Monthly Archives: October 2020

Sweet Neoma

by

Based on a true story.

The train wakes him like it has nearly every day of his life, shaking the floorboards of the attic bedroom he once shared with his brother’s ghost.  For maybe the hundred time, he hears his sister Louise ask him why he stays in ‘that awful old room when you could move into Ma and Pa’s old bedroom?’  He wonders if she could bring herself to lie in that bed.

‘My room’s comfortable enough,’ he tells her.  ‘Anyway, I prefer not to sleep with the dead,’ he lies. 

Two blasts of the train whistle as it flies through town punctuate his morning wake-up call.  The railroad, like the town, grew up around the house he grew up in.  So many changes over so many years.  So many people crossing the threshold before crossing over.  The house saw it all from the steps of its wrap-around porch overlooking one of the main thoroughfares, where horse-drawn carriages once clattered before giving way to automobiles.  

He spent the better part of a summer painting that porch Apple Green (the name of the colour on the paint can) when he was ten-years-old.  And thirty.  He’ll need to paint it again soon before another summer goes by.  Something different this time, he decides, washing his hands twice at the chipped sink tucked under the slope of the attic eaves. 

Lemon Drop is a nice colour. 

‘It is,’ he agrees, wondering if there actually exists a paint colour named Lemon Drop.

Or Vanilla Cream.

Stairs shriek in protest beneath his bare feet as he makes his way down to the kitchen to fill the percolator and suck on a sugar cube.  As a kid, his brother Frank suspected Father rigged the stairs so they could never sneak in or out without giving themselves away. They tried everything to trick the stair trap: walking slowly, walking quickly, walking on tiptoe, walking on the left side, the right side, walking each side together in total unison… Those traitor stairs betrayed their every move every time.  

It was the only problem they ever tried to solve together.  Before long, Frank took to crawling out the attic window and climbing down the porch bannister to see the girls.  He never dared.  Not after Frank got caught.  No girl was worth Father’s wrath. 

One was.

One was, he agrees.

He hasn’t heard from Frank for some time now, but those stairs still make their presence known.  Maybe the next generation will solve the mystery, he thinks, chewing on buttered toast smothered in blueberry jam, adding another sugar cube to his milky coffee.  The niece maybe.  What’s her name again?  Kitty?  Kathy?  Too smart for her own good (so Louise says).  She’ll figure it out. 

Or your son might.

He lets the words tickle, tease, torment like persistent mosquitoes.  He doesn’t swat or wish them away.  He knows they don’t mean any harm.  They’ll be gone soon.   

Even without its additional leaf, the dining room table is too big for one person.  The empty chairs arranged around it emphasise his loneliness more than the empty spaces in the coat closet or the echoes of his every move in the high-ceilinged parlour.  He remembers that the vent in the parlour ceiling connects with the floor vent in Louise’s old room.  How many times did they cluster around that vent listening to adult family members spill their grown-up secrets deep into the night?  He wonders what he would hear now if he went in that empty bedroom to listen at the floor vent?

Nothing worth listening to. 

Plate and mug washed, he retreats to the ice blue bathroom to thoroughly clean his teeth with clove powder.  Everything here from tiles to towels was once rose pink.  Mother’s choice.  ‘Just because what you do in here isn’t pretty, doesn’t mean the room can’t be.’  That was Father speaking for Mother.  Interpreting for her as if she spoke a language the rest of them couldn’t understand. Considering how many people in town didn’t even have an indoor bathroom back then, having a beautiful one seemed beyond luxurious.  Though the rose-pink is long gone, he can still smell, faintly, the rose soap Father gave her at every gift-giving opportunity, knowing she would never buy something so frivolous for herself.  He continued gifting her with it after Father passed.  Mother didn’t even like the smell of roses—as she told him over and over, but she liked the colour pink.  Damned if he didn’t carry on that rose soap tradition til the day she died. 

He washes his hands and face in cold water before climbing back up the shrieking stairs to dress.  Already he knows it will be too hot for a suit.  Any other day he would just wear a vest and roll up his shirtsleeves, abandoning his jacket on the back of the office chair.  Today, he’ll have to put up with the heat.  An extra layer of talcum and a few dabs of cooling peppermint oil will see off the worst of it.  Someone once told him peppermint oil prevents fever.  ‘Keeps you cool and keeps you well,’ whoever it was claimed. 

