Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “You okay?” Mae asked.

  Niall put the bookmark back between the pages and closed the volume. “Christ. Don’t know why I did that. She’s never going to finish it.” He dropped the book in a box and went outside.

  Mae began her work in the kitchen, packing mismatched plates and utensils into boxes for the thrift store. A cast-iron frying pan sat on the stovetop as if Florencia was going to come back and cook breakfast. Mae paused as she started to pack it up. Jamie always complained about her cheap nonstick frying pan—but no, that would bother him, scavenging the dying woman’s stuff. She put the pan in the box.

  The contents of the refrigerator, nothing but yogurt and applesauce, suggested Florencia had reached a point where she couldn’t eat solid food, but there was so much left, she’d overestimated either her appetite or her lifespan.

  What would it be like to know it was the last time you’d go grocery shopping, the last time you’d do all your ordinary tasks? To have to stop and let go of your life? Mae had so many plans and goals. Everything that mattered hinged on having a future. What would it be like not to have one? The idea threw a blank wall in front of her mind. No matter how she tried to imagine the experience, she couldn’t—unless that faceless obstacle was it.

  When Niall returned, a whiff of tobacco smoke came through the door with him. It bothered Mae more than ever, provoking an image of helping her father to put all of Niall’s stuff in boxes. Marty, a college track and softball coach, was fit and active. His fifty-one years looked like forty on him, while Niall, a year younger, could have passed for sixty. Mae was sure he had chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer could be next.

  Soft thuds came from the living room, broken up with long pauses. Mae dropped the last expired yogurt into the trash and walked to the living room doorway. Niall was putting books in boxes, very slowly, opening pages, stopping to read passages. He coughed, sniffed, sighed. Mourning while Florencia was still alive. Reeking of smoke. Mae wanted to tear the cigarettes out of his pocket.

  The urge crossed her mind again and again as the work stretched out through the day. While Mae was in the bedroom packing up the clothes Florencia had left behind, he cleaned the bathroom, with frequent smoke breaks and long pauses between bouts of activity. Mae felt the weight of those silences. He was slowed down by grief, and also by lack of breath.

  The bedroom gave Mae a new impression of Florencia. A silk duvet. Satin-edged sheets. Small paintings on the wall and delicately painted pottery arrayed on the dressers. She’d cared about the beauty of her place of sleep. I wonder if she had guests here, but not the kitchen. Not lately, though. If she’d had a lover, Niall wouldn’t have been the one she’d turned to for this final favor.

  Mae went to check on one of Niall’s silences and found him staring at a hairbrush. Hair. A reminder of when Florencia had been healthy. He glared at her. “Stop fussing over me. I need to be alone.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mae returned to work in the bedroom closet, trying to shut off an image of Niall sick and bald.

  She noticed a few strands of Florencia’s hair on some of the sweaters as she took them out of drawers. Sometimes it was long and dark; at other times it had been cut short and dyed fuchsia. Fuchsia. A lot of people cut their hair when they started chemo. Had she done that and then gone crazy with the color? Defying death? Mocking her illness? Another piece of the puzzle of this woman.

  As the afternoon faded into early evening, Niall declared they’d done all they could for one day. They stepped out onto the porch and he locked the front door, a conventional lock plus a deadbolt. “We should check the back door.”

  On the rear of the house near the driveway, a former screened porch had been converted into a sunroom. All the blinds were drawn, as they were on most houses in the hottest months of the year. Niall tested the door knob and bent down to peer into the crack. “Both locks are on.”

  “Is that the studio?”

  “Ayeh.” He rattled the door again. “Secure as it’s going to get.”

  As they walked to the truck, Mae said, “I’m surprised she doesn’t have an alarm system with that art collection.”

  “Not many people know she has it. I guess you could tell she didn’t have a lot of visitors. Alarm’s a good idea, though. Or storage. I’ll call her tomorrow when she’s gotten settled.”

  Mae drove to Niall and Marty’s adobe house on Riverside Drive. Their other vehicle wasn’t in the driveway. “I guess Daddy’s not back yet.” He ran summer softball camps at the College of the Rio Grande campus in Las Cruces. “I’ll wait with you.”

