PARALLEL LINES
It should have been their birthday today. Well, it was still hers, Caroleen supposed, but with BeeVee gone the whole idea of “birthday” seemed to have gone too. Could she be seventy-three on her own?
Caroleen’s right hand had been twitching intermittently since she’d sat up in the living room day-bed five minutes ago, and she lifted the coffee cup with her left hand. The coffee was hot enough but had no taste, and the living room furniture – the coffee table, the now-useless analog TV set with its forlorn rabbit-ears antenna, the rocking chair beside the white-brick fireplace, all bright in the sunlight glaring through the east window at her back – looked like arranged items in some kind of museum diorama; no further motion possible.
But there was still the gravestone to be dealt with, these disorganized nine weeks later. Four hundred and fifty dollars for two square feet of etched granite, and the company in Nevada could not get it straight that Beverly Veronica Erlich and Caroleen Ann Erlich both had the same birth date, though the second date under Caroleen’s name was to be left blank for some indeterminate period.
BeeVee’s second date had not been left to chance. BeeVee had swallowed all the Darvocets and Vicodins in the house when the pain of her cancer, if it had been cancer, had become more than she could bear.
For a year or so she had always been in some degree of pain – Caroleen remembered how BeeVee had exhaled a fast whew! from time to time, and the way her forehead seemed always to be misted with sweat, and her late-acquired habit of repeatedly licking the inner edge of her upper lip. And she had always been shifting her position when she drove, and bracing herself against the floor or the steering wheel. More and more she had come to rely – both of them had come to rely – on poor dumpy Amber, the teenager who lived next door. The girl came over to clean the house and fetch groceries, and seemed grateful for the five dollars an hour, even with BeeVee’s generous criticisms of every job Amber did.
But Amber would not be able to deal with the headstone company. Caroleen shifted forward on the day-bed, rocked her head back and forth to make sure she was wearing her reading glasses rather than her bifocals, and flipped open the brown plastic phone book. A short silver pencil was secured by a plastic loop in the book’s gutter, and she fumbled it free –
– And her right hand twitched forward, knocking the coffee cup right off the table, and the pencil shook in her spotty old fingers as its point jiggled across the page.
She threw a fearful, guilty glance toward the kitchen in the moment before she remembered that BeeVee was dead; then she allowed herself to relax, and she looked at the squiggle she had drawn across the old addresses and phone numbers.
It was jagged, but recognizably cursive writing, letters:
Ineedyourhelpplease
It was, in fact, recognizably BeeVee’s handwriting.
Her hand twitched again, and scrawled the same cramped sequence of letters across the page. She lifted the pencil, postponing all thought in this frozen moment, and after several seconds her hand spasmed once more, no doubt writing the same letters in the air. Her whole body shivered with a feverish chill, and she thought she was going to vomit; she leaned out over the rug, but the queasiness passed.
She was sure that her hand had been writing this message in air ever since she had awakened.
Caroleen didn’t think BeeVee had ever before, except with ironic emphasis, said please when asking her for something.
She was remotely glad that she was sitting, for her heart thudded alarmingly in her chest and she was dizzy with the enormous thought that BeeVee was not gone, not entirely gone. She gripped the edge of the bed, suddenly afraid of falling and knocking the table over, rolling into the rocking chair. The reek of spilled coffee was strong in her nostrils.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay!” she said again, louder. The shaking in her hand had subsided, so she flipped to a blank calendar page at the back of the book and scrawled OKAY at the top of the page.
Her fingers had begun wiggling again, but she raised her hand as if to wave away a question, hesitant to let the jigging pencil at the waiting page just yet.
Do I want her back, she thought, in any sense? No, not want, not her, but – in these nine weeks I haven’t seemed really to exist anymore, without her paying attention, any sort of attention, to me. These days I’m hardly more than an imaginary friend of Amber next door, a frail conceit soon to be outgrown even by her.
She sighed and lowered her hand to the book. Over her OKAY the pencil scribbled,
Iambeevee
“My God,” Caroleen whispered, closing her eyes, “you think I need to be told?”
