One Ghost Per Serving (5 page)

“I’m sorry for the short notice,” Willa said from the kitchen table where she was paying bills. Eric popped open a club soda and guzzled the whole thing before he opened another. Then he held up a paper-wrapped sandwich. “Can I eat the rest of this?”

Willa ripped a check from the book. “Of course.”

Eric devoured the sandwich, a pickle spear, two oatmeal cookies, and a bowl of cereal.

“Did you eat today?” Willa asked, keeping her eyes on her register.

“Not much.” He thought about it. “Breakfast.”

“Have more, then.”

“Maybe later, after I get some stuff out.” He looked down the hall to the bedrooms. “Where’s Taffy?”

Willa kept her eyes on the checkbook but cocked her head toward the hallway. “In her room, working on a project. She never says, you know?”

He went back to the garage and pressed the button to open the door. Years ago, when they had the house built, they added a larger-than-normal garage to accommodate the height of a 1950s-era Flxible VisiCoach bus, which Eric’s father had converted for motor home use. The Flxible’s gas engine and transmission worked fine, as did the tires and the A/C roof units, though not the heater cores. The refrigerator and microwave, as well as the shower and toilet, were fully functional.

He and Willa thought they would use the Princess when they had more time, but argued over where they would go. She wanted to tour city buildings with impressive chillers and other HVAC feats of engineering, but he thought they should see the Grand Canyon, and maybe work on getting a National Park passport filled. They were on the verge of compromising when they both gave up on the idea.

Eric had kept the Princess well-preserved and maintained since inheriting her from his Dad, and if anyone understood that sort of thing, it was Willa. She had wanted to build the garage for it in the first place. Eric backed the bus out and parked it in the driveway, where it was coated in the light from the front of the garage.
The Princess Patsy
was written in large script across both sides, an exact replication of the script on the side of the bomber his grandfather flew on during WWII. The paint was vivid, the lettering crisp. The bus had been maintained in the garage, but not used beyond test runs.

Eric took some toilet paper and paper towels from the house into the small cabinets in the center kitchen of the bus. Then some pantry staples – coffee, crackers, peanut butter, canned things, non-perishable milk – and most of his own clothing, which he put in the storage drawers under the sofa that doubled as a bed. He put some of his bathroom stuff and the toilet paper into the Princess’s tiny shower and bathroom. Most of it he already kept in a hanging bag.

Taffy emerged out of the garage wearing welding glasses with silver around the sides of the eyes. She flipped up the glasses.

“Taffy, I –”

She pulled her glasses down and returned to the house.

When Eric went back inside, Willa was in the shower, getting ready for bed. Taffy’s room was locked and had the usual
Laser in Progress - Do Not Enter
warning sign.

“Taffy?”

He waited, knocked again. She wasn’t going to come out.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow to get stuff for your party.”

He went to the kitchen and wrote a note. On the note he drew an anteater, one of her favorite animals. He put the note in her ‘messages’ box, a slim attachment on her door. On his way out, he took a framed photo of him, Willa, and Taffy wearing matching jeans and white shirts, posing with a golden retriever. Eric had rented the golden that day, because he wanted to be that kind of family. He also took a coffee mug with the same photo on it.

Later, after he had turned off Hardscrabble Road and parked in the giant lot behind the Fireworks Superstore & Convenience Center, he looked in the Princess’ narrow refrigerator to gauge how much space he had. He had planned on riding his bike over to the Quality Market to pick up some more food. He expected the fridge to be empty, but it was full of covered dishes and labeled plastic containers. There was a chicken casserole, a vegetable lasagna, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes, monkey bars, and peanut butter cookies. There was a bottle of milk in the door. Willa had kicked him out, but made all of this food for him.

He didn’t go to the store. He had some of the chicken casserole, and then a monkey bar with some milk while he watched
The Frighteners
on TV. He flossed and brushed, undressing to his briefs, then pulled out the sofa into a bed that was just slightly wider. He turned on his sound machine, set his alarm, and fell asleep holding one of Willa’s Duran Duran tee-shirts he took from the hamper without telling her.

Taffy agreed to go to Quantity Market to pick up some things for her birthday party, so Eric took the Princess and parked in the back of the store lot.
He lingered by the door and tossed his keys in his hand. What if something happened to the Princess? What if someone stole it? All of his stuff would be gone, too, and he would have nothing: no bus, no bike, no clothes, no food, no laptop, no transportation. No place to live. Willa would take him in if she had to, but he didn’t want her to pity him. If his bus were stolen, he would probably have to check himself into a mental hospital, because that would be the proverbial straw, and he would have to start jumping trains with a scruffy little dog, and Taffy would be ashamed and embarrassed of her Dad, who had grown a long beard and forgotten how to talk.

Taffy jumped to the ground in her orange high-tops. The only things she ever changed about what she wore on the outside were her t-shirts and the color of her hair elastics with the plastic balls. She had swapped out her mycology tee for one that read
Don’t Play in Python Caves
.

“You make these shirts, don’t you?” Eric put his hand against her upper back as they walked to the store.

She nodded once. He kept his hand on her bony shoulder blades for another moment, then reluctantly dropped it. “On school equipment,” she said.

“Any python caves in Jamesville?”

“No, but there are probably a few bat caves. Besides, it’s not pythons, it’s the bats that live in the python caves.”

