Salerno Enterprises did not go under. Not only did Angelina keep the business afloat, she also made shrewd investments. She found other markets for the olive oil, making the boycott by the stores in New York ineffective. When she was ready to retire, she turned over her position of CEO to Dolly. By that time, Dolly knew all the inner workings of Salerno Enterprises, and had some of her own innovations to contribute. Angelina went to live in Florida where she still resides with her three obnoxious Yorkshire terriers, Mimi, Fifi, and Lulu.
Cousin Alberto was released from prison. His sentence was reduced by five years for cooperative behavior. I saw him only once after that, at a restaurant. He did not appear to be a broken man, but he was definitely damaged. There was none of the old bravado. His dyed dark brown hair had gray peeking out along the part line. His smile startled me; he had false teeth! I guess the prison diet wasn’t that healthy, or maybe he offended a prisoner with a big fist.
Neither Debo nor Dolly ever married. Dolly lived with Jason for many years. He died of a heart attack two years ago. Debo finally wearied of police work in the City. Now she teaches classes at the New York Police Academy. The four of us, Dolly, Debo, Angelina, and I, get together twice every year, once at Christmastime in Florida, and again at Easter in New York City. I never did tell them about Father’s ghostly visits. At first I was too ashamed of my own role that caused his appearances, and then too much time went by to bring it up. When this memoir is published, we’re going to have plenty to talk about!
And Father? He never appeared to me again, but Dolly, who lives in our old apartment, swears that when she’s taking a shower, she hears him singing arias in the kitchen.
The sun is high in the window when Teresa wakes up from a blissfully deep and dreamless sleep. Before getting out of bed, she closes her eyes to better recall Margaret’s appearance. Now Teresa remembers that she did see Margaret’s shoes, a pair of sturdy leather boots, repaired and worn. One more detail comes to Teresa in the daylight. Margaret’s wrist was wrapped in a dark, stained cloth. Teresa shivers, remembering the reason for the bandage. Eddie Thomson’s version of the story seems to be true.
Teresa is hungry. She decides to have a real English breakfast at the cafe in town. She washes and dresses quickly, thinking of fried eggs and tomatoes, sausage, and toast. She is delighted to get a seat at a table by the window. She orders her breakfast while pushing down the guilty knowledge of how the heavy food will make her feel later on. She is sipping her first cup of tea and gazing out the window when Father Michael passes by. Here is the one person in Mantecombe she can tell about Margaret. Even if he doesn’t believe her, he will listen and keep her tale in confidence.
A moment later, Father Michael steps into the cafe. He sees Teresa just as she is lifting her hand to wave to him. He strides over to her table.
“What serendipity!” he says. “Miss Salerno! I was hoping to catch you. May I?” He indicates the chair opposite her.
“Please, Father Michael. Sit down.” She returns his broad smile. “I’m having the death-defying English breakfast. Would you like to join me?”
“That would be a pleasure, one that I allow myself to indulge in perhaps twice a year.” They laugh together. Teresa notices the crinkles by his eyes when he smiles.
“I have to confess, Miss Salerno, that I googled your publications after our last meeting.”
“You did?”
“Yes, and I found you to be quite a prolific writer. A good one, too, I might add. I read the articles you wrote on the effects of television on young children. Rather horrifying.”
Teresa finds her cheeks getting hot. When was the last time I blushed? she asks herself.
Father Michael leans forward over his teacup, his expression earnest. “But don’t you think there should be more longitudinal studies, ones that follow the children through their secondary schooling?”
“Absolutely. In fact, one of the teams of scientists that I interviewed is trying to get funding to do just that.”
Their conversation flows easily through breakfast, ranging from children and television, to the Middle East, to the New York Times Book Review that Father Michael reads weekly. Teresa joins him in laughter often during their talk. When he leans toward her to make a point, she catches a whiff of his after-shave, fresh and citrus-y. She likes everything about this man, his kind face, his intellect, and his zest for life.
Finally, the last cup of tea is drained, the plates are removed, the cafe is almost empty of customers.
“This has been a delightful meal,” Father Michael says, standing up. “I have another confession. I also googled your bio, Miss Salerno.”
“Oh, dear. I haven’t looked at it for months. I hope it wasn’t too pompous.” Or too revealing, she adds in her mind.
“Not at all. However, you have had quite an interesting life so far. And quite a few losses,” he adds after a pause.
