Revived Spirits (5 page)

I hand over the mirror to Virgil, then glance at my watch. “She’ll need to be back in twenty minutes. Adam has to be home by midnight.”

Virgil nods. “If we
ain’t
back in twenty minutes, get
Adahy
to holler for me. Ever since I died, I
ain’t
been so good with time. Twenty minutes, a year, it all feels the same to me.”

Once Virgil and Abigail have disappeared into the woods, I say, “I wonder what they talk about when they’re alone.”

“Whatever they talk about, they do it really politely,” Adam says. “I can’t imagine living in the eighteen hundreds. You’d be so busy saying ‘I beg your pardon’ and ‘if you please’ that you’d never really say anything that meant anything. It would be like, ‘Pardon me, Miss, I do hope you and your family are keeping well, and excuse me for troubling you, but I seem to be on fire. If you would be so kind as to douse me with water, I would be terribly grateful.’”

We laugh for a minute, then Adam says, “After you and Abigail can’t see each other anymore, will she still be able to visit Virgil?”

“Not here,” I say. “Maybe there’s some way they can see each other in their realm, but I don’t know. Right now the only time she sees Virgil is when we bring her here.”

“You know,” Adam says, picking up a flat stone and skipping it across the water, “I hadn’t really thought about it until the other day... When you lose Abigail, I’ll lose her, too. That’s sad.”

“It is.”

Adam never talks about emotional stuff, so for him to say he’s sad is a really big deal. I can feel how uncomfortable he is with what he’s just said, so I call to
Adahy
and try to distract Adam by making skipping stones into a contest.

Virgil and Abigail come back right when Mom’s calling us. After we’ve said our ghostly goodnights and are on the path to the car, I ask Abigail, “So has Virgil ever tried to get
into the mirror with you so you can be face to face?”

Abigail lets out a shocked gasp. “Miranda, you have no idea how little space there is in here! We would be squashed together like sardines. It would be most inappropriate.” She dissolves into giggles.

“See what I mean about the eighteen hundreds?” Adam mutters.

When we reach Mom, she’s sitting on the hood of the car. As soon as she sees us, she quickly shoves something into her skirt pocket.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Oh.” Mom shakes her head and chuckles. “I don’t know why my instinct was to hide it.” She pulls the object out of her pocket. “It’s a phone. Dave gave it to me so we could talk since we don’t really get to see each other as often as we’d like. Actually, I was just asking him if he’d like to come to our house for dinner on Thursday.”

“Wait,” Adam says. “You mean you have a cell phone now, like a normal member of modern society?”

Mom smiles. “Yep. I guess I do.”

All of a sudden my stomach feels nervous and fluttery. If Mom is embracing technology so she can talk to this guy, it must be serious.

“Do I look okay?” Mom is standing in the doorway of my room. She’s wearing a sky-blue dress with a fitted bodice and full skirt. She’s put up her hair, and silver hoops dangle from her earlobes.

“You look pretty,” I say.

Dave’s coming for dinner, and Mom’s been a nervous wreck all day. She took the afternoon off from work to clean the house and shop for dinner. Granny kept offering to kill one of the chickens and fry it for the company. When Mom explained that Dave is a vegetarian, Granny said, “I thought you told me he was a college professor.”

To tell the truth, I’m pretty nervous too, but not the way Mom is. She’s nervous about what he’ll think of us. I’m nervous about what I’ll think of him.

Dave arrives right on time holding a bouquet of daisies and a bottle of wine. Mom says, “How thoughtful—thank you,” while I stand in the background like a dog that can’t decide whether to wag its tail or growl. “And you remember Miranda,” she says.

“Hi,” I say, neither wagging nor growling.

“Of course I do,” Dave says. He’s more dressed up than the other time I saw him. He’s wearing a checked button-
down shirt, khakis and loafers. He looks very teacher-
ish
. “The flowers are for you too,” he says. “But not the wine, of course.” He smiles, and I feel him wanting me to like him.

“Thanks,” I say. I know I should say more, but my nerves are making it impossible for me to push out more than a syllable at a time.

For the time being, I’m saved from having to make more conversation by the entrance of Granny. I know she is a lot of the reason Mom is nervous. While most people change their speech or behavior a little depending on how well they know who they’re with, Granny is exactly the same with everybody. As a result, she can make quite an impression. Several times today I heard Mom making nervous suggestions to Granny about this evening: “Let’s keep Methuselah in his cage tonight, okay?” and “Please don’t talk at the dinner table about herbal remedies for constipation.”

Tonight, as always, Granny is dressed in crow black from head to toe, her never-cut steel gray hair braided down her back.

Mom must have told Dave what to expect because he doesn’t bat an eye. “And you must be Mrs. Chandler! What a pleasure to meet you at last.” He holds out his hand.

Granny takes his hand and inspects it instead of shaking it, turning it over so she can see his palm. “Hmm,” she says. She lets go of his hand and looks him up and down with sharp, beady eyes. “Well, he’s a nice-looking feller, Sarah. Built solid. Good teeth.”

Mom’s cheeks are pink, and she lets out a tense little laugh. “Mother, he’s not a horse you’re thinking about buying.”

“No, but he’s a good specimen all the same.” Granny pats Dave on the forearm. “I thought you might be puny on account of not eating no meat.”

“I try to eat a lot of vegetable protein,” Dave says.

