A Timely Concerto (4 page)

“Hello.” Sylvia’s tone was the same brisk, yet vague tone she used as a receptionist. Since there was no recognition in her tone, Lillian figured Mom and Joe had yet to sign up for Caller ID.

“Mom, it’s me. I have a surprise for you.”

“Lillian! I was just thinking about you.”

To forestall any persuasive arguments to come home and abandon Seven Oaks, Lillian took control.

“Look out front, Mom.”

She watched as the front drapes parted and her mother’s profile appeared. Seconds later, Sylvia cooed with delight and Lillian was at the front door enveloped in her mother’s arms.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Sylvia asked as she led Lillian through the pristine living room into the den. Although new furniture graced the living room about every third year, the comfortable den contained the same worn plaid sofas that had been in place as long as she could remember.

“I just decided to come up, see about some things, check on the apartment,” Lillian said. “I need some more clothes and stuff, too.”

“You can stay here, if you like,
” Sylvia said, eyes sparkling with the idea of having her oldest daughter tucked back under her roof. “If I had known, I would have put fresh sheets in the guest room and made something special for dinner. Joe and I are having gazpacho and sandwiches but I can stretch enough to feed one more.”

“Thanks, Mom. I may eat but I won’t stay here tonight.
. I will want to see if Charli is free. If she’s not doing anything, we’ll go out.”

Charli – short for Charlotte – was her oldest friend, a friend dating back to the days of playgrounds, cartoons, and Pixie Sticks
. Lillian did not see her often but they were still friends.

“Well, that would be nice. I’m glad to see you
. Please tell me that you’re back to stay, that you’ve come to your senses and are going to sell Seven Oaks.”

Lillian counted to ten with silent restraint
. Her feelings for the old house had the potential to cause a major fight, something she wanted to avoid. After the pause, she selected her words with the same care she would use to pick her way through a minefield.

“I came back to take care of some business details and to get some clothes, things like that. I’m planning to go back to Neosho after a few days. I know you don’t like Seven Oaks but I do. I still haven’t decided if I want to move there on a permanent basis but like I told you before, I plan to spend the summer there.”

Sylvia’s face fell like a failed soufflé. “Lillian, you find the house lovely and fascinating because it’s new to you. I just hope that you’ll learn that there’s nothing there for you and that it is haunted. I know that sounds silly and you’ll think I’m crazy but it’s true.”

“I know.”

Sylvia did not react in the first few seconds and then she paled beneath her make-up. Her voice was flat as the plains of Kansas. “You have seen him. I knew you would.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not afraid? The man terrified me, Lillian, skulking around like, well, a ghost.”

Lillian laughed a pure burst of mirth that she couldn’t contain. “That’s because he is one, Mom. Don’t you know who he is or was?”

“No, I don’t but I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

The years since she left this home peeled away like the layers of an onion because she and her mother had fallen into the same pattern, a civil debate in which neither would give. Now, however, her mother had nothing to hold over her, no threat of grounding her from football homecoming or mandatory Saturday morning cleaning session.

“He’s the man who built the house, Howard Speakman.”

Pronouncing his name aloud made him seem real again but her mother rose to pace the room. “How do you know that? How could you?”

The decisive moment was here and she hesitated. Did she tell her mother that she had conversed with the ghost or not? With regret for the many times she had mocked others when they claimed to have seen a ghost, Lillian sighed.

“He told me.”

Those three words hung in the room, so powerful that they were all but visible. A profound silence stretched out and grew tall as neither said anything until Sylvia burst into tears and flung herself onto the couch, hands covering her face.

“Mom, don’t.” Lillian said “Please.”

Before she could bend down to offer any gesture of comfort, a series of thumps signaled someone bounding up the stairs from the basement and Joe, whistling a merry tune, burst into the room. His grin wilted and he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of his wife crying.

“What happened?” He looked from his wife to his punitive daughter but neither answered until he repeated the question.

“She’s seen the ghost,” Sylvia said voice as dry as the martinis she loved. “I think she should forget this foolish idea of keeping Seven Oaks and come home but she wants to stay.”

Joe’s arm encircled her shoulders and as if she drew strength from his touch, she sat up straight and stopped crying. Grateful for the surcease, Lillian sank into an easy chair.

“Have you?” Joe didn’t seem shocked at the idea of a ghost; Sylvia must have confided her childhood fears to him long ago. That did not surprise Lillian. Her mother and stepfather had a solid marriage, linked like a solid sterling chain that was all but unbreakable.

