by Beca Lewis
Except maybe Bill. As the older brother, Bill was happy that Connie was Edith’s friend. Some days they would sit on the porch swing together and talk about what they wanted in life.
Bill was as handsome as Edith was beautiful, and for a brief moment, Connie had considered that Bill might make a good first boyfriend.
But that moment had passed. Instead, they became good friends, which Connie soon realized was far more valuable. Bill had one more year of college as an architecture major and was actively looking for a job in the city.
“What city?” Connie had asked. And he answered, “Any city.”
Bill wanted to get away from the small-town life as much as Connie wanted to be somebody. But Connie didn’t think it was because he wanted to be someone like she did. It felt more like he had a secret, and a city was where he could hide it.
Towards the end of the summer, Connie thought she had figured out his secret and wanted to ask him, but was afraid asking him would ruin their friendship.
She also thought Bill’s mother, Lorraine, knew what it was, but she was afraid to talk about it for the same reason. Or maybe she thought it would make it real if she said it out loud.
Lorraine taught Connie about gardens and birds. When Lorraine wasn’t in the kitchen making their meals, Connie would often find her outside on her hands and knees weeding or planting.
Lorraine belonged to the local garden club, and their house was on the list of gardens to visit that year. When Connie found out why she was working so hard in the garden, she volunteered to help.
The moment Loraine handed her a pair of gloves and a trowel, Connie was hooked.
It was an odd thing to like, Connie realized. She planned to take over some part of the world. Why waste time working in the garden and feeding birds when that was not on a career pathway? Gardening and birds would not help her achieve her goals in life.
But later, Connie was happy that she had found them because her love for them had helped her survive more than one trauma. Even when she had moved to the city to build her career, she always had pots of plants and bird feeders.
Yes, that summer had provided her with more happiness in a few short months than all the years of her life until then. She carried that summer around with her as a jewel that sparkled with perfect memories.
Every member of that family had given her something that changed her in ways so profound that it took her years to acknowledge it.
It was what she had done that changed their lives that made her a terrible person.
At that moment, Connie knew who the boy reminded her of, and once again, she felt as if she would die of a heart attack.
Except she was already dead. And so was Edith’s little boy, Eddie.
Ten
Connie’s knees buckled, and she fell to the ground. And even though she was not actually on the ground, she bent over and buried her face in the grass, hoping she could smell it and make this horrible dream go away. She couldn’t. And it didn’t.
Eddie laughed. “Caught you by surprise, didn’t I?”
Connie sat back and looked at him. Sitting on top of the grass, she was about the same height as him, and his dark blue eyes twinkled as he laughed at her.
“I don’t think it’s funny or something to laugh about. What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re dead. What’s there to laugh about?”
“Now, that’s where you are wrong, Miss Connie,” Eddie said, twirling in a circle, arms in the air as if he were a leaf spinning in the wind.
“Where am I wrong?” Connie demanded, trying and mostly failing to get herself under control.
“Well, I could say you’ve been wrong about everything for years, but I don’t need to tell you that. You have had time to think about what you did with your life.
“I mean that you might be wrong about there not being something to laugh about and that I am dead.”
Connie stood up and looked down at the boy.
“You are dead. I heard about it.”
“And you didn’t come to the funeral, did you?”
“I never go to funerals,” Connie shot back.
Both of them stopped and didn’t speak. Eddie waited so that Connie could hear what she had just said.
When she turned and walked back towards the house, he followed.
“Go away,” Connie said.
“Even though I am the only one you can talk to? Are you sure you want to tell me to go away? What if I never come back and you are stuck here forever? Because you will be.
“And the other thing that you are wrong about is thinking I am dead—because I am not. At least not in the same way that you are dead.”
“What makes you different?”
Connie faced Eddy, hands on her hips, trying to take control of the situation, and then, realizing that she would never have control of this situation, started to cry.
Eddy didn’t wait for her to stop crying before replying, “It’s pretty obvious. I can come and go.”
With those words, Eddy vanished, leaving Connie feeling as if her insides had been ripped out and put on display.
She thought things were bad before, but they had just gotten worse.
*******
Eddie came back a few hours later. Connie hadn’t moved. She had stood in front of the clock and watched the minutes tick by, wondering why the world kept going the same way as before, even if she wasn’t part of it.
And she let the tears roll down her face because it was true; she hadn’t been part of the world long before she died.
While she watched the clock tick, she let herself return to when she had been alive, really alive, that summer with Edith and her family, and what they had done for her.
All summer, she had been worried whether she would have enough money to finish school. But then Edith’s family had changed everything.
One morning Ralph and Lorraine had sat Connie down at the kitchen table and told her they had to talk to her about something. She was terrified that she had done something wrong, and would have to leave.
