Getting Sassy (27 page)

Erika stood from her desk and came around to greet us when we arrived, smiling at my mother with a warmth I didn’t think the woman capable of.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Guthrie.” She took my mother’s hands in hers.

This morning she wore a black, gauzy top over a pair of black slacks and a turquoise scarf wrapped around her neck.

I looked around, maybe expecting to see Jack

“It will just be the three of us,” Erika said.

“I thought we needed five,” I countered.

“Five is, of course, ideal, but since this spirit broke into our session, I believe he has something he needs to communicate. I don’t think the number will matter to him.”

“I’m sure it won’t,” I said. Both Erika and my mother gave me rather sharp looks. I could see how my mother recognized the sarcasm, but I didn’t think Erika knew how to read me yet.

She took us into the same small room, with the same table, only this time there were just three chairs around it. Heavy shades were drawn to keep out the light.

We settled into our chairs; Erika had my mother sit to her right. She put on some soft environmental music—birds and wind. She lit the candles and lowered the lights, but instead of holding hands, she turned to my mother and said, “Could we talk for a moment, Mrs. Guthrie?”

My mother’s eyes widened in a look I’d come to know as her don’t-call-on-me look and she dampened her lips with a flick of her tongue.

“Can’t I just talk to Robert?” she said.

“It would help if you first told me a little about your husband. Anything you can tell me may assist me in reaching him on the other side.”

When my mother didn’t respond, Erika asked her, “What did he call you? Did he have a special nickname for you?”

“Elizabeth,” she said, after a moment. “He called me Elizabeth.”

This was news to me. I’d never heard anyone call her Elizabeth except for Wyman when he was annoyed over some minor transgression.

“That’s good,” Erika said, sounding encouraged. “What else can you tell me?”

My mother swallowed. “May I have some water?”

The psychic hesitated. “Of course.” She left the room.

“I don’t want to talk
about
him,” my mother said to me. “I just want to talk
to
him.”

“What do you want to ask him?”

“First I want to make sure it’s him.”

“Then ask him a question that proves it. But one he can answer with a yes or no.”

She looked panicky for a second. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Did he give you something that only he would know about?”

“Well, yes, but—”

Erika returned with a round, black tray carrying three water glasses. After serving each of us, she propped the tray against the wall and sat again.

“What is his last name?” Erika asked.

My mother said, “Please. Just call him Robbie.”

“I think—”

“If he’s there, he will answer to Robbie.”

Why “Robbie” all of a sudden? But we were holding hands now, and Erika had begun her chanting, so my question would have to wait.

My mother looked calm at first, but then she became a little agitated, and I could see her lips twitching. (I was making no pretense of closing my eyes. I wanted to see everything.)

And then, like the last time, I saw the curtain flutter. And, again, the window was not open. A few moments later I caught a whiff of something sweet. Flowery.

My mother wrinkled her nose but did not say anything. Her sense of smell has all but deserted her. She clung to my hand with her own—soft, warm and dry.

“... Please walk among us, Robbie.”

The candle flames on the table wavered, and I swear the room darkened. The sarcasm began to seep from my body, making room for a mix of fear and annoyance. I knew there had to be some way she pulled it off but I had no idea how. The alternative—that this was all as real as I was—was just too hard to deal with right now. I figured as long as I kept telling myself this ritual was a fraud, I could keep my nerves in check.

“Robbie, I have someone special who wishes to speak with you.” The breeze had turned cool and now there was a soft thump against the table.

“Robbie?”

Tap.

“Elizabeth is here with me. She wishes to speak with you. Will you talk to us?”

Silence.

“Robbie?” Erika asked.

My mother had opened her eyes and then, perhaps responding to the same squeeze Erika gave my hand, she snapped them shut again. Without turning my head and risking Erika’s scolding, I took in as much of the room as I could. The light was dim, but I could still make things out—the little table beneath the window, the CD player in the corner. I had the strangest feeling that there was something under the table, whatever had made that sound was just inches from
my knee. That thought caused an involuntary leg spasm and earned me another squeeze from Erika.

