Being Dead

by Vivian Vande Velde

  When I got back to the doorway that opened on to the porch, Dad had gotten up and turned on the porch light himself. There was nobody else on the porch. In the corner in which we'd been looking was an old porch chair on gliders, and thrown over the back was a sweater that I had left there a couple weeks ago, when the nights had been cooler. Maybe, in the shadows, that had looked like a person sitting there.

  "He was here," Dad said. "Sitting here, watching me."

  I thought for several long moments before I said, "He's not here now," the most reassuring thing I could come up with.

  "He was here," Dad repeated, a whisper barely louder than a sigh....

  A whisper that I could hear perfectly well in the silence, since Spartacus had suddenly stopped barking.

  "He was here and he's just waiting for me to fell asleep."

  And I couldn't think of anything reassuring at all to say to that.

  To him or to me.

  Dad stayed up the rest of the night, with all the lights on, die way a kid afraid of the dark might.

  Still, by the next night, Mom and Dad had made up—or pretended to for my sake—and they went to bed together.

  I was awakened about three o'clock by my father's yelling and my mother's crying. I got out of bed and went down the hall to their room.

  "How could you not have seen him?" Dad was demanding. "He was looming right over me in bed."

  I stood in the doorway, thinking that he hadn't had anything to drink all day. That was why Mom had let him back in the bedroom.

  "He was not there," Mom sobbed.

  "He came out of the shadow in that comer—" Dad started.

  "It was a dream," my mother insisted.

  "It started as a dream, but then I woke up and he was still there."

  "Mommy, Daddy," I said, hoping that if they saw me, they would stop fighting. When I had been little, if I had a nightmare my father would say, "Dream or real, I'll protect you," and he would sit by my bed until I fell back to sleep. If I said that now, would Dad feel safe, or would he think I was mocking him? I would protect him if I could.

  "Sarah, please," Mom said, "can you get that dog of yours to stop barking before the neighbors complain?"

  My dog? All of a sudden, Spartacus was my dog?

  But I went down to the kitchen to see what I could do about calming him. I gave him a Milk-Bone, figuring he was the kind of dog who might get distracted by a treat the way—sometimes—I can be distracted by chocolate. I was right. He forgot whatever he'd heard or smelled in the night and scarfed down the Milk-Bone.

  On my way out of the kitchen, I met my father, coming downstairs with a pillow. He didn't meet my eyes as he settled down on the couch. "Good night," he told me.

  "Good night," I said, but he had a book with him. Pillow or no pillow, it was obvious he wasn't planning on going to sleep.

  "Leave the hall light on," he said as I went upstairs.

  I left the hall light on.

  The next morning I was still in bed, vaguely aware of my father showering, getting ready for work. This would be his first day back at the tool-and-die shop since we'd gotten the news about Kevin. I could smell the coffee my mother was brewing in the kitchen and could hear Spartacus scratching at the kitchen door to get out.

  Nice, normal sounds from a nice, normal household.

  I was just about to drift back to sleep when I heard my father scream. It was worse than when he'd yelled in his sleep, for this was a scream of pain.

  I fought with the sheet that had gotten tangled around my legs, and heard Mom running up the stairs. I almost collided with her in the hall outside the bathroom. She gave me a look that was too complicated for me to read, and tore the door open.

  Dad was backed up against the wall, wildly swinging his razor as though to keep someone away from him. Half his face was still lathered; on the other side there was a long cut that more or less followed his jawbone, and blood dripped onto his white T-shirt "He tried to grab my hand," Dad shouted. Now he sounded more angry than frightened or hurt. "He tried to make me cut my own throat"

  "He didn't!" Mom screamed at him. "Even if Kevin did come back from the dead, he would never do that! Where is he? Where? I don't see him. Sarah doesn't see him. You're imagining this!"

  "He wants me dead," Dad said. He held a towel to the cut to staunch the bleeding. But in the meanwhile he didn't put down the razor.

  "How can you say that?" Mom screamed at him. "How can you say that about Kevin?"

  "Should I call an ambulance?" I asked.

  "I am not hallucinating!" my father shouted at me.

