Help for the Haunted(68)

“I don’t know what that’s got to do—”

“Just name one.”

“Fine. Norman Rockwell.”

“A writer?”

“The Bront? sisters.”

“A singer?”

“Please, can you make your point, Sylvester?”

“My point is, if any of those people had kept their gifts to themselves, the world would be a less beautiful place. Do you agree?”

“I do,” she answered, however reluctantly.

“Well, it’s no different for us. We should be sharing this thing that you—that we are able to do. We should let others know how many people we’ve helped. It’s a hopeful message, Rose, and if there’s one thing the world needs, it’s hope. Do you agree with that too?”

“I do,” she said again.

“Good. So let’s find a way to make you comfortable up there. The last thing I want is the woman I love, that girl with a toothache I fell for at first sight, to be unhappy.”

My mother just stared out the window, saying nothing. Later, she told Heekin she’d been thinking of that story my father shared back at the Mason Hall. Outside, in the dark of those woods, she envisioned the Locke family. Among the shadowy trees, she saw that headless farmer’s wife, her husband in bloody overalls gripping that hatchet, their children playing ring-around-the-rosy. My mother did not spook easily, but this vision left her unsettled, filling her with a sense of foreboding.

“Are you okay?” my father asked from the driver’s seat.

She turned from the woods, from that family, to look at him. “I’m okay.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear it.” He reached over, took her hand, and held it tight. “So about that reporter. The man gave me his card. Mentioned something about an interview for the newspaper. Don’t worry, if it happens, I can do all the talking.”

And so a week after that night, Heekin found himself standing on the stoop of our Tudor, ringing the doorbell. When no one answered, he knocked. Finally, my father opened the door and ushered him inside, explaining, “My oldest daughter broke the bell years ago. She thought the little box that contains its mechanics right here on the inside of the door was a bank and kept dropping coins inside. Put in so many the bell stopped ringing. One of these days I’ll unscrew the cover and fix it. Probably find a million dollars in there while I’m at it.”

Heekin smiled, looking furtively around the living room while taking a seat in one of the wingback chairs that my father offered. He noted the large cross on the wall, the antique clock nearby, the curio hutch stuffed with books, but what caught his eye more than the rest were the framed pictures of Rose and me on a small table in the corner. They were taken when we were in elementary school, our eyes bright, our hair brushed and shiny.

“I take it those are your daughters,” he said as my father sat across from him.

“Those are my angels, all right. Lovely, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Heekin told him. “You must be a proud father.”

“I am. Now, speaking of my girls, they’ll be home from school soon. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get down to business.”

Sixty-Three-Year-Old Woman Wins Annual Pie Eating Contest. . .

School Chancellor to Announce New Spending Program. . .

Librarians Create Quilt to Raise Money for New Annex. . .

Those were the sorts of stories Heekin normally covered. They had little depth and required only a handful of questions before the lede, body, and kicker unfurled in his mind. But this interview was different—so much so that it left him nervous. Fidgeting there in his seat, he worried that his old stutter would return. It was something he thought he’d resolved with the help of a speech therapist years before, but whenever he felt uncomfortable it resurfaced. In an effort to keep that problem at bay, he had brought a tape recorder and a reporter’s notebook along, filled with questions not addressed in the lecture at the Mason Hall.

How did the two of you get your start?

How do the two of you handle it when one senses something the other does not?

How do the two of you balance your unusual occupation with the everyday demands of raising a family?

But Heekin had drafted those questions with both my mother and father in mind. They were a unit, after all. Yet there was no sign of my mother. He should just come right out and ask, Heekin told himself. Didn’t being a reporter mean raising inconvenient questions? But like so many things in life—his failed stint in the air force, his failed relationship with his first wife—he’d never been very good at that. Besides, my father did so much of the talking, unprompted, there was no need to put forth more than a couple of questions.

“The situations you and y-y-your—” Heekin said at one point, interrupting a story my father had already told at the lecture, “y-y-your wife. These situations you and your wife encounter sound terrifying. Do the two of you ever feel frightened?”

“We’re human,” my father said, with a certain amount of pride in his voice. “So fear is only natural. But when we feel it, that’s when we pray.”

Even though the tape recorder was running, Heekin scratched the answer in his notebook. In truth, he had only asked the question as a way of finally bringing the conversation around to my mother. Not that it mattered, since my father moved swiftly to another topic. “Would you like to see the basement?”