The Invited(86)

    “What does he say?” the old woman asks. “Does he have a message for me?”

I squint down into the bowl and am startled by what I see. It’s not Alan’s face looking back at me (real or imagined), nor is it my own reflection.

It’s her again. The woman. She’s come back to me, this woman from my dreams, from my nightmares. Sometimes I think she’s just a part of me: my dark side, the place all my powers come from. She’s the one who gives me my visions, whatever knowledge I may have, I understand that. My spirit guide. She’s so familiar to me, with a face that isn’t my mother’s but has certain similarities. She has the same eyes as my mother but a longer face; same dark curly hair but kept long, not cut short like my mother’s. And this woman wears a necklace, a strange design with a circle, triangle, square, and circle, with an eye in the center. I’ve been dreaming of her since I was a little girl. Since before my mother was killed in the fire, before my father remarried and carted my brother, Mark, and me off to Springfield to start another life with his new wife, Margaret, whom we were made to call “Mother,” and soon our new flock of half siblings, all blond and blue-eyed and freckled like their mother. They pretended to love us for Father’s sake but were always slightly suspicious of our dark hair and eyes, of the tragedy we wore on our sleeves.

The woman from my dreams is speaking now, trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear the words. I lower my face closer to the bowl. I can smell the alkaline scent of the black dye. My breath is making the water ripple slightly, distorting her image.

The woman in the water speaks urgently, though without sound. Her eyes bore into mine. She’s got something in her hands, something I can’t make out at first; then the image clarifies, the object comes into view.

It’s a gun. A handgun. Small and silver, like the one Sam owns.

Sweet Melissa. That’s what he calls his gun. Silly, to name a gun and to name it something you might call a lover. It gives a strange power to the object, imbues the cold metal with warmth, with emotion.

Sam is out plowing the fields now, but he’ll be home by suppertime. If Miss Vera pays me well, we’ll have a nice roast tonight. No pasta primavera with Alfredo or Cajun rice and beans—giving a dish a fancy name doesn’t make it fill your belly more or disguise that it’s a cheap meal, that we couldn’t afford better.

    No money for meat, but there’s always money for Sam’s bourbon. He sees to that.

He isn’t a bad man, Sam. Just a man who’s run out of luck. Out of choices. Last year, we sold off thirty acres to pay the back taxes. Now we’re underwater again.

I hear Sam’s voice, clear as a church bell in my mind (though I know he’s out plowing the east fields, getting ready to plant the corn).

Finished, he says.

We’re all finished.

I glance down and see my own reflection in the rippling water, but there’s blood on my chest, blooming like a flower.

I gasp, totter backward, nearly falling out of my chair.

“What is it?” Vera asks. “Is it my Alan?”

“Yes,” I say, sitting up, collecting myself, looking back down at the front of my sweater, which is clean, spotless.

“He came to me with such force, it caught me off guard,” I tell her. “He really loves you. He misses that cake you used to make.”

A guess on my part, but I’m good at this, and the smile on Vera’s face shows I’ve gotten it right again.

“Oh!” she cries. “The brown sugar cake! Heavens, yes! I haven’t made that in ages! I think I’ll go home and make some this afternoon.”

“He’d like that,” I tell her, daring another look down at my bowl. I see only my own dim reflection. “He’s smiling at you. Can you feel him smiling down at you?”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I can.”

She reaches into her patent leather purse, pulls out forty dollars and passes it to me. Then she grabs another ten and slips it into my hand. “Thank you, Ann,” she says, her hand dry and powdery in my own. “This means so much to me.”

And at moments like this, I think, Is it so wrong, what I do? Lying, pretending, inventing small fictions based on little flashes I may or may not receive? I see how happy I make Miss Vera, the spring in her step as she hurries out the door to make her cake, and I think, I am doing good work. I am shining a positive light on the world.



* * *



. . .

I’m busy making dinner in the kitchen when Sam comes in later.

“Daddy,” the children chirp, crowding him like hungry birds. I see that even though it’s not yet five, Sam’s been drinking. He totters on his feet, leaning this way and that, trying to correct his balance, to remain upright. He’s got a bottle stashed in the barn. One in the workshop, too. They’re all over, so he’ll never be thirsty.

    “Don’t pester your father,” I tell the children. “He’s been working all day. Go on in the living room. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”

They mind so well, my children.

They’ve learned.

Learned to be a little fearful of their daddy, to keep their distance when he’s drinking.

Once they’ve left, I look him in the eye. “Everything okay?” I ask. I hate how timid my voice sounds. How quickly I turn into a little mouse around him.