by Mary Rickert
The person you most love has died and is now trying to contact you. You are happy.
You do whatever you can to help. You go out in the middle of the worst blizzard on record since there has been a record and drive to town. A trip that usually takes ten minutes today takes an hour and a half and you are happy. You go to the local drugstore and walk right past the aisles stripped of batteries and Sterno cans and candles to the toy section, where you select a Ouija board and tarot cards and you don’t care when the clerk looks at you funny because you already have a strange reputation and who even cares about reputation when your dead daughter is trying to talk to you. You are not scared. You are excited. You know you probably should change your expression and look bored or disinterested as the clerk tallies up your purchases on a notepad because the cash register doesn’t work due to the power outage and you probably should say something about buying this for your teenage niece but instead you stand there grinning with excitement. You sense the clerk, who looks to be a teenager herself, only a few years older than your dead daughter, watching you leave the store and walk through the storm to your truck, the only vehicle in the parking lot.
It takes even longer to get home and by the time you do, the fire has gone out and the house is cold. You are too excited to stop everything to build another fire. Instead you set up the Ouija board on the kitchen table. The cat comes over to smell it. You light a candle. The cat rubs against your leg. You sit at the table. You rest your fingers lightly on the pointer. You remember this from when you were young. “Steff,” you say, and the sound of it is both silly and wonderful in the silent house. As if, maybe, she’s just in another room or something. “Steff, are you here?” You wait for the pointer to move. It does not. “Steff?” Suddenly the house is wild with light and sound. The kitchen blazes brightly, the refrigerator hums, the heater turns on. The phone rings. You push back the chair, stand, and bang your thigh against the table. The phone rings and rings. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Steff, Steff, is that you?”
The dial tone buzzes.
You slam the phone down. The cat races out of the room with her tail puffed up.
You turn to the Ouija board. The pointer rests over the word. Yes. You try to remember if you left it there but you don’t think you did or maybe it got knocked there when you hit your leg, but why are you trying to explain it when there is only one explanation for your dead daughter’s voice on the phone? Slowly you turn and look at the silent phone. You pick up the receiver and listen to the dial tone.
You don’t know whether to laugh or cry and suddenly your body is convulsing in some new emotion that seems to be a combination of both. You sink to the kitchen floor. The cat comes back into the room and lies down beside you. The dead can’t make phone calls but the living can lose their minds. You decide you won’t do that. You get up.
You try to believe it didn’t happen.
But just in case, every time the phone rings, I answer it. I speak to an endless assortment of telemarketers wanting to sell me newspapers, a different phone service, offering me exciting opportunities to win trips to Florida or the Bahamas. Jack calls about once a week and we generally have the same conversation. (I’m fine. He can’t come back. I haven’t forgiven him. I haven’t forgiven myself. I don’t expect to. Ever.) Once there is a call where no one speaks at all and I’m terrified to hang up the phone so I stand there saying hello, hello, and finally I say, Steff? and there’s a click and then the dial tone. Once, an old friend of mine from the city calls and I tell her all lies. How I’ve begun painting scenes of idyllic life again, how I’ve begun the healing process. I tell her the things people want me to say and by the end of the conversation she’s happy she called and for a few minutes I feel happy too, as though everything I said was true.
I start receiving Christmas cards in the mail, strange greetings of Peace on Earth with scrawled condolences or blessings about this first Christmas without her. Jack calls in tears and tells me how much he misses her and us. I know, I know, I say gently, but you still can’t come back. There is a long silence, then he hangs up.
I go into town only for groceries. I lose track of the days so completely that I end up in the supermarket on Christmas Eve. Happy shoppers load carts with turkeys and gift wrap and bottles of wine, bags of shrimp, crackers and cheese. I pick through the limp lettuce, the winter tomatoes. While I’m choosing apples I feel someone watching me and turn to see a teenage girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen standing by the bananas. There is something strange about the girl’s penetrating stare beneath her homemade knit cap, though it is not unusual to catch people staring at me; after all, I’m the mother of a dead girl. I grab a bag of apples. I wonder if she knew Steff. I turn to look over by the bananas but she’s not there.
“I don’t know if you remember me or not.”
The girl stands at my elbow. The brown knit cap is pulled low over her brow with wisps of brown hair sticking out. She has dark brown eyes, lashed with black. She might be pretty.
“I waited on you during the first storm at Walker’s drugstore.”
I nod, at a loss at what to say to this strange, staring girl.
She leans close to me. I smell bubblegum, peppermint, and something faintly sour. “I can help,” she whispers.
“Excuse me?”
She looks around, in a dramatic way, as if we are sharing state secrets, licks her chapped lips and leans close again. “I know how to talk to dead people. You know, like in that movie. I’m like that kid.” She leans back and looks at me with those dark, sad eyes and then scans the room as if frightened of the living. “My name is Maggie Dwinder. I’m in the book.” She nods abruptly and walks away. I watch her in her old wool coat, a brown knit scarf trailing down her back like a snake.
“Oh, how are you doing, dear?”
