Chapter 22
After the sciomancy incident, I put an immediate stop to our divination experiments and try to convince myself there is no way my father is in conversation with Seth’s ghost. I am imagining things, and my projections have spun out of control.
It is time to come back to earth, so I return to the schedule that Nina had set forth.
She was right. There is comfort in rhythm and repetition, both for my father and for me.
We have enough going on with his Alzheimer’s.
We don’t need any additional surprises or drama, and we certainly don’t need any paranormal activity.
But I can’t stop thinking about it.
With Thanksgiving approaching, I wonder if this will be the year that I oversee the roasting of a turkey for the first time.
For some reason, being in charge of that task feels like a lunge toward adulthood that I am not yet ready for.
Nina is appeasing our mother and going to London—for a quail dinner, I presume—so it is just my father and me.
I ask him what he would like to do for the holiday.
“Well, let’s see. What does one normally do on Thanksgiving?” He needs a reminder.
“Eat, and then eat some more,” I say. “Most people roast a turkey.”
“A whole turkey? Why on earth would anyone want a whole turkey?”
So that settles it, and I am relieved. We agree to go out, and we invite Carl to come along.
Sleepy as Locust is in the off-season, Lorne’s is always buzzing; and as far as diners go, it’s solid.
The menus hit the table before you’ve even settled into your booth.
If you want to be in and out in twenty minutes, that’s entirely possible.
If you prefer to linger at the counter all day, that’s fine, too.
There’s no rush. It’s not like in New York City, where turning tables is a science, and if your meal exceeds ninety minutes, you start to feel subtle pressure from your server (“Will that be all?”) that eventually yields to not-so-subtle pressure (a check you didn’t ask for appearing on your table like an eviction notice).
Lorne’s doesn’t have an agenda; it’s a place where everyone can feel comfortably indifferent.
The place is half full when we walk in. Two of the dark-green booths are occupied, and a few solo diners sit at the long laminate counter.
A sign above the soda fountain displays a quote from Groucho Marx: “I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s the only place to get a decent meal.
” On the radio, Bing Crosby is already crooning Christmas carols.
We slide into a booth in the center of the long space, and a familiar waitress named Sandy slaps our menus down and points to the sign indicating today’s special—turkey club—before scurrying off.
That’s when I notice Paula, alone at the counter with a gigantic martini—which must be an off-menu item, this being a diner.
She turns and gives me a wink, and I wave her over.
“Well, happy Thanksgiving,” she says. “I see we all did the wise thing and let Lorne’s do the cooking this year.”
“Will you join us?” I ask. Having now worked with her for a few months—and taken her dance class a number of times—I now consider her my second-best friend in town after Carl.
She resists for a moment, but then accepts without any additional prodding. When Sandy comes back, I nod at Paula’s martini and inquire, “Could I possibly get one of those?”
“You got it,” says Sandy.
Carl, who doesn’t drink, orders a Coke, and my father follows his lead, saying, “Coca-Cola—what a treat. When was the last time I had one of those? It must have been years ago.” (It has been one week.)
We all order different entrees, and Sandy scribbles so hastily that it looks like she’s joking. Then she taps her notepad conclusively. “That it?”
Once she leaves, we settle into comfortable small talk.
“No kids in town this year, Paula?” asks Carl. I knew Paula had a daughter, but I didn’t realize she had more than one child.
“Zara stayed out in California. She’s with her in-laws this year, god help her. And Max finally took a few days off, so he went to Iceland.”
“Max?” I ask.
“My nephew,” Paula says with obvious pride. “A little older than you. He’s an arborist, so he’s always up a tree somewhere. Lives near Long Lake.”
“We might need some trees taken down at some point, right, Dad?” I say, trying to involve my father in the conversation, though I fear he may struggle to follow along tonight. “We have lots of trees.”
“More trees than we know what to do with,” he confirms. Carl and Paula smile.
I appreciate their acceptance and ease around my father, which is never a given with Alzheimer’s.
