A Summer with the Dead Read online

  The boy wore baggy, knee-length shorts and a hooded sweatshirt with a W on the front. He was transparent below his knees, his feet nonexistent. He raised both hands toward her, motioning again. His lips formed the words, help me.

  “Maya?”

  Maya jumped, a pain in her throat.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Elly stood to the right of the bathroom door.

  “That boy,” Maya said.

  “What boy?”

  “At the end of the hall. He’s inside a green swirling light.”

  “Are you awake, Maya, or having a nightmare?”

  The boy was gone. Maya blinked three times. “I guess it was a dream. It seemed so real though.”

  “Come’on, honey. Let me fix you some warm cocoa,” Elly said. “That always soothes me.”

  Maya hurried down the stairs behind her aunt, afraid to look behind her but glancing back twice. “What are you doing up this time of night, Elly?”

  “Watching television. Sometimes I don’t sleep straight through the night. The weatherman says a storm’s coming our way. I’ve never liked storms. They always raised havoc with the animals, back when we had animals.”

  The kitchen light was already on and the woodstove radiating heat, and yet, Elly wore flannel pajamas beneath her wool robe and wool socks inside her slippers.

  “Are you cold?” Maya asked.

  “I woke up shivering and saw my breath in the air when I turned on the light. So I got up to make sure the furnace is working. No good reason for it not to work. It’s only five years old.”

  “Did you check to see if your room’s heater vents were open?”

  “I did. The vents were shut, but I don’t remember closing them This has happened before.”

  “Maybe when you vacuum, you accidentally rake the vents closed,” Maya said.

  “Maybe.” But Elly’s face looked doubtful.

  “Aunt Elly?”

  “Yes, baby girl?”

  Maya wrapped her arms around Elly. “Thank you for inviting me here. Thank you for making me feel welcome. I needed a refuge. I won’t let nightmares ruin this visit. It means too much to me.”

  Elly patted Maya’s back. “Things are better now that you’re here, honey. I needed someone like you in this house. I’ve never wanted to live alone with all these …”

  “Sad memories?”

  Elly nodded. She heated milk and made two mugs of cocoa. They carried them into the living room where the old tube television flickered black and white shadows around the room. An issue of Retirement Living lay open on the sofa. Maya eased into the armchair to the right of the stone fireplace. She sipped her cocoa. “It probably was just sleepwalking,” she said. “But it seemed so real.”

  “I’ve had nightmares like that before,” Elly said. “The other night I dreamed the house was sinking into a big hole, as if the earth wanted to swallow the entire place in one gulp. Maybe because you asked me about sink holes the other day. Remember? What was your nightmare about, sweety?”

  “It started out with Benson standing in my bedroom doorway. He wanted to strangle me.”

  “He’s sounding more and more like a no-good skunk,” Elly said. “If he shows up here I’ll show him my double-barrel shotgun. I keep it under my bed at night. Benson will see the deep, empty eyes of hell one second before I pull the trigger if he comes inside my house uninvited.”

  Maya swallowed an uncomfortably large amount of cocoa as she studied her aunt for a moment. She tried to picture Benson’s astonished face, staring into the black barrels of a shotgun with such a tiny woman aiming it at him. “I can’t picture Benson breaking and entering, Elly. He’s more of the cussing and swearing, pound-on-the-door kind of guy. He’d throw a rock through your window and shout for me to come out, but I don’t think he’d ever force his way in.”

  “He’d better not.” Elly sounded dead serious.

  “And while I have bad dreams about him wanting to throttle me, I don’t think he really would. I think my subconscious is simply trying to finish divorcing him. My mind needs to justify my actions.”

  “Benson might have you rattled, Maya, but he don’t scare me none.”

  “Have you ever killed anything, Aunt Elly?” Maya asked.

