The Queen Gene

by Jennifer Coburn

  “Me too!” Renee said, excitedly.

  “I was a healer, but the townspeople were small-minded and, well,…” Anjoli stopped, and waved with her arms as if to say, You know the rest.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Renee and her kids were set to leave later that afternoon, but their departure was delayed when she made the mistake of asking Jack about his project. He explained that a VW bug reminded him of the summers of his youth and that by adding the surf-and-sand theme, he was recapturing a feeling of freedom he had as a teen. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, glancing at me. “Life’s good now, but there’s a certain irresponsibility about the summer that I need to remind myself of these days. This is my way of saying to myself, ‘Dude, school is out for the summer.’”

  “God, I’d love to feel like school is out for the summer,” Renee said. “I feel like I’m in friggin’ detention in the middle of the winter.”

  Jack continued painting. “Yeah, Luce told me what’s been going on. Sorry about all that. Care for a little art therapy?” he asked, holding out his brush.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  An hour later, Renee looked like a different person. Her pain visibly dissipated after painting in a way that it hadn’t by chatting. I was impressed at how the paint fell onto her jeans as if by design. I am certain I would look like a drop cloth after an hour of painting, but Renee’s jeans looked purposefully adorned and incredibly hip. She also did a beautiful job on the Volkswagen, creating Van Gogh-like swirls of ocean waves.

  “Love the jeans,” I said.

  Anjoli concurred. “If I gave you a pair of my dungarees, would you mind doing the same to mine, darling?”

  Renee seemed startled by the request, but happily agreed. “If I can remember what I did,” she said.

  Moments later, Anjoli scampered out from the house in her light denim pants and demanded, “Do me right now, darling.” I had to wonder how many times that phrase had been uttered by her in the past year alone. By the time Renee finished Anjoli’s pants, I was in line waiting for my pair to be painted. Sitting in a lawn chair, I asked if she could “Pollock” my pants.

  “Here,” Jack began for her. “I had an art class come over and Pollock the bug a few months ago. Let me show you how to do it.” He held a dripping paint brush over my thigh and let paint drizzle as he swept it inches over the length of my leg. When Renee finished, I was wearing a wet pair of blue jeans that seriously rivaled those sold at Alchemy. Anjoli wore Van Gogh sunflowers which suited her well.

  Jack excused himself to check on Jenna and the boys and to rinse his brushes.

  “Renee, you are talented!” I shrieked. “You know what?” I asked. When no one replied, I decided to continue anyway. “You should sell these!”

  “She’s not selling my dungarees!” Anjoli protested. “I adore these, darling. Wait until Alfie sees them. He will just about drop dead that he didn’t come up with this idea.”

  “Not yours, Mother. She could sell hand-painted jeans. I’m sure they’d sell for a lot. How much did you pay for those graffiti pants you were wearing that first time I met you?”

  She smiled. “Those?”

  “What graffiti pants?!” Anjoli said. “I want to see the graffiti pants.”

  “Lucy, I made those,” Renee said, blushing slightly.

  “No you didn’t!” I shouted. “I want a pair. What would you charge? I’ve got an old pair of jeans in my dresser.”

  Renee laughed. “I appreciate your kindness, but you really don’t have to do this. Money isn’t my problem.”

  “Renee, you are out of your mind if you think this is charity. I want a pair of those pants! While you’re at it, I think you should seriously consider painting t-shirts. Now that summer’s here, women need something fun to wear. I mean, we can’t do theme sweaters all year round, can we?”

  Renee was still with thought. She was in the place between being flattered by the suggestion and considering it. She looked at Anjoli and asked, “Would you really buy these jeans if you didn’t feel sorry for me?”

  “Darling, let’s not forget, it is I who asked for the pants to be painted.” She paused, raised her eyebrows, and explained, “I love these pants. I wouldn’t ask you to do something to them unless I thought it would make me adore them even more. Really, I’m not that generous, darling.”

  But sometimes she was. And for a moment I wondered if this was one of those times.

