Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  The girl stopped abruptly, her tear-streaked face blank with shock. “Mae? Shit. You saw me.”

  “Honey, you were kinda hard to miss. I heard you, too. You have a fight with Reno?”

  “More than a fight.” Misty peeled off her leather jacket and flung it onto the porch. She picked up a cell phone that lay at her feet, its case open and the battery out, and put the parts back together. “That stupid little jackass. He’s up to something. Up to his eyeballs in some kind of I-don’t-know-what. He’s lying and hiding and treating me like—like I don’t need to know. He won’t even let me come into his place anymore. What’s he got in there?”

  “I have no idea. I hardly know him.” What a mess. Reno had set Misty up to either break off with him or be unbearably frustrated and curious. “You must have asked him.”

  “He says it’s his housekeeping—that his place is a mess. Like I’d care. I keep my bike in my living room. I leave my clothes on the floor. I have to hunt for dishes under the bed.” She kicked a tuft of grass. “He’s lying and he’s not even a good liar. Today he said he’d be late getting here because he had a commission, a painting to finish. Reno—a commission? He’s never had a gallery show. And he never shows me his work anymore, he hasn’t for months.”

  “Does he show his father his work?”

  “No. He doesn’t want him to visit, either.”

  “Is Reno okay? Like is he ... I don’t know ... depressed?” That might explain a lot about how he acted. “Or using drugs?”

  Misty stared at Mae as if she’d seen something new and strange. “Shit. He could be selling drugs. I don’t think he’d ever use them, but he’s had more money lately—and I honestly have no idea who’s buying his work. He says he sells to tourists, but there aren’t that many this time of year. And a waiter in T or C sure isn’t making big tips in the summer.”

  “Does he have a lot more money? Anyone who’s driving the Rabbit doesn’t seem to be rolling in wealth.”

  “Not like a ton of money, just more. He doesn’t spend it on his car. He spent it on my ring.” Misty trailed off, pacing, thumbs hooked in her belt loops.

  “You’ve got to keep pushing him to explain. He should want to get closer, not keep you away, if y’all got engaged.”

  Misty paused in her restless ambling and regarded Mae. “You don’t get it. You’re spoiled. Jamie talks.”

  Jamie did talk, for sure, but Mae doubted she was spoiled by it.

  Misty continued. “Like you actually know what he’s thinking.”

  “I reckon I do.” He was constantly narrating his inner processes. The last time he’d spent a weekend at Mae’s house he’d delivered a rambling monologue from the bathroom, sharing something he’d heard on the radio about Japanese toilets that would wash your arse and tell you how much you weighed. While cooking, he’d commented on the eggs in her refrigerator, asking if she knew that with chickens everything came out of the same hole? Yes, sugar, it’s called a cloaca. He’d turned that word into clucking noises, cloaca, cloaca, cloaca, and then wondered if maybe chickens needed Japanese toilets to wash their cloacas. Mae smiled at the recollection. “It’s not always what I’d call deep thought, though.”

  “I’d settle for any thoughts at all. Reno’s turning into a hermit.” Misty lowered herself onto a porch step. “Those things Chuck Brady said about you—are those true?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, I’m not a miracle worker, but basically, yes.”

  “I don’t need a healing.” The Apache girl pulled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. “I want you to find out Reno’s secret. It’s bad, I know, me asking you that. I shouldn’t. But he won’t tell me. It’s like he gave me the ring to make it all okay. But it doesn’t. I still need to know.”

  Mae sat beside Misty. “He might talk to his daddy, wouldn’t he? Even if he won’t tell you?”

  “No. His family has no idea what’s up. They’re worried, too. I talk to them more than he does.”

  “I’d have to have a good reason—a really good reason—to do that kind of work as a psychic.”

  “I gave you one.”

  “I mean, like thinking he’s in danger and there’s no other way to find out what’s wrong. It would bug me if my boyfriend had a secret, but ...” Reno might not be in trouble. He could be concealing something like another girlfriend. He was an attractive man in his fragile way, and a little mysterious. Women might pursue him. That wouldn’t be any of Mae’s business. On the surface, it seemed unlikely that he would get engaged while he had another girlfriend, but Mae knew from experience with her first husband that men who cheated did some crazy things. “I don’t think I should. I’m sorry.”

