Free Spirits

by Linda Wisdom

  Marian sighed heavily. “She’ll never believe us,” she told her husband.

  “Yes, she will. Once she’s gotten her hangover out of the way and is willing to listen to reason.” Patrick patted her hand.

  Alex chuckled. “Oh, I’m very reasonable. This is all a dream.”

  “If you’re such a reasonable woman, why did you choose this dress for me?” Marian inserted, looking down with distaste. “This color makes me look sallow.”

  Alex looked at her dream mother. “But I thought that was one of your favorite dresses.”

  “This was never a favorite. I always hated it. In fact, I meant to get rid of it. Now I’m doomed to wear it forever.” Marian plucked the silk folds with open distaste.

  Alex frowned. This was starting to get a little out Of hand. Maybe it’s a nightmare, she silently told herself. “Aunt Irene thought it would be appropriate.”

  “You allowed Irene to choose the dress I was buried in? That explains everything. She wanted me to go to my grave looking sallow. That sister of mine never forgave me for stealing Patrick out from under her nose. She couldn’t understand that Patrick really wasn’t interested in her when we first met him at Jane Simpson’s birthday party. Darling, you must eat before your food gets cold.” Patrick and Alex exchanged a telling look. They’d established a long time ago that Marian must not have any taste buds where her own cooking was concerned. “Was it a nice funeral, dear? Were there a lot of people there? How was the weather?” she asked brightly.

  Alex’s eyes widened in shock. “I can’t believe I would have a dream allowing you to ask such morbid questions?” she squeaked. “I’m having enough trouble understanding why I haven’t woken up yet and I’m listening to you ask about your own funeral in such a blasé way! I’m still trying to figure out how you got in my dream!”

  “Alex, honey, we keep telling you we aren’t part of a dream, but I guess it’s just going to take time convincing you. As for your mother, you know her well enough to know that she wants every little detail,” Patrick cut in. “As for how we got here, that’s a trade secret. The one thing I can tell you is that we received this chance because we died before our time.”

  She stared at him over the rim of her cup. She was well-known for her creative mind, but even she couldn’t have come up with an idea this outrageous. This was one dream she just had to remember when she finally woke up! “I beg your pardon?”

  “We weren’t supposed to be on that road that night. Because we took a wrong turn, we were wiped out by an eighteen-wheeler that wasn’t supposed to be there either,” he explained. “Ironically, when all this happened your mother and I were talking about you and Peterson and how we hoped you’d get smart and throw him out of your life.”

  “Palmer,” she stressed the name. “You do this deliberately, Dad.”

  “Of course, he does, darling,” Marian spoke up. “Patrick figures if he doesn’t remember Jason’s name, you’ll soon forget the man.”

  Alex chewed on her lower lip as something else came back to her. “This is incredible. I have you talking about seeing me properly married. How much more properly married can I get than with Jason?” She held up a forefinger. “Aha! See, now I know you’re a dream. Otherwise, you’d admit I was right. I’m remembering you two the way you were. Believe me, by now you both would realize just how right Jason is for me,” she concluded happily.

  Patrick exhaled a breath of frustration. “This dream business is beginning to annoy me. He’s not right for you, Alex. The man has his life so strictly controlled that he not only knows where he’s taking his vacation five years from now, but he’s probably already made his reservations! Why, I bet his suits are lined up in the closet according to color and season and his shirts kept in the same order. Of course, there’s not much you can do with an entire wardrobe of white shirts. Why, I bet he even has his underwear starched.”

  “So what? At least I can count on Jason a lot more than I could ever count on Craig!” she argued. “When I thought Craig was performing noble works at the hospital it turned out he was hidden away at the No Tell Motel with his latest conquest. Who knows how long that would have gone on if one of those bimbos hadn’t decided she wanted to be the next Mrs. Dr. Craig Summers and showed up on the doorstep. Her stunt might have lost her chance of being a doctor’s wife, but that didn’t stop him from marrying someone else two weeks after our divorce was final. She caught on to his flings a lot sooner than I did and her ultimatum worked just as well as mine did. Their marriage lasted an entire four months.” There was no bitterness in her voice, only resignation. “Marriage to Craig taught me one thing. Being married to a doctor is bad for one’s mental health.”