  “And I don’t feel sorry for you, darling. Frankly, I’m too damned excited about how hot I look in these new dungarees to feel anything but joy,” Anjoli said. “Seriously, I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for your husband because he’s obviously a fool to neglect a wife like you.”

  As Renee’s car drove away, my heart softened a bit toward Anjoli. She wasn’t going to win any Humanitarian of the Year awards, but she had done something rare for her this afternoon. She gave something of herself.

  * * *

  Crossing paths through our driveway were Renee’s car and a red Mustang convertible I didn’t recognize until I saw a blond head bopping about on the passenger side. “Surprise!” shouted Kimmy, raising both hands over her head. “You said come visit, so here we are!” She laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard as Jack, Anjoli, Adam, and I stood watching the car approach us.

  In a pink “good girl” sundress, Kimmy flew out of the car before it fully stopped and twirled like Julie Andrews singing that the hills were alive. I would have thought she was on drugs or had fallen off the wagon if she didn’t soon announce the cause for her delirium. She grabbed Nick by the hand and hurried him to us. “We are totally engaged!” I looked at Anjoli, who forced a smile and congratulations.

  “You must be Nick,” I said, stepping toward him, awkwardly moving with uncertainty about whether I should shake his hand or hug him.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling broadly. Reaching out his hand, he introduced himself to Jack and apologized for coming by unannounced.

  “We wanted it to be a surprise!” Kimmy said. “I proposed this morning and before we even went out to start looking for my ring, I was like, Nick, let’s jump in the car and go see Auntie Anjoli and Cousin Lucy. Jack and Adam, too, of course. So anyway, we’ve been driving forever, but here we are!”

  “She proposed to you?” Anjoli asked pointedly.

  Nick shrugged a laugh. “I would’ve done it myself, but when Kimmy asked, I figured, okay, this is how we’re doing it. You know Kimmy always does things her own way.”

  His observation made me wonder if she might be pregnant with another man’s child.

  “Congratulations!” Jack offered.

  Kimmy hugged everyone and continued. “Before we speak another word of this, I have to know right now — Anjoli, will you be my maid of honor?”

  Anjoli had the look of a deer that was told that if it smiled hard enough, the oncoming truck would stop. Clumsily, she accepted. “Yes, certainly. I’d be, I’d be honored.” She paused. “Darling.”

  “And Lucy, you’re the matron, right?” Kimmy asked.

  “Of course I am,” I said.

  Kimmy shrieked with delight and said now that the bridal party was settled, she needed to go to the bathroom. She skipped and then leapt up the path to the front door. But before she reached the front door, her ankle rolled inward and snapped. Nothing could faze this freshly engaged woman. She laughed and clutched her ankle as she sat on the grass. “Whoa, am I poetry in motion or what? Note to self, do not skip down the aisle.”

  What I loved about my marriage with Jack is how we could have an entire conversation with facial expressions.

  I popped my eyes and raised my brows as if to say, Another woman injured her leg. Still think it’s a coincidence?

  He shrugged as if to say, Yes, I do, but like I said, if it makes you feel better to get someone in to look at the place, I’ll be supportive.

  I pursed my lips to say, Don’t do it on my account. If you’re okay with l
iving in a haunted house, I’m okay too.

  As the sun set on the summer day, the six of us sat in the backyard sipping champagne, toasting the new couple. I tried to catch Anjoli’s gaze every now and then to ask her how she was handling the news. But she was in full performance mode, smiling, laughing, and celebrating the engagement. It was almost as if she didn’t see me trying to connect with her. As an actor puts a fourth wall between himself and an audience, Anjoli built a protective shield between herself and the rest of the world.

  “I love it when the sky gets pink like this,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Here’s to the pink sky,” Kimmy said, raising her glass.

  From Maxime and Jacquie’s house, I saw a figure moving past the window. The front door flew open and Jacquie stood with her hand on her hip. “Keep it down up there!” she barked. “Some people are trying to sleep.”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s eight-thirty, Jacquie. Come up and celebrate with us.” A universal murmur of disapproval came from the group, including Mancha, who growled to let us know that Cruella de Vil should not join is. “My cousin just got engaged. Bring Maxime up and have a glass of champagne with us.”

