The Queen Gene

by Jennifer Coburn

  “Lucy,” said a man’s voice though the phone. I turned my head away from the window to focus on what the caller was saying. “It’s Earl from Healthy Living magazine,” he said. I sank into my hunter green leather chair which sat in front of my rustic, burled-wood desk that Jack made for me. I loved how it looked like a slice of tree with its undefined edges and tree rings on the surface. “Listen, sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. I was camping in Juneau. Y’ever been to Alaska?” I told him I had not. “Beautiful country. Don’t miss it. Really a sight to see. Anyway, I got your message, and I’d love to have you do a story for the Living the Dream section. The piece you did on the flax seed revolution is still getting letters.” This had to be a lie. Even I was bored by my pitiful attempts at humor throughout this thoroughly dull piece. “So tell me what you’ve got goin’ on there in your little corner of heaven.”

  I sighed. “Earl, I’ve got to be honest with you. The dream has turned into a nightmare.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he replied. I peeked out the window again to see Mancha repeatedly reject my son’s efforts to play with him. “What’s going on?”

  “First of all, not one visiting artist has created a single piece of art. The French guy has sunk into a depression and doesn’t do anything, much less sketch. He had an affair with the cellist who doesn’t play cello, but now goes out on endless shopping excursions with Maxime’s extremely bitter wife.”

  “Maxime is?” Earl asked.

  “Oh, sorry. Maxime is the French guy who used to do absolutely stunning sketches with thousands of ink dots the size of a needle prick. His wife, Jacquie, seemed like a breath of fresh air when she arrived, but quickly became a vitriolic demon of consumption. I’m serious, Earl, all this woman does is shop,” I said, laughing at how absurd it sounded. “So Maxime took up with Chantrell for a few weeks. She completely abandoned her cello and her research on the effect of music on vegetables.”

  “Really?” Earl said, interested. “What effect is music supposed to have on vegetables?”

  “I don’t know. She was involved in some fruit and flower research project before and wanted to expand it to vegetables.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” Earl said.

  “Except she doesn’t play anymore, so the only definitive result we have is that complete neglect of vegetables leads to their death,” I said. “She doesn’t even water them anymore.”

  “Harsh,” Earl said.

  “But wait, there’s more!” I said, imitating the tone of an infomercial hostess. “A month later, the glass sculptor arrived, and he’s neither depressed nor unpleasant, but everything he touches shatters. Even things he doesn’t touch! Every window in his house broke within weeks of his arrival. Don’t you find that odd?”

  “I’ll spare you the joke about people living in glass houses,” Earl said.

  “Please do.” I laughed. “So now I have three completely unproductive artists and an open house on Labor Day that we’ve already advertised. The entire community will show up and see the artist colony where no art is made. It’s a disaster.”

  “Sounds like it,” Earl said, sympathetically.

  “Oh, it gets better,” I continued. “Every woman that passes through the threshold of my home gets some sort of leg injury. I sprained my ankle. My friend Robin broke hers. We’ve had knee injuries, tetanus, twisted limbs, and bruises.”

  “Really?” Earl sounded piqued with curiosity. “Only the women?”

  “Yes, not only are the men spared from injury, but they’re assisted with home repairs.”

  “What do you mean?” Earl asked, intrigued.

  “I mean that Jack and his friend Tom, who does handyman stuff around the house, say that home repairs are getting done by themselves. Leaky faucets, bad wiring — all getting fixed without either of them lifting a finger!”

  “Lucy,” Earl said tentatively, “can I propose something radical?”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “Have you considered the house might be haunted?” he asked.

  “Haunted?” I repeated, incredulous. “Haunted like Poltergeist haunted? Haunted like ‘I see dead people’ haunted? Haunted like ‘get out’ Amityville Horror haunted?”

  “Well, those are movies, Lucy,” Earl said. “What I’m talking about is the more mundane haunting. You know, spirits stuck between worlds?”