“Yes, well…” she hesitates, embarrassed, and determines to google herself as soon as she gets back to the Manor. Then she gasps and covers her mouth. “Oh! Father Michael! I have the most amazing news about Mar— my research. I completely forgot that I wanted to tell you about it.”
“I should love to hear,” he says. Then wrinkling his brow, “Today I’m all booked up. I know! How about we have dinner tomorrow evening? There’s a little inn just north of here, quiet, good food. What do you say?”
“That would be lovely,” Teresa answers, her mind racing. Is this a date? What shall I wear?
“I’ll meet you in the Manor car park, at seven o’clock. How is that?”
“Perfect,” she says, smiling. “That will be perfect.”
Father’s ghost came to speak to me three more times in the next months. Each time the odor of his cigar alerted me to his presence, and each time he was harder to see, but easier to hear. It was as if he had to choose to focus his energy on only one mode of manifestation. The second appearance came only three days after the first. He hovered faintly in the corner by the chair
“You were a good sister, Teresa. You took care of the twins.”
Perhaps that took all the spirit energy he had, since he faded out before I could stop shivering and gather my wits. When at last I did, I spoke angry words to the spot where he’d been, hurling my rage into the dark room.
“Somebody had to take care of them! You were off in Italy for weeks on end, with Angelina, I suppose. And Mother was out with Cousin Alberto. You were total losers as parents! The girls could have become whores or heroin addicts, and you’d never have noticed!”
The baby inside me moved, as if protesting the angry tone and the influx of adrenalin that my emotion transferred to him. Even though I stopped lambasting Father aloud, I continued the diatribe in my mind, until I heard the clash of the trashcans announce the coming of the day. I maintained a long litany of his failings that I fingered mentally, as if telling a rosary made of pain.
The third time Father came, four months later, I was awake with indigestion. The clock in the hall had struck 1 a.m. As I sipped my second cup of peppermint tea, I read the galleys of a book I was editing. For several nights I had slept poorly. My pregnant belly made it hard to find a comfortable position. When I smelled the cigar smoke, I slapped the papers down on the quilt.
“Not again!” I growled. “Haven’t you caused enough pain and trouble? What do you want from me?”
Father’s voice seemed to emanate from the walls. “Forgive me,” he said.
“Forgive you? Is this some sort of celestial homework assignment?”
“Forgive me, Teresa. Let me go.”
I was so stunned that I hardly noticed when he faded away. I had never considered that my hurt and rage could be binding Father’s spirit to me. No one else, not Debo, not Dolly, not Angelina, had mentioned a visit from Father’s ghost. He kept coming to me. All my life, the mere mention of him caused me to be swallowed in a wave of rage and hurt. All the memories that I nurtured highlighted Father’s neglect, and his withdrawal of affection, attention, or approval. It took effort to maintain this mountainous grudge I carried against my father. Did I have any positive memories of Father? Any at all? In the lamp light of my bedroom, I made myself reconsider.
In the years before Junior was born, I was wrapped in the warm blanket of Father’s love. It seemed to end with my brother’s birth, but now, in the wee hours, with the scent of cigar smoke still drifting in my bedroom, I could recall other times. Some small, sweet moments came back to me. I remembered practicing a Chopin Etude on the piano while Father sat in his recliner. When the piece came to an end, I glanced at him. His eyes were closed, and he was smiling.
“That was beautiful,” he said. “Play it again, little bird.”
I remembered one evening when I was doing my homework at the kitchen table, he came home with a velvet jewelry box that he put in my hands. I looked at him, surprised, searching in my mind for the occasion that merited a gift, but I could think of none. I was eleven years old, as awkward and funny-looking as I could be, with braces, a bad haircut, and an attitude.
Father smiled at my consternation. “I saw these in the window at Saks. I thought you’d like them.”
In the box was a pair of pearl stud earrings. The pearls were set in gold petals, making a delicate, luminous flower. They were lovely. I wore them for years, and I have them still. Now other events came back to me. There was the time he took me, just me, to the opera. I was fourteen and the performance was La Boheme. Junior sulked for days because he wasn’t invited.
Father said to him, “I’ll take you to the opera when I know you can behave yourself.”
The evening was that much sweeter for me because Junior was excluded. I wore my best navy suit and, of course, my pearl earrings.
When I was working at the publishing company during the summer, Father came by occasionally to take me out to lunch. Mostly we talked about the business and the twins, nothing personal or significant. But it was time that he gave to me alone.