  “If I wanted champagne, I would be drinking champagne!” Jacquie shouted. “What I want is quiet!” With that, she slammed the door loudly enough to wake the sleeping giant at the top of Jack’s beanstalk.

  I could tell I was really a mother now when my literary references were fairy tales.

  “Let her be,” said Jack.

  Chantrell opened her door and asked if she could join us. “Yeah!” Kimmy howled. “The more the merrier.” She went back into her house and returned with her cello. A few moments later, Chantrell swept her long red hair behind her shoulders and began to play for us. Maybe thirty or forty seconds was upbeat and celebrant. It then quickly descended into a melancholy, aching piece that would have been depressing enough without Chantrell weeping throughout every bar.

  Again I shot Jack a look as if to say, This is not normal. She was so happy when she arrived.

  He looked at me and without uttering a word said, Artists, what can you do?

  “You play so, um, nice,” Kimmy said. “Do you know anything from, um, like Fiddler on the Roof or something?” Soon our engagement party soundtrack was “Anatevka,” the song the heartbroken villagers sang as they were banished from their village by Russian pogrom. I was sure Kimmy had meant something a bit festive, like “Matchmaker” or even “Sunrise, Sunset.”

  “Darling, you have been such a love to play for us,” Anjoli said to Chantrell. “But we have some family issues to sort out, you know, finances and the like, so if you don’t mind.” I had to say, Anjoli handled that quite gracefully until she made a shooing motion with her right hand.

  After Chantrell left, Anjoli looked at me and said, “Darling, if I was ever inclined to think this place was haunted, now would be the time. That was a horror.”

  “She tried,” said Nick. Jack reached for the champagne bottle and noticed it was empty. He went inside to get another.

  “Jack won’t hear of it,” I said to my mother.

  Turning to Kimmy and Nick, Anjoli explained. “Lucy thinks the house is haunted, which, of course, is impossible because I personally cleared the space.”

  “I don’t think the house is haunted,” I said. “I just think something is off. Every woman who comes to the house gets some sort of leg injury. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  Anjoli defended her space-clearing. “I happen to know something about spirit inhabitants, and this house shows no signs of having visitors from the other side, darling.” Anjoli turned to Nick and raised one brow. “You probably think this sounds incredibly flighty. Certainly they disdain any such talk in the ivory towers of Princeton.”

  “No, I think it’s interesting,” Nick answered. What was more shocking than his answer was the fact that he seemed completely sincere. “My dad did his field work in Oaxaca. He specialized in Mexican curanderos, so I’ve always been fascinated by this kind of stuff.”

  “Your father studied witch doctors?!” Anjoli said.

  “And tribal healing rituals,” Nick said, not realizing he hit the Anjoli jackpot. “My family spent years in Mexico and went to all kinds of curandero healings. We never did anything normal like go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was always to visit a voodoo doctor or attend some sort of ancient backwoods chicken sacrifice.”

  Jack and I stared at Nick, awestruck by the disclosure. He looked so normal — buttoned-up even.

  “Isn’t he the greatest?” Kimmy giggled.

  My mother smiled. “Welcome to the family, darling.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Somewhere during dinner, Nick managed to convince my mother that if the house was in fact haunted, it was not due to any shortcomings in her ghost-busting skills. I liked him, but he did not fit my image of an Ivy League professor. He had the requisite salt-and-pepper goatee and thoughtful looking face, but he seemed less clinically detached than I expected him to be, warm even. Nick spoke with admiring passion about tribal rituals that sounded far stranger than anything Anjoli had ever done. He was almost matter-of-fact about my entertaining the idea that the house was haunted.

  “Come on, Nick,” Jack said, slicing the apple pie Nick and Kimmy had brought from a local bakery. “You can’t think a house can have ghosts.”

  “I can’t?” Nick replied.

  “Why can’t he, darling?” Anjoli asked.

