Unexpected Treasure

COVID took away so many things CeCe treasured. Besides losing people she cared about, she lost her sense of smell, taste, energy, desire to leave the house, her creativity, and her connection with the other side.

“You once said your ability to communicate with dead people was a curse,” Emily said, disappearing off the screen of the Zoom. CeCe heard dishes clattering and Emily saying something she couldn’t quite hear, and then the microwave dinging.

“Em, screen time…focus…have you talked to dad lately? Is he even out there?”

Emily popped back into focus and took a big bite of a very cheesy, greasy pizza. CeCe turned away and sighed. Pizza now tasted like roadkill and she didn’t want to see it. Emily’s chewing and nodding like a bobble-head made CeCe dizzy.

“Can you turn off your video when you eat, please,” she snapped. Emily clicked it off and started talking with her mouth full. “Yes, he is. Mmm…Talked to dad last week, mmm, he said to tell you he can still hear you, and he talks, but you aren’t answering. Mmm…his comment was WTF. How does dad even know that phrase…didn’t he die long before that was coined?”

CeCe sat quietly for a minute contemplating how her dad knew her favorite expression.

“You still writing”? Emily asked as she clicked her video back on, while wiping her face with her sleeve like dad always did.   

“Nope. Can’t string more than two words together and one of them is ‘the”.”

“Taking pictures?”

“Nope. Well, a few here and there of the dog, but my camera bag has more dust on it than Grammy had on top of her dresser.” CeCe felt a poke in her side. She looked around but the dog was on the couch and no one else was home.

“Her place was so dusty that I used to sneeze just walking in the door,” Emily said taking a bite out of what appeared to be a giant chocolate chip cookie.

“Has dad sent you any coins lately?” CeCe asked Emily trying not to look at the cookie. Her beloved chocolate no longer had any taste and seeing her sister enjoying the cookie made her sad.

“Dad only sends you money, not that you are going to get rich on 11 cents.”

Cece smiled at the thought of the 11 cents she used to find every time she talked to her dad since he died. She found the coins on the curb, at the mall, on the floor of her car, in her hubby’s pants pockets, and at the bottom of the washer. Since she rarely left the house, except for the occasional cat sitting job, she hadn’t found any money from him since she had COVID and that made her sad

“I get moths,” Emily continued. “Big, dusty, white moths. When I see them, I know he is around. Why they hell do I get moths and you get money?

“He liked me better.”

“Hardly, we both know our baby brother is the favorite. We were just dad’s TV remote slaves and beer getters.”

CeCe did a spit take and the hot coffee almost came back out through her nose as snorted at her sister’s comment. That made the hot black liquid taste like snot, in addition to the lovely burned rubber taste. She set her cup back down on the table and wiped her face with a napkin.

“Well, on that happy note, I need to go take care of Boris and Natasha now,” CeCe said as she reached for her phone that had just her popped up her reminder “B&N”

“Is Bullwinkle going to be there too?

“Ha ha. Love you!” CeCe ended the Zoom. She grabbed her phone, keys to the cats' house, and her work bag. She kissed the dog on the head before she closed the crate, and ran out the door.

Old Blue turned over on the first try, which was a miracle. At 17, CeCe couldn’t bear to let the car go because her father had helped her pick it out. It was held together his way too…with string, dried up WD 40 “glue”, and duct tape.

The cats were in rare form when CeCe got there. Boris left a trail of hairball puke from the living room to the dining room and Natasha had torn a hole in the duvet cover. As an added bonus one of them left a dead mouse right in front of the door and CeCe almost stepped on it.

CeCe and the cats had a little come-to-catnip talk as she cleaned up their messes. Before she scooped up the baby mouse to dispose of it, she said the Mourners Kaddish over its stiff little body. The cats sat at a distance, licking their paws, and staring outside as she recited the prayer. Going with her best poop-bag-pick-up-style, she carefully scooped up the unfortunate thing and took him outside to the trash for a proper burial. Most Rabbi would probably be horrified that she recited the Kaddish for it, but CeCe felt that all creatures have souls and should be offered a moment of respect.

When the cats were fed and their litter boxes sparkled, she sat out of their view to see if she could capture any good pictures of them to text to her friend and client. B & N were not like her usual charges who wove themselves around your ankles and meowed incessantly to be petted. Nope, B & N were aloof and scoffed at humans--including their human dad who was a long time friend. Apparently, they had no respect for mice either. It would be one thing to eat it, but it was clear it was just killed for sport.

