Things Go Flying (24 page)

Audrey liked this time of night, when everything was tidied up and prepared for the next day. Her work was done. It was peaceful with the boys out of the house and Harold in his chair.

It was perfectly quiet—sepulchral—when the Royal Doulton figurine on the coffee table—the little shepherd girl—sailed through the air and hit the brick fireplace, shattering into a hundred pieces.

Harold launched out of his La-Z-Boy.

Audrey screamed and pivoted, wide-eyed, to the fireplace.

An eerie, absolute silence returned. “What was that?” Audrey said.

Take a wild guess,
Harold wanted to say. But he said, “Now do you believe me?” Even though he was rattled, he wasn't as rattled as she was; he'd seen this sort of thing before. And he couldn't deny there was a certain peevish satisfaction in being shown to be right. He enjoyed the horrified look on Audrey's face more than he'd enjoyed anything for a long time.

Next, the glass candy dish on the mantelpiece flung itself off the edge like a hell-bent lemming off a cliff, smashing itself to smithereens against the tiles in front of the fireplace. The hard, stale candies rolled around on the tiles with a little clicking sound.

“Who's there?” Harold shouted. He didn't expect an answer, but felt like he should say something.

There was a scraping sound from the shelves behind them, china against wood. Alarmed, Audrey turned toward the sound.

“Not the Lladró!” Audrey shouted, standing up.

The scraping sound stopped, all was still. It was a standoff. “Take the other one,” Audrey said, meaning the cheap, garage-sale china boy with dog.

Nothing happened for at least ten seconds, but it seemed like much longer. Then the cheap china boy with dog hurtled against the fireplace and exploded, and a few seconds later they heard the door to the basement slam shut.

Audrey collapsed back onto the couch. She started to shake. She felt the same way she'd felt the time she almost hit a pedestrian who'd jumped out on to the road—she recognized the feeling of reaction that set in afterwards.

Harold stood over her. He saw that she was shaking. He was worried that she was going into shock. Charitably, he took off his new bathrobe and arranged it over her shoulders, standing beside her in his boxer shorts.

Audrey looked up and said, “Better close the curtains.”

Harold closed the curtains and then they both wondered what to do next. Neither one of them wanted to believe what had just happened.

“We have to sweep up that broken glass,” Audrey said eventually. But she didn't want to go into the kitchen to get the broom and dustpan because that was where the door to the basement was. Harold nodded but he didn't want to go into the kitchen either.

It crossed Audrey's mind that she might have a hard time getting the laundry done.

“So—was that your mother?” she finally asked.

“I don't think so,” Harold said. “She doesn't throw things.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“I don't know.”

“Well—are these things dangerous?”

“I don't know.”

Audrey turned on him, “You're supposed to be the bloody expert on this aren't you?”

Harold looked blankly at her. He didn't know what to say. The pleasant
I told you so
feeling had fled and now he was just panicky. He said, “I've never
known
them to be dangerous, exactly.” He didn't tell her that his mother had seemed to know how to handle them, up to a point, anyway, whereas he didn't have a clue.

“We have to get this cleaned up before the boys get home,” Audrey said, not moving.

Finally, she took his hand and together they went into the kitchen, got the broom and dustpan out of the broom closet, and cleaned up the mess in the living room.

“We're going to have to get on top of this,” Audrey said, affecting a confidence she didn't feel.

Harold nodded and looked at her, impressed. At least now he didn't feel so alone.

They lay wide awake together most of the night, clasped in each other's arms.

• • •

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Audrey was so exhausted the boys took one look at her and went straight to the toaster and made their own breakfasts. Harold went off to work, grateful for the distraction. Audrey had another cup of coffee and thought about the pile of laundry waiting for her in the basement. Wondered what else was waiting for her down there. She'd never have a better excuse for not doing the laundry.

Eventually she persuaded herself that it made no sense to avoid the basement. These things could be anywhere—they could float through walls, so she was no better off sitting here at the kitchen table than she was downstairs in the laundry room.