What could she say but the truth? “Yes, I have. I realize it sounds far out but it’s true.”

“And you weren’t frightened?”

His tone was the same he had once used to comfort her night terrors or console her after a disappointment. That he believed, without question, that a ghost roamed the rooms of the ancestral family manse surprised her more than she would have expected but she swallowed, her own throat dry as if she had spent the day at the beach, and moved her head.

“No.”

Joe sighed and ran his hand over his thinning hair, an old gesture in times of stress. “Lillian, I’ve never been much of a guy to believe in ghosts or hauntings or all that supernatural stuff but I do believe the things your mom has told me over the years about the ghost, the one she calls The Man. At first, I thought he might be a childhood imaginary figure, not a playmate, but something she conjured up but I decided a long time ago that whatever she experienced was real. Now you, a self-professed skeptic, come home telling about the same thing and it has me bamboozled. I don’t know what to think.”

Neither did she. “Joe –“

He held up a hand and she stopped. “I don’t want your mom upset by all this, though, and she is. Let’s just have a visit and we won’t talk about it. We may another time but not now. How’s that?”

Relief lightened her mood by a fraction. “That’s fine, Joe. I don’t understand everything myself and most of the reason I came home was to put some distance between me and Seven Oaks so I can think.”

“Good girl!” Same words, same tone as when she brought home a good report card or got an A on an important test. “I hope you’re staying for supper.”

Lillian did, eating a ham sandwich and a bowl of gazpacho but she wouldn’t spend the night. Making chitchat at the dinner table taxed her brain and because they skirted the issue of Howard – The Man – the conversation felt forced. Tension eroded what could have been a happy family meal and she excused herself early to head for her apartment.

After Seven Oaks, her small apartment in Overland Park, just off the freeway, felt cramped and tight. Dust filmed the end tables in the living room and the simple furnishings felt as anonymous as a hotel room. Her tiny fridge was empty except for a carton of yogurt that had curdled and her two plants were limp, leaves yellow from lack of water. In the bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and flopped on the bed but it felt hard beneath her body.

The absence of knick-knacks and pictures on the wall brought home what she had always known – this was not a home, just a place to sleep. She had never bothered with any decorations or notions to make the place personal and it looked little different than it did on the day she moved in. If there had not been clothes hanging in the closet or a few things in the various cupboards, no one could have guessed that anyone, especially not Lillian Dorsey, lived here.

Tomorrow she would think; tomorrow she would go to the main branch of the Kansas City library and research but tonight her body was too tired, too boneless to do anything but drift into sleep before she could even pull off her shirt or step out of her jeans.

Within a week, her apartment was empty and the lease broken. All of her things were either packed or discarded. The Salvation Army downtown benefited from the donation of most of her kitchen items and three boxes of clothing. Lillian delivered her letter of resignation to the school district offices and for good or ill; she cut most of her ties with Kansas City. Although much of the week had been spent taking care of details, Lillian had found time to meet her friends and to spend quality moments with her parents. Neither Sylvia nor Joe approved of what she planned to do but neither said much as if both had agreed to handle the delicate subject with the lightest touch possible.

Stuff heaped the back seat of her car so high that she had to strain to
see the KC skyline in her rear view mirror. Two afternoons spent at the downtown main library had increased her knowledge of the spirit world and a trip to several bookstores in the metro area netted several books on paranormal subjects.

Now she knew that there was no such thing as a simple haunting or an average ghost.
There were intelligent hauntings where a spirit was aware of the setting and might even wish to communicate, residual hauntings where the impression or memory of something that once happened remained like a stain, and there was poltergeist activity as well. Benign ghosts and evil spirits both seemed to exist, at least in the minds of the believers.

She bought books by self-proclaimed spiritual gurus like Sylvia Browne, James Von Praagh and John Edward, the medium rather than the politician, books to take home for further study.

Lillian also tuned into shows that she had never before watched and didn’t even dream existed; a show about plumbers turned ghost hunters in Rhode Island and one about a group of paranormal investigators in England who seemed more terrified than knowledgeable. She watched a pair of brothers down in Texas who ghost hunted and some college students who worked with mediums. She watched movies that dealt with the spirit world, everything from the very trippy
Poltergeist
to the black and white classic,
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
to Whoopi Goldberg in
Ghost
and also
The Others
, a film that she could not forget because it disturbed her.

She should be an expert on ghosts by now but she
was not; although the reams of material she studied provided some insight into understanding Howard’s presence at Seven Oaks, she was more confused than confident. Nothing quite fit the situation so processing the data was like wearing shoes that did not fit but looked chic.

