AmyBB25 is hopeful.
I meant to post this before Halloween but it didn’t happen. This is a little ghost story my dad always told us as if it were true. Who knows, maybe it is…
Well, Harold and I were going out that night. I came in the back door and threw my old metal thermos from morning coffee in the kitchen sink. “Hello!” I called. “Hello? Anybody home?” Good, because I was already shrugging out of the bib overalls I’d worn that day, ripped at the knee and smeared with grease and mud. I took the steps two at a time, their familiar creaks a syncopated rhythm, and stepped out of the overalls at the top, pulled my shirt over my head and flung it in the corner of the bathroom. Harold would want to get to the dance as soon as possible—his girl had to leave early—and he’d be picking me up in fifteen minutes. But I lingered in front of the mirror, the shower running behind me, filling the bathroom with steam. I quickly brushed my teeth and shaved, turning this way and that as the mirror fogged up. I nicked myself and muttered, “Damn,” tapping the razor against the sink. I turned and pulled back the shower curtain, but then stopped and reached over, toes still on the edge of the old claw-foot tub, and pulled the bathroom door open. It was already hot in there and too foggy to breathe.
In the shower, I finally let myself relax, soaping up my hair and armpits and sang out a tune by The Platters. “Out of the mist, your voice is calling…” At the end of the first chorus, I thought I heard the back door opening. It always made a distinctive whoosh as it opened and the glass in its pane would clatter.
Suddenly aware, I cocked my head to the corner where the shower curtain met the wall and listened.
“Harold?” I called out. “That you?” There was no answer so I listened hard again. Now I could hear the creaks of those steps. “Harold,” I called again, “I’ll be out in a minute. There’s beer in the icebox… or fill up that flask at Dad’s bar.” At this, the creaks stopped and I figured Harold had headed back down, so I returned to my sudsing and singing. I liked to sing in front of Harold. He thought he had a good singing voice but the guy could warble the ears off a stalk of corn. I, on the other hand, had a voice to rival the likes of Old Blue Eyes himself and I never lost an opportunity to let Harold hear, hoping he’d compare and finally see the light.
But then I became aware of a smell in the bathroom. I glanced down with a sneer at the soap I held in my hand, sniffed it. No, just Ivory, 99.44% pure. Unscented as the day is long. This smell was flowery, feminine and very fresh. It seemed to flow into the bathroom in a florid balloon, filling the air, swirling about, but it wasn’t offensive, it was—
Lavender.
I stopped dead, the water pounding on my head and dripping off my nose. Lavender. It was lavender. Slowly, I set the bar of soap in the dish. Slowly, I stretched my hand out to the shower curtain. Slowly, I pulled it back. Slowly, I leaned forward and peered past the curtain at the bathroom.
Lavender was the perfume my grandmother wore. She wore it always and it preceded and followed her everywhere like a fresh cloud. She only bought the best stuff from someplace in England, and used fresh buds from the garden at the farm for sachet. Marion, my mother’s cousin, called my grandmother Aunt Mattie, of course. She’d told me about the lavender. About the lavender and England and all about my grandmother who’d lived in this house, too. She’d told me about it because I’d never met my grandmother—she was dead.
There was no one in the bathroom, of course. “Harold?” I said hopefully. I stared out through the curtain for a long while, water dripping on the floor, watching the fog swirl around above the sink. Then I forced my mind to go blank and returned to my shower, quickly, deliberately and numbly finishing the familiar ritual. I couldn’t wait to get out of the room. I was glad I’d shaved before the shower.
I turned off the water and realized that the lavender scent was almost gone, drifting away with the swirls of fog. I dried hurriedly and jogged to my room where I dressed in a fresh t-shirt, slacks, shirt and jacket. Socks. Shoes. Combed through the hair and banged down the stairs. I grabbed a bottle of beer from the icebox and called out, “Harold?” to no one for the third time that night. Then I stepped out the back door, pulling it closed behind me and glanced down the driveway. Harold was pulling in.
I cocked my head at him and swigged my beer. He stopped the car and slipped out. He was a tall skinny guy with big ears, his hair slicked back. He raised his arms in a “What?” gesture. “Had to get gas,” he explained.
“Sure,” I said as I hopped over the porch rail.
“Sorry!” There wasn’t a trace of guile in his voice or expression. I looked at him, hand on the car door.
“What? Get in!”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re really funny.”
“What are you talking about? Get in! We’re late!”
“You weren’t here earlier?”
“What?”
“You didn’t come in while I was in the shower, creak the stairs, try to scare me?”
“What?” He was truly exasperated now. He really liked this girl and he wanted to get going and I knew it. “No! Get in!”
I frowned and jerked open the car door, sat and tucked my beer bottle between my knees. Harold threw the car in gear and squealed down the driveway, muttering at me.
As we pulled away, I stared back at the house, opened my mouth again to accuse my friend, then stopped. The house peered back at me as innocently as Harold did. Sure, maybe Harold snuck in the house while I was in the shower. Sure, maybe he creaked up and down those stairs, holding back chuckles the whole time. But how could Harold produce that strong, distinct odor of lavender, gone as quickly as it had come, like the swirls of wispy fog?
~Amy B.