Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy

by Allison, Jennifer

  The guitarist shot the priest an impatient look. The musicians had finished their repertoire of prelude music and had begun repeating the same pieces.

  Shifting in their seats, the sparse group of guests observed the wedding couple with growing anticipation.

  “Someone’s got cold feet,” Mrs. Furbo muttered.

  “I told him, ‘Don’t pick another one like Charlotte,’” Mr. Furbo said.

  Sitting behind the Furbos, Captain Jack extended his legs and arms in a giant stretch, and then folded his arms across his chest as if preparing for a nap in the sun. He had slightly altered his pirate attire for the occasion of the wedding, choosing a clean T-shirt instead of the gold necklaces and sleeveless, torn shirts that revealed his shoulder-to-wrist tattoos.

  As he gazed out at the bay, something very interesting caught his attention: The same gopher tortoise he had spotted a couple days ago lumbered slowly toward the wedding party, pausing to chew blades of grass along the way. Captain Jack observed the animal with a sleepy smile.

  Mrs. Furbo also saw the tortoise, but she watched it through her spectacles with the fierce stare of a hawk who has just spied a tasty rabbit on the ground below.

  Having determined that they could not wait any longer, the priest nodded to the musicians and walked toward the rustic altar followed by Eugene and Mrs. Joyce, who walked arm-in-arm.

  “Dearly beloved,” said the priest, “we are gathered here today to join Patricia Joyce and Eugene Horace Pook in holy matrimony. We are especially honored to gather here in the very spot on the Matanzas Bay where, more than four hundred years ago, Spanish colonists said the first Catholic Mass on North American soil. Lord, we ask your blessings on this couple and on the children of this new family, who—er—appear to be absent for the moment, but are very much in our hearts and minds.”

  The gopher tortoise now grazed only a foot away from Mrs. Furbo, completely oblivious to the attack that was about to take place. With a sudden motion, Mrs. Furbo leaned down as if stooping to retrieve a dropped earring and swiftly contained the animal inside her large, cloth handbag—an oversize purse that covered the animal so perfectly that it might have been created explicitly for tortoise catching. Now holding the heavy gopher tortoise in her bag, Mrs. Furbo turned her eyes back to the priest, who was speaking of the shrine of Our Lady of La Leche and the sanctity of marriage.

  Captain Jack tapped Mrs. Furbo on the shoulder. “I saw you put that gopher in your bag,” he whispered.

  “Never you mind,” she hissed back.

  “That’s against the law, ma’am.” Captain Jack moved his chair closer, so he was now only a few inches behind Mrs. Furbo.

  “Are you a police officer?” Mrs. Furbo kept her eyes on the priest.

  “No,” said Captain Jack. “I’m a pirate.” With a motion every bit as swift and surprising as Mrs. Furbo’s attack on the gopher tortoise, Captain Jack seized Mrs. Furbo’s handbag. Unfortunately for him, Mrs. Furbo had a surprisingly strong grip on her purse, and the two of them became stuck in an absurd tug-of-war.

  Noticing the fight, Evelyn just stared, open-mouthed, and Debbie clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle giggles at the bizarre sight of Captain Jack snatching an elderly woman’s purse during a wedding ceremony. Now feeling the priest’s eyes on him, Captain Jack gave up and sank back into his seat.

  The priest cleared his throat before continuing. “And now,” he said, “tradition commands me to raise the question to the friends and relations who have gathered here in support of Eugene and Patty: Is there any one among you who knows any reason why these two should not be wed? If so, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

  The priest looked out at the faces of the unusually distracted guests: Captain Jack glared at the back of Mrs. Furbo’s head; the Furbos both peered down into the handbag; Mary Louise glanced in the direction of Water Street for a sign of her daughter and Gilda, and Evelyn adjusted her parasol-size yellow hat.

  Then, across the grass, the priest saw something very strange—a girl wearing an oversize Motor City T-shirt, dirty pajama bottoms, and bare feet ran toward the ceremony as if her very life depended on it. A teenage boy and a younger girl followed her. As Gilda approached, panting, the priest and dumbstruck guests stared at the most inappropriate sight they had ever seen at a St. Augustine wedding.