She counted her blessings. At least Harold wasn't crazy—she no longer anticipated terribly sad years of deterioration from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Not that this wasn't a problem.

She'd put in the wash, she decided, and then do some research. She'd Google poltergeists. Somebody, somewhere, must have some ideas on how to get rid of them. Maybe she could get a Ouija board and talk to them herself.

She went downstairs, banging the laundry hamper against the wall and singing loudly as she went. Once she'd got the laundry going, she sat down at the computer. She was well into her research when the phone rang. She ran upstairs to the kitchen.

It was Ellen. “Hi, Audrey.”

“Hi,” Audrey said automatically, hardly registering the voice on the line because she'd pulled up some truly disturbing stuff on the Internet.

“You want to go out for lunch today?”

Suddenly Audrey remembered who she was talking to, remembered that Ellen had been the source of the pills under Dylan's mattress. “Sure,” she said tartly. “That's a great idea.”

• • •

H
AROLD WAS STUDYING
his spider, his back to the neglected files on his desk.

He was growing quite attached to his spider. He'd been telling everyone in the lunchroom about it. Harold had noticed early on that the web wasn't catching any flies. He'd wondered how long a spider could go without food. Harold had taken to looking around his office and the lunchroom for dead flies to put in his spider's web, but the pickings were slim. Then he'd remembered the light fixtures! All he'd had to do was bring a screw driver from home and stand on a chair and open them up. There were all kinds of bug corpses in there. His spider would grow fat.

Now Harold was carefully dropping into the web a couple of dead flies he'd just recovered from the overhead light in the front lobby, unfazed by the dubious looks the receptionist had given him.

“Hey, Harold,” Tom said.

The only thing more interesting to Harold than the spider right now was his best friend Tom. He sat up and exclaimed, “Tom! I'm so glad you're here! I'll just get the door.”

He got up hastily and closed the door to his office—he certainly didn't want anyone overhearing them. He already had the Harold Walker Action Plan.

“How are you, Harold?”

“Fine. I'm fine,” Harold said. “Well, you know, I'm okay.”

After that, there didn't seem to be much to say. “Come take a look at this,” Harold said, a little desperately—he didn't want Tom to leave—and indicated the spider weaving its web. Together they watched the spider work. At least Harold assumed Tom was there beside him, watching the spider. They were men, and having something else to focus on made talking easier.

“You know,” Harold said after a while, “Audrey's pretty freaked out.”

“I bet,” Tom said, right beside him.

“We had quite a scare last night.”

“Right,” Tom said.

“Do you have any idea who that was?” Harold asked.

“Just some kid, hanging around. Trying to get a rise out of you. He's harmless.”

“Oh. That's good.” After a while Harold ventured, “Any idea how I can get rid of him?”

“I wish I could help you, Harold, but I really don't know what to suggest. I'm pretty new here myself. Nobody here seems to answer to anybody.”

Crestfallen, Harold changed the subject. “Any word on your test results yet?”

“No—still waiting.”

They watched as the spider deftly traversed its web to investigate the newly arrived fly corpses.

“Tom,” Harold said, and he didn't know where he found the courage, but it needed to be said, “We're still friends, right?”

“Sure.”

“Why did we stop getting together, anyway?”

“Oh, you know, things get in the way.”

“What things?”

“Maybe you'd better talk to Audrey.”

Harold thought Tom meant it was because, being men, they'd left all the social arrangements to the women, so Harold said, “I wish we'd made more of an effort, though.”

• • •

“Y
OU LOOK LIKE
hell,” Ellen said in a kindly way, sitting down across from Audrey in a booth at Il Fornello on the Danforth. She was late, but within reasonably acceptable limits, so by tacit agreement neither one of them mentioned it.

“Would you like to know why?” Audrey said.

“Of course.”