CeCe’s iPhone was at the ready and she captured 15 or so amazing stills of the cats eating and searching the space where the dead mouse laid in repose. On a whim she turned on the video and caught Boris in his graceful leap from the buffet to the dinner table. CeCe watched the video three times, marveling at the act of grace she had captured.

The video and a few of the stills went off to their dad and CeCe bid the cats ado and headed home.

She knew her pup would give her the third degree when he smelled cat on her and that thought made her smile.

A loud thud and dragging of the car’s rear end quickly wiped the smile off her face. She hit the brakes and nothing happened. Sadly, she knew this drill well, as the front brakes had done the same disappearing act two months before. CeCe flicked on her hazards, dropped the car into neutral, and coasted down the hill and into the Dairy Queen parking lot. Using the emergency brake, she got Blue stopped between two white lines of a wide open parking space.

How ironic that she would land at her dad’s favorite fast food joint. He adored Dilly Bars and if no one was watching, he would eat one after every meal.

She was thankful the phone had a full charge and the snow storm that was predicted, never materialized. The phone told her it was 40 degrees. AAA said they had a high volume of calls so she set the phone down and waited, staring into the window of the DQ. After a 30-minute hold, she got a live person who said that they had a high volume of calls (dah) and a truck would be there within five hours.

“Five, as in F-I-V-E” she repeated back to the AAA lady.

“Five, yes, and you need to be with the car when we get there or the driver will leave.”

CeCe got out of the car to see if maybe something had fallen off and that it wasn’t the brakes after all. She walked around, peering underneath as she saw her dad do a hundred times when one of the string of junkers he drove broke down. Nothing. Bye bye brakes. She was hoping she could just pick up a rotted muffler, toss it in the back, and go home to the dog. Been there. Done that.

The smell of burgers and fries started wafting over from the DQ. Shocked to smell something good, she was sure fast-food restaurants had stacks on their roofs emitting powerful smells to entice innocent dieters to break their Keto or Mediterranean regime and chow down on a greasy burger, fries, Coke, and Dilly Bar combo. She counted the loose bills and change in the bottom of her walking bag, figuring she had enough for one combo. She double masked up, went in, and ordered her Dilly Bar combo meal

“By the way,” she said to the unmasked cashier. “I am not lurking in your parking lot; my car broke down and I am waiting for a tow. I will be out of your hair when Triple A gets here.” The woman stared at her, shrugged, and handed her bag and a Dilly bar and walked away without a “you’re welcome” to CeCe’s thank you.

CeCe took the food to the car, inhaling the delightful scent of French fries which shocked her since this was the second time today, that she could smell something good.

She laid out her spread on the seat. Blue’s seats were already stained from past food mishaps so a little fry grease would just add to the pattern. Like her dad, she ate the fries first and then the burger, saving the Dilly Bar for last. Unlike her dad, she ate it neatly, with no chocolate stains decorating her coat. She cleaned up the napkins and wrappers and dumped them in the trash can outside the store.

Back in the car, she was surprised that her phone still had a full charge. The battery was finicky often losing power after a five-minute call. She knew she needed to conserve the power, so she set the phone on the seat and reached around to the backseat and pulled out the bag of books that never made it to the library book sale.

Her old McCall’s cookbook came out of the bag first. Her Betty Crocker Cookbook was her favorite so she was OK re-homing the McCall’s book after taking a photo of her dad’s favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The book opened to that recipe and she read through it even though she knew all the steps by heart. Cream the butter and sugar together…gently fold in the eggs…eat some chocolate chips to make sure they were the good ones before adding.

The recipe didn’t say that, but that was the routine. If dad was home when she made them, he did the taste testing “to make sure the chips were still good”.

CeCe spent the next two hours reading through the recipes trying to plan the next family meal. She reread her mom’s favorite Chicken Ala' King recipe, Emily’s favorite blueberry-apple conserve recipe, her brother’s favorite crap bisque, and her favorite chocolate loaf cake recipe.

She was hungry again, but luckily the windows of Old Blue were sealed tight so she couldn’t smell the fries. She rustled around in her bag and found a few wrapped mints that had to be older than the hills because she hadn’t been to her favorite pizza joint that gave them out, since before she had COVID two years ago.