  “Let the record show that the daughter and son of the bride have a very good reason why these two should not be wed,” Gilda declared as she made her way toward the altar.

  46

  The Confession

  I had planned a very special reading for this very special day,” said Gilda, “an original poem. I had also picked out a far more attractive outfit, including gloves and a hat. However, due to reasons beyond my control, I was detained this morning and unable to wear it.” Gilda paused to look very directly at Mr. Pook, who appeared to be calculating whether he could run fast enough to get to his car and leave town. Eugene turned to glance behind at the Furbos, who had joined the rest of the guests in glaring at Gilda with as much distaste as they could muster. It was one thing to break up a wedding, but to do so with dirty hair, dusty pajamas, and a Motor City T-shirt was completely unforgivable. “So,” Gilda continued, “before I share the reasons that this wedding must not proceed—and they are many—”

  “Gilda, what are you doing?!” Mrs. Joyce hissed, having finally found her voice. She stared at her daughter with the horrified relief and boiling anger of a mother whose child has narrowly missed being hit by a car after darting into traffic.

  “Believe me, Mom,” said Gilda, “you’ll want to know what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Gilda, please get to the point, or I’m going to tell them!” said Stephen, who watched from a few feet away.

  “Dearly beloved,” Gilda began, “the story I am about to tell you would fill many mystery novels—”

  “Oh, please, Gilda!” Stephen blurted, “give us the short version!”

  “I beg your pardon, Stephen, but this is a hard-earned dramatic moment, which you happen to be ruining.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell everyone.”

  Up until now, Mrs. Joyce had watched this exchange between Gilda and Stephen with angry, slack-jawed amazement along with the rest of the wedding guests. Now she suddenly seemed to remember that the two teenagers who were ruining her wedding were actually her own kids.

  “Stop it right now!” she shouted, surprising Gilda and Stephen enough that they ceased bickering. “This is unacceptable!” Mrs. Joyce realized that by yelling at her kids in front of everyone, she was only adding further melodrama to a scene that had already spiraled out of control, but she couldn’t help it. “First, I can’t believe you’re late. Second, I can’t believe you turned up wearing outfits that I wouldn’t even wear to clean the house! Third, you’re both grounded for a year!”

  “Mom!” Stephen raised his hand in the air. “First, I’ll be in college, so I don’t think you’ll be able to ground me.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that—”

  “Mom, I can explain!”

  As Gilda, Stephen, and Mrs. Joyce shouted back and forth, Captain Jack seized the opportunity to attempt a tortoise rescue. He gingerly reached under Mrs. Furbo’s chair until he grasped her handbag, then slowly pulled the bag toward him. He was just about to free the captive animal when Mrs. Furbo noticed the disappearing bag and jumped up from her seat just in time to grab a handle and pull with all her might.

  The tug-of-war between Captain Jack and Mrs. Furbo resumed in full force, this time with such energy that Mrs. Furbo kicked Captain Jack in the shin.

  “Ow!” he yelled.

  “Please! Everyone be seated!” The priest raised his hands, struggling to capture the attention of the bickering wedding guests. It was a lost cause; by now the entire group was out of control.

  Amidst all the chaos, Eugene decided to make a run for it and escape while the getting was good.

  But as he tiptoed away from the ridiculous fiasco
that had started as his wedding, something very strange happened. Without warning, it began to rain. Next, and just as abruptly, Eugene found himself staring into the dead face of Charlotte, who wore the same wedding dress she had worn on the night of her death.

  The guests jumped up to run for cover from the rain. They turned from their seats just in time to see a large man fainting at his own wedding.

  “It was me,” Eugene muttered as his knees buckled. “I did it. I killed my Charlotte!”

  47

  Eugene’s Story

  It rained like a monsoon on the last night I saw Charlotte alive. Come to think of it, the storm was similar to the one we had just this week—tree branches down all over the place. . . . We know how rain comes almost every day and leaves as quickly as it showed up, but this rain was different. I remember how it continued through the whole night.