“It’s the bats that do what?”

“Spread something like Marburg.”

He noticed the start of dark circles under her eyes. “Are you having trouble sleeping again?”

“Trouble getting to sleep,” she said. “Working on a project.”

He didn’t bother asking about it, because she never said a word about any of her projects. All he and Willa could do were occasional safety checks and the strict stipulation of no radioactive materials, and no reasons for the CDC or any other federal or private agency to raid their house. And enforce a bedtime, but he and Willa usually got to bed so early that Taffy probably just waited until they were asleep to work some more.

“At your age, you ought to get nine or ten hours,” he said.

This statement garnered a distracted “I know,” the tone of which said, ‘Maybe, but that’s never going to happen.’

“I don’t want you to fall asleep in school. Try to wind down from your work earlier.”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

Taffy seemed unparentable. Eric worried about her constantly – what was she working on? Was it safe? Should he and Willa demand to be more involved? She resisted all of this. Not only was Taffy the least sentimental person he had ever known, she was the most independent. Sure, they provided for her, but more like they were the host family for a scientist whose top-secret research they were supporting.

Taffy paused by the gumball machine in front of the store. “Why don’t we just get a delivery?”

“Because I’m selfish and want to go to the store with you,” Eric said. Going to the market with Taffy was not for the undiscriminating or weak-stomached. But he knew what she was like in the store.

Five minutes into their shopping, a woman with a toddler bumped into Taffy with her cart and didn’t apologize. Eric knew the woman would have hell to pay later. When they saw the woman in the deli section, Taffy smiled and stood beside her like she was admiring the chicken. Taffy peered into the case.

“Retail-sliced deli meats have the third-highest combination of disease-causing micro-organisms, so if your family starts exhibiting symptoms like high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea, even weeks from now, it’ll be your fault.”

The woman sputtered and was about to say something to Eric about bringing up his daughter or forgetting to instill manners in her or punishing her for being so impudent. But he just left the aisle with Taffy.

“Nice job,” he said, being sincere. “But try to resist your completely understandable urge to rub their stupid behavior in their faces.”

Taffy shrugged. “She was the one with no manners, and she’s older than you. She’s had all that time to work on being a nice person, but I guess having a baby means she doesn’t have to be.”

They swung by the refrigerated shelves. The warehouse door swung open and one of the employees held it open as he yelled to someone in back.

“Hey, there’s not enough sweat in dairy. Modify the temp!”

Taffy rolled her eyes and looked at the yogurt selection. She picked up the same brand that Eric had been eating lately, Quantal Organic, and took a closer look at the lid.

“Dad.”

He was always psyched to hear her call him Dad. It didn’t happen often.

“Look at this Amass-and-Win prize.” She looked up at him, eyes wide. “Winning this contest would be amazing. Do you know what it could mean?”

Eric hadn’t paid much attention to the lid, or noticed the prize.

“I could do field study anywhere I wanted,” she said. “Not that anyone could ever really win one of these things. But wow.” She turned the lid one way, then upside down. “What are these symbols? They’re not Egyptian or anything else I recognize. How are you supposed to Amass-and-Win if you don’t know what the letters are? How are they allowed to do that?” She put the yogurt back. “Figures.”

They selected a cake, which Taffy didn’t really care about but Willa did, and checked out with their snacks and birthday candles and favors. Eric’s subconscious plucked at his brain, but he didn’t even know what he was trying to think of.

Eric brought Taffy and the birthday haul back to the house, with Rex following, and dumped everything off in the kitchen.

“What’s this thing?” Willa asked, pushing the plastic bag down around the base of the cake container.

“The cake,” Eric said.

Rex leaned in. Eric turned his head and gave him a look that said, ‘Really? You’re here
now
?’

“Did Taffy see this?” Willa gripped the counter edge, narrowed her eyes and put her tongue over the edge of her teeth – a dangerous look.

“We picked it out together.” Eric chewed on his bottom lip. “Why, is it wrong?”

Willa pulled up the bag around the cake container. “She must not have been paying attention. You’ll have to take it back and get something else.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Eric took the snacks out of the other bags.

“She’s turning twelve,” Willa said. “I want something a little more … sophisticated. It has a unicorn on it. She doesn’t like unicorns, or horses, for that matter.”

“Everyone loves unicorns,” Rex said. He tried to remove the top of the container and Eric slapped his arm away, then covered it by tapping the top of the plastic container for rhetorical effect.

“She’s
twelve
,” Eric said. “It’s not like ponies are automatically replaced with high-end espresso makers. Also, Taffy doesn’t even care what’s on the cake, as long as it’s not a barber, a squirrel, or a princess. Heaven forbid all three.”

Willa was silent.

“But maybe I can find a new cake with something from the Pleistocene era, or the Pilosa order,” Eric said.

“What’s that, a Robert Ludlum book?”

“The musk ox, the saber-toothed cat, even pandas, I think. Or sloths, anteaters.” Eric shrugged, hoping his suggestion would work and smooth this over. “

Willa closed her eyes and held up her hand. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding a birthday cake with a giant ground sloth frosted on the top. Good luck with that. Just get
something else
, please. And with chocolate filling this time.” She left the kitchen with a towering stack of paper plates, napkins, and plastic utensils.