You smell good.

A clean smell, he agrees, blushing slightly.

He dips his already peppermint smelling fingers into a pile of Pep-o-mint Lifesavers.  Bright, red-white striped rolls like the pinafores worn by the hospital girls.  Do candy-stripers still exist?  He’s not sure.  It’s been so long since he’s entered a hospital, though he once felt like a permanent figure haunting its corridors. The Lifesaver rolls collide into one another, wriggling and rattling against the sides of the glass bowl.  He captures one and shoves it deep into his pants pocket. 

From the nightstand, he fishes a penny out of the top drawer to feed the bubblegum machine purchased at a business auction a decade ago.  He likes the satisfying click the gears make as he twists the knob; that childlike anticipation as hundreds of sugar-coated candidates jockey for position until, finally, one tumbles down the chute into his waiting palm.  He tucks it neatly in the small pocket of his vest where gentlemen are meant to carry watches.  He doesn’t mind that it bulges awkwardly, spoiling the line of his suit

Always keep something sweet by your side. 

Always do.  Always will, he promises. 

He pushes through the screen door off the kitchen, past a row of bright soda shop syrup bottles.  He likes the way the light filters through the colours, bathing the back porch in rainbow shafts.  The front door would be more direct for where he’s going, but using the formal entrance never occurs to him.  Habit to always go in and out the door closest to the garage and the car. 

That new car.

A shining Chevy Impala—cherry drop red with toffee leather interior.  Good to know his hard-earned cash is good for something.  Frank would spit nails if he could see it.  That much-loved, ever worked on Oldsmobile of his was consigned to the junkyard five years ago.  The boys at the repair shop took what they could use from it, along with all Frank’s tools—tools his brother used to tinker with any car that parked near him long enough.  He doesn’t need them anymore and it’s good to know someone’s getting some use out of them.     

He stops to wash his hands again at the old pump, working the soap cake, wrapped in a stocking tied to the base of the pump handle, between his hands to coax a layer of lather.  Growing up in an era of epidemics made him conscious of cleanliness from a young age.  As a boy, he never understood why the preacher said it was “next to Godliness.”  Surely, the idea of cleanliness was to avoid God and his Heaven as long as possible.  Mother smacked him for saying so but didn’t say he was wrong.  Young as he was, he knew he was right. 

Losing loved ones to those epidemics didn’t keep him young for long.  ‘So many ways sickness can make you suffer,’ as Louise so often says.  Cleanliness hadn’t helped Mother or Father or Frank or… 

Frank was another kind of unclean and another kind of sick and God himself probably washed His hands of him long before this mortal coil did.  Father never brought Frank into the family business—much good it would have done him to try.  Mother never thought much of Frank’s excuses to be anywhere but church every Sunday.  She’d probably have a lot to say about his own church attendance nowadays. 

What she has to say doesn’t matter anymore. 

Past the place where Mother’s lilies once bloomed, on either side of the porch steps, two rows of peony bushes perk up their pink and white ruffled heads like so many precious pieces of divinity arranged for a ladies’ tea party on an emerald platter.  They seem eager to play their part on this important day.  He kneels respectfully before them, breathing their delicate scent until it surrounds him like a perfumed shroud.

My favourite. 

He wants to pick the prettiest ones, but knows she’ll want the ones that smell nicest.  Taking his time, he chooses a dozen that satisfy both criteria, carefully cutting each stem on the diagonal. ‘Makes them last longer,’ Mother said.  As an after-thought, he picks a white peony—not fully open, a tightly curled whipped cream garnish of a bloom—and adds it to the collection. 

At the too large dining room table, he gathers the dozen peonies together, their ice cream scoop blossoms melting into one another, then wraps the stems with a crisp length of chocolate brown ribbon.  In the mirror over the buffet in the parlour, he fixes the white peony bud to the lapel of his suit jacket, securing it with a pearl tie pin.  He rubs a thumb against the tarnished edges of his reflection, but it makes no change to the image of a gaunt, grey man in a pinstripe suit, decades out of style, lined face lit by the pale bud glowing near his heart in a shaft of early summer sunshine. 

