Chapter Three The Gossip Merchant

CHAPTER THREE THE GOSSIP MERCHANT

There wasn’t a whole lot that irritated me. However, the source of such rare annoyance had managed to slither into my house and ruin the sunny morning barely before it began.

‘… It’s not a good omen, Celine. I have a sixth sense about these things…’

Rita Bailey’s voice, which was shriller than a police siren, had no trouble infiltrating my bedroom despite the fact she was an entire floor below me. I scowled at my ceiling. I didn’t want to hear about Lana Green’s affair, Jenny Orin’s worsening psoriasis, or the Tyler kids’ lice scandal. But the volume of the old lady’s voice had left me with no other option. I would have to suffer it either way, and, given the depressing messiness of my bedroom coupled with my desire to eat breakfast at some point, I decided to face her head-on and get the most unpleasant part of my day over with.

I rolled out of bed, crawling between crumpled jeans and inside-out T-shirts to fish out a partially obscured bra. Springing to my feet and swivelling around without touching anything – because sometimes I liked to make a game of it – I swooped a pair of denim shorts off the ground and pulled them on before settling on a white tank top and my favourite pair of Converse. After putting on some moisturizer and pulling my hair into a messy braid, I crept downstairs, steeling myself for what I was about to hurtle into, coffee-less and overtired.

Rita Bailey, an old, portly woman with cropped white hair and pinched, shrunken features, hunched over the kitchen table, sipping her coffee in an outrageous pink pantsuit. Beside her, my mother was politely enduring her company, offering a tight smile and a robotic head nod at appropriate times. She had even cleared part of the table, which was usually buried beneath stray sewing projects and piles of fabric samples. Now confined to just one square foot of space, they balanced precariously against the wall, threatening to topple over them.

When we lived in a spacious four-bedroom house on Shrewsbury Avenue, my mother had two whole rooms dedicated to containing the explosions of materials needed for her dressmaking, but here, her works-in-progress always seemed to spill from room to room, following us around our cramped home in every shade and pattern imaginable. Yards of Chantilly and ivory lace stretched along armchairs, jostling for space beneath mannequins in short summer dresses and rich evening gowns. On several scarring occasions since we’d moved here a year and a half ago, I had woken up screaming at the sight of a half-finished dummy bride perched in the corner of my room, or a denim dress that should never see the light of day.

It wasn’t that my mother didn’t have some sort of system in place, it’s just that no one but her could ever figure it out. She was probably the most organized disorganized dressmaker in all of Chicago, and I think she liked it that way. Mrs Bailey, who was staring narrowed-eyed at the teetering pile of fabrics across the table, evidently did not.

I swept into the kitchen, pulling her attention away before her frown became so intense it broke her face. ‘Good morning, Mrs Bailey.’ That wasn’t so bad .

She re-fixed her stare on me. ‘Good morning, Persephone.’

I winced. It had been a while since I had heard my name in its hideous entirety and, unsurprisingly, nothing had changed – it still sucked. But the way the old lady said it always seemed to make it worse, drawling over the vowel sounds like she was talking to a five-year-old child – Purr-seph-an-eeeee .

‘I prefer Sophie,’ I replied with a level of exasperation that usually accompanied the topic.

‘But Persephone is so much nicer.’

‘Well, no one calls me that.’ It wasn’t my name and she knew it. It was just a symbol of my mother’s fleeting obsession with Greek mythology, which had, rather unfortunately, coincided with the time I was born. Thankfully, my father had given up on the mouthful within the first year of my birth. It didn’t take him long to think of ‘Sophie’ as a passable alternative – the name I suspect he wanted all along and one that rendered me eternally grateful to him for two reasons: one, that I didn’t have to go through life with a barely spellable relic for a name, and two, that he didn’t nickname me ‘Persy’ instead. When my mother conceded defeat, I became ‘Sophie’ for good. Plain, simple and pronounceable.

‘How do you even know to call me that anyway?’ I added as an afterthought. For all the times Mrs Bailey had intentionally wrongly addressed me, I had never thought to ask her how she had discovered one of my best-kept secrets. Then again, she was the first person to discover the location of our new house when we moved, despite the fact we had actively tried to hide it from her, and it was nearly an hour’s walk from Shrewsbury Avenue. Maybe she was clairvoyant after all.