  It was the eve of my wedding, so I wasn’t expecting to see Charlotte until the next morning at the ceremony. I thought she was acting a little peculiar at the wedding rehearsal, but I guessed it was just nerves. I was worried, though, because I had heard a few rumors. In those days, people had a way of talking. And Charlotte—well, anything she did seemed to attract people’s attention.

  I did my best not to think about it. After all, Charlotte’s father had just given me the best gift of my life—a beautifully carved antique rifle. I sat up at the dining-room table cleaning that rifle like Mr. Furbo had taught me, and I thought about how he and Mrs. Furbo had welcomed me into the family.

  So who suddenly comes into the house looking like something a dog pulled out of a river but Charlotte. Well, I knew something was very wrong if she was barefoot and wearing her mama’s silk wedding dress out in the rain on the night before her wedding.

  “I have something to tell you, Eugene,” she says to me. And then she tells me that she can’t marry me—that she loves someone else. She told me she was leaving for good.

  Suddenly, it was like I was a little boy again, standing outside in the rain and just looking at them empty train tracks, wondering why my daddy left. Not this time, I told myself. This time, I wasn’t going to stand for it.

  “I’ll kill him before I let him take you away,” I told Charlotte. “I’ll follow him to Europe if I have to.”

  Well, this upset Charlotte somethin’ terrible, and she grabbed the gun by the barrel and tried to take it away from me. It went off, and she fell. I couldn’t believe it; she had been shot right in the heart.

  I lay next to Charlotte’s body for the whole night, just listening to the rain. Well—I suppose I got up just one time, to forge some of her good-bye letters, including a letter to her boyfriend Chance—to tell him that she wanted him to leave without her.

  I knew I should call the police, but how could I face Charlotte’s parents after what I had done? How could I tell them that I had killed their only daughter, even if it was an accident? Besides, I knew they would make me give Charlotte up; I would have to bury her deep in the ground where I could never be close to her again.

  I had decided I would never tell a soul. I would keep Charlotte near me always.

  48

  Still Single, Still a Doofus

  Dressed in jeans, a St. Augustine T-shirt, and a scraggly ponytail, Gilda’s mother looked more like her old self than she had since Mr. Pook had started influencing her.

  Gilda, on the other hand, was dressed in a lavender vintage dress and a matching hat that she had swiped from one of the closets in Eugene’s house. After being locked in a musty old cistern and forced to sit next to a coffin containing a dead body for hours—not to mention several more hours of questioning at the police station after Eugene turned himself in—Gilda felt entitled to take at least one souvenir from the house.

  Realizing she hadn’t yet updated Wendy on her successful investigation, she took out her notebook and scribbled a letter to be mailed upon landing in Detroit:Dear Wendy,

  Let’s just say that a few teensy things happened since our brief conversation a couple days ago.

  Right now I’m on the plane returning home with Mom and Stephen.

  Yes, Stephen is still single, and still a doofus. And no, he didn’t kiss that girl I told you about, so you can stop asking. In fact, he literally had one of the worst Halloween nights of his entire life. We both did. To be honest, we’re lucky we survived it, so next time you’re jealous, just be careful what you wish on people!

  I’ll fill you in on exactly what happened later, but the result is that Mom did NOT get married. And no, it wasn’t because I ruined the wedding either. Okay, technically I did interrupt the actual ceremony, but the reason the wedding got called off was that we all happened to discover something horribly tacky in Mr. Pook’s background. (That’s how we Southern belles talk about little social faux pas like murders and hidden bodies, by the way.)

  After Mr. Pook confessed and turned himself in to the police for questioning, I gave the Furbos the diary I found in Eugene’s cistern; it belonged to their daughter (she’s the one Eugene killed in case you’re not following me here, Wendy). They took the diary and just nodded at me blankly; they seemed to be in shock. It’s strange how, even though the Furbos willingly broke off their relationship with Charlotte twenty years ago, now that they know she’s actually dead and that she never even got to Europe, you’d think she had just disappeared yesterday. I guess deep down, they must have always assumed that they would see her again someday.

