Spirit Talk: (Book One of The Fiona Series)

by Colleen McManus Hein

  “Of course! We would be thrilled if you came to a game! I’ll let you know when he's back on the ice.” Sally stood, looking a lot more relaxed than she had when she came through the door. She was gazing at the yarn on the shelves.

  “Is your grandmother here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but she’s napping,” Fiona said. Fiona thought momentarily of how incredibly slowly Mary had moved as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. She lifted each leg as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

  Sally was still looking around the shop. “Tell her I say hi. I used to come in here a lot when I was a girl. Mary taught me how to crochet, and I’ve been making afghans ever since.” She reached up to a shelf full of colorful acrylic yarns and fingered a purple ombre skein. “Mary is a legend in this town. I was so sorry to hear she wasn’t doing well.”

  Fiona’s heart skipped a beat. She knew her grandmother was ailing, but it was a shock to hear a stranger mention it. Fiona was disturbed by the notion that her grandmother's decline was public knowledge. “I can’t get her to go to a doctor,” she blurted. She realized that she was squeezing her left hand so very tightly with her right that her fingernails were pressing into the skin. “It’s very frustrating, because I’m sure they could make her better.”

  “That generation,” Sally remarked in a soothing tone, “have a fear of doctors and hospitals. It’s seems irrational to us, but to them, the fear is very real.” She looked at Fiona with concern.

  “I’m scared,” Fiona admitted.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Sally consoled her. “I went through the same thing with my mother. Getting her to the doctor was like pulling teeth, and there literally was no way to get her to the dentist. What about your mother? Would she intervene?”

  Fiona gazed up into Sally’s kind face and realized that Sally, if she’d grown up in Fireside and learned to crochet from Mary, would have known Theresa. She might even have been one of the girls in the photos in her mother’s bedroom. Fiona suddenly had to ask. “Did you know my mother?”

  “I did!” Sally exclaimed. “We were best buddies. Your mother and I were inseparable when we were girls. I came from a family of seven kids, so I spent a lot of time here. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world to be an only child, and your mother thought it was the greatest thing in the world to be part of a big family. We had a lot of fun together, she and I.” Sally was grinning, like she was remembering something from the past that made her laugh. She shook her head, then, like she was trying to bring herself back to the present moment.

  “My mother is coming over Christmas with my sister Ann and Ann’s husband and baby.”

  “It would be lovely to see Theresa again and to meet the rest of the family.” Sally smiled at Fiona and Fiona got the feeling that she was seeing Theresa instead. “I’ll stop by as soon as Eric’s back on the ice and let you know when his next game will be.” Sally began pulling on her coat. It was a quilted parka in a bright cherry red. Fiona noticed that Sally’s cream-colored hat and mittens were hand-crocheted.

  “Your mother and I have a lot of years to catch up on.” Sally added. “Thirty-two years, I think. I was so sorry, by the way, to hear about your father.”

  “Thank you,” Fiona murmured. She was getting a very strong feeling, almost an image in her head, that Sally had very much disapproved of her father and that it had caused a break in her friendship with Theresa. She felt sure that the two friends had never spoken after Mary left Fireside.

  Sally let herself out of the store with a friendly wave. Fiona sat and stared at traffic on Main Street until closing time, the crochet project forgotten in her lap. She was still thinking about the previous night with Henry and, in spite of her newfound popularity with clients, it was all she could think of. Fiona intended to pretend like everything was the same when she arrived at Henry’s house the following day. She would be her normal self and not allude to the fact that she and Henry had experienced a “moment” on her birthday.

  She was determined not to be the one who made the first move; that way, she’d never have to endure rejection from Henry. Remembering his face moving closer and closer to hers, however, was such a delicious memory that she suspected it would sustain her for a long time. She could fantasize for months about the almost-kiss.

  At five, Fiona turned out the main light and made her way upstairs, leaving the lamp on in the window. The apartment was quiet and Mary’s door was closed. Fiona hadn’t bothered to plan a meal because Mary had been skipping dinner and going straight to bed the last few nights.

