Linda Urban - Almost There and Almost Not

For Kate

always there

Great-Great-Great-Aunt Eleanor was really named Elsie.

She wont admit it, even though shes little more than a bluster through a room, thin and gray and dusty enough to sneeze at. Eleanor, she insists. Hint of a British accent.

She was raised in Kansas.

I know about Kansas because of Dog.

Dog tells the truth. Or brings it to me, really. Its not like he can talk. Living or not, hes still a dog.

I tried to tell my not-so-great Aunt Monica about this once, and she nearly felt my forehead.

I dont mention Dog anymore.

And I call the great-great-great-aunt Eleanor. Whats the harm? Dead people deserve whatever names they want, I think, though if I had my choice, Id rather not wait until dying to rid myself of California. People make comments about a name like California.

What was your mother thinking? asks Aunt Monica.

What indeed? asks Eleanor.

Watch it, I warn the deader of my aunts.

Good thing about ghosts is theyre so much your elders, you dont need to mind them.

That, and their swats go straight through you.

Maybe I gave the impression Aunt Monica is dead. She isnt.

Her swats would make contact for sure, even though shed have to do it left-handed, seeing as her right arm is bent-casted from finger to shoulder and slung in place. She says she tripped on the back porch steps, but something about the way she says it makes me doubtful its the whole story.

Still, I have to trust her. She doesnt have a dog, so theres no outside source of information.

The reason I am at Aunt Monicas is because my mom, who named me, is also dead. Unlike Eleanor, she never visits, though. I wish she would. I have a lot of questions for her.

And because of my dad, too, who did his best for four years but needed a pause from the single-parent raising of an eleven-year-old girl and her need for bras and similar. He decided Alaska was a good place for earning money and a bad place for a bra-needing child, and so he put me and my couple of boxes in his truck and drove me to his sister-in-law Isabelles in Minnesota and after a couple of meals (meatloaf, warmed-up meatloaf, and meatloaf sandwiches) knew the Alaska jobs he was after would be all full up if he didnt get there quick.

He has feelings about stuff like that.

Not the same kind of feelings as theres-a-ghost-in-this-room feelings, but feelings, anyway.

His feelings werent quite right about Aunt Isabelle, though. She was not better at girl things than he was, and she didnt think it a blessing to have some company, either. A week and a half after Dad left, my aunt Isabelle heard about her aunt Monicas accident and put me and my couple of boxes in her car to see if I could be a blessing to someone else.

And Aunt Monica? Well, she isnt the sort to have any feelings, as far as I can tell. But its only been a few days. Who knows what will happen? Ive asked Dog, but he isnt telling.

Listen, said Aunt Isabelle. She starts a lot of her sentences like that. As if you could avoid hearing her. Listen, I thought this would be useful to you.

She was talking to her aunt Monica and waving at me to unload the cooler wed driven all the way from Minnesota. It was full of meatloavesbrick-size and wrapped in foil. The idea, she explained, was that every few days Aunt Monica could heat one up and be saved any trouble of cooking. Plus, making them had been good practice for her entry in the Minneapolis Meatloaf Cook-Off, which would be happening in the next month and for which she had secured an entry.

Listen, with so much practicing and recipe experimentation ahead of me, you can see how I wouldnt have enough room. She nodded in my direction just as I was putting the last meat brick in the freezer. Youre going to think Im dumb, but I thought she was talking about the meatloaf.

Aunt Monica held up her noncasted hand, putting a pause on Aunt Isabelles chatter. Perhaps you could go out back and take in the garden flowers, she said to me.

Heres another thing that might make you think Im dumb. I know now that take in means go have a look, but when I stepped outside, I thought Id find some potted plants that needed bringing into the house for the night. When I didnt find any pots on the back porch, I kept looking, stepping out to the lawn and into the enormous garden Aunt Monica has bordering it. Back when her husband was alive, he kept it neat and careful, but in the last year so many weeds have sprung up, she says, its impossible to tell the uninvited from the invited.

Finally, in the farthest part of the yard, near the stone angel birdbath, I found a couple of holes in the garden dirt. There were some flowers tipped over next to them, roots exposed. Im no gardener, but even I know tearing roots up like that can kill a growing thing, so I figured these must be the flowers Aunt Monica wanted taken in.

I headed for the garage, thinking Id find a pot to put them in, when I heard a small, strange sound behind mesort of a gasp and sort of a bark. I turned around andzip!just like that, this little streak of white bolted out of nowhere. It tore round and round the yard, half gasping, half barking, all motion.

It was a dog.

The fluffy, mischievous kind like Dorothy Gale had in the Oz movie, but entirely white, tip to tail. When he finally slowed, I could make out a pair of black-coffee eyes under all that floppy fur, and front paws dark with mud. He was doing a strange thing with his tongue, pushing and pushing at the roof of his mouth like hed gotten into a peanut butter jar.

Need some help, dog? I asked.

The dog cocked his head like Id surprised him. Like an eleven-year-old girl actually speaking to him was the last thing in the world hed expected. He spun around a few times, wagged his stump tail, and spit out the thing that had been bothering him.

It was a scrap of paper, rough and torn-edged. In between the soil and the slobber on it I could see writing.

Have you been in somebodys trash? I asked. The dog didnt answer, of course, just sat there looking pleased with himself. People get rid of things for a reason, I told him.

The dog had a shimmery quality that I now understand is part of being from the passed-on world, but right then I thought it was a trick of the light, the sun going down the way it was. I held out my hand to let the dog sniff it, which he did, and to offer an ear scratch, which he dodged.

Im not going to hurt you, I told him, but the dog was not convinced. He barked a few times more and then, tail still wagging, darted away fast as he had come.

I had forgotten all about the flowers by then and bent down to pick up the trash the dog had left. The writing on it was cramped and uneven, like a little kids, but there was something old-fashioned about it, too. I studied the page, giving it so much undivided attention my fifth-grade teacher, Miss Tenzing, would have beamed proud.