Her hand was involuntarily spelling it out again, breaking the pencil lead halfway through but continuing rapidly to the end, and then it went through the motions three more times, just scratching the paper with splintered wood. Finally her hand uncramped.
She threw the pencil on the floor and scrabbled among the orange plastic prescription bottles on the table for a pen. Finding one, she wrote, What can I do? To help
She wasn’t able to add the final question mark because her hand convulsed away from her again, and wrote,
touseyourbodyinvitemeintoyourbody
and then a moment later,
imsorryforeverythingplease
Caroleen watched as the pen in her hand wrote out the same two lines twice more, then she leaned back and let the pen jiggle in air until this bout too gradually wore off and her hand was limp.
Caroleen blinked tears out of her eyes, trying to believe that they were entirely caused by her already-sore wrist muscles. But – for BeeVee to apologize, to her …! The only apologies BeeVee had ever made while alive were qualified and impatient: Well I’m sorry if …
Do the dead lose their egotism? wondered Caroleen; their one-time need to limit and dominate earthly households? BeeVee had maintained Caroleen as a sort of extended self, and it had resulted in isolation for the two of them; if in fact they had added up to quite as many as two, during the last years. The twins had a couple of brothers out there somewhere, and at least a couple of nieces, and their mother might even still be alive at ninety-one, but Caroleen knew nothing of any of them. BeeVee had handled all the mail.
Quickly she wrote on the calendar page, I need to know – do you love me?
For nearly a full minute she waited, her shoulder muscles stiffening as she held the pen over the page; then her hand flexed and wrote,
yes
Caroleen was gasping and she couldn’t see the page through her tears, but she could feel her hand scribbling the word over and over again until this spasm too eventually relaxed.
Why did you have to wait, she thought, until after you had died, to tell me?
But use your body, invite me into your body. What would that mean? Would BeeVee take control of it, ever relinquish control? Do I, thought Caroleen, care, really?
Whatever it might consist of, it would be at least a step closer to the wholeness Caroleen had lost nine weeks ago.
Her hand was twitching again, and she waited until the first couple of scribbles had expended themselves in the air and then touched the pen to the page. The pen wrote,
yesforever
She moved her hand aside, not wanting to spoil that statement with echoes.
When the pen had stilled, Caroleen leaned forward and began writing, Yes, I’ll invite you, but her hand took over and finished the line with exhaustedmorelater
Exhausted? Was it strenuous for ghosts to lean out or in or down this far? Did BeeVee have to brace herself against something to drive the pencil?
But in fact Caroleen was exhausted too – her hand was aching – and she blew her nose on an old Kleenex, her eyes watering afresh in the menthol-and-eucalyptus smell of Bengay, and she lay back across the day-bed and closed her eyes.
A sharp knock at the front door jolted her awake, and though her glasses had fallen off and she didn’t immediately know whether it was morning or evening, she realized that her fingers were wiggling, and had been for some time.
She lunged forward and with her free hand wedged the pen between her twitching right thumb and forefinger, and then the pen travelled lightly over the calendar page. The scribble was longer than the others, with a pause in the middle, and she had to rotate the book to keep the point on the page until it stopped.
The knock sounded again, but Caroleen called, “Just a minute!” and remained hunched over the little book, waiting for the message to repeat.
It didn’t. Apparently she had just barely caught the last echo – perhaps only the end of the last echo.
She couldn’t at all make out what she had written – even if she’d had her glasses on, she’d have needed the lamplight too.
“Caroleen?” came a call from out front. It was Amber’s voice. “Coming.” Caroleen stood up stiffly and hobbled to the door. When she pulled it open she found herself squinting in noon sunlight filtered through the avocado tree branches.
The girl on the doorstep was wearing sweatpants and a huge T-shirt and blinking behind her gleaming round spectacles. Her brown hair was tied up in a knot on top of her head. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.” She was panting, as if she had run over here from next door.
Caroleen felt the fresh air, smelling of sun-heated stone and car exhaust, cooling her sweaty scalp. “I’m fine,” she said hoarsely. “What is it?” Had she asked the girl to come over today? She couldn’t recall doing it, and she was tense with impatience to get back to her pen and book.
