It Happens Every Day

by Derek A. Murphy

  It Happens Every Day

  by/© Derek A. Murphy

  * * *

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  Chapter One

  The funeral was scheduled for four o’clock Monday afternoon and Brian wanted to make sure his car was clean and shiny when he arrived; it was the least he could do for Annelisa. He had frittered away the better part of the day reminiscing with his friends about the things they had all done together in school. With the sun sinking through the clouds on the horizon, the tree he had parked the old car under wasn’t giving him any shade now. Though the day seemed colorless to him, the late-summer sun bathed the grass of his mother’s well-kept lawn in gold and he could swear he saw the heat shimmer above it. At least he had made short work with washing it and only had to finish buffing out the wax job.

  He preferred doing it the old-fashioned way instead of using a powered buffer and could feel the weave of the old t-shirt stretch as his fingers drove it across the haze of wax, leaving a high shine on the dark-blue paint. Brian was almost able to lose himself in the monotonous rubbing motion, but felt a twinge in the muscles of his lower back and straightened up to ease them. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he gazed to the west and noted the reds, pinks and oranges splashed across the clouds by the sun. Lisa had always loved watching sunsets and continually dragged him outside to watch them. She used to say that God had to be an artist; he always used such pretty colors for sunsets. At the thought, he abruptly choked on a sob and felt his eyes grow moist at the thoughts of what Lisa had been like to be with. Her senseless death in a freak accident affected him more than his father’s had when he was six.

  She had been a pretty girl; about 5’2", weighing in about ninety-five pounds, with dark-blonde hair that had a reddish tint to it and eyes the color of dark-grey storm clouds. He remembered how her little, pointed chin had dug into his chest every time they made love until he had equated that particular pain with feelings of joy. Her nose might have been a little long, but the surrounding features had seemed to diminish its size to the point where it was hardly noticeable unless you saw her in profile. It just seemed to go well with her heart-shaped face. Why had she insisted on going for a jog that morning? The fog alone would have kept most people home and in bed. It was unusual to have a fog at this time of year. Who could have foreseen that a kid delivering papers on his scooter would collide with her, sending her over the side of the bridge and onto the rocks near the bridgehead? They were supposed to sign the loan papers on the house they were buying that day, preparatory to their marriage and he’d had to call to postpone the appointment. With the ink barely dry on their college degrees, they had both been fortunate to find positions that spring with larger salaries than they had ever dreamed they could start out with. Thus, the house; which he really didn’t need anymore, but with Lisa’s sudden death, a lot of plans had been left up in the air.

  He looked again at the sun and noticed that it seemed brighter; probably thinner clouds to shine through, and he involuntarily closed his eyes. The image was still burned on his retinas and it seemed that the sun shined right through his eyelids. He stood that way for a few seconds until it seemed that the wind switched directions and rose to buffet him for a few seconds, growing cold as it did. A touch on his arm made him open his eyes and he gave an inarticulate cry, jerking backwards as he recognized Lisa standing beside him. His eyes closed involuntarily in his effort to discover if she was really there, or if this was just an illusion born of his grief. He kept them closed a few seconds and felt the wind die away, to be replaced once again by the summer’s heat on his sweaty skin and damp t-shirt.

  When he opened his eyes again, she was gone, leaving him with the feeling that he had lost an opportunity to spend his life with her. He felt that it was an opportunity that he would never have again, and he felt a greater sense of loss than he had when he heard that she had died.

  * * *

  Standing at the back of Brian’s car, Annelisa felt confused and disoriented as she looked at the hand she had laid on Brian’s arm; she had been surprised to see him standing at the back of the car. Just seconds earlier, he had been working at something under the hood and simply appeared at the back when she turned that way after gazing into the sinking sun. To convince herself that he had really been there, she turned her hand over to look at it. A sheen of sweat covered her palm and the inside surface of her fingers, yet Brian was no longer standing beside her. Turning her head, feeling lost, she saw him pull his head from under the hood of the car to throw the big, round, air filter onto the pile of trash that had collected against the tree in his front yard, all but bare of grass as it was. She wished that she didn’t love him so much; he was difficult to get along with and his habits left something to be desired.

  He looked around and spotted the new air filter lying on the top of the dirty car and snarled, "Give me that filter."

  Hurrying to obey him, she slid the cardboard box that contained the filter from the top of the car and carried it to him. He snatched the box from her and growled, "Don’t slide it on the top! I want to trade it in someday and if the canvas is ruined, I won’t get a good trade!"

  Scurrying away from him, she returned to the house and all but trotted into the kitchen, past where Brian’s father watched wrestling on the TV. The old man looked up as she passed him and disinterestedly turned his attention back to the flickering pictures on the screen. Reflecting that Brian had good taste in women, the old man picked up his beer and sipped at it as he wished that he was twenty years younger; he’d show the girl what a man could do.

  In the kitchen, Annelisa opened the fridge and removed a beer from it. Turning to look in a drawer for an opener, she looked up as Brian’s mother spoke:

  "I guess he’s in a bad mood again. What happened this time? Lose another job?"