  “Not all doctors are like Craig,” Marian protested. “Look at Doctor Fletcher. He and Lena have been married for more than forty years.”

  “He’s one of the rare ones,” Alex conceded. “But if the two of you are worried about my unmarried state, don’t be. I’m very happy with my life as it is and I’ll take the next step when Jason and I decide it’s time. And the way he’s been talking lately, I’m sure he’ll be proposing soon. Will you stop that?” She glared at her father, who was bending over the side of his chair, pretending to stick his finger down his throat. “You never gave him a chance.”

  “Fine, I’ll give him one now,” he quipped, a twinkle in his eye.

  “You can’t, because you’re nothing more than a dream!” She’d had enough. Alex jumped up and carried her dishes over to the sink. “Look, it’s been nice seeing you two again, but this dream is not going well. So, no offense, but I’m going to wake up now. Why don’t you two return to wherever you came from, and we’ll all be happy. I’ve got a deadline for my next batch of strips staring me in the face and a ton of work ahead of me.”

  “Dear, we can’t leave.”

  She turned at her mother’s words, with panic etched on her face. There was something in the older woman’s voice that smacked too much of the truth. What if this wasn’t a dream? What if…no, she stoutly assured herself. This had to be a dream, right? Right? “What do you mean you can’t leave?” She felt suffocated.

  “Just that,” Marian replied. “We’re here until you’re married to the right person.”

  Horror filled Alex’s mind. She had a dreaded thought. If this wasn’t a hangover-induced dream, she was actually sitting here with her parents who had died ten months earlier! “And if I don’t marry the person you two deem right for me?” she whispered between stiff lips.

  Marian’s smile grew even broader. “Then we stay until you do.”

  Alex spun around, bracing her hands on the sink. “I can’t handle this,” she muttered, turning away and running out of the room.

  “That went well.” Patrick’s words followed her out.

  Alex first escaped to her bedroom, where she quickly dressed in a pair of loose white cotton drawstring pants and a bright, hot pink oversized cotton T-shirt. One long look in the mirror convinced her that this was no dream. This was about as real as it could get, and she wasn’t too sure she could handle it. After ascertaining her hair was dry enough, she brushed it out and pulled it back in a ponytail high on her head before heading for the second bedroom that she had set up as her office and workroom. Right now the drawing table and bottles of ink and pens waiting for her offered a welcome retreat into reality. Right now she needed that heady dose of reality. Before settling down to work, she turned on the portable television she kept there for company.

  “And now we’ll return to our morning movie, Bob Hope in The Ghost Breakers,” a disembodied voice announced.

  “Oh”, no, you don’t.” Alex snatched up the remote control and punched a button with more force than was necessary. She wasn’t fond of game shows, but she decided she could always change her choice in programs.

  “And now for our next question. What famous ghost—”

  “Augh!” The channel button was punched again.

  “If you’re not careful, you’ll
punch your finger right through the control.” Patrick stood in the doorway.

  She set the control down. “I still can’t take all this in. This isn’t a dream, is it?” She sounded hopeful that he might say differently.

  “I’m afraid not.” He walked in and looked at the cork board on one wall, decorated with colorful cartoon strips, stopping to read each one. “These are wonderful, Alex.” He chuckled over one. “A tour of the North Pole where the Abominable Snowman can take you on a one-way hike? And be sure to bring enough food for both of you? That’s good.”

  “A friend complained about the heat last summer and asked why ‘Chuck-It-Ail Tours’ couldn’t have some trips to cooler places. That was one of the ideas I came up with,” Alex replied, still watching him with a suspicious gaze. “The strip is doing so well that I’m featured in another twenty-five papers.” Her mind was spinning with dozens of questions. If they were really ghosts, how could this have come about? She wanted to go back to the belief that she was in bed dreaming it.