  “Then don’t you dare tell anyone I asked. Especially Reno.”

  “I won’t. Just don’t marry him until he tells you.”

  Misty laughed suddenly. “If we got married right away, I’d have to see what’s in his house. We’d both live in it.”

  “Don’t even think about it. What if he is selling drugs? You don’t want to marry into that.”

  “Then you’d better think again about helping me.” Misty twisted her ring. “I’ve been with Reno since we were kids. We’re not ending it.”

  Mae had married the first time right out of high school. Mack had been so smart, so handsome, so charming—and unfaithful, and an alcoholic. She’d thought she could help him and straighten him out, but their marriage had been a disaster, a two-year hell. The desire to stop another woman from tying a bad knot had sucked her into some unwise psychic work before, and she could feel it tempting her again. Part of her mind and half her heart told her it would be wrong, but the other parts disagreed. Seeing Misty unhappy and yet committed at the age Mae had been while in the throes of that miserable marriage, she wanted nothing more than to stop the girl from marrying Reno. Or at least to let her know why she shouldn’t. As far as Mae could see, his secretive behavior was reason enough, but Misty didn’t seem to realize that. She needed the secret itself.

  “Okay.” Mae felt a door open inside her, a door that she wished she could close already, but it was too late. Misty looked so hopeful. Mae caught herself wrapping the fingers of her right hand around her left ring finger. Sometimes it still surprised her to find it bare. “I’ll ... I’ll think about it. But you should try a few more times to find out by talking to him.”

  Chapter Four

  Misty went into the blue house in a calmer mood, and Mae resumed her drive to the ceremonial grounds, looking forward to seeing Bernadette and finally meeting her family. There was a large sign across the road announcing the powwow, the ceremonies—and a rodeo. A rodeo, at the same time? Bernadette hadn’t said anything about that, and neither had Jamie. Mae had never seen one before and it sounded exciting. She would have to get Jamie to go with her. If it was anything like what she imagined a rodeo to be, he couldn’t complain that it was boring like baseball.

  She parked her car in a rough dirt lot packed with vehicles. Tents sprouted on every spare piece of ground, even in the corners of the parking lot. As Mae began walking across the lot, a group of Apache teenage girls emerged from one of the corner tents, whispering to each other and laughing so hard they nearly fell down. They reminded her of girls at church camp back home. Mae’s mama had made her go, and for Mae the best part had been the silliness and bonding with friends, not the religious instruction. She wondered if these girls took their ceremonies more seriously than she had taken Bible studies.

  Despite training for an upcoming triathlon, Mae noticed the effects of higher altitude on her heart rate as she headed uphill toward the entrance to the ceremonial grounds. At the top of the path she paused, wondering how she would find Bernadette in the crowd when she went in. Then the idea struck her as funny. Bernadette would see her. Everyone else was Indian, and Mae was the whitest white woman on the planet, a tall redhead who stood out even in a mostly Anglo crowd. She took out her cell phone and called her friend to let her know she’d arrived.

  W
ithin a few minutes, Bernadette Pena, a slim, graceful woman with strong features and long dark hair threaded with silver, strode down a steep dirt path lined with vendors.

  “I’m so happy you could make it,” Bernadette said as they embraced. She let go of the hug. “Where’s Jamie? His friends here have been asking about him.”

  “He had an appointment. And then he had to shop for a new van for his tour—and he’s planning a surprise for me. He won’t get here until kinda late.”

  “A surprise? That’s a fun reason to be late.” They started up the path Bernadette had come down. “There are so many people I’d like you to meet. Especially my family.”

  “That’ll be wonderful. I’ve been looking forward to meeting them. Niall told me I’d probably meet Orville Geronimo, too. Do you know him?”

  “I went to high school with him. We only see each other about once a year now, but we were friends back in the day.”