It’s an affliction that often makes people self-conscious, worried about making a misstep, worried about others’ missteps, so afraid of awkwardness that they can’t help but create more of it.
Isolation is often easier than trying to maintain a social life, but tonight, our haphazard foursome feels manageable. More than that: it feels right.
Sandy returns and plops down our drinks.
Less than a minute later she is back with our plates.
Lorne’s is not known for its culinary prowess, but after a few bites of my club sandwich, I am confident that this meal is far better than anything I could have conjured up.
Paula orders another martini, and I follow suit.
We’re now properly tipsy, and I can’t resist bringing up my recent fixation.
“So I think my father might be a medium. Or an oracle. Or something like that.”
“Oh?” Paula looks intrigued as she plucks an olive from her martini and eats it.
I explain how it started with the loons, and how the tarot reading led to our exploration into divination.
My father, still sipping his Coke, nods along.
Perhaps influenced by Nina’s incredulity, I stop a few times to hedge: “It’s probably all in my mind.
” But Carl and Paula don’t seem to think so, and I haven’t even gotten to the Seth sighting yet.
“Do you remember … when I was a teenager … there was a snowmobile accident?” It’s hard to even bring it up.
“Of course, love. Such a tragedy,” says Paula, without judgment. I look at Carl, who seems in the dark.
“When I was sixteen, my boyfriend, Seth … well, he wasn’t my boyfriend at the time, but anyway, he died here. He crashed his snowmobile on the ice on New Year’s Eve.”
Carl winces but then meets my gaze again.
“And a few weeks ago, my father saw him. We were on the dock, and he said Seth had just slipped around the corner into the boathouse. He was sure of it. It didn’t seem like a confused memory; it seemed real.”
My father listens intently, as if unaware that I’m telling a story about him.
“And it’s not the first time he has mentioned Seth. But it seems to come and go.”
“Who’s Seth?” my dad asks.
“See?” I say. Then I respond to my father: “He’s an old friend.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t someone else? Like a real person who resembled Seth?” Paula asks.
“I checked. There was no one there.”
“Could be a hallucination, but I doubt it,” says Carl.
“So maybe Arthur really was visited,” adds Paula.
“You know, he was always very perceptive. We were on the Conservation Committee together a while back. He could practically predict the day the buds would bloom.” Then she addresses my dad directly.
“Arthur, remember that year when you rallied everyone to battle the Japanese knotweed? And thank god. It’s a nightmare, that stuff. Invasive species.”
“Knotweed…” muses my father with clear hostility toward the plant.
“This is only one dimension of many, you know,” continues Paula, circling her hand through the air around us. “There’s more to life than meets the eye. There has to be.”
“You believe in that stuff? The occult?” I ask.
“What’s the alternative—not believing in it?” Paula shakes her head. “No thank you.”
Sandy slides up to our table and plunks down four fat wedges of pumpkin pie. “On the house.”
As we chirp in gratitude, Carl takes a slice and ventures, “Just because we don’t have an explanation for something doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
Paula nods, and then adds, “Or maybe nothing is real.”
I’m emboldened by their open-minded reception. “So you believe me?”
Paula nods enthusiastically as she daintily drags the tip of her pie off with her fork. Out the window of our booth, snow has begun to fall with increasing gusto, lacing the trees and sugaring the tops of the cars in the lot.
“I believe Arthur can sense things before they happen. And I believe he can commune with people who are on the other side,” says Carl, pausing thoughtfully.
“You do?” I ask.
“Well, it’s not just that I believe it—I know it.” Carl nods. “I’ve seen him do it.”
This is the story he tells us.
Before Carl moved to Locust, he lived near Albany.
His mother suffered from dementia, too, and he had spent the better part of his forties caring for her.
Though he has two siblings, it was Carl who stepped up and took responsibility for his mother’s well-being.
It took a toll on him, as caregiving often does, but he stuck with it until he couldn’t anymore.