As I sifted through my twenty-three years with my father, I was slowly filled with shame. All along there were expressions of his caring, and I had blocked them out in order to feed my rage. I cried a great deal that night, hot tears of regret. I even called out to his spirit to come back, but he did not reappear.
A week went by during which my heart felt like it was being reshaped. The process involved an ocean of tears and much chest pain, like the organs between my ribs were imploding. When finally Father swirled in on the scent of smoke, I wept as I said, “I’m so ashamed and sorry that I’ve stayed angry at you for so long. I can forgive you, Father. But can you forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “I did not love you well enough. I will do better the next time, my little bird.”
With that eerie promise, the smoky trail dispersed. To this day, the odor of cigar smoke sends prickles up my spine, but Father’s ghost has never returned.
Teresa lets her hands fall away from the computer. They rest like surrendering puppies in her lap. Her sister, Dolly, never seemed to seek Father’s approval. She modeled herself after Angelina. Debo channeled her frustration and anger at Father into the military academy. Now, in her work as a police officer, Debo has power and control, and she earns male approval. But I never figured it out, Teresa thinks. I never stopped trying for what Father couldn’t or wouldn’t give me. Teresa wipes tears from her cheeks.
“Enough of ghosts!” she says aloud. “I need a break.” She takes her backpack and drives into town.
She spends the afternoon at the cinema, watching an entertaining but predictable romantic comedy. Then she has a Chinese dinner in a restaurant crowded with a busload of American tourists homesick for familiar food. Listening to their loud conversation, Teresa shrinks back into her booth, hoping that she looks British, or at least as if she’s from somewhere other than Baltimore. But no one tries to engage her in conversation. After her mu shu chicken and green tea, Teresa strolls along the breakwater and eats an ice cream.
Teresa sees Eddie Thomson walking toward her with a little boy in tow. The child is suntanned with a shock of dark, unruly hair. His face is a little grubby, the way a child’s face looks after a day outdoors. When she is within talking distance she says, “Good evening, Mr. Thomson. Who is this handsome little fellow?”
Eddie looks up, puzzled. Then he grins in recognition, “Oh, it’s the wrecker lady. This is me grandson, little Frederick.”
Teresa squats down to the child’s eye level. “Hello, Frederick,” she says. “My name is Teresa. Let me guess. I think you’re about five years old. Am I close?”
“Five and a half,” Frederick answers. He gazes at her with a frank, open stare.
“You know, Frederick, I just had dinner at the Chinese restaurant, and the waiter gave me some fortune cookies. Would you like one?” Teresa pulls a crinkly paper package out of her jacket pocket. She glances up at Eddie. “Is it all right?”
“Sure, if he wants,” he says.
Frederick nods and takes the cookie. “I’m going to show it to me mum first,” he says. “She can read it to me.”
“Sounds good. Nice meeting you, Frederick. Ciao, Eddie,” Teresa waves and continues her walk, musing. That child, she thinks, is Margaret’s descendant. I wonder if Margaret knows he exists. Shall I tell her? Teresa walks the length of the town and then back again. When the first stars appear and she’s tired enough to brave another night with the dreams that may come, she drives home. She has some warm milk and goes to bed.
The dream comes on in a rush of movement and sound: a flickering fire, a child’s sing-song, the clank of a pot lid. Once again Teresa is the observer and the player. The place is the interior of a sparse cottage. A woman with dirty blond hair and a pinched-up mouth is bending over the open hearth, stirring something in a cast-iron pot. A toddler sits on a low stool playing with a length of soiled string.
The woman turns to Teresa who is also Maggie and says, “Take the babe and go peg out the wash.”
“He’s fine as he is,” says Maggie.
“I said take the babe.” The woman scowls, hand on hip.
From the doorway, the man speaks. “Do as your mam says, Maggie.”
“She’s not me mam,” says Maggie. “And Josiah’s fine as he is.”
The woman steps up to Maggie and grabs her arm. “Yer mam was a weak, sniveling thing, and she’s dead and gone. Ye’ll answer to me now and do as I say.”
“Now, Mary,” says the father, “no need to be hurtful.”
“You stay out of this, George Braithewaite.”
Maggie shakes free of Mary’s grip. “I hate this place and I hate the both of you!” She pulls her cloak off a hook and swings it over her shoulders. “You disgust me! You’re cheaters and liars! As soon as I’m able, I’m leaving forever!” She runs out the door and across the farmyard.
The scenery blurs and shifts into dark weather. Beneath her feet the earth seems to tip. Wind and rain and crashing waves fill her ears with a great, hungry roar. Slick boards slope up under her. She is sliding. Then a wave swallows her, and she is falling, screaming, and falling.