  At a window of an adobe-brown cinderblock building, Bernadette paid for Mae’s admission, and Mae thanked her. Passing through the gate—an open frame, like a big empty doorway—Mae felt like she’d walked into a small Indian version of a state fair, complete with the smell of greasy food and electronic music coming from an inflated play area. Along both sides of a dirt walkway wide enough for a vehicle to drive through, vendors were selling pizza and sodas, fry bread and beans, T-shirts and hats, and art and jewelry. From somewhere beyond this stretch of bright, noisy commerce came the pounding of a drum so loud it sounded like the earth’s own heart. Heading toward the sound of the drum, they passed aisles with more stalls on the right—still more jewelry, pottery, and food.

  Bernadette asked, “Do you need an introduction to Orville?”

  “Niall would like it if I met him—but I hope Niall or Reno has talked to him. I don’t know if you knew Orville’s ex-wife?”

  “Not well. We were never close. But Alan told me she’s dying.” Alan Pacheco, Bernadette’s significant other, was an art professor at Eight Northern Pueblos Tribal College, where she and Stan Ellerbee taught. “She wants Alan to be the one to write about her ... when her time comes.”

  “You mean, write her obituary?”

  “More like a full-length article. She’ll also be giving him material for a biography, and she wants him to help organize a memorial exhibit. They weren’t friends, but she said that since he’s a fellow pueblo painter and an art critic, he’s the right person for the job. She asked him to come to the hospice in Las Cruces and talk with her.”

  “That’s got to feel weird.”

  “For him?”

  “For both of them. Especially Florencia—planning how she’d like to be remembered.”

  Bernadette slowed the pace of their walk. “It’s better not to use her name when you’re talking with Apaches. We don’t want to say it by accident without knowing she crossed over.”

  “Sorry. Reno told me. I’m trying to get used to how you do that even before someone dies. If it slips out, I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  “It’s not so much disrespect as that the name has power. It calls the spirit that just left us, and if we don’t let the dead go, we can get ghost sickness, especially people who were close to the one who died. Maybe you’d call it depression, or not ‘moving on.’ To us, it would be the dead who didn’t move on as well as the living. I’m sure Alan and I will have some careful conversations while he’s writing about her. His tribe doesn’t have a taboo on naming the dead.”

  “He told me once that they feel real close to them.”

  Bernadette nodded and fell silent, perhaps a hint to stop talking about death and the dead.

  Mae asked, “Is Alan here?”

  “No. He’s on the board of just about everything, including the Eight Northern Pueblos Art Show, which is next weekend. No free time between that and this new project.” They crossed toward the last booth at the end of the main row. “I think you’ll remember Orville’s work from seeing some of it in my apartment.”

  Mae recognized the style of his paintings, but she never would have recognized the artist as Reno’s father. Orville had a large nose, narrow-set eyes, slightly protruding teeth, and a bit of a pot belly. He stood behind a counter displaying T-shirts, and his paintings hung on the canvas walls of his booth. Some of the smaller ones showed an image of a bird in the sky or the mountains on the horizon in the palm of a hand. The larger pictures, reminiscent of the one Bernadette owned, portrayed the Ga’an, the mountain spirit dancers. The background of the paintings reminded Mae of a million stars, the endless New Mexico sky.

  Orville conversed in Apache with an elderly man with iron-gray hair and black-framed glasses. The older man’s build and features were more like Reno’s—Reno aged to around eighty. They switched to English for greetings, and Bernadette introduced Mae to Orville and his uncle Lonnie Bigmouth.

  The artist reached out and took Mae’s hand in a strong, warm handshake. “Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard about you from Niall. He’s a good man.” His accent was stronger than Reno’s, his English words so clipped he sounded as if he was using the stops that made Apache sound so unlike other languages. “How is he?”

  “Good and then not so good. I mean ...” Mae hesitated, not sure how to proceed. “Have you talked to Niall in the past couple of days? Or Reno?”

  “Reno called. He’s still in T or C. He said he had to work this morning. But nothing about Niall.”

  Work? Reno had been at Passion Pie in the morning. And Dada Café didn’t open until lunch time.

  Orville leaned with his arms braced on his counter, his gaze moving back and forth between Mae and Bernadette. His uncle sat in one of several folding chairs and picked up a small wood carving in progress.

