by Sarah Dreher
So if things were looking a little odd… well, it was just one more oddity in her life.
But she knew, absolutely knew there were other, more mundane explanations for Aunt Hermione’s problems than hungry ghosts. They hadn’t even scratched the surface of real life, everyday possibilities.
Marylou was out in the first base coaching box, shouting the Blue Shirts through their wind sprints. They had finally settled on the name when the mother of one of the young women, a potter of some regional renown, had been coerced into doing the laundry. Maybe she had just experienced an inspired creative moment and was preoccupied, or maybe she didn’t notice what she was doing or did-’t know any better, or maybe she just plain didn’t want to be asked to do it again. At any rate, she’d washed the tops and bottoms of the uniforms together, new white tees in the same hot water as the new discount-house blue shorts. The result was a softball team that looked tie-dyed.
Which put an end to their endless discussions about uniforms and names that made a political statement.
“Come on, girls,” Marylou yelled. “Pick ’em up and put ’em down.”
Stoner winced. “I wish she wouldn’t call them ‘girls.’ They’re young women.”
“They don’t seem to mind,” Gwen remarked.
The second base woman sprinted past Marylou and grinned and made a rude gesture. Marylou laughed.
Young lesbians and softball. It was a rite of passage, she supposed. One of those spontaneous traditions that sometimes surfaced in a subculture that didn’t even know it had traditions. Women’s Music Festivals was another, though lately women’s music had been co-opted by the mass culture. Not that she minded, it was great to see women finally getting some of the rewards they’d done without for centuries. And when the fickle populace found new fads—which was inevitable— they could go back to the old, original Women’s Music Festivals.
Young lesbians, she thought, would never forsake softball. She’d even joined a team herself, when she was first coming out. It was what you did, to make friends and be around your own kind.
Her team had started with the same philosophy as the Blue Shirts, too. Most of them did. Winning didn’t matter, as long as every woman had a chance to play and learn and could feel good about herself. Sometimes the within-game schedules were more complicated than the league schedules, so everyone could play the position she wanted and the one she wanted to learn, all in one game.
It worked, too. Morale was great, the camaraderie was touching. Every game a celebration of sisterhood the way it ought to work.
Until they started to win.
Then suddenly it mattered who played second base because it was such a vital position. And they’d have to field their best team against the Hot Shots because they’d lost every game to them last season and they were tired of being laughed at. And, anyway, it was only for one game.
Except that it was never only for one game. The less talented, less athletic members would complain a little, reluctantly for fear of being accused of jealousy, and then begin—one by one—to drop out.
She wondered how long it would be until it happened with this team. When her own team had gone in that direction, she’d left along with the others on principle, even though she was a pretty decent player and scheduled to play every game. But if they were going to play that way, she wasn’t interested. It was wrong, and unkind, and she wasn’t going to treat her sisters like that.
Some of the original “good” players never spoke to her again.
She sighed and glanced over at Gwen, who had never been in the softball racket and would be beyond middle age before she’d been ‘out’ longer than she’d been ‘in.’ There was that familiar sudden tightening in her chest, as if someone had just knocked the wind out of her. After all this time, Gwen could still do that to her. It wasn’t that she was pretty in the world’s eyes—though to Stoner she was just plain drop-dead gorgeous. It was the calmness about her, as if there was nothing in the world to be afraid of, and nothing that couldn’t be handled if you just took your time and thought it through.
Stoner, who believed that there was a great deal in the world to be afraid of, and seldom time to think it through, could have moments of the same calm just by being around her.
Gwen, she thought, is like the goat they put in the stall with a nervous race horse.
Which, while not flattering on the face of it, was absolutely the best thing Stoner thought you could say about anyone. It was, as Gwen was inclined to say about the aura of animals, “so very Zen.”
Marylou had decided to join them on the grass while the team chose sides for a practice game.
“How do they look?” she asked brightly.