  I had grown up with this sort of talk, so it’s not as though the idea of spirits stuck between worlds was something I’d never heard about before. It’s just that this was Anjoli’s realm. If anyone should have a haunted house, it should be her. She’d know what to do. Hell, she’d have a good time with it, throw a bon voyage party for the spirits or something. She’d have actors dressed like dead celebrities. It would be on Page Six.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I told Earl. “I never considered it. I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “Now that would be a story!” Earl exclaimed. “Even better than flax seed, I’d say!”

  “I’m not sure, Earl,” I said. “I’m not sure I believe in haunted houses. I hope I’m not offending you, but it sounds a bit flaky.”

  “Oh,” he returned with a tone that let me know I had, in fact, offended him.

  “Earl, please. All of my life I grew up with a mother who was into every new age trend. I’ve seen it all, and frankly, I like living in a world where reason and logic dictate my actions.” I couldn’t help laughing aloud. “Okay, maybe not reason and logic, but the whole paranormal thing just doesn’t resonate with me.”

  “I understand, Lucy, but the fact is that it doesn’t need to resonate with you to be real. Your house sounds like it’s haunted, and whether you choose to respond to it or not is your decision. But if it were my place, I’d look into it and fast.”

  I couldn’t believe what came out of my mouth next. “How would I even know if the house really is haunted?”

  I could practically see Earl smiling on the other end of the phone as he delivered his easy joke. “Who ya gonna call?”

  “Don’t say it.” I laughed.

  “Ghostbusters!” we sang in unison.

  “Seriously, Earl, who investigates this sort of thing? I mean, I don’t want some charlatan coming in and charging thousands of dollars for a problem that doesn’t even exist.”

  “You can buy ghost detection equipment on the web. It’s fairly inexpensive,” Earl said. I wondered why we were even having this conversation. There was no way my house was haunted. There was even less way I was going to order ghost-seeking equipment and hunt for spirits lingering in my home. I thought the guys who combed the beach for lost coins and watches looked ridiculous. I cannot even picture someone using a ghost detector.

  “I need some time to digest everything you’ve said.” I learned that dismissal years ago when a client said it to me. At the time, I thought it was a polite way of letting me know that my complex concept needed time to be broken down and properly appreciated. Now I know it’s a nice way of saying, This conversation is over.

  I went outside to join Adam and Anjoli who were still content in the backyard. “Reading anything good?” I asked my mother. She looked up and smiled. “Nothing more interesting than what you have to say, darling. What’s the good word?”

  Maybe the house was possessed. Who was this woman inquiring about me?

  “No barking at lady!” Adam scolded Mancha who was yelping toward the guest houses. I looked down, but there was no one around. I was grateful that Mancha wasn’t barking at Jacquie, our resident Cruella de Vil, who I suspect would want to skin him and make a pair of gloves for herself. Well, one glove maybe. Mancha yelped again and Adam reprimanded him similarly.

  “That’s been their little game this afternoon. Mancha barks and Adam tells him not to bark at the lady. It’s really quite irritating, darling. I keep hoping one of them will do something different, but it’s the same tedium over and over again,” Anjoli said. She shrugged. “Kids, dogs, what are you going to do,
right? They are cute, but not exactly stimulating, are they?”

  “Mother, do you find anything odd about the house?” I sat next to her. Anjoli lowered her reading glasses and asked what I meant. “I mean, do you think there’s something wrong with the house?”

  Anjoli waved her hand as if to dismiss my concerns. “All houses have problems. I’ve got old plumbing and a goddamned sorority house across the street. You should see the place. The oldest one of them is twenty-two.”

  “Honky, look at the lady!” Adam shouted, pointing at a grove of trees.

  “Adam, I’ve said hello to the lady three times now, darling,” she said in her sing-song voice. “I’m sure she feels properly greeted by us all.”

  “Say hi to the lady, Mommy!” he said to me.

  “Hello, lady!” I shouted and waved.

  Anjoli was growing impatient. “Why can’t he watch TV for an hour?!”

