The Barker Street Regulars

I crossed my legs at the ankles.
    “It’s rather drafty here,” Ceci apologized, “but it’s where Irene receives best.” Ceci could have been talking about a radio.
    “Yes?” I prompted, thinking, Oh, so Irene makes home visits.
    “Naturally, Simon comes back to his own yard. How many sugars?”
    When she’d served me and poured for herself, I asked when Simon had begun to reappear.
    Ceci glowed. “Exactly one week ago today. Monday. Of course, I’ve been communicating with him for the past year, and it has been a great consolation, not that I ever for a second believed that Simon had ceased to exist, if you understand me, but I was blocked by the wall that isn’t there.”
    “Does Simon...?” I fished for a serious-sounding alternative to bark or woof. “Does Simon speak to you, uh, directly?”
    With touching sweetness, Ceci explained that Simon spoke through Irene. “I ask him a question, and he responds through her.” She sounded as I would if I had to explain the simplicity of E-mail to a Rip Van Winkle whose idea of high-tech communication was the carrier pigeon.
    Consequently, it seemed better to focus on the content than on the technology. “Questions like...?” I asked.
    “Well, naturally, one of the first things I wanted to know was why on earth he died! And why then, when Ellis had passed on only a year before and I’d just had to put Althea in the nursing home. It was no time to leave! And as soon as he answered, I felt like such a selfish fool!”
    It seemed to me that with investments bought and held, daily help, and more than enough room for Althea in this palatial house, Ceci damned well ought to feel selfish. Not that Althea complained about the Gateway. But has anyone ever really wanted to move to a nursing home?
    “And what did Simon say?” I felt ridiculous.
    “Well, it’s really quite obvious, but Ellis needed him, you see, because he was having difficulty in adjusting to the Great Transition.” She sipped her tea and remarked lightly, “Ellis always did hate to travel. After he passed on, everyone kept telling me I ought to fly off to Europe, now that I could, but I didn’t want to leave Simon, and I was very busy, very active in the church, and Althea and I were always going places in those days, symphony, out to lunch, and there’s a very pleasant group of people who get their dogs together at one of the parks near here, and I took Simon there to play with his friends, and I had no desire to go dashing off to some foreign country all by myself. And then after I lost Simon, before I found Irene, I could barely... There were weeks when I never left this house. I let myself go completely. I could think of nothing, you see, except all my departed ones, my baby, Willie, who lived only two days, and my Nancy, who was such a beautiful girl—she’s been gone thirty years now—and all my beautiful dogs, and then my Simon. I was in a terrible state, you see. There didn’t seem to be any point to anything anymore, with everyone gone. ”
    “Yes.”
    “So one of the very first things I asked Simon was, what was I to do?”
    “And?”
    Ceci deftly placed her cup in its saucer. “Simon quite simply ordered me to pull myself together. He was distressed and Ellis was distressed at the way I’d let myself go. It made them feel rejected and unloved, you see, that I’d stopped caring about my appearance. So, straight away I got my hair done, and I bought a new suit and a few other odds and ends, and not in black, either! Simon does not like to see me in black. On a Newfoundland, it’s one thing, of course, but on me, he finds it very depressing.”
    “How often do you, uh, hear from Simon?”
    “Well, at first, it was only once or twice a week, when I had to go all the way into Cambridge to Irene’s office, but then Simon communicated his wish to come home here to Norwood Hill, and Irene was very obliging.”
    I’ll bet she was, I thought. “And now?” I asked. “Simon is always with me,” Ceci replied, “just as your dear what’s-her-name is always with you.”
    “Vinnie,” I said.
    “But for several months now, I’ve arranged to communicate with him almost daily.”
    At Irene’s fee? Plus, I guessed, a premium for at-home consultation.
    As if reading my thoughts, Ceci continued, “That’s what irritated Jonathan, of course. He was very, very annoyed with me, and unpardonably rude to Irene, well, not unpardonably, after all, forgiveness is forgiveness,