“Fine.” Actually, they looked a little scraggly, but she didn’t want to hurt MaryLou’s feelings. Marylou had adopted the team as her personal project, and had become so identified with them that if one of them cut herself, Marylou bled.
“There’s a lot of potential there,” Gwen said.
Marylou scowled at her. “I haven’t fallen for that one since I was six.” She pulled a two-quart plastic bottle of Big Y brand unflavored seltzer from her tote bag. “They have a few rough edges, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Gwen said.
Marylou handed her the seltzer and stood up, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Hey,” she yelled at the women on the field, “this isn’t rest hour. Let’s see some Charlie Hustle out there.”
Gwen unscrewed the cap from the water and took a swig. “My God,” she gasped, “that’s potent stuff.” She recapped the bottle and handed it back to Marylou. “I didn’t know you were a fan of Pete Rose.”
“Who’s that?” Marylou asked, squinting toward the field.
“Pete Rose? The baseball guy. The one that got kicked out for gambling.”
“What’s that got to do with Charlie Hustle?”
“They called him that.”
“Why?”
“Because he was so aggressive. Especially on the base paths. He’d make a dive for home plate that would mangle anyone who got in his way.”
Marylou looked over at her. “Well,” she said indignantly, “that’s a fine example to set for young people. No wonder the world’s gone to hell in a hand-basket. Gangs, drugs, random vandalism and poorly thought out violence. And we make heroes out of people like this Hustle person.”
“She has a point there,” Stoner said.
“Poorly thought out violence?” Gwen asked. “You prefer well-thought-out violence?”
“It’s better than crashing into some poor working stiff just because he’s standing where you want to be when it’s where he belongs in the first place. Yes, compared to that, give me a good old gangland execution any day. At least that’s about something.”
Gwen said she “saw.”
Stoner didn’t say anything at all.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see what Diana had to say about their predicament, even though Aunt Hermione adamantly refused to run it past the other women in the coven. She didn’t know them well enough yet, she insisted. And some of them weren’t psychic, just devout. A few would probably think she was accusing them of something, which would cause all kinds of trouble. “Especially that skinny weaselly one,” she’d said. “She takes offense at a cloudy night. We’d be processing for the rest of our lives.”
Certainly Aunt Hermione wouldn’t mind if Stoner just kind of casually got Diana’s opinion, not in any official way. Not as if she were “consulting a psychic.” Diana, knowing Aunt Hermione, might even bring it up herself.
Doubtful. Most of the legitimate psychics she’d met were as tight-lipped as celebrity defense lawyers. Well, she couldn’t blame them. They knew things about you that you didn’t even know yourself. Say the wrong word, push the wrong button and the Big Bang pales by comparison.
Sometimes it struck her that being a human being, going about your daily business, was an incredibly dangerous undertaking. The streets were full of twisted souls looking
for a chance to explode. You never knew what might set them off. Really, she’d rather deal with wild animals than people. At least wild animals were predictable and wouldn’t harm you if you read their signals properly. And their signals usually meant, “Stop right there, speak respectfully, and back off.”
People, on the other hand, were complicated, convoluted, mixed up, and half the time didn’t know why they did what they did. Though if you asked them they’d claim 20 /20 insight. In spite of it all, most people went right along living their lives, not giving a second thought to the fact that they were in mortal danger. She thought it must mean they believed in something, God or fate or karma, or at least their own invulnerability.
“Nonsense,” Edith Kesselbaum had said once when Stoner had voiced that opinion, “they’re all in denial.”
So there was plenty of reason to look for the source of their trouble on this plane. They didn’t need to go poking around in the metaphysical universe.
Not that she had a problem with the possibility of an unseen world. Most people at least accepted the reality of light bands they couldn’t see and wave lengths they couldn’t hear. So who was to say there wasn’t a whole lot going on that no one knew about? “It’s like electricity,” Aunt Hermione was fond of saying, “Better to believe, and be prepared, than not to believe and get a nasty shock.”
And there was one of their bones of contention. Aunt Hermione was convinced Stoner should be prepared, and being prepared meant working with and honing her natural psychic abilities.