  Mae said, “Niall quit smoking. Good in that way.” This news got a pleased but startled look from Orville. “But ... I think Reno wanted to be the one to tell you ...”

  Bernadette took over. “Your first wife went into hospice.”

  “I knew she was sick.” Orville frowned. “I had no idea it was that bad, though. Reno knows this and he didn’t tell me?”

  How self-centered of Reno. He’d called to lie about his lateness and not bothered to share this news?

  Bernadette said, “I only found out because she wants Alan to write about her.” She filled Orville in on his ex-wife’s condition and the various projects she wanted Alan to do.

  The artist sighed, and then a sad smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “That’s so like her. In charge of her image until the end.” Orville looked down for a while, then regarded Mae. “This must be hard on Niall.”

  “It is,” Mae said. “I helped him clean out her place.”

  “Did Reno help you?”

  “No.” He didn’t even offer.

  “He should have lent you a hand.” Orville straightened a stack of shirts. “Her family cut her off for marrying me, and then we didn’t even last two years.” He refolded one of the shirts. “She had every reason not to want to deal with a Geronimo. But she took my second wife’s son as a student. He owed her something for that.”

  “They might have had an argument. She didn’t even tell him about hospice.”

  Orville turned to Lonnie Bigmouth and said something in Apache. The old man answered in a few short words.

  “What’s the name of the place?” Orville asked. “My uncle and I would like to go see her.”

  “I don’t know except that it’s in Las Cruces. Niall does, though.”

  “I’ll ask him. My first wife and I had our differences, but we had our good times.” He paused. “Is her parrot still alive?”

  “I didn’t see a parrot, no. Niall didn’t mention one.”

  “We got that parrot when we got married. She loved that bird. A hyacinth macaw. Gigantic bright blue thing. Huge eyes. Crazy-looking. They live to be really old. Heard of one that lived to be a hundred and twenty.”

  Did Reno ever think about other people? He should have told his father the parr
ot was gone. It had once been his pet, too. “Sorry. I reckon this one didn’t.”

  Orville nodded. “One less thing to worry about, then. It’s hard to find a home for an older bird. Parrots bond to you. We couldn’t even have a custody fight over Violet. She’d chosen her person. And it wasn’t me.”

  So someone else had loved Florencia. A bird.

  As they approached a huge white canvas tipi at the entrance to the ceremonial grounds, Mae asked Bernadette, “What did Fl—his first wife’s family have against Orville? He seems really kind, really nice.”

  “He is. It wasn’t him personally. It was that she moved here with him.”

  “That seems kinda petty. People get married and move away all the time.”

  “I know. It seems more about control than love. I don’t think she had a good family.”

  They paused beside the tipi. Its poles were freshly-cut trees whose green branches wrapped around each other at its top. The area before its entrance, which faced the dance arena, was carpeted with fragrant yucca leaves and demarcated by a row of benches. In front of the benches a group of men surrounded an enormous drum, all of them beating it in the same rhythm. The singers’ voices were raw and powerful, wailing the song. Bernadette spoke close to Mae’s ear but it was still hard to hear her over the music. “This is where the girls’ coming of age ceremony takes place, in the big tipi. Their families are in the little ones.”

  To the right of the big tipi spread a long arbor covered with canvas and green branches, and beyond that stood a row of smaller tipis, their peaks echoing the crowns of the mountains.

  Across the arena to the left, a small scattered audience, some holding umbrellas against the sun, sat on glaring aluminum bleachers to watch a circle of older men in fancy shirts dancing with almost no movement, shaking gourd rattles, and keeping the beat with a pulsing of their legs. With a thump of the drum, the dance ended.

  “Thank you, gourd dancers,” said the man on the loudspeaker. “Jingle dress dancers, get ready.”

  As the men dispersed, Bernadette led Mae up the middle of the bleachers to join her family, and introduced her to more people than Mae could take in at once, as much as she wanted to get to know them and make a good impression. They included Bernadette’s older brother Michael, his wife and two teenaged daughters whose names Mae instantly forgot, Bernadette’s cousins Pearl Tsilnothos and Elaine Fatty, and Elaine’s son Zak and his wife and children whose names Mae couldn’t retain either.