This face sends me back to that day. Snow on tulips. My daughter’s death. “Mrs. Bialo, I never thanked you for coming over that morning.”
She pats my arm. One of her fingernails is black, the others are lined with dirt. “Don’t mention it, dear. I should of made a effort long before. I wouldn’t bother you now, except I noticed you was talking to the Dwinder girl.”
I nod.
“There’s something wrong with that child, her parents are all so upset about it, her father being a reverend and all. Anyhow, I hope she didn’t upset you none.”
“Oh no,” I lie, “we were just talking about apple pie.”
My neighbor studies me closely and I can imagine her reporting her findings to the ladies at the checkout, how I am so strange. I’m glad I lied to the old snoop, and feel unreasonably proud that in this small way I may have protected the girl. It doesn’t take a Jungian analyst to figure it out. It felt good to protect the girl.
It’s the coldest, snowiest winter on record and Christmas morning is no different. The wind chill factor is ten below and it’s snowing. I stack wood into the carrier, the icy snow stinging my face. My wood supply is rapidly dwindling but I dread trying to buy more wood now, during the coldest winter anyone can remember. I can just imagine the bantering: “Lady, you want wood? Seasoned wood?” Or the pity: “Is this, are you, I’m so sorry, we’re out of wood to sell but wait, we’ll bring you ours.” Or the insult: “What? You want me to bring it where? Not after what you did to that girl, they should have put you in jail for child neglect, letting her leave like that with a stranger.” Head bent against the bitter chill, both real and imagined, I carry the wood inside.
There is nothing like that feeling of coming into a warm house from the cold. I turn on the classical music station, make a fire, fill the teakettle, and put it on the kitchen stove. The radio is playing Handel’s Messiah, the teakettle rattles softly on the burner, the cat curls up on the braided rug. I wrap my arms around myself and watch the snow swirl outside the window. Inexplicably, it stops as suddenly as if turned off by a switch. The sun comes out, the yard sparkles, and I realize I’m happy. The teakettle wh
istles. I turn to take it off the burner, search through the cupboard for the box of green tea. I wrap the teabag string around the teapot handle, pour the hot water. If we never got that stupid computer, if we never (stupidly) let her go with him, how different this morning would be, scented by pine and punctuated with laughter, the tear of wrapping paper and litter of ribbons and bows. I turn, teapot in hand, to the kitchen table and see that the storm has returned to its full vigor, the crystallized scene obliterated. As it should be. In my grief this stormy winter has been perfect.
I find my strange Christmas perfect too. I make a vegetable soup and leave it to simmer on the stove. The radio station plays beautiful music. All day the weather volleys between winter wonderland and wild storm. I bring out the old photo albums and page through the imperfect memories, her smile but not her laughter, her face but not her breath, her skin but not her touch. I rock and weep. Outside, the storm rages. This is how I spend the first Christmas without her, crying, napping, in fits of peace and rage.
I go to bed early and, for the first time since she died, sleep through the night. In the morning, a bright winter sun is reflected a thousand times in the thick ice that coats the branches outside my bedroom window and hangs from the eaves like daggers. The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Steff, talk to me, what do you want?”
“Maggie Dwinder.”
“What?”
But there is no answer, only a dial tone.
I tear up half the house looking for the local phone book, searching through drawers and cupboards, until at last I find it in Jack’s old office on the middle of the otherwise empty desk. Jack used to sit here in a chaos of papers and folders, a pencil tucked behind his ear, the computer screen undulating with a swirl of colored tubes that broke apart and reassembled over and over again. I bring the phone book to the kitchen where I page through to the Ds and find Dwinder, Reverend John, and Nancy. My hand is shaking when I dial.
“Hello,” a cheerful voice answers on the first ring.
“Hello, is Maggie there?”
“Speaking.”
“Maggie, I spoke to you on Christmas Eve, at the grocery store.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You said you could help me.”
“I’m not sure I, oh.” The voice drops to a serious tone. “I’ve been expecting you to call. She really has something important to tell you.” While I absorb this, she adds, “I’m really sorry about what happened.” Her voice changes to a cheerful tone, “Really? All of it? That’s great!”
“I’m sorry I—”
“No way! Everything?”
“Maggie, are you afraid of being overheard?”
“That’s the truth.”
“Maybe you should come over here.”
“Okay, when?”
“Can you come now?”
“Yeah, I have to do the dishes and then I can come over.”
“Do you know where I live?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Can you get here or should I . . .”
“No. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”
She took so long to arrive that I started watching for her at the window. In the midst of more bad weather, I saw the dark figure walking up the road. At first, even though I knew she was coming, I had the ridiculous notion that it was Steffie’s ghost, but as she got closer, I recognized the old wool coat, the brown knit hat and scarf crusted with snow. She walked carefully, her head bent with the wind, her hands thrust in her pockets, her narrow shoulders hunched against the chill, her snow-crusted jeans tucked into old boots, the kind with buckles. I asked myself how this rag doll was going to help me, then opened the door for her. For a moment she stood there, as if considering turning back, then she nodded and stepped inside.
