Phantom, 2-14

by William de Rham

From our porch, I watched grandson Jamie shoot down the driveway on his skateboard. My throat closed as he hurtled into the street. The blare of a horn filled my head and everything in me cringed as I waited for the screech and that awful thump. But there was nothing, just the sound of Jamie’s wheels, reminiscent of a jet fighter scraping the sky.

In his sloppy hockey jersey, with his nose ring glinting in the sun, the boy annoyed me. Then he stretched out his arms like wings, reminding me how much he wanted to fly, like me and then his Dad. Not with his grades, I thought. I filled my lungs to call for him to come in and do his homework. But a hard, keening voice from across the street cut me off.

“HEY! How many times I have to tell you kids to get out of the street?”

I thought: Kids? What’s she talking about? There’s only Jamie.

“City of Portland’s got a park for that. USE IT!”

Adele Zora was a sight that strangely warm February day. Steel-wool hair corkscrewed from her sharp-angled face, pasty-white from the Maine winter that had begun in October.

Jamie glared up at her. From the set of his shoulders and his bunched fists I knew he was about to give her some lip. He and his mother had been with us only a month. My son sent them here when the Navy ordered his F-18 squadron into the Gulf. Jamie wasn’t happy about the move from Pensacola and didn’t care who knew it. I’d commanded young men, teens even, but this one was a handful.

Before Jamie could yell back, the neighbors’ screen door opened and Jamie’s eighth-grade classmate Steffie came out.

“That skating park’s gone,” she called to the old woman. “Didn’t you hear? They closed it to build the new development.”

“Did anyone ask you, Stephanie Harper? No they did not!” snapped Adele, her vowels as broad as any Kennedy’s. “I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of other people’s conversations! And you, boy, get out of the street if you don’t want the cops confiscating that board!”

As she slammed down her window, I thought I heard someone utter the B-word.

“Jamie!” I called, more sharply than I’d have liked. “Get in here and do your homework.”

His face clouded and then closed down. I hoped we weren’t going to have another set-to.

Steffie went to him, geometry book in hand. I’d asked her to help him. He turned away, his face full of sullenness, and started for the house. That he motioned for her to follow relieved me.

They arrived in the kitchen just as I began sorting the mail.

“Anything from Pop?” Jamie asked. Now his eyes sparkled.

“Sorry. Not today. How was the geometry test?”

The kid’s face fell. I couldn’t be annoyed with him anymore.

“Gotta learn it if you want to fly,” I reminded him and then scrambled to change the subject. “Both ready for V-day tomorrow? Think anyone’ll catch the phantom this year?”

“Phantom?”

“You don’t know about the phantom? The Valentine’s Day Phantom? The Valentine Bandit?” Steffie asked, her voice rising with disbelief.

That glowering, closed-down look clouded Jamie’s face again and my heart skipped, like when I’ve almost dropped something.

“I don’t think they have the Phantom everywhere,” I said. “Just Portland. Some places in Vermont and New Hampshire, I’ve heard.”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Jamie, impatient, annoyed, but maybe just a bit curious.

Steffie relented. “Early every Valentine’s morning, someone tapes hearts to the front doors of homes and businesses all over town.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Now curiosity competed with impatience.

“No one knows,” I said. “But I can’t tell you the number of times it’s saved me from forgetting the day. Your grandmother would be so hurt if I did. Maybe that’s why. Or maybe he does it to make sure people feel loved―that no matter how bad things might be, there’s someone somewhere who cares about them.”

“Does he come here?”

“Yep,” said Steffie. “You’ll see. Tomorrow there’ll be hearts on everyone’s doors. Except for that old witch, Madame Zora, who nobody can stand.”

“Madame Zora? Is that what people call her now?” I asked, almost to myself.

“On account of her looking like an old gypsy fortune-teller, and her being such a―”

“Witch. I know. You said.”

As I watched them head upstairs, I didn’t know what to say.

My own days as a naval aviator had taught me to wake up early. At five the next morning, I was in the kitchen making tea. Hearing steps on the porch, I turned and saw that face like a hatchet fill the front door window. As I went to greet it, a large red heart replaced the face.

I opened the door to icy air. Adele Zora held a yellow padded envelope decorated with small red hearts. Sprigs of iron sprang from under the black wool cap she wore against the cold.

 “Morning, Adele.”

“Morning, Bill. Got that package from young Willie out in the Gulf,” she said, handing it to me. “What’s inside? If you know and don’t mind saying.”

“A CD with his Valentine’s message to his wife and the boy. Thanks for letting him send it to you early and for keeping it, Adele. We wanted to make sure it got here in time but we didn’t want to ruin the surprise with an early delivery.”

“More than welcome.”

“Still the phantom, I see.”

“One of them. Early morning cold bothers me some. Otherwise, I enjoy it. Well, take care―and keep your grandson out of that street. Don’t want him ending up like my Kevin.”

The screech of brakes and that awful thump sounded in my head again. Twenty-five years ago, from the very same porch, I had watched the speeding car throw young Kevin in his rollerblades high in the air. We buried him two days later and Adele’s husband three years after that.

“I know I was hard on the boy, today. But sometimes you’ve got to be if you want to keep them safe.”

“I know, Adele. I know. I don’t know what we’d do …” That’s when I stepped into the cold, took her hand, and kissed her cheek.

 “You take care, Adele. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

 As I watched her walk stiff but proud off my porch, I thought about all the hours she and her family had spent with my wife and son, helping them wait out my own assignment to a squadron of F-4s in Viet Nam. Shaking my head, I said to the air, “It isn’t fair.”

As I headed upstairs to rejoin my wife in sleep, I heard a rustle and thump in the closet. Sometimes we have mice and I put getting some traps on my mental to-do list, even though I wondered whether mere rodents could make such a commotion.

Later that morning when I came downstairs, the heart on our door was gone. I thought it odd because usually everyone leaves them up for at least a couple of days. But as I looked across the street I saw, for the first time in years, a heart taped to Adele Zora’s door.

I wondered if my grandson had just turned a corner.

END

Originally published in The Chrysalis Reader, Volume 17, Bridges:Paths between Worlds (2010-2011, Swedenborg Foundation Press)