Who’s the lucky girl?             

His reflection brightens as he smiles into the silence.

Once, this house was full of sounds: the rattles and shrieks of metal on metal from Frank’s tools in the garage; the snips and trickles of Mother with her garden flowers; the hum of music and conversation from Father’s shortwave radio that picked up noise from every corner of the globe.  Gone now.  The quiet feels…

Peaceful.

Peaceful, he agrees.

He lays his jacket reverently, careful not to crush the peony boutonniere, across the creamy caramel leather of the cherry red Impala before climbing into the driver’s seat.  The bouquet he places on the passenger side next to a brown paper bag folded over at the top.  Before starting the engine, he cracks open the small tin of Black Crows he keeps in the glove compartment and pops a liquorice into his mouth.

He turns onto Main Street and parks in front of his office, partly from habit but also for convenience.  The old Virgil & Son sign now reads Virgil: Attorney at Law, each letter still bearing that fresh paint gleam.  For nearly a decade, he had been content to keep his father’s name intact beside his own, but, ultimately, it caused too much disruption and confusion.  No one will be requiring his legal services today though.  Today, business takes him across the street—to The Sweet Shop.

Goody, goody gumdrops!.

Twin windows flank the door of The Sweet Shop—each one a feast of sights, smells and tastes.  In the left window: rows of chocolate bars line up like soldier boys on parade beside girlish lollipops with paper frills around their necks while, between them, conversation hearts trade messages of flirtatious adoration; waves of cherry mash, hub wafers, honey sticks and cola bottles wash up against a pirate chest overflowing with rock candy treasures; the plaster head of a fiercely cheeky. bowler-hatted gangster advertises candy cigarettes under a speech bubble that reads “Here’s looking at you, sweetheart.”  In the right window stands a fairytale gingerbread house covered in tempting penny candies with cinnamon stick trim, ice-cream cone trees, cotton candy clouds and paths pebbled with Boston Baked Beans.  A witch marionette leans against her house of temptation, one jointed, green, wooden finger beckoning all good children to: “Come Taste for Yourself.” 

It’s a den of delicious sin—and that’s just the outside. 

Once inside The Sweet Shop, greedy customers face a terrible choice.  Go left toward the jars of candy stacked ceiling-high on groaning shelves or displayed in long glass cases like crown jewels.  Or, turn right to a sparkling silver counter, take a seat on a shining black vinyl stool and order ice-cream sodas, sundaes or multi-layered scoops overflowing with peanuts, coconut, chocolate sprinkles and, of course, a cherry on top. 

This is his favourite place in town.  The most beautiful.  The most holy.  This is where she should be.  

‘Morning, Mr Virgil,’ greets the boy behind the counter, moving a hand to his bare head as if to remove a cap that isn’t there. 

‘Thanks, Ollie.  Working hard today?’  Ollie blushes, grins.

‘Yes, sir.  What can I—

‘That you, Junior?’ calls a voice through a door.  He winces.   

‘Sure is, Mr Woody.’

Charles Woody is one of three people still living who call him by his childhood nickname.  ‘Big shot lawyer like his dad,’ Woody says to anyone waiting in line for chocolates or sipping ice-cream soda when he happens to be there, ‘but time was everyone in town called him Junior.’  Woody rounds this off with: ‘Wouldn’t know it now,’ and a hearty laugh as he stands next to him comparing heights.  ‘Now he’s gotta duck just to get through my door.’  More laughter. 

‘I have those bulbs your misses wanted,’ he announces, eyes roving over every inch of the shop he can see, straining to sneak into those he can’t. 

He holds up the brown paper bag by its folded down top.  One half of Woody’s meticulously waxed moustache pokes around the corner of a door plastered with candy advertisements clipped from magazines old and new.  The rest of Mr Woody’s moustache, curling over his candy apple frame, makes its way toward him. 

‘Your mother’s heirloom lilies?’

‘Some even older than you are.’  Behind him, Ollie stifles a giggle.    

