Grandghost

by Nancy Springer

  Silly me.

  I headed into the Florida room, squinting and yawning, a mug of coffee in one hand and a bowl of Special K in the other, and what I saw hit me so much like the punch of a furious fist that I dropped both the cereal and the coffee, adding their mess to the wreckage that made me flinch: origami birds crumpled, flung to the floor or torn into confetti. Bright bottle-cap circles of plastic smashed, shattered, scattered. Strings of Mardi Gras beads snapped and strewn. Bowls broken. All sorts of silent hurt things bearing screaming witness to anger.

  At first I gawked, stunned, breath and reason both knocked out of me. Then I gasped, and in a kind of sick replay of the day before, I cried, ‘The studio! Oh, God, no!’ Headlong, heedless of whatever I might crunch underfoot, I ran through the mess, darting toward the easel.

  I saw the life-sized portrait, gave a choked cry, felt my knees weaken and my whole body go watery with shock. Not that the child’s defiant face had changed – it glared back at me with a sort of dark and sullen beauty I had never before achieved in paint – but her hair had reverted to being short and shaggy, and her dress …

  It was the dress – no longer lavender – that nearly made me faint, because I recognized it. Torn and grimy, the dress painted on the portrait in my own distinctive style was dirty yellow, the color of urine, printed with flowers – little brick-red roses.

  There was no mistaking my own brushstrokes. And there was no mistaking that fabric, that print, either. I had seen scraps of it hugging the child, the skeleton, secreted in my backyard.

  FIVE

  Never mind the next several hours. I spent them not quite literally gibbering but definitely non-functioning; forget breakfast, not even able to clean up the mess I’d left on top of the other mess on the floor. I was, as folks say, walking around in circles and bumping into walls. I really thought I was losing my mind, and no wonder, considering my options.

  If I chose to think a spirit from the backyard skeleton had somehow infiltrated my home, thrown a temper tantrum in my Florida room and morphed my art into its own image, then I was obviously losing it, because believing any of that meant believing in ghosts, and nobody with any common sense believes in ghosts.

  However, if I chose to think I had tattered my own precious origami and repainted the dress myself without remembering, in my sleep or in a schizophrenic state or whatever, then evidently I was so bonkers I needed to be institutionalized.

  Ghost or gonzo? I wasn’t sure which scared me worse.

  I never should have called my daughters, of course, but I was so upset I needed to talk with someone. So I tried Maurie, but got her voicemail, on which I left a one-word message: ‘Gadzooks!’ Then I called Cassie, and she picked up.

  Trying to joke, I said, ‘Why do things always have to break down over weekends?’

  ‘Like what, Mom? The fridge again?’

  ‘No, like me. A breakdown of the nervous sort. Either that or I need to change my mind about ghosts.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Her dress matches the one that was on the skeleton, and I was sure I painted it lavender.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘The little girl …’ But I must not say anything to either of my daughters about grandchildren, much less about yearning for them and deciding to paint a fantasy family of them! To avoid that subject, I blurted, ‘Somebody or something came in here and put my collection of found circles on the floor and pulled down my flying origami, and then the same bump in the night came back and destroyed everything.’ Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, plus other things, went bump in the night, according to Robert Burns. I hadn’t heard the phantom of the Florida room go bump, but I had seen the damage.

  ‘Wait, Mom, slow down. Somebody broke in and did what?’

  ‘There’s no need for her to break in. She is in somehow, not just in the painting but in the house. Or at least in the Florida room. Making a fool of me. Making me think I’ve lost my marbles.’ Again, I tried to joke. ‘I suppose she wants me to find them so she can play with them.’

  ‘Mom.’ Cassie’s voice sounded cautious and a bit too calm. ‘Have you talked with Maurie about this?’

  ‘No, she didn’t pick up.’ All on its own, my body let out a shaky sigh, meaning I was finished fussing. ‘It’s just as well I didn’t talk with her; she’s gotten so teacherish,’ I told my other daughter, hearing my own voice back to normal, perky and wry. ‘Listen, Cassie, sweetie, don’t worry about me. I’m all right now. I just have a major mess to deal with, and after that I need to decide what I’m doing today.’

