The Lovely Shadow Read online

  “Mrs. Fischer,” June said, “I can’t thank you enough. I truly can’t. But when we have a court hearing, how likely is it that Johnny will be placed permanently into our care?”

  Miss Lilly beamed in satisfaction, understanding that June’s use of the word ‘our’ was intentional and implied Miss Lilly’s continuing presence in our household and a place in my upbringing.

  Mrs. Fischer smiled (which was a macabre sight indeed with her makeup in such a bad condition) and said, “It is exceedingly unlikely that the court will grant joint custody to the two of you.”

  She pointed in our general direction and wagged her plump little sausage finger back and forth between Miss Lilly and June.

  “However, Miss Devon, you are a blood relative of Mr. Krimshaw and the court is generally fond of preserving the unity of family whenever possible.”

  “With the whereabouts of Mrs. Krimshaw still unknown, and the condition of the environment in which she abandoned him, it is very unlikely that custody would ever be granted back to her even if she does resurface soon.”

  “In my estimation, the likelihood of permanent custody being granted to you is very high indeed, especially considering that I’ll be recommending that very judgment, and I don’t like to toot my own horn, but when I throw my weight around, the court generally listens.”

  Mrs. Fischer gave a slight wink and patted her belly as she used her self depreciating humor to emphasize her point, and June and Miss Lilly laughed.

  There seemed to be an unspoken signal that went off, as all three adults in the room rose from the couches simultaneously, and reached across the table to shake hands. I, however, remained seated.

  I did not think my legs had healed enough in such a short time to support my weight, and I didn’t want to bring Mrs. Fischer’s attention to the fact that I’d just been crippled by my guardians.

  “Lilly,” June said, “I’ve got to drive Mrs. Krimshaw back to town, and pop in at the police station again. Would you mind keeping an eye on Johnny again?”

  “O’ course not June-bug. De boy be like a breath o’ fresh air to me. I don’ never mind watchin’ him. An’ b’sides, I done promise him a sammich an’ den did no’ give it to him on account o’ all dis ruckous.”

  June thanked Miss Lilly, bent down and kissed my forehead, and then headed out the door with Mrs. Fischer.

  Miss Lilly went back to the kitchen to check her gumbo and get my sandwich, and I sat on the couch, massaging my legs, and feeling bad about having been so mortified by Mrs. Fischer’s outward appearance.

  She turned out to be a lovely maiden on the inside, but I could not escape the fact that on the outside, she was a dragon.

  CHAPTER 18

  I was still rebuking myself when Miss Lilly came back carrying a plate with two grilled cheese sandwiches on it and a bowl of tomato soup. She set them on the table, pulled a soup spoon from her apron and set it down next to the bowl, and told me I should come eat. Then she headed back to the kitchen to play with her gumbo.

  I headed over to the table and bent down to smell the soup. For as long as I could remember I had always loved the smell of tomato soup. I sniffed deeply, expecting to have my senses bathed in the acidic aroma of creamy tomatoes, but instead I got a nose full of rose scent.

  I stood up quickly and stared at my bowl of soup, checking to make sure it was really tomato, and not some kind of bizarre Cajun flower soup. It appeared to be tomato. I bent down and smelled it again, but with a bit more caution. It smelled just like tomato soup.

  Shaking off the weird, I sat down and took a gargantuan bite out of my sandwich, then reached for my spoon to wash down the bite with a bit of soup. My spoon was gone.

  I checked all over the table top, and looked around on the floor but could not find a spoon. I was sure that I’d seen Miss Lilly put a spoon down next to the bowl, but thought I must have imagined it, because all evidence seemed to point to the contrary. There was no spoon here.

  I chose to simply slurp my soup directly from the bowl rather than go in the kitchen and pester Miss Lilly for another one. I did not want her to think I was insinuating that she had not been up to snuff on her performance.