  “Sure, honey. Chickens, a sick calf. Poor thing was suffering. A trout. Clubbed him on the head till’ he stopped flopping around. A rat in the basement. I hit him with a shovel five times before he stopped squealing. A pigeon that was building a nest in the porch rafters. It kept shitting on my porch and front door so I blew it out of the sky one morning and tossed the carcass in the yard. I spotted a coyote running off with it later.”

  “Farm life is harsh. You can’t get sentimental about farm animals, I guess,” Maya said.

  “Can’t be sentimental about anything, two legged or four legged, except for those you can trust.”

  “Yes … well, we can’t shoot people we don’t trust,” Maya said.

  “It gets easier over time.”

  “What does?”

  Elly pulled her eyes away from the flickering television. “What?”

  “What gets easier over time?”

  “Not sure what you mean, honey,” Elly said.

  “That’s what you said.”

  “When?”

  “Just now. We were talking about killing animals and about trusting people, and you said we can’t be sentimental and that shooting those we don’t trust gets easier over time.”

  “Gracious, baby girl. Farm life gets easier over time. Taking care of sick animals and getting rid of pests. Those things get easier over time.”

  Maya nodded, but she had an uncomfortable feeling. Aunt Elly didn’t make sense sometimes, as if her thoughts were jumbled or like she didn’t follow the logical progression of a discussion. Maya reminded herself that maybe this time next month, or the following month, Elly might be living in the retirement home. The caregivers there would not allow her to keep a shotgun under her bed, or to decide who was or wasn’t trustworthy.

  Benson’s words continued to trouble Maya however, even though she told herself over and over again to stop thinking about him. Sometimes she believed she heard his voice, the actual words in the air—

  “You’re nuts, Maya.” His voice was like a scar on her eardrums.

  Mental illness can run in families.

  She’d read that last month in a magazine in Dr. Conover’s waiting room. Dr. Conover advised her to stop self-diagnosing, and Maya agreed it probably wasn’t helping, but Elly was her father’s older sister. He died of heart failure in a sanitarium years ago, but he wasn’t there for heart trouble.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  MAYA SPENT THE FOLLOWING three mornings cleaning the living room and dining room, digging into every crevice and corner with the vacuum nozzle or a damp cloth wrapped around the head of a screwdriver. Short of taking apart the television, everything was scrubbed, wiped down, inside and out. While Maya cleaned, Elly wrapped her knickknacks, vases, and collectables, with bubble wrap and packed them into various cardboard boxes. She taped the boxes shut and listed the contents on the cardboard with a permanent marker. “A few of these will go into the storage unit the retirement home provides. I know you said you don’t want anything, Maya, but after I’m gone you might have second thoughts. If you still don’t want any of it, maybe you can sell it all and buy yourself something nice.”

  “Okay, Elly,” Maya said. “I’m positive you’ll sell almost everything else at the garage sale.”

  “I’ve driven by garage sales before but never stopped. There were always too many people hanging around,” Elly said. “I don’t like crowds, or for that matter, people. I’ve met too many who were nothing but nasty.”

  “I found a Wedgwood vase at a yard sale once,” Maya said. “I paid eight dollars for it and sold it to a collector for six hundred.”

  “What’s the difference between a garage sale and a yard sale?”

  “A yard sale means the sellers
can’t fit all the junk into their garage. They set stuff in the driveway and out across their yard. You can usually get the best deals at yard sales because they don’t want to move it back inside again. Whatever they don’t sell, they have to haul to the junkyard or to some charity. To get a good deal, you just need to make a reasonable offer.”

  “There’s a lot of junk in this house and in the sheds and barns. We might need to have a yard sale then,” Elly said.

  “Good. That means more money for your retirement years.”

  “Look at that. It’s already eleven-forty. I’ll make lunch,” Elly said. “How about a toasted cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup, honey?”

  “Sounds fabulous. I’m almost done in here. I’ll help you.”

  “Naw,” Elly said. “I got it handled. It’s hard to start up a cleaning project once you’ve sat down and rested. I remember how that goes.”