“‘Beans, beans, the musical fruit,’ huh?” Granny says, grinning. “But I understand how you feel. It’s a kindness not to take more from nature than you need. Me, I eat some meat, but only what I raise and kill myself. I never eat that stuff they sell in the grocery store where the animals have been raised in factories and then cut up and wrapped like candy so people don’t have to think about where their meat came from. That
ain’t
right for the animals nor the people neither one.”

“Exactly,” Dave says, and he starts talking about this book about responsible eating I remember Mom checking out from the library.

“Speaking of food, I’d better go check on the bread,” Mom says. “Why don’t you relax in the living room?” I’m headed for the living room too, but then Mom says, “Miranda, why don’t you help me with the salad?”

In the kitchen Mom takes out the homemade sourdough loaf that’s been warming in the oven and says, “I think it’s going okay, don’t you?”

“He’s only been here five minutes.”

“I know, but he’s getting along so well with your granny. Get the salad out of the fridge, okay?” As I’m fetching the bowl, Mom says, “Oh, no.”

“Oh no what?”

“I don’t have anything to use to open the wine he brought. He’s going to think we’re unsophisticated hicks!” I set down the salad bowl and pat her arm. “Mom, the guy obviously likes you or he wouldn’t be here. Why are you so nervous?”

Mom takes a deep breath. “It’s like this. When I was about your age I decided I was sick of piano lessons. So I quit and didn’t play for years, then in college I decided I wanted to start playing again. And when I did, it felt like it took forever for my fingers to remember what they were supposed to do. That’s how I feel about dating now even though I really like Dave. It’s been a long time, and I’m out
of practice.”

We gather around the table and Mom doles out the salad, which she calls “the first course.” It’s the first time we’ve ever served courses at our house.

Granny must’ve been in my thoughts because she says, “We
ain’t
usually this high-
falutin
’ at supper. We mostly just dip soup beans off the stove and sop them up with cornbread.”

“Hey, that’s still pretty elaborate compared to how I eat most nights,” Dave says. He pulls out a Swiss army knife, takes out the corkscrew part, and goes to work on the bottle of wine. “Since I live alone, sometimes I just have a bowl of rice or an egg for dinner.”

“Well, then you ought to come over a time or two a week and let us feed you,” Granny says around a mouthful of salad.

Dave looks at Mom and smiles. “I might do that, thanks.”

“You ought to get you some eggs from out back before you go too,” Granny says. “I
ain’t
gathered them yet tonight.”

“You have chickens?” Dave says, his eyes lit up.

“We’ve got a dozen laying hens and a few more for reasons we don’t talk about in front of vegetarians,” Granny says.

“We have goats too,” Mom says, clearing the salad bowls. “That’s goat butter you’re eating with the bread.”

“It’s delicious,” Dave says. “I wondered why it was so tangy. I’d love to meet the chickens and goats.”

“Well, we can introduce you,” Granny says, “but they
ain’t
much for conversation.”

Dave laughs. “I grew up in the city—Cincinnati—but my grandparents had a farm a few hours away. I always loved going there in the summers and running through the corn rows and playing in the hayloft. My favorite book when I was a kid was
Farmer Boy
.”

“
Almanzo
.” I’m surprised to hear myself say the name of the farmer boy in the book. “I always loved that name.”

“It’s a really cool name,” Dave says.

Mom serves minestrone after the salad and then pasta tossed with a sauce made from the last of our summer tomatoes.

“I don’t remember the last time I felt so well fed,” Dave says. “I’ll have to cook for you guys sometime too. When I’ve got somebody to cook for besides myself, I can rise to the occasion.”

Mom and Dave go to visit the chickens and goats while Granny and I clear the table. “He’s a good man,” Granny says. “Did you look in his head and see that?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “I guess I was kind of nervous and didn’t think to do it.”

“Well, I did,” Granny says. “And he’s a fine feller. Widowed, too, with no children, and that makes him sad. He
ain’t
lived here long, and he was pretty lonely till he met your mama. But he’s crazy about her—”

I put up a hand. “Too much information!” I don’t know why hearing about Dave’s feelings for Mom embarrasses me, but it does.

“And you”—Granny says as if I hadn’t said anything at all—“you
ain’t
all the way happy about this.”

Granny’s washing dishes and handing them to me to dry. I almost drop the one she gives me. “No, but I feel bad because I’m not. It just feels weird, you know?”

“I know. Your mama’s been happy here raising you, but there’s always been a little piece of happiness missing from her. When a woman’s widowed as young as she was, it
ain’t
fair to expect for her to be alone for the rest of her life. She still loves your daddy, but your daddy
ain’t
here. This feller Dave is, and she deserves some companionship.”

“So did you find any companionship after Grandpa died?” I ask.

Granny snatches my dishtowel and flicks me playfully across the behind. “Now that is none of your business. And don’t go poking around in my head trying to find out, neither.”

She sends me upstairs to do my homework until it’s time for dessert. It’s turning dark, and right as I’m finishing my last math problem, Abigail scratches on my closet door.

“Come in,” I say.

She bursts in, out of breath with excitement. “So how was the dinner? Tell me all about your mother’s new beau!”

“It was fine.”

Abigail sticks out her lower lip. “Three words are not telling me all about something. Is he handsome?”

“He’s okay.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yes.” I had to give him that.

“Oh, I wish I could’ve seen him!” Abigail says, wringing her hands.