‘Sure you want to part with them?’ Mr. Woody’s hand hesitates, but his eyes fix on the bag and its precious contents. 

‘I’m not much of a gardener.’

‘Well, can’t say she’s not had he heart set on these for some time.’  The bulging brown paper bag disappears under the counter.  ‘This will make me popular at home.’  A wide smile spreads across Charles Woody’s wide face.  ‘On the house today, Junior.’

‘That’s really not—’  But the old man waves away his protests.  ‘Thank you, sir.’ 

Woody shoulders young Ollie out of the way to serve his favourite customer.  A shiver runs down the boy’s spine as he shuffles off to the stock room.  Woody doesn’t need to ask what he wants because he always gets the same today.  While the candy man fills a white paper bag, he lets his eyes wander the shelves and displays, breathing in the smell of chocolate, vanilla, fruit, cream and sugar—so much sugar. 

See anything you like?

I do, he gulps, face flushing. 

‘My Pearl should come see you soon.  Separating from her husband,’ babbles Mr Woody.  ‘About time if you ask me.  Bad business.  Make sure he pays for what he’s done, though, I told her.  Get Junior on the case.  He’ll sort that scoundrel out.’ 

Pearl is Mr Woody’s granddaughter.  She lives thirty-five miles away in a city big enough to have a hundred lawyers.  He nods, not really listening, and vaguely promises to pass her name along to a firm he knows.  Woody passes the bag of sweets across the counter, pausing to give him a long, deep look.  A hand on his shoulder, snaps him out of his reverie. 

‘How you keeping, Junior?’ 

He hesitates, hand half closed over the bag.  He knows this is polite interest—even sincere sympathy.  But it’s not necessary and it’s not welcome. 

‘I keep fine, thank you.  Sir,’ he adds a heartbeat later.  ‘Running late.’

Woody nods, gives his shoulder a squeeze.  He mumbles softly, under his breath: ‘Miss her.  A real Cracker Jack.’

How sweet.

‘Can’t be late,’ he chokes through a tight throat.  Mr Woody lets go of the bag.  Ollie opens the door for him. 

‘Come again,’ they chorus. 

Crushing the white bag to his chest, he marches smartly out of The Sweet Shop.  He vanishes into the interior of his red-hot car and exhales the breath he has been holding onto.  The bag of candy in his arms releases its own lungful of sweet air that soon fills the space.  He gives a contented sigh and leans back into the leather.

Better now?

Much. 

Ready for what comes next?

Almost.

The drive to Willow Hill Baptist Church takes him to the edge of town.  True to its name, several ancient willows dot the hill it stands on, graceful branches swaying in the subtle summer breeze.  Unlike Ma’s impressive red brick church, Willow Hill Baptist is a simple white clapboard with a high, angular tower.  Round glittering windows above the arched doorway make it seem as if the eyes of God look down on each entering parishioner.  Willow Hill is the oldest church in the county.  “Built sometime after the ark” goes the local joke.  “Over an Indian burial ground,” goes the local legend. 

He wonders how Mother would feel about him being here.  She was a Methodist born and raised and buried in the plot behind St John’s on the other side of town.  Maybe she wouldn’t approve.  Or maybe she would be so relieved he was going to church—any church. 

She can’t tell you what to do anymore.  

Flags, flowers and bunting decorate the exterior of Willow Hill and line the pathways, crowded with a slow, unsteady procession.  Men in shady fedoras or freshly pressed uniforms shuffle along, hands firmly in pockets.  Matrons with coiffed hair restrained under wide-brimmed hats walk arm-in-arm preceded by impatient children straying from paths to climb trees or worry birds, pursued by chastisements followed by threats. 

Everyone carries flowers—wildflower posies, budding corsages, blooming wreaths big as hula-hoops.  Everyone greets the preacher, standing beneficently beneath the arched doorway, with kind words, warm handshakes, distant waves, jaunty salutes, touches of hats, nods of heads.  Ladies flock around the preacher’s smiling wife, sharing stories, swapping compliments. 

He feels the preacher’s eyes on him as he makes his way along the winding path.  Everyone here is someone who knows him.  They make way as he passes.  He feels contagious.

