Bijou Read online

  “About three weeks.” Ivy finished the last of her tea. Mine, too, was empty. “Just little things at first. A jumping lamp. My bathroom mirror cracked. But then last week all the doors in the house locked and the air conditioning went off. Bruce was alone in the house. I was getting my hair done.”

  The steel bands around my heart loosened a little as I listened. Not for the first time I wondered what my sister did for money, that she could afford an expensive hairstyle like the one she had now. She seemed to have plenty of it, and if she ever had a job in her life, it lasted no more than a few months at a time.

  A cold notion tightened around me again. What if Ivy was dealing in Bijou again? “How did you get Bruce out of the house?”

  “He called me. There were voices in the background of the phone. I came home and simply demanded the ghost explain itself.” Ivy shrugged, looked into her glass at the melting ice. It looked diamond-clear and thirst-quenching. “She unlocked the doors. It took hours to get the air conditioning back on.”

  I wondered about it. An attention-getting move aimed at Bruce, although it was a way to get Ivy to come home and communicate. “You know, I don’t do hauntings. You know what I do now?” I wanted to talk about the good side, the white side of the family talents.

  Ivy gave me a strange look. Impatience? Jealousy? Desperation? “You’re a nurse. I knew why you became one. You help the dying. You didn’t really give it all up.”

  Shrugging, I shook my head. “A Spirit Keeper in health care. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I wanted to help people. I saw so many people die in fear, their families too. So afraid of death. I just make it sweeter. People thank me. They don’t know what happened, but suddenly their terror is gone.

  Turning her head, Ivy looked at me. “I think that’s funny, you dealing with the dead that way. You said you wanted to have nothing to do with the family talent.”

  “Dad said he didn’t want me to have anything to do with it.” I folded my arms around me. The old hurt was just as fresh, as memories of family laid siege on me here in the new house. We had always called it the new house, even though it was a shabby tract home in a row of similar structures. I thought about that. “Speaking of the family business, heard of anyone trying to sell Bijou around here?”

  Ivy’s forehead wrinkled. “How would I know?” I saw her shiver. “Although, there have been a lot of wraiths around lately.”

  “God, I hope not.” A terrible practice, only performed by Spirit-keepers such as ourselves. The Elixir of Life, distilled, purified human souls stolen at the moment of death, sold on a highly exclusive market to the very, very rich who wanted to stay looking young.

  “Is the old house still standing?” I wanted to change the subject.

  Ivy gazed at me through narrowed eyes. She picked up the tattered cigarette. “It’s been sold. The buyer is going to tear it down.” Her voice had turned icy.

  “Tear it down? Who?”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. Zoe stood behind me. “Mom, can I get my swimsuit out of the car?”

  “OK, honey. Let’s get your swim suit out of the car.” Rising, I stretched my neck. The sun blazed even through my sunglasses, but I felt nothing but cold. There was ibuprofen in the car, too.

  Ivy jumped up more quickly than I imagined possible, the metal chair scraping on the concrete patio—her hand closed around my wrist in a tight, spidery grip. “Tonight? Will you summon her tonight?”

  “I haven’t done that in a very long time.”

  “I know, but she will only come for you. She wanted you here. This was all set up for you.” Her voice became breathless, and I wished she would sit down before she fell down. She wasn’t as well as she wanted to believe.

  “Killing Hollis?” I whispered fiercely. Fortunately Zoe had already gone with Bruce through the breezeway toward the street. “Why would she do that, Ivy?”

  Ivy’s eyes widened, and she fell clumsily into her seat. I put my hand on her shoulder, sorry I had sounded so mean just then. “I don’t have a choice, do I? Not now. YOU got me here, not her.”

  “No, no. Only you. You can’t escape what will happen. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  So am I. So am I. I ran my hand across her forehead. “Sit here. Rest. Let me get my gear.”

  “You will summon her? Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Through the breezeway, I walked into the hot day. Tawny hills ringed us in under a hot bowl of sky as the sun balanced on the western slopes. The place smelled like it always did: baking grass, bitumen, melted tar. Dusk stretching toward Quantum City promised relief to this San Francisco bedroom community.

