Nothing but Ghosts

by Beth Kephart

  By the time I make it back downstairs, I realize something’s actually up. The living room is half as messy, for one thing, and the kitchen is basically scrubbed. Cooked in, but scrubbed. The extra leaf has been fitted into the table and a linen tablecloth thrown on, and on one end is the bud vase and on the other is a water pitcher stuffed full with black-eyed Susans. Dad’s got one of Mom’s aprons on, but he’s also wearing a regular shirt with the sleeves rolled up an equal distance on his arms.

  “Dad,” I ask, “what’s going on?”

  “Well, don’t you look lovely?” He tips his head in my direction when he turns to see me. “Your mother loved you in that dress, I remember.”

  “She bought it for me,” I tell him. I spin, and the yellow skirt kicks out a circle.

  “You look like a pinwheel.”

  I glance past him toward the sink, the counters, the top of the oven. He’s grilled asparagus and sprinkled it with cheese. He’s tossed blueberries and raspberries in with a salad. He’s filled an oval plate with crackers and cheese. “You look like you’ve been cheffing all day,” I tell him.

  “Wait,” he says, “until you see what I’ve got in the oven.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re having a party.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes, and if you would be so kind as to set the table? Six settings, Katie, with the linen napkins.”

  I don’t budge. “Dad. Seriously. What’s going on?” I can’t see how he’s got a surprise when I’m the one who has solved the mystery, stumbled onto all the answers.

  “We’re having a party, like I said.”

  “Any particular reason?” I’m still standing, not moving an inch. Dad lets out the longest, most theatrical sigh. He starts collecting the plates, the forks, the knives, the napkins, and presenting these.

  “End-of-summer celebration.”

  I open my hands, take on the stack of table things, still don’t budge. “It’s not the end of summer, Dad.”

  “Oh, Katie,” he says, “do you always have to be so right? Just go with this for a while.”

  “Six places, Dad?” I start laying things out.

  “Well, will you look?” he says. “Here comes our first guest already.”

  I follow Dad’s gaze, out the kitchen window, see Sammy Mack and Mrs. Mack, walking up like two civilized people. The kid’s dressed just like a normal person—a pair of khakis, a dark blue tee, his light-up sneakers. He’s holding his mother’s hand. They knock, then let themselves in. Sammy breaks free from his mother’s hold and runs toward my dad, giving him a friendly smack against the thigh.

  “Awfully nice of you, Jimmy,” Mrs. Mack says to my dad, then, to Sammy, “Your very best behavior now—remember what we talked about.” Sammy pumps his head in his best imitation of agreeing.

  “Thank you for bringing him over,” Dad says. “We’ll get him safely home later on.” Mrs. Mack smiles at my dad, gives a stern look to her son. She waves at me like I’m a second thought, like she didn’t actually see me until now.

  “You remember my daughter, Katie,” Dad says.

  “Of course,” she says, waving hello and good-bye.

  “What’s for dinner, Jimmy?” Sammy asks.

  “Chicken,” Dad says. “And spaghetti squash. It tastes just like spaghetti.”

  “Does it taste like pizza?”

  “We could pretend.”

  Sammy sets off on a triumphal march, all around the kitchen, pumping his little fists, nodding his head, making his shoes light up like fireworks.

  “Is it Sammy’s birthday?” I ask my father.

  “Not that I know of. Is it, Sammy?”

  Humming to himself now, Sammy is off in his own world. I finish setting the table—forks on linen napkins, plates in their places, water glasses, knives. When I turn, I find Dad’s next guest has slipped in so quietly that I hadn’t even heard her. I’m too flabbergasted to say hello. Have you ever seen one of those cool Gap models in the pages of Vanity Fair? That’s who she looks like—all funky but sweet, with the coolest, tallest pair of cranberry-colored shoes. “Ms. McDermott,” I say, feeling my face turn red hot. “Dad didn’t tell me you were coming—”

  “She’s tough to surprise,” Dad interrupts. “I do my best.” Even Sammy’s stopped to give the librarian the once-all-over.

  “Hello again,” he says.