It’s their way of showing respect.

By distancing themselves?  By staring?  Is that respectful? 

Stop.  You’re here now. 

He’s here now.  She’s here.  This is the place.

The peonies feel slippery in his palm.  Sweat trickles into his collarbone.  He passes the bouquet to her, remembering the first time they met.

See anything you like?

I do. 

Hard to choose.

Which do you like best?

That’s easy—saltwater taffy.

Really?

Best in the state.

Pretty colours.

Can’t judge just by looks.  Like the sign says: taste for yourself.   

 I’ll take a penny of taste.

Let me know how you like it.

I will.  Next time.

Come often as you like. 

He did.  Again and again and again.  Every time he saw her face through the window display of sweet treats.  She was the sweetest of all. 

They share the contents of the bag from The Sweet Shop: piece after piece of pink and white saltwater taffy.  ‘Made of sugar and tears stretched, pulled, twisted and tamed,’ she joked on one of her rare dark days.  Apparently, the best saltwater taffy comes from the sea.  If that’s true, he’ll never know.  This is the only saltwater taffy for him. 

Always. 

‘Dad, ain’t that Aunt Neoma?’

 The name paralyzes him, but sharp awareness quickly pierces cold shock.  His eyes slip sideways to a small, round boy some distance away in denim overalls and new recruit hair crouching beside a shaggy black and white dog.  Both stare at him.  He knows the boy.

‘Her name was Naomi,’ corrects the father.  He knows him too.

‘Friends sometimes called her Neoma.’  And the mother. 

‘Is that her friend?’ asks the boy. 

‘That’s a lawyer,’ sneers the father.  His wife laughs.  He sighs. 

Shut up, Hugh.

A short bark of laughter escapes his lips.  Boy and dog tilt their heads in confusion.  Even the father and mother stop what they’re doing to look curiously at him. 

‘What’s he doing?’ the boy persists. 

‘Same thing we are.’  The father, Hugh, returns to his task. 

‘Why?’

‘He and your aunt were going to get married,’ the mother explains. 

‘Is he my uncle?’ gasps the boy.

‘No.’  The father drops the word like a lead weight.  His harshness stops the boy. 

‘She died before the wedding,’ the mother adds gently after a tense moment. 

‘Oh.’  The boy ruffles his dog’s fur while weighing up the worth of asking more.  His mother spares him.

‘Of influenza.  Flu killed a lot of people back then.’

Mother.  Father.  Neoma. 

‘I got the flu last Christmas.’  Even from a distance he hears the boy’s voice tremble. 

‘That was different.  Your aunt died almost thirty years ago.  It was a special flu,’ reassures his mother. 

‘Don’t sound special if it killed her,’ quips the boy.

‘A specially deadly flu,’ his mother tartly amends.

‘So, he never married because Aunt Neo-ai-mo died?’

‘He wouldn’t’ve married her even if she had lived,’ his father snaps.

That’s a lie!

‘How come?’ asks his son.  His father, Hugh, doesn’t answer.   

‘The family didn’t like us much,’ whispers the mother. 

‘Bit rich if you ask me,’ the father growls.  ‘That brother of his—

‘Hush now!’ hisses his wife.  ‘He might hear you.’ 

He hears.  Every word slices.  Would it do any good, even now, for him to say it didn’t matter what his family thought of her?  Would Hugh understand the steps he’s taken to silence their objections? 

I know.  That’s all that matters. 

‘Looks like Mr Lawyer likes her,’ observes the boy.

‘His name’s Virgil.’ 

‘His office is across the street from The Sweet Shop where your aunt worked,’ narrates the mother. 

‘The Sweet Shop,’ sighs the boy with naked longing, laying his head tragically against the dog’s heaving side. 

‘Maybe later.’  His mother stands, stretches, adjusts her straw hat against the sun.

‘Walk your dog first,’ commands his father. 

‘Yes, sir!’  The boy leaps to his booted feet beneath stubby legs, throws his father a comically exaggerated salute.  ‘Come on, Tippy,’ he calls before tearing away, the black and white dog yapping at his heels. 