  ‘Mom, if you really have a home invasion, you need to call the police.’

  ‘No, I just need to clean up the spilled cereal and broken coffee mug and ruined origami and stuff. What about you? Any weekend plans?’

  For some reason she laughed, but then she couldn’t seem to explain what was funny. She said she had to go.

  Still in a bit of a state, I didn’t get any painting done that day. Instead, I took my time sweeping up and picking up and throwing broken things in the trash; I even mopped the Florida room’s floor. But then I didn’t want to stay in the house and eat there, no matter how clean the place was now. I went to Waffle House again and had a hamburger; they make very good burgers. With hash browns, scattered, smothered, diced and capped, which means loose, with onion, tomatoes and mushrooms. I love the jargon. And the carbohydrates. Comfort food.

  ‘Are you going to the Two-Toed Tom Festival?’ the friendly waitress asked me.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The grilled gator festival up in Esto.’

  I was beginning to understand that, in Skink County and adjoining areas, the national holidays were almost meaningless compared with the Boiled Peanut Festival, the Possum Queen Competition, the Watermelon Festival, the Down Home Rodeo and, above all, the Chicken Purlieu Memorial, dedicated to the memory of the confederacy; ‘chicken Purlieu’ was the mainstay ration of Robert E. Lee’s troops, and having eaten the slop once, I considered it no wonder the South had lost. But a grilled gator festival?

  ‘Two-Toed Tom?’

  ‘Biggest, meanest gator ever was. Twenty-four foot long, red eyes like a devil, all but two toes missing off one foot from a steel trap. He roamed them swamps around Esto eatin’ off cattle and horses back in the eighties.’

  ‘What?’ I’d expected a legendary gator from much longer ago. ‘Come on!’

  The short order cook was listening in. ‘Even ate some people,’ he volunteered.

  ‘You’re messing with me!’

  ‘No, we’re not!’ The waitress spoke with earnest haste. ‘Folks was terrorized, went after him with guns and traps, and one guy even tried dynamite. He was so pissed off because Two-Toed Tom ate his mule, he blew up a whole swamp and everything in it. Then he heard a ruckus from the next swamp over. Two-Toed Tom was eating his wife.’ She pronounced the word ‘wahf’ to go with ‘Waffle House.’

  I badly wanted to roll my eyes. A wahf-eating gator, my hind foot. But I said, ‘I hope the guy killed him.’

  The cook trumped that. ‘Nope, nobody never killed him nohow. He’s still out there.’

  ‘No way! How old is he supposed to be?’

  ‘Well, if it ain’t Tom still leaving two-toed tracks, then it’s his ghost.’ The waitress grinned, thrilled at the idea of a gator ghost.

  ‘And Esto has a festival for him?’

  ‘Sure! Two-Toed Tom is Esto’s claim to fame. Do you like gator meat?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you have it on the menu?’

  ‘Damn shame we don’t.’

  I ate my burger and my hash browns, and the waitress brought my check, and as I drove home I tried not to think about Two-Toed Tom. Not that I had anything against a tall-tale gator, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a gator ghost.

  Or any sort of ghost.

  Back home, I went into the studio as if drawn there by a gravitational force, sat down in my Joseph (upholstery of many colors) chair and
gazed at the artwork gazing back at me from the easel. Even though it was finished, it would remain on the easel for the time being, because it was not finished with me.

  I had not signed it. I wouldn’t dare.

  Instead of the happy, golden, idyllic fantasy granddaughter I had meant to create for myself, I faced a child so terribly real I could barely meet the gaze of her dark eyes. They pierced me with rage – it was hard not to look away from such blistering rage – and pain. Always, I knew from having lived a fairly typical life, burning pain follows just beneath raw anger like a shadow. But in the portrait I saw a haunting, fire-eyed, huge, monstrous alligator of pain, anger and hurt too vast for a child to carry.

  Impulsively, I whispered, ‘What did they do to you?’