“I just,” said Amber rapidly, “I liked your sister, well, you know I did really, even though – and I – could I have something of hers, not like valuable, to remember her by? How about her hairbrush?”
“You – want her hairbrush.”
“If you don’t mind. I just want something –”
“I’ll get it, wait here.” It would be quicker to give it to her than to propose some other keepsake, and Caroleen had no special attachment to the hairbrush – her own was a duplicate anyway. She and BeeVee had of course had matching everything – toothbrushes, coffee cups, shoes, wristwatches.
When Caroleen had fetched the brush and returned to the front door, Amber took it and went pounding down the walkway, calling “Thanks!” over her shoulder.
Still disoriented from her nap, Caroleen closed the door and made her way back to the bed, where she patted the scattered blankets until she found her glasses and fitted them on.
She sat down and switched on the lamp, and leaned over the phone book page. Turning the book around to follow the newest scrawl, she read,
bancaccounts
getmyhairbrushfromhernow
“Sorry, sorry!” exclaimed Caroleen; then in her own handwriting she wrote, I’ll get it back.
She waited, wondering why she must get the hairbrush back from Amber. Was it somehow necessary that all of BeeVee’s possessions be kept together? Probably at least the ones with voodoo-type identity signatures on them, DNA samples, like hair caught in a brush, dried saliva traces on dentures, Kleenexes in a forgotten waste-basket. But –
Abruptly her chest felt cold and hollow.
But this message had been written down before she had given Amber the hairbrush. And Caroleen had been awake only for the last few seconds of the message transmission, which, if it had been like the others, had been repeating for at least a full minute before she woke up.
The message had been addressed to Amber next door, not to her. Amber had read it somehow, and had obediently fetched the hairbrush.
Could all of these messages have been addressed to the girl?
Caroleen remembered wondering whether BeeVee might have needed to brace herself against something in order to communicate from the far side of the grave. Had BeeVee been bracing herself against Caroleen, her still-living twin, in order to talk to Amber? Insignificant Amber?
Caroleen was dizzy, but she got to her feet and kicked off her slippers, then padded into the bedroom for a pair of outdoor shoes. She had to carry them back to the living room – the bed in the bedroom had been BeeVee’s too, and she didn’t want to sit on it in order to pull the shoes on – and on the way, she leaned into the bathroom and grabbed her own hairbrush.
Dressed in one of her old church-attendance skirts, with fresh lipstick, and carrying a big embroidered purse, Caroleen pulled the door closed behind her and began shuffling down the walk. The sky was a very deep blue above the tree branches, and the few clouds were extraordinarily far away overhead, and it occurred to her that she couldn’t recall stepping out of the house since BeeVee’s funeral. She never drove anymore – Amber was the only one who drove the old Pontiac these days – and it was Amber who went for groceries, reimbursed with checks that Caroleen wrote out to her, and the box of checks came in the mail, which Amber brought in from the mailbox by the sidewalk. If Caroleen alienated the girl, could she do these things herself? She would probably starve.
Caroleen’s hand had begun wriggling as she reached the sidewalk and turned right, toward Amber’s parents’ house, but she resisted the impulse to pull a pen out of her purse. She’s not talking to me, she thought, blinking back tears in the sunlight that glittered on the windshields and bumpers of passing cars; she’s talking to stupid Amber. I won’t eavesdrop.
Amber’s parents had a Spanish-style house at the top of a neatly mowed sloping lawn, and a green canvas awning overhung the big arched window out front. Even shading her eyes with her manageable left hand Caroleen couldn’t see anyone in the dimness inside, so she puffed up the widely spaced steps, and while she was catching her breath on the cement apron at the top, the front door swung inward, releasing a puff of cool floor-polish scent.
Amber’s young dark-haired mother – Crystal? Christine? – was staring at her curiously. “It’s … Caroleen,” she said, “right?”
“Yes.” Caroleen smiled, feeling old and foolish. “I need to talk to Amber.” The mother was looking dubious. “I want to pay her more, and, and see if she’d be interested in balancing our, my, checkbook.”