His mother and father gather their tools and load them into a small wheelbarrow.  Some people take the decoration of memorials further than others.  From what he can tell from the corner of his eye they planted a small garden around a trio of family headstones.  It makes his peony bouquet and penny sweets seem pitiful. 

I don’t need a garden.  I only need you.  Now take me home. 

As the clock nears noon, a heat haze settles over Willow Hill Baptist Cemetery.  The gentle breeze that whispered through the willow trees earlier in the day has gone silent, leaving the low hanging branches to droop in midday exhaustion.  “Shouldn’t be so hot so soon,” he hears people mutter as he passes.  “If this is Memorial Day, what’s it gonna be like come Fourth of July?” other complain. 

He’s not sure when Decoration Day became Memorial Day.  Those labels don’t mean anything to him.  For him, today will always be their Anniversary.  On this day, twenty-seven-ago, he would have married Naomi Minniver Harold.  No matter what her brother says or what his mother said.  Nothing would have stopped him from making her his wife. 

Til death do us part. 

Not even death. 

He hasn’t decorated his own family’s graves in years.  It feels too much like invitation, and he has worked too hard to expel their presences.  Father hasn’t come back to play his shortwave radio in the middle of the night since he let Louise take it with her last time she came to visit.  Frank never crashes around the garage or lifts the window sash since he gave away his tools and nailed down the window frames. 

He often wonders if his brother haunts other people now.  All the ones he thinks did him wrong.  Plenty still around. 

Mother’s ghost was the hardest to exorcise.  If she wasn’t pruning the flowers by moonlight, she was making the porch swing creak or polishing the silverware.  And talking—constantly talking.  After Father died, she never shut up.  Always filling his head with advice. 

Find someone new.  Make a family. Carry on the Virgil name. Your son might…

Neoma’s spirit never felt at home with Mother’s ghost.  Her presence agitated Father too, who, with no radio to play, took to climbing the same staircase he boobytrapped in life just to whisper phantom disapproval in his son’s ear. 

That shop girl wasn’t good enough. Her family is trash.  Aim higher, son. 

That was when Father started moving books around and filling in the newspaper crossword puzzle while his son was doing his part to keep the family business alive.  Father’s books of poetry and history were donated to the local library.  The law books went to his college alma mater. Removing Father’s name from the law firm’s sign sealed his tomb.   

Giving away Mother’s heirloom lilies will be the last straw for her.  Oh, she got mad as hell while he dug them up, but now they’re gone, Mother will be too.  Louise will kill him when she finds out what he did to Mother’s flowers, but, for her sake, it had to be done. 

For Neoma.  All for Neoma.

In the gothic horror stories he loves, folks use salt to protect themselves from evil spirts.  They put a line of it across every threshold to keep them out.  But he didn’t want to keep them out, he wanted to bring one in and keep her there.  “Catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar,” the saying goes.  He can’t imagine why anyone would want to catch flies, but he reasoned the same might work for ghosts.  And what better way, he thought, to welcome in the candy shop girl? 

He fills every corner of his house, pockets, office, car with something sweet for her—gumballs, peppermints, sugar cubes, syrup.  He consumes high amounts of sugar to truly keep her in his heart.  In his blood. 

  Unlike some husbands, he never forgets an anniversary.  Every year he leaves a bridal bouquet of peonies and a bag of saltwater taffy on her grave.  He’ll do the same until he joins her, so they’ll always be together.

Together, sweetheart.  With your sweet Neoma.  Forever. 

Naomi, also known as Neoma, was my father’s aunt who died in October 1930, when she was only twenty-two years old, of an illness no one can quite agree upon.  Family lore has always been that Neoma died of Spanish Flu, but reports from newspapers at the time of her death claim it was infantile paralysis—polio.  Were the doctors trying to conceal the nature of her death to avoid the panic of a community flu outbreak or did the family misremember the circumstances of her death?  We will probably never know. 

One Memorial Day, my father noticed a stranger laying flowers at his aunt’s grave.   When he asked his mother who the man was, she told him the story of his Aunt Neoma, engaged to be married to a local lawyer before she died.  Every year, those flowers appeared on Neoma’s grave…until her lost love joined her in death.