garage and bring in a
box of her old records so we could spend the evening listening to
them together.

It is a testament to how much I loved and
respected June that the idea of sitting around the front room on my
sixteenth birthday listening to old music with a woman who for all
intents and purposes was my mother, was actually an appealing
idea.

There are just not enough words in the
English language to explain the depth of my love for June and Miss
Lilly. They were both my mother, they were my safe place, (yes,
even at sixteen years old a man needs a safe place) and they were
my best friends and I enjoyed their company tremendously.

When I opened the side door to the garage, I
nearly fell down from the shock. Sitting in the usually empty space
in the middle of the garage was a brand new Honda Accord with a big
red bow on top.

I screamed and whooped and hollered several
times and must have aroused Louie’s curiosity because he came out
of the house, right past Miss Lilly and June who were standing on
the porch, and stood beside me in the doorway to the garage, where
I was still standing and jumping around and screaming like a
contestant on Let’s Make A Deal.

Louie had gotten much better at making
himself visible by that point in time (though June could still not
see him even when he did fully materialize) and he chose to become
fully visible in that moment; most likely so he could mock me.

He stepped directly in front of me so I would
be forced to look at him, opened his eyes as wide as they would go,
and opened his mouth wide—as if he were screaming—and waved his
hands around wildly.

After a few seconds of wild arm waving, Louie
put his hands on his cheeks and kept mock screaming while jumping
up and down in place. I couldn’t help but laugh at his little
display.

Laughing at Louie’s antics only seemed to
fuel his desire to be more obnoxious. He began spinning in circles
and stomping his feet, while still holding his hands against his
cheeks, and then ran over to the car and leaned over the hood,
spreading his arms over it as if he were giving it a hug.

Suddenly he jumped up in the air and landed
on his feet on the hood. He placed his hands on his hips and wiped
the mock shock look off his face and instead put on a stern
emotionless face and began dancing a Russian jig on the hood of my
new car.

Tears were leaking out of my eyes and I was
doubled over with laughter watching Louie being a nut. Though June
could not see Louie, I could see him as solidly as if he were a
physical man and it was a hilarious act that he was putting on for
me.

Eventually Louie grew tired of performing and
leapt down off the car and landed silently beside me and extended
his hand. I grasped his hand—which was awkward for me because I
could only barely feel it in my own hand, and it felt cold and
damp—and he gave me a furious hand shake while clapping me on the
back before returning to the porch to stand beside Miss Lilly.

I looked back to the porch and saw the three
of them beaming at me and the tears that were leaking out of my
eyes from Louie’s dance began to flow much more freely.

“Do you like it, Jelly-Bean?” June asked.

“I love it!” I replied enthusiastically. “And
I’m pretty sure Louie likes it too.”

Louie laughed silently on the porch and gave
me a thumbs-up signal before fading back into a shadow.

“Well, Boo, you gonna be givin’ us a ride to
town in dat contraption o’ what?”

I smiled broadly as June, Miss Lilly and
Louie descended the porch and came towards me. When June was still
about fifteen feet away she reached in her pocket and withdrew the
keys and tossed them to me.

I caught the keys one handed, almost as if I
had some athletic ability to speak of which was certainly not the
case, and jogged out to the front of the garage to open the bay
door. By the time I got the door opened up and headed back into the
garage, my three amigos were already sitting in the car; June in
the front and Miss Lilly and Louie in the back.

I checked my pocket to be sure my wallet
which contained my learner’s permit was with me before sliding into
the driver’s seat. I took my time adjusting my mirrors and my seat
before I clicked my seatbelt into place and stuck the key in the
ignition.

Because my driver’s education teacher had
been so adamant about checking mirrors, it had become second nature
to me to check my rearview mirror before actually allowing the car
to move.

When I looked in the mirror I saw that Louie
had materialized again and was currently making a big production
out of looking terrified and biting his nails.

I laughed as I said “What do you have to
worry about, Louie? I can’t possibly kill you any deader!”

Before I had finished my joke Louie had
pulled his knees up to his chest and had put a two-handed death
grip on the grab-handle that hung from the ceiling of the car. When
I finished speaking he let go of the handle and settled back into
his seat. He gave me a big cheesy grin and shrugged his shoulders
as if to say “good point”.