  I had left on just such a day, as dusk laid down a shroud to hide my flight. I left a world where nothing made sense, or all of it did, a pattern laid out for me that I had not designed. A giant board game where dice always roll doubles and there is no going backward, only forward on the allotted spaces. I left to escape the ghost of my best friend, and here I was back again, following the squares leading me to the center of the game.

  Mae Worthington waited there for me to draw the card with her name on it, toss the dice again, and reread the curse of my past.

  Chapter Two

  A Fateful Flower

  Quantum City is not very big. We arrived at our destination in five minutes. Houses covered what had once been horse pasture. If I hadn’t had Ivy with me, I would have gotten lost. We crossed First Street and I recognized the giant pepper tree on the corner of Traverna Close, a street of Sears craftsmen bungalows built by a manufacturing company for its employees in the forties. Imitation gas lamps lit the street where old trees reached thick limbs into the night. No one was about this late—the houses hunkered down, dark and quiet, waiting.

  Ivy’s voice was soft, almost reverent. “Meredith Caplan bought one of these houses. I guess she wanted to be close to Mae.”

  Bruce snorted at his mother’s remark about the teacher. Zoe said nothing. At the end of the street was a concrete barrier. Traverna Street had once crossed the Santa Fe Pacific tracks at this unmarked crossing. It must have been closed after Mae died here. Pulling up to the barrier, under a gaslight streetlight, I cut off the motor.

  It was near midnight. Zoe was in the front seat with me, Ivy and Bruce in the back. Pepper stretched out in the very back snoring mildly. We had driven here to the site of Mae’s death, the best place to summon.

  Behind me Ivy said, “I thought you knew. Your old best friend Mae’s become quite popular with the mascara and tattoo set. It’s just revving up now for the anniversary of her death. A memorial will show up here soon, if it’s not already. It’s been quite a party out here.” I turned in my seat, looked at her over my shoulder. This was terrible news.

  Ivy was trying to look innocent, but it made her face look surprised, not guileless. She pulled strands of frizzy hair away from her face.

  “FOD.” The words floated up from Bruce directly behind me.

  “What is he talking about?” I rolled my cold bottled water across my forehead, as if this would dampen the fire in my head.

  Ivy rolled her eyes at me. I hated that. “Do you see why you had to come?” “Explain why I had to come. I’ve grown stupid, suddenly.”

  Ivy’s eyebrows went up with patronizing patience. I hated that, too. “About five years ago that pea-brained teacher Meredith Caplan got a hold of Mae’s poems. She thought the work was genius, so she paid to have them published. That was when the suicide cult formed, probably. They call themselves that FOD thing or something like that.” She turned on her stool. “What is that, Bruce—German?”

  “Means ‘Friends of the Dead’”, he muttered.

  Ivy turned back to me. She looked quivery, as if she had just bolted down a liter of caffeine. “None of this was an issue until this Death Club got a hold of the book. They started the ritual. Every year they bring offerings to the tracks where Mae died.”

  The car windows seemed to blink and breathe, as if they too were listening. It
made me dizzy. I was glad I was sitting down.

  “Libra isn’t really a part of all that.” This from Bruce.

  “Yes, she is,” Ivy responded sharply to her son. “She’s the leader, el jefe, or is it la jefe, the one who keeps all that shit going. You know that, Bruce.”

  “Who is Libra?” I checked the time on my phone. 11:55. Almost time.

  A scowl crossed Ivy’s face again, pulling her eyebrows together. “Bruce’s girlfriend, Agnes Webster. Fourteen going on forty.” she said, a sneer in her voice.

  The girl’s name sent a small shock through me. Webster. It was a common enough name. Could be anyone’s daughter.

  “She goes by ‘Libra’?” I asked Bruce.

  Ivy answered. “All those girls have names they made up, use them on My Book or Spacepage or one of those teenage Internet covens.”

  “Death Club.” I knew many of Mae’s poems, at least the ones she let me see, were packed with musings about death, what it would be like to be dead. A cold thought struck me. “Do any of these girls write about—suicide?”