  Again?

  “Dad?” I start, but now there’s another knocking at the door, and I give Dad my are-you-crazy? look.

  “Our final guest,” Dad says.

  I set off through the kitchen, practically skid into the door. When I yank it open, Danny’s staring at me, a purple dahlia in his hand. “Are you kidding me?” I ask. I don’t step aside to let him through. I just keep staring at him.

  “Would I do that?”

  “What?” I already forgot my question.

  “Kid you?”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, and he’s still outside and I’m still inside, and I have a million things to tell him, more than a million, and again there’s this problem—I don’t know where to start—and finally I remember to make some room.

  “I was invited.” He steps toward me. He stands there, slipping the purple dahlia into my hand.

  “By my dad?” It’s a perfect dahlia. I know precisely where he got it.

  “By Ms. McDermott, actually. Who received the invitation by way of your dad and decided to include me. Cool house, by the way. Way big. Like a mini Miss Martine mansion.”

  “I’m so confused.”

  “Is this the famous Danny Santopolo?” It’s my dad now, come out from the kitchen, wiping his hands dry on my mother’s flowered apron. All of a sudden I realize something: My father got his hair cut. He hardly looks mad scientist tonight.

  “Good to meet you, Dr. D’Amore.”

  “Hope you like spaghetti squash.”

  “Never had it.”

  “You’ve got to have spaghetti squash before you go to college,” Dad tells him, clapping a hand on Danny’s shoulder and leading him into the kitchen, leaving me to walk behind the two of them. “One of life’s most pressing rules.”

  “Good to know,” Danny says. He waves to me from behind his back. I catch his fingers briefly in mine. Looking past the two of them, I can see Sammy still on his march and Ms. McDermott slicing the bread as if she’s always worked in our kitchen. The chicken’s out of the oven. The meal is practically served. Dad stands at Mom’s place so that no one will sit there. I choose the chair next to Danny. We’re seated.

  “Will you do us the honor?” Dad asks Sammy, who has plopped down next to him.

  “Blessings on our blossoms,” Sammy shouts.

  “Amen,” Dad says.

  “Amen,” we echo.

  “There’s enough of everything for everyone,” Dad says, scooping things onto people’s plates, passing dishes.

  “You’re quite the cook,” Ms. McDermott tells him, and looking around the table now, I see that what she says is true. Dad has become a master chef. He’d win top prize on any reality TV cooking show.

  “I’ve decided that cooking is just another way of painting,” Dad says, and I think; Oh, Mom, I hope that you heard that. I hope you can see us all here right now, that you’re sitting with us, at this table. I feel Danny’s hand reaching for mine. I squeeze his fingers tight.

  “My dad don’t ever cook,” Sammy announces, and Danny laughs, and now Sammy shouts, “Pizza time,” digging into the squash. Dad asks for the bread, then he asks for the butter. Ms. McDermott takes another helping of salad. Danny says, “Wait till I tell Owen,” and I say, “Don’t,” and Sammy says, “Who’s Owen?” By now Dad is getting around to his point, is clearing his throat, saying, “We have all been at work on the mysterious case of Miss Martine. Today, I understand, there’s been a breakthrough.”

  I stare at Dad, completely baffled. I stare at Sammy, who has started to fidget. I look at Danny, remember this morning, him talki
ng on the bridge with Old Olson, him going off into the thick of the trees. Danny, I think—maybe Danny beat me to knowing, but now I realize, looking around the table again, that the person I should be watching is Ms. McDermott. There’s a blush of high red in her cheeks, an expression on her face that I have never seen before. “I just happened to mention to your dad,” she says, “that I bumped into you in the library today. That you’d had yourself a breakthrough.”

  “You told him that?”

  “I did.”

  “But when?”

  “When he called me to verify something about the painting.”

  “Which I’d shared with Ms. McDermott the night she came to drop off the photo of Miss Martine,” Dad adds now. “The painting, I mean. I’d given her a tour.”

  “There’s a painting?” Danny asks.

  “I was planning to tell you,” I say.

  “And a photograph?”