  I had meant for the cut—though the bleeding was slowing down, not nearly as bad as I had feared when I'd first walked in. His words played in my head. So did others. Those amusing little comments from cartoons: sending for the men in the little white coats, calling the guys from the funny farm. Not for my father.

  Not for my father.

  Mom said, "You need to talk to someone about this, Tom. Dreaming is one thing—"

  "These have not been dreams," Dad insisted.

  "You're destroying what's left of this family." Mom pushed past me and fled the room, sobbing. Dad, still holding that razor, took a step toward the door. I wanted to yell, "Run, Mom!" to warn her.

  But Dad only threw the razor in the trash.

  How could I have thought—even for an instant—that he would harm her?

  "I won't let him get me," Dad muttered.

  I felt guilty that I was so glad when Dad left for work. But I was still glad.

  Then he came home from his job midafternoon, which was about two hours too early. Dread sat in the pit of my stomach as I watched him come up the walk.

  "He followed me," Dad said.

  Not in the dark of night Not when waking up from a nightmare. Not when he needed someone to blame for cutting himself.

  "Oh, Tom," Mom said, between pity and exasperation.

  "There're too many machines," he said. "The drill press. Tumbler. Grinder. Lathe. All it would take would be one moment of inattention, and he could come up behind me, and that would be the end of me."

  "Kevin wouldn't do that," I protested, as though rational protests could convince him.

  Dad looked at me with a level, evaluating expression. "Not before," he agreed. "But now that he's dead..." He nodded to show he understood that Kevin's death had changed things. "He's just waiting, hiding in the shadows, waiting for his chance."

  His words obviously scared my mother as much as they were scaring me.

  "You haven't slept properly in days," she said. "That's what's causing this. Let me call Dr. Farrell to see if he can give you a prescription to help you sleep and you'll see—"

  "No!" Dad cried as though shocked that Mom could be so stupid. "I have to keep my wits." Dad sat rocking on the chair that wasn't a rocking chair. "Can't let Kevin get the drop on me. He's getting stronger. Every time he comes, he's getting stronger." The scabbed-over cut on his left cheek and the stubble on his right from when he had given up shaving midway through gave him an alarming appearance, like some of the spookier hippies protesting at the colleges.

  Don't do this! I wanted to yell at him.

  "Fine," Mom said sharply. "I'll start dinner."

  But she must really have gone into the kitchen to use the phone, for Uncle Jack and Aunt Lise showed up within a half hour, standing on the stoop, knocking on the door to the porch. Uncle Jack was still wearing his mechanics overalls from the Esso station where he worked. Though he had cleaned his hands, he still had grease on his face. Dwight was with them, wearing a T-shirt that said NIAGARA FALLS MUSEUM OF THE BIZARRE. Talk about appropriate.

  "Ifs the dinner patrol," Uncle Jack announced cheerfully through the screen door. "Lise has declared she's not cooking tonight, and we thought maybe you and Maggie and Sarah needed the night off, too. Our treat. We'll take you all out to dinner."

  "We're not dressed," Dad said.

  Uncle Jack snorted. "Do we look dressed? I
t's not like we're offering to take you anyplace nice—just the hot-dog stand by the pier."

  "That's so kind," Mom said, already untying her apron. "I can just put away what I started and save that for tomorrow. Come on, Tom."

  I held my breath. Please, please, please, I mentally begged. Uncle Jack was always good at making things better. I was sure his company would be good for my father.

  Dad eyed them warily. But, "Let me get my sneakers," he said to my relief. He went upstairs, and Uncle Jack winked at my mother through the screen door.

  Everything was going to be all right, I was sure of it.

  Then Spartacus, who had let Uncle Jack's car into the driveway without uttering a single guard-doglike sound, who had let Uncle Jack and Aunt Lise onto the stoop, who had let them ring the doorbell, who had let Dwight press his face against the porch screen—not a pleasant sight at all—suddenly started barking.

  At first I thought he had finally become aware that we had visitors and was trying to warn them away from his territory. He tore into the porch and lunged at the door, not even giving Aunt Lise, who was closest, time to get properly scared. But he wasn't after her. He just bowled his way between Mom and the door and Aunt Lise, tearing out of the house to the freedom of the outdoors.