Her experiences with the ghost of Howard Speakman seemed closest to the intelligent haunting category; he interacted, he was aware of her presence, and he realized he was deceased. However, except for that one fact – that the man died a century earlier – Howard did not seem like a ghost at all. He was a man who lacked a corporeal body but when she expressed that to Charli, her friend had snickered.

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?” Charli asked, twirling her Daiquiri glass in a slow circle over the table. “I don’t want to make fun of you – Lord knows, you’re my oldest friend in the world but honey, it all sounds insane. You are resigning your job and giving up your apartment to hang with a ghost. That’s way out of the box.”

Vinnie shared Charli’s concerns too. Lillian’s protests that she loved Seven Oaks and wanted to experience small town life in
Neosho did not fool anyone but despite the warnings, she was headed back to begin a new life. If she failed, then she would come home with her tail between her legs and start again but she didn’t think it would come to that. What would happen was a blank unknown but as she piloted the car south toward Neosho, happiness settled over her like a benign cloud of blessing.

Pulling up behind Seven Oaks felt right. In the early afternoon
sunlight, the house looked as large as it had when she first arrived but this time she did not see the flaws but instead focused on the overall beauty of the house. One detail that nagged, however, was the tall grass, now inches higher than the day she left. Making a mental note to call the teenager who had cut it before, Lillian let herself in through the back door.

The dim kitchen was silent and as she moved through the house, she heard no unusual sounds, no piano
music, or footsteps. Every ornament was in its place and nothing rearranged. After a week away, the air smelled of must and closed up house, not unpleasant but far from appealing. She expected Howard to show up with every footstep that she made but she reached the bedroom with her bags without meeting him.

Disappointment turned her stomach into a cold ball and intensified the slight headache from driving. Maybe she
was
crazy after all and Howard no more than a figment of an overactive imagination, something her parents and every teacher since kindergarten had accused her of owning. Was I wrong, she asked herself, sinking down onto the bed with more force than necessary. Had she given up a job, an apartment she had liked, and ignored the pleas of those nearest to her for a delusion, for something that was not there?

Feeling foolish, she said his name aloud. “Howard. Howard, are you here?”

In the moments, after she spoke Lillian heard the distant burr of a lawnmower, someone honking a car horn, and the trill of a cardinal in a treetop outside the window but no tread on the stair, no music, and nothing else.

She had promised to call her mother when she reached
Neosho so with a sigh; she dug out her cell phone and dialed the number. Just as her mother answered, she glanced up and yipped. Howard stood in the hallway outside the bedroom wearing denim britches and a shirt with suspenders. His wide brimmed hat covered most of his face but beneath the brim, she saw a smile.

“You came back.” Howard
said his voice hushed and quiet. “I wasn’t sure if you would or not.”

Lillian nodded, swallowing around the lump that filled her throat.

“Hello.” Sylvia repeated for the third time, voice thick with exasperation. “Lillian, is that you?”

“Hi, Mom.” Good humor returned and she grinned as she waved at Howard
... “I’m back at Seven Oaks, safe and sound.”

“You made good time.” Sylvia said. “I’m glad you had a safe trip.”

After a few more moments of chitchat, Lillian ended the call and stood up.

“Hi, Howard.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Lillian.” Although he bowed in formal fashion, his voice was light and a smile flirted with the corners of his mouth. He did not look like a faded portrait but a young, virile man. “You have returned from your journey.”

“Yes, I’m back and I’m here to stay.”

His smile broadened. “So you’ve decided to make your home at Seven Oaks? I am delighted. I can recommend the place highly.”

Lillian laughed. “I guess you could at that. Will you tell me all about it, how you built it and everything?”

“If you like. What else do I have to do besides haunt the place?”

He was lonely, she realized, had been lonely while she was away and for decades. That touched her and on impulse she blurted out,

“I missed you, Howard, while I was gone. And I researched hauntings so that maybe we can figure out what happened and why you’re here.”

He stood as still and firm as one of the oak trees that ringed the house and for a
moment, she thought she had made a mistake. Then he removed his hat and tossed it past her to land on the bed. His smile vanished and with a serious mien – where did she keep coming up with these old-fashioned words anyway, she wondered – he sat down in the rocker.