  She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Tupperware of tuna salad she’d made on Monday. Her birthday cake – yellow cake with buttercream frosting and pink fondant flowers made lovingly by Ginny - was still untouched. Maybe Fiona would bring slices to Henry and Ryan tomorrow. She’d been too tired the night before to have a slice, and it seemed too depressing now to eat birthday cake alone.

  Fiona pulled the loaf of bread from the cabinet, made herself a sandwich, and sat down at the kitchen table with her library book. She had an hour and a half before one of her new clients, Alison, a girl from Eric’s high school, came for a reading. She hoped Alison wouldn’t ask if some boy at school returned her romantic feelings. This was the kind of question most teenaged girls asked. Fiona had a hard time passing along messages that either didn’t come at all or didn’t say what the girl wanted to hear. She would probably be able to pick up on a grandparent or other relative who’d passed over, though, and the thrill of a message from “Great Aunt Gert” or someone like that always brought a smile.

  As Fiona sat and read, taking intermittent bites of her sandwich, she was overcome by a very odd, very unfamiliar tingling. She couldn’t tell if it started in her chest or her extremities, but before Fiona knew it, her entire body was humming with an intensely pleasurable vibration. It felt as though every cell in her body was singing with joy. She’d never experienced such an ecstasy; it was beyond any spiritual, emotional, or physical sensation she could ever recall. Fiona felt utterly alive, warm, and ecstatic. Then, as quickly as it came, the feeling passed. She was left feeling shocked but pleasantly warm and not empty.

  Something had happened. Fiona knew this, but she had no idea what it was. Someone or something had entered her soul and body, filled her with love and joy, then departed. Someone, she realized, had passed away and passed right through her as they went.

  “Could it be Ginny?” she wondered. Ginny was right next door and Fiona could have been the first body Ginny encountered on her way to “the light.”

  Dear God! Could it be Eric, succumbing, in the end, to his dangerous bout with the flu? She stood and lunged for the kitchen phone to call Henry. As she put the receiver to her ear, she glanced into the dark hallway at the other end of the apartment. She saw a faint, ethereal glow rising a few inches above the floor and she slowly put the receiver back without dialing.

  Overcome with curiosity at the strange sight, she squinted and moved like a ghost through the living room and closer to the bedrooms. The glow was coming from beneath her grandmother’s bedroom door.

  Fiona’s steps slowed even more as she reached the hallway. The light was soft, pinkish, and almost solid, like it was something she could scoop into her hands. It pulsed at first, then grew dimmer, then brighter. Fiona ever-so-gently stepped into the luminescence and pushed open the door without bothering to knock.

  Fiona momentarily lost her ability to breathe when she entered her grandmother’s bedroom. The pink luster was trailing off a halo of light which surrounded her grandmother’s prone, unmoving body on the bed. Fiona inched closer, still not breathing. Her grandmother’s dark, radiant eyes were open, and she was smiling at something above her. Fiona glanced up, but there was nothing that her eyes could see. Mary, however, had seen something splendid when she died.

  Fiona sat on the bed next to her grandmother’s body and touched her hands, not yet cold, but no longer warm. She held her grandmother’s hands until the lum
inosity slowly diminished and the room grew dark. Grandma Mary was gone.

  Her first instinct, when she finally could move again, was to call Ginny. Then, Fiona realized that she would not be able to speak the necessary words over the telephone. Instead, she ran down the stairs, through the Sewing Bee, down the front steps, and up the steps of “Ginny’s Cuttery.” She pressed her finger against the doorbell to Ginny’s apartment above. After a very long moment, the buzzer rang, harsh and shrill, and Fiona pushed the door open.

  Ginny was standing at the top of the stairs in her bathrobe. She looked startled. “Fi, darling,” she called down, “is everything okay?” Then, as Fiona dragged herself up the stairs, a look of comprehension passed over Ginny’s face. “Oh, sweet Jesus, no!” Ginny exclaimed. Fiona said nothing and just stared through tears at Ginny.

  Chapter 25

  Looking back later on those nightmarish hours and days after Mary’s death, Fiona knew she owed everything to Ginny. Ginny took charge, which was fortunate, because Fiona was completely lost. When her father died, she had not been the one to orchestrate the wake and funeral; Theresa had handled everything.