  “No, go home. Get some rest. I could use some time by myself.”

  Mae hesitated to leave. Though she understood the need to be alone, she wanted Niall to have someone within shouting distance if he changed his mind. “How about I start dinner for y’all?”

  He put on a shocked look. “You?”

  “Why not? A bad cook is better than none.”

  She headed for the purple front door. Niall, a few paces behind her, stopped when his cell phone rang. He answered. “Hmm?” Had to be Marty. Niall would at least say hello to someone less intimate. “Yeah. Good enough.” He pocketed the phone. “He got a table for us at Dada Café.”

  “That was real thoughtful.”

  “Ayeh. I’m not in the mood for it, but he meant well.”

  Mae offered to drive, but Niall—though he had to be so exhausted he could hardly stand—grumbled about the wastefulness of returning in separate cars when they could walk a few blocks. She shook her head. In the morning she could hardly get him to walk a block, and now she couldn’t get him to rest when he was tired. If he held still, maybe the grief would overwhelm him.

  They went inside for a quick cleanup, then took Pershing Street to Broadway and turned left toward the restaurant. The blue neon sign on the flat roof of the Ellis building displayed the name of its former owner, depression-era healer Magnolia Ellis, against a sky reflecting pink from the sunset. The sidewalks in front of it bore the imprint WPA 1939. Like much of downtown, the building dated to the years when the town, then called Hot Springs, had been a mecca for people seeking cures and even miracles. When Mae and Niall passed the two-story brick structure, she was startled to see a realtor’s sign in the downstairs window below the lettering advertising the current tenant’s chiropractic practice. She stopped and made sure she’d seen it right.

  “What are you doing?” Niall asked, slightly out of breath. “Need to rest?”

  “It’s for sale. I wonder if Dr. Freidan is gonna retire.”

  “Want me to buy it for you? Set you up as the heir to Magnolia?”

  There was no way Niall could afford to purchase the historic landmark. He was successful, but not like Florencia Mirabal, and though Mae had gifts as a psychic and healer, she was no Magnolia Ellis. Niall had to be kidding about buying the place. “You buy it for me, I’m setting up a personal training studio.”

  “Nope. In T or C, there’s more call for healers.” The town had become Truth or Consequences and an arts center, but it remained a spa destination. “You want a personal training business, you’ll have to do that in Cruces.”

  Niall crossed the Ellis building’s parking lot and studied the realtor’s sign in the window. Mae followed.

  Maybe he hadn’t been teasing her. Niall liked to invest in real estate. He owned several rental houses, including the one Mae lived in rent-free while she was in college. The Ellis building would be a great investment, though not for Mae to use. She was nowhere near ready to set up a business, especially not as a full-time healer.

  In the window of the office, her tall, athletic form reflected beside Niall’s. Both were five-foot-ten, but she took up more space with her curves and muscles than he did with his thinly covered bones. He coughed a few times and said, “I might look into this.”

  What good was it to invest in a future he might not be around for?

  Niall felt for his cigarettes.

  Don’t
do that. Please. Mae put an arm around him, interrupting the act. “You’re so sweet. You’d really buy me Magnolia’s building?”

  “Maybe. If you want it.”

  She didn’t, but the offer touched her, and she couldn’t help wrapping Niall’s hug-resistant frame in an embrace. What I want is for you to quit smoking.

  Mae’s vision shifted. It was suddenly midday. The front windows of the building revealed a full waiting room. Old-fashioned cars lined up along the street, people sitting in them with their windows rolled down. More cars filled the parking lot. Mae felt a pure life force flowing through her like the brilliant light of New Mexico, like the hot springs under the city’s skin. Her mind went as clear as the sky in her vision. A deep, glowing certainty filled her. Something moved from her to Niall, some of the infinite light.

  He pulled back, and she let go. The strange image and feelings cleared. It was early evening again. The crowds were gone. Had she been in an altered state for more than a minute? It had been so deep, time had ceased. As a psychic, Mae could see someone’s past by touching things that person had owned, but she normally had to concentrate and use crystals to do it. This moment from the town’s history had come back uninvited, complete with what felt like the healer’s energy.

