The Queen Gene

by Jennifer Coburn

  I smiled at his suggestion. “When did you get to be so cute?” I asked him, crawling in to be closer to him on the bed.

  “I’ve always been this way,” he replied.

  “You were a grump for years,” I said softly, kissing his forehead, then moving to his lips.

  “I was great.”

  “You were a jerk,” I kissed him again. And before we knew it, we forgot all about posting our request for applications online that night.

  * * *

  After Nick and Kimmy had breakfast, they said goodbye and headed back to Princeton. They promised to come back for our open house on Labor Day weekend, a promise I knew they’d keep. Nick sounded far too intrigued by the idea of our make-your-own culture we’d created here on a few acres in the Berkshires. I liked him. He seemed just grounded enough to make a good, stable life with Kimmy, and yet wacky enough to keep up with the excitement she’d bring.

  “Shelia will be here at three,” Anjoli announced as the car drove away.

  “Shelia?” I asked. Jack held the same puzzled expression, begging an answer.

  As she tied her scarf around her hair to make a pony tail, Anjoli answered, “The woman who’s going to finish the space-clearing I began, darling. Do you have any chicken liver?”

  “Dare I ask what she needs with chicken liver, Mother?”

  We walked toward the house, and she stroked Mancha’s head. “Not for the space-clearing! For my baby. His nutritionist said he could be suffering from an iron deficiency. Chicken liver for a space-clearing,” she scoffed. “Don’t be ludicrous, darling.”

  Anjoli sat at the kitchen table while I loaded the dishwasher, and Jack took Adam down to his studio where he had recently installed a bouncing duck that a toddler could jump around in. “Have you ever taken him to a regular vet?” I asked my mother.

  “Why would I do that, darling?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t they need vaccinations?”

  “I would never vaccinate Mancha!” Anjoli said, sounding appalled. “The mercury could upset his little system, darling. Plus, more goes wrong in these medical offices than anyone ever reports. I say if you want to stay healthy, keep far away from doctors.”

  “Mother,” I said, as I realized my hand had been motionless under running water for quite some time. “I hate to have to ask you this, but did you have me vaccinated?”

  “If I had it to do over again, I would spare you those awful shots, but yes, when you were a baby, I marched in lock-step with the doctor’s orders,” Anjoli said. “I suppose you’re relieved about this, darling?”

  “I am.”

  “So conventional,” Anjoli said, waving her hand. “Anyway, darling, Shelia will be here at three, so I was hoping you could vacuum beforehand.”

  “Vacuum?”

  “Yes, darling. Last night I did some reading on the Internet and learned that negative energy can get stuck in the carpet. The more we can clean up before she gets here, the better off we’ll be.”

  “Aren’t we paying her to clean?” I asked.

  “We can’t expect her to vacuum, darling!”

  There are times when I’m conversing with my mother when I have to stop myself and ask, What the hell am I talking about?! This was definitely one of them. “Okay,” I said, inhaling deeply. “I’ll vacuum before she gets here.”

  * * *

  At 3:20 pm, the doorbell rang. By then not only was every inch of carpet vacuumed, Mother insisted that we lift all of the seat cushions and suction spirits from the sofa and love seat. I found myself wondering if a simple vacuum cleaner bag would be strong enough to contain a ghost that managed to injure women’s legs and to deplete artists of their creativity. Then I found myself wondering if I’d lost my mind completely by surrendering my home to an Internet ghost-buster found by a woman who had driven a dog to neurosis.

  “A thousand apologies for my lateness,” said Shelia. “Traffic was terrible.” Somehow I had imagined her arriving by broom or magic carpet. At the very least, I’d expected her omnipotence to be able to avert mundane problems like traffic. Shelia wore a black sweatshirt with gold script lettering that read “Magic Happens” and a long black skirt with dark blue Chuck Taylor high tops. She placed a square shoe box on my kitchen table and introduced herself, holding my hand too long and gazing too deeply into my eyes. When she spoke, I noticed her teeth were badly capped and her gums had freckles. I never knew gums could have spots, but hers did. Shelia opened her box and told us that she found Tibetan tingsha bells extremely effective in purifying space. “My bells are handcrafted in bronze, iron, and zinc by Tibetan monks,” she said. I felt as though she expected some sort of reaction from me and couldn’t help accommodating.