  After checking for herself that Mary really had passed on, Ginny called 9-1-1 to “make it official.” The paramedics and firefighters had come instantly, screaming around the corner from the fire station, one and a half blocks from Mary’s Sewing Bee. They'd rushed up the stairs with their lifesaving equipment, assessed Mary, and made some obligatory attempts to start her heart. After an appropriate number of tries, they’d covered Mary’s body with a sheet and somberly carried her out of the building on a stretcher. Fiona had sobbed in Ginny’s arms. Ginny, who was also crying, had stroked Fiona’s hair and mumbled comforting words in her ear.

  Soon after the firefighters departed, Fiona’s teenaged client, Alison, appeared at the top of the stairs. She looked with confusion at Ginny and Fiona, seated on the couch with a box of tissues between them. “The door was open,” Alison remarked nervously, gesturing down to the shop, “so I let myself in. I hope I’m not…” Her voice trailed off. It was very clear that Alison’s appointment had been forgotten and that she was not expected.

  Fiona had gestured to the chair across from the couch. “Sit down,” she said weakly, “and I’ll explain.”

  Alison surprised both Fiona and Ginny by also bursting into tears, especially considering that she had never met Mary. “I lost my grandmother when I was in eighth grade,” she snuffled, “and seeing you is bringing it all back.”

  Fiona handed the box of tissues to Alison and smiled sympathetically. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’m sorry I can’t perform a reading for you. I’ll set something up for…for after the funeral.” As soon as Fiona said it, she wished she hadn’t. Fiona had no idea if she’d be able to schedule any more readings; she had no idea how she’d remain in Fireside now that her grandmother was gone.

  “I understand,” Alison said, standing and turning back toward the stairs. “Hang in there,” she'd added in a soft voice before disappearing back down to the main floor. The bells on the door jingled as Alison let herself out.

  Ginny invited Fiona to stay at her apartment for the night, but Fiona was adamant that she wanted to sleep in her own bed. Oddly enough, she actually wanted to be alone. The phone calls to her mother and Ann had drained but also calmed her. Theresa, Ann, Rick, and Nula would begin the drive to Minnesota the very next day, as soon as Rick could get away, and arrive sometime on Friday.

  Fiona had been shocked by the sounds of grief which erupted from her mother when Theresa heard the news; the keening was animal-like, much different from her mother’s gentle weeping when Fiona’s father died. Fiona felt as if her mother’s sobs were rolling into her own body.

  After Ginny left, Fiona sat in Mary’s spot on the couch, thinking of all the things she’d learned from her grandmother in the short time they’d had together. Although she heard no words, she could feel Mary in the room with her. She knew her grandmother was at peace, though; if anyone was prepared to cross over and be with the spirits, it was Mary.

  *****

  When she called Henry, he had been perfect. He didn’t try to calm her down or soothe her misery, he simply listened. For a long time, they were silent, and Fiona was immensely comforted by Henry’s presence on the line. Henry asked her to come to his house so she didn’t have to spend the night alone in the apartment. Fiona hesitated for a moment before declining his offer. She pictured how he would wrap her in her arms and she would stay there, all night if possible. But she couldn’t. She needed to be in the apartment. She wanted to wallow in her grief unobserved. It wasn’t the right time to explore her lust for Henry. She knew it would consume her if she ended up in his arms.

  Fiona absent-mindedly held her grandmother's card deck in her hands as she thought of Mary. She pulled the Ace of Hearts and remembered how it had been the first card Mary taught her. She was still holding the deck when she finally drifted off to sleep with her head on an embroidered throw pillow. When she woke suddenly at dawn, the deck of cards was placed neatly on the coffee table. Fiona knew this was impossible: the cards should have dropped from her hands and spilled off the edge of the couch onto the floor. The cards should be in a messy pile. The deck, however, was neatly stacked at an angle to the coffee table’s edge. Grandma Mary was neat and tidy to the very end…and beyond.