  When I was all done eating I packed up my dirty dishes and brought them into the kitchen to wash them. I was a quick study, and had learned at breakfast that those who dirty the dishes wash the dishes.

  Miss Lilly had apparently tired herself out with all the activity that had gone on, for she was sitting in a wooden chair at a small table in the corner of the kitchen with her head on her chest, snoring loudly.

  I washed my dishes as quietly as I could and got them put away. Then I headed out of the kitchen and went looking for something entertaining to do.

  I spent some time exploring the rest of the house, wandering aimlessly from room to room. I found a laundry room, study, bathroom, and a family room (complete with a T.V. and V.C.R. downstairs. There was nothing of any vast interest downstairs aside from a bookcase in the family room that contained a plethora of books.

  June’s minimalist decorating sense prevailed in every area. Every room had just enough ornamentation to keep the room from seeming empty, but never so much as to make the room appear busy or cluttered.

  The scant decorations did not detract from the elegance that the builders of the house had engineered in, but rather seemed to enhance them. Ornate woodwork appeared in every room around doorways and windows, and also in moldings that ran along the floors and ceilings.

  The exploration of the house did not turn out to be the time sink that I’d hoped it would be and I soon found myself restless and bored.

  I decided to head back to the family room and turn on the television. June had satellite television and I was not familiar with the controls on the clunky remote control, but I played around with them long enough to get them figured out.

  I flipped through the channels for awhile until I found an old Tom and Jerry cartoon and sat there staring blankly at the T.V. for a bit, watching the mischievous mouse tormenting the poor tomcat in at least a dozen different and entertaining ways.

  I felt lazy and somewhat depressed but did not know why. So many wonderful things had happened to me in the last sixteen hours or so—since June had first opened the basement door—that I could think of no reason to feel down, but there I was.

  There was something niggling at the back of my mind but I could not concentrate on it quite hard enough to bring it into focus, and its presence seemed to weigh heavy upon my soul, soiling me from the inside.

  My mood rapidly digressed and depression began to steal over me like a cold shadow when a cloud slips in front of the sun. On the television, the poor tomcat was currently tied to a chair and the small brown mouse was sadistically yanking out his whiskers one by one, and I saw no humor in it.

  I clicked off the T.V. and set the remote on the coffee table. I leaned back onto the couch, and committed to the idea that I was going to sit there and be miserable for no good reason.

  Just when I got comfortable on the couch and uncomfortable in my soul, a quick breeze blew gently through the room, carrying with it the scent of roses, and then dissipated. I glanced at the window that was set in the wall directly across from me and saw that it was open part way, leaving a three inch gap which was undoubtedly the source of the wind.

  The open window I saw, but what I didn’t see was the curtains moving in the breeze. I was still puzzling over that phenomenon when the breeze blew by again. I was staring directly at the curtains when it happened, and they did not move.

  I sat upright on the couch and looked around the room. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

  I got up and went exploring the rest of the downstairs to try and discern the source of the rose scented breeze. I checked every window and door and found them all closed. I found Miss Lilly still in her chair with a stream of glistening drool running from the corner of her mouth, down her chin, and onto her shoulder.

  I stood there for a se
cond, breathing in the wonderful aroma of the gumbo that was simmering on the stove when Miss Lilly woke with a startled snort and jumped out of her chair, scaring me at least half way to death, if not even closer.

  I figuratively jumped most of the way out of my skin, and was convinced for a second that I had literally jumped out of my socks until I remembered that I had left my socks near the front door earlier in the day.

  I screamed like a girl with a scraped knee at the fright Miss Lilly had given me when she jumped up, and my scream in turn scared Miss Lilly halfway to death and cause her to scream out in shock.

  When Miss Lilly screamed, she involuntarily jumped and tried to swivel her body around to the source of the scream that had startled her. The jumping, swiveling, and screaming proved to be far more than her heavy frame could pull off gracefully and she lost her footing.