Ellen, in contrast, looked great, and Audrey wondered if Ellen had had work done that she hadn't told her about. Botox, maybe. Audrey wouldn't put it past her.

“Last time we talked, I told you that I'd found those pills in Dylan's room. Remember?”

Ellen nodded, her face taking on a pall of sympathy.
Oh, save it
, Audrey thought. “Guess where those pills came from?” Audrey whispered conspiratorially, deliberately drawing her in. Ellen clearly had no idea. “Your bedroom!” she announced, no trace of a whisper.

Ellen paled. She didn't even try to deny it. Audrey acted as if she had, though. “Don't try to deny it—Dylan told me everything!” She leaned forward over the table between them and practically hissed, “Dylan got them from Terry, who stole them out of
your
dresser drawer.”

Ellen started to cry. Big tears welled up and ran down her cheeks, taking her mascara with them. She looked down and fumbled in her purse for a Kleenex.

Relentless, Audrey said, “And you sat in my kitchen and pretended you hardly even knew what ecstasy was!
How could you?
”

“Oh, get off your high horse would you!” Ellen snapped back. Now Audrey was taken by surprise.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're so perfect! The perfect housewife with the perfect marriage and the perfect kids. You have no idea!”

Audrey had never considered that she might be the object of—was that envy? Was that possible? Her family—perfect! What an idea! She spent all her time just trying to keep their heads above water. She was astonished that someone might see them that way.

“You don't know what it's like—being divorced, the kids blaming you all the time—
dating
. It's hell.”

Audrey's sympathy was aroused. After all, Ellen was her best friend, she was genuinely upset, and really, when you looked at it that way, Audrey supposed she could afford to be a little generous.

She handed Ellen a Kleenex packet from her own handbag. “I'm sorry,” Audrey said.

“Me too.”

“It's such a shock. I had no idea you did drugs.”

“I don't! Not really. I only tried it once. I was seeing this man, and— anyway, long story short, he turned out to be an absolute jerk, and I wanted to get rid of them, but I was afraid to flush them down the toilet because you know everything goes into the drinking water supply that way, and I haven't had time to go to the hazardous waste depot—”

“What do you mean, it goes into the drinking water supply?”

“Everything you flush goes into the water supply,” Ellen assured her. “Didn't you know?”

Audrey could hardly imagine it—this was horrifying.

“It's all treated, but still.”

Just like that, they were friends again.

“Being married isn't everything it's cracked up to be,” Audrey said, once their food arrived—two plates of spicy agnolotti. Now it was Audrey's turn to make a play for sympathy. “For instance, a couple of days ago I had to pick Harold up from the police station.”

Ellen's eyebrows shot up, and Audrey told her all about it.

“You have to get him to see somebody,” Ellen said.

“He's seeing a philosopher.”

“A philosopher? What the hell good is that going to do?”

“I don't know,” Audrey said, discouraged. “And anyway, you haven't heard everything yet.” Then she spilled out all her troubles— including the poltergeist but not the paternity test—while Ellen looked more and more appalled.

“Maybe you need one of those exorcists to come to your house,” Ellen blurted out.

At this, Audrey waved their server over and ordered them each another glass of wine.

After lunch, Audrey said goodbye to Ellen and went out and bought a Ouija board. She'd been reading up on Ouija boards on the Internet. Seeing things fly across the room had made her a believer. Also, the Internet had assured her she wasn't a victim of hallucination.

She couldn't count on Harold getting the upper hand here. Harold seemed to be utterly without resources as far as dealing with the dead went, even given his unusual—and entirely surprising—past. She'd had absolutely no idea. That Harold should have such a dark secret! You think you know somebody.

She felt so foolish buying the Ouija board that she felt compelled to explain to the completely uninterested sales clerk—speaking very carefully, because she'd had a couple of glasses of wine at lunch—that it was a gift for her nephews. Audrey was optimistic enough to think that if she could actually communicate with these spirits through the Ouija board, perhaps she could reason with them and get them to leave.