Once Upon Another Time (19 page)

He enjoyed his job
at J&J Crew, and had worked there for five years.  He also came from a
large family of not less than one hundred aunts, uncles, and cousins and he had
just turned thirty-two.  Walking barefoot over hot coals would have been easier
than admitting I was three years older than he was.  His response was that age
was just a state of mind.  We talked about Nicholas and the subject of Matt
came up a few times.  Gavin seemed interested in knowing about him.

As Mother skimmed
the knife across the cutting board, dropping the onions into a bowl filled with
boiled redskin potato slices, celery, and green pepper, she peered across the island
at me through a dark tassel of bangs.  I felt compelled to discuss Matt, my
mind reading and the less than conventional way Matt and I had been
communicating.  After all, my parents had an unyielding belief in the existence
of spirits and parallel universes, although, I didn’t know what their thoughts
would be on mind reading.

I wasn’t sure
where to begin.  It wasn’t something I’d ever discussed with my parents.  More
to the point, I’d always had difficulties discussing any part of my life with my
mother.

 As she performed
her signature “Cher” style snapping of the head from side-to-side to flip her
silky long black hair off her shoulders, I thought I’d try to speak to her.  After
all, she was practically an expert on ghosts.

“I was thinking,”
I said breezily, picking up a celery stick and waving it facetiously in the
air.  “Maybe we should talk.” 

“Oh, you want to
talk about your date tomorrow?”  She scraped one last dollop of mayo from the
jar, the spoon tinkled against the sides of the glass. 

I lowered my eyes
to stare vacantly at the circular pattern of bananas Nicholas was placing on
the bottom of the piecrust.  “Well, not exactly.” 

Mother’s eyebrows
rose with curiosity, as she folded the mayo into the salad.  “So, does not
talking about it mean you’re not excited about your date?”

“No--I mean yes,
I’m looking forward to it.”

“Hey, Aubrey,” my
father called from outside on the deck, as he pulled his long silver hair into
a neat ponytail.  His black T-shirt, tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans,
showed off the start of a slight paunch.  “What happened to the cushions that
used to be on the wicker furniture?”

“Buster sprayed
them,” Nicholas called back.

Buster was
obsessed with leaving his mark on everything like the cushions, the wicker
furniture, the laundry basket, and the coffee table.  I looked over my shoulder
and saw him perched on the living room sofa.  I imagined him as a mini Doctor
Evil scanning his empire wringing his little paws together, his meows coming
out in fiendish chuckles. 
It’s mine, all mine to do with what I wish!

“Aubrey, what is
it you wanted to talk to me about?”

I turned back to
look at Mother.  “Oh, nothing,” I said, as I poured a can of blueberry pie
filling over the banana-lined graham cracker crust.  Ghost expert or not, I
just couldn’t get up the courage to say anything.  I’d spent my teenage years
laughing at my parents’ ridiculous notions of ghosts roaming the earth.  The
last thing I wanted to hear was
I told you so.

“Mom, this is
yummy,” Nicholas said, as he licked a puff of whipped cream off his finger.

“Honey, please
don’t poke your finger into the topping.”

“But Mom,” he
said, as his lower lip curled over.

“How about if you
go outside and pick some of your home-grown juicy tomatoes for dinner?”  I
coaxed.

He smiled broadly,
his front upper tooth missing, surrendered to the tooth fairy for two new,
crisp one-dollar bills.  “They’re the best, aren’t they Mom?”

The last weeks of
school, Mr. Stevens, Nicholas’s first grade teacher, had brought packets of
seeds to class so the children could experience growing and caring for their
own vegetables over the summer.  He was great with kids and reminded me of a
music teacher I had in junior high, Mr. Murray.

I’d guess he must
have been in his thirties.  He was handsome with a thick black mustache and
long sideburns.  His tweed jacket always had the faint smell of cherry pipe
tobacco.  Being the offspring of parents I could never relate to, I was
desperate to be normal and find answers to why my parents’ lives were like
social trials and endless spiritual journeys.  Much to my surprise, Mr. Murray
convinced me that although my parents weren’t part of society’s stereotypical
mold, they contributed much to the world. 