  “Mmmm,” I said, faking being impressed.

  “They are individually ground and polished and adorned with ancient, mystic symbols,” Shelia said, again waiting for a reaction.

  “Really?” Anjoli said.

  Shelia continued. “They are treasured for their ability to produce pure and cleansing sounds that release spaces of their sha chi.”

  All right, lady, let’s get this show on the road. I need to get dinner on the table in another two hours.

  She held the bells out for Anjoli and me to inspect. It felt as awkward as when waiters asked me to approve of the first sip of wine from a bottle. What was I supposed to say? “Lovely,” I muttered. Soon Shelia was flitting around my house ringing her bells in each corner of the room. As the bells rang, Shelia shut her eyes and contorted her face as if spirits were traveling through her.

  Jack, who had come upstairs to refill Adam’s sippy cup with juice, couldn’t resist. “Are we trying to get rid of the ghosts or call them to the table for dinner?”

  I wanted to run into his arms and declare myself on his side of this debate once and for all. I wondered how I let myself believe that this witchy bell-ringer could solve our problems. With a look I told Jack, You were right. This is truly ridiculous.

  Adam pointed at Shelia and said he wanted the drums. Apparently, the tingsha bells look like an instrument from preschool music class. Adam thought it was time to reach in to the basket of music and sing “Sha Chi, go away, don’t come back another day.”

  “Darling, go back to your studio,” Anjoli scolded.

  “Is this studio in the house?” Shelia asked, still ringing.

  “Yes,” I answered. “We’ve got three guest houses and a studio in the back.”

  “I’ll need to see them all,” Shelia demanded. “Spirits can be very sneaky and hide. I need to ring every corner of every space if I am to fully cleanse the property of sha chi.” I wondered if she charged by the corner.

  She became more animated, swirling around the room with a childlike carelessness. One might think she was enjoying herself, except every few seconds she stopped dead in her tracks and scrunched her face as if she were swallowing bad medicine.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked her.

  “It’s intense. Sha chi is leaving your home and using my body as a conduit to the spirit world,” Shelia said.

  Jack tried to contain his smile. “I hate it when that happens.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As we were making our way down the path to the guest cottages, I realized that it would be my first peek inside them since the artists moved in.

  In a way, I hoped no one was home, especially Randy. How would I explain this witchy woman wanting to come inside to ring bells in each corner?

  Our first knock was on the door of Maxime and Jacquie’s place. It took a good minute for Maxime to answer, and when he did he looked as if we’d interrupted a nap. “Hi,” I said, brightly. “This is my friend, Shelia, and you remember my mother, Anjoli, right?” He barely nodded. “I was wondering if we could come in for a sec and look around. Jacquie’s not here, is she?”

  “No, she is at the mall with Chantrell,” he said before beginning to weep. “Excuse me for the tears. I cannot stop crying for months. If I sketch
ed all the time I cried, I would have an entire exhibit by now.”

  As he spoke, my eyes scanned the living room in disbelief. I had seen fraternity houses that were cleaner than this house. There were fast-food wrappers on the floor, stacks of newspaper, and a mountain of shopping bags in the corner. The smell of old food permeated the entire cottage. Despite the fact that Jack and Tom had installed screens, bugs had managed to find their way in to make an insect hurricane around the uncovered garbage pail. I was certain that no self-respecting ghost was in this home, but asked to come in anyway.

  “I hope Chantrell is shopping for Lysol,” Anjoli said to Maxime. Without acknowledging her, he returned to the wooden bench at his table and buried his overflowing eyes in his palms.

  As it turned out, my fear about how I would explain Shelia was completely unfounded. Maxime didn’t seem at all curious about this strange woman who was dancing around his house ringing bells and contorting her face. He might not have even noticed because after Shelia finished, he simply looked up from his table and thanked us for stopping by.

  Rattled by the mess Maxime and Jacquie had made of our guest home, I asked Anjoli and Shelia for advice. “I think I should call a therapist. This man is obviously depressed.”

