All Dolled Up

Lori Delapena shuffles things around the top of her cluttered dresser as she spirals deeper into a fit of exasperation.

Son of a mother f…

She imagines punching something but instead steadies her nerves and promises herself to be more organized from now on, something she’d done and would do many more times.

A-ha!

She finds what she’s after under a picture of herself when she was a baby. Brick red lipstick. The same kind she wore on her first date with her husband, Kasey, and it had been his favorite color ever since.

Relieved, Lori puts on the lipstick, clicks the lid shut then checks her work. Perfect. Lori was the type of gal to get herself all done up on a Sunday with no grand plans so when she went to see Kasey, she went all out. But even with her penchant for random glamour, each time she did all this she looked herself over in the mirror and asked herself the same question: All this for a ghost?

Lori hurries over to the window and checks the night sky to see where the moon is. She begins to wonder if she will ever get used to the way things are now and her thoughts drift to the past. She thinks about when she and Kasey first met, the time they broke up, and a random Christmas morning. A banging sound from downstairs snaps her out of it. She checks the moon again.

Time to go.

Lori walks downstairs and hears her mother, Lilas, rhythmically rocking in her old chair. Lori’s son, Dustin was putting on a show for his grandmother. He clinked and clanked opposing armies made up of X-Men figurines and a few toy dinosaurs that had belonged to Dustin’s older brother.

Lilas watches the battle feigning concern, making sure to gasp in awe every time Dustin yelled “Booooom!” or “Pow!” Lori walks into the room. Lilas smiles at her the same way she did on Lori’s wedding day, telling her how beautiful she looks without having to say it. Dustin ignores her completely.

“Heading out?” Says Lilas.

Dustin looks up.

“I am!” Lori says with a smile.

“Bring back some flowers?” Says Lilas.

“Of course, momma.” Says Lori.

Lori hugs her mom then kisses Dustin on the head and gives him a squeeze. The battle has slowed down.

“What if it doesn’t work this time?” Says Dustin.

“Then we be thankful for the times it did…” says Lori.

“… and the times it will.” Dustin finishes. “Will you tell him I said hi? And that I’ve been really good!”

“Of course I will. I’d better go.” says Lori.

Lori steps out into the summer evening air and attentively looks at the sky.

Better hurry.

She sets off, her heels clicking on the smooth sidewalk. She walks and winds her way through the neighborhood she had known since she was a girl, but with the way things were now everything seemed new as if she were on ice skates and would float away if she didn’t stay focused. She repeats the advice she had just given Dustin about being thankful no matter what to herself all while stopping her imagination from playing out the worst possible scenario over and over in her head.

A while later she comes around a bend and feels a familiar tingle down her spine. No matter how many times she saw it, it made her shudder. Not with fear, but with reality. She moves towards it and passes under a sign reading:

Tahoma National Cemetery

The moon follows close behind.

***

Kasey used to joke that “The letters don’t really need to be in cursive, do they? It’s a cemetery, we know things are serious.”

Lori smiles at the memory and walks along until she sees her destination. A white iron bench surrounded by trees and bushes in the middle of the cemetery near the fountain.

Lori hurries past the trickling fountain and over to the bench, sits down and looks up to find the moon. Her heart races with anticipation like when you’re waiting for an important phone call. The moonlight rolls over her slowly wiping away the tree shade. She was ready.

Each time, it worked the same way:

·        She sat on the bench and waited for the moon to be in the right place. Then closed her eyes and relaxed until the air settled. Then she waited for it to start. The ringing. Faintly and in just one ear at first until it grew louder and louder, spreading quickly.

*Sometimes it was a hearty ring like it was coming from a sturdy fire station bell and sometimes it was high pitched and sharp, but either way, it was a ringing.

·        Then she needed to stay in it and stay calm no matter how loud the ringing became. It was like trying to pass through a doorway made of sound.

*Sometimes an imaginary scream, thud, or the sound of a window breaking would whip her awake and she’d quickly try and relax again to get the ringing back

·        If she made it through the ringing, she was on to the final step. She just needed to open her eyes before the moon passed. This seems easy enough, but here, when you try to open your eyes for the first time it feels like they’re you’re to lift a brick with your eyelids.

But if she could do it, then she would be there. In the In Between.

She’s almost to the other side when a sound breaks her focus. A bassy “B-BOOM!" whooshes through her head.

Dammit!

She breathes deeply and closes her eyes. The ringing starts again.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm. She repeats to herself.

The ringing again grows louder and louder until it feels like it’s bursting out of her head like radio waves. She sways in place a little but stays focused and calm until she feels the difference roll over her and the ringing starts to fade. She forces her eyes open before anything can pull her out of it again. She's there.

She looks to her right and shivers with love. There, revealed by the moonlight, is her husband. There was Kasey. He’s wearing his favorite suit. It was a three-piece blueberry blue colored button-down and was the last present Lori ever bought him. He only ever wore it to see her and otherwise kept it in pristine condition.

“Hi.“ Lori breathes.

“Heya, Doll.” She always loved it when he called her that.

For a moment, they simply sit.

“How is everything?” Says Lori.

“Gimme’ a bottle of whisky and I'll tell you all about it.” Says Kasey with a wink.