  Patrick beamed. “I’m proud of you, baby. Who knew that your love for doodling would grow into a syndicated comic strip featuring a crazy tour operator?”

  “‘Chuck-It-All Tours’ motto, ‘We send you where you don’t want to go’,” she quoted, still watching him as if he might disappear in a puff of smoke at any minute. “It has turned out to be a surprise success. I don’t think Fritzi will ever be as popular a character as ‘Cathy,’ but she’s holding her own.”

  Patrick nodded. “Your mother and I knew our appearing like this would startle you and you would have trouble taking all of this in. But the last thing we want to do is frighten you or make you feel harassed. It’s just that we love you, and like any parents, dead or alive,” he flashed a grin, “we want what’s best for you. Can I help it if I don’t think Jason is good enough for you?”

  “I still can’t believe this is happening. But if it is, you have to understand that Jason is very good for me. He isn’t threatened by my success nor the idea that I draw a comic strip,” she explained, tamping down that one niggling memory of Jason explaining to people she was an artist and not mentioning the cartoon strip at all. “If you want me to be happy, then let it go at that, because ghosts can’t properly match make when no one else can see them. Ghosts,” she groaned. “I can’t believe I’m actually using that word!”

  He smiled. “You’ll have to, I’m afraid. As for matchmaking, we have ways you’d never dream of. I’ll let you get to work. Do you still have sports channels on your cable?” She slowly nodded. “Good, maybe I’ll get lucky and find a golf match on. And maybe I’ll talk your mother out of cooking lunch for you.”

  Alex watched her father leave. “Dad?” He turned his head, a questioning look on his face. “Can you and Mom disappear? You know, go up in smoke or something?”

  He grinned. “I’m sure the time will come for you to find that out.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered, turning back to her drawing board.

  It wasn’t surprising that two hours later Alex remained seated there, her mind a complete blank.

  “None of this can be real. Unless it’s to help me think up some new ideas for the strip. Maybe ‘Chuck-It-All’ should offer tours of haunted houses,” she mused, staring at the heavy white paper with its neatly drawn-in large black squares taped to the slightly slanted board. “Ride with the headless horseman, float along with the lady in the lake, fly with the ghosts of Orville and Wilbur Wright, eat dinner with Henry the Eighth.” She nodded to herself as she jotted down notes on a lined pad she kept nearby. She’d learned long ago that it helped to write down her ideas before she sketched them out. “Maybe something good will come from this, after all.” With the idea quickly growing in her mind, she took up the heavy-duty felt-tip pen she used for her rough drafts. Within moments she was hard at work, her unexpected guests forgotten as she brought her idea to life.

  “So what are we going to do?” Marian plopped herself down on the couch next to Patrick, who was concentrating on a football game since he hadn’t been lucky enough to find a golf match.

  “Hmm?” He didn’t look up as his eyes remained trained on the television. “Do about what?”

  “Patrick, I’m talking to you about Alexis, your loving daughter.” She grew exasperated. “What are we going to do?”

  He frowned. “What about Alex?”

  Marian sighed. “About her assumption that Jason Palmer will make a perfect husband when we both know she would be bored to tears with him within a week. Not to mention those suspicions that he’s involved in something illegal. I’m just grateful they haven’t moved in together. It would make things that much more difficult.”

  “The easiest thing to do would be to find her someone better suited for her.” Patrick’s attention was still centered on the television screen. “Will you look at that? I forgot how brutal Australian football was.”

  “Patrick Thomas Cassidy, forget the football game,” she scolded, snatching the remote control out of his hand. “We have some serious plotting to do. And we don’t have any time to waste. I looked in Alex’s appointment book and she has a dinner engagement with Jason tomorrow night.”

  “There’s no need to do anything right away,” he argued, his eyes trained on the television screen. “Not if he isn’t coming around until tomorrow.”