“You must be freezing. Please, take off your coat.”
She whipped off the knit hat and revealed straight brown hair that fell to her shoulders as she unwrapped the long, wet scarf, unbuttoned her coat (still wearing her gloves, one blue, the other black). She sat to unbuckle her boots, while I hung her things in the hall closet. When I returned, she sat at the kitchen table, hunched over in a white sweatshirt. It occurred to me that she might fit into one of Steffie’s baggier sweaters but I offered her one of mine instead. She shook her head and said (as she shivered), “No thanks, I’m warm enough.”
“Do you want some tea?” She shrugged, then shook her head. “Hot chocolate?”
She looked up and smiled. “Yes, please.” I opened the refrigerator, took out the milk. “I like your house. It’s not at all like I heard.”
I pour the milk into the pan. “What did you hear?”
“Oh, different stuff.”
I set the pan on the burner and start opening cupboards, looking for the chocolate bars from last winter.
“Some people say you’re a witch.”
This is a new one and I’m so startled by it that I bang my head on the shelf. I touch the sore spot and turn to look at her.
“Of course I don’t believe it,” she says. “I think of you more as a Mother Nature type.”
I find the bars and, after only a short search, the sharp knife we used for cutting the dark chocolate, which I drop in with the milk, and stir.
“I never saw anyone make it like this before. We always just add water.”
“We used to make real whipped cream for it too.”
“Of course I wouldn’t care if you was, ’cause, you know, I sort of am.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you know, like, I told you, dead people talk to me.”
I’m glad I have an excuse not to look at her as I stir and stir, waiting for the chocolate to melt. When it has, I pour in the rest of the milk, whisking it to just below a boil, then pour two mugs full. There is a temporary break in the weather. Sun streams across the kitchen table. I hand the little witch her mug. She holds it with both hands, sniffs it, and smiles.
“You don’t look like a witch.”
She shrugs. “Well, who knows?”
I sit across from her with my own mug of hot chocolate. Yes. Who knows? All I know is that Steffie told me she wanted Maggie Dwinder. So here she is, sipping hot chocolate in my kitchen, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with her.
As if sensing my inquiry, she stops sipping and looks at me over the rim of the cup. “She wants to come back.”
“Come back?”
“She misses you, and she misses it here.” She slowly lowers the cup, sets it on the table. “But there’s a problem. A couple problems, actually. She can’t stay, of course. She can only be here for a little while and then she has to go back.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She’s been gone a long time.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
She bites her chapped lips.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me.”
“Yeah. Anyway, she can’t stay. I’m sorry too, but that’s the way it is. Those are the rules and, also . . .”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think you’re going to like this part.”
“Please tell me.”
She looks up at me and then down at the table. “The thing is, she doesn’t want to stay here anyway, she sort of likes it where she is.”
“Being dead?”
Maggie shrugs and attempts a feeble smile. “Well, you could say that’s her life now.”
I push back from the table, my chair scraping across the floor. “Is that supposed to be funny?” Maggie shrinks at my voice. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she says, softly. “Maybe she figures she sort of belongs there now.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When does she want to come?”
“That’s why she talked to me. ’Cause she said you’ve been really upset and all, but she wonders if you can wait until spring?”
“Spring?”
�
�Yeah. She wants to come in the spring. If it’s okay with you.” Maggie watches me closely as I consider this imperfect offer, my daughter returned but only borrowed from the dead. What rational response can there be? Life is composed of large faiths, in the series of beliefs that sustain us, we little humans whose very existence is a borrowing from the dead. I look into Maggie’s brown eyes, I fall into them and feel as if I’m being pulled into the earth. All this, as we sit at the kitchen table, a world done and undone, a life given and taken.
“Yes,” I say. “Tell her spring will be fine.”
We are like one of my paintings. Small, in a vast landscape. The snow glistens outside. We are not cold, or hungry, or anything but this, two figures through a lit window, waiting.
Maggie and I became friends of sorts. She liked to sit in the kitchen and chat over hot chocolate about her school day. (Most of her classmates and all her teachers were “boring.”) The cat liked to sit in her lap.
There were no more phone calls from Stephanie. “Don’t worry about that,” Maggie reassured me, “she’ll be here soon enough and you can really talk.”
It was the worst winter on record. Maggie said that the students were really “pissed” because they would have to make up days in June.
I grew to look forward to her visits. Eventually we got to talking about painting and she showed me some of her sketches, the ones assigned by the art teacher—boxes, shoes, books—and the ones she drew from her imagination: vampires and shadowed, winged figures, pictures that might have warned me were I not spending my days painting girls picking flowers, with dark figures descending on them. I thought Maggie was wise. She understood and accepted the way the world is, full of death and sorrow. This did not seem to affect her happiness. On the contrary, she seemed to be blossoming, losing the tired, haggard look she had when I first met her. I mentioned this to her one day over hot chocolate and she opened her mouth, then bit her lip and nodded.
