Beaming Sonny Home by Cathie Pelletier Read Free Book Online Page B

television on her way to the kitchen, but now she found herself wanting desperately to turn it on. What if the news about Sonny was awful? She’d wait for her daughters to get up. She’d let them carry the burden, since they could do it so lightly.
    â€œDa da da,” Mattie hummed. “Da da da da dee dee dee.” There was no melody that she recognized to her humming. Sonny and Lester had been the only musical units in the family. But she liked the full sound of her voice in the small kitchen. “Da da da dee dee dee ka-boom ka-boom ka-boom.” And singing was one way to ward off bad luck. She flipped the bacon with her fork and watched as it bubbled and curled in the pan. When she heard the toast pop, she removed the bacon strip by strip, waiting for the grease to drain back into the pan as she laid each one out on her plate. Then she put one slice of toast on each side of the bacon, a little ritual of hers for years. “Call me superstitious,” Mattie liked to say to her friends, “but at least call me.” The truth was that her best friend, Ruthie Hart, had died of cancer just a year earlier and, therefore, never called anyone anymore. And her second best friend, Martha Monihan, had gone a little crazy when her husband’s skidder rolled on him while he was cutting logs for the P. J. Irvine Company. Martha had taken to using a Ouija board to ask Thomas questions about car insurance and how to fix the leaky water pump, and what to tell that crazy young daughter of theirs who had come home Easter morning, three months after Thomas died, and announced that she was pregnant. The Ouija board was giving Martha all the answers she really wanted to hear, Mattie knew, but she didn’t tell Martha this. It was only when Martha took to asking Lester Gifford questions that Mattie couldn’t suffer her friend any longer. Trouble was, all the answers sounded just like things Lester would say. About Roberta’s Christmas wedding, the Ouija board, speaking for Lester Gifford, had spelled out: LET HER FREEZE HER DAMN ASS OFF. Mattie could almost hear Lester’s little intake of breath at the end of that sentence. “All right,” Mattie had then said to Martha. “I’ll play this silly game with you.” Her fingers touching the pointer ever so lightly, she leaned in close, thought a bit, and then asked, WHY DID YOU CHEAT ON ME. That little pointer took off like a three-wheeler, spinning on its heels, darting from letter to letter, dragging Martha’s and Mattie’s fingers with it. That little pointer put the pedal to the metal, as they say. It was all Martha could do to keep track of the letters it was pointing out, but she did, writing them down with one hand. Martha wasn’t one to miss a soap opera, much less a personal answer from beyond. NONE OF YOUR FUCKIN BUSINESS, said the Ouija board. That was enough for Mattie. She had stood up, pushed the little pointer off the board and onto the table, as though it were Lester’s big fat tongue. “I listened to that enough in my marriage,” Mattie said to Martha. “I don’t need to listen to it from the grave.” Martha had started to cry when she realized she’d spelled the word fuckin . “Never in my whole life have I used such foul language,” Martha insisted, which Mattie knew was a crock. Lester Gifford had slept with Martha Monihan off and on for over thirty years. Mattie had no doubt that he’d told Martha what his usual response was when his wife asked where he’d been, why he’d been there. She had reached for the paper Martha was using to write messages on, messages from the spirit world. Mattie had a little spiritual message herself that she wanted to share with the living. DON’T CALL ME AGAIN, MARTHA MONIHAN was what Mattie wrote and shoved under Martha’s beady eyes. This was a far cry from the “Call me superstitious, but at least call me”