In the shade of a red maple, Ana helped spread the tablecloth over the picnic table and stepped back to let her family lay out the food: tuna salad, pasta salad, chips, grapes, strawberries, brownies, muffins. She and her grown children and her two grandchildren had gathered at the edge of Lake Nockamixon to celebrate her seventieth birthday, on an August afternoon laden with humidity.
Unscrewing a thermos lid, her son Jasper poured sparkling wine into paper cups. Alcohol was banned at the park, but in a nondescript container, who would be the wiser? When everyone but the teens, Luna and Geoffrey, had a cup, Jasper raised his.
“To our mom, on this milestone birthday.” He chugged his drink. “If only Dad could have joined us.”
“Here, here.” There was polite applause.
Ana raised her cup and smiled at the group. There had been some bumps and potholes on the road of life for her family—perhaps the biggest bump, Emery’s death almost a year ago from a heart attack.
Jasper’s eyes glistened as he poured himself another round. Her oldest seemed the most deeply affected by his father’s passing. Kaitlin, his wife, laid a hand on his shoulder in comfort. Ana’s other son, Paul, and her daughter Mindy and partner Sonja lined up for another splash of wine.
What the rest of the family didn’t notice—or failed to sense—was Emery’s presence just beyond the picnic table, a shimmering apparition with waving arms. Emery showed up with regularity, frightening Ana at first when he popped into view a few days after his death. Picking up the shards of the plate that broke when she dropped it in surprise, she wondered what a hallucination of a dead spouse portended for her mental health. But as his sightings continued, she realized he was benign if annoying, much like he’d been in real life.
On this day, Emery signaled to her with his arms. As always, he was silent. Apparitions didn’t make noise anyway, did they? He had been a silent bear of a man, and his children took after him. The group remained quiet around the picnic table, until she sighed, picked up a paper plate, and dug into the spread.
Emery was still waving at her, gesturing at the table—did he want a glass of the wine? How would that work?—but she decided to ignore him, as she too often had done while he was alive.
“Thanks, everyone,” she said. “This is a wonderful get-together. Let’s eat!”
Plates filled, the group moved to the next picnic table over to sit down. Paul and Jasper talked about the Phillies prospects, and Mindy chatted quietly with Sonja.
It was Luna who took the volume up a notch.
“Grams, I made the tuna salad. Don’t you want any?” Luna, at thirteen, could still pout if the mood suited her.
Why had she passed up the salad?
“Your granddad—” Ana started, but knew that explanation wouldn’t do. On her seventieth birthday, she didn’t need to worry her family that she was going crazy.
Jasper broke off his conversation with Paul to look at Ana oddly. “Mom? You okay?”
She nodded. “Of course.” She reached out and gently squeezed Luna’s shoulder. “I just didn’t feel like tuna today. I’m sure it’s scrumptious.”
Smiling, Luna returned to her own plate, scooping up mouthfuls of food. “It is. Mom said so.”
What had Emery been so insistent about? He was now standing behind Jasper, hands on his hips. No more waving or acting agitated. Words from the past bubbled up. I kept trying to tell you.
Kaitlin brought out from a cooler a boxed birthday cake. Luna crowded next to her to plunge the candles into the frosting. Geoffrey, Luna’s older brother, seemed uninterested as only a fifteen-year-old can be at a family gathering.
Paul pulled a lighter from his pocket, but paused, arm extended toward the candles, his face now a pale shade of green. He thrust the lighter at Kaitlin and hurried to the restroom facility across the picnic area. She lit the candles.
Instead of a sweet chorus of the birthday song, one by one, the members of Ana’s family fled to the restroom, their faces wan, holding their stomach.
“What’s going on?” Ana muttered. She watched the candles flicker in the breeze off the lake. “Happy birthday to me,” she sang softly. “Happy birthday to me.” She blew out the flames. Emery moved closer to her and pointed a shimmering hand at the tuna salad.
Oh.
“Food poisoning?” She addressed her husband’s ghost out loud.
He nodded vigorously. Death apparently had given him license to add drama to a situation. Why couldn’t he have been a little more lively before?
“I’m sure they’ll be fine. Just a touch of ptomaine.” She idly began cleaning up the picnic debris, collecting the paper plates, pouring out the bubbly left in glasses. She closed up the food cartons, including the suspect tuna salad. No one had yet returned from the facilities. Should she call 911?
Before she could pull out her phone, Jasper staggered back to the table.
“Taking everyone to the hospital,” he croaked.
“If you must go, I can drive,” Ana said. “I feel fine.”
“No, no,” Jasper said, waving his hand half-heartedly. “It’s your birthday.”
“You are sick. Everyone is sick. This is ridiculous.” She picked up the cooler and bags and carried them to her van. Emery walked beside her, fading in and out. Fourteen months ago, he kept complaining about back pain, an ache that wouldn’t ease up. For a man who said little, that should have been her clue. And now, he’d tried to alert her to another threat, and she’d failed again to understand.
Ana started the van, picked up Jasper and then the rest, who were puddled by the restrooms.
At least she could help salvage the remains of the day.
As she pulled onto the highway, Emery, hovering near her window, smiled.
Some of Dianna’s stories are in the following anthologies.
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The post promised an autumnal birding phenomenon not to be missed. Steph wasn’t really a birder—she could never tell one sparrow from another—but she did like birds.
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An overnight stay at a small New England inn proves a challenge when the guests in the next room launch their own plans for the evening.
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In the shade of a red maple, Ana helped spread the tablecloth over the picnic table and stepped back to let her family lay out the food: tuna salad, pasta salad, chips, grapes, strawberries, brownies, muffins.
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Emma worked her way through the tables of used books laid out at a community fair in Bucks County. Books! As if she didn’t have enough of them on her bookcases and her bedside table. Balancing an armful of books—mysteries, a literary classic, two romances—she spied a familiar cover.
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The night the eyes appeared in the window for the fourth time was the night Casie moved to the guest room, leaving Benjamin to sleep alone in the master.
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Hi Dianna, How often we miss the signs and clues and the small whisper that tries to alert us to bigger things. Great story!
Thanks, Veronica!