Connecting

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “If you wouldn’t mind going over some problems, that would be great,” Calla tells Willow, sensing that she needs the distraction.

  “Good. Let’s do it.”

  As Calla reaches for her notebook, she glances over to see if Jacy’s still over there, absorbed by his book.

  He’s there . . . but he’s not absorbed by his book; he’s looking right back at her.

  When she catches him, though, he lowers his eyes again to the page.

  Calla sighs inwardly.

  After school, backpacks over their shoulders, hoods raised against the cold breeze, Calla and Evangeline trail a couple of other school kids along Dale Drive toward the entrance to Lily Dale.

  At this time of year, nobody mans the gatehouse, with its sign that reads LILY DALE ASSEMBLY . . . WORLD’S LARGEST CENTER FORTHE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

  Beyond, the winding lanes of the town are deserted against a cold gray backdrop. Clumps of late-summer flowers, blooming profusely in defiance of an almost perpetually sunless sky, bend and shift on fragile stems in a brisk wind off the choppy lake waters.

  “. . . so then I casually mentioned to him we might be out of town that weekend,” Evangeline is saying, “just in case he was thinking of asking me. What do you think?”

  “Hmm?” Distracted by a sense of uneasiness that’s been nagging at her all day, Calla’s barely been listening to Evangeline’s long-winded account of what happened between her and Russell Lancione during study hall.

  “Never mind. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I—hey, what are you looking at?” Evangeline follows Calla’s gaze off to the right, in the opposite direction of Cottage Row and home.

  Leolyn Woods is over there.

  “Nothing, just . . . want to take the long way home today? I feel like getting some fresh air.”

  “Fresh air?” Evangeline asks dubiously, as a strong gust whips a clump of frizzy orange hair over her face. “You’re joking, right? It’s like a hurricane out here. Any more fresh air and we’ll be dangling from a tree branch somewhere.”

  Her words are punctuated by the familiar, furious silvery clanging of metal wind chimes, as common above local doorsteps as medium shingles are.

  And it isn’t just wind chimes. Calla has no idea whether all Lily Dale residents are as big on indoor clutter as Odelia, Ramona, and a handful of others have proven to be, but they all seem to love outdoor clutter. Birdbaths, garden gnomes, fluttering American flags or smaller nylon ones imprinted with harvest pumpkins and autumn leaves. Now that election season is here, political signs have been popping up, too.

  Calla hasn’t been able to pinpoint any practical or spiritual reason for the jumble of exterior ornamentation. It simply appears to be, to the Lily Dale landscape, what neon-lit signs are to Las Vegas: part of the local tradition.

  “The thing is,” Calla tells Evangeline, with another glance toward Leolyn Woods, “we always go the same way, every single day.”

  “Uh, maybe because that’s where we live?” Evangeline frowns, shaking her head a little and longingly watching her brother, Mason, bear to the left up ahead, toward Cottage Row and home.

  “I’m taking the long way today,” Calla decides. “You don’t have to go with me, though.”

  “But why do you—” Suddenly Evangeline’s round face breaks into a grin. “Oh!”

  “What?”

  “I know why you want to go that way.”

  She does?

  “You do?”

  “Sure.”

  Then why is Evangeline smiling? There’s nothing amusing about a ghost showing a person an old map marked with an X.

  And anyway, how could she know?

  How does anyone around here claim to know anything? Calla reminds herself.

  Okay, Evangeline does claim to be a budding psychic medium, but as far as Calla can tell, she’s got a long way to go. It’s highly unlikely that she had a psychic vision of the book and the map.

  Still, Calla decides to humor her. And in Lily Dale, you really just never can tell.

  “All right,” she says patiently. “Why do I want to go that way?”

  “Blue.”

  “Blue? Blue what?”

  “You mean Blue who. Blue Slayton. Duh. I bet he’s hanging over at Jeremy’s today, right? Jeremy lives there—on East Street.” Evangeline gestures off in the distance, beyond the path toward the woods.