The woman nodded, as if conceding a point. “Well I think that might be good for her.” She hesitated, then stepped aside. “Come in and ask her. She’s in her room.”
Caroleen got a quick impression of a dim living room with clear plastic covers over the furniture, and a bright kitchen with copper pans hung everywhere, and then Amber’s mother had knocked on a bedroom door and said, “Amber honey? You’ve got a visitor,” and pushed the door open.
“I’ll let you two talk,” the woman said, and stepped away toward the living room.
Caroleen stepped into the room. Amber was sitting cross-legged on the pink bedspread, looking up from a cardboard sheet with a rock and a pencil and BeeVee’s hairbrush on it. Lacy curtains glowed in the street-side window, and a stack of what appeared to be textbooks stood on an otherwise bare white desk in the opposite corner. The couple of pictures on the walls were pastel blobs. The room smelled like cake.
Caroleen considered what to say. “Can I help?” she asked finally.
Amber, who had been looking wary, brightened and sat up straight. “Shut the door.”
When Caroleen had shut it, Amber went on, “You know she’s coming back?” She waved at the cardboard in front of her. “She’s been talking to me all day.”
“I know, child.”
Caroleen stepped forward and leaned down to peer at it, and saw that the girl had written the letters of the alphabet in an arc across the cardboard.
“It’s one of those things people use to talk to ghosts,” Amber explained with evident pride. “I’m using the crystal to point to the letters. Some people are scared of these things, but that’s one of the good kind of crystals.”
“A Ouija board.”
“That’s it! She made me dream of one over and over again just before the sun came up, because this is her birthday. Well, yours too I guess. At first I thought it was a hopscotch pattern, but she made me look closer till I got it.” She pursed her lips. “I wrote it by reciting the rhyme, and I accidentally did H and I twice, and left out J and K.” She pulled a sheet of lined paper out from under the board. “But it was only a problem once, I think.” “Can I see? I, uh, want this to work out.”
“Yeah, she won’t be gone. She’ll be in me, did she tell you?” She held out the paper. “I drew in lines to break the words up.”
“Yes. She told me.” Caroleen slowly reached out to take the paper from her, and then held it up close enough to read the pencilled lines:
I/NEED/YOUR/HELP/PLEASE
Who R U?
I/AM/BEEVEE
How can I help U?
I/NEED/TO/USE/YOUR//BODY/INVITE/ME/IN/TO/YOUR/
BODY IM/SORRY/FOR/EVERY/THING/PLEASE
R U an angel now? Can U grant wishes?
YES
Can U make me beautiful?
YES/FOR/EVER OK. What do I do?
EXHAUSTED/MORE/LATER
BV? It’s after lunch. Are U rested up yet?
YES
Make me beautiful.
GET/MY/HAIRBRUSH/FROM/MY/SISTER
Is that word “hairbrush?”
YES/THEN/YOU/CAN/INVITE/ME/IN/TO/YOU
How will that do it?
WE/WILL/BE/YOU/TOGETHER
+ what will we do?
GET/SLIM/TRAVEL/THE/WORLD
Will we be rich?
YES/I/HAVE/BANC/ACCOUNTS GET/MY/HAIRBRUSH/FROM/HER/NOW
I got it.
NIGHT/TIME/STAND/OVER/GRAVE/BRUSH/YR/HAIR/INVITE/ME/IN
“That should be B-A-N-K, in that one line,” explained Amber helpfully.
“And I’ll want to borrow your car tonight.”
Not trusting herself to speak, Caroleen nodded and handed the paper back to her, wondering if her own face was red or pale. She felt invisible and repudiated. BeeVee could have approached her own twin for this, but her twin was too old; and if she did manage to occupy the body of this girl – a more intimate sort of twinhood! – she would certainly not go on living with Caroleen. And she had eaten all the Vicodins and Darvocets.
Caroleen picked up the rock. It was some sort of quartz crystal.
“When,” she began in a croak; she cleared her throat and went on more steadily, “when did you get that second-to-last message? About the bank accounts and the hairbrush?” “That one? Uh, just a minute before I knocked on your door.”