‘I saw it on a letter once.’

‘Where?’

‘I can’t remember.’ She sounded affronted by the question. ‘It may have fallen out of your mailbox.’

‘Mmhmm.’ Snoop , I noted mentally.

Beside me, my mother was circling the top of her mug with her finger. ‘Sophie,’ she chided gently, ‘why don’t we talk about something else?’

‘Why? Are you still trying to shirk the blame for naming me the most hideously embarrassing thing you could think of?’ Even though my voice was light, I was only half joking. Not that it seemed to matter to my mother; she found my name-based indignation inexplicably amusing. I guess it made sense. The whole joke was hers in the first place and now it was following me around through people like Mrs Bailey or Uncle Jack, who used it like a weapon when he was angry at me for taking impromptu nap breaks at the diner.

‘I think the name Sophie is just as lovely. It suits you,’ my mother pandered, smirking into her mug until all I could see were the tips of her delicate pointed brows. I felt a tiny pang of envy for their symmetry. Everything about her was dainty and refined, like a pixie. Through the magic of genetics, she had only passed her sunny blonde hair and her heart-shaped face to me. But, by the wonder of mimicry, I had also acquired her tendency for extreme messiness and her inability to cook properly. I was reserving judgement on where my diminutive height came from, because I was still hoping to miraculously grow another three inches before my seventeenth birthday, which was rapidly approaching.

At the word ‘Sophie’ Mrs Bailey emitted a long noise of ragged disapproval. It sounded like she was choking – and, fleetingly, a small, morally devoid part of me hoped she was.

I crossed over to the countertop to fill my mug and caught sight of the honey jar on the windowsill. Streaks of sunlight winked at me through the glass, as if to say ‘Good morning!’ It would be a shame not to try it , I resolved. I grabbed a spoon and pried the lid from the jar, setting aside the frayed square of cloth that covered it and taking care not to disturb the black velvet ribbon.

Behind me, Mrs Bailey was practising her favourite hobby – the art of lamenting, ‘Persephone is so much more elegant. It might not suit her now, but she could always try and grow into it.’

‘Thanks, but I think I’ll just stick with Sophie and continue to live in the modern world.’ I dipped a spoon inside the jar and twirled it.

‘You look so tired this morning, Sophie,’ Mrs Bailey informed the back of my head, labouring over my name like it was difficult to pronounce.

Ignoring her taunt, as well as the civilized option to put the honey in oatmeal or on toast, I stuck the heaping spoonful of it straight into my mouth.

‘She’ll be bright and chirpy once she’s had her caffeine fix,’ my mother explained over my shoulder. The edge in her usually calm voice informed me that her patience was finally wearing thin. Even after my father’s screw-up, my mother had managed to retain her inhuman level of kindness, which meant she was still too polite to turn a sixty-something, lonely, annoying Mrs Bailey away, even when her conversation mainly consisted of disapprovals and backhanded compliments.

‘Are you sure, Celine? She seems so exhausted. She’s a shadow of what a sixteen-year-old girl should look like. She should be out in the sun, getting a tan. She used to be such a pretty little thing.’

Seriously? I would have responded with bitchiness-in-kind but the honey was sticking my teeth together.

My mother released a small sigh – a speciality of hers. It was ambiguous enough to mean anything to anyone – ‘I’m tired/happy/disappointed’ – but I had a feeling it was intended to politely draw the topic to a close.

Fighting the urge to take my coffee and run, I turned around and seated myself firmly at the kitchen table, dragging the chair legs against the floor as noisily as I could and revelling in the look of discomfort on Mrs Bailey’s face.

OK, lady. Let’s go . ‘I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.’ The laboured, honey-laden words masked the sarcasm in my voice. I took my first, glorious sip of coffee and felt the steam rise up and warm my nose.

‘Well actually, you did .’

Quelle surprise . I always seemed to be interrupting Mrs Bailey’s ground-breaking news bulletins.