Instead, Ralph said that they had paid her next year’s tuition and room and board. And they said that they would help her apply for scholarships and loans, and with the promise that if she kept on working both at school and her jobs, they would make sure she always had enough.
When she tried to refuse, they wouldn’t let her. Instead, Ralph and Lorraine told her she was like a daughter to them. Both Edith and Bill were happier because Connie was in their life, and Ralph said his business had never been more organized.
“Besides,” Ralph had said, “Paying for your next year of school is an investment for us. All we want in return is for you to be part of our family.”
For Connie, it was as if heaven had opened its doors. Not only did she have the women of the trailer park believing in her, but an entire family.
It didn’t matter that this family wasn’t related to her; they had accepted her as if they were—not like the mother she never knew, and the father she never wanted to see again.
“You told her?” Edith had said, bouncing into the kitchen as the three of them sat at the table, holding hands with overflowing eyes.
Right behind Edith was Bill, who said, “Oh, good. You said yes, didn’t you?”
Connie could only nod. She stood and hugged Edith and Bill. She had a brother and a sister—something she had never thought she would want or have.
“Let’s celebrate,” Ralph had shouted.
“Pancakes!” Edith had responded.
After that, anytime Edith and Connie wanted to celebrate something, they always went for pancakes.
Back in her kitchen watching the clock, Connie smiled at the memory and then shivered. She hadn’t touched pancakes for years. She never made them. Never went to eat them, even when Karla had begged for them.
No matter how
hard she had tried, she could never erase the memory of the Matthews family as they celebrated that day that she became a daughter in their family.
Hours later, when Eddie returned, as she knew he would, Connie turned to him and said, “I’m ready. I will do whatever I need to do.”
Eddie cocked his head to the side, studying her. Finally, he answered. “Okay. Then it’s time for you to meet someone.”
A second later, Connie was no longer in her kitchen, and she and Eddie were no longer alone.
Eleven
Bryan Anderson loved walking in the woods. It didn’t matter the season. To him, it was always beautiful. Even in the winter, he loved it. The naked tree branches against the sky were so beautiful he could, and did, spend hours studying their design. And it was people-quiet in the winter. He rarely encountered anyone on the trails with their noisy walking and chattering.
Instead, his companions were animals and birds. Deer and rabbits would often find him during his walks. The deer would stand in the undergrowth by the trail and watch him walk by, barely moving. Only a flick of their ears would give them away.
Bryan would say hello and stand as still as they did. They would stare at each other, and Bryan would imagine that the deer was talking to him. When the deer stomped his feet, Bryan thought it meant the deer was ready to leave, so Bryan would clasp his hands together at his heart and bow to the deer. He believed that the deer would tip his head in return.
Today Bryan was so lost in thought he barely noticed the changes that were occurring all around him. Winter had given way to spring a few weeks earlier, and now the little buds on all the tree branches were silhouetted against the sky. Spring wildflowers had begun to bloom, and the willow’s green leaves had already appeared. Bryan barely noticed. He was preoccupied with what was happening with him. What he called “the problem” was getting worse. Or better, he thought to himself, depending on his point of view.
And that was another problem. Bryan didn’t know if he liked or hated what was happening.
There was a rustle in the bushes beside the path, and a rabbit hopped out in front of him. Bryan laughed. He knew this rabbit. They were walking friends and had been for many years, ever since Brian was a boy who escaped to the woods.
They had walked together for so many years that Bryan knew that it couldn’t be the same rabbit. But he figured that somehow they had passed the job down from rabbit to rabbit, so he thought of them as the same one.
Today the rabbit did what it always did. Stared at him. And when Bryan took a step forward, the rabbit began hopping down the trail, leading the way. The rabbit would slow down or speed up or even wait, depending on what Bryan would do.
Sometimes they would walk that way for hours. When Bryan turned around to head home, the rabbit would dart in front of him and walk, or in his case, hop back until they reached what Bryan assumed was the rabbit’s home, because it would scuttle into the bush, turn, give Bryan one last look, and then disappear into the underbrush.
Today, Bryan didn’t have time to walk too far. He was meeting a friend for lunch at the Diner. He was debating whether he would tell her about what had been happening to him. Would telling her help or make it worse? Either way, telling her meant he had to admit that it was real.
The problem had started when he moved back home to the small house on the outskirts of Doveland to take care of his mother. She had asked him to, and he had said yes. How could he not? There was no one else to do it. Besides, he had nothing keeping him in the city. No proper job, no family.
He could blame the fact that nothing ever went right for him or his parents, but he knew it wasn’t their fault. They had both done their best with a boy who couldn’t focus. As long as he could remember, he only wanted to walk in the woods. These woods. They had been his secret home away from home. But the woods hadn’t helped him get through school. Not that he wanted to fail at school. He simply couldn’t get himself to care enough about it to do well.