Teresa wakes up, drenched in cold sweat. Moonlight is pouring through the window. Before she turns on the lamp, Teresa sees a dim shape whose edges seem to shimmer. As if watching a Polaroid photograph assemble, Teresa sees a woman materialize. She is translucent as fog, but the outlines are definite. Margaret’s eyes meet Teresa’s with a steady, solemn gaze. She nods her head, slowly, once. She touches a finger to her lips, as if cautioning secrecy, and fades away in a swirl of mist.
Once the fear engendered by the dream subsides, Teresa finds that she is thrilled to have seen Margaret, however briefly. She takes the legal pad and pen from the nightstand and writes:
Margaret: was wearing a sort of ruffled cap over dark curly hair that fell below her shoulders. Simple long dress of a light colored, flowered fabric. Didn’t see her shoes. Face a long oval, pale, slightly beak nose, full lips, wide cheekbones, large, dark, sad eyes. Do spirits choose the age at which they wish to appear?
Teresa pauses, pen in hand, and looks out the window. She can detect the subtlest lightening of the sky. Dawn is beginning but the stories, hers and Margaret’s, are coming to an end. Teresa pulls her computer off the desk and settles it on top of her knees. She wonders what Janine, her editor, will say about the part Teresa is going to write now, the part about Father’s ghost.
The smell of cigar smoke woke me. It was such a familiar odor that, at first, my sleep-muddled brain didn’t register that the apartment had not reeked of smoke for over a month. As my mind cleared, I had the eerie sensation of being watched. I sat up and peered into the darkness. At first, all I saw was a cloud of smoke moving like a slow tornado around the wicker rocker in the corner of my room. The cloud began to pulse inward. Each time it pulled in, the shape of the cloud altered. It was rather like watching a bad science fiction movie. I was too unnerved to move or scream. Finally, the mist resolved itself into a semi-transparent shape that was trying to look like my father. I heard a voice then, thin and transparent like the smoke.
“This isn’t so easy,” it said.
“Father?” I croaked from a dry throat.
“Yes, my little bird,” he said. His face assembled and then fell back into mist. Parts of him came together, feet, an arm, a knee, and then disassembled. “I get the voice, then the face goes,” he said.
“Father, why are you here? What do you want?” I whispered. “Shall I get Angelina?”
“No. Let her rest.” He paused, then in a thin thread of a voice he said, “I’m sorry, Teresa.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“I should have loved you better.” His voice was so faint that I almost thought I was imagining it. His face faded, then his legs and feet. The last part I saw was his hand holding the cigar. And then the mist dissipated.
I fell back on the bed, clutching my chest to contain my pounding heart. Of course, there was no more sleep for me that night. I huddled in my bed with all the lights on. Every few seconds I’d look at the chair, but no mist reappeared. In the hours before daylight, I struggled to cope with the experience. Should I tell Angelina? Would she believe me? For that matter, did I believe what I heard, or was I possibly creating a long-hoped for scenario in which I received, at last, an acknowledgement from Father?
Memories of his rejection came to me in fresh waves of feeling. The straight A report cards he’d only grunted at, and set aside, the piano recitals he’d missed or slept through. He’d never missed one of Junior’s baseball or football games. The excuses Father made for my delinquent brother still left me sour and angry. Beyond the hurt and pain of my childhood, I always carried a volcano of rage inside me. Even after the fright of his ghostly appearance, I felt the same fury.
Once that volcano exploded once, when he brought Angelina, his new wife, home from Italy only months after Mother’s death. I confronted Father in his office at work. I came in without knocking, brushing past Mrs. Romano, the secretary. I shut the door.
“Teresa?” he said, raising his thick eyebrows, surprised to see me.
“How dare you!” I hissed, knowing that Mrs. Romano was surely trying to listen in. “How dare you bring that woman home, and mother barely in her grave for three months!”
He stared at me, then scowled.
“It’s obvious that she was your mistress. For how long? How long were you cheating on mother while she was dying?”
“Teresa, be careful what you say. I’m still your father,” he began.
“Yes,” I said, my voice shaking, “and you disgust me.” I began to sob furious tears. I rushed out past a gaping Mrs. Romano, down the hall and out of the building.
Eventually Angelina’s patience and good nature won me over. But I closed my painful heart against my father. And now, here he was, in spirit, anyway, offering an apology. Would I accept it?
Tangled Magic 