The Queen Gene (21 page)

We all turned to Jack to catch his reaction. “Look, I’m not saying you guys can’t believe in ghosts. It’s not my thing.”

“Not his thing, darling!” Anjoli scoffed. “Can you believe such arrogance?”

“I wouldn’t call it arrogance, Anjoli,” Nick said, diplomatically. “He’s entitled to his opinion, like you are yours.”

* * *

That night after we got Kimmy and Nick settled in the guest room, Anjoli and I surfed the Internet for ghost-busters while Jack went upstairs to read. Browsing a global network of information was difficult with Anjoli because she saw a million things that distracted her. Marketers are smart. They know that when a person enters “space-clearing,” it’s also a good time to hit them up for tarot cards, Wicca products, and essential oils. “Oh look!” Anjoli said. “Space-clearing salt is on close-out!” She insisted I click on the icon because we might need some for our house clearing ritual. “Darling, rock salt is excellent for removing negative energy.”

“Salt?” I asked.

“Yes, its cohesive qualities make it the ideal
sha chi
remover.”

She sounded like she was on a TV commercial for spiritual Spray ’n’ Wash.
Sha chi got you down? No problem. Just use a little rock salt with extra cohesive qualities and say goodbye to evil spirits and negative energy. Thanks rock salt!

Looking at the myriad of ghost-buster ads made me less sure that this was something I wanted to pursue. One site had a spooky music soundtrack. The other was decorated with tombstones. I felt extremely foolish for even considering this as an option. “Look at these prices, darling!” Anjoli said when she sensed my skepticism growing. “It’s so cheap, you can’t go wrong. Didn’t you say that
Healthy Living
editor wants you to write an article about this anyway? It’s a tax write-off!”

“I guess,” I said. “Let’s deal with this tomorrow.”

“We can’t wait another day!” Anjoli said dramatically. “This is a very powerful spirit if it was able to withstand my clearing rituals. Who knows what nefarious plan it has up its sleeve?”
Do ghosts have sleeves?
“Besides, I want to get back to the city by Tuesday, so we need to get the place cleaned tomorrow. Darling, you go to sleep. Let Mummy handle this. You know what pleasure it gives me to take care of you.”

I went upstairs to find Jack in bed reading a novel. It was one of those typical guy paperbacks with a weapon against a dark black-and-red background. He looked up and asked how my hunt for a ghost-buster had gone. “Anjoli’s handling it,” I explained. “She says she enjoys taking care of me.” We laughed. “Hey, you know what I just realized?” Jack paused for me to continue. “We need to put our ad back on the Internet. We’ve got to start looking at new artists for our second season.”

“I was thinking that too,” Jack said. “Should we ask for psychiatric evaluations this go ’round?”

“Very funny,” I returned. “What are the odds of getting another Jacquie and Maxime?”

“Chantrell’s no day at the park either,” Jack added. “What was the deal with that funeral dirge she was playing at dinner?”

“At a celebration of an engagement no less!”

“She’s obviously been married before,” Jack said, laughing.

I whacked him with a pillow. “Jack, seriously, let’s talk about the schedule. If you post the announcement on the web tonight, can we reasonably ask for applications to be in by July 4
^th
?”

“Why not? That gives people a month. It’s not like our application is overly cumbersome. It’s one page long, big deal. A few days to shoot photos of their work and get the all-clear from a mental health professional. I think that’s plenty fair.”

I smiled at his suggestion. “When did you get to be so cute?” I asked him, crawling in to be closer to him on the bed.

“I’ve always been this way,” he replied.

“You were a grump for years,” I said softly, kissing his forehead, then moving to his lips.

“I was great.”

“You were a jerk,” I kissed him again. And before we knew it, we forgot all about posting our request for applications online that night.

* * *

After Nick and Kimmy had breakfast, they said goodbye and headed back to Princeton. They promised to come back for our open house on Labor Day weekend, a promise I knew they’d keep. Nick sounded far too intrigued by the idea of our make-your-own culture we’d created here on a few acres in the Berkshires. I liked him. He seemed just grounded enough to make a good, stable life with Kimmy, and yet wacky enough to keep up with the excitement she’d bring.

“Shelia will be here at three,” Anjoli announced as the car drove away.

“Shelia?” I asked. Jack held the same puzzled expression, begging an answer.