“Robbie,” Erika said, sounding as though the name were awkward for her. “Elizabeth would like to speak with you. Are you here for her?”

The silence pressed into my ears and it was a full ten seconds—I was counting—before the single rap came. Apparently Robbie didn’t need to be coached again on the psychic code—one rap for yes, two for no—because Erika took his response for a yes.

“We welcome you here,” she said.

At that moment I wondered where Jack was, and then I imagined him behind some emerald green curtain—flipping switches that caused custom-made hammers to pound inside the walls.

“Mrs. Guthrie,” Erika said, “you may ask him a question now.”

“How does she know it’s really him?” I asked.

Erika shot me a shivery look, and then said to my mother. “Go ahead and ask him a personal question.”

The tip of my mother’s tongue darted out again, and I imagined she needed some water, but she’d have to let go of Erika’s hand, and I knew there was no way my mother was breaking the circle at this point. “That ring you gave me,” she finally said, her voice strained and scratchy. “Was it shaped like a star?”

No.

“A bow?”

Yes.

I could practically feel the ring she’d just described gripping my finger. Why hadn’t she ever mentioned that my father had given it to her?

I refocused when I saw my mother nod as though he’d answered this correctly. And then she did something very strange. She smiled. One she’d been saving for a while. There was a sigh attached to it, and her body relaxed. Like at last she’d come home. I thought for a moment that she’d died right there and then. All this time she’d just been waiting for an escort. But then she drew in a new breath and exhaled.

It was all I could do not to ask her to explain the ring. But Erika was there, squeezing my hand so hard I jumped a little.

So, instead, I said, “What did you want to ask him, Mom?”

My mother closed her eyes and said, “I didn’t know you’d died. I’m so sorry.”

I couldn’t believe she was talking like this to the guy who’d taken her sofa money.

“What did you want to ask him?” Erika prompted.

“Nothing. Really. I just wanted to talk to him.”

Erika and I exchanged looks.

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

Yes
.

“Good.” She nodded and then glanced at Erika. “Do they sometimes lie?”

“No,” Erika told her.

I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d just witnessed a kindness. How would Erika know?

“I think I’d just like to sit here with him for a few minutes.”

“I don’t know how long he can stay,” Erika said, and I detected some strain in her words. Then she took in a sharp breath and her eyes widened, staring at a space between my mother and me. Almost as if...

“Can you see him?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I can now.”

My mother glanced over her shoulder, than back at Erika. “How does he look?”

“He’s quite tall. Well over six feet. Distinguished. He’s wearing a green sweater over a denim shirt. He has intense, alert eyes. Your daughter’s eyes.”

Tall? In the one photo I’d seen of my father he stood next to my mother. Saying he had three inches on her was being generous. And at her tallest, my mother was maybe five-foot-five.

I squinted. Saw nothing.

“She does have his eyes,” my mother agreed. Then she said, “Is he still handsome?”

“Yes, he is.”

We all sat in silence for several moments, and I imagined I could hear a fourth person breathing in the room. Of course that was silly.

“Mrs. Guthrie,” Erika said, her breath catching, “he is speaking to me.” We looked at her. Her sight was trained on the place beyond my mother.

“What is he saying?” Both my mother and I asked at the same time.

After a few seconds, Erika spoke again, “He said Robyn is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” my mother said.

“He says she looks like you.”

Without glancing my way, my mother said, “I think she resembles Robbie.”

Another strange statement. Robert Guthrie had reddish brown hair and there was nothing in his face that I could find in my own. Maybe the only photo I had of my late father was not an accurate one. My mother had lied about his death for so many years, I guess I wouldn’t put it past her to have shown me a photo of someone else.

After a few moments of listening, Erika said, “There’s something he wants to say to you, Mrs. Guthrie—he wants me to tell you that— he wants me to tell you he’s sorry.”

My mother’s cheeks reddened and she sighed. “I know. So am I.”