He was a wise and
wonderful individual, a man who wore his compassion on his sleeve and unfortunately--sometimes
his wig.  A vigorous head banging to Aerosmith while demonstrating the electric
guitar would flip the wig to one side.  Nevertheless, he was my hero. 

“So, what does
your date look like?  You said he was around Dad’s height, right?” 

“Yes, Gavin’s
around six foot five.” 

“Is he average
looking or a dreamboat from heaven?”

As I helped place
the slices of hardboiled eggs on top of the potato salad, the word
heaven
brought Matt to mind.  I decided then that if I had to eat crow so be it.  I
just had to talk to her about Matt.

“So, have you been
reading that book Love Spirit?” she asked.  Her blue eyes seemed electrified
against her bronze skin.

My eyebrow
automatically shot up.  “Why would you ask me that?”

She smiled
sheepishly.  “Hmm, I saw it sitting on the coffee table.”

I suddenly felt as
if my world had just crashed down around me. 
Could it possibly be that…no
she wouldn’t have.  It had to be Matt.  But what if this was her trick of all
times!

My mother had duped
me many times before, but this I didn’t want to believe.  My mind spun in a pool
of endless thoughts.  She was at my house every day, either dropping Nicholas
off or picking him up.  Seeing Matt’s ghost was one thing, I knew that was
real, but the book!  Why didn’t I see this before?  She’d always gone to
extreme lengths to meddle in my life, but this time she’d gone too far. 

“Mother, why are
you corresponding with me via a
book
?”

“What?”  She did
her best to disguise her surprised look with one of confusion.  “What are you
talking about?”

“Oh, don’t even
try to pretend you don’t know.  I’d seen that bogus face of confusion before.”

“Before?”

“The anonymous
notes you placed around my office from a so-called secret admirer, in an
attempt to try and ease my breakup with Rick?”

“Well I--”

“Setting me up on
that blind date and leading me to believe the man was a doctor, when all along
he was a medicine man trying to perform soul retrieval on me?”

“Actually, he was
a Shaman, but--”

“Listen, the point
is you can’t keep pulling these tricks on me.  I have enough going on with
Matt’s ghost popping up every now and then, but to pretend he’s teaching me
about fate, destiny and second chances, and--”

“Excuse me!” 
Mother stared at me in quizzical horror. 

I had suddenly
realized what I’d just blurted out about Matt.

“Aubrey, I don’t
have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.  And what was that you said
about
Matt
?”

Good God!
 By
the wan look on her face, I sensed she really
didn’t
know what I was
talking about, but why did she ask me about the book?  My mind flashed back to
the day at the mall when I crashed into the book display, and that particular
book lay open on the floor before me.  She certainly had nothing to do with
that.

“Aubrey, what’s
going on?”

“Ha!  Um, ah.”  My
eyes gazed over the smooth granite countertop.

She sighed and
shook her head.  “I think I know what’s going on.”

I lifted my eyes
to look her.  “You do?”

She nodded. 
“Finally, after all these years, you’re having a spiritual awareness.  Finding
your soul, thinking about destiny and second chances--it all makes sense now.”

“It does?”

“Of course.  The
past few of weeks you’ve seemed happier, more tuned into your feelings.  You
know how I’ve always stressed the benefits of earnest meditation.  I don’t know
what the
book
has to do with any of this, but I now understand your
rejuvenated outlook on life.”

“I seem different
to you?”

“It’s difficult to
explain, but you seem to have a bounce in your step, you’re more at ease, more
content, not so controlling.”

I really hadn’t
thought about it, but I really was beginning to see the world differently.  I
did
feel happier and less obsessed with things, like a little dust on the
furniture, and the cans in the cupboard were a little jumbled lately, but it
didn’t bother me.

“But what was that
you said about Matt?” asked Mother.

I stuffed a
hardboiled egg into my mouth and motioned to my mother that I was stepping
outside to light the grill. 
Well that went well
.  I walked down the
deck stairs to the flagstone patio.   

As I struck a
match, Sallie, my next-door neighbor kept an eye on me.  She was playing fetch
with her miniature poodle.  The woman could have been a trophy winner on
Dancing
with the Stars
had they added
horizontal samba
to the category. 
Wearing white anklets, a mini skirt, and her blonde hair in two long braids,
she looked like a kinky Swiss Miss.  I wondered where she had stashed her toy boy. 

