Spooky Little Girl (25 page)

Until this morning.

Despite dialing her alarm back to the eighties radio station, she woke up once again to Mexican polka music, which she loathed, particularly when the alarm went off at 3
A.M.
It reminded her of refried beans, and the mere thought of that right out of a dead sleep made her sick. She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and on the bathroom mirror was another Lucy Fisher return address sticker, just like the one Nola had found on her lunch bag a while ago. Lucy had lived here, she reminded herself. It would be completely within the realm of possibilities that a return address sticker had gotten caught on a sleeve and then had ended up stuck on a mirror, much like the way that seeds get caught in the fur of animals and spread to other regions. It was perfectly possible that that was how Lucy’s sticker had wound up plastered flat on the mirror and why it had taken several applications of Goo Gone to remove. Perfectly possible.

Perfectly.

But then when Nola went to make the coffee, there was another Lucy Fisher sticker on the handle of the carafe, exactly like the first sticker. Nola scratched that one off, too, with another hearty squirt of Goo Gone.

After the coffee was made, Nola reached inside the refrigerator for her Coffee-mate, and there was yet another Lucy Fisher sticker, taping the lid closed. Almost as if Nola had to see it if she was going to have any creamer in her coffee at all.

And she was going to have creamer.

One sticker popping up was possible, Nola told herself, but three? Still, she thought, she hadn’t seen Lucy, and what did stickers prove, aside from the fact that this used to be Lucy’s house? She knew exactly what sensible, no-nonsense Martin would say, and she didn’t really feel like being called “hysterical” so early in the morning, especially by a man who might just be trying to cover up seeing his ex-girlfriend on the sly. Instead, she finished her waffle,
sopping up all of the excess syrup with the last bite, and decided to keep her eyes wide, wide,
wide
open.

“I have a surprise for you, Martin,” she said gleefully, popping up out of her chair. “You stay right there.”

Martin looked up as she disappeared from the kitchen, only to reappear seconds later with a box in her hands, gift wrapped in paper that cried
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
in scrolling silver letters. This gift was the item that the mailman had delivered the previous Saturday.

“For me?” he said, clearly surprised by not only the package, but the paper as well.

“It’s the sixth-month anniversary of our domestic partnership,” Nola said, and beamed.

“I didn’t know,” Martin confessed. “I don’t have anything …”

“It’s all right,” Nola said. “The present is really for both of us.”

Martin smiled, tore the paper off, and opened the box. Inside was a picture frame with no glass but what looked like a blank computer screen.

“Look!” Nola said as she excitedly reached across and flipped a switch on the back. Suddenly, two faces appeared on the screen, one Martin, one Nola, from their first camping trip. It was easily identifiable because of Nola’s face, which had blistered from inadequate application of sunblock due to the fact that she’d insisted her skin was too sensitive to tolerate it. She’d said that an umbrella would shield her just fine, although in four days’ time, her entire head had shed like a cobra’s.

Suddenly, the image on the screen began to fade and another one materialized, this one looking like a green, furry bowling ball on a plate, with a candle in it.

“My birthday cake,” Martin said. “You said it was supposed to be a cabbage, right?”

Nola nodded and smiled.

The scene continued as one image melted into another, faded in, faded out, materialized and then vanished. It really couldn’t have worked out better for Nola, who, considering the events of the morning, wanted nothing more than to say to her domestic partner,
Lucy never existed. She was never here. We have cabbages and sunburn now
.

“How do you work this thing?” Naunie said, poking at the picture frame, turning it upside down, and all around, back to front.

“It’s the same as uploading pictures onto a computer,” Lucy said, her hands grasping the top of the flickering television. “I’m almost done, so put it down. Don’t break it!”

Naunie put it back on the coffee table and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to lose my charge waiting for you,” she said impatiently.

“Give me thirty more seconds!” Lucy replied. “Just because you drained every small appliance in the house and got a head start is no reason to be fussy!”

“I have something big planned for the mailman today,” Naunie said, making conversation while Lucy finished. “It’ll teach him to be a snitch.”

“Don’t go too nuts,” Lucy warned. “The last thing we want is a spooked mailman poking around when we least expect it. Let’s get this job done and get out of here.”