  Actually, he isn’t. He had soccer practice right after school. But Evangeline just gave her a good cover story, so . . .

  “Oh . . . fine. You got me.” Calla feigns a sheepish grin. “That’s why I want to go that way. You coming?”

  Evangeline hesitates.

  Come on, Evangeline . . . come with me . . .

  Calla really isn’t anxious to go into the woods alone. She’s been there before, and it’s a creepy spot. The locals claim Inspiration Stump and its surroundings are a highly charged vortex of spiritual energy, and judging by her own reaction to the place, Calla suspects they’re right.

  “Why not.” Evangeline shrugs and looks down at her chubby build, even more roly-poly than usual in her down jacket. “I could use some extra exercise. Let’s go.”

  As they walk along, she resumes the saga of Russell Lancione and his unrequited crush on her, claiming not to care but spending an awful lot of time analyzing everything he’s said and done.

  Calla hates to cut her off, but they’ve reached the turn-off for Leolyn Wood, and as a conversational rule, Evangeline rarely pauses for air.

  “Hey, let’s walk through there!” Calla exclaims, as though she just thought of it.

  Evangeline breaks off in the middle of a sentence. “What?”

  “The woods. Let’s go that way.”

  “That’s a dead end. Why do you want to go in there?”

  “It’s just so . . . peaceful.” Calla is getting sick of keeping up the act, but she still isn’t ready to tell Evangeline the whole story. For all she knows, the map in the book, which is stashed in her backpack, is utterly meaningless.

  But if not . . .

  “We can’t go in there right now,” Evangeline says simply, shaking her head.

  “It’s okay, then, you go home, and I’ll see you lat—”

  “No.” Evangeline grabs Calla’s coat sleeve. “I mean, we can’t go in there. Not that I don’t want to. Not that I do, though.”

  “Why can’t we?”

  “Didn’t you ever see the sign?”

  “What sign?”

  “Here . . . come on.” Evangeline leads the way to the edge of the grove and points at, sure enough, a sign.

  DO NOT ENTER LEOLYN WOODSIN HIGH WINDS

  “What? That’s crazy,” Calla declares, even as she gazes overhead at the ominously swaying, creaking trees, their gnarled branches bony fingers grasping at the purple-gray heavens.

  “Maybe, but it’s just as crazy to ignore it, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Anyway”—Evangeline flashes her a smile—“I guarantee you Blue Slayton’s not hanging in the woods on a day like today. In fact, I’m sure he knows you’re about to walk past Jeremy’s house, and I bet he comes outside looking for you.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because, duh. He’s one of the most powerful psychics around here. Like his father.”

  Calla considers that. She hasn’t exactly seen evidence of Blue’s abilities since she’s met him . . . but that doesn’t mean Evangeline’s claim isn’t true.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Evangeline hugs herself and stamps her feet a little. “I’m freezing.”

  Calla considers ignoring the warning sign and Evangeline, anxious to see what—if anything—lies in the spot marked by the map.

  Then that nagging sense of uneasiness gets the better of her.

  Another time.

  Maybe she’ll even get Jacy to go with her.

  Though, now that she thinks about it, she’s barely had a chance to talk
to him lately. Today when she tried in the cafeteria, he seemed almost cold. But that was probably because he was reading, and she was interrupting.

  Then again . . .

  The more she thinks about it, the more obvious it seems that he’s been avoiding her lately.

  But why?

  “Calla, you’ll never believe this . . . guess what?” Evangeline breathlessly greets her on the telephone later.

  In the midst of clearing the dinner dishes with her grandmother, Calla grins. Evangeline often begins her calls with that phrase, and her news is rarely anything anyone else would consider earth shattering.

  “I can’t even imagine,” she tells Evangeline dryly, “so you’ll have to tell me.”

  “My aunt is going to take us shopping at the mall tomorrow after school!”