  Chapter 26

  Fiona was amazed at all the people from Fireside who came to Mary’s Sewing Bee on Thursday and Friday to pay their respects. It seemed that her grandmother had known every single person in town. There were faces Fiona recognized from the Golden Goose, the Maple Moose, and the library. Ginny, anticipating the crowds, filled the shop and the apartment above with trays of food and urns of coffee. Mary had only owned four matching cups and saucers, so Ginny arrived with her own china, stacks of napkins, and highball and wine glasses. She brought crystal pitchers for ice water and silverware, too. Fiona’s heart was warmed by the outpouring of love.

  Jenny, one of the Care Crochet ladies, set up a makeshift bar on the dining room table and made drinks for anyone who asked. The other Care Crochet ladies descended with trays of casseroles, plates of cold cut sandwiches, cookies, coffee cakes, and coolers filled with soda and beer. Every time Fiona wanted to hide in her bedroom and cry, one of Mary’s friends would appear next to her with a sustaining cup of tea and gently remind her of her duties. She would then find the strength to speak to more of her grandmother’s friends and admirers, graciously listening to stories of Mary’s many kindnesses. She kept tissues in her pocket both days because so many of the stories, told with great affection, made her cry.

  Many of the reminiscences involved Mary’s predictions which had come true and messages she had brought from dead loved ones. If Fiona believed previously that her grandmother was ostracized in Fireside for being a “witch,” the affectionate stories dispelled that notion. Mary had been beloved.

  Henry came without Ryan and Fiona stepped wordlessly into his arms. He felt warm and smelled familiar. She didn’t care what anyone thought of their embrace, she simply needed to feel his arms around her for a long, comforting moment. After they stepped away from each other, he still stayed close by, making conversation with Mary’s friends. Carol’s name came up many times, and Fiona saw once that Henry’s eyes were wet. She took his hand and palmed him a folded tissue, which he swiped across his eyes.

  Before leaving, he squeezed Fiona’s hand and said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, absolutely anything, please just call.” As Fiona watched him disappear through the doorway, she had to resist a strong urge to run after him and beg him to take her to his bed. She was too drained emotionally to play games. She wanted to bare her newly-raw soul to him. And her body.

  *****

  When Theresa, Ann, Rick, and Nula walked through the door Friday morning, Fiona nearly collapsed with relief. She was so exhausted and overwhelmed at the sight of her family that she burst into tears all over
again. Ginny led Fiona, Theresa, and Ann into Fiona’s bedroom to allow them some privacy. The three women sat on the bed as soon as Ginny closed the door and hugged one another. After a few minutes, Fiona was able to regain her composure. She watched Ann and Theresa as they gazed around Theresa’s childhood bedroom. Ann stood to look at all the photos and keepsakes from their mother’s childhood. “You really do look like Mom at this age, Fi,” her sister said, still swiping at her eyes with a tissue as she examined a photograph.

  Theresa reached up and stroked Fiona’s hair. “It’s gotten so long,” she remarked. “It hasn’t been this long since you were in kindergarten.”

  Fiona managed to laugh. “And you took me to get it cut off because I screamed every morning when you tried to get the tangles out.”

  “You remember,” Theresa sighed. “You were a hellcat when I tried to brush it and put it in braids.”

  Fiona and Ann exchanged a conspiratorial grin. “Grandma’s friend Ginny, who owns the beauty parlor next door, was determined to give me a ‘Dorothy Hamill’ haircut, so I’ve been afraid to go for a trim,” Fiona whispered in case Ginny was outside the bedroom door.

  At that moment, the door swung open and Nula appeared, her hands on her hips. When she saw Fiona, she shrieked “Fona!” and toddled forward. Fiona caught Nula’s little body and swooped her joyfully into her arms. She put her face against her niece's warm neck and breathed deeply of her scent – it was the same delicious, powdery baby smell that Ryan emitted.

  “I missed you so much, Nula,” Fiona whispered.

  “Missed you so mush,” Nula mimicked. She made an audible kissing noise near Fiona’s ear.

  Rick appeared a moment later looking relieved to spot Nula; she had disappeared into the cluster of mourners standing in the living room. Rick glanced around the bedroom with interest.