  “’Cause it doesn’t make any sense,” Jack. “Come on, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Maybe,” Nick said. “Maybe not. One thing I know for certain is that the longer I live and the more I learn, the more I realize that I know very little. Who’s to say ghosts don’t exist? No one’s proven they do, but no one’s proven they don’t either, and until that happens, as far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out.”

  I didn’t like admitting this — not even to myself — but the fact that a Princeton professor thought there might be some credence to the haunted house theory gave me permission to believe it myself.

  “Really?!” Jack said, incredulously. He sat in silence for a moment, absorbing the thought. “Nah, it’s too out there.”

  “How far out there is it, really, Jack?” Nick asked. “You’ve got five intelligent people who think it’s possible, and only one who’s sure it isn’t. It seems the really radical position is to automatically dismiss something you can’t be certain of.”

  We all turned to Jack to catch his reaction. “Look, I’m not saying you guys can’t believe in ghosts. It’s not my thing.”

  “Not his thing, darling!” Anjoli scoffed. “Can you believe such arrogance?”

  “I wouldn’t call it arrogance, Anjoli,” Nick said, diplomatically. “He’s entitled to his opinion, like you are yours.”

  * * *

  That night after we got Kimmy and Nick settled in the guest room, Anjoli and I surfed the Internet for ghost-busters while Jack went upstairs to read. Browsing a global network of information was difficult with Anjoli because she saw a million things that distracted her. Marketers are smart. They know that when a person enters “space-clearing,” it’s also a good time to hit them up for tarot cards, Wicca products, and essential oils. “Oh look!” Anjoli said. “Space-clearing salt is on close-out!” She insisted I click on the icon because we might need some for our house clearing ritual. “Darling, rock salt is excellent for removing negative energy.”

  “Salt?” I asked.

  “Yes, its cohesive qualities make it the ideal sha chi remover.”

  She sounded like she was on a TV commercial for spiritual Spray ’n’ Wash. Sha chi got you down? No problem. Just use a little rock salt with extra cohesive qualities and say goodbye to evil spirits and negative energy. Thanks rock salt!

  Looking at the myriad of ghost-buster ads made me less sure that this was something I wanted to pursue. One site had a spooky music soundtrack. The other was decorated w
ith tombstones. I felt extremely foolish for even considering this as an option. “Look at these prices, darling!” Anjoli said when she sensed my skepticism growing. “It’s so cheap, you can’t go wrong. Didn’t you say that Healthy Living editor wants you to write an article about this anyway? It’s a tax write-off!”

  “I guess,” I said. “Let’s deal with this tomorrow.”

  “We can’t wait another day!” Anjoli said dramatically. “This is a very powerful spirit if it was able to withstand my clearing rituals. Who knows what nefarious plan it has up its sleeve?” Do ghosts have sleeves? “Besides, I want to get back to the city by Tuesday, so we need to get the place cleaned tomorrow. Darling, you go to sleep. Let Mummy handle this. You know what pleasure it gives me to take care of you.”

  I went upstairs to find Jack in bed reading a novel. It was one of those typical guy paperbacks with a weapon against a dark black-and-red background. He looked up and asked how my hunt for a ghost-buster had gone. “Anjoli’s handling it,” I explained. “She says she enjoys taking care of me.” We laughed. “Hey, you know what I just realized?” Jack paused for me to continue. “We need to put our ad back on the Internet. We’ve got to start looking at new artists for our second season.”

  “I was thinking that too,” Jack said. “Should we ask for psychiatric evaluations this go ’round?”

  “Very funny,” I returned. “What are the odds of getting another Jacquie and Maxime?”

  “Chantrell’s no day at the park either,” Jack added. “What was the deal with that funeral dirge she was playing at dinner?”

  “At a celebration of an engagement no less!”

  “She’s obviously been married before,” Jack said, laughing.

  I whacked him with a pillow. “Jack, seriously, let’s talk about the schedule. If you post the announcement on the web tonight, can we reasonably ask for applications to be in by July 4th?”

  “Why not? That gives people a month. It’s not like our application is overly cumbersome. It’s one page long, big deal. A few days to shoot photos of their work and get the all-clear from a mental health professional. I think that’s plenty fair.”