  My heart squeezed. To my astonishment, I realized that I could learn to love her, this hostile young granddaughter, so beautiful in her own unlikely way, with her square, stubborn chin, her scowling brow, her hacked-off hair. Something terrible had happened that had left her buried in my backyard, and half a century later she was here, now, in my studio because she needed …

  No. I didn’t want to go there; Esto could have its ghost but I most certainly did not want one of my own; my body clenched and I very nearly chickened out. But the sentence in my mind completed itself just in time.

  She needed a grandma.

  The word, the concept, my obsession compelled me. I couldn’t run away.

  Yet I couldn’t seem to move forward, either, mentally speaking. The terrain was far too strange.

  So I sidestepped. I smiled at the portrait’s intense young face and said conversationally, ‘Dear, howsabout if I go get my origami paper, then come sit here and keep you company and make some more flittercritters to replace the ones you pulled down?’ I needed to fetch the paper from the back room where I segregated playtime craft materials from my art. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  For the most part, folding origami was what I did for the rest of the day: I sat in my Joseph chair folding swans and swallows, hummingbirds and butterflies with their bright paper wings lifted to soar, while the nameless, fey child on my easel silently watched me.

  Sunday morning, I sidestepped my situation in another way, by sleeping late. In a sense this was not procrastination, because I had assigned the matter of the changeling portrait to my unconscious mind for processing, so the longer I dozed, the more time I gave myself to arrive at some kind of insight. I finally got up with remnants of dreams trailing like smoke in my mind, quickly gone, although on the way to the bathroom for some reason I mumbled ‘spitting image’ to myself.

  During my shower (my scorching hot shower; I really needed to set the water heater’s temperature gauge lower) I mused on this phrase. Spitting image, expectorating image – why would anyone think that was a compliment? After I got dressed but before breakfast, I looked it up online, arguably a mistake; beyond agreeing that the proper phrase was ‘spit and image,’ most of what I found was opinion, confusion or folk etymology having to do with God creating humankind from spit and mud, or children being the spit (euphemism for ejaculate) and image (lookalike) of their parents, or maybe it should have been splitting image. Oh, come on. But reading one reference from a British source, I felt hair prickling on the back of my neck: Spit and image: spit is an ancient synonym for, or corruption of, the word ‘spirit.’ In referring to ‘spit and image,’ one bespeaks both inward spirit and outward appearance.

  I researched no farther, but mulled over spirit and image as I dawdled with my toasted bagel at breakfast, or perhaps I should say brunch. It was afternoon when I finally set foot in the studio.

  Perish the thought that I could have gone somewhere else instead. My art is my life. Only serious illness and death held priority over it. Specifically, Jim’s death. Also, years ago, I had taken a few days off for Maurie’s wedding, and I supposed if a grandchild were ever to be born … silly thought. The point is, for me to turn my back on my art for any lesser reason would have changed me into a frightening stranger to myself.

  I found the portrait of a child still frowning at me and still on my easel, although some other things had been moved around. Somehow, my origami flittercritters had flown down from the table where I had left them. I saw them arranged in circular clusters on the floor: butterflies both large and small in one, swans in another, hummingbirds with hummingbirds, swallows with swallows, all facing inward.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I asked the shaggy-haired girl on my easel. ‘Having committee meetings?’ Because, of course, she knew; she, or her spirit, had put them that way. Even an unhappy child can play.

  ‘None of my business, of course,’ I added, backing off a bit to sit in my Joseph chair, my thoughts circling and circling, like Two-Toed Tom chasing his reptilian tail, as I contemplated her.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ I told that life-sized young face, ‘an artist named Magritte made a very realistic oil painting of a pipe – for smoking, you know; briarwood with kind of a curvy stem. And he titled it, “This is not a pipe,” which made him famous.’

  I sat there with an imaginary calabash in my real mouth, trying to reason like Sherlock Holmes, and I came to a most unreasonable, indeed reckless, conclusion.

  I said, ‘According to Magritte, you are not a child. You are the image of a child. But you and I know better. Your spirit helped me help you to create yourself in your own image – the image of a very specific child who was buried in my backyard.’