  "Yes, but he says that when he gets a good one, we’re going to get married."

  Sighing, the older woman stopped cutting up the chicken she was preparing for dinner and looked at her with tired eyes. She said, "He’ll never get one. He’ll get drunk and piss off the boss wherever he works and get fired; time after time."

  Nodding her head toward the living room where her husband sat in front of the TV, she continued, "Take my word for it; the best thing you can do is get away from him. If someone comes along that treats you halfway decent, you should go with him. Brian will never amount to anything."

  Not wanting to hear anymore disparaging talk about the man she loved, Annelisa hurried back out into the front yard, handing Brian the cold beer.

  Taking the beer, he upended it, swallowing half before lowering it. With a gleam in his eye, he said, "Go on home and get dressed in something pretty. We’re going out on the town tonight."

  "Don’t you think you should save your money, Brian? I mean, you’ll need some new clothes so you can go job-hunting."

  His eyebrows lowered as he asked, "What’s wrong with my clothes? I know they don’t look as nice as the clothes all those uppity people at the Country Club wear, but they’re what I have to wear. If you love me, you’ll have to take the way I dress along with the rest of me."

  Lowering her head, she nodded a couple of times and asked, "What time will you pick me up?"

  He took another drink and said, "In time to go to the movie. I think it starts at seven. Then we’ll go to the dance at the Moose Lodge."

  Silently, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and
felt his hands go to her waist as he pulled her close to kiss her firmly on the mouth. He smelled of beer and tobacco. The thought crossed her mind that he had lied to her again; he had sworn that he quit smoking. Sighing, she turned to go to her car at the curb and looked around at the other houses in the neighborhood. All of them were well-kept, attractively painted with bright colors; their lawns were freshly mown and spotted here and there with pretty flowerbeds. She was sure that the neighbors must hope that the Maclins would move away someday.

  As she slipped behind the wheel of her car, she noted the peeling paint and bare wood that showed on Brian’s home and wondered if she was doing the right thing in staying with him.

  * * *

  The muted exhaust of the big engine died to nothing when he turned off the key and exited the convertible. His eyes went to the leather upholstery of the seats and unbidden memories of his high school and college years spent with Lisa came back to torment Brian yet again. Squaring his shoulders, he closed his eyes in the dusk and took a deep breath, and felt again the unwonted cool breeze blow over him. As gooseflesh rose on his arms, he opened his eyes and saw Lisa standing on the porch, wearing a sundress that he hadn’t seen before. The smile on her face seemed tentative and sad, and he wondered what would make her feel that way. Then he remembered, she was dead and could no longer plan on spending her life with him. He closed his eyes at the vagrant pain, holding them that way for a few seconds and felt the heat of the early evening come back to press down on him like a stone.

  Opening his eyes again, she was gone, with nothing to indicate her former presence but his own memory. The door where she had been standing opened and her mother stepped out, a wan smile curving her lips as she waved at him. He supposed that he had seen Mrs. Carey and mistaken her for Lisa. They looked so much alike that they could have been twins. Waving back, he walked up the sidewalk to the porch and stood with one foot on the first step, silently commiserating with the woman.

  Looking at Lisa’s mother, he had to remind himself that the girl he loved was dead and that this was her look-alike mother. He started to speak, found his throat full of unshed tears and had to cough. Before he could speak, Mrs. Carey reached out for his hand, drew him up onto the porch and guided him to the porch swing where she sat him down beside her, still holding his hand.

  Her dark grey eyes looked sadly into his as she said, "We want you and your mother to sit with the family tomorrow. You’ve become so much a part of this family that it just wouldn’t be right for you not to."

  Nodding, he found his voice. "I keep seeing her. First at home and then here, just now, before you walked out."

  Her eyes glimmered with tears as she said, "I know. It seems like she’s everywhere in this house. Sometimes, I have the feeling that when I enter a room, she’ll be there, asking questions, telling me about the plans you’ve made for the evening. Things like that; the kind of things that she always used to talk about."

  Almost sobbing, he said, "I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. There are so many things that I wish I had said; so many things I wish I had done for her."

  Gathering him in, she held his head on her shoulder as he cried until he was finished and straightened up, feeling childish and unmanly. Maybe it had been the way her hand stroked the back of his head; just like his mother’s had when he was a kid.

  "I’m sorry, Mrs. Carey. I shouldn’t have broken down like that. I’ve never been especially emotional about things like this."

  "It’s alright, Brian. You just never lost someone that you loved so much, that’s all."

  "I don’t know how I’m going to get by without her. There were so many things left undone. I’m not going to buy the house we picked out; it just wouldn’t be right without her there."

  "Well, you know best about that. I would rather think of you living there than continuing to live with your mother. You’re old enough to be out on your own, Brian. I think Lisa would like to think of you living there, whether she was there or not."

  Frowning, he looked down at the boards under their feet and sighed. "Yeah, I guess so. I postponed the meeting at the bank until next Friday. I still have time to make a decision."