This was one of Kasey's go-to lines and it made Lori snort every time he said it.

“I was almost late.” Says Lori.

“What did you lose?” Says Kasey.

“Nothing!”

Kasey waits…

“I misplaced your favorite lipstick!” Says Lori.

“Well, it was worth finding. You look like a magazine cover.”

Lori blushes.

“Things are good?” Says Lori.

“Things are good. Not too bad and not too good. Just good.”

“Well, that doesn't sound all bad.” Lori banters, making him chuckle.

“How much time do we have?” Says Kasey.

Lori looks at the sky.

"Twenty-one moon minutes” she says. He smiles and puts his hand

on the bench where her leg is.

“Any hiccups on the way through?” Says Kasey.

“Just one. Nothing too bad." Says Lori.

He nods.

“How's Dustin?” Kasey asks thinly.

“He says to tell you hi. He misses you.” Says Lori.

Kasey’s throat clenches as if a rock has been shoved down it.

“And he says to tell you that he's been good.”

“Has he been?”

“Not really.”

They burst into laughter, changing the atmosphere.

“How's David?” Says Lori.

“He’s well! He misses you and Dustin.”

Lori does her best to keep herself together as she imagines what David would look like now.

“He still has his X-Men toys on his dresser ready for battle. He won’t even let me move them.” Says Kasey.

“Dustin was playing with his when I left.” Says Lori.

“He loves those things.” Says David.

“You boys used to love watching that show together on weekends.”

“The kids did, you mean.”

“Oh please! You said Rogue was a bombshell! "

“I liked the story!”

“Oh, just like you liked the stories on Baywatch?”

“See! You get it!”

Lori rolls her eyes, and they laugh together. This is how it always was with them even when they were teenagers. No matter what, their conversations always funneled back to the same thing it had tonight: laughter. They laughed and looked at each other as much as they could. Time melts away.

The border of the moon's light was now visible on the cracked sidewalk a few feet away. They used this as a marker for when they had about 5 minutes left. They put their hands in the same spot on the bench like they always did towards the end just to be in the same space.

“What now?” Says Lori.

“We wait." Says Kasey.

“For?" Says Lori.

“Each other.” Says Kasey.

“We wait for each other with each other?”

“Wait a minute...” Kasey says cheekily.

Lori laughs and swings her hand to playfully hit Kasey’s arm and smacks the bench instead.

”Ow!" Says Kasey. They laugh again.

“When's the next full moon?” Says Lori.

“Not soon enough.”

She smiles flirtatiously.

“How long?”

“Bout a month. Same as always, Dolly.”

Lori knew this, but hearing him say it out loud always comforted her. Only a couple of minutes left now. They look for something to say as the anxiety of at least another month without seeing each other or knowing what the other was doing or how they are or if their OK looms.

“Oh! Tell Dustin I'm going to New York next week. ‘Gonna be in the tallest building there.” Says Kasey.

“He'll love that!” Says Lori.

Kasey looks down and sees part of his foot has been wiped away by the edge of shadow creeping towards them. He pulls it into the light fully and looks back to Lori. For the last few moments, there's not many words. They are there with each other and that's enough.

As the last bit of moonlight passed through them and just before they are both gone again, they say what that always say.

“Love you always.”

“Love you forever."

Then the ringing. Then silence.

Lori sits for a moment, replaying the evening. A short time later she begins walking home, picking flowers along the way for Lilas.

***

Kasey lets the ringing in his ears pass and stares out over the graveyard, his eyes purposely avoiding one area. Eventually, his eyes settled on a tombstone, and he makes himself not look away. He reads the tombstone over and over.

Lori Delapena

Born

August 31^st, 1982

Died

March 11^th, 2016

Fuckin’ cursive…

Next to Lori’s grave was a smaller one Kasey could never bring himself to look at, no matter how hard he tried. It had been four years.

Kasey lumbers back home and wonders if it was all a dream like he always did, but he knew it wasn't. It was real. As real as the joy he felt each time he saw her and as real as the pain he still felt from losing them. Kasey winds back through the neighborhood his wife had grown up in and passes the house he and his family had moved into when he was a teenager.

A few minutes later he arrives back home and quietly steps in through the back door trying not to wake David, who had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV again. Kasey walks over and lays a blanket on his son, turns off the TV then goes upstairs to his bedroom.

He slowly takes off his suit and carefully hangs it next to Lori’s favorite dress. He always had the same thought, and it always made him laugh a little.

All this for a ghost?

He looks over at his messy dresser and fights the continual urge to clean it up. That's how Lori kept it and that's how he left it. An ode he admitted to himself as silly, but one he refused to give up, nonetheless. He walks over and picks up a picture of Lori when she was a baby off the dresser and smiles at it. Nestled underneath the picture, Lori’s lipstick sits where it had for years.

Kasey moves over to the window and looks up at the sky and sees the first whispers of morning barely on the horizon. He begins to wonder if he’ll ever get used to the way things are now and his thoughts drift. He snaps out of it and gently reminds himself that he's going to have to.

He sits on the bed and plays back the evening in his head over and over. Happy tears roll down his cheeks and over his smile. He looks up and out the window at the fading moon.

“See you soon, Dolly.”