Ghost of a Chance

GHOST OF A CHANCE

               “What are you doing home from work so early? Are you sick?”

               “No. I was laid off.”

               “What is ‘laid off’?”

               “It’s when the mental giants who run a company decide that the people who do all of the actual work are no longer needed for economic reasons.” I explained to my resident haunt. 

               “Oh,” she furrowed her brow, “like being fired?”

               “No,” I sniffled, “I didn’t do anything wrong, there were a lot of other people laid off, I have benefits for another month, and severance for six months, and I can file for unemployment, but I don’t have a job anymore!” The sniffle became a wail of self-pity laced with anxiety. 

               “Oh. What’s in the box?”

               “All the stuff from my office.” Sniff.

               “Oh. I’m…sorry?”

               “Stop saying ‘oh’! What am I going to do??” When in doubt about what to do, I find throwing myself down on the nearest flat, soft surface helps. Sofa, bed, etc. The sofa was closest. 

               I’m Nora Young. Thirty-something high school graduate, some college, making…was making…an okay living in marketing. My ghost is Isabelle. She either can’t or won’t tell me her last name or her history. She showed up in my apartment about a year ago possibly attached to something I dragged home from an estate sale or thrift shop. 

               When she first appeared, I fainted. Real, honest to God fainted. When I came to, I screamed and fainted again. It took several weeks for me to accept that she was in fact real, that I was NOT crazy, and for us to come to an understanding. I did ask her to leave and I smudged several times. Then we came to an understanding.

               Isabelle hails from the Edwardian era and appears to me to be in her mid-twenties. She’s really quite pretty…for a ghost. She looks like a Gibson Girl. Tall, dark hair piled high on her head in a bouffant, high cheekbones, pert nose, fair skin, hourglass figure with the help of a corset.

               I am petite, full figured, with a short auburn bob and freckles. Isabelle despairs of my fashion sense. Or lack thereof. 

               “Isabelle, what am I going to do?” I sniffled again.

               “What do you want to do, Nora?”

               “What?” Snuffle.

               “You were always complaining about your employment and your employer. You weren’t really very happy there,”

               “That’s every employee’s right!” I interrupted, “I think it’s even in the Constitution. It’s a Constitutional right to complain about your employer. Practically an obligation”

               “Be that as it may, you didn’t like your work. You didn’t derive any enjoyment from it. What is it you want to do?”

               “I liked the people. Some of the people. One or two of them were okay,” I mumbled. 

               What did I really want to do? Of course, I’d thought about what I would do if I won the lottery. And then never got around to buying lottery tickets. I had a million ideas of what I would do! I loved antiques and books and tea and baking and…. Where could I work that would combine all those things and allow me to make a living? 

               I could always go back to school and finish my degree in something. But I hated school and didn’t want to go back. 

               “You should start a business, Nora. Be your own employer,” Isabelle whispered beside me. 

               I jumped, “What? No, I couldn’t. Could I? No, I couldn’t. What if it didn’t work out? What if I fail and lose everything?”

               “What if? What if?” the expression on her face was a mixture of anger and sadness, “Do you know what I would give to be able to take a chance on something again? To throw caution to the wind? To reach for the brass ring even if I missed?

               “In my day women didn’t have the freedom and choices that your generation does, but we did still have some freedoms and I regret every day the ‘what ifs’ I didn’t take advantage of because I was afraid.”

               We had determined early in our acquaintance that we were not able to make physical contact. That had always been fine with me until now when I wanted to take her hand or give her a hug she looked so very sad. 

               “I’m sorry you didn’t get to do what you wanted, Isabelle. I’m still scared. I could lose all my money, my apartment. You!” I gasped, “What would happen to you if I lost my apartment?”

               She gave me the side eye. “Do not use me as an excuse, Nora. Do you not remember waving that burning grass around the apartment trying to get rid of me?” Her usual happy countenance was back, “No, young lady, I believe that there is more than a ghost of a chance that you can make a success of a business.” She winked when I groaned at her turn of phrase. 

               And so, after a brief mourning period for the loss of my job, I started researching the process for starting a business. I didn’t tell family or friends what I was planning. I didn’t want anyone to discourage me. I was taking my advice from a ghost. Nothing crazy about that, Nora. 

               One night when my head was spinning and I was doubting myself, I lay on the couch with a glass of wine and some chocolate chip cookies watching TV. Isabelle sat at the other end of the couch. 

               “Tell me what happened,” I said to her.

               “What?”

               “To you. To your…life. How did you die? When?” I had asked her these questions before, but she had always changed the subject. 

               She was silent for a long time, but then said, “I had an older brother and a younger sister. My father was an attorney and Mother was a homemaker. We were relatively upper middle class and after high school I enrolled in an art school,” she had a far away look in her eyes now, looking back over a hundred years ago as if it happened yesterday.

               “A fellow student and I fell in love. His name was John and he was a starving artist. He wrote me poems. And then my father had a nervous breakdown and everything changed. Father died in a sanitarium and I was married to a young man who was an attorney and the son of a partner in my father’s law firm and could support my family. A year later I died in childbirth along with my infant son.”

               Tears were running down my cheeks now, my wine, cookies and the TV forgotten. 

               “I’m so very sorry, Isabelle,” I whispered, “Did you learn to love him? The man you married?”

               “I’m sure I would have if we had had more time together. He was a good man and he loved me very much. He never remarried and lived quite a long time after I died.”

               “Were you a good artist?” I asked.

               She looked at me and smiled, “I was awesome.” She was always tickled when she could work in a current phrase. 

               Several days later I came home from a thrifting excursion and informed Isabelle that I had decided on a business. 

               “It’s going to be called the Royal Tea and Typewriter Salon. It will be a tearoom, a vintage typewriter salon, and have a small antiques retail area,” I was bouncing up and down with excitement. 

               “That’s a bit confusing, but, awesome!” She shouted and jumped around with me. 

               “Do you think it has a ghost of a chance?’ I asked as we bounced.

               “You won’t know unless you try!” she grinned.

               I found a cozy location, got all my licenses, legal paperwork, and banking set up, found a tea vendor (loose and bags), bought some working typewriters for people who didn’t have their own, bought a mish mash of old tables and chairs to set around the space for ‘type-ins’, and found a bakery to deliver a limited menu of sweet and savory baked goods daily. My small antiques retail area is eclectic and includes books. 

               Isabelle and I unlock the door together every day.