  “All right. Ten minutes and I’ll be done.” Maya raised a dust mop and knocked down a cobweb she’d missed in a high corner. She traveled around the room until she’d dusted the entire ceiling a second time. By then, her shoulders ached and the smell of frying bread and melting cheese made her mouth water.

  “Lunch is ready,” Elly called from the kitchen.

  Maya gathered up the dust mop, cleaning rags, polishes, put them all into one big bucket, carried them through the back skylight room and through the pantry hall. The soiled rags she tossed down the steps and into the basement. Maya washed her hands in the kitchen sink and sat down at the table.

  “Dig in, honey.” Elly sipped her soup from a mug.

  Maya bit into her sandwich. “This is how I like them, with the bread edges all crispy.” Maya tasted the soup. “You put oregano in it?”

  “And bits of grated cheese, do you like it?”

  “It’s delicious. I think this proves we’re related, which reminds me. You find any photos of Uncle Harlan yet?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re up in the attic. I just haven’t wanted to climb those stairs yet.

  None of them were taken around the farm here though. Before we moved here we knew a number of people and I remember posing for some group shots. I’ll look for those.”

  “People you worked with, you mean?

  Elly nodded. Her thin, silvery brows pinched together as if some memories were unpleasant.

  “I’d love to see them. How old were you when you moved here?” Maya asked.

  “We moved in the day before my twenty-first birthday. Harlan was almost twenty-nine.”

  “So, you’ve lived here—wow, fifty-five years.”

  “The years flew by, baby girl. Don’t let your life fly by. Don’t let people take things from you. Don’t let anyone push you into corners where you don’t want to go.”

  Maya nodded but was unsure what Elly meant, unless she meant Benson, and Benson was history.

  After lunch, Maya washed the dishes, watching raindrops plop into the puddles in the driveway. As always, the woodstove was stoked and it was warm in the kitchen. She struggled to hold her eyelids open.

  “Whew,” Maya said. She dried the last utensil and slid it into the drawer. “I think I’ll sit down for a while.”

  “Go on upstairs and take a proper nap, baby girl. You’ve been working since breakfast.”

  Maya said, “If I crawl into bed I might sleep the whole afternoon away.”

  “I’ll wake you. What time?”

  “Don’t let me sleep any later than one-thirty or I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

  Maya climbed the stairs, dropped her jeans and shirt on the chair and crawled into bed. The sheets were cool against her bare skin, the pillow smooth and crisp against her cheek. The window was open and inch. The lace curtain swayed and a chickadee sang from the peak of the roof.

  “Maya? Honey? Wake up. Wake up.”

  “What time is it?” Maya’s voice sounded distant in her own ears. Her tongue was dry and stiff. It tasted sour.

  “It’s one thirty-five. I’ve been trying to wake you up for five minutes. Are you all right?”

  Maya sat up, trying to work up saliva. “I must have slept with my mouth open. I’m all dried out.”

  “Come on downstairs. There’s fresh lemonade.”

  When Maya entered the kitchen, Elly entered the back door, her arms loaded with firewood.

  “The oddest thing,” Elly said. “Just now, Coty asked me how well I know you. He asked me if I’m sure you’re my niece.”

  Maya poured a tall glass full of lemonade. “He asked you if you really know me?”

  “I said, of course you’re my niece. You and I have exchanged cards, letters and photographs from the time you were five years old. Your first letter was written in blue crayon. I still have that letter somewhere.”

  “What did he say then?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He just shrugged, almost like he doubted me.”

  “This is kind of a coincidence, Elly. You know how your mind wanders while you’re cleaning? I was thinking earlier this morning, maybe you should ask Judith to send a photo of her nephew, so we know for sure Coty is who he claims to be.”

  Elly faced the bay window and the fields. “Good idea. I’ll ask Judith to send a photo the next time I talk to her. But then, she’ll want to know why. She wants an explanation for everything. Some of my thoughts are private and I don’t feel like telling her everything. If she wants to know what it’s like here, why doesn’t she come for a visit? She’s not a prisoner over there in Seattle. It’s a retirement home, not an asylum like that place where your father died.” Elly wore a sudden, pained expression, as if she had bitten her tongue. “Oh dear. You already knew about that, didn’t you Maya?”

