12. Donna
TWELVE
Donna
BILLY BOSTON AND THE SCARLET SPITFIRE
“But why is Wilhelm not your boyfriend, Püppchen ? Why do you not want happiness with a man? Wilhelm is not Trevor. Only Trevor is Trevor.”
It’s been a long day, and I don’t have it in me to argue with this woman. Also, I’m starting to wonder what my problem is. “I know he’s not Trevor, and I am happy, and Billy is great, but?—”
“His team schtinks ,” Opa interjects. “But Wilhelm is great.”
“Exactly. But this is just a no-strings thing that we have, Oma.” I don’t know how to explain to her that I’m starting to think I want more of Billy and with Billy and from Billy, but I can’t bring that up with Billy or I might end up with no more Billy.
“What is this no schtrings ? Why should you not have all of his schtrings ?” Oma asks.
“We just hang out and fool around and have fun without the commitment. It’s really great!”
My oma snorts. “ M?dchen . Püppchen . Between a man and a woman this is not a thing.”
“Ach! Schtop pestering her! Everything has its time, yah? You know the saying, Donna, Alles hat seine Zeit. Let our girl have no schtrings until she wants schtrings , Helga.”
“Thank you, Opa.”
“But you need to nail that man down soon, Püppchen , before someone else will. He wants schtrings with you, but he will not wait forever, I think.” Opa sounds like Sigmund Freud all of a sudden.
“Yah. ‘Everything has its time…’” I can literally hear my oma rolling her eyes at him.
“Okay, well, I’m almost at the house, so I need to hang up now. Love you guys. Glad you got home safe.”
“Say hello to Wilhelm for us!” Oma says before I hang up on her.
Billy is already at the house. His car is parked outside, and it’s alarming how happy I am to see it there. He has his own key now. We don’t have keys to each other’s apartments, but he has a key to my haunted house. That’s something, I guess.
I’m still wearing scrubs because I just got off work, but I comb my fingers through my hair and apply lip gloss in the rearview mirror. I’ve got the wooden box filled with letters that Lars gave to me for safekeeping. Hopefully we can just read them aloud to Lara, she’ll find peace and have closure, and then she’ll be on her merry way and I can focus on the cranberries and my sunroom and my shiplap. Hopefully.
If she doesn’t leave, well, I probably won’t be able to sell a haunted house, and I can’t live here, so I’ll just keep living in the city and paying the property taxes on this place because my late patient, who was so very sweet, forgot to leave me money to pay for taxes and upkeep and, oh right, he also didn’t mention his wife’s ghost.
So this has to work.
Not that I’m in a big hurry to move out of the apartment, because that would mean moving away from Billy. The thought of it makes the rims of my eyes sting and the tip of my nose tingle. Even though I work twelve-hour shifts, even though Billy’s always out doing God knows what, God knows where most of the time, I’ve gotten used to living under the same roof as him. But if he does start dating someone seriously, it will be a lot easier for me if I don’t have to hear him come home with her, so I really do need a ghost-free house to move into.
As I step up onto the front porch, I get a better grip on the wooden box and start to flip through all the keys on my key ring to find the one for this house. But before I do, the front door pops open. I wait for Billy to appear, but he doesn’t. Stepping through, I find the inner door open as well. I guess he forgot to shut them.
He isn’t waiting to greet me in the front hall either. I find Billy’s toolbox on the first step of the stairwell, but I do not find Billy. “Hello?”
No reply.
I don’t hear any movement downstairs.
And then I hear humming from upstairs.
Shit.
Not the upstairs humming again.
“Billy?”
No reply.
I clutch the box to my chest and pick up a flathead screwdriver from the toolbox before going upstairs. I do not plan to stab a ghost with a screwdriver, and I also don’t think I’ll do much damage if there’s an axe murderer up there. But if there’s another dove stuck in the closet and I have to pry open the window, this will definitely help.
But now I hear more than humming.
I hear singing.
And the hint of an echo that can only mean one thing—Billy is singing in the bathroom. It’s not that damn Chumbawamba song. It’s not a Meat Loaf song. Nor is it a Neil Diamond song.
I don’t recognize it, but it sounds like a classic.