Caroleen nodded, wondering bleakly if BeeVee had even known that she was leaving her with carbon copies – multiple, echoing carbon copies – of the messages.
She put the rock back down on the cardboard and picked up the hairbrush. Amber opened her mouth as if to object, then subsided.
There were indeed a number of white hairs tangled in the bristles.
Caroleen tucked the brush into her purse.
“I need that,” said Amber quickly, leaning forward across the board. “She says I need it.”
“Oh of course, I’m sorry.” Caroleen forced what must have been a ghastly smile, and then pulled her own hairbrush instead out of the purse and handed it to the girl. It was identical to BeeVee’s, right down to the white hairs.
Amber took it and glanced at it and then laid it on the pillow, out of Caroleen’s reach.
“I don’t want,” said Caroleen, “to interrupt … you two.” She sighed, emptying her lungs, and dug the car keys out of her purse. “Here,” she said, tossing them onto the bed. “I’ll be next door if you … need any help.”
“Fine, okay.” Amber seemed relieved at the prospect of her leaving.
Caroleen was awakened next morning by the pain of her sore right hand flexing, but she rolled over and slept for ten more minutes before the telephone by her head conclusively jarred her out of the monotonous dream that had occupied the last hour or so.
She sat up, wrinkling her nose at the scorched smell from the fireplace and wishing she had a cup of coffee, and still half-seeing the Ouija board she’d been dreaming about.
She picked up the phone, wincing. “Hello?”
“Caroleen,” said Amber’s voice, “nothing happened at the cemetery last night, and BeeVee isn’t answering my questions. She spelled stuff out, but it’s not for what I’m writing to her. All she’s written so far this morning is – just a sec – she wrote, uh, ‘You win – you’ll do – We’ve always been a team, right –’ Is she talking to you?”
Caroleen glanced toward the fireplace, where last night she had burned – or charred, at least – BeeVee’s toothbrush, razor, dentures, curlers, and several other things, including the hairbrush. And today she would call the headstone company and cancel the order. BeeVee ought not to have an easily locatable grave.
“Me?” Caroleen made a painful fist of her right hand. “Why would she talk to me?”
“You’re her twin sister, she might be –”
“BeeVee is dead, Amber, she died nine weeks ago.”
“But she’s coming back, she’s going to make me beautiful! She said –”
“She can’t do anything, child. We’re better off without her.”
Amber was talking then, protesting, but Caroleen’s thoughts were of the brothers she couldn’t even picture anymore, the nieces she’d never met and who probably had children of their own somewhere, and her mother who was almost certainly dead by now. And there was everybody else, too, and not a lot of time.
Caroleen was resolved to learn to write with her left hand, and, even though it would hurt, she hoped her right hand would go on and on writing uselessly in air.
At last she stood up, still holding the phone, and she interrupted Amber: “Could you bring back my car keys? I’ve got some errands.”
Like a lot of people of my generation, my wife and I spent a year — 2007, in our case — visiting elderly parents in “assisted living homes,” the kind of places where the dining room has tables but no chairs because all the diners will arrive in wheelchairs, and there are banners advancing sentiments like, “Sunsets are as beautiful as sunrises,” which can come to seem bitterly ironic.
In one of these places I was standing against the wall of a corridor so that two extremely elderly ladies could be wheeled past one another – and as they crossed, one of them croaked at the other, “Bitch!”
It occurred to me that a story about conflicts between two very old people would be fun – and of course I had to put a ghost in it.
And I teach one class a week at the Orange County High School of the Arts – the other end of the age spectrum! – and the school building used to be a nineteenth-century church. My classroom is the basement catacombs, and one afternoon when I had given the students an assignment and they had all dispersed throughout the church to write, I found two of the girls huddled over a box that they had converted into a makeshift Ouija board, using a crystal for a planchette. When I said, “What the hell!” one of them quickly explained, “It’s okay, Mr. Powers, it’s one of the good kind of crystals!”
Oh. Well then.
So I had to give Amber their Ouija board.
–T. P.