“Although we’ve not been acquainted long, Miss Lillian, I must admit that I missed you too.
I am not sure what to make of you for you are more forward and forthright than most young ladies that I once knew. That is not a bad thing, mind you, but it is different. In my day, young ladies were much less open with men they knew so little and I was often shy myself but with you, I feel quite confident.”

His blue eyes gleamed with emotion as he spoke and she realized that he was as smitten as she was. A familiar delight she had experienced whenever interest was mutual with a man made her want to giggle but realization that their situation offered little outlet for such emotions shadowed her joy.

“I thought about you while I was gone,” Lillian said the words awkward with the new emotions. “I want to help you if I can, to at least understand why you’re still here and how that can be possible.”

“That you believe it means a great deal to me.
No one has before, not really,” Howard said. “I have longed to be able to discuss my strange experience with someone but the few who saw me were frightened. I tried to speak with my mother but she shut me out. Her grief was so heavy that she could not bear to think some part of me could be here and she feared she was mad when she saw me so I let her be in the end.”

“That’s so sad.”

He tilted his head and scrutinized her. Apparently satisfied that she spoke with compassion, he nodded. “Yes, it is. It will be a relief to tell someone what happened to me. Although I’ve gone over it in my mind a thousand times or more, I’ve not told a soul what happened.”

“
Then tell me.”

Howard nodded. “I will but
not here; I died in this room. Meet me downstairs in the second parlor.”

He died in the room where she
slept. That was disconcerting and she fumbled for words until she could process that information.

“The
room with the piano?”

“Yes, Lillian.”

He was there, and then he was gone as if he had never been. Lillian stared at the antique bed with the high headboard and wondered if the bed was the same one where Howard died. Until he spoke about dying, she had almost forgotten that he was a ghost, not a new love interest, but the reality hit hard. No matter how much this felt like the fragile beginning of a relationship, it could not be anything more than a strange friendship because he was spirit and she was human.

With no need to rush – Howard wasn’t going anywhere, after all – she unpacked her bags and struggled to collect her thoughts during the mundane task. Making a mental list of every boyfriend she had ever known, Lillian compared how she felt at the beginning of each liaison to how she felt now. The same giddy excitement, the desire to know more about the person, and the urge to please him were present. She was not the naive teenager that fell for a basketball player, Josh, the guy she dated until after high school graduation or the blinded co-ed that had a brief but intense relationship with an English professor.

Until a few months earlier, Lillian had been dating another teacher, Rob McGraw but the relationship had lacked any sizzle and they parted as good friends instead of lovers. Rob had been as comfortable as a worn pair of blue jeans and their tastes similar but no spark of passion ever ignited. Occasional dates since then had included a quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, a newspaper staff writer, and a real estate guy but there had been nothing more than fun with any of them, no potential for anything lasting.

That made her attraction to Howard, a long dead farmer with a beautiful home that had become his prison, all the stranger. Lillian could not deny, even to herself, that she felt that familiar pull, that awakening of interest that had so often been the first step of a relationship.

“We can be friends,” Lillian said, staring at her own face in the wavery mirror above the dresser as she brushed out her hair. “I didn’t come back to Neosho only for Howard, anyway. I love this old house.”

Then she stuck out her tongue at her reflection and sprayed a little perfume over her wrists before heading downstairs to hear Howard’s story. As she descended, piano notes filled the air with a burst of song and she recognized the old George Cohan tune,
Yankee Doodle Boy.

Howard’s voice, a rich baritone, echoed through the second parlor as she entered. The chorus was familiar as
Yankee Doodle Dandy
but Lillian did not recognize the other lyrics but she smiled. Somehow, the music melted away her inhibitions and banished the shy, awkward feelings far away.

“So were you born on the Fourth of July?” She settled down on a comfortable wing chair beside the piano.

His fingers danced across the ivories so the music continued although he stopped singing to answer. “No, actually I was born on December 13, 1867 but I am a Yankee Doodle boy, born in Illinois.”

Lillian did the math; he was born two years after the Civil War ended. Andrew Johnson was president, she mused, and when he was just a toddler, General Grant, that heavy-set oaf with the cigar clamped between his pudgy fingers, took over the Oval Office. A shiver, the kind her mother had always called a goose walking over your own grave, made her shudder. Keep it light, Lillian, she thought, just be light.

“Chicago?” she guessed. “Hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat.”

The Sandburg quoted didn’t register – Howard showed no recognition to the poetry - so she figured the poem was published later than Howard’s lifetime. He shook his head.

“No, Tompkins, in Warren County. It is near Monmouth, county seat and home of the college. My father was a farmer. I grew up there.”