Authors: Terri-Lynne Defino
“You just cry, baby,” Clarice smoothed her hair. “Just cry.”
Benny let go. It felt good to be held like a little girl crying tears over nothing more dire than a lost plaything or a tiff with a school friend. Her mother stroked her hair, whispered soothing sounds. She asked no questions and offered no advice, and for this, Benny loved her so much.
“I’m tired of being sad,” she said finally.
“It has been too long, Benny. It’s time to let him go. To be happy again.”
Benny sat up. She took the crumpled tissue her mother handed her and blew her nose. “I know,” she said. “But it makes me feel so horrible to even consider being happy. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Can I ask you a question you’re not going to like?”
“Is it about Dan?”
Clarice nodded.
“Fine, Ma. Ask.”
“Did he make you happy, last winter?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, baby.” Clarice rose to her feet, kissed her daughter’s head. “You coming down to dinner? I’m making pork chops.”
Benny wiped her nose again, cocked her head. “That’s it?”
“Roasted potatoes, too. And green beans. They aren’t as wonderful as the ones Savannah will have in—”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Her mother smiled, thumbed a tear from Benny’s cheek. “I know, sweetheart. Dinner’s at six thirty.”
Her mother left her sitting alone and stunned. Disbelief and relief vied for first place in Benny’s head. She dabbed her face dry, tried blowing her nose on the tissue one time too many and ended up a mess. Washing her hands, she smiled wryly. Between a ghost chatting her up and her mother keeping her thoughts to herself, the ghost was far, far less strange.
* * * *
He tried being angry, the whole ride driving home. Dan Greene was sorry. Sorry Benny’s grief was still so raw. Sorry he’d moved too fast. Sorry she—they all—lost Henny, period. He couldn’t go past the place where his friend died without getting choked up. Being a first responder on the scene had been the stuff of nightmares, the kind that often appeared in his sleep. It was nothing short of miraculous Benny hadn’t seen her husband twisted and bloody and broken. Her scooter usually kept her to the confines of Bitterly, but she had gone to a baby shower in Great Barrington. An old high school friend, if he remembered right. By the time he, Tim and Charlie took her to the site, the clean-up crew had done a good job of clearing it all away. Someone left a bouquet tied to a tree. He remembered Benny taking it down, picking out the dead flowers and bringing the rest home.
Henderson Parker Fredricks, you moron. You stupid, careless moron. How could you do that to her? To all of us? Idiot.
Henny, Tim, Charlie and Dan. The wild one, the jock, the nice guy, and the comedian. Best buds. Dan couldn’t remember a time they’d not been friends, and always figured it started in kindergarten. At Henny’s funeral, he learned it went even further back, almost to the womb and the momentarily trendy “Expecting Club” their mothers had been members of. They were boys born and raised in Bitterly. Men who never left. Until Tim, after Henny died and proved there was no such thing as ‘all the time in the world.’
Instead of passing by the cemetery, Dan pulled in. He hadn’t been there since the February prior. Valentine’s Day, in fact. Finding Henny’s grave was easy enough. Benny made it so.
He spotted the matching gardens—Henny’s, and the woman whose name he never remembered. It always made him smile to recall the goth phase Benny went through, believing she had a connection to the woman resting there more than a hundred years. Tim teased her mercilessly back then. Benny never got angry or upset. Their bond and understanding was that absolute. Tight as he and Evelyn were since their parents’ deaths, it wasn’t anything like Tim and Benny. There were years when Dan would have gladly not seen his sister for more than the holidays, like most of those years during her marriage to Paul.
He trudged up the hill, squatted at the garden-graveside. He traced the letters on the stone, as if it would somehow conjure Henny from the dead. Benny would have the words to say, brought back from those teen years of pagan rituals she had been so serious about. He wondered if she’d tried them after Henny died, for old-time’s sake. Or desperation.
“Remember when we were kids?” he asked the air. “And Tim dared you to kiss his sister. I thought it was a bad idea. So did Charlie. I think Tim must have known what he was doing though, considering how he was with her. You remember. He could tease her all he wanted but anyone else who did paid the price.”
Dan laughed softly. He plucked a few dead leaves from the marigolds.
“You came back and got your five bucks for doing the deed, but everything changed. Not that any of us knew, back then.