  “It’s just that’s all come together only now.” I feel my cheeks go hot.

  “But you were going to tell me?” Danny asks.

  “I was. I can tell you now.”

  “What’s going on?” Sammy shouts, impatiently, a funny look on his superhero face.

  “I found a portrait,” I say. “In box number seven. A portrait that tells the whole story. Or sort of most of it. The rest I got from Old Olson.”

  Ms. McDermott gives me a beautiful smile. My dad settles back into his chair. “Go on.” I feel Danny’s hand beneath the table, his fingers cool and gentle, forgiving, and now I learn forward and draw a deep breath, put the story in its place.

  “Turns out that Miss Martine had a cousin,” I begin. “But she was more than a cousin, really, I guess. More like Miss Martine’s best friend. And some of the things that mattered most to Miss Martine were entrusted, for safekeeping, to the cousin.”

  “But what’s the story?” Sammy shouts. He has crisscross marks on his forehead from paying so much attention.

  “The story, Sammy, happened in September, right about this time of year, fifty-something years ago, which is thirteen of your lifetimes.”

  Sammy looks at me and smiles. Danny squeezes my hand. I continue. “In that night in that year, a big storm blew in from Florida, then rammed itself up the East Coast, then stayed. Streams got to be rivers, and rivers overflowed, and boats floated off and parked beside houses and the roofs of houses blew down, and a train that Miss Martine had been planning to take got thrown right off its tracks.”

  “You can’t throw a train off its tracks,” Sammy says.

  “We use the word derailed, Sammy.” I look from Sammy to Dad and back again. Then I look at Ms. McDermott. Her eyes are full behind her glasses, eager, I realize, for the story.

  “So where was she going?” Danny asks. “When the storm got in her way?”

  “She was going to marry a man she loved. She was eloping.”

  “Who?” Dad asks.

  “A horseman,” I say. “By the name of Olson Long.” I turn to Danny. “He was her trainer. Their love was a secret.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Keep going.”

  “When they decided to elope, she packed her trunk, she snuck away, but the storm had set in,” I continue. And now all of a sudden, as I am telling this story, I am right there with Miss Martine, right there in that night, in that storm, with a trunk packed full of everything a society queen would need to live with the man she loved, the father of her child. And the rains come down and they won’t stop coming, and the winds blow and they won’t stop blowing, and somewhere in the city, the man boards a train, and somewhere in the suburbs a taxi stalls, and sometime later that night that train will jump its tracks. It was John Butler Everlast who hurried out into the storm to find his daughter. Just him driving the washed-over roads, not his chauffeur. Just him beside the swollen river, desperate to save his daughter, first, and then, in his own way, to protect her. He took her home and buried her trunk full of things, and then he kept the secret of her baby. He brought her home, and that is where she stayed. Brokenhearted. Broken. Her son tending to her world.

  Ms. McDermott shakes her head; the whole table’s quiet. Even Sammy, down there, is quiet. “She never escaped,” I say, “and she never really lived either. Her heart was broken. She was so young.”

  “So that’s the story,” Danny says after a moment of silence. “The way Old Olson tells it.”

  “And then there’s the story,” Dad says, “as Everlast tells it. In his painting. He had to paint it right onto a canvas. His own disappointment, his deep regrets. Amazing, Katie. Amazing. The story. The way you found it.”

  “I just don’t get why she had to vanish altogether,” I say, thinking of Miss Martine in that house on the hill. “Why she had to lock herself away from the world. Why she didn’t just step back into life, after a while.”

  “There’s no way of knowing, Katie,” Ms. McDermott says.

  The before and the after, I think. The color of caution.

  “The brutal politics of regret,” Dad says.

  “The politics of shame,” Ms. McDermott says, shaking her head.

  But I still can’t see it. I still can’t understand that kind of disappearance, one that you choose for yourself, like you’re dead, but you’re actually not, like you’re a ghost, but you’re still flesh and bones, like you want to live but cannot. Gone until the past got dug back up again.