“No kidding,” Naunie agreed. “I’m sick of sleeping on this smelly old couch.”

Lucy paused for a moment and looked at her grandmother.

“Really? Are you?” she questioned sarcastically. “Because I’ll trade you that stinky old couch for an even stinkier La-Z-Boy recliner with a broken footrest. Just say the word. It shall be yours.”

“Seriously, Lucy,” Naunie said. “Why didn’t you have better furniture? This stuff is all crap!”

“Neither of us made very much money, Naunie,” Lucy explained. “I would have loved to have an old historic English cottage, covered with rose vines and filled with overstuffed wing chairs and white linen sofas, but that wasn’t a reality. We barely had enough to live on.”

“Oh, come on,” the old woman argued. “What about the money from my house? You could have bought something nice with that!”

Lucy didn’t say anything and pretended to be fascinated with the volume button on the TV.

“What did you do with it?” Naunie said, less a question than a demand. “What did you do with the money?”

“I spent it on Hawaii!” Lucy finally spit out.

Naunie looked shocked. “You spent it
all
on Hawaii?” she asked.

“It was supposed to be the vacation of a lifetime,” Lucy tried to explain. “Not the last vacation time of my life.”

Naunie looked genuinely offended. “I bet Alice didn’t spend my life’s work on a vacation,” she said quietly.

“No,” Lucy answered quickly. “No, she didn’t. After her bum of a husband left her with a house payment, a kid to raise, and a piece of junk car, Alice didn’t use it for a vacation. She used it to fix her car and pay the mortgage she’d fallen behind on.”

Naunie didn’t say anything, but just looked silently at the picture frame.

“Oh,” Lucy said, nodding her head. “Oh, I see. I get it. Alice did the responsible thing with her money, and I should have done the responsible thing with mine. Like buy nice furniture so when I came back to this house as a goblin, you’d have a more comfortable spot to sleep!”

“Lucy, I don’t think you do get it,” Naunie said harshly. “Do you understand what’s going on? No one knows you’re dead. Nobody. And the reason for that is because, well, it seems like you were
flying around by the seat of your pants so much that your fanny was hanging out and you never seemed to mind. Or notice. No one is out looking for you because no one thinks it’s out of character for you to take off. That’s why you’re here, Lucy! That’s why you’re stuck half in and half out of this existence. At least I can say I scared the shit out of Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen and this is my punishment. But, Lucy, sometimes you had a hard time following through. You always did. Maybe that was my fault, but now it’s come back to haunt you.”

“I died and my sister didn’t tell anybody,” Lucy protested. “I do not see how that chalks up to me being flaky! That’s ridiculous! I would clearly say that’s more Alice’s fault than mine!”

“None of the people you knew were surprised you disappeared and didn’t come back, except for one person,” Naunie argued.

“Who?” Lucy shot back.

“Nola,” Naunie said. “She’s been terrified that you were going to come back all along. She still is. That’s what the photo album is about. She’s marking her territory like a cat.”

“Well, she can surely have it,” Lucy responded, finally feeling a big enough charge that she lifted her hands off the TV. “But I think we need to metaphorically spray on this little frame for now.”

“Count me in!” Naunie cried, rubbing her wrinkled little grandma hands together.

“Okay, hand me the camera!” Lucy said as she walked over to the coffee table.

“You know how to work that thing?” Naunie said suspiciously.

“Of course I do. It’s Martin’s,” she informed Naunie. “He never buys anything new. Smile!”

Naunie quickly delivered a pose, her hands delicately placed on her knees, and smiled like a schoolgirl.

“Say cheese!” Lucy said cheerily, as Naunie struck one hand
behind her head and another one on her hip à la Jane Russell, but in a flowing white haunting gown.

“The camera loves you, baby!” Lucy laughed as Naunie moved from one pose to another, blowing a kiss, hands cupped under her chin, looking seductively over her shoulder.

“Want me to get sexy?” Naunie asked with a wink. She raised her White Lady gown up to reveal her little bird legs and her Easy Spirit shoes. “I can roll my knee-high hose down!”

Lucy snapped away, and then turned the camera to Tulip, who had been sleeping soundly all morning long. “Tulip!” Lucy called loud enough to wake the dog up. Tulip lifted her head, and Lucy took a picture. “Come on, Tulip! Come on over here!”