She got under my skin,
is what you told me after I asked why you were hanging out with her instead of us. I never got it, Henny. Girls. Women. I saw my dad smack my mom around and never got why she didn’t toss his ass out. Then my sister with Paul. Damn idiot, she is. Was. I never got that under-your-skin feeling for anyone. But Benny?” He chuffed. “She’s way under. I never told her I asked you if it was okay that I take her out. I was afraid she’d think it was creepy. Maybe I should have. Told her, I mean. Not that you answered me. You and me, we were tight. Better was me than some other asshole, right?”
Dan chuckled softly, fought the tightening in his throat.
“Now she’s making up a boyfriend. How’s that for a do not disturb sign? I think he’s pretend, anyway. If you got any sway in things, I’d sure appreciate some help.”
Dan rose to his full height and brushed his hands clean. Colorful and profuse, the garden was nevertheless as safe as it was pretty. Pansies and marigolds. Forget-me-nots and snapdragons. Only annuals that didn’t have to survive harsher weather, never any perennials that did. As a landscaper, it had struck him as strange Benny would only plant flowers requiring a complete re-do, year after year. As a man who cared for her—and a smarter one than most gave him credit for—Dan understood all too well.
A Silken Skirt of Breeze
A full tank of gas, jeans, a high-necked T-shirt and the faithful Grim Reaper hoodie for when it got cooler, Benny went to the cemetery prepared this time. In the milk crate she had a sandwich, a thermos of lemonade, and an old blanket to sit on. Despite the prior night’s provocative comment, or perhaps because of it, Benny was looking forward to her visit with Augie. Maybe she was nuts-o. Maybe he was real. After tonight, she would have proof one way or the other. She would make sure of it.
Riding through town, Benny didn’t resist the urge to stop in CC’s for something sweet to go with her otherwise non-exciting dinner. She pulled her scooter up onto the sidewalk where customers sat at the bistro tables. The weather was cool and dry, the air scented by sunshine and cut grass and the briar roses currently growing rampant along every rock wall and roadside. A welcome respite after a few days of humidity.
If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait an hour.
“Jo? Anyone here?” Benny rang the bell on the counter. Nearly empty racks on the wall disheartened, until Benny spotted the tray of her favorite chocolate mud cookies.
“Oh, hey, Benny.” Caleb, Charlie McCallan’s middle son, came out of the back room with a broom. “I thought I heard the bell ring. Can I get you something?”
“A mud cookie. Make it two.”
His face colored. “I’m supposed to bring two dozen over to a graduation party as soon as I close up, but I suppose Johanna wouldn’t mind, seeing it’s you.”
Graduation party. Dan’s niece. She’d forgotten all about it.
“No, no. Don’t do that. How about one of those big tollhouse cookies instead?”
“You sure?”
“Positive. I was torn between the two anyway.”
Caleb slid the cookie into a waxed-paper sleeve and set it on the counter. Benny handed him a dollar and took a bite.
“Didn’t you graduate this year?” she asked him.
“Next year.”
“You look into any schools yet?”
The cash drawer dinged closed. “I’m pretty set on going to the Culinary Institute, like my sister. I love working in the bakery. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
“Fantastic, Caleb. Really great.” Benny took another bite. “Johanna must be thrilled.”
“Just a little.” He grinned, and in that instant looked exactly like Charlie. “Charlotte wants me to come south for the summer.”
“She really likes it down there in Cape May, huh?”
“Loves it.”
“You going to go?”
He shrugged. “Maybe for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to be gone all summer. It’s my last one as a high school student. I kind of want to hang with my friends.”
“She’ll understand.”
“This is Charlotte we’re talking about.”
“True.” Benny put the last bite of cookie into her mouth. “I can’t believe I just ate that whole thing. You’d better give me another. It was supposed to be for later.”
* * * *
Her cookie tucked safely into the milk crate, Benny zipped out of town. It would remain light for a while yet. She had time to visit and still be able to get home before dark. She wasn’t a teenaged-goth-chick anymore. There was only so much time she could spend casually hanging out in the cemetery before other people started questioning her sanity.