  Was it a sign? Mae looked up at the Magnolia Ellis sign and then at the “For Sale” sign and almost laughed. A sign. If it was, she couldn’t take it too literally. It might be a reminder to keep working as a healer, but not to have Niall buy the building.

  He took a cigarette out and lit up but didn’t take his usual deep drag. Frowning at it, he put it out against a brick and slid it back into the pack.

  Chapter Two

  Why didn’t Niall smoke the cigarette? Had the healing energy made him reluctant to light up? Mae wanted to know but didn’t dare ask. He hated being nagged about smoking. They walked on to Dada Café in silence.

  On arrival, they found Marty waiting for them in the main dining room of the eclectically decorated restaurant. He was still dressed for work, wearing track pants and a T-shirt featuring the mascot of the College of the Rio Grande teams, the Tarantulas. His sandy brown hair, streaked with gray, was mashed from wearing a ball cap all day, and his freckled arms were slightly burned.

  “Hey.” He stood and gave Niall a hug. To Mae’s surprise, Niall returned it and held on for a moment before they sat. Marty said, “I guess you had a day of it.”

  Niall picked up a menu and flipped it open. “Mae helped a lot. I’ll have to finish up and meet the thrift shop truck there tomorrow.”

  “You want me to do that?” Mae asked. “If they’re coming early, I can do it before I leave for Mescalero.”

  “Thanks, but they didn’t give me a time yet.”

  “Take it easy,” Marty said. “Let the truck take the furniture and whatever you’ve packed, and I’ll help you with the rest on Saturday.”

  Their waiter was Reno. He appeared silently and placed a basket of bread on the table. “Can I get you any drinks?”

  Niall said, “In a minute.” He slid his fingers back and forth on the menu, then looked up at the waiter and spoke softly. “You left so fast this morning I didn’t get to ask you this. I haven’t talked to your father about Florencia yet. Have you?”

  Reno took in a sharp breath. “Please, don’t use her name. I’ll see him tomorrow. What can I get you?”

  Niall ordered a beer, and Mae and Marty ordered iced tea. When the waiter departed, Niall said, “I should have remembered that taboo, as many years as I’ve known Reno’s father. I expect you’ll meet him when you get to Mescalero.”

  “I will?” It would be Mae’s first visit to the reservation where her friend Bernadette Pena had grown up. “I don’t know if Bernadette knows him. She hasn’t lived there for ages.”

  Niall gave her an exasperated look. “He’s not as famous as Howe or Mirabal, but still ...” He shook his head. “She’ll know him. They probably went to high school together. He’s on the tribal council, and he helped Jamie’s father get his research with the tribe started. Everybody knows Orville.”

  When Reno returned with their drinks, Niall said, “Mae’s headed to Mescalero tomorrow. Maybe you two could carpool.”

  Startled, Mae glanced at Niall and then at Reno. What in the world had prompted that offer?

  “I doubt it.” The young man gave her a perfunctory smile. “Are you ready to order?”

  After they placed their orders and Reno left, Mae asked Niall, “Why’d you say he could ride with me? He’s about as friendly as a rock.”

  Niall sipped his beer. “He won’t ride on Misty’s Harley. Scares him. And Reno drives the turquoise Rabbit.”

  “Oh.” The ancient car was a T or C icon of sorts. With a duct-taped back window, more dents than smooth surfaces, and a layer of bumper stickers attesting to a long history of eccentric owners, it was often presumed dead, sitting on Austin Street for weeks at a time in front of a shabby turquoise-and-white trailer like a matching accessory. Then it would appear in the parking lot at Bullocks’ grocery or on Main Street in front of the coffee shop. Mae had sometimes heard other pedestrians marveling over the fact that it had moved. “Maybe I should offer again. I don’t think that ol’ thing could make the trip. And Misty might need a ride, too, if they’re going together. I can’t blame him for not wanting to get on her bike with her. I’ve done it once, and she’s kind of a crazy driver.”