“ Every morning, every evening
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun? ”
I pause when I reach the door of the en suite bathroom. It barely sounds like Billy. He’s got that old-timey ragtime vibe going. It’s weird.
Very weird.
As I’m about to step into the bathroom, I get a flash of an image of Jack Nicholson in The Shining when he’s in a shower with that woman.
If Billy is showering with the ghost of Lara Olander in my house and singing to her, I will murder him and then I will make his ghost live here with me forever.
But he doesn’t appear to be in the shower with anyone else, living or paranormal. He’s in the tub, stepping back and forth, holding his caulk gun in both hands and then twirling it like it’s a cane, while he’s back to humming. Is that the Charleston? Or a foxtrot? He’s really into it, so I just stand here watching him for a bit. And he doesn’t seem to realize I’m here at all, even though I don’t see an earbud in his ear.
I clear my throat.
He still doesn’t acknowledge me.
“Billy!”
He sees me out of the corner of his eye and shouts, “Mothahfuck!”
I scream .
We both freeze and stare at each other for a few seconds until we can really focus on one another, and we burst out laughing.
“Jesus,” he says. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He steps out of the bathtub and runs his fingers through his dark hair. He looks so cute in his unbuttoned flannel shirt.
“Yeah, well, I heard you …” I almost lean in to kiss him. Which is not a thing that we do. But it feels like it should be. “Got your caulk out, I see.”
“Awww yeah. I’ve been putting this caulk to work all over this house.”
“What was that song you were singing?”
“Huh? When?”
“Just now.”
“Was I singing?” He looks genuinely confused.
“And dancing a little bit.”
“I was?” His brow furrows. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Billy look confused like this before. He usually just goes with the flow. “That is so weird. I’ve had this song in my head ever since I got here today. But I don’t think I ever heard it before. And I definitely didn’t realize I was singing it.”
Yeah, that checks out, and that’s not creepy at all…
“Well…sounded like you were having fun!”
“Whatcha got there?” He nods at the box of letters. “Cigars?”
That makes me laugh. “No! It’s the letters.”
“What letters?”
“The ones Lara wanted.”
His face is blank.
“Remember, you said that she told you she was looking for the letters Lars wrote to her?”
He looks less confused now. “Ohhhh. Yeah, right. From the Ouija night.”
“Yeah.”
“So we’re doin’ that again?” He sounds oddly excited about the prospect of contacting a ghost again.
“Yeah. I left the board here and that bag of salt is still in the bedroom, so I guess we should contact her that way. I could just try reading the letters out loud to see if that does it for her, but I don’t really feel her presence right now—do you?”
“You mean Lara?”
“Yeah.”
“No, not yet. I mean, you’re not acting like her right now, right?”
“What?” Now I’m confused. “When was I acting like her?”
He finally puts his caulk gun down on the counter and rubs his forehead. “You know. When you got up on the table and said that stuff.”
I frown at him. “I wasn’t acting like her. I was…” I get a chill just thinking about it. “I was possessed by her, I guess.”
He smiles and shakes his head at me like I’m messing with him. But surely he can see from my face that I’m not. “Wait. You swear to me that you weren’t acting last time? You weren’t pretending to be possessed?”
“I swear! What—did you think that was role-play or something?” I guffaw.
He rubs his lips together. “Huh? Noooo. I just thought you were messin’ with me.”
“Oh my God. You thought I did all that for a scene? That I went to Costco to buy a twenty-five-pound bag of salt just to spice things up?”
“Donna, we could put on a Broadway show with all the costumes we’ve collected over the past couple of years. What’s a bag of salt? All that matters is I thought you were into it and I was really into it too.”
I laugh so hard I snort. “Oh my God! You are such a guy!” I can’t even remember the last time I laughed this hard.
Except that now I’m starting to question what actually happened with that Ouija session. Maybe I did make the message indicator move? Not on purpose, but maybe subconsciously? Maybe I’m just clinging so hard to an old story about getting my heart broken that I’m refusing to move forward and made up a ghost to hold me back? Is Trevor the metaphorical ghost I’m haunted by? I don’t remember lying down on the table at all. It’s like I blacked out for a while. Maybe I was drunker than I thought I was. Maybe I’m so used to role-playing with Billy that I just slipped into RP mode…and unconsciousness. Surely that’s the preferable explanation.
