Oddest of All (6 page)

The woman took a deep breath. Looking down at her hands, she whispered, “Twenty years ago this very night I killed my mother.”

I felt my stomach twist. Were we sitting at the table with a homicidal maniac who might turn on us at any moment? I glanced around, hoping there were no butcher knives in easy reach.

“How did you kill her?” asked Chris, who seemed to take this news more calmly than I did. Maybe that was because Chris's mother was still around, whereas I hadn't seen mine since the day she took off to “find her own life.” Mothers were less of an issue for her.

The woman gave us a very sad smile. “I didn't shoot her or anything like that. But I might as well have. I was supposed to go to a Halloween party with my boyfriend, Bud Hendricks. My mother didn't want me to go. ‘Dolores, that boy is no good!' she kept saying. ‘He'll only bring you grief.'

“We had a screaming battle. Finally she forbid me to leave the house. When Bud showed up, she turned him away at the door.”

Dolores sighed. “Just after eleven o'clock I snuck out. I had managed to call Bud, and he was planning to meet me a mile up the road, so Mother wouldn't know what I was up to. She found out anyway, of course; she was brilliant at that kind of thing. And she went out after me. Dad was working late at his office, and Mom's car was in the shop, so she went on foot. That's how worried she was about me.”

Dolores shivered. “When Bud picked me up, I realized that he had been drinking—which was one of the things Mom objected to about him. We started back toward town. The storm that had been building up all day cut loose. Bud was driving too fast, not paying enough attention . . .”

Dolores started to cry again, but after a moment she got hold of herself. “My mother was walking toward us through the rain. I saw her first. I screamed and grabbed the steering wheel. We swerved, but not enough. We hit my mother, then went rolling into the ditch and smashed against a tree. That's when this happened,” she said, pulling back the hair that covered her terrible scars.

Neither Chris nor I knew what to say. Finally I just touched her arm and whispered, “What happened next?”

“I was in a coma for about a month,” Dolores whispered at last. “When I came out of it, my father told me that both Bud and my mother were dead. He looked half dead himself.” She turned away from us. “Dad never did recover from it all—though he took good care of me while I was recuperating.” She sighed. “Poor Dad. He couldn't tell me about my face, just couldn't bring himself to be the one to do it. One of the nurses had to hand me the mirror . . .”

She choked on the memory. I watched her, glad that her telling the story had given me a chance to really study her face, and at the same time embarrassed that I wanted to study it. I felt sick in my stomach from the way it looked. What would it be like to go through life that way?

Dolores ran her fingers over the scars. “I don't mind them too much now,” she said, almost as if she had read my mind. “They feel like a fitting punishment. What I mind is what I did—that, and the fact that I was never able to tell my mother how sorry I was, never got to take back my last words to her.”

“Your last words?” asked Chris.

Dolores closed her eyes. “When we had our fight, I screamed that I hated her.” She put her fingers against her scarred cheek, and I could see that they were trembling. “‘I hate you!' I screamed. ‘I hate you! I hate you!' Then I ran upstairs and slammed the door to my room.” She paused, swallowed hard, then whispered, “Those were the last words I ever said to her.”

I shivered. It wasn't hard to see why Dolores wanted so much to say something to her mother. I know lots of kids who have told their parents they hated them, but none who had had the bad luck to have their parents die before they got to take the words back.

“Have you ever seen your mother's ghost?” asked Chris.

Dolores shook her head.

“Then why did you think she was still around?” I asked.

“The parrot sees her.”

She looked defensive, as if she was daring me to contradict her.

“How do you know the bird sees her?” asked Chris.

Dolores looked down at her hands. “He talks to her. He was her bird, she'd had him from before I was born.” She smiled. “He always used to greet her when she walked into the room. ‘Hello, Sweetie!' he would say. ‘Hello, Sweetie!'”

Her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands. “The bird didn't say a word for six weeks after Mother died. Then one night after I came home from the hospital I was sitting in the living room when he let out an incredible squawk and cried, ‘Hello, Sweetie! Hello, Sweetie!'”

Dolores's good eye grew very large as she remembered the night. “‘Mother?' I called. ‘Mother, are you there?'”

“I knew she was. But she didn't answer.”

Dolores sat back in her chair. “She's haunted this house ever since. She comes about once a month. I never see her, but the bird always knows when she's here, always tells her hello, always cries ‘Don't go! Don't go!' when she leaves, just like he did when she was alive.”

She closed her eyes. “She must be so angry. I have to tell her how sorry I am. Maybe then her spirit can rest. I go out every year on this night, hoping maybe I will meet her along the road. But I never do.” She paused, then said, “I'm terribly sorry about your car. When I saw it tonight, for a moment I thought . . .”

She looked away, her shoulders trembling. “It's almost identical to the car Bud was driving that night. I thought . . . oh, I don't know what I thought! I was so shocked I must have lost my mind for a moment. After you swerved away from me, I fainted. When I came to, I was horrified. I went to see if you were all right, but you had already left. I'm so sorry.”

Now
this
was a situation my father never anticipated when he chose to drive an antique car. I was trying to figure out how he was going to react to Dolores's story when I heard Chris say softly, “Do you want to try something?”

Dolores and I both spoke at the same time. “What?”

Chris looked a little nervous. “Before I tell you, you have to realize there's a lot about this ghost stuff that Nine and I still don't understand yet ourselves. It does seem like the more experiences we have, the easier it gets for us to see them. The problem is, we're not the ones who need to see your mother. You are. But I'm wondering if we go in the living room and sit together, me on one side of you, Nine on the other, and hold hands—well, maybe it would bring you into the link so that you could see her, too.”