  “About Dad dying at Western State Hospital? Yes, Mom told me.”

  “You were just a little girl then. About ten years old?” Elly asked.

  Maya nodded. “Almost eleven.”

  “That’s too young to know about such morbid things. I hope you mother didn’t tell you everything.”

  “She said Dad died of heart failure.”

  Elly’s smile was sad. “We all die of heart failure, honey. That’s how the doctors decide we’re dead. No heartbeat. Did your mother tell you I went to see your father there? After all, Stephen was my little brother. How could I not go?”

  “She refused to say anything about it.”

  “Of course not. Your mother would never tell you that I did something kind. I went three times. The first time they let me look through a little window into a cell with thick, white mattresses all over the floor and walls. Stephen crouched in a corner, hugging his knees, facing away from the door. I knocked and called his name but he never even looked in my direction.”

  “Mom never took me to see him,” Maya said. “She was afraid it would frighten me.”

  “That was for the best, honey. Stephen wasn’t himself. The second time I went,” Elly said. “He was in a room full of people, some in wheelchairs, some on couches. A few were humming. Some drooling. Some walked in circles. Several stood in corners, swaying back and forth or bumping their heads against the wall.” Elly’s voice faded to nothing. She was someplace else, somewhere far away, someplace only she saw. A moment later she continued. “Stephen sat at a table covered with puzzle pieces. He’d pick them up, stare at them and then put them down again, one piece after another, never seeming to comprehend the pieces could be connected. I put my hand on his shoulder and he jumped. The table and puzzle pieces went flying everywhere. Stephen started crying and a nurse came and led him out of the room, so I left and came home. I waited a month before returning. That time, Stephen said my name. “Elly.” He touched my hand and then tears rolled down his face like his heart was broken. “It’s over, Elly,” he said. ‘All over.’ I asked him what he meant but he just shook his head. I stayed for an hour. We sat side by side and nurses walked by and smiled. Finally one of them said visiting hours were over. The next day your mother phoned and told me what had happened.” />
  “What did happen?” Maya said.

  “I guess you’re old enough to know now. Stephen hanged himself. He tore his pajama bottoms into strips and braided them into a cord—they found him hanging from a water pipe in the hallway.”

  Maya’s stomach muscles quivered, as if her cheese sandwich and tomato soup might come back up. She sipped her tea, added sugar and stirred it with a spoon. “Mom never said anything about that.”

  “I’m sorry if that upsets you,” Elly said.

  “I knew there was more to the story than what Mom told me. Aunt Ruth always got so quiet when the subject of my father came up,” Maya said.

  “Who is Ruth?”

  “My mother’s older sister.”

  “Oh, her. Never liked her.”

  “She was outspoken and bossy, but she was always good to me,” Maya said.

  “That’s because you were her sister’s child. I wasn’t a blood relative so she made it clear she didn’t like me, but that’s all water under the bridge now. Your father is gone and so is Ruth. Oh, look there … out the window. The storm has arrived.”

  A limp brown leaf hit the window like the palm of a hand, flattening itself against the glass. Raindrops followed, pounding the glass, pouring down, running in rivulets and smearing everything outside into a green and gray blur. The leaf slid down and caught on the windowpane. It quivered in the wind and then blew away. Wind whistled in the chimney and the rhododendrons thrashed back and forth as if in agony.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  MONDAY MORNING, MAYA WOKE at five and arrived in the kitchen ahead of Aunt Elly. She raked up hot coals in the stove, added kindling, small pieces of pitchy fir and one large piece of alder. When flames curled around the alder, she closed the door and filled the teakettle. She oiled the griddle and placed it across two burners on the electric range. She stirred pancake batter in a bright yellow bowl, filled a pot with water, and dropped in four eggs to hard boil.