That’s better than owning a haunted house.
I guess?
I can’t stop laughing. This is ridiculous. My goal in life for the past couple of years has been to keep things as uncomplicated as possible outside of work, and now the guy I have role-play sex with is helping me renovate a house that might be haunted, I’m starting to have feelings for him because I’m coaching him on how to date someone else, and I bought a Ouija board because a teenager told me to.
Maybe this is exactly what I need.
I look at Billy’s perplexed face again, and my heart aches a little because one day I might not be able to look at that face at all.
But I’ll worry about that later.
“Well,” I say, wiping away the tear of laughter from one eye, “let’s get this over with.”
“Okay,” he says, washing his hands in the bathroom sink. The water is, thankfully, no longer cranberry red. “I gotta let that caulk dry anyway.”
He helps me set up again. It’s not nighttime yet, so it’s a lot less creepy. Though, I am one hundred percent less tipsy, so now it kind of feels like one more thing to cross off the to-do list for fixing up this house. Kind of. There’s slightly less of a chance I’ll be possessed by a ghost when I’m painting the living room walls.
After I’ve drawn the pentagram and done the space-clearing ritual, Billy and I sit opposite each other at the round table. I place the box of letters in front of him, to the side of the Ouija board.
“I think you should read the letters. Okay? Once we’ve contacted her. If we contact her. Are you good with that?”
He nods. Not exactly apprehensively, but with much less enthusiasm than he usually agrees to things.
“Thank you. I haven’t read them yet, like I said, because I knew they were personal. I have no idea what they say. And there’s a chance I might get possessed again. But whatever happens, just keep reading the letters until you’ve read her all of them. Okay? There are ten in there. They aren’t very long. But I don’t think she’ll move on until she’s heard all of them.”
“What if she takes over your body again and she wants my body?”
“I mean. Resist it.”
He makes a face like I asked him to walk to the moon.
“Have you never said no to a woman who wanted you to make love to them, Wilhelm?” I tease.
“I’ve never said no to a woman who looks like you, Red,” he says softly. “I don’t think I can look into your face and resist you if she tries to kiss me.”
Dammit, Mouth. “Well…that’s really sweet. But she’s Lars’s wife, so…”
He sighs. “Okay, so let’s do this. I’m gonna read some letters out loud. Right on.”
“Yeah.”
“Should I read them like Lars?”
“You don’t have to. I mean. If you can. Like Lars when he was in his twenties? He didn’t have a strong Boston accent like yours. At least not when I knew him. He traveled a lot.”
“Oh, okay. So don’t sound as unbelievably sexy as I usually do. Got it. Good note.”
“He actually talked kind of like an old-timey movie hero. Just read it like an actor from a black-and-white movie, if you can do that.”
“I shall do my very best,” he says, combing his hair down with his fingers so it lays flatter on his head. It’s usually all wavy and kind of unruly. And he’s clean-shaven. Billy looks so different all of a sudden. I’m realizing he has the same coloring as Lars did when he was younger. He had a few black-and-white photos of himself with Lara around his condo, but I didn’t spend much time looking at them.
We place our fingers on the planchette. I tell myself not to manipulate it, as if that will do anything. Clearing my throat, I say, “Good afternoon… We invite La ra to communicate with us… Lara Olander…are you here?”
I barely get the chance to inhale before the room temperature drops and the planchette moves to Yes .
“Okay. Hello again. I’ve brought the letters from Lars.”
The planchette moves jerkily to R - E - A - D .
“Yes. We’re going to read the letters to you.”
Billy looks up at me, and I nod at him to go ahead.
He opens up the wooden box and takes out the stack of letters, in their envelopes. “Okay, we’ll just start with this one, I guess.” He unfolds a piece of note paper. “‘My darling,’” Billy reads, without the Boston accent. “‘My scarlet spitfire.’” His eyebrows raise, and he makes a guttural sound of approval.
I roll my eyes.
