Die Job(2)
Oh, yeah, that sounded educational. What was on the schedule for next week—a monster-hunting trip to Loch Ness? A snowshoe adventure to find the Abominable Snowman?
“You’re going on a field trip to do what?” Althea Jenkins, our part-time aesthetician, asked. Her brows crinkled her chocolate-colored skin clear up to the hairline of her short, gray-flecked afro.
“Ghost hunting. Debunking, really,” Rachel said, a huge grin splitting her face. “But we need another chaperone,” she said, pleading with Mom with her Nile green eyes. “My mother was going to go, but her boss got, like, sick and is sending Mom to a convention in Lexington this weekend in his place, so we need to find someone else to chaperone or we won’t be able to go.”
“In my day,” Althea said, putting avocado, olive oil, and a handful of herbs in a stainless steel bowl for a new moisturizer she wanted to try, “we read King Lear and did algebraic equations and dissected frogs in school. We didn’t go gallivanting about the countryside, chasing after spirits. Fah!” She shook her head, more bemused than angry. A tall woman about my mom’s age, she wore a red tunic over black jeans. She pushed the tunic’s sleeves up before mashing her ingredients with a pestle.
“Where are you going to do your, um, debunking?” Mom asked, plopping combs into the jar of blue germicide at her station.
“Rothmere,” Rachel said. Forearms on her thighs, she leaned toward Mom. “There’s this absolutely awesome ghost out there, Cyril Rothmere, who haunts the house looking for his murderer! Dozens of people have seen him over the years and, like, the Discovery Channel did a special on him a few years back. How cool is that?”
“Pretty cool,” Mom said solemnly. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do on a Saturday night than go ghost hunting with your class, Rachel,” she said, “but Walter’s got tickets to Wicked in Jacksonville and we’re headed down there right after my last client.”
Rachel swiveled in the styling chair and opened her mouth.
“Don’t look at me,” Althea cut her off, holding up an avocado-gooped hand. “Kwasi and I have plans.”
“Grace?” Rachel turned to me. “Please?” She drew the word out into three syllables and clasped her hands together prayerfully.
Why was I the only one in the room without plans for a Saturday night? Mom and Althea, both widowed and sixty, had boyfriends and were headed out for wild nights on the town. Okay, maybe “wild” was an overstatement, but at least they were going out. My sort-of boyfriend, political reporter Marty Shears, had moved from Atlanta to DC two months ago for a new job with the Washington Post, leaving my weekends pretty darn empty. So, at thirty, and divorced for a year, I had rented a Julia Roberts DVD for the evening’s entertainment and was considering purchasing a pint of Chunky Monkey to add to the festivities. If I really wanted to peg the excitement meter, I would study the MLS listings my new Realtor had given me and decide which houses I wanted to view, even though, if the last few months of house hunting were any indicator, none of them would work for me. My friend Vonda said that was because I wasn’t sure about settling in St. Elizabeth, but that’s just silly. Other than my two years at UGA and my time in Atlanta with Hank, I’d lived in St. Elizabeth all my life. Marty had mentioned it would be easy for me to get stylist work in DC, but that hardly constituted a proposal, and our four months of weekend dating—Atlanta was a half-day drive—didn’t justify a cross-country move. Maybe I’d really like DC, though, when I visited Marty next weekend . . . I shook off my thoughts.
“Oh, all right,” I told Rachel. “I suppose I can cancel my plans and go ghost hunting.” I tried to make it sound like I was passing up the opportunity to attend an inaugural ball. Althea’s snort of laughter told me I hadn’t succeeded.
Rachel squealed and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, thank you, Grace! It’ll be a blast.”
Not knowing exactly what to expect from a ghost-hunting field trip, and not having plans for tonight, either—I needed to get a life, as Vonda was always saying—I drove out to Rothmere half an hour later to get the lay of the land. Remembering field trip high jinks during my senior year, not all that long ago, I wanted to be one step ahead of the teenagers I was going to be responsible for.
St. Elizabeth sits in the crook of a backward L bordered by the St. Andrew Sound to the east and by the Satilla River to the north. Being surrounded by all that water is partly why St. Elizabethans get all worried about hurricanes; it’s the flooding more than the winds that we fear. Rothmere lies west of town, up the long arm of the L, and its acreage slopes down to the Satilla. The pure, white lines of the Greek revival building stood out against the cornflower blue of the sky—you’d never know there was a hurricane brewing—and the columns glistened as the sun’s slanting rays gilded them. Venerable magnolia and pecan trees provided pools of shade suitable for Southern belles to hold court in with their beaux gathered around, a la Scarlett O’Hara.