Josephine's Celebration

by Steve Jensen

The walk along the drive to her stepmother's house gave Sherilyn a little time to think. Old conversations were summoned-up and edited to her satisfaction but nothing vital, nothing truly conclusive would stick, and her thoughts drifted by in the stream of consciousness. There was nothing more to be said anyway and no-one to hear them; regret is wasted on the dead.

      Decades had passed since she last visited Josephine. A white picket fence, bright and homely as before, surrounded the empty house and the walls were free of creeping ivy; all this disarmed her fanciful, half-formed notions of a haunted house. But a home is merely the window-dressing of our lives - it was Sherilyn who was haunted, and this she knew full well. Her late father, the travelling salesman, had been apart from Sherilyn virtually all the days of her youth, caught up in his futile desire to provide an ideal home for his estranged family. Even his marriage appeared now as one of convenience - as if Josephine of all people could have brought up the little stranger in her home! Both his theory, and her practice, would have been laughable if they weren't such sad and wretched things.

      The two women had reluctantly begun to fashion a shaky “relationship” shortly after Sherilyn's father died, one built on sterile courtesy and unspoken dislike, but Josephine's nascent dementia put paid even to this lip service. Often, Sherilyn would break the silence by going out to the kitchen, ostensibly to make coffee but in truth giving the odd couple a welcome reprieve from the distance between them. Here, Sherilyn would catch a mumbled word or two, fragments of disjointed sentences, as her stepmother talked to herself in childlike tones. A few visits of this nature decided the younger woman - after all, there were far more important things to do. She had kept away until this unwanted homecoming.

      No dread moments of waiting at the front door for an answer now; no awkward greetings to tolerate and inwardly decipher; merely a reflection in the lefthand glass panel. Sherilyn looked away when she glimpsed a grown-up child's disappointed face, lined by affection's absence as a cold wind disturbs still water. She turned the key she had inherited along with the house.

      As anticipated, Hurricane Josephine had passed through - and lingered - in the rooms of her home. She had left her telltale marks on all of them: wine bottles both full and half-drained, old newspapers, discarded and outdated clothes. More telling though was the linear arrangement of dust upon shelves and bookcases; the visible ghosts of family portraits banished or perhaps exorcised. Sherilyn glossed over the bad memories as she gradually put the house in a semblance of order.

The following day, she made her way to the attic, by choice the last duty on her mental list of chores; if this was to be her home once more, she had to enter this house of spirits.

      To her surprise, the room was well-ordered, in the main...boxes were stacked neatly enough and, thankfully, no photographic images of the restless dead confronted her. As she strode to the center of the attic, she paused - here her stepmother had left her hateful mark, and on Sherilyn's things too. But her anger - what had the crazy woman been up to? - faded away as she looked closely at what appeared to be the aftermath of a doll's tea party.

      At first, she shivered, just a little - the doll in the pink dress sat at the head of the miniature table looked more like a witch than a child's plaything. It resembled an old woman; the “skin” of its face had folded in on itself, giving the doll the appearance of great age. Scattering the tiny upturned cups and plates along the floorboards with her feet as she strode towards it, the unwelcome thought crept into Sherilyn's mind that the horrible thing was the image of Josephine, in some way. Sherilyn wiped the dust from the plastic but cast it aside as soon as she could; you can stay here on your lonesome, she thought. The toy lying in its tailor-made box on the floor was a different matter though, and she snatched it up with joy rising in her heart.

      As a child, the rosy-cheeked doll Sherilyn now held had been her only real companion, the only one who knew her secrets, sad and trivial as they were. She had named it after herself, and “Princess Sherilyn” was the beneficiary of a wondrous fantasy life, the other toys merely the courtiers in her make-believe realm. The real Sherilyn hugged her namesake now, not caring about the caress of cobwebs and the transfer of dust.

      Another pleasant surprise awaited her, as she stared at the chubby arms and legs of her playmate: in a cold hand, the doll held a grubby piece of paper. Sherilyn saw a small round seal, colored dark yellow, obviously drawn by an adult. Illegible lines of text covered the page and she could only make out her own name written in grave, outsized letters. A mixture of happiness and poignant regret coaxed long-withheld tears to stain her dirty face - in her stepmother's madness (and how Sherilyn hated that word now, how ashamed she was to think of it that way), the despised and lonely woman had made a graduation diploma for Sherilyn's likeness. The smiling dolls, the brightly-colored dishes, the chairs and tables – it all made sense, suddenly - this was a celebration. Josephine too had played with the dolls, as her mind made her a child again; perhaps this fantasy life had been the only real one she had left to her...

      Sherilyn, overcome, sat upon an upturned box and let the tears have their moment. With the Princess clutched tightly to her breast, she then climbed down the step ladder. The “old woman” was left in her wake, alone once more.

***

Decades passed, and Sherilyn died alone and unmourned in the house of her stepmother. It might be said that the dolls outlived them both. When the workmen came to clear the building of its contents, one of them picked up the smiling doll which rested in a box on a dusty shelf. He considered taking it home for his daughter. But when he examined Princess Sherilyn closely, the small and grubby death certificate she clasped in a cold hand decided him. He left her lying in the close-fitting box, alone; after all, there were far more important things to do.

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