Page 79 of Persephone's Curse
“Sure,” I said.
“I don’t know why I keep thinking about this,” she said, shaking her head, looking past me. “I keep thinking about the day Clara was born. I know you were too young to remember…”
I didn’t remember, but also, Ididremember, almost. I shared the memory with Evelyn, with Bernadette. The lollipops, the books, my mother’s low, plaintive moans drifting down the staircase. Aunt Bea reading to us, singing to us, braiding our hair, telling us stories about Persephone. Our mother seeing the ghost. Our mother seeing Henry.
“You all had… an imaginary friend,” Mom said. “Do you remember that? You must have told me about it at some point. I was delirious from the pain, from the water, from the whole experience, and I… I guess I would call it a hallucination. But I swear I saw a boy. I swear I talked to him. I swear he told me his name…”
Why was she bringing this up now? Was the tear in the sky triggering old memories for her, memories of Henry?
“Henry,” Evelyn said from the doorway, standing as still as a statue, her eyes wide and unblinking. “His name is Henry.”
“Whatever happened to him? You stopped talking about him,” Mom said. “He was an imaginary friend, right? He must have been. And one of you told me about him and I just… But he seemed soreal.” She laughed softly, took another sip of her wine and pointed her glass at me. “Childbirth is a trip. When I was pregnant with you, I kept hearing music. Frank Sinatra. As clear as if someone had puta radio on. But nothing was on, there was no music, your father checked everywhere…”
“He wasn’t imaginary,” Evelyn said softly. “And he wasn’t a friend.”
“Right,” Mom said. “That’s right. He was a ghost.”
Another sip of wine, emptying the glass, then a rinse and the dishwasher and a kiss on my temple as she slipped past me, leaving Evelyn and me alone together.
“Is she acting weirder than usual lately?” Evelyn asked, and it took everything in my power not to reply,Pretty rich, coming from you, captain of the weird.
“She said she’s not feeling great. That things seem strange.”
“The tear…”
“I think so.”
“Well maybe tomorrow night we’ll figure everything out,” Evie said after a moment.
“Yup.”
She leaned her head against the doorway and closed her eyes. I watched her chest rise and fall with her breathing.
“I hope we do,” she said.
Then, forgetting whatever it was she had come into the kitchen for, she turned around and left.
Maybe was prompt, ringing the doorbell at eleven the next night, dressed in all black, with a long wool coat, a hood pulled down low over her face.
“It’s me,” she said when I opened the door. “Your friendly neighborhood ghost whisperer.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost before?” I asked her in the entranceway, as she unlaced her floral something something boots and shrugged out of her coat.
“I’ve had unexplainable experiences,” she said.
I thought about Henry helping me with my seventh-grade history project, Henry patiently showing me how to fold a paper airplane, Henry making goofy faces when I’d woken up from a nightmare once, our parents hosting a dinner party downstairs, feeling all alone until he’d materialized at the end of my bed.
“Me, too,” I said. “I’ve had a couple unexplainable experiences, as well.”
“This is a cool house,” Maybe said. “Have you lived here your whole life?”
“My whole life,” I repeated. “My ancestors built it, actually. A long time ago.”
Maybe smiled. “That sounds so nerdy.Ancestors.”
“Just more succinct than saying my great-great-great-great-grandmother.”
“What was her name?”