  The floor trembled beneath my feet when Miss Lilly’s robust rump landed forcefully on it. I was mortified. I was certain that Miss Lilly was going to be pissed that I had given her such a fright.

  She sat there and stared at me for a couple seconds, and I waited tensely for her to start hollering and threatening me with her spoon. Instead of getting angry, Miss Lilly started laughing in the same sharp barking tone I’d heard at breakfast time.

  When Miss Lilly laughed, there was no superficial quality to her laughter. She laughed hard and deep. It seemed that within her stout body somewhere, there was an infinitely deep pool of joy, and her throat was a pump that tapped this well of happiness, pulling the joy to the surface, and spurting it out of her mouth in the form of laughter, drenching everybody around her with it.

  I began to laugh along with Miss Lilly, forgetting my sour mood and curiosity for the time being. When Miss Lilly was laughing, it was impossible to remain dour.

  Finally, our laughter subsided and I helped Miss Lilly up off the floor. When she was upright again and had finished smoothing out her dress and apron, she looked at me very seriously and said, “I done told you we was all gonna be bustin’ our butts before de day were done!”

  We both laughed again, and Miss Lilly opened her arms, inviting me in for a hug, which was precisely what I had needed to complete my transformation from gloomy to blissfully content.

  When we broke free of our embrace a few seconds later, Miss Lilly kicked me out of her kitchen again and I returned to the family room to see if I could find a book to pass the time until supper.

  When I entered the room I saw a paper lying on the coffee table that I hadn’t noticed before, and was fairly certain had not been there. It was lying on top of the remote control, and I knew I had not placed it there when I set the remote down.

  I picked up the paper and looked at it, but could not understand what I was looking at. There was a line of script written on the paper in a very elegant, flowing handwriting. The style of writing on the page seemed to exude an effeminate aura and brought to mind indistinct images of the female form, flowing and undulating in a most alluring dance that was at once exotic, sensual, and graceful.

  Trying to clear the images of infinite beauty from my mind I stared at the handwriting on the page and tried and make out what it said.

  La tristesse se lave l'âme, mais il peut se laver l'âme de suite.

  I was certainly not a philologist or linguist and had no idea what the words might mean, but I suspected that perhaps Miss Lilly could figure it out.

  I grabbed up the note and headed back to the kitchen to pester Miss Lilly as she worked diligently to get supper prepared.

  “Miss Lilly,” I said as I walked in the door, “will you look at something for me?”

  Miss Lilly looked at me suspiciously and said, “Wha’choo be wantin’ me to look at?”

  I handed Miss Lilly the note I found and said, “I found this paper in the family room and thought maybe you knew what it said. I can’t read it.”

  Miss Lilly read the note out loud.

  “La tristesse se lave l'âme, mais il peut se laver l'âme de suite.”

  As she read the words a tingle ran down my spine and in my mind I saw a flash of the same indistinct but definitely feminine form moving gracefully.

  I must have been deeply buried in my vision, for when Miss Lilly spoke again it startled me and I felt my face flushing, as though I’d just been caught doing something I shouldn’t have been.

  “Dis note be written in French,” Miss Lilly said. She looked slightly puzzled as she stared at the note in her hand.

  “But I be de only one in de house dat be knowin’ de French, an’ I know dis not be my writin’. But it be sayin’ true fo’ sho’.”

  “Where you say you be findin’ dis letter again, Boo?”

  I explained the scenario to Miss Lilly, about feeling the breeze and not being able to locate its source, and finding the note laying on the table when I reentered the room, but I left out the smell of roses and the indistinct but compelling images that flashed into my mind when I looked at it. Those two things seemed somehow private to me and I was not yet ready to share them.

  Miss Lilly looked puzzled again, but decided that the note was probably up on a shelf and the breeze had blown it free, where it floated down onto the table. I thought that seemed like a reasonable explanation, but still wanted to know what the note said.