  “Forget about the therapist, darling. Call a cleaning woman,” Anjoli suggested. “Protect your investment before you worry about this deadbeat’s mental health. You’re going to get rats in that place if you’re not careful.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so,” Shelia began, “that guy and his wife need a good, swift kick in the ass. Didn’t you say they are living here as your guests?” I confirmed. “You’re not responsible for getting him a shrink or a maid. Tell him to clean up his act or hit the road.” This was not the advice I expected of a self-proclaimed spiritual practitioner, but then again, she was in the business of evicting spirits, not coddling them.

  I suggested we go to Chantrell’s house next since I knew she wasn’t there. Plus, I saw that Randy was home and hoped he might leave before we got around to his place. The cellist kept her home immaculate, but I was surprised to see the number of crucifixes hanging on the walls. There was a gold Jesus on the cross next to a plain gold cross in the entry way, and a painted Jesus on a wooden cross in the kitchen. In the living room there was a colorful needlepoint cross framed in glass, an equally colorful God’s eye-like cross done with rainbow yarn, and another made with twigs that appeared to have come from our woods. I could see a painting of Jesus in the hallway leading to her bedroom, but decided not to go down that path. No one could help noticing the tidal wave of Christ. Even Mancha seemed to be taking it all in, moving his beady eyes from one cross to the next.

  Anjoli shuddered. “I feel so violated, darling,” she said. “Who knew it was going to be a cathedral in here?”

  While my mother felt violated by the abundance of crucifixes, I felt we had invaded Chantrell’s privacy and was eager to get out of her home. Of course, I owned the place, but going in without her prior knowledge was something I hadn’t thought through well enough. I felt as though Chantrell would be justifiably angry if she discovered we’d been in her home. I also had the feeling I was going to burn in eternal damnation. “Let’s get out of here,” I suggested to Anjoli. “Shelia, be quick about it and meet us outside.”

  “Have you gone mad, darling?” Anjoli protested. “We haven’t seen her bedroom. I’ve got a hundred bucks that says she’s crossed the mattresses over each other and is sleeping on a Posturepedic crucifix.”

  “Mother!” I scolded.

  Shelia began ringing bells, ignoring my mother’s and my argument.

  “Darling, why would you want to deprive me of such fun? I’m looking forward to seeing what other goodies she’s got. What do you say we leave a little cross in the bathroom, right above the toilet paper, and write ‘Holy shit’ on it?”

  I couldn’t tell whether or not she was kidding, but with Anjoli, it’s best to err on the side of caution. “I don’t think a devout Catholic would find that very funny.”

  “Oh, pooh!” Anjoli pouted to the sound of tingsha bells. “Let’s go check her underwear drawer to see if she’s got panties with days of the week on them. Christ, that’s so Catholic! I’ll grab a marker and we can write ‘Ash’ over Wednesday and ‘Good’ before Friday. Surely the girl has some sense of humor and would appreciate a little joke, darling.”

  As Anjoli contemplated her sophomoric pranks and Shelia rang bells in every corner of the rooms, I wondered about how this ultra-Catholic Irish woman reconciled having an affair with a married man just a few months ago. Sure, my hedonistic heathen of a mother ran around with the gold band crowd, but that was to be expected. How did Chantrell, the earthy musician with a thing for Christ, cat around with the Frenchman next door? I remembered that I should call Renee and see how she was doing — if Dan had agreed to go to marriage counseling as we had discussed. When we last spoke, Renee said she was going to insist that they get counseling or pack a suitcase for him, though I suspected that the last part was more of a throwaway line.

  “Okay, we’re outta here,” said Shelia after about three minutes of bell-ringing.

  We’re outta here? I expected this from a cab driver, not a spirit remover.

  “Show me the next place,” Shelia demanded. “You know I’m going to have to charge extra, right? When I talked to Angie on the phone, she didn’t say anything about all these corners.”

  Petting Mancha’s smooth head, Anjoli stopped and looked up at me. It’s on me, she mouthed. “Does baby want a treat?” She reached into the side pocket of her purse and fed Mancha a tiny brick-red pellet.