  “Really?” Calla perks up. “Wow, that would be—oh, wait. I can’t. I forgot to tell you this afternoon . . . my dad’s flying into Buffalo tomorrow to visit me for the weekend.”

  “That stinks. I mean, I know how much you miss him, but—hey, wait a minute. The mall is in Buffalo, too. What time is he coming in?”

  “I think around eight.” She looks around for the scrap of paper where she wrote down her father’s flight information when he called earlier.

  “We can all go to the mall, then pick up your dad at the airport! My aunt won’t mind. Let me go ask her. Aunt Ramona! ”

  The phone drops with a clatter in Calla’s ear before she has a chance to protest—not that she necessarily was going to.

  After what she’s been through lately, a trip to the mall would be a nice, welcome dose of normal.

  She carries some dirty dishes over to the sink.

  “What’s going on?” Odelia asks, rinsing a sudsy glass.

  “Evangeline said her aunt could take us shopping at the mall on Friday, then pick up Dad at the airport.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I know. I just don’t want Ramona to have to go out of her way.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’ll mind,” Odelia comments with a small, cryptic smile.

  Seeing it, Calla remembers the strange sensation she had about Dad and Ramona when her father visited a few weeks ago and they met for the first time. The two of them couldn’t be more different, but it was almost as if there was some kind of fleeting connection between them. At the time, Calla didn’t know what to make of it, or even if it was just her imagination.

  But now, looking at her grandmother, she gets the distinct impression that Odelia might somehow have the same crazy inkling.

  Evangeline is back on the phone, sounding a little breathless. “Aunt Ramona said she’d love to pick up your dad at the airport Friday night!”

  “She’d love it?” Calla echoes dubiously.

  “That’s what she said. Just get the flight information and tell him we’ll be there! Aren’t you psyched? I love how everything just falls into place, don’t you?”

  “Sure . . . I guess. Listen, I’ll see you in the morning for school.”

  “See you then!”

  Calla hangs up the phone to see that her grandmother is still watching her, looking as though she wants to say something. “What?”

  Odelia shrugs. “Nothing, just . . . Ramona is a great person, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. I love her.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” Calla echoes. “Why good?”

  “No reason,” Odelia replies as the doorbell rings. “That’s Mr. Henry. Would you mind finishing the dishes for me?”

  “Sure. You mean Mr. Henry from yesterday? The one who’s trying to reach his dead wife?”

  “That’s the one.” Odelia dries her hands and heads for the door.

  A few moments later, she’s escorting Owen Henry— looking just as dapper as before, and just as feeble as he leans on his cane—through the kitchen on the way to the back room where she sees her clients.

  “This is my granddaughter, Calla.”

  He smiles and pauses to lean on the cane with his left hand while tipping his hat with his right. “Lovely as the lily. We met.”

  “Good luck,” she says, and goes back to the dishes as he and Odelia disappear into the back room.

  She’s upstairs doing her homework when they emerge an hour later. After hearing her grandmother show him out the front door, she goes to the top of the stairs.

  “Did you get through to Betty, Gammy?” she calls down.

  “Nope.”

  Surprised by her grandmother’s flat response, she descends the stairs halfway to find Odelia frowning.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I wasn’t getting anything at all from him. It happens sometimes.” “Was he disappointed?”

  “Yup. He kept insisting that I try harder to reach her. I explained that it doesn’t work that way—that it’s not like a telephone where you just dial up the spirit of your choice.”

  She’s said that countless times to Calla. It doesn’t help to ease the frustration.

  I know how you feel, Owen Henry, Calla thinks as she climbs slowly back up the stairs. I’ve lost someone I love, too. And I’d do anything to connect with her again.

  In the shadowy second-floor hall, she rounds the corner— and cries out when she comes face-to-face with a stranger.

  Oh, okay . . . she’s not real. At least, she’s not alive—or of this century, or even the last. She’s wearing a long dress with a snug bodice and high collar, and her hair is pinned back severely, Victorian-style.