  Diffidently, she said, "I know you don’t put much stock in psychics and such; neither do I, but there’s this psychic in town that people keep talking about. Mrs. Heatherington down the street says that she helped her a lot last month after her husband died. And, no, she didn’t ask her for a lot of money, either."

  He nodded. "I pass her shop every day going to and from work. She keeps strange hours; five to midnight, the sign says, six nights a week."

  Glancing at her watch, Mrs. Carey said, "It’s half-past nine now. She should be there if you want to go see her tonight. I’ll make your excuses with the rest of the family. If she can help you deal with Lisa’s death, it will be worth it."

  Brian abruptly made up his mind and nodded again. "I think I’ll do that. God knows I can’t go on feeling the way I do."

  * * *

  Lisa didn’t know what to expect when they entered the psychic’s place of business; the sign in the window stated that the psychic did readings every evening, six nights a week, and since there weren’t any stuffed bats hanging from the ceiling, or jars of questionable substances stacked on a counter, it didn’t give the impression of being anything like the place of business of a carnival mindreader or anything like that. Instead of the things she had feared, there was a simple waiting room with a small stack of current magazines on a coffee table and comfortable chairs spaced around the walls. A coffeemaker sat on a table to one side and the smell of freshly-brewed coffee filled the room.

  She had managed to talk Brian into leaving the dance early with an implied promise of sex in the backseat of his convertible before going home. Before they had gone three blocks, they spied this place, with its sign blazing in the dark and decided to stop for a lark. Lisa was glad that Brian wasn’t drunk; he could be most unpleasant and obnoxious about things like this, but had entered into the playful spirit of her idea and seemed to be having fun.

  Before they could sit down with their cups of coffee, the door on the other side of the room opened to admit a pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman with dark eyes that glittered like black jewels.

  She was well-dressed, in a business suit and her hair hung loose about her shoulders in luxurious, dark waves. The nails of the hand she extended to them were well-kept and shone with polish. Lisa was sure that the woman must have had a manicure that day. With heavy makeup, the woman looked older than she probably was and Lisa wondered why she would want to appear old. The heady scent of her perfume filled the room and Lisa felt dizzy for just a split-second as she took the woman’s hand.

  "Welcome. I’m Mrs. Petrov. How may I help you?"

  Suddenly abashed, Lisa waited for Brian to speak up and when he didn’t, she said, "We’d like to know what our lives will be like."

  Frowning, Mrs. Petrov said, "I’m not a fortune teller, though I have done Tarot readings in the past. But I don’t read palms or anything like that. If that’s what you’re looking for, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until a carnival comes to town."

  Brian asked, "Do you still do the Tarot stuff?"

  Straightening as though trying to decide whether to be insulted or not, Mrs. Petrov said, "For the right customers. I generally help people who are especially troubled about something; a death, an impending marriage they’re not sure about, a new job offer, that sort of thing."

  Her manner, more than her words, gave Lisa the impression that she didn’t like Brian and she was sure that he picked up on that as, suddenly out of patience, he turned toward the door, saying, "Well, forget it."

  As the door sighed shut behind him on its closer, Lisa turned to follow him and the woman put her hand on Lisa’s arm, stopping her.

  She said, "Come back without your friend tomorrow, I’m not open on Sundays, but I will be here. I think you need my help."

  Feeling both horrif
ied and astounded that the woman could sense that she was troubled; Lisa ducked her head and scurried out the door, joining Brian at the car. He was already inside and she waited as he held the button down that drove the convertible top mechanism. She knew what that portended; he was going to hold her to her promise of sex. Lisa wasn’t sure that she really wanted to have sex with him, but if she didn’t, there would be a terrible argument and he might become violent. Again.

  Feeling helpless, she walked toward the car, squeezing her eyes shut for just a moment and cast a glance down the darkened street. There, with the pavement dully glowing under the streetlights with the junebugs and moths dancing round them, she thought she saw Brian walking toward her on the sidewalk. His hands were thrust into his pockets, and the sad look on his face grew even sadder when he saw her. He squeezed his eyes shut as though in pain…and disappeared.

  Gasping at what she was sure she had seen, she stood at the open door of the car with one hand on the back of the seat and one at her throat. At Brian’s growl, she slid the rest of the way into the seat and swallowed once as she closed the door and he pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  With his eyes closed, he stumbled once, stubbing the toe of his shoe on an upthrust corner of the concrete sidewalk, which forced him to open his eyes. Stopping, he turned to look back at his car; there it was, but why had he seen Lisa just slipping into the front seat, just in front of him? Shaking his head, he put out a hand to lean against the storefront beside him as he began to feel dizzy. What was wrong with him? Why did he keep seeing her everywhere he went?

  Brian had half-convinced himself that going to see this gypsy psychic was a waste of time, but in view of this latest occurrence, he screwed up his resolve and, opening his eyes, continued on down the street to the psychic’s place of business. The sign beside the door identified the psychic as Madam Petra, and held the silhouette in profile of a fortune teller. He took a deep breath as he placed a hand on the doorknob and let it out as he pushed the door open.