  My heart pounded like a drum at a virgin sacrifice when we reached Randy’s house. He came to the door in his white t-shirt and jeans, squinted and smiled at me, then looked at my mother and Shelia. “Hey, what’s up, Lu?” he asked. Oh, you know, nothing special. At the sound of your voice uttering my name — my shortened name at that — my nipples just sprang to life, and I’ll need to change my panties. Same old, same old.

  “Hey, Rand,” I said, mentally kicking myself for the ridiculous attempt to imitate his style. “This is probably going to sound a bit bizarre,” I began. He is smirking! Is he smirking or smiling? How does he get half of his mouth to turn up like that while the other half stays put? How full are those lips? “But my mother’s friend, Shelia, is taking a class on ghost-busting,” I lied, rolling my eyes at the absurdity. “And my mother told her she could practice here because there are, um” — my confidence waned as I spoke the next words — “there are, um, so many corners for, um, for her to ring her tingsha bells in.”

  I was standing slightly in front of Anjoli and Shelia and hoped to God that they had enough discretion to refrain from making any quizzical facial expressions.

  “Tingsha bells?” Randy repeated.

  I raised my eyebrows and rolled my eyes so the women behind me couldn’t see. “I told you it was an odd request, but she really needs to do our whole place or she’ll get a bad grade on the assignment.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” Randy said with a laugh. Was it my imagination or was he looking at me more than the other women? I suppose I was the one speaking to him, but it seemed as though his eyes broke contact with mine only rarely. “I just wonder why you’re using tingsha bells. My mom always burns the wands.”

  “Juniper wands?” Shelia chimed in.

  Randy nodded. “I think so.”

  “Those are only for cleansing. We need to get rid of the sha chi in here,” Shelia said.

  “There’s no sha chi in here,” Randy began. “I only see three beautiful women in my home.” God save us from our girlish idiocy, but we all giggled. Even Mancha. “Go ahead and do what you need, Lu. You know my place is yours.”

  I wasn’t sure what to quiver about first. He said my name, not the other two so-called beautiful women. I absolutely loved the Lu business. And, my place is yours. Okay, technically, it’s just an accurate representation of
the ownership status of the property, but when he said it, I felt our bodies wrapped around each other’s in a naked embrace. Good God, if I were glass, I’d shatter too.

  “How do you know about all of this space-clearing stuff?” I asked.

  “My mom is into all that new age philosophy,” he answered. “We’re from Northern California.”

  “Principles, darling,” Anjoli added. “The spiritual principles that your mother follows have been around longer than any religion, so calling them philosophies is really quite condescending.”

  Shut up, Mother!

  “Okay, I’m done,” said Shelia.

  “That was fast,” slipped out. “I mean, you took less than a minute. Randy’s got some serious sha chi here. Everything he touches breaks, and he works with glass! That’s some serious stuff, Shelia. Maybe you should do another round.”

  Randy smiled. “I thought this was a school assignment.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t take it seriously, does it?” I returned without hesitation. “I think people should throw themselves into everything they do fully and passionately.” Holy fuck, did I just say that aloud? “They should be conscientious and committed,” I corrected.

  “It’ll be extra,” Shelia said.

  “Extra credit!” I said, bursting with nervous energy. I wondered if there was a new age term for my neurotic Jewish energy that seemed to have a life of its own. Yid chi? “Shelia, you’re such a dedicated student that I know you’ll want to go for that extra credit. Now spin your wand and do your thing.”

  “Bells,” Randy corrected.

  Shelia shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  “So are you,” I blurted.

  What?! What did I just say?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When Chantrell returned from her shopping excursion with Jacquie, she was not too happy about discovering that we had been in her home. I don’t blame her, but her reaction was a bit much. She dropped her shopping bags as soon as she crossed the threshold and stormed back outside shouting. Anjoli, Shelia, and I came out from Randy’s cottage to see what all of the commotion was about. “I want to know who’s been in my house!” she shouted. Before anyone could answer, she shrieked again. “Don’t stand there looking like fools. Tell me who’s been in my goddamned house.”