Stoner had no intention of honing her psychic anything. It was like playing with a Ouija board. Open that door, and you never knew what might come through. So, since it was perfectly possible to live a fruitful, productive, and happy life without playing with a Ouija board, don’t play with Ouija boards.
The few encounters she’d had with the “Unseen” had not left her with a jolly feeling about that invisible universe.
Which, of course, was Aunt Hermione’s point. Learn how to control what comes through from that place.
Stoner said it worked just as well to keep the door firmly and permanently locked.
Aunt Hermione would counter by pointing out that Stoner had once, without intending to open any doors, become the focus of a particularly nasty haunted house.
Stoner would reply that that had been a coincidence and probably hadn’t really happened, anyway. Besides, she’d been drugged and was likely hallucinating.
Aunt Hermione reminded her that Gwen had seen it, too.
Stoner would say they had all been under a lot of stress that night, and then suddenly remember something she’d forgotten to do out in the kitchen.
But, assuming just for the sake of assuming there were unseen forces at work, how would they get to Aunt Hermione? Aunt Hermione’s intuition and experience would set off alarms the minute a vampire crossed her path, whether in body or in spirit. She could even spot evil over the phone, on the message machine, and in on-line chat rooms. After all, clairvoyants don’t make a living out of being easy to fool. She had her defenses well indexed and firmly in place.
The trouble was, too many people used this psychic phenomenon stuff as an excuse for not confronting the real world. Why assume it was ghosts after Aunt Hermione’s soul, when it might just as well be someone who had it in for her and was slipping arsenic into her vitamins?
Because of what Cutter had said? But Cutter was a troubled soul, with a great deal to tell and very little to say. There were memories stored up in him that would probably drive a sane person crazy—the jungles of Vietnam, the war, the drugs, the killing. He must have seen things—all of the service men and women must have—that she couldn’t even imagine, secrets that combatants and the media tacitly agreed could never be spoken of again.
Cutter had his own way of looking at things, that much was obvious, and no doubt his own way of describing them. You couldn’t tell if Cutter was speaking of life as he saw it, or in metaphor.
Or if he knew the difference.
At work when she had asked, “Marylou, when Cutter talks to you...” She had tried to think of how to put it delicately, and decided it was impossible. “Is what he says usually real, or does he imagine things?”
“Usually real,” Marylou had said. “He doesn’t hallucinate, he just can’t cope.”
“And what he told Aunt Hermione, about someone stealing her soul?”
Marylou had thrown up her hands. “Who knows? I leave that to better and looser minds than mine.”
Diana’s shop, Turquoise, always made her think of Aunt Hermione’s study back in Boston. It was the incense, the sweet-tangy odor of smoldering herbs that had built up over the years until it was no longer possible to tell the difference between the scent of the room and the scent of Aunt Hermione herself. Aunt Hermione believed that every client’s sun sign had its own preferred vibration—allowing for individual differences, of course. Most Scorpios were F-sharps, but some were one F-sharp above middle C, some were one or two below. If a Scorpio were coming for a reading, she’d try to find the fragrance that best matched the F-sharps vibrations of that particular client. It usually turned out to be Hecate, which was no surprise. The Goddess of Vengeance and Scorpions had a lot in common. And F-sharp, while pleasant enough, could turn on you unexpectedly. Stoner suspected that the sound given off by finger nails clawing on a blackboard was F-sharp.
Cancer was G and Circe’s Moon. B-flat was the sound of Virgo, with Egyptian Temple as a scent. Aquarians responded to the C major chord and High Joan the Conqueror. Stoner’s own sign, Capricorn, called for D and Sandalwood.
Usually Hermione kept the odor light and pleasant, like soft background music. Except for a Taurus. With a Taurus, Stoner could swear her aunt lit one of everything she had in stock, including a few that had gone by. Passing the study door was like going through the horrors of the perfume aisle in a department store.