Scooter parked, she gathered her picnic supper from the milk crate. Henny’s plot looked pretty from a distance. Welcoming. Harriet’s too. Benny laid her blanket between the two, put her food on it, and went first to her husband’s grave. A hand placed upon the stone, she bowed her head and searched for words that never sufficed even if she did find them. The dream still spooked her. It hadn’t been the first time her Henny turned into zombie-Henny within the confines of her mind. All the other times, she woke in a cold sweat. This time he’d spoken—
It’s not me. It’s you. I’m sorry, Benny
—and his words spooked her more than his altered form.
Letting her hand fall, Benny turned to Mrs. Farcus’s grave instead.
“It’s no use. I’m a mess.”
Nothing.
“Augie asked me to come back. He said he’d show me where he’s buried. Anyone there? Augie? Mrs. Farcus?” She swallowed hard. “Harriet?”
Still nothing. She went back to her blanket, sat down, and opened her sandwich. The giant cookie had robbed her appetite. She ate anyway, washed it down with the lemonade. The second cookie taunted her. She picked it up, nibbled at the edge.
“I am eating for two, you know,” she told it, and ate the whole thing. If she couldn’t have one of Johanna’s mud cookies, two of her tollhouses were ample compensation. She felt a wee bit queasy, though she licked her fingers clean. Leaning back on her elbows, she looked up at the darkling sky. If she wanted to get home before dark, she had to leave soon.
She rose groaning to her feet, gathered the garbage, and started for her scooter. Stopping at Harriet’s grave, she noted a few marigolds ruining the orange and yellow tableau with their withered brown-ness. Benny deadheaded them, grimaced at a bare spot she hadn’t noticed before. She would bring something to fill it with, next time she visited.
“I guess I’ve been stood up,” she said, brushing her hands clean and re-gathering her garbage. “Could you tell him I was here? Augie, I mean. Not Henny. I’m pretty certain he’s not here. Not like you, or Augie. Hell, I don’t even know if you are here or I’m just wishing so hard that—”
The cookie wrapper whipped out of her hand and fluttered away. Benny grabbed for it. It dodged. It actually dodged. She dropped the rest of her what she still held and she gave chase. The wrapper caught on a tombstone, a tuft of grass, a branch, a bouquet of flowers long-since wilted, skipping, lifting, rolling on a non-existent breeze Benny wouldn’t think about until she caught it, lest she think too hard and decide she was completely nuts after all. She followed it all the way across the cemetery. It obliged by waiting until she caught up, winded and slightly annoyed to be chasing animated garbage. It finally splatted against the face of a tombstone, in an older area of the cemetery, and there stuck. Panting, Benny swiped it, and read:
Katherine Weller Fiore
September 13, 1919 ~ January 28, 1976
*
August Fiore
July 4, 1908 ~ July 7, 1980
Benny shoved the wrapper into her pocket. She knelt at the grave, traced his name with the tip of a trembling finger. Looking back the way she had come, she found no splash of color to mark Henny’s grave. Beyond the row of tombstones, a wrought-iron fence, and trees dotted with lightning bugs. She rose and moved to the fence, gripping it with both hands, and remembered a summer evening like this one, when she was fourteen. These woods. On the other side of the fence. And Henny.
“On the dramatic side, but it worked.”
She caught herself before spinning to his spectral voice. “Augie?”
“Who else would it be?”
“I hardly know anymore. You have no idea—”
“Hold that thought just a minute…”
A sensation like a breath gasped made Benny blink, but she didn’t look at it.
“There,” Augie said. “Is this better?”
Less spectral. More real. He was getting better at making the transition. Or she was only wishing. “I suppose,” she said.
“Something wrong, Benedetta?”
Yes. No. “I’m assuming it was you, with the cookie wrapper?”
“It was. Impressed?”
“Annoyed is more like it. I’m not in the best shape for running across a cemetery.”
“You look quite shapely to me.”
“Stop that.” She bit at the insides of her cheeks to keep from grinning. “Why didn’t you just talk to me?”
“I haven’t quite mastered moving from depth to depth yet. Forgive me, but it was easier to get you here this way.”
“Depth?”
He chuckled. “My own notion, ah? The best way I can describe it is that going from the place I mostly exist in to here, where I am with you now is like kicking off at the bottom of a pool. It is fast, at first, and slows as I get to the top. From deep to shallow. From dark to light. That is why it’s easier for me to move about when in the deep place. See?”