As she tied her scarf around her hair to make a pony tail, Anjoli answered, “The woman who’s going to finish the space-clearing I began, darling. Do you have any chicken liver?”

“Dare I ask what she needs with chicken liver, Mother?”

We walked toward the house, and she stroked Mancha’s head. “Not for the space-clearing! For my baby. His nutritionist said he could be suffering from an iron deficiency. Chicken liver for a space-clearing,” she scoffed. “Don’t be ludicrous, darling.”

Anjoli sat at the kitchen table while I loaded the dishwasher, and Jack took Adam down to his studio where he had recently installed a bouncing duck that a toddler could jump around in. “Have you ever taken him to a regular vet?” I asked my mother.

“Why would I do that, darling?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t they need vaccinations?”

“I would never vaccinate Mancha!” Anjoli said, sounding appalled. “The mercury could upset his little system, darling. Plus, more goes wrong in these medical offices than anyone ever reports. I say if you want to stay healthy, keep far away from doctors.”

“Mother,” I said, as I realized my hand had been motionless under running water for quite some time. “I hate to have to ask you this, but did you have me vaccinated?”

“If I had it to do over again, I would spare you those awful shots, but yes, when you were a baby, I marched in lock-step with the doctor’s orders,” Anjoli said. “I suppose you’re relieved about this, darling?”

“I am.”

“So conventional,” Anjoli said, waving her hand. “Anyway, darling, Shelia will be here at three, so I was hoping you could vacuum beforehand.”

“Vacuum?”

“Yes, darling. Last night I did some reading on the Internet and learned that negative energy can get stuck in the carpet. The more we can clean up before she gets here, the better off we’ll be.”

“Aren’t we paying her to clean?” I asked.

“We can’t expect her to vacuum, darling!”

There are times when I’m conversing with my mother when I have to stop myself and ask,
What the hell am I talking about?!
This was definitely one of them. “Okay,” I said, inhaling deeply. “I’ll vacuum before she gets here.”

* * *

At 3:20 pm, the doorbell rang. By then not only was every inch of carpet vacuumed, Mother insisted that we lift all of the seat cushions and suction spirits from the sofa and love seat. I found myself wondering if a simple vacuum cleaner bag would be strong enough to contain a ghost that managed to injure women’s legs and to deplete artists of their creativity. Then I found myself wondering if I’d lost my mind completely by surrendering my home to an Internet ghost-buster found by a woman who had driven a dog to neurosis.

“A thousand apologies for my lateness,” said Shelia. “Traffic was terrible.” Somehow I had imagined her arriving by broom or magic carpet. At the very least, I’d expected her omnipotence to be able to avert mundane problems like traffic. Shelia wore a black sweatshirt with gold script lettering that read “Magic Happens” and a long black skirt with dark blue Chuck Taylor high tops. She placed a square shoe box on my kitchen table and introduced herself, holding my hand too long and gazing too deeply into my eyes. When she spoke, I noticed her teeth were badly capped and her gums had freckles. I never knew gums could have spots, but hers did. Shelia opened her box and told us that she found Tibetan tingsha bells extremely effective in purifying space. “My bells are handcrafted in bronze, iron, and zinc by Tibetan monks,” she said. I felt as though she expected some sort of reaction from me and couldn’t help accommodating.

“Mmmm,” I said, faking being impressed.

“They are individually ground and polished and adorned with ancient, mystic symbols,” Shelia said, again waiting for a reaction.

“Really?” Anjoli said.

Shelia continued. “They are treasured for their ability to produce pure and cleansing sounds that release spaces of their
sha chi
.”

All right, lady, let’s get this show on the road. I need to get dinner on the table in another two hours.

She held the bells out for Anjoli and me to inspect. It felt as awkward as when waiters asked me to approve of the first sip of wine from a bottle. What was I supposed to say? “Lovely,” I muttered. Soon Shelia was flitting around my house ringing her bells in each corner of the room. As the bells rang, Shelia shut her eyes and contorted her face as if spirits were traveling through her.

Jack, who had come upstairs to refill Adam’s sippy cup with juice, couldn’t resist. “Are we trying to get rid of the ghosts or call them to the table for dinner?”