“‘My Lara, it has been twenty-seven hours since we said our goodbyes at the train station in Virginia. I am back in my home state, but it no longer feels like my home without you here. I have written you five other letters. Three of them were unreadable because I was so frantic to get the words out. Two of them were inappropriate, but very honest ramblings of what I long to do with you. I have been pacing about my flat, thinking of you. Your scent, which still lingers on my fingers and my coat. Your flaming-red hair and alabaster skin. The way your blue eyes dance with deviousness and desire when you smile at me. The way your lips taunt me with flirtatious words and kisses. That mouth, that mouth… Your mouth will be the death of me, my sweet devil woman.
I am losing my mind here without you. This is the cruelest separation I have ever known. I must return to you, Lara. You are too far away. I can no longer conceive of a life without you in it. Come to me, or I shall come to you. How can we be together? Lara, Lara, Lara. There is only one other four-letter word that means so many different things to me, and it also makes me think of you and what I want to do to you.
I cannot believe your parents refuse to get a telephone.
Write me back immediately.
I demand a response.
I’ll be thinking of you, always, as I go about my business here. I will not come to you until I get word, tormentor of my mind and heart and soul and flesh. Do not torment me for sport. Your claws are in me, but I will not play this game forever.
Yours, yours, yours,
Lars.’”
Well, shit.
I can see why Lara was missing those words.
I had forgotten that my fingers are still on the planchette until it slides across the board to the M . To the O . To the R . And to the E .
“More,” I say to Billy.
“Comin’ right up,” he says, as if he’s mixing drinks at that bar. He reads another short letter, one that obviously came after that first one he read, chronologically. She obviously wrote him back, he went back to see her, and her mouth did another number on him. But she sounds very sweet too. She was probably just young and only knew how to tease men.
As soon as Billy’s done reading, the planchette spells out MORE again.
Billy unfolds another letter. “‘My darling Lara, my love is building a house for you. It sounds like a line from a poem, but it is simply the truth of what I am doing. For you. For us. If you will have me now and forever, dear Lara, we will live together in this house. We will harvest cranberries and have chickens and goats. We will fill this house with children and love. Please, Lara. Come to me in Middleborough. Let me take care of you. I have rented a small old house in town, and we can live there until this new house is complete. I will come to Virginia again to ask your father for your hand next week if I hear from you. Please. I need to hear from you soon. Your devoted lover, admirer of your mind, and slave to your delightful moods, Lars.’”
Well. I don’t think Lara is making me swoon. She doesn’t have to. Lars wrote some damn fine love letters. And Billy is doing a damn fine job of reading them. A little too damn fine. I’m starting to get a little lightheaded. Or heavy headed? My head feels light and it’s like my blood feels all fizzy or something, but the air feels heavy all around me.
Did I forget to eat today?
Probably.
Billy starts to read another letter. “‘My love, my soul, my scarlet spitfire. The way you gave yourself to me this time. I am over the moon. I miss your smile and your voice, but you’ll be here soon. All I hear is your voice in my head. Your voice and our song.’”
I watch him, but my vision is getting blurred. Darkening around the edges, like filmstrip when it burns. I can hear Billy’s voice but also someone else’s whispered voice. Flashes of memories that feel like dreams because they aren’t mine.
Such a bewildering swirl of emotions. So many lines are blurred, and I can’t parse out what’s coming from Lara and what’s mine. Frustration and impatience and the exhilaration of having a body again and love. So much love.
I feel my hands on my chest, over my heart, and then I watch as my hands reach out for Billy.
It’s like I’m watching a movie of myself from the inside.
I don’t feel like I have control of myself anymore. She does. Almost like I have invisible strings controlling me. Like she’s the puppeteer and I’m a marionette .
But the face I see before me isn’t Billy’s. It’s a young Lars.
“Lars!” I stand up and grab his face. “Lars! My love, my life!”
“How ya doin’?” Billy says.
Part of me knows it’s Billy’s voice, but it sort of splits off into someone else’s. Lars’s voice.
“Oh, my love, our song! Yes, our song!” I start singing.
“ Every morning, every evening
Ain’t we got fun? ”
Billy stands up and sings.
“ Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun? ”
My feet move around the table to Billy, but I’m not the one who’s moving them.
