Twenty-Two October 29, 2023
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Elsie stands under Zander’s portico fidgeting with the button on her sweater.
Her cardigan is purple and covered in ice cream cones.
Under it, she wears an army green pleated miniskirt over red-and-brown-striped sweater tights, all bought for the occasion.
The clash of pattern and colour pleases her in the same way listening to jazz does.
She adjusts her backpack and tugs down her skirt, and finally, she knocks.
In Zander’s yard, foam headstones are propped up in the dirt of the vegetable garden bed, and fake cobwebs are strung over the windows and the portico.
Two skeletons, dressed as bride and groom, lounge in lawn chairs, and their ghosts, also in a wedding gown and tux, dance in the apple trees above them.
Carved pumpkins line the path to the house, each punctured in the shape of a different constellation.
She knocks again. Leaning to the side, she can see flickers of Zander moving around in his office through the slats of the blinds. Maybe he can’t hear her over the music he’s playing. She tries the doorbell, but it doesn’t ring, so she knocks again, louder this time.
Finally, the music stops, and she hears footsteps approaching down the hall. She imagines Zander peering at her through the peephole before he unlocks the door. Then there he is, dressed in what she’s come to think of as his work clothes, a black turtleneck and chinos.
She’s the client. She’d booked an appointment online with him, to avoid an awkward exchange over the phone. But then, on the way in, she hit construction, traffic. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she says.
But he only waves her in, his expression flat, his eyes tired and without the spark they’d held less than a week ago when he kissed Elsie in Crystal’s workshop.
“Your decorations are amazing,” she says to fill in the void. “You must get a ton of trick-or-treaters.”
“Just carrying on a family tradition,” he says.
He closes the door behind her and leads her into the office. “Tea?” he asks, already plugging in the kettle.
Elsie sits on a stool, knocking her heels against the rungs. “How was your week?”
“Okay, I guess.” From the small cupboard over the coffee station, he takes down a box of teabags, cups. He pours himself a coffee.
“I wanted to apologize,” she says. Zander doesn’t turn around, so she talks to his back.
“I think, again, that I may have misread some cues. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
” She plucks a tissue from the box on the table and twirls it into a snake.
“I just didn’t think you were interested—” No, it was more that she saw the signs, but then didn’t believe he could be interested in her. This handsome, smart, articulate man.
Zander sets a jug of milk on the table without looking at her. “You said you wanted to discuss the seventh house?”
Elsie tortures the tissue snake. “Yes, but—” That was the excuse to see Zander, to apologize, to make things right, to start over with him.
But now it seems that’s going nowhere. The tears sting and spout as she feels a sudden, overwhelming hatred of that stupid atlas.
So many shitty things have happened since she found it.
She tugs another tissue from the box, wipes her eyes, blows her nose.
Zander sits next to her. “Hey, what’s happening?”
“Dad had a stroke and—” And she fucked things up with Zander. And Marcus is an ass. And her life is shit.
“Your dad’s in the hospital?”
“Oh! I thought Bailey would have told you. He had surgery yesterday, to clean out his carotid artery.”
“Is he okay?”
She plucks yet another tissue from the box. “He’s recovering. But his doctor thinks he might have another stroke.”
“Oh, Elsie.”
“The thing is, I know he does. Have another stroke, I mean. A series of them, in the next couple of years. And then he dies.”
“You saw it when you opened the atlas to the seventh house.”
“And the sixth.” Elsie tugs out another tissue. “These trips to the past and future have been so hard.”
He gives her a moment to blow her nose again. “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning. You opened the atlas yesterday, right? The moon transited into your seventh house just after midnight. Or did you do that today?”
“Yesterday. Bailey came with me. She saw me phase.”
“She believes you now?”
“Yes.”
“What was the location?”
Elsie waves a hand at the window, in the general direction of the ocean. “Close by here, actually. Ross Bay Beach, across from the cemetery.”
Zander leans back on his stool. “Really?” The kettle whistles but he doesn’t get up. It whistles on.
Elsie puts her fingers to her ears. “May I turn this off?”
“Oh, sorry.” Zander stands to pour boiling water into her mug. “Does that beach mean anything to you?” he asks, as he offers her the cup. “I mean, does it have some special significance?”
“It does now.”
“What happened when you opened the atlas? What did you see?”