It took several attempts for the old dog to get to her feet, but she finally succeeded and ambled over toward Lucy, who took several snaps of Tulip smiling with her tongue lolling out.

“Let me get a picture of the two of you!” Naunie insisted, snatching the camera from Lucy’s hands. “This button here?”

Lucy nodded, wrapping her arms around Tulip’s neck and smiling. On the next one, Tulip turned to give Lucy’s face a long, juicy lick.

“These are wonderful!” Naunie said. “It’s too bad we won’t show up in any of them.”

Lucy giggled and plopped down next to Naunie on the couch, flipping through the tiny digital display on the back of the camera.

“Well,” Lucy remarked, “I can’t see your rolled-down knee-highs, but you are one sexy orb, Naunie!”

“Yeah, that’s a shame,” her grandmother said, shaking her head and flipping to another frame. “A ball of light just doesn’t do justice to an old woman’s sex kitten pose. I had ‘come hither’ eyes in that one.”

“Actually, you look less like a ball of light than a frenzied moth in this one,” Lucy joked. “Let’s upload these!”

In no time at all, Lucy hooked up the cable, transferred all of the photos over, and even overrode Nola’s slide show as the current one. Instead of face blisters and cabbage cakes, there were multiple photos of Lucy, Naunie, and Tulip, although only Tulip had the nerve to actually be seen. In place of Naunie or Lucy, tiny balls of energy dotted the image. In some of the photos, the balls were in concentrated spots, and in others, the balls were all over the place, depending on how dramatic Naunie’s pose had been.

“Wow,” Naunie said, watching as the photos faded from one into another. “I look positively glowing!”

“You are a thousand points of light, Clovis,” Lucy said, then burst into a giggle, as did her grandmother, who then put the frame back where it belonged on the coffee table.

With the frame back in place and the image in it transitioning from a photo of a couch with a bunch of what looked like dust specks and bugs flitting about to another photo of Martin’s La-Z-Boy boasting the same dust, the afternoon of mischief eventually lost its novelty. Naunie and Lucy passed the time by playing cards in the kitchen, then moved to the living room to watch
Twentieth Century
with Carole Lombard on the classic movie channel. When that was over, Naunie read one of Nola’s trashy magazines, and Lucy decided to give Tulip some spa time.

Naunie and Lucy, it seemed, were truly spirits of leisure.

As she walked back into the living room after letting Tulip back inside, Lucy heard the familiar
clomp-clomp-clomp
of the mailman’s heavy step lumbering up the driveway to the front door. She quickly hung back in the hallway even though she didn’t have a full enough charge to be seen. Naunie, however, had enough of a charge to not only be seen, but to run for public office. The glow around
her was beaming, and she crouched behind the door, waiting. Naunie had closed the drapes to the large living room window so she could get close enough to hear the mail carrier as he came closer and closer to the front door, and then the footsteps stopped. Naunie turned around and gave Lucy the “Shhh!” sign and then covered her own mouth as she giggled silently in anticipation.

They both heard some rustling on the other side of the door, the squeak of the mail slot opening, and, boom, in shot the mail, landing straight at Naunie’s little feet. She quickly picked up the bundle, raised it back up to the mail slot, and shoved it back with all of her might. It landed outside the house with a muffled, dull sound.

“What the …,” the postman commented.

In a second, Lucy heard the mail slot sing again, and then
THUD!
The mail landed at Naunie’s feet, just as it had before.

She nimbly gathered it right back up, positioned it next to the slot, held it steady with one hand, and then shot it through with the open palm of the other hand by hitting it with all her might, popping it like a volleyball.

The mail scattering all over the front walkway made almost a hissing sound as it slid across the concrete, and Naunie did the best she could to stifle her laughter.

“Whaaaaaat?” the postman could be heard questioning as he gathered up mail like playing cards.

Lucy heard the wail of the mail slot again, and instead of the mail coming through on a repeat journey, the only thing that made an appearance in the opening was a big, fat, blinking, spying eye.

Wasting not even a moment, Naunie took a deep breath and blew as hard as she could. Her maneuver was evidently successful, given the clatter of the flap as it slapped the front of the door.