  “I think it’s great that he uses his imagination for play,” I said. “Miss Rhiannon says Adam is very bright and has conversations with his imaginary friends every day.”

  “And this is positive?” she whispered so Adam wouldn’t hear. “Back in my day, kids who did that were oddballs. It wouldn’t kill him to watch a little Sesame Street every now and then. We didn’t do this whole imaginary friend nonsense back when you were a baby. I popped you in front of the TV and came back when it was time for bed.”

  “The lady is flying!” Adam shouted as his gaze followed a path in the sky. Mancha joined him barking in the same direction.

  “Mother! Don’t you find this odd?!”

  “Extremely, darling,” Anjoli returned. “I think you’re turning an otherwise normal little boy into a social outcast. Don’t listen to that hippie teacher of his. Tell him that there is no lady and get him a video, or at least a truck or something real to play with so he’s not incessantly chattering and disturbing people. He sounds like Rain Man over there.”

  Some of my friends tell me they can’t stand listening to their mothers’ constant cooing over their children. Mine just said she believed my son to be an idiot savant and suggested I remedy him with a ten-hour daily dose of Cartoon Network.

  “Mother, I’m going to say something a bit strange for me, but I’m hoping that you, of all people, will understand.” Anjoli nodded. “Do you think there’s any bizarre chance that the house is, well, maybe slightly, um — haunted?”

  “Haunted?!” Anjoli said.

  “I know it sounds odd, but there have been some strange things going on since we moved in,” I explained.

  “It doesn’t sound odd, darling,” Anjoli said. “It’s not at all unusual for an old house to have visitors from the other side. It’s impossible, though. Remember that when you moved in, I performed the space-clearing rituals that would rid your new home of any ghosts.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said recalling Anjoli burning sage and chanting in every corner of the house. She took a class through the Learning Annex and was so thrilled with her newfound ghost-busting skills that she considered starting a side business. She gave up the idea after she found out how “exhausting” it was to rid our home of apparitions.

  “So you see, darling, it’s not possible to have ghosts unless you think my

  space-clearing rituals were ineffective.” I said nothing. “You’re not suggesting that my space-clearing didn’t take, are you?”

  It was then I realized that my home was absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt spooked.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You think the house is what?” asked Jack as he began changing into a shirt for dinner. I love the way he looks after he scrubs every last bit of the day’s paint off of his body, combs his wet hair to the side, and puts on a clean shirt for an evening at home. Honestly, I adore the way he looks as he’s painting as well. Sometimes I go down to his studio and watch him. I stand in the doorway, and he doesn’t even notice me there. He narrows his eyes with concentration, steps back, shakes his head, and returns to his stool to continue or correct his work. When I see him so engrossed in his painting, I know we made the right decision moving here so he could pursue his art. Haunted or not, I loved this house.

  I sat on the edge of our bed and watched him button his shirt and start searching for his jeans strewn on the bedroom floor. “I didn’t say I think the house is definitely haunted, just that it might be,” I said.

  Jack smiled. “Oh well, as long as you’re not saying definitely.” He laughed.

  “Jack,” I whined, urging him to take my suggestion more seriously. “Can’t you even entertain the idea that something like this is possible? I mean, do we really know everything there is to know about life after death?”

  After he buttoned his jeans, Jack sat beside me and addressed me without smiling. He placed his hand on mine and said he could not possibly consider that the house was haunted. “I’m sorry, Luce. I can’t even go there. It’s not in my nature to believe in that hocus pocus.”

  “But the leg injuries, the personality changes, the complete black hole of art down there,” I said, gesturing to the guest cottages. “Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I do. Look, I’m not saying you can’t believe the place is haunted, but don’t get mad at me if I don’t agree with you.”