“He worries that you had forgotten about him.”

My mother glanced at me. “How could I?” Then she said, her voice kind of dreamy. “I remember everything. The day you gave me the ring. We were on the pier... I can still hear the gulls.”

Pier? Gulls? “In Colorado?” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Hush, Robyn,” my mother hissed at me, all the tenderness gone.

I didn’t want to start anything—not right this second—so I backed off.

“He wants to know why you never came back.”

“You tell him, Mom,” I said under my breath.

She darted a look my way. “You know why.”

“Yes, I think you do,” I added and my mother jerked my hand.

“You should have called,” Erika translated. “He wanted to know where you were.”

I was tempted to ask him if he was planning to steal more money from her, but I was leery about annoying a ghost. And then my mother said, “Too much... too much had happened.”

What I didn’t understand was why she was being so sweet to this guy who had beaten her and stolen her sofa money.

Then Erika said, “He wants to know if Robyn knows.”

From the widening of my mother’s eyes I knew we were heading someplace she didn’t want to go.

“Knows what?” I asked.

For the second time she said, “It’s none of your business, Robyn.” But this time I wasn’t going to let it go.

“I think it is my business.”

“This is my life,” my mother said, “not yours.”

That just about rendered me speechless. Our lives were braided together. And for her to dismiss me like that, well, it pissed me off. I squeezed her hand. “You tell me now or so help me I’ll snatch my hands away, blow out the candles and throw open the shades.”

Instead of pitching an eye dart at me, Erika said to my mother, “He says that you should tell her.”

My mother bowed her head, and all I could see was her pink scalp under the threads of white.

“Tell me what?” My question was met with stone silence. Even the birds in the CD had lost their voices. I commanded myself to think. All the questions tumbled together at once. Why didn’t I resemble the guy in the photo, but did resemble this dead man? What was it my mother had kept from me? What was so important that she’d keep the lie for forty-five years? When I trusted my voice enough to speak, I said, “Am I allowed to ask a question?”

Apparently she had to consult with the spirit first, but finally Erika nodded.

“Did you desert my mother in Cortez and run off with the money she was saving for a sofa?”

This time it was me clamping down on my mother’s hand to keep her from bolting.

“No, he did not.” Erika relayed.

“Are you Robert Guthrie?”

“He says that is not his name.”

Something burned in the pit of my stomach. “What is your full name?”

“Robert Alan Savage.”

I had never heard this name before. Never.

My mother’s eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was pressed into a thin, bloodless line.

Still watching her, I asked the ghost, “Are you my father?”

After a moment, Erika said, “Yes. He says he is.”

I clung to my mother’s hand as I asked, “Were you ever married to my mother?”

Erika cast a glance at my mother, who would have gone sprinting were it not for us holding on to her.

“He says he loved your mother.”

“That is not what I asked.” I fought to keep my tone even.

“No,” Erika finally said, “they were never married.”

Oh, Jesus. I did not know this was coming. Or had I? I must have. It answered questions I hadn’t even thought of yet. I had to sort out the details. Had he just said what I thought he’d said? Or had I misinterpreted something? The fine hair on my arms rose. “Are Robert and Robbie two different people?”

At the same time, my mother and Erika said, “Yes.”

Double Jesus.

“Robyn.” It was my mother, and her tone had that little whiney crescendo.

I couldn’t stop myself from turning to my mother. “Why?”

Staring at the table’s surface, she just shook her head.

Erika looked past us, and then she nodded and turned toward me. “He’s afraid your mother has forgotten.”

“Forgotten what? What—”

“I did not.” My mother looked to be teetering between tears and anger. “Robbie, how can you say that?”

Bile was working its way up my throat. I couldn’t swallow. “Sounds like a reasonable concern,” I said. “You forgot to mention he was my father. For forty-five years.”

“I’ll not have you taking that tone with me—”

“You have no idea where me and my tone are going. Why, I—”

“This must stop.” Erika abruptly released our hands. “I cannot conduct a séance under these conditions.”