His mother had become paranoid and erratic.
She escaped their home multiple times, and she regularly woke in the night and got into trouble—turning on the stove, turning on the car, wandering the sidewalk in the dead of winter.
Eventually, Carl had to admit to himself that she was more than he could handle, and he secured her a spot in a home where he could visit her every day.
He was torn about the decision, but she settled in, and after six months, it seemed they were both doing better than they had in years.
Carl began to allow himself the odd indulgence—weekend fishing trips, a new truck.
The future began to open up for him, but then, talk of a global pandemic began to spread.
Before he could comprehend what was happening—before anyone could comprehend what was happening—the first wave of the virus swept his mother’s nursing home.
She tested positive on a Sunday and died two Sundays later.
Carl’s grief was so immense that he initially wished he could follow her, either by accident or by design.
His guilt led him in all directions. First, he leaned into vices—alcohol, gambling, whatever pills he could get his hands on.
Then, after bottoming out, he leaned into virtues—sobriety, exercise, meditation, vegetarianism.
Finally, he moved to Catwood Pond, determined to start over and lead a quiet life. But still, he was plagued with the feeling that his own decisions had led to his mother’s demise. His rational mind could not outmaneuver the part of his psyche that wanted him to shoulder the blame.
Around this time, Carl met my father. Whether consciously or not, he saw in Arthur an opportunity to make amends, or at least to make conversation.
He began visiting every once in a while, and then more regularly.
Preoccupied with her PhD, Nina wasn’t interested in getting to know Carl in any depth, but she was happy to have him occupy Arthur for a few hours now and again.
At first, that was all it was: keeping company.
But eventually, Carl opened up and told Arthur how much he missed his mother.
He felt able to reveal his secret shame, knowing that Arthur wouldn’t remember it the next day.
There was something comforting about being able to tell and retell his story—first one way, then another way.
He divulged it over a dozen times, with Arthur listening intently and compassionately each time.
Eventually, the past began to lose its sting. Carl started to feel unburdened.
One afternoon when he stopped by, Arthur seemed preoccupied. He said he had just been chatting with a woman—older, frail, with ice-blue eyes and a raspy voice, wearing earrings made of seashells.
He was describing Carl’s mother to a T; there was no doubt about it.
But Carl had never talked about her in this much detail, and Arthur had certainly never known her.
Arthur’s account was vague at first: they had talked about the weather, about global warming, about how the loons had all gone north, and about Harry Belafonte.
This made Carl smile, because his mother had loved the singer like none other.
He left that conversation feeling puzzled but exhilarated.
He wanted more; he wanted to apologize. The next few times he visited my father, there was no mention of Carl’s mother.
He assumed it had been a fluke, never to be repeated, and he felt he had lost her all over again.
But then one day, a few months later, when he and my dad were sitting on the porch, my father said, “That woman keeps coming back. The one with the seashells on her ears. A real spitfire. We have a wonderful time together.”
“What do you talk about with her?” Carl asked eagerly.
“Oh, this and that,” said my father. “But she talks about you mostly.”
Carl’s heart leapt, and he held his breath as my father continued. “She says you are a wonderful son. She says you want her to forgive you, but that there’s nothing to forgive. She is having the time of her life. And she says you should get a dog.”
If it weren’t for the Alzheimer’s, Carl would have assumed Arthur was messing with him. But Arthur was guileless and sincere, and had no reason to know that these were the exact words Carl needed to hear. No, Arthur wasn’t a prankster—he was a channel.
The next time Carl visited, my father had absolutely no recollection of this conversation, and he never mentioned Carl’s mother again.
But it was enough. Whatever he had transmitted had been sufficient to heal the gaping hole in Carl’s heart.
Ever since, he had felt a peace that he hadn’t known since long before his mother’s death, and even before her illness.
So, no. Carl doesn’t think I am crazy, and neither does Paula. On the contrary, they think Seth is visiting my father for a reason.
I tremble to think what that reason might be.