  “Miriam?” Calla asks instinctively, and the woman smiles delightedly before drifting through the wall—in the very spot where there was once a doorway to an upstairs sitting room, Odelia told her.

  “What happened?” Odelia calls, hurrying up the stairs. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Gammy. Actually, I think I just met Miriam.”

  “You mean you saw her?”

  “Yup.” And her heart is still pounding from the scare.

  “That means your psychic awareness really is growing stronger every day,” her grandmother informs her.

  Maybe so.

  And maybe she’s getting closer to being able to glimpse the one person she longs to see again.

  Because what good is it for her to be able to see dead people if the one person she’s lost and needs most of all isn’t among them?

  One of the Lily Dale mediums—Althea York, Willow’s mother—did actually see Mom standing beside Calla. It should have been comforting, and it was, in a way, but it was also incredibly frustrating to know Mom was right there and yet not be able to make the connection on her own.

  She tried to convince herself that it was enough just to know her mother’s still with her.

  But it isn’t.

  She longs to see her, the way she’s seen other spirits, like the woman, Miriam, in the hall just now. She longs to speak to her mother.

  “Your pain is so overwhelming . . . it may be acting as a barrier,” Althea told her. She went on to explain that in time, when Calla learns to accept her loss—and to become more expert at opening herself to spirit energy—her mother might be able to come through to her.

  Not exactly promising.

  Calla can’t imagine ever accepting that her mother’s been ripped from her life so unfairly—and deliberately.

  In Mom’s girlhood bedroom, she closes the door behind her and kicks off her shoes.

  It’s taken a while, but Calla finally feels at home in this room, with its vintage furniture, whitewashed beadboard, wallpaper, and carpet in soft shades of sage and rose.

  The bureau and shelves are filled with Mom’s books, framed photos, and other mementos of the girl she once was. On the bed is a quilt Odelia made of fabric squares from Mom’s old clothing. Whenever Calla climbs into bed and wraps herself in it, she likes to imagine being wrapped in her mom’s arms again.

  When her homework is done, Calla changes into pajamas and does just that, hoping she’ll get through a night without nightmare
s for a change. The one about Mom being pushed down the stairs, or the other one . . .

  The one that keeps popping up to remind Calla that something tore Odelia and Mom apart for good, years ago. She’s been hearing snatches of their terrible argument in her dreams since she got to Lily Dale.

  At first, before she knew about her “gift,” she assumed she must have witnessed it, as a toddler.

  But now she wonders if she was really there at all. Maybe she’s been channeling the emotion-charged past.

  “. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . . ,” Mom sobbed.

  “. . . for your own good . . . ,” Odelia said, and then, “. . . how you can live with yourself . . .”

  Then one of them, Calla isn’t sure which, declared, with chilling certainty, “The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake.”

  Calla has grown pretty sure they must have been talking about Cassadaga Lake, just yards from Odelia’s doorstep. Her grandmother inexplicably forbade her to set foot in its waters when she first got to Lily Dale in August.

  Calla can’t help but wonder if whatever secrets might lie in its black depths could possibly have something to do with her mother’s death.

  With her murder.

  When at last she falls asleep tonight, she does dream, but not about Mom and Odelia.

  She dreams about a gothic-looking house perched high on a cliff, with an octagonal stained-glass window in its square center turret and a widow’s walk above.

  And she dreams about a woman with a puff of white hair and gold-rimmed glasses on a chain.

  Odelia may not have been able to get through to Owen Henry’s lost love . . . but somehow, Calla has.

  There was no specific message, though. Just the house and Betty.

  With the school day ahead and her father on the way, there’s nothing to do but file it away with all the other spirits she’s met in passing.

  For now, Owen Henry will have to keep on longing, keep on waiting, keep on hoping for a connection.

  Just like me.

  FIVE

  Buffalo, New York

  Friday, September 21