  "Oh no," I complained, because I was always the one who had to chase him down and try to coax him back home. Try roaming up and down your neighborhood yelling, "Spartacus! Spartacus, come back!" and see if you don't feel entirely humiliated.

  Maybe, if I was lucky, Uncle Jack would ask Dwight to go. But just then we could hear my father start to come down the stairs into the living room. Then his footsteps stopped. "No!" Dad yelled. "No, Kevin! Keep away! Keep away from me!"

  Uncle Jack pushed past me and my mother into the house.

  Through the doorway I could see Dad crouched on the stairs, his arms protectively over his head. There was no sign of anything that could even vaguely be construed as shadowy, much less as Kevin.

  Being the coward I am, I went after Spartacus. Please let my father be all right, I prayed to the beat of my sneakers pounding the sidewalk.

  It took several minutes for me to comer Spartacus and get a firm hold on his collar. When I got back Uncle Jack's car was still in the driveway, but there was no sign of him or Aunt Lise. Dwight was sitting on the stoop, experimenting with how long he could stretch out his bubble gum. By his unhappy expression I guessed he had been ordered to stay outside.

  "Hey," he said when he saw me dragging Spartacus up the walk. He stuck the gum back in his mouth even though his hands, which he had been touching it with, were filthy. "He always do that?"

  "Do what?" I asked, figuring he meant did my dad always act like his dead son was attacking him. I had no intention of making things easy for Dwight.

  But Dwight nodded his head toward Spartacus. "Does Nero there always get wigged out whenever Kevin makes an appearance?"

  I could have strangled the little creep. "You are such an insensitive jerk," I told him.

  "All right, all right; Spartacus," Dwight corrected, as though I was mad because he'd gotten the dog's name wrong, when he was always calling him Tiberius or Claudius or something. "Don't be so sensitive. He doesn't know what his name is."

  I would have smacked Dwight, but I didn't dare let go of Spartacus's collar. He wasn't quite so wiggly as before, but I didn't have the stamina to chase him three blocks again.

  "Kevin is dead," I told Dwight, as though he needed reminding. "My father..."—I took a long, shuddery breath and said it out loud for the first time—"my father is going crazy." Nutty as a fruitcake. Got bats in the belfry. Not playing with a full deck. One can short of a six-pack. The airy words to describe the darkness in my father's head played in my head. Angrily I finished, "And that's nothing to make jokes about."

  "I'm not," Dwight protested.

  "Would you just get the door and shut up."

  Dwight opened the door to the porch, and I pushed Spartacus in. Spartacus jumped up onto the davenport as though he had never even heard of the outside world, much less tried to escape into it. Worn-out from his exertions, he laid his head on his paws.

  I could hear Uncle Jack's voice, and my father's, coming from the living room. I didn't want to go in, so I curled up next to Spartacus, who was stinky, but at least he was soft.

  Dwight had obviously been given strict instructions that he was not to come in. He pressed his face against the screen again; "Hey," he called to me from the stoop. "Hey, Sarah."

  "Go away." I buried my face into Spartacus's furry shoulder.

  "Uncle Tom sees Kevin?" Dwight asked. When I didn't answer, he asked, "And you and Aunt Maggie don't?" And when I still didn't answer, he asked, "But the dog does?"

  "The dog doesn't see Kevin," I said between clenched teeth.

  "Does he always act weird when your father is seeing him?"

  "He always acts weird," I said. "He has a brain the size of a pea."

  "Dogs can sense things people can't," Dwight said. "Like those whistles that are too high-pitched for humans to hear."

  "You're saying Kevin has come back from the dead to blow a dog whistle at Spartacus?" Dwight could be such a moron.

  "Stop acting so damn superior," Dwight told me.

  I thought about what he was saying. "My dad is acting weird. He jumps up and he yells and he moves fast. That's what's spooking the dog."

  "Your father was upstairs when die dog got spooked," Dwight pointed out. "Spartacus was in the living room; he saw something that made him want to get away. Then your father came down and saw what Spartacus saw: Kevin." He was looking very pleased with himself.

  I straightened up. "There's no such thing as ghosts."

  Dwight held his arms out in a hey-don't-blame-me gesture.

  "And even," I said, "even if there were, Kevin would not do the things my dad thinks he's doing. He wouldn't threaten him. He wouldn't be trying to hurt him. Kevin..." I sighed. "Kevin was never like that."