So he had squeaked through high school, kissed his parents goodbye, and moved to the city hoping that would cure him of his daydreaming. He got a job. First, as a dishwasher in a restaurant and eventually making his way up to being a waiter at a restaurant that did well enough that he could pay his rent for a room in an apartment owned by one of the cooks. He ate well. That’s the best he could say about his life.
The few times he visited his parents, he did his best not to let the woods draw him back in. His parents thought he was distancing himself from them when he would leave days earlier than he promised, but what he was doing was running from the call of the forest path. When his father passed away from a heart attack five years ago, he came home for the funeral, stayed a few days, and left again before his mother discovered what a failure he had become.
He always lied to them about his work. He borrowed pieces of conversations he heard when waiting on tables and used that information to convince his parents he was successful at all the vague jobs he would mention. They would smile and nod and tell him they loved him. Maybe he would like to come back to Doveland?
“No,” he’d say, “They need me at work.”
His mother would bite her lip, and he knew she was trying not to cry, trying to keep herself from begging him to come home.
A few weeks after his father died, he received a check in the mail. His father had left him some money. In the envelope was a note his father had written to him and left with the lawyer. It invited him to go home and walk in the woods.
Bryan broke down. He had never fooled his father, and of course, that meant his mother had always known, too. And now she had died, too, and he had no one.
As Bryan walked, he scuffed his feet, leaving a trail in the dust. Turning around, Brian looked back at it and thought about how the life you lived followed you just like the scrapes in the dirt. For him, there were no clear footprints, no direction, just feet dragging through everything.
His mother had left him three gifts. She had left him the house, and she left him the rest of their savings account. In it was enough so he could live comfortably if he stayed in the house. He could walk in the woods for the rest of his life.
But she left him one more thing. And that was the thing he called the problem.
What was hard for him to admit was perhaps, if he wasn’t crazy, the gift his mother had left him gave his life a purpose. God only knew how much he needed a purpose in life.
Yes, he would tell Rachel about the problem, and if she believed him, that would mean he wasn’t crazy.
He had gone to school with Rachel. Sometimes they had walked in the woods together. She had never laughed at him, even when her friends teased her for befriending such a loser.
She had come to both his father and his mother’s funeral. A few weeks after his mother’s funeral, she started calling him, inviting him to breakfast.
He always turned her down. Until yesterday, when he had said yes.
Following his scuff marks back down the trail, rabbit leading the way, Bryan thought, yes, perhaps it is time to start living.
The irony of it was that if he wasn’t crazy, he would begin to live by helping the dead.
Twelve
“Where are we?” Connie asked, grabbing Eddie’s arm in fear.
“You’ve been here,” Eddie replied. “You know where you are.”
“No!” Connie shouted. “I don’t want to be here. Take me home.”
“No, I won’t. You ran from this your entire life, and now you are still trying to run even though you are dead. You agreed. Now you are here. I could leave you here to deal with it on your own, or I can help. Those are your only choices.”
Connie looked around where Eddie had brought her and remembered how beautiful it had been to her the summers she had lived with Edith’s family. Until she left them and broke everyone’s heart. Including her own.
When Connie turned an
d walked away, Eddie walked away too. He had someone to see first anyway, and it would give Connie the chance to think about her life, which is what Connie had decided to do.
Eddie’s threat that he would leave her there didn’t worry Connie. She knew he wouldn’t, just as she knew he was right. She had to stay and deal with what she had done.
She and Edith had returned to college after that wonderful first summer. Ralph and Lorraine had paid her tuition and dorm fees, as they had promised. She sent a thank-you card to them and a letter to her trailer park women telling them that all was well. She told them she was still in school and was very happy.
In her mind’s eye, she could see the women gathering in one of the tiny trailers reading her letter while the kids ran around outside, and their husbands and boyfriends worked or drank what they earned.
Connie had yearned to do something for them, and that desire drove her to get even better grades. She had changed her major to business. Not for Ralph, but because of him.
The next few years flew by. Every holiday Connie went home with Edith and strengthened her friendship with Bill. He had moved to Pittsburgh but always returned for the holidays and a few weeks every summer. At school, Edith got passing grades and collected men while Connie got A’s and collected information.
At the beginning of their third year of college, Connie had moved into an apartment with Edith. Located over one of the stores downtown, it was small, but cozy and ideally located for each of them—for different reasons.
Edith loved the separate bedrooms. She made good use of hers while trying to decide which boy she was dating was the one. Connie loved watching the flow of students and townspeople as they shopped and strolled through the streets and up onto the campus.
It was the summer after they graduated that both Edith and Connie disappointed Ralph and Lorraine. But not in the same way. Edith had chosen a boy, and Connie had accepted a job.
The boy’s name was Theodore Prince. Theo came from a family with money and had a built-in future that included a job at his families’ business, which he was destined to run someday.