‘I was just telling your mother that a new family have moved into the Priestly house on Lockwood Avenue.’

I was utterly shocked by my unexpected interest in anything Mrs Bailey had to say. But suddenly there I was, glued to Cedar Hill’s resident gossip merchant like she was about to announce the finale plot of my favourite TV show. An onslaught of questions formed inside my brain. Where do they come from? How are they related to the Priestlys? Why are you wearing that crazy pink suit?

‘Well, I bet it will be good to have some new faces around the neighbourhood,’ my mother interjected before I could begin.

The old lady shook her head like she was having a seizure. She leant across the table and looked pointedly at each of us in turn as if calling for our undivided attention, which she knew she already had. She dropped her voice. ‘You know I have the gift of sight, Celine. I’ve been seeing things ever since I was a child…’

I had to blow into my coffee to hide my smirk.

‘I was walking by the old Priestly place a couple of weeks ago and I got the most unsettling feeling. When I saw the renovations and the moving vans, it all started to make sense. The house is full again and I just know it’s not good.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ my mother offered. I could tell by the airiness in her voice that her attention was beginning to wander. She started to pick at a stray thread in her capri pants, frowning.

I considered telling Mrs Bailey to chill out too, but she had already redirected her gaze towards our backyard as if she were looking into another secret dimension. But in reality, she was just staring at the potted plant on the windowsill. She squinted her eyes and sighed, probably noticing it was dead.

‘Nothing good will come of having five young men making trouble in the neighbourhood, because that’s exactly what they’ll do, Celine. You mark my words.’

She shook her head again, but every cropped white strand of hair remained perfectly static, like they were frozen in place.

‘Wait, did you say five guys?’ I had already seen two of them. Well, one of them, sort of. The second one had knocked me over. I frowned at the memory. Even after a night of reflection, I still wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Mrs Bailey was, of course, scandalized by my interest. Her mouth was bobbing open and closed, like she was trying to find the exact words for how much of a disgrace I was. ‘Five young, troublesome men,’ she heaved at last, clutching at her chest for added effect. ‘I saw them move in and I can tell you, they do not seem like the respectable type.’

Isn’t that what you said about my father? I wanted to ask, but I stopped myself. The argument wouldn’t be worth it. It never was. And besides, I had gotten all the info I needed: there was a new family of boys in the neighbourhood. Millie was going to keel over with happiness when I told her.

Distracted, I got up to take my half-filled mug to the sink. ‘I think having new neighbours is pretty cool.’

‘What’s cool about it?’ Mrs Bailey threw the question at my back like a dagger.

I turned around. ‘What’s not cool about it? Nobody ever comes to Cedar Hill willingly. This place is so boring. It feels like any minute now we’re all just going to fossilize.’ Maybe some of us already have… I stopped myself again.

‘There’s no need to be so dramatic,’ she returned.

I blinked hard to suppress an inadvertent eye roll.

‘I’m sure those boys are perfectly fine,’ reasoned my mother, who was rifling through her sewing kit. I could tell she was more interested in finding a needle to fix the single thread on the capri pants that had betrayed her.

Mrs Bailey was still wearing a frown that was beginning to twitch from the effort of keeping it in place. ‘No, Celine, there’s something not right about it. That house has been empty for too long. And we all know the reason.’

‘Ghosts,’ I whispered dramatically. I wanted to add an ‘ Oooooo ’, but I figured that might be going too far.

Mrs Bailey rose abruptly from her chair, shrugging on her shawl in a show of clumsy indignation. When she spoke again, her voice was low. ‘You can make jokes all you like, Persephone, but you just better be careful.’

I glanced at my mother and was surprised to find that she had returned her attention to our conversation.

‘Notoriety attracts notoriety,’ Mrs Bailey was muttering without looking at either of us. ‘And with what your father did, it’s best to be aware of—’

‘I think that’s enough, Rita.’ My mother rose from her chair, fixing the old lady with a dark look. ‘Sophie can handle herself. She knows how to be careful.’

‘Yeah,’ I echoed, feeling a million miles away. I was thinking about how I had steered myself into trouble the night before. The stinging in my knees resurfaced at the memory.