that milky water, thicker and darker than before, forming again at the edges of my vision. So I got down to business.
With a voice weak from not being used, I croaked out, “James, you look terrible and you smell bad. Alive or dead, I won’t have you going to seed. And listen, Carmel Handy is here and she wants you to know that she died yesterday.”
“Day before,” she corrected.
“Sorry, day before yesterday. She’s on her kitchen floor. She wants you to talk to your cop friends and see to it that none of them start the rumor that she died with a skillet in her hand. She refuses to leave this world with people making jokes about her.”
Of course, I knew full well that the time for Carmel Handy to worry about people joking was in the seconds before her skillet met the side of Mr. Handy’s head. But she seemed satisfied with what I’d said to James. She said, “Thank you, dear.”
Now that I’d completed her assignment, I waited for her to leave. I figured once you did a ghost a favor they would fade away or maybe pop like a soap bubble that had been pricked with a pin. That was how it worked in the movies, at least. But Miss Carmel was no Hollywood ghost. She stayed put, looking relieved but excited about what might happen next.
Worried expressions spread around the room like a virus. James was frightened. His concerned gaze went back and forth from me to Alex Soo. “Sweetheart, did you say Carmel Handy is dead, and she’s here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t want to worry you with it, but I’ve been seeing dead folks for a year now. I know it’s probably not what you want to hear, but I think we both knew it might happen sooner or later.”
From the back of the room, Mama hollered, “Hey, Odette. Tell Richmond what I said about taking care of those urges!”
“Richmond, Mama says …” I stopped to think about what to tell him. I was not about to utter the words “carry a Victoria’s Secret catalog into the bathroom” to Richmond Baker. I said, “Mama says you need a new hobby. She suggests you take up reading.
“And, Clarice, Mama also says you should count your blessings for having Richmond around to do the thing he’s best at and not having to deal with the bullshit that comes along with living with him. Right now she wants to slap you, but I think she’ll get past it if you promise to forget about what your mother says and just use Richmond till you use him up.”
Clarice looked mortified, and it pleased me to see that I could still embarrass her after so many years. When she recovered enough to speak, she said, under her breath, “Barbara Jean, I think she’s got brain damage.”
“Call it brain damage if you need to, Clarice. Just do what Mama says, or we’ll both haunt you.”
I spoke more carefully to Barbara Jean. “Lester’s here and he wants me to tell you something. He feels bad that he got you to marry him when he knew you didn’t love him. He says it wasn’t right and he should’ve done better by you since he was so much older. He’s asking you to forgive him.”
Barbara Jean didn’t look the least bit surprised or upset by what I’d said. I knew that she was worried about me, but I could also see that she still wore the remnants of the despair I’d seen on her face two days earlier when she’d talked to me about Chick and his brother Desmond. And I supposed that, after the haunting she’d gone through over the years, a message from her dead husband was nothing.
Barbara Jean said, “Tell Lester he was good to me … to us. He’s got nothing to feel bad about. I’m glad I married him.”
Lester let out a sigh. He tipped his hat to me and then, like Miss Carmel, sat watching.
James said, “So, you say you’ve been seeing dead folks for a year?”
“Just about,” I answered.
Big Earl, Miss Thelma, and Daddy yelled out in unison, “Tell James we said hey.”
I relayed the message. “Daddy, Big Earl, and Miss Thelma all say hey.”
James twisted his mouth and rubbed at the scar on his face, the way he often did when he was deep in thought. No doubt he was remembering Mama and her endless public conversations with dead folks. But my James is as