Once, during one of her more churlish adolescent moments, Stoner had accused her aunt of “sucking up” to her Taurian clients’ bad taste. She was looking to pick a fight, and she knew it. Her emotions had been running rampant all day, and by two o’clock in the afternoon she had progressed from “normal adolescent” to “troubled teen.” She needed an outlet, and she needed it now.
Aunt Hermione had merely nodded thoughtfully, and explained that Taurians, being of a strongly sensuous nature, enjoyed vibrant tastes, colors, and odors. They were, in fact, made irritable by subtle and bland surroundings. And an irritable Taurus wasn’t pleasant to be around, any more than disgruntled bull would be. “So why tempt them,” she said, “when they’re really quite easy to please if you take the time?”
“By the way, dear,” her aunt called after her as she stomped out of the room muttering about ‘no fun to fight with,’ “that expression you used—something about sucking, wasn’t it?—it’s quite expressive, and I’m sure it’s satisfying to say, but it really is unattractive. I do hope you outgrow it soon.”
That had merited a bedroom door slam, but she hadn’t used the expression again.
Now she didn’t care about Taurians or whether the incense was delicate or cloying. Because some day, she knew, the memories incense brought would be all she had of her aunt.
That is truly grim, she said to herself. You have her dead and buried, and she hasn’t even been diagnosed.
But she knew, deep in her gut, that something was terribly, terribly wrong and growing worse. Last night, lying awake, she had heard her aunt pause halfway up the stairs, as if she had to catch her breath. And she looked worse every day, paler and more papery. When she entered a room, it was as if she hadn’t come in at all. No energy radiated from her. And nobody knew what to do.
Pull yourself out of this, McTavish, Stoner told herself. You’re almost to the point where Edith should give you a label, and a code number for insurance purposes.
It was fairly quiet in Turquoise. Only one other customer, as far as she could tell. It was impossible to predict th
e rising and falling of the clientele in Diana’s store. Some days, like today, it’d be nearly empty. Other days Diana would be so busy she’d have to call in her kid sister to help out. At first, Stoner had thought the busy days were brought on by the Sale, 20% off signs in the windows. But, as the year rolled along, she realized that there was always a twenty-percent off sale at Turquoise. Even in the dead of winter, when there was nothing to do but shop in town or go to the Pothole Cinema, or drive over to the Wal-Mart in North Adams and risk sliding off the road to your death on Horseshoe Curve—affectionately known as Truckers’ Leap. Once over that embankment, if you didn’t end up crashing through the roof of someone’s house, you might not be found for months. Nobody from the Mohawk Trail area was ever declared officially “missing” until after the spring thaw.
Anyway, it wasn’t the presence or absence of sales that accounted for the up and downs of business at Turquoise. Diana claimed it “just happened,” falling back on the midwestern practicality that had been a part of her character before Spirit intruded and put an end to her career as a certified public accountant.
“There I was,” she had told Stoner shortly after they first met, “explaining the state tax forms to the new secretary at the Chevy dealer, when I hear myself say, ‘Your sister’s child’s in trouble, but it’ll be all right.’ It was a real shock, since I didn’t even know she had a sister, much less one with a child. And the voice was mine, but not entirely mine, higher and thinner, maybe. Then the whole darn thing came true.” She had smiled a little ruefully. “I’ll tell you, though, you make a whole lot more money as a CPA than you do as a trance channel.”
She’d opened the store on advice of Spirit, who continued to try to tell her what to stock. It wasn’t working out terribly well. Spirit had a very different agenda from the tourists who came to Shelburne Falls to see the Bridge of Flowers and the Glacial Potholes.
Diana managed to make ends meet by stocking a few lines of expensive dresses and lingerie, a corner of brightly colored books and toys for children, and some fancy socks and gloves for the tourists. For her regular customers—mostly local pagans, wiccans, herbalists, crystal healers—she carried esoteric and arcane books, smudge sticks and incense, gemstones with various mysterious properties, herbs, pentacles and oils. The two populations met over handmade crystal jewelry.