  Dwight sat down on the stoop. "No," he agreed. "But something is going on. Sure, your father is sad that Kevin died. But is that enough to make him see things that aren't there? Let me help you investigate this."

  "I'm not—" I started, but just then my mother and Uncle Jack and Aunt Lise came out. Mom looked angry; I think she was embarrassed, and that made her angry. Uncle Jack looked shaken. Aunt Lise rested her cheek against mine. She probably wouldn't have done that if she'd been aware that until a minute ago my cheek had been against die dog, but it was a nice gesture. "Everything is going to be fine," she assured me. "Jack has gotten your father to agree to see a doctor tomorrow."

  Tomorrow he might change his mind, I thought.

  She finished: "He thinks a quiet night at home would be best for this evening. We'll go out to dinner tomorrow, okay? All of us."

  I nodded. What else could I do? Demand that they take me out?

  Dwight asked, "Can I spend the night?"

  "No." Aunt Lise didn't even glance at my mother to see if it was okay with her.

  "But—"

  "Move," Uncle Jack commanded.

  Dwight moved. But so did my mother. She accompanied my aunt and uncle out of the porch and down the three steps of the stoop. They stood by the car, talking, their voices quiet, their faces earnest. Dwight took the opportunity to press his face once more against the screen door. "Remember," he whispered, "take your cue from the dog."

  Yeah, right. Compared to Dwight, the dog almost did seem smart.

  Could Spartacus see something that none of the rest of us could, except Dad?

  And if there was something to see, what else could it be but Kevin?

  Was I stubbornly refusing to believe Dwight could be right, just because he was Dwight?

  "So what do you think is going on?" I asked. "Not all dead people come back as ghosts, or Gramma Cassie would still be hanging around family picnics, force-feeding us those rock-solid diabetic cookies of hers. So why has Kevin come back?"

  "U
nsettled business," Dwight said. "That's why ghosts get tied to Earth. Wrongs to be righted, that sort of thing." He had a question of his own: "Why does your father think Kevin is here?"

  "To ... I don't know..." It sounded so stupid. "To get him."

  "Why?"

  Exasperated, I said, "I thought we already agreed Kevin wouldn't be that way."

  "But why would your father think he would? Did your father used to beat him, or anything like that, that he thinks Kevin could want revenge for?"

  "No," I said.

  The thing I remembered was that picture of Kevin and Millicent Oschmann on prom night—how they'd had to wait for Dad, who had run off to the store for flash cubes for the camera, then everybody smiling and waving, everybody thinking ve had forever.

  Dwight sat on the stoop; I sat on the other side of the door in the porch—both of us resting our chins on our hands, thinking.

  "They used to get along," I said, "until..." And there it was: the solution Dwight was looking for. "Dad's feeling guilty," I said, "for supporting the war, for encouraging Kevin"—that wasn't it by half—"for bullying him into serving instead of running off to Canada." It was different, I remembered him saying, but I wouldn't listen. I finished: "He thinks he's responsible for Kevin being dead."

  "But," Dwight said, "what's really happening is that Kevin keeps coming back—not because he wants to, but because your father himself keeps calling him back by his own feelings of guilt" Dwight saw the skeptical look on my face. "It's a possibility," he said.

  So is intelligent life on Mars.

  But I liked Dwight's interpretation a lot better than my father's. Or mine.

  "Dwight," I started.

  But I never finished.

  There was a sound from the house.

  And just as Mom, Dad, and I had known Kevin was dead as soon as we'd seen those army guys, so, too, we all immediately recognized the significance of that sound: It was a gun. I knew that without even having known my father had a gun—a Luger, I was told later, a German officer's gun, a memento that lots of World War II veterans brought home with them. But in that single moment after the shot, I saw Aunt Lise flinch, Uncle Jack whirl back toward the house, Mom sway and catch hold of the car door. Dwight's eyes looked ready to bug out of his head. Spartacus began to whimper. As for me, I was just empty. Perhaps I had finally figured it out; perhaps not. Perhaps there would have been something I could have done with the knowledge I thought I had. Perhaps not. In that moment, I knew I would never know.