  I had to ask. From the corner of my eye I saw Zoe raise her head from her book. Ivy waved a dismissive hand. “Not yet. But the school is worried about it. These girls, led by Libra, are getting out of hand. Libra started one of those blog things, talking about the afterlife and the dead and all that. My God.” Ivy took deep breath, her eyebrows drawn together in self-importance. “That girl has no clue. She is playing games with dark mystery she knows nothing about, but thinks she does. Some poor young, vulnerable really depressed young kid is going to take it all seriously and do harm to themselves.”

  Positioning my arm between the front seats, I lay my head on it. I had to think for a moment, but weariness fogged my brain.

  Ivy continued. “That Libra has serious issues. She tried to make our old house the default location for honoring Mae’s birthday. They would drive by and throw things, bracelets, plastic toys, purses, things Mae writes about. Last year they threw a copy of poems by some old guy.”

  “Walt Whitman,” came a lucid but dreamy interjection from Bruce.

  “Yeah, whatever. Always something alluded to in Mae’s book.”

  I lifted my head. “Bruce, can I see your copy of the book?”

  He looked up look at me, “Which book?”

  “Mae’s book of course.”

  After sounds of rustling and grunting behind me, a black and white paperback book, narrow in the spine, appear near my head. I reached for it.

  Checking my watch again, I saw it was almost time. “You all will do as I tell you. It’s imperative you obey my instructions. Summoning can be dangerous, especially with a ghost like Mae Worthington.”

  “She’s a gray lady. That’s a woman who died violently.” Next to me Zoe smelled like fresh grass and sand. I turned to look at her, astonished that she knew instinctively how Mae died. But she was my daughter; why should I be surprised?

  “I don’t really know if she killed herself or if it was an accident, Zoe. But yes, it was violent.”

  “She got hit by a train,” Zoe insisted.

  Glancing at Mae’s book of poems, insipidly titled “Fateful Flowers” by, no doubt, Meredith Caplan, I recalled a Meredith Caplin from high school. She was a geeky girl who hung out on the edges of our crowd, who even then seemed obsessed with becoming Mae’s friend.

  The Paris Review published one of Mae’s poems when she was fifteen. It was a very big deal. I mused, “Do you suppose she’s mad about them publishing her stuff without her permission?”

  Ivy said, “I think it’s more than that. She has a big grudge and needs to either get at the truth or get even. Ghosts are very one-way that way.”

  Bruce folded his arms. There was a petulant edge to his voice. “Some of those are love poems. But they could be for anyone.”

  “Love poems, whatever. Drippy geek drivel. Any girl who likes this stuff needs therapy.” Ivy straightened her shoulders.

  “I wish we’d driven past the old house,” Zoe said with a sigh. The car felt so cold, even the steering wheel. I wished I had gloves.

  I said, “On the way back. It’s almost midnight.”

  The night whispered to me, filling my head with a thousand murmurings. I had never heard its like before, as if a stadium of the dead ringed the valley, watchful, disturbed.

  Behind me Ivy stirred. She felt it too. What did it mean, so many phantoms here, tonight, in QC? A possible reason paced around my brain, eying me as a big cat would its prey. I hated to think of it, but all the signs were here. Bijou. Someone was collecting souls. A lot of them. Glancing at Ivy, I saw her gazing out the open window, drumming her fingers on its edge. I wondered how much she knew about this increase in Bijou trafficking, and had the uneasy feeling that handling a recalcitrant ghost was not the only task before me. I picked up Mae’s book and opened the car door. The smell of dry grass and sage came into my nostrils on a cool breeze. To the right of the car, west along the tracks, I could see a paved area, and beyond this the barrier stopped. Silver tracks continued, polished by the passing of freights and Amtrak.

  Leaning back into the car, I said. “Everyone stays here. No one leaves the car. Wait for 20 minutes. If I don’t return, Bruce, I want you to get me. Ivy and Zoe: do NOT attempt to find me. Bruce will bring me back.”

  Bruce’s eyes widened, but he gave me a quick, attentive nod. Zoe pouted, but Ivy inclined her head in agreement.