  “Well,” Miss Lilly said, “de note be sayin ‘sadness washes de soul, but sadness can wash away de soul’.”

  I scrunched up my brow as I tried to ponder out the full implications of the phrase, but its meaning seemed to be just out of my grasp. I understood all the words but when strewn together in that particular sequence, the phrase seemed to be contradictory.

  “What do you think that really means, Miss Lilly?”

  “I tink it mean dat it be okay to grieve for de people an’ tings dat be lost, but if you spend too much time tinkin’ bout how sad you is, an’ how much you miss dem tings, den you be getting lost in de sadness.”

  Miss Lilly handed me the slip of paper and I absentmindedly stuck it into the back pocket of my jeans while I pondered Miss Lilly’s interpretation.

  Thinking back to the depression I had been feeling right before the note appeared, the words on the paper made perfect sense to me; however, it made the appearance of the note seem far less random than a breeze blowing it down off a shelf.

  I was just beginning to dwell on the matter when I heard June pull up in the driveway and decided that the matter could wait.

  As I was headed out of the kitchen Miss Lilly hollered after me, “Supper be ready in abou’ ten minute, Boo, so don’ be runnin’ off too far.”

  “Ok, Miss Lilly thanks.”

  I made it into the living room only seconds before the door opened up, and though I considered doing another flying superman leap into June’s arms, I decided that it would probably be in both of our best interests if I did not do that again.

  It was good that I had decided on restraint. When June came through the door I could sense immediately that there was something terribly wrong. All of the joy was out of her eyes, her shoulders were slumped, and she was dragging her feet. She looked like she had just seen her best friend die of a heart attack while watching him kick her favorite dog.

  I could think of nothing to say in the midst of the storm of sadness that seemed to be surrounding June, so I simply walked over to her as she closed the door and leaned back against it, and gave her the biggest hug I could possibly deliver with my small body.

  June did not lean down to return the hug, but she reached down and stroked my hair and began to cry.

  We stood there for several minutes, until June managed to siphon back her tears and sniffles, and wiped her face dry. Then she broke our embrace and got down on her knees in front of me so we were eye to eye.

  One more diamond leaked out of the corner of her left eye and I watched it as it struck a crooked path down her cheek to her chin, where it hung for several seconds before finally dropping off.

  “What’s wrong June?”
/>   June inhaled deeply; apparently unsure of her ability to make words. She held the breath in for a second before releasing it in a deep sigh. Then she said, “Johnny…Honey… I just left the hospital. I went to the police station to talk about…well it doesn’t matter why, but they asked me to go there to identify… well… it’s your mama, Johnny. She’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I stepped back away from June in shock. I did not know what to say, or what to feel. But I felt like my head had just exploded, which was ironic in a way. My mother had often intentionally given me the impression that my head was exploding while she was alive, and now, in death, she’d managed to pull off that trick one more time, though unintentionally.

  I just stood there, blinking at June and said the only thing I could, “Dead?”

  June nodded, her lower lip quivering, and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Baby. I’m so sorry.”

  “Dead?”

  June nodded again; the tears streaming freely once more down her face. I could see a myriad of reflected lights in each tear, turning the world upside down in each reflection.

  I blinked a few more times and realized I had been holding my breath, I exhaled deeply and nodded my own head and said resignedly, “Dead.”

  I was lost in a sea of various emotions so deep that it threatened to pull me down in the undertow. I was so inundated with feelings that I overloaded and became desensitized and numb. I looked at June and dispassionately said, “Miss Lilly says dinner will be ready in a few minutes. We should go wash up.”

  Then I turned and started for the stairs. On my way, I saw my socks lying at the bottom of the steps where I’d tossed them before heading outside earlier that day. It felt like several lifetimes had passed between that moment and this one.

  I bent down and grabbed the socks and thought that they felt strange in my hands. I attributed the weirdness to the strange insurrection my emotions seemed to be having, and continued on my journey to the upstairs bathroom to wash my hands.