  His response took me back to our days in marriage counseling where Etta would remind us that we could be a stronger, more united couple when we accepted each other as individuals. That is, Jack could have his quirks and idiosyncrasies, and I didn’t have to attach my identity to any of them. The reverse was also true, as he was now reminding me. I sort of missed our therapist back in New Jersey. Going to counseling forced Jack and me to sit down once a week and really listen to each other. We broke so many old habits like immediately defending charges that weren’t even launched and blaming each other for failings in the relationship. And, of course, couples counseling also gave us a common language to speak — and a common person to make fun of at home. We had more laughs at the expense of our therapist and the way she habitually drew diagrams on her dry erase board. I even bought a white board and mounted it in the kitchen so I could do my impressions of Etta when Jack and I had a disagreement at home.

  “No, I’m not mad at you, Jack,” I assured him. “But I feel a little embarrassed that I’m even considering this, and it would be of great comfort to me if you also thought it might be a possibility.”

  “Sorry, hon, but I don’t,” he said. “It’s too Anjoli for me.”

  “Fair enough,” I returned.

  “I won’t stand in your way, though, if you wanna, you know, do something about it,” Jack said. “I mean, if it makes you feel better to get the place, I don’t know, de-spooked, I won’t give you a hard time about it.”

  “You won’t think it’s silly?” I asked.

  “Luce, I will think it’s silly,” Jack replied. “What I’m saying is that if you feel like you need to do something, I won’t stand in your way.”

  I took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to try to convince him to see things my way. I wasn’t even sure I saw things my way, and Jack was far more pragmatic a person than I. He hadn’t grown up with Anjoli as a mother. My mother-in-law, Susan, had been Jack’s den mother for Cub Scouts. She was a member of the Soroptimist Club in Winnetka, Illinois. She’d served as the PTA treasurer for all of the years her kids attended the local elementary school. If I was having trouble accepting the idea that our home might be haunted, how could I expect anything more from Jack?

  “You’re right,” I said. “This is crazy talk. Of course the house isn’t haunted. I guess I want so much for there to be a reason for everything that’s gone wrong. I was so eager to pinpoint a cause to our problems, but it’s really rather ridiculous, isn’t it? As soon as you said you’d support my de-spooking the house, I realized how flaky it sounded. Haunted house,” I scoffed. “Forget I ever mentioned it.”

  “Forgotten,” Jack said with a wink. “Now, let
’s eat.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. I rolled through my cloud of cotton sheets to see that Jack was still in bed, a rarity after 6:00. The clock read 7:48 am, which made me smile with a sense of mischievous accomplishment. I’d completely exhausted him the night before.

  “Hello,” I said groggily. It was Renee in tears.

  “Sorry to call so early,” she sobbed.

  I sat upright and took the phone into the hallway so I wouldn’t wake Jack. “No problem. What’s going on? You sound upset.”

  “Dan and I had a huge fight last night. He stormed out at midnight, and when I woke up this morning, I saw he hadn’t come home.”

  “Whoa,” slipped out. There seemed little else to say because the next questions seemed to have obvious answers. I dared not ask where he went, but did make a pitiful attempt to convince her that this may not appear as bad as it seemed. “Are you sure he didn’t just wake up early to go, um, jogging or something?” These feeble attempts were always done as much for my benefit as the other person’s. I hate to admit, but I am so squeamish with other people’s discomfort that I try to make it go away as quick as possible. Sure, I want to help my friend feel better, but I also want to escape the painful reality in which we are both trapped.

  Renee laughed. “Oh, that’s right, you’ve never seen Dan. Well, let me assure you, he’s not out jogging. I might buy it if you said he got up early to get himself a dozen Krispy Kremes.”

  This depressed me more than anything. A woman in her forties with a few extra pounds — okay, we’re talking about me — was as sexually marginalized as a pair of old tennis shoes, while Pudgy McButterball had a beautiful wife and mistress on the side.

  “Can I come over?” she said. Renee had always sounded so self-assured, it was unsettling to hear her sounding this vulnerable. I had already cast her as the woman who had it all together in spite of her marital problems. Now I would be forced to see her as a more complex, textured person, which terrified me to no end. Nonetheless, she was a friend and her needs would have to supersede my fears.