  Circling the car I walked west along the barrier. In the ambient light sprayed by the nearby suburb, I took a quick look at “Fateful Flowers”.The photo on the back arrested my attention. From a swing in an abandoned, wintry playground, Mae stared at the camera. She wore her black “Morticia” dress, her white-gold hair unworldly in the black and white photo. I remembered sharing this view in real time, standing with Hollis as he snapped the picture. Why had they chosen this particular one for the book? Pain pricked as I thought about how Mae—and now Hollis—had died.

  Across an apron of weed-cracked concrete, remnants of the old street, an accumulation of shiny objects caught my eye. Mae’s shrine that Ivy and Bruce had talked about. A silver and red heart-shaped balloon wavered over a pyramidal pile. From here I could make out several stuffed cats—an homage perhaps to a silly cat verse in the book, vases of flowers, mostly calla lilies, a flower Mae referred to in one of her poems about Frida Kahlo.

  Turning my back on the shrine, I looked down the length of tracks. I had wished, coming here, that Mae would simply appear so I wouldn’t have to align my chaotic thoughts in that special way and do the thing that opened the veil between worlds for a summoning.

  Night breezes strummed dead grasses, bringing a hissing music into my ears. Around us the neighborhood was silent, except for the distant muttering of traffic on the freeway. A terrible loneliness engulfed me here, at the death site. I didn’t come here after she died. For the first few days after she died, friends would bring me items; a chip from a tail light, a scrap of twisted chrome. I still had those packed away in a box buried in my attic at home.

  “Dammit Mae, stop playing games!” I shouted before I knew it. Silence followed—no one heard except a dog who barked, not at me but at the spectral murmur of the night. For I had shouted through the veil—here it was very thin, almost as thin as on All Hallows Eve, Mae’s doorway to the Phantom Zone.

  I held a talisman in my hand. A crucifix, ugly, ornate, fashioned from silver, it had a tiny image of Jesus glued in the cross-piece, one of those coin-shaped medallions that when you moved it, Jesus opened and closed his arms. No one knew who had modified the crucifix in such a way, but it made the cross seem more friendly; it had been in the family for years, and I kept it near me every time I dealt with spirits.

  Closing my eyes, I imagined the Phantom City with Mae in it. We gazed at each other through the glass, hands pressed against it, noses tight up to it, pushed flat. My breath fogged the glass between.

  The dog stopped barking. Opening my eyes, looking east p
ast the barricades across the tracks I saw a girl approaching. Above her a dark shape flowed, swirling stars as the wind might do to leaves.

  Could be anyone. A neighbor, curious about what we were doing. A girl out for a walk with her dog somewhere invisible.

  But I knew it was none of these. The girl came to the barricade and passed between two of the concrete blocks. Seeing the shrine, she stopped a moment to look at it, picked a wilting lily out of a plastic vase. Holding it carelessly in her hand, she approached.

  My chest tightened almost to the point of pain. Was I having a heart attack, or had I just forgotten to breathe? Mae looked so real, so much the girl in the photo I held. Except her hair long with straight bangs, the blackest shade she could achieve with the bottle of hair dye. Black, not blond as she had been in the book photo. Eyes the shade of violet next to white, a shifting allurement in them under dark eyebrows, above pink lips. Pearl Pink. Her favorite shade of lipstick.

  At least she had not appeared as a mangled corpse, as some liked to do. In a tank top and cutoffs, she was barefoot. She arrived in the form of memory, an evening after school we spent at the quarry with Sawyer and Hollis, where Mae had spontaneously jumped into the water, in this very tank top and shorts, and had lost her sandals in the process. Hollis carried her back to his car. I could see her hair was still wet.

  “God, Annabelle Lee, you look older.” Her voice was still high and almost shrill. She was the only one who called me Annabelle Lee. I hated that.

  I said, “You’re dead, and I’m not. That is the difference, Mae.” I remembered Aunt Rose, my father’s sister, telling me it was best to be straightforward with ghosts, no matter who they were in life or how they behaved. Ghosts needed formal reasoning. Aunt Rose and our dad argued endlessly over this point.

  “Oh, chill. I’m only kidding.” Directing her Caribbean Sea eyes in the direction of the car, she said. “That’s Zoe over there, isn’t it? She is very pretty, I’m not just shitting you about that, either. And Ivy is here, and the proud, brave Bruce. I am so honored.”