Part Two

The guy I’d given my mini-sermon on public ritual reappeared and nodded at me in recognition, although definitely not acknowledgement of my half-assed wisdom.  He kissed the top of Rainbow’s head and said “My ears are burning, ladies. I hope there’s not a problem here,” almost at the same instant that I said “Missing people come back sometimes…you don’t know it was the last time.” I wanted to pat her shoulder, but I wasn’t a patter. It didn’t matter, though…she saved all her feeling for her boyfriend.   “Haven’t you done enough? I mean, for once. “That was mean.  If there were a spiritualists’ union, I’d have reported her for that, but Tony gave no sign that he heard but a pained flicker in his eyes. “I thought I told you to leave,” she said coldly.

He gestured across the lot and later I spotted a motorbike with pizza boxes tied onto it with bungee cords.  “I did, but your dad ordered pizza.  A lot of pizza.”  He smiled, but doused it in the face of Rainbow’s immobile silence.  “You know these people are hungry…” He pointed at me.  “She asked me about McDonald’s like an hour ago.” Part of me wanted to argue, but the sun was high in the sky and I was suddenly aware that all of the hollow feeling in my chest wasn’t from not knowing where to go next, nor a clean feeling from getting something of my chest. “Yeah, that’s right. I did. More about a tragedy that happened that he didn’t remember…” Nobody paid any attention, in a quick rebuke to the fantasy that I could make up for not having children by advising these people. I took the hint and shut my trap.  I moved aside so people could place more offerings. And they did. Figures of Lisa Simpson, Snoopy and Woodstock, and newer characters I didn’t know.  A few asked me if I knew the family, but nobody thought it was weird when I said I was in the neighborhood, even though I would have, in their place, perhaps.

Rainbow didn’t move.  “I don’t care… it makes me sick how he thinks he could just buy everyone.  Maybe she’s not even kidnapped at all.  Maybe my father sold her. He sure would take any trade-in he could get for me! You know I’m right, Tony.” She took off across the parking lot, not looking where she was going and threatening to send votives and plastic ponies flying as a rag doll smiled emptily up at us. I still couldn’t decide if the overall effect was touching or eerie, and for the thousandth time in a month, decided not to decide. It was one thing I’d shocked myself by becoming good at in my time off, though I still got through a few chapters of neglected Great Books before turning on the TV or pulling up something online to fill the condo with voices.

 Tony followed, his big-footed, puppyish gait more respectful of the displays than  I might have predicted “Ramona…I mean, Rainbow, it was your idea to have a ritual tonight and you told me yourself you can’t do that on an empty stomach…just have a few bites..” He grabbed a piece of pizza and broke it into bites with his big hand.  She pushed him away twice, before finally eating a bite or two, as if she were taking a pill, or granting a huge favor.  “I suppose you can stay for the ritual. Make yourself useful, since you are part of the reason, we’re all here right now.” Love may have been blind for a flamingo man like Tony, but it wasn’t deaf. On some level, it cheered me to see him stand up for himself. “What makes you say that?”

“If you hadn’t been there that night…maybe I’d have been on guard,” she said, so softly, only years as a seasoned eavesdropper made me catch it.  The black woman from earlier was at my elbow. She nodded a greeting, reminding me of my cat, not seeming to mind that I was one of the oldest people present. “The microphones and stuff are here,” she told Rainbow.  “Are you okay to set up now?” There was a silence that felt like indecision as the little spiritualist clutched shedding pages torn from a spiral notebook. As she flipped through, I could see that her knuckles were white and she cursed under her breath. I decided to be the helpful stranger for her like she had been for me, but as my lips shaped something like “problem?” or “can I help?” Tony came so close that I could almost smell the combination of pizza spices and sweat.  “On-guard? What does that mean?’ he demanded.  “You weigh eighty pounds…do you know karate as well as magic?”

He’d made her smile, but she struggled to hide it by lifting her chin defiantly.  “I weigh a hundred and three pounds, but I always thought I’d have untold strength in a crisis…that I’d have all kinds of buried wisdom to connect with…maybe adrenaline…you know, mothers lift their cars of babies…” she looked at the sheets of paper, written in a wild scrawl with lots of cross-outs. “I can’t use these rituals, either. They’re all about death. I know that as time goes on… well, I know certain things. But I can’t face it now.”

 Tony used his own latest-model phone to scroll through some Wiccan sites. “You can do this,” he offered. “Just stand next to the pictures of Kelli and invite her to be with us…it would be sick if she showed up, but nobody is really expecting that—like, nobody plans to lift a truck off their kid, Rain. Like a lot of things, it happens or it doesn’t. “Rainbow thrust aside the sheets of paper and I put them in my purse. I don’t know why I wanted them; I hadn’t come as a professional witness, just as an amateur one, but sometimes even a handwritten page provided a buffer between me and the world that I found myself craving.  Even the crackle as my purse settled comforted me. Rainbow finally ascended the makeshift podium and made a joke about “Magic People Time” which I wasn’t sure was a thing, but once the feedback stopped from her putting her face too close to the microphone, the crowd laughed so maybe it was.

 There was an expectant rumble from the young crowd and I finally saw some broadcast folks I knew: Andrea Something with her professional-looking bob and amateur-looking camera crew.  I found myself hoping that nobody talked. I wanted to say something, but Rainbow did first. “I had something else prepared today, but on closer reflection, that is a death ritual, and I haven’t given up hope that Kelli is alive. I’d like to say I miss her and I want her to come home. Before my grandma died a few years ago, we played a lot of games, and in some of the ones with hiding, there was a thing that she taught me to say. “Ollie, Olly, oxen free…come out come out wherever you are!” There are few positive things I will remember as well as that sea of young voices, coming from people with tears on their cheeks, calling out that childhood chant.   I joined in, as if I were still hopeful and not self-conscious, not even wondering what my voice sounded like. For a moment, I think we all waited, as if there were some literal magic that would put Kelli here in front of us.  It felt great not to know better, but in the end, there were no miracles here. At least at that precise, camera-ready instant, we were all disappointed. I wrote some notes in pink ink and mingled them with Rainbow’s “Four Elements” rituals. In a ridiculous burst of positive thinking, I was convinced that mingling my half-formed thoughts with all that ancient wisdom would protect Kelli Watson, at least for that day. Later on, I was grateful that the writing’s amulet status was not based on the article I was able to write from my impressions, because I couldn’t read very much of my