I wanted to run into his arms and declare myself on his side of this debate once and for all. I wondered how I let myself believe that this witchy bell-ringer could solve our problems. With a look I told Jack,
You were right. This is truly ridiculous.

Adam pointed at Shelia and said he wanted the drums. Apparently, the tingsha bells look like an instrument from preschool music class. Adam thought it was time to reach in to the basket of music and sing “
Sha Chi,
go away, don’t come back another day.”

“Darling, go back to your studio,” Anjoli scolded.

“Is this studio in the house?” Shelia asked, still ringing.

“Yes,” I answered. “We’ve got three guest houses and a studio in the back.”

“I’ll need to see them all,” Shelia demanded. “Spirits can be very sneaky and hide. I need to ring every corner of every space if I am to fully cleanse the property of
sha chi
.” I wondered if she charged by the corner.

She became more animated, swirling around the room with a childlike carelessness. One might think she was enjoying herself, except every few seconds she stopped dead in her tracks and scrunched her face as if she were swallowing bad medicine.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked her.

“It’s intense.
Sha chi
is leaving your home and using my body as a conduit to the spirit world,” Shelia said.

Jack tried to contain his smile. “I hate it when that happens.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

As we were making our way down the path to the guest cottages, I realized that it would be my first peek inside them since the artists moved in.

In a way, I hoped no one was home, especially Randy. How would I explain this witchy woman wanting to come inside to ring bells in each corner?

Our first knock was on the door of Maxime and Jacquie’s place. It took a good minute for Maxime to answer, and when he did he looked as if we’d interrupted a nap. “Hi,” I said, brightly. “This is my friend, Shelia, and you remember my mother, Anjoli, right?” He barely nodded. “I was wondering if we could come in for a sec and look around. Jacquie’s not here, is she?”

“No, she is at the mall with Chantrell,” he said before beginning to weep. “Excuse me for the tears. I cannot stop crying for months. If I sketched all the time I cried, I would have an entire exhibit by now.”

As he spoke, my eyes scanned the living room in disbelief. I had seen fraternity houses that were cleaner than this house. There were fast-food wrappers on the floor, stacks of newspaper, and a mountain of shopping bags in the corner. The smell of old food permeated the entire cottage. Despite the fact that Jack and Tom had installed screens, bugs had managed to find their way in to make an insect hurricane around the uncovered garbage pail. I was certain that no self-respecting ghost was in this home, but asked to come in anyway.

“I hope Chantrell is shopping for Lysol,” Anjoli said to Maxime. Without acknowledging her, he returned to the wooden bench at his table and buried his overflowing eyes in his palms.

As it turned out, my fear about how I would explain Shelia was completely unfounded. Maxime didn’t seem at all curious about this strange woman who was dancing around his house ringing bells and contorting her face. He might not have even noticed because after Shelia finished, he simply looked up from his table and thanked us for stopping by.

Rattled by the mess Maxime and Jacquie had made of our guest home, I asked Anjoli and Shelia for advice. “I think I should call a therapist. This man is obviously depressed.”

“Forget about the therapist, darling. Call a cleaning woman,” Anjoli suggested. “Protect your investment before you worry about this deadbeat’s mental health. You’re going to get rats in that place if you’re not careful.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” Shelia began, “that guy and his wife need a good, swift kick in the ass. Didn’t you say they are living here as your guests?” I confirmed. “You’re not responsible for getting him a shrink or a maid. Tell him to clean up his act or hit the road.” This was not the advice I expected of a self-proclaimed spiritual practitioner, but then again, she was in the business of evicting spirits, not coddling them.

I suggested we go to Chantrell’s house next since I knew she wasn’t there. Plus, I saw that Randy was home and hoped he might leave before we got around to his place. The cellist kept her home immaculate, but I was surprised to see the number of crucifixes hanging on the walls. There was a gold Jesus on the cross next to a plain gold cross in the entry way, and a painted Jesus on a wooden cross in the kitchen. In the living room there was a colorful needlepoint cross framed in glass, an equally colorful God’s eye-like cross done with rainbow yarn, and another made with twigs that appeared to have come from our woods. I could see a painting of Jesus in the hallway leading to her bedroom, but decided not to go down that path. No one could help noticing the tidal wave of Christ. Even Mancha seemed to be taking it all in, moving his beady eyes from one cross to the next.