  “‘What if he decided to give her an engagement ring for a birthday gift? From all that she’s said, she’ll accept his proposal.”

  That caught his attention. He frowned at the idea. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You should have. You proposed to me on my birthday,” she reminded him.

  He reached over and kissed her cheek. “May seventeenth. A day I’ll never forget, my love. I guess I didn’t think he would have that much imagination. I figure his idea of an important day is whenever he closes a deal.”

  “Then we should come up with a distraction, just in case.”

  “Alex isn’t too happy with this, as it is. Let’s take it step by step. We’ll play tomorrow by ear,” he decided. “If we’re not subtle about this, she’ll never forgive us.”

  “Meaning you have no idea what to do.”

  “Meaning I want our plan to be foolproof. We need something she can’t blame on us. You know what kind of temper our darling daughter has. Just because we’re ghosts doesn’t mean she won’t blow her stack at us.” Patrick’s features lightened in speculation. “Don’t worry. When the time comes, I’ll have something more than appropriate.” He patted her hand. “We didn’t go to all this trouble to fail right off the bat, did we?”

  By the time Alex closed her bedroom door that night, she felt as if she had survived four lifetimes in twenty-four hours. She reminded her parents the couch pulled out into a bed—if they had the ability to sleep that is. Then she retired to her room for a long, hot soak in the tub and snuggled under the covers with her small television set perched on the bed.

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky and wake up in the morning to discover I was right and this was nothing more than a crazy dream,” she murmured, leafing through the television listings. ‘“Ghost and Mrs. Muir.’ Just the thing to watch in my situation.” She looked up at the ceiling. “If you wanted to send me a ghost, did you have to send me my parents? My mother still can’t cook, and she’s already started hiding my cigarettes. My father has never approved of my taste in men.” Her attention was diverted by her cat stalking the air-filled hills in her covers until she finally pounced on Alex’s lap. “You can see them too, Suzi Q, can’t you? Either that, or you’re having this dream right along with me.” She didn’t expect an answer, as the cat curled up against her chest. “And you’ve always loved to talk to Mom. Well, it’s got to stop now, because I don’t want any of my friends to see you talking to thin air. That is, if Mom and Dad are right and no one else can see them.” She flopped back, groaning loudly. “Oh, come on, this can’t be happening! And if it is, why did it have to happen now? Something’
s going to go wrong, I just know it. And before too long it’s going to explode in my face. I can see it all now. The world is going to find out my parents are haunting my apartment and Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are going to come in and rout them out. If this is what happens when I turn thirty, I can see that forty is going to be hell!”

  Chapter Two

  “It was nothing more than wishful thinking,” were Alex’s first words when she bolted upright in bed. “That and a dream that would make a wonderful movie of the week.”

  Normally not the type of human being to wake up feeling cheerful and ready to face the big bad world, she was surprised to take stock and find herself mentally alert without her usual frantic need for caffeine first thing in the morning.

  Pacing back and forth in front of the closed bedroom door, Suzi Q yowled her plea for it to be opened.

  Alex frowned. She never closed her door unless she had overnight guests. “Okay, Suzi, I get the message.”

  She crept out of bed and cautiously opened the door. Silence greeted her. She heaved a sigh of relief. She was right. It was nothing more than a dream, a result of her spoken wish at her party that her parents could have been there to celebrate her birthday.

  “Come on, let’s find some breakfast.” She padded barefoot into the kitchen and set up her coffee maker, then sneaked out the front door to grab the morning newspaper from her doorstep. Within ten minutes, she was seated at the table with her paper, a cup of coffee and two slices of toast topped with strawberry preserves. When the phone rang she kept her eyes on “Dear Abby” while reaching for the receiver, raising the antenna to the cordless model. ‘“Lo?”

  “My, what a lovely greeting first thing in the morning.” The male voice was well modulated and confident. “Honestly, Alexis, I thought you were more articulate than that.”