“ The rent’s unpaid, dear
We haven’t a bus. ”
Billy puts a hand on my waist and takes my hand in the other .
“ But smiles were made dear
For people like us. ”
We dance and sing. I don’t know this song, but I’m singing it. Billy is too. Together, we sing:
“ In the winter in the summer
Don’t we have fun
Times are bum and getting bummer
Still we have fun. ”
“Oh, my love!” I cry out. I feel giddy. Or she does. Lara is having the time of her afterlife. “Oh, Lars! You’re back, you’re back, you’ve come back to me!” I kiss him, all over his face. “Oh my darling, I’m all yours! Take me here and now! Take it out for me—oh, how I’ve missed it so!”
“Uh-oh.” Billy lets go and steps away from me. “Nah, I gotta finish readin’ these letters now. Sit back down there, you.” He points to the chair. “I command you to sit back down and listen.”
“Oh, but we’re together again at last, you silly goose! We must never let each other go!” I hurl myself at him. Or rather, Lara hurls myself at him.
And then my lips press against his.
My memory of kissing Billy like this at the football game gets overtaken by a memory that isn’t mine—of kissing Lars .
The unabashed rush of love is so beautiful it brings tears to our eyes— my eyes.
“Oh, my love, my love, my love! Don’t ever stop kissing me!” It’s not quite my voice, but it somehow matches my feelings.
He looks at me. Looks into my eyes, trying to figure out who’s saying that to him.
“Lars. Lars!” I wanted to say Billy , dammit! “More, please, don’t stop! Oh, my darling, Lars!”
He looks disappointed, grips my arms and pulls away. “Lara,” he says, authoritatively. “Sit down in that chair so I can finish reading my letters to you. You need to hear them. Then we can really be together.”
“Why, yes sir,” I purr. Both of us are having a distinct reaction to that tone. My body returns to the chair and listens to the rest of the letters.
Apparently Lara got cold feet and was nervous about leaving her parents and her life in Virginia. Lars had promised his mother that he wouldn’t leave Massachusetts again now that he was home from the war. The fear and sadness is overwhelming. I can’t stop the tears. They’re pouring down my face. I know how much they love each other and I know how it all turns out, and it’s all just sad. Even Billy is getting a tremor in his voice.
He gets to the final letter in the box and has to clear his throat before reading it.
“‘My love. My scarlet spitfire. My bride. The month I spent without seeing you or hearing from you brought the kind of agony that I never want to experience again. The loss of you was the loss of everything. Opening the door to this house and finding you standing there on the porch, your beautiful face wet from the rain and your tears, was the great surprise of a lifetime. Greater, even, than our chance meeting when I was visiting a friend. You came to me. You pledged yourself to me. And you married me. Not in haste, but in pure joy. Now I must wait for you to return with the rest of your belongings. We’ll have a wedding here one day, my love, I promise. This house is ready for us and all the love we have to fill it with.
Our life together will begin.
There is so much I could say to you, my darling. Fortunately I have the rest of my life to tell you. Just know that anything I ever tell you means this: I love you.’”
He looks up from the letter and directly at me.
“I love you,” he says again. “I love you.” And there’s no trace of the black-and-white actor or Lars. It’s pure Billy Boston baritone.
“Oh, I love you too!” I cry out. But it’s not Lara’s voice. It’s mine. I get up and reach across the table to grab his face and kiss him. It’s not the invisible puppet strings that are making me do it.
And then I get dizzy, so dizzy.
The room is spinning .
I don’t feel Lara anymore—she’s gone.
It’s just me kissing Billy.
We finally break the kiss.
I still feel a head rush, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Lara leaving.
I have to sit down again because my knees feel weak, and again, I don’t think it has anything to do with being possessed by Lara.
Some voice in the back of my mind reminds me to close the session.
I place my fingers on the planchette. Billy takes a seat and does the same. We slide it to the words Good Bye on the board.
And now it’s done.
Lara got what she wanted.
She heard what she needed to hear.
I’m just not sure who said I love you to whom just now.
I just know that it felt so good to say it.
I think the ghosts are gone.
But now I feel haunted by what we just said.