  Maybe love, I think, is the biggest thing there is. Maybe love also contains the most amount of ruin, and I look at my dad and my mom’s empty chair, and I think about Danny going away in a few days, and I remember Jessie and Ellen and my own disappearing, and now I consider Ms. McDermott, going home every night to her house full of books, though she’s the most stunning librarian there is and could have anyone she wanted, if she wanted to take that chance. Maybe loving once means some part of you is stuck loving forever—loving and chasing and living with whatever you’re lucky enough to remember.

  “We all come to terms,” Dad says, “in our own time.”

  I sit beside Danny, knowing that my dad is right. I sit here imagining Miss Martine and my mother’s flowers, settled in now, in her yard. I sit wondering if I’ll ever come to terms with losing my one and only mother, and then I suddenly feel grateful for the things that I still have, and the new things, too.

  “Pretty great party, Dad,” I say, choking up.

  “House needed a little livening up,” Dad says. “And besides, who doesn’t love a bona fide mystery?” He looks all right, almost half happy, one hand on the back of my mother’s chair, one hand on the back of Ms. McDermott’s. He takes a good long look at Sammy now and makes some kind of decision. “Katie, love,” he says, “will you take my first-rate assistant home? He appears to be a tad kaput.” I look toward that end of the table, and he’s right: Sammy’s half asleep—his eyes half open and his face all smeared, as if he has eaten way too much pizza.

  “Everything was really great, Dr. D’Amore,” Danny says, standing beside me. “I’m glad we’ve met.”

  “The door’s pretty much always open at the D’Amores’,” Dad says. “I’m a great fan of Katie’s friends.” Danny makes the slightest bow. I give my dad a forehead kiss.

  “Come on, Sammy,” I say, reaching out my hand.

  He shakes his head no and doesn’t budge. Gently I wrestle him out of the chair, give him a kiss of his own.

  “I’m coming back,” he says with a perfect pout. “I’m coming back tomorrow.”

  “Breakfast will be waiting,” I say.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m not sure that any of us ever come fully to terms with loss. And yet, in the stretch of time since my mother’s passing, I’ve been given the gift of extraordinary friendship by a deeply appreciated many. My first thanks, then, go to all who listened and loved, who filled my home with cards and flowers, who showed the way. Nothing but Ghosts is filled with their essence—with the deep, faithful goodness of my father; with Jamie Comiskey’s spaghetti squash; with th
e kindness of Yvonne D’Amore and Ann McDermott; with the pure alivedness of my nieces and nephews, Miranda, Owen, Julia, Daniel, and Claire; with the impeccable intelligence of Ivy Goodman, Alyson Hagy, Jennie Nash, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Kate Moses, Ellen Brackett, Amy Rennert, and my own aunt Carol. Jeremy: How you have taught me, inspired me, blessed me. Bill, thank you.

  To the Harper team—Laura Geringer, Jill Santopolo, Corey Mallonee, Cindy Tamasi, Lisa Bishop, Carla Weise, Renée Cafiero, Laaren Brown—I thank you for all you do. Laura, especially, I thank you for standing by with this, for seeing more inside the lines than I had seen myself.

  Chanticleer Garden and the souls who keep it blooming: Once again, you have planted seeds; you have given this story a most glorious physical home.

  About the Author

  Beth Kephart was nominated for a National Book Award for her memoir A SLANT OF SUN. Her first novel for teens, UNDERCOVER, received four starred reviews and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Amazon.com. In 2005 Beth was awarded the Speakeasy Poetry Prize. She has also written INTO THE TANGLE OF FRIENDSHIP: A Memoir of the Things That Matter; STILL LOVE IN STRANGE PLACES: A Memoir; GHOSTS IN THE GARDEN: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self; FLOW: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River; ZENOBIA: The Curious Book of Business; and HOUSE OF DANCE. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family. www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com

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  ALSO BY BETH KEPHART

  Undercover

  House of Dance

  Credits

  Jacket art © Ilona Habben/zefa/Corbis

  Jacket design by Carla Weise

  Copyright

  NOTHING BUT GHOSTS. Copyright © 2009 by Beth Kephart. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.