Once Upon Another Time by Rosary McQuestion Page B

mist or an outline?  Are some ghosts just really,
really better at it than others?  Has Matt been honing his skills all these
years?  Is that what took him so long?
    My phone vibrated,
crawling across my desk.  It was a text message from my mother.
    Nicholas said 2
remind u 2 stop at the store 4 cereal.  R u still picking him up at 6:30?
    The woman didn't
know how to program TiVo, but she had the texting skills of a teenager,
surprising for someone who still maintained some of her flower child ways. 
Petite with silky long black hair and bearing a strong resemblance to Cher, my
mother still preached holistic dieting, awareness of the universe, the power of
crystals, and the twelve steps to somewhere to reach something with twin flames
and angels.
    If I wanted, I
could ask her about ghosts.  My parents believed in anything and everything
having to do with spirits and parallel universes, while I’d spent half my
lifetime disputing their beliefs. 
    For the second
time, my phone had an incoming text.  It was a picture message from Laura, depicting
her beaming face sipping a martini.  Just met up with David.  Join us 4 a
little bubbly.  Max is here 2.  Wink, wink.  LOL!
    The last time I
saw Max was in October.  He had one too many drinks and tried to get me to go
to the Halloween store to try on a naughty nurse’s outfit. 
    I sent my mother a
text letting her know I was on my way to the grocery store.
    * * * *
    “Mom, when people
die they go to heaven like my dad, right?” 
    Picking the comic
book up off the floor, I turned to study Nicholas as he sat cross-legged on his
twin-sized bed, framed by walls of skylark blue and tan.  With jutting knees
and tousled sandy hair shooting out beneath his Yankee’s baseball cap, he
stared curiously at the dead chameleon in the palm of his hand.
    “Um, yes, when good people like your dad die, they go to heaven.”  I placed the comic book on top
of the dresser next to a small empty cage with a hamster wheel.  Nicholas
insisted the chameleon would want to play on the bright blue plastic wheel.
    “But you told me
when Greenleaf died he went to heaven, too.”  He wrinkled his nose as he stared
up at me beneath the peak of his cap. 
    “Well, I guess
what I didn’t explain is that Greenleaf had gone to animal heaven.”  Removing
Nicholas’s baseball cap, I placed it on the night table, and sat down beside
him.
    “But Mom, how can
Greenleaf be in heaven when he’s still right here?”  Nicholas adjusted his
pillow to make more room for me.  “And if my Dad went to heaven, how can he be
buried in the ground at the cemetery?  Can they be in two places at the same
time?” 
    Things were much
easier when Nicholas was three years old and I first explained, “Daddy’s far
away in heaven.”  Somehow, he had made a connection with his Teletubbies’ video
where they go far away.   To him, his dad was hanging out in lands of big
grassy knolls overrun with plump little creatures. 
    “Well, actually
Daddy’s body is here on earth, but his spirit is in heaven.  Same with
Greenleaf, his spirit went to heaven.” 
    “Is a spirit like
a ghost?”
    “Hmm, I suppose.”
    “Can you see
ghosts?”  Nicholas’s deep brown eyes widened.
    Oh sure, your
father popped up just this morning. 
    “Okay Partner,
it’s time for you to go to sleep.”  Slipping out from beside him, I fluffed up
his Spider-Man themed pillow, and placed Greenleaf on the night table.
    “But Mom we were
talking about ghosts and--” 
    “End of discussion
for tonight.  We’ll talk about it another time,” I said, as I squeezed my palms
against his cheeks, planted a kiss on his forehead, and switched off the
bedside lamp.
    I padded downstairs
to the study to catch up on the e-mails from work that I hadn’t had time to
respond to.  As I switched on the desk lamp, Buster startled me.  I wasn’t
expecting to see him camped out on my chair.  His eyes were like half-drawn
window shades,