She wondered what mints would taste like and was surprised when she actually got a hint of mint. That was a lovely change from the flavor profile she had been used to since COVID. Road kill, dirt, rusty metal, and old cigarettes were du jour. She savored the mints, which by the end had no taste; still a reprieve from road kill was divine.

Still hungry and now thirsty, she was kicking herself for rushing out of the house without her credit card. Her walking bag had 11 cents left in it, which made her smile.

She dug around in the car and found enough loose change to get her a bottle of water, so she went back into the DQ to buy one and use their bathroom. She was so grateful that she hadn’t broken down a block earlier. The abandoned gas station probably had bathrooms at one time but the graffiti on its boarded up walls gave her the he-bee-gee-bees.

Back in the car, she watched people come and go, like her dad used to. She kept up a running commentary with herself of the spirits she imagined surrounding each person. Since COVID had taken away her ability to, as she liked to shock people by saying, “talk to AND HEAR people,” she wasn’t sure what the spirits were saying, but she found comfort in trying to imagine.

The old guy coming out with the burger stuffed in his mouth would get a warning from his dead wife to watch his cholesterol, she thought. She wondered if the guy was a believer. Most people scurried away from her when she admitted she could talk to dead people. CeCe was OK with that. She didn’t like living people much anyway, so all the better.

Sometimes she would do readings for the people who believed. There were only a few times she couldn’t contact some dead person they knew. Most of the time she delivered messages of gripes the person had with them when they were still living, where to find missing items from their estate, and warnings to watch their blood sugar. 

Of all of the messages that she delivered, she liked the ones where she helped people find their loved ones’ missing items the best. She had done that more times than she could count and that had made the constant noise in her head of dead people trying to get her attention tolerable. She never realized she would miss the silence.

CeCe never charged for readings and scoffed at the TV “psychics” who did. She knew they had researchers scouring the social media pages and googling the people they would “read.” You could tell when the person had a limited digital footprint because the “messages” were generic.

“Your grandmother loved you dearly,” they would tell the tear-faced man.

“Your husband watches over you every day and he lets himself be known to you when you see a bird.” The bird pin on her jacket flashed on the screen and the woman nodded knowingly and pointed to the pin with a smile.

TV psychics made CeCe crazy. In reality, dead people never gave you the messages you wanted to hear. They spoke the truths and wisdom you didn’t want to hear when they were living and didn’t want to hear from the great beyond either.

She used to wish it away, her ability, because sometimes it was out of control. Like the time she found herself on a street in the middle of the Centreville, Virginia that was clearly a Civil War battle site. The screams she heard that day still ring in her head and she never, ever, ever, set foot on that street again.

CeCe checked the phone and it still had a full charge. She didn’t want to jinx that by texting her hubby to tell him she was OK. She kept reading the cookbook trying to figure out why she decided to let it go. It had so many recipes she forgot about, including her granny’s favorite jellied prunes with walnuts recipe. She gagged a little thinking about that, and got a paper-cut as she quickly turned the page.

Cursing quietly, CeCe licked the blood from her finger and flicked on her phone seeing that three hours had passed. She was amazed at how calm she was. She was aware that she was worrying about the cost to fix Blue, the mess she was going to find in Bear Bear’s crate, and that she would need to use the bathroom again but that the DQ would be closed before the tow truck came. Still the usual panic that she expected was silent.

She settled back into the cookbook when the phone rang. “You call for a tow?” a voice shouted at her.

“Yes, I am in front of the Dairy Queen on Brown Boulevard.”

“Be there in five,” he said and the phone clicked off. Wow, two hours early! That was amazing!

When the tow truck driver pulled in, CeCe got out of her car. A cold wind was picking up and she shivered, the sun had kept the car a toasty temperature. She walked around to greet the guy when something silver caught her eye. Lying next to her front passenger tire was a shiny dime and a penny. She could feel her dad surrounding her, but she couldn’t hear him. Emily told her he could still hear her so she said, out loud, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome, the driver said. “I haven’t done anything yet. Where yinz taking it?”

“Home please.”

The driver skillfully hooked up Old Blue and got her home safely. He even backed her into the driveway so the next tow truck could get her out easily. Standing in driveway, CeCe looked down and saw 11 cents sitting on the bottom step. She bent down to pick it up and smiled. She could almost hear her dad say you’re welcome.