She pours milk into her tea. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“I’ll guess, then. And you can tell me if I’m right or not.” He takes a sip from his coffee. “It’s a full moon. Or it will be, officially, at midnight tonight.”
“And that means . . .?”
“The seventh house is about partnership, so, with the moon illuminating it, you’ll have a very clear idea of what you want when it comes to partners, romantic or otherwise.
Whatever was initiated in that powerful dark moon at the eclipse becomes actualized now as the full moon moves through your seventh house.
” He gets up, finds a copy of her seventh house chart from the file on his desk and sets it on the table between them.
“And you’ve got a lot going on there. In the present, outer world of your chart, Uranus and Jupiter are pushing for insight and understanding.
And Aries is on the cusp, so you’re likely to be quite active and energetic in establishing partnerships. ”
She holds the mug in both hands. The warmth of it. “But am I likely to be successful in establishing a relationship?”
He turns his focus back on the atlas, his face reddening.
Is he blushing? His hand is trembling. “Everything here says you’ll dive right in, but you should be careful.
” He hesitates before continuing. “The full moon is likely to show you there’s a lot more to the relationship than you currently understand, or want. ”
“What do you mean?”
He keeps his eyes on her chart. “Relationships aren’t just about providing you with the security or reassurance you might be looking for.” He picks up his phone to check the time. “Shit. I didn’t see how late it is. I have another appointment to make. Grab your coat. We’ll take my car.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“I think you’re supposed to.”
“Supposed to?”
“Just give me a minute.” He disappears into his living area and comes back out with a bouquet of lilies.
“Are those for me?” she asks, delighted.
He seems a bit confused. “No,” he says.
“Oh.”
He doesn’t explain. He opens the front door, ushering her out, and locks it behind them. “We’ve got to hurry. It’s almost time.”
“Time for what?” she asks. “Who are we seeing?”
He opens his car door and places the lilies on the back seat. “You’ll see.”
ZANDER FINDS a parking spot between two cars across from the Ross Bay Cemetery and parallel parks effortlessly. (A skill Elsie never masters. Mapmaking is easy for her. Spatial orientation in the real world? Not so much.) He reaches into the back seat for the lilies before opening his door.
Elsie gets out. There’s a residential area right across from the graveyard. What’s it like to live so close to death each day? Peaceful, probably. The cemetery is like a park, trees everywhere.
She takes a few steps down the sidewalk expecting to go to someone’s home, but Zander crosses the street towards the cemetery.
She waits for a car to pass then trots to catch up.
It’s only once they’re through the cemetery entrance and walking its winding road that she finally asks, “Why are we here?”
Zander smiles but doesn’t answer. He leads Elsie through a maze of stone and grass: mossy headstones, mausoleums, memorial statues of the once well-to-do.
The trees are mature here, planted many decades before.
As she follows Zander, she kicks up the litter of leaves.
There’s a deer statue overseeing a grave ahead.
At least she thinks it’s a statue, until the deer rises and ambles away on their approach.
They reach the newer plots and Zander finally stops at a grave with a small, simple headstone that reads, Maryanne Grace Wood.
“My grandmother,” he says. “Nana.” He lays the bundle of lilies at the base of the headstone then sits on the bench opposite it.
“Ooh,” Elsie says, “I get it now.” The lilies. The graveyard. “You took me to meet your dead grandma?”
“You invited me on a hike to the place where your mother died.”
Fair. Elsie wishes she had a grave to visit, a headstone with her mother’s name on it. But she and her family had scattered her mother’s ashes at the lookout.
He checks his phone for the time. “We just made it,” he says. Then he leans forward to put a hand on the tombstone. “Happy anniversary, Nana.”
“Anniversary?” Elsie asks.
He turns to her. “Today, right now, is the anniversary of her death. Nana died during the first Covid wave, when they weren’t allowing any visitors into long-term care. I had to say goodbye to her on a tablet.”
“She was already in long-term care?”
“She had Parkinson’s,” he says. “In her final years, she needed more care than I could give her at home.”
“You took care of her?”
“For as long as I could.”
He turns back to the headstone. “Nana, this is the woman I told you about,” he says. “Elsie. Elsie, this is Nana.”
“You told her about me?” Elsie asks.
He grins at her. “That I met the time traveller that your mom told her about? Are you kidding?”
Within her shoes, Elsie wiggles her toes. He told his grandmother about her!