  They were completely stunned at this horrible revelation, and just sat there holding the diary and glaring at Eugene. Mrs. Furbo didn’t even notice when a gopher tortoise crawled out of her handbag! (Captain Jack told me later that she had tried to kidnap it.)

  Speaking of Captain Jack, one benefit of this whole fiasco (and let’s face it, as weddings go, it really was one of the biggest disasters in St. Augustine history) is that we now have an invitation to come back and visit him and go on his pirate ship again. He also helped take my mom’s mind off the fact that her fiancé had been storing a corpse under his kitchen by taking us out on his boat and singing some of the sea chanteys he knows.

  NOTE TO SELF: try to help Mom meet more zoologist-pirates.

  Okay, Wendy, get your purple hair dye and lipstick ready, and put away your homework, because I’m coming back to town. And yes—I’m coming back TO STAY!

  “I can’t believe I didn’t make it to the beach even once,” Stephen complained.

  “Wait a minute.” Gilda stopped writing and turned to face Stephen more directly. “Is that all you can say after everything we’ve been through?”

  “I’m just saying; I wish I had gone to the beach.”

  “Okay, but let me ask you this: Has this experience finally opened your eyes to the reality of ghosts and psychic phenomena?”

  “It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that Eugene Pook is one very messed up guy.”

  Gilda rolled her eyes. “What about you, Mom? Didn’t you notice anything strange about Mr. Pook’s house?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I did have some odd little spells I couldn’t explain.”

  “What do you mean?” Gilda suddenly remembered how her mother had stood in the middle of the kitchen motionless, as if in a trance. She remembered how her mother’s eyes had looked different—as if some other entity was looking through her.

  “It was strange. I would walk into a room and immediately forget where I was and what I was doing. And now that I think about it, it often happened in the kitchen—right over that old cistern you and Stephen discovered. . . .” Mrs. Joyce’s voice shook at the macabre memory, and she took a deep breath to compose herself. “Anyway, I suppose I did experience some strange events.”

  “Next time, you should pay more attention to the messages you’re getting, Mom,” Gilda suggested. “Maybe carry a little notebook in your purse like I do.”

  “I’m not planning a repeat of this experience, Gilda.”

  “That’s exactly why you need to work on your psyc
hic skills. You’ll be able to spot warning signs and trust your intuition better so you don’t end up getting engaged to someone who stores his ex-girlfriends under the house again.”

  “Spotting warning signs would be a good thing,” Mrs. Joyce agreed, wryly.

  “You’re trying to get Mom involved in that psychic nonsense now?”

  “Stephen, I’m not trying to get Mom involved in anything. I’m guessing Mom has some psychic sensitivity, right, Mom? I’m guessing you probably inherited it from Grandmother McDoogle, just like me.”

  “I thought Grandmother McDoogle had dementia,” Stephen commented.

  “Eventually she did,” said Mrs. Joyce, “but when she was younger, she had an uncanny knack for predicting all sorts of things that came true. And a lot of her friends believed that she really did speak with ghosts.”

  “So now you and Gilda are going to sit around the house talking to ghosts?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Gilda imagined sitting on the couch with her mother drinking sweet tea, eating chocolate chip cookies, and chatting about local ghost stories like Darla and her mother.

  “I just want to find out how crazy things are going to get before I bring any new friends over,” Stephen commented.

  “Don’t worry; I don’t have the stomach for this psychic stuff the way your sister does.”

  “But wouldn’t it be fun to learn at least a little bit about it, Mom?”

  “Well.” Mrs. Joyce had always thought of herself as a down-to-earth person—someone who didn’t have time for impractical pursuits. She had certainly never considered herself a particularly intuitive, creative, or psychic person. But what if these things really do run in families? she thought. And what if I showed a little interest? Maybe Gilda and I might feel like we have something in common for a change. “Okay, why not?” she said. “Maybe you can invite Wendy over and we’ll have a little psychic party, since the two of you didn’t get to go trick-or-treating this year.”