The idea made me a little nervous; we had never actually tried to summon a ghost. And I wasn't sure what this ghost was going to be like. Just because she had been weeping when we saw her didn't mean she wasn't still in a screaming rage about what had happened twenty years ago. What would we do if she showed up angry? It's not like we had an instruction book with a chapter titled “How to Deal with a Really Furious Ghost.”

On the other hand, I couldn't think of anything else to do. If fate had brought us here to help Dolores, this made as much sense as anything.

Dolores seemed to have pretty much the same reaction. “I'd do anything to see her again,” she whispered.

“Shall we try it?” asked Chris, looking at me.

I nodded. Without another word, the three of us stood, and walked into the living room.

“Jeremiah,” squawked the parrot as we entered the room. “Go to Jeremiah.”

“That's the second time tonight he's said that,” I whispered. “Who's Jeremiah?”

“I don't have the slightest idea,” said Dolores. “I never heard him say it at all until about four months after the accident. It was as if he learned it after Mother's death—though neither my father nor I taught it to him. For a while, I wondered if it was someone that Mother wanted me to contact. I even looked in her address book. But she didn't know any Jeremiah.”

One more bit of weirdness. I was trying to figure out how they all fit together.

We sat on the couch, Dolores between Chris and me. I was on her left side, the side with the scar.

“Now what?” asked Dolores.

“I don't know,” I said. “I guess you should try to call your mother.”

Dolores closed her eyes. “Mother,” she whispered. “Mother, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Maybe Nine and I should try,” said Chris. “Mrs. Smiley, if you can hear us, come back, come—”

She was interrupted by Commander Cody. “Hello, Sweetie!” he squawked. “Hello, Sweetie!”

Dolores's hand flinched in mine.

For a moment, we saw nothing, and I wondered if the bird was really an indicator that the ghost was around. Then Mrs. Smiley shimmered into view, a still-pretty, middle-aged lady whose face was marked by infinite sorrow.

Dolores gasped.

Mrs. Smiley looked at her daughter and shook her head sadly. I felt a surge of relief: At least she wasn't mad.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

No answer. I wasn't surprised. In all the times Chris and I have met ghosts, not one of them has ever spoken to us.

“Mother,” whispered Dolores, “I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

I wondered if this would break whatever tie held the ghost, free her to go on to the next world. But Mrs. Smiley didn't go. Instead, she leaned over to the parrot, as if whispering to him.

“Jeremiah!” it squawked. “Go to Jeremiah!”

The ghost looked at us pleadingly, as if begging us to understand.

That was when I got it. “Was your mother very religious?” I whispered.

Dolores nodded.
“Very
. It was something else we fought about.”

“Don't move. I'll be right back!”

I slipped my hand out of hers, half afraid the ghost would vanish once I did. But she stood in place, a look of desperate hope on her face. I tiptoed up the stairs and into the room Mr. Smiley had assigned to Chris and me.

The family Bible that lay on the dresser was covered with dust. I blew it off, then started to flip through the pages. It took me a moment to find the book of Jeremiah, but when I did, I struck pay dirt. Pressed between the pages were two thin sheets of paper, almost like the stuff you use for airmail. They were so thin you would never have known there was anything in the book if you weren't looking for it.

Glancing at the pages where the letter had been waiting, I saw that two phrases had been underlined in the text. The first was in chapter 31, verse 22: “How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter?”

Yow
, I thought.
That sure puts a finger on what Mrs. Smiley was all wound up about
.

But the second phrase, which was part of verse 34, gave me hope. It said, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

I glanced at the letter. The handwriting was wobbly, as if the person who wrote it had been very weak, and it looked unfinished. But I knew Dolores had to see it.

I slipped back down the stairs. When the ghost saw me, saw what I was holding, she burst into tears.

I thrust the letter into Dolores's hand. “Here,” I said. “Read this.”

She glanced at it. Then, with a quavering voice, she spoke aloud the words her mother had written nearly twenty years earlier—the undelivered letter her spirit had stayed to make sure her daughter finally read.

 

My Darling Dolores,

As I write these words, we both lie in hospital beds, with little hope that either of us will ever leave them. If the Lord must take one of us, I pray it will be me. You have a whole life ahead of you. I already have too much behind me.

I will have one great sorrow in dying, dear one, which is that I will not be here to see you grow to womanhood. I have, too, one great fear—not of death, for I trust the Lord. My fear is of dying before we can make peace between us.

Oh, my sweet baby girl, how can I say what is in my heart? How can I say how much I love you? You will not know until you are a mother yourself. I would do anything, give anything, to protect you from the sorrow and pain that have come to you. I am so sorry, my beloved.
More
than sorry.

There is one thing you must know if I should die before you wake. I forgive you. For whatever part you feel you played in this tragedy,
I forgive you
. For whatever you fear I am angry about, I forgive you. For whatever sorrow you think you have caused me, I forgive you. For whatever wrong you believe you have done me, I forgive you—as I hope that God and you will forgive me.

Terrible things happen between mothers and daughters, my dear one, but there is a ferocious love that binds us. With all the love I have, I release you from guilt.

Do you remember when you were little and we used to read
The Hunting of the Snark
? The Bellman said, “What I tell you three times is true.” You used to repeat that whenever you wanted to convince me of something. Now I am telling
you
three times: I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you

 

That was as far as Mrs. Smiley had written. She must have tucked the letter into the Bible, then died before she could finish it. As her daughter read it aloud now, Mrs. Smiley's ghost drifted toward us. Kneeling before her daughter, she gazed at her with the most radiant look of love I have ever seen.

Something twisted inside me as I wondered where my own mother had gone.

After a moment Mrs. Smiley reached her hand toward Dolores's face. She couldn't touch her, of course. That's the thing with ghosts—their forms are less than mist, and no matter how they try, they just can't touch you. So Dolores didn't realize her mother was there until I whispered, “Dolores, look up.”