“Nana died just a couple of days before Halloween, which she loved. Honestly, I think she was more pissed at missing Halloween than dying. Anyway, now that she’s gone, I celebrate it for her.”
“The house.”
“She always decorated it for Halloween.” He turns back to the headstone. “I saw her once after her death, here, as we buried her.”
“Really?”
“Standing over by that maple. She always said she would try to make it to her own funeral.”
“That doesn’t scare you? That her ghost is still around, watching?”
“Of course not.”
Elsie wouldn’t want her father hovering around after his death. Then again, that old woman already is.
Zander touches the tombstone again. “Anyway, Nana, I miss you. Love you.” He kisses two fingers and presses them to the headstone again. “I’ll drop by again soon.”
He stands and turns to Elsie, holding out a hand towards the path that winds through the cemetery. “Want to take a walk?”
“Sure.”
They stroll down the paved path, kicking up leaves. Up ahead, the deer nibbles grass between graves.
“You really told your nana about me?” Elsie asks.
“I also told her that I thought I would be seeing a lot more of you.” He smiles shyly at her. “Or at least I hoped I would.”
“I feel really bad about the other night,” Elsie says. “I never would have gone out with Marcus if I understood—”
“That I was interested in you?” He takes her hand. The warmth of his palm on hers. The thrill of his touch. (And there it is: in their hands, a fresh start.) “Tell me what you saw when you opened the atlas to the seventh house.” He’s smiling, like he already knows.
Elsie bobbles her head. She can’t. She just can’t.
He squeezes her hand, urging her on. “Tell me.”
She takes a deep breath and, giddy with nervousness, her eyes on the path ahead, she launches. “I was on the beach. It was night. There was a crowd, music, people dancing. It was a reception. I had just gotten married.”
“To me.”
She looks up at him, wide-eyed. “How did you know?”
“Just before she passed, I told Nana that I’d get married at the Ross Bay Beach, where we spent so much time together when I was kid.
That way she could see the wedding from the cemetery, where she wanted to be buried.
” His eyes follow a gull flying overhead.
“And before, you told me the coordinates on the eighth house map were for my place. The date on that chart is so far in the future, I figured we had to be involved in each other’s lives for a long time. ”
“Why is the eighth house important?”
Zander grins without looking at her. “Like I said, the fifth house is about the sex we have for fun. The eighth house is about the sex that connects us on a spiritual level.” He pauses. “The sex we find in marriage, whatever form that takes.”
Elsie’s gaze flutters up to Zander. Spiritual sex in Zander’s house. She could go for that.
“But, again, I wouldn’t take it literally,” he says.
“Sex can represent many things, connecting us not only to our lover but to the deepest parts of ourselves. Like I told you before, the eighth house is often called the house of transformation. It’s also about duties, the obligations we have to others, especially when it comes to other people’s money. ”
“Other people’s money. Like my dad’s?”
“Maybe. The house does govern inheritances. But that can come from a marriage too.”
“But the chart is titled ‘The Eighth House: Sex and Death.’ Does that mean I’ll see Dad’s death?”
“It’s more about endings, about the people and ideas we need to let go of so we can move forward.”
“Do you think we really . . .?”
“Get married? Who knows?” He stops to take both her hands. “But let’s not rush it, okay?”
“No, no, of course not.” Is he about to bolt like Marcus did?
“How about we spend some time together,” he says, “and see how all this plays out, like normal couples do.”
He called them a couple!
But not normal.
They turn and walk back towards the cemetery entrance hand in hand. “I thought we’d hang out at my place for a bit,” he says. “Then maybe go out for dinner?”
“I don’t like driving in the dark.”
“I’m not trying to push you into anything, Elsie.”
“No, it’s not that. I really don’t like driving in the dark.”
“So, don’t.” He takes her hand in both of his, holds it to his chest. “Stay with me tonight. Take Monday off. Then, if you must, you can open the atlas at my place once the moon transits into the eighth house, to see what the future brings.”
Uncertain what this invitation means, exactly, Elsie sidesteps in place. “So, I stay in the guest room again?” she asks. Just to be clear.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Zander kisses her knuckles. “Let’s take this slow, okay?”
Why does he want to take it slow? What man wants to take it slow? Is he uncertain about her? She doesn’t want to take it slow. But—
She swings his hand. “Okay,” she says.