The two souls touched down lightly on the über green lawn of 51 Chatterley Drive, mown to within an inch of its life.
Irving looked at the lawn, disgusted. “Nu? In our day, we didn’t give lawns crew cuts. We let them grow a bissel before shaving them down to the nub.”
Sadie harrumphed. “In your day, you lived in a fourth floor walk up in Crown Heights and didn’t have a lawn.”
“Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are when you’re cynical?” Irving said.
In their corporeal forms, Irving and Sadie had been two Jews from Avenue A in Brooklyn. They met for the first time on the Other Side and had hooked up then. They couldn’t remember how long ago because time was different on the Other Side than here on Earth. Could have been ten years or fifty. The two had been vaporizing in and out of homes in the Deep South and were headed for Memphis, which had a large observant Jewish community.
Why they had found themselves back on earth, and in the South of all places, after passing over was still pretty much a mystery to them although they thought they would get hints every so often. Perhaps they were supposed to connect up again with their former spouses who had also passed over. Sadie had no interest in that whatsoever. She’d had enough of Manny while she was alive. She saw no need of dealing with his demands or his gas in The Life To Come. They had the sense that they were drawn into each home for a reason, and not just willy-vanilly as Sadie called it.
They diverted from their destination of Memphis when they sensed something of interest evolving in a home. In the ether of their transit, they experienced synesthetic vibrations like the blinking fuchsia neon arrows on a diner pointing to the entrance. Ghost radar pulled them in. A tractor beam of human frailty. A human comedy.
“So,” Sadie said, patting her hair into place. “Why here?” Sadie wore her thick dark hair in a bun and for some reason had a flowered apron wrapped around her waist. She was short and wore sensible shoes.
Irving, who resembled a wild-eyed celebrity knock-off of Leon Trotsky toward the end of his life but had never shared his politics, looked at the house. He didn’t like to intellectualize too much.
“Why not here?” He shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
The two spirits floated to the front bay window and through it into the house.
“I still can’t get over how much fun it is to walk through solid objects. I could do it all day,” Sadie said.
“We do do it all day,” Irving said.
They noticed two people sitting in recliners that faced the television. The ghosts drifted onto the utilitarian beige sofa, surreptitiously moving diapers and toys aside out of the sightlines of the living souls. Small objects were tougher to finagle than large walls. Their celestial bodies could sense the shapes and forms and it made them uncomfortable. They settled in to watch.
Conrad and Bobbi Jo Boyd sat staring at the flat screen TV. Dr. Phil was on. Conrad wore his blond hair very clipped, much like his lawn. He had crackling blue eyes, and a face that would have been handsome had it not been bland. Conrad’s wife, Bobbi Jo was also blond and looked like any number of golden-haired, shapely TV announcers and southern beauty queens that are impossible to differentiate. She was definitely pretty but her face had no distinguishing characteristics. Sadie thought both faces lacked character. Wonder Bread faces Irving called them. She and Irving were used to strong middle European faces. Bobbi Jo had an athletic body and looked like she played tennis and golf, which in fact she did.
“How’s that workin’ for you?” Dr. Phil asked with an impish grin. The audience erupted in hilarity. He was addressing an unattractive overweight man sitting next to his cowering nondescript wife. The title of the segment flashed across the screen: My Husband Calls Me Fat and Ugly Every Day.
Both Bobbi Jo and Conrad had been raised in the South, Bobbi Jo in Mississippi and Conrad in Louisiana. They now lived in Georgia. They met in college in the Christian Youth Coalition and married right after graduation and started raising kids immediately. They went to the kind of evangelical church that numbered in the thousands, not hundreds. It had two fulltime rock bands and two choirs.
“I’ve been thinking,” Conrad said.
“A portentous declaration,” Irving said.
“Indeed,” Sadie agreed. “I am teetering on the brink of my seat. I’m waiting with bated breath. I’m looking out of the airplane and ready to pull the ripcord. I’m holding it in until the end of Act II.”
“Ganug,” said Irving. “I want to hear her response.” They both leaned in with expectant faces as though they were watching Gunsmoke on television.
Mazel Tov on being a published author.
Al