She got nervous
every time I’d light the grill, claiming I’d almost set her house on fire in
fall of the year before.  It wasn’t my fault that when I threw the match that
ignited the lighter fluid soaked coals, which spiked the brittle lilac bush,
that a thin, fiery branch fell and ignited a path of dried leaves, which led
straight to her house.  It wasn’t that big a deal.  I had extinguished the
flames with a garden hose long before the fire department arrived.

The screech of
worn wheels on the sliding screen door drew my attention, as Mother stepped out
onto the deck.  The silver beads on the outside leg of her customized BeDazzled
bellbottom jeans sparkled in the sunlight, while her red peasant blouse exposed
one bare shoulder.  She balanced a plate of uncooked seasoned chicken as she
walked down the steps.

“Aubrey,” my
father said, as he tossed a Frisbee across the lawn to Nicholas, while Sallie’s
yappy little dog darted after it.  “What do you think about us selling the gift
shop and starting a new business?”

“Sell the gift
shop?  Why would you start something new at your age?”

“We’ve decided the
shop is too much to handle, and we’d never trust anyone to manage it full-time,
so selling is the only option.”

“What are you
thinking about doing?” 

“We’d go in a
totally new direction,” Mother said, as she passed me the plate of chicken. 
“We want to open a kiosk at the mall and sell what we believe in.  Like fresh
salads made from organic homegrown fruits and veggies.  Fresh juices and
smoothies, some made with yogurt.  It’d be great tasting healthy foods.  And
the business would be small enough so it wouldn’t take up but a quarter of the
time and effort we currently put into the gift shop.”

“But you’d have to
start over.”

“Oh, it’d be
fine,” said my father.  “It’s been years, but we did start over once before.”

“When?”

“Don’t you
remember the move?” my father asked.

“How do you expect
her to remember that?”  Mother shook her head and picked up the garden hose to
spray the dirt off Nicholas’s handpicked tomatoes.  “She was only a little
older than Nicholas.”

“Are you saying
the gift shop wasn’t always downtown?”

Mother set the
tomatoes in a bowl and shook the water from her hands.

“Back in the
seventies, your father and I had a tiny one-room storefront in a neighborhood
lined with hundred-year-old oaks.  There were several quaint storefronts, all
neatly tucked between beautiful old turn-of-the-century houses.  The
neighborhood was beautiful and multicultural, made up of artists, writers,
poets, and musicians.”

“Hey, remember
that fortuneteller two storefronts down from us?” my father said, as the
Frisbee zoomed by, coming within an inch of hitting him in the head. 

“Gramps, you gotta
pay attention!”  Nicholas yelled, while the poodle playfully jumped at him,
trying to get his attention.  I glanced over my shoulder at Sallie who was busy
talking on her cell phone, no doubt trying to schedule a nooner.  

My father bent
over to retrieve the Frisbee that was stuck inside the bottom branches of the
lilac bush.  “That fortuneteller woman,” he said while peering up at me, “was
real spooky.  Your Aunt Mille, God rest her soul, used to hang around with
her.  They made quite a pair back then.” 

“I can barely
remember Aunt Millie,” I said, as I clamped the tongs around pieces of chicken
and tossed them on the grill.  “She died young, right?” 

“Yep, only twenty-two.”

“So why did this
woman and Aunt Mille make a good pair?” 

A branch caught on
my father’s ponytail as he tried to stand.  Mother rescued him by yanking it
out. 

“Ouch!” my father
yelped.

Mother
straightened and turned toward me doing the
Cher
flip, while folding her
arms across her chest.  “Your Aunt Millie pretended to be a spiritualist.  She
wasn’t even part of the revolution, but she pretended to be, saying she had
‘powers.’  She claimed to be a mind reader.  Of course, coming from your
father’s side of the family, that didn’t surprise me.” 

With one plump
chicken thigh suspended in mid air, my heart dropped to my stomach.  “Mind
reader?”  The chicken slipped from the tongs, ricocheted off the side of the
grill, and plopped onto the patio stones.