  There. I’d done it, I’d said it aloud, I’d committed myself to the cause of craziness, and it was a good thing I was sitting down, because I felt shaky and I knew damn well it wasn’t due to low blood sugar; I’d just eaten.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I admitted to the child, ‘but don’t worry, I’ll suck it up. I’d rather be crazy with integrity than sane and heartless.’

  The portrait’s steady gaze demanded more.

  ‘I know it’s not about me. It’s about you.’

  And that was as far as I could go, for the time being. The spirit from my backyard grave had taken me by the hand to manifest the image for some compelling reason, driven by some terrible need; that much I could see in the portrait’s haunting eyes and taut mouth. I felt guiltily glad that mouth could not speak. The image’s silent cry for help was harrowing enough. Someone had failed the child terribly, and she needed a grandma. I had set out to paint a grandchild. Well, then, I had to be that rescuer.

  But how?

  SIX

  I was still sitting there, in what writers used to call a brown study – better than a purple funk, I suppose – when I heard a car pull into my driveway and stop. I stayed where I was, listening as the car doors slammed, because no one visited me except, occasionally, mail delivery. But this was Sunday, so it was probably tract pushers from whom I needed to hide. Even worse, it might be reporters again.

  Somebody knocked on the front door. As if motionlessness were necessary for concealment, I froze like a bunny in my chair.

  Someone knocked again, and then a voice I knew yelled, ‘Mom!’

  What? Cassie! My heart leaped, and so did my body in its arthritic way, heaving off the chair to galumph toward the door. Through the picture window I could see – knock me silly – both Cassie and Maurie, my wonderful daughters, looking tired and oh-so-beautiful. Thank the genetic luck of the draw they were tall, slender and dazzlingly dark like their father, not short, sandy and freckled like me.

  I couldn’t get the door open, or my arms around the pair of them, fast enough. Hellos and how-are-yous flew out of us like corn popping.

  I let go of them long enough to shoo them into the house. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have cooked something.’

  ‘Spaghetti,’ Cassie teased, referring to the limited extent of my culinary repertoire.

  ‘Yes, by all means, I would have cooked spaghetti!’

  Maurie said, ‘We’ll take you out to eat, Mom.’

  ‘But what are you doing here? Both of you together?�
�� Cassie in her generic blue jeans and high-topped sneakers, Maurie in her fashionable black shoes and slacks and blazer with red silk neck scarf; the two of them had always been irreconcilably different. Not hostile, but it was a surprise to see them together on what must have been quite a spontaneous vacation trip. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Delta Airlines, Mom.’

  ‘Rental car, Mom.’

  Blinking and owlish, the pair of them.

  It delighted me so much to see them in some sort of conspiracy, even if it was at my expense, that I laughed aloud. ‘Well, come in! Come in! Coffee? Milk and cookies?’

  Joking about gluten-free cookies and agreeing on coffee, they followed me to the table in the Florida room but did not sit down; they stood looking with raised eyebrows at the mess of bowls, bottle caps, Mardi Gras beads and origami birds on the floor.

  ‘You should have seen it before I cleaned up,’ I said.

  Maurie said, ‘You really ought to have called the police if somebody came in and did this.’

  ‘Nobody came in. No forced entry.’

  ‘Are you sure? Has anybody else been victimized by vandals? Did you ask your two-named neighbor? She would know, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘If Wilma Lou knew a thing about any of this, she’d be sitting up on top of the house, praying. Please don’t tell her. Don’t tell anyone. Nobody’s been in this house except me, but do you really think I did this myself?’

  Shaking her head and looking bewildered, she faced me, trying to speak, but just then Cassie yawped, ‘Oh my God!’ She had strayed into the studio, only a few steps away, and was gawking at the portrait on my easel.

  Maurie hurried over to join her, and they both stared. I followed and had a look for myself, just in case my painting had grown fangs or something while my back was turned, but it was still the same: a life-sized rendition of a shaggy-headed, rather grubby child with a hard-eyed, hurt gaze.