  When Reno returned, Mae said, “If you do end up needing a ride, I live right behind Frank and Kenny’s place.” Her neighbors worked in Dada Café’s kitchen. “They know how to get hold of me.”

  Reno served their salads and refilled water glasses. “Thank you, but I have other plans.” He picked up his tray and started to walk off and then paused, almost smiling. With that slight thaw, he became as beautiful as Howe’s winged cowboy. “You underestimate the Rabbit.”

  Maybe his beauty had made Misty fall for him. He didn’t strike Mae as having any other charms.

  After dinner, Niall did what he always did when they ate at Dada Café: sat on the bench at the corner of Broadway and Foch and lit up. Mae’s hope that he might be quitting flickered and faded. She and Marty walked a few paces away to avoid the fumes.

  “Got your things all packed?” Marty asked.

  “Not really, no. Just some warm stuff for after dark. I’d rather come back here at night than pay for a motel.”

  “That’s a lot of driving. Jamie okay with that?”

  “We compromised. I told him I wouldn’t mind getting a motel for one or two nights. But not four. I don’t like having him pay for stuff like that—I like to split things. And that’s as much as I can afford. Gas for the Focus is gonna be cheaper.”

  Mae noticed a lack of smoke and realized that Niall was doing the same thing he’d done at the Ellis building, putting the cigarette out and sliding it back in the pack.

  “Daddy—did you see that?”

  Marty nodded. He strolled over to sit beside Niall with a calmness that Mae admired. He had to be thrilled and hopeful inside. After a long pause, Marty asked, “You quitting?”

  Niall held out the pack of cigarettes. “I can’t smoke. I just stare at the frickin’ things. I even light up. And I can’t smoke.”

  Mae had made a commitment not to use her healing skills without asking first. Having made that mistake once with Jamie, she was careful now, but maybe the spirit of Magnolia Ellis had somehow sensed Mae’s wishes and helped. No—if she could do that, her parking lot would be like Lourdes or Chimayo. However, the place did have a legacy of healing energy. Mae must have activated it with the intensity of her desire for Niall to quit.

  All she could see of her father was the back of his head, his broad shoulders and his long lean arms spread along the back of the bench. He rubbed Niall’s neck. “I can think of worse things to have happen.”

  Niall stood, slipping out of the public display of affection. “Next thing you know I’ll be wanting to exercise.”

&n
bsp; Marty rose and met Mae’s eyes, his raised eyebrow and cocked head asking if she was responsible. She shrugged and held her palms up.

  They walked to the near-empty parking lot behind the restaurant.

  “I’m thinking of buying the Ellis building,” Niall said as they approached his pale green Beetle.

  Marty’s face showed surprise. “That’ll cost a pretty penny.”

  “Good investment, though. Set Mae up.”

  “That’s generous, but we should talk before you jump into anything.” Marty unlocked the car and looked at Mae quizzically. “You thinking about starting a healing practice?”

  “No. I just pointed out the sign.”

  “Good. Might be different if you were ready to graduate, but ’til then the only time you’re free to work much is the off season for this town.”

  Niall grumbled, “Someone will have bought the place by the time she graduates. And who knows how long I’ll be around.”

  That was a dismal thought. Mae and Marty exchanged glances. No words needed.

  Niall took out his cigarettes and lighter and went through the ritual for the third time—lighting up, staring at the cigarette, and then putting it out against his car’s rear window and tucking it back into the pack. “Christ, this is weird. Feels like I ought to work at it if I’m not going to smoke.”

  Mae took the pack from him. He didn’t resist. “Maybe some part of you is working at it. I mean, you just said you don’t know how long you’ll be around. Maybe you’re ...” She didn’t want to say it, even though it was obvious. “With Florencia being so sick ...”

  “Confronting my mortality? Planning my legacy?”

  “Something like that. You want me to throw these away for you?”

  Niall’s lens-distorted gaze stayed on her a while. “You have anything to do with this?”

  “Not on purpose.” She looked down, then met his eyes again. “I was wishing you’d quit, but I didn’t heal you on purpose or anything.”