Take the Stairs

by Take the Stairs (retail) (epub)

  I looked at Mom with a meaningful stare, but she didn’t notice. I knew a couple of guys on the team who would do this. Maybe Willis or Richardson. Somehow, the news about my dad had gotten to them, too. Why wouldn’t they leave me alone? I wished the Jackal went out for soccer.

  The garage was in a small gas station. It didn’t look open, but we pulled in anyway. Old cars crowded the parking lot. There was hardly room for my mother to drive in, but she made us fit.

  The office was filled with soccer trophies, photos of hot cars that looked as if they were ripped out of an old calendar, and pictures of saints with halos over their heads. In a greasy coverall, the owner was talking loudly on the phone in Greek. The room was dirty, run down, and needed painting—depressing, like the Building. And it stunk like car exhaust because the door to the garage was open.

  There were two men waiting in the office as well. One was sitting on one of the chairs lined up under the window. His hair was gray and he was wearing one of those jackets with a nametag on it. Stan—that was what his tag said. The other was standing. He was a bit younger, skinny, and his ears stuck out from under his baseball cap. Both looked too old to be interesting.

  Then the guy behind the desk was off the phone and Mom was talking to him in the garage. I was just hanging, so I couldn’t help but listen to the skinny guy talking to Stan.

  “I couldn’t tell ya whether I’m Scottish or Irish. I went back to New Brunswick—where I’m from—to find my family.”

  “Family’s important.” Stan nodded.

  “Yep. I tried to look them up in the cemetery while I was there, but they weren’t about to talk to me. Now I’ll never know whether I’m Scottish or Irish.”

  I knew he was just kidding about ghosts talking to him. That wasn’t the weird thing. The weird thing was what the guy named Stan said next.

  He said, “If you want them to talk to you, you don’t go there in the daytime. You got to go at night. Alone. Then they’ll talk to you.”

  I slid my eyes sideways to see if there was any hint of humor in his face, but there wasn’t. He just looked still and serious at the skinny guy.

  The skinny guy began to shuffle nervously from foot to foot and sneak weird looks at Stan. “I get ya.”

  Stan used this as an invitation to talk some more. “Yeah, you gotta go alone at night. Walk among the tombstones and pray that the one you want to talk to will come and see you. If you see something sneaking out from behind a tree and feel a tap on your shoulder, then you know.”

  “Oh, jeez,” said the skinny guy, shuffling about more now. “That’s when I’m outta there. No way.”

  He scuttled out of the office and into the gray drizzle as if he had something important to do, but I knew he was trying to get away from the spooky talk.

  Mom came out of the garage then with the mechanic.

  “Come on, David. I need your help,” she called to me.

  I followed them outside.

  Mom passed me the keys. “We’re going to do a quick check without taking the tire off,” she explained. “We’ll look for the nail while you drive slowly backward. Can you handle that?”

  “Sure!”

  Glad for a chance to be behind the wheel, I rolled back, watching my mother’s hand in the driver’s mirror show me when to stop and go. When she stuck her head right under the car, I braked so hard she bumped her head.

  “Be careful!” I yelled at her.

  They found nothing. Someone must have let the air out. It could have been one of the guys on the team. Or maybe it was Tony, from the Building. He had been giving me mean sideways looks. Anyway, I wouldn’t trust anyone from the Building, especially after the way they hounded Petra last summer—for a lousy twenty bucks!

  While Mom talked some more to the mechanic, I went back and fingered the soccer trophies, pretending they were mine, but I was thinking about what Stan had said. About how he had said it—as if it were true. As if he could read my mind. Then Stan started to speak.

  “What I said before, boy, it’s on the level, sure enough.”

  I looked at him then. He seemed so ordinary. So I gathered my courage and asked, “How do you know it’s true?”

  He smiled, wiggled his false teeth around in his mouth, and said, “Because I’ve done it. Talked to my own mama one year to the day after she died. That was on a visit to her grave. And my brother, well, he called me on the telephone the day after he died to tell me about some money he had hidden in his apartment, in the wall behind the light switch. I guess he didn’t want the next people to find it. Sure enough, when I took that light switch apart, it was there. Right where he told me to look.”

  He must have been pulling my leg, but a shiver crept through me. Stan was still looking serious, so I just said, “Oh.” What was I supposed to say to something like that?

  “Most of the dead don’t walk to the cemetery,” he continued.

  “I know that.” Maybe this guy was just a loser.

  Stan ignored me. “Some of them get lost. Can’t find their way.”

  I wondered why ghosts had to hang out in cemeteries. Couldn’t they be anywhere else?

  Mom called me then. “No leak, David, time to go.”

  I’d lost my chance to find out more, but I knew I would go to the cemetery—just to see if it was true.

  * * *

  AT 11:30 THAT NIGHT, I SNEAKED down the hall, away from Mom’s soft snores. I shut our heavy metal apartment door without even a click. No problem. Half an hour to get into position. I figured that midnight was the best time to talk to ghosts.

  I put the collar of my jean jacket up against the wind and any strange people that might be lurking on the city streets. When I got to the Jackal’s house, I scooted around the side and climbed over the fence. My feet landed with a crunch on the dry leaves that were bunched up against his fence.

  Gloomy blackness closed in on me. I stood for a long time behind the Jackal’s house, shaking a bit and sweating, even in the cool night air. I stared up at his darkened window and listened to the wind whirling around the headstones and rustling the leaves in the trees. Little animals that I’d never noticed during the day scurried from stone to stone. I wished that the Jackal was with me, but Stan had said to go alone.

  Then I started down the rows, thinking of all the horror shows I’d ever seen. The moon shone through the tree branches, making strange shadows, but I saw no ghosts. I tried to read the names and dates on the tombstones in the dark and almost cried over each grave. This sappy sobbing thing had taken me over ever since Dad had died.

  I was heading to Dad’s grave—the place I had been avoiding since I watched the coffin sink into that dark pit months ago. I hadn’t even come when the stone was placed, but I knew where the grave was. The spot still haunted me in my dreams. Sixth from the end of the row near a bush that had been blooming red flowers on that day. I sat facing his gray rectangular stone, but not on his grave. I couldn’t step on him.

  Thomas Duncan MacKay

  Beloved husband to Margaret Anne

  Beloved father to David Thomas

  May all lost souls find their way to eternal light.

  Why did my mother put that on his tombstone? Maybe Dad was one of the ghosts who got lost on the way to the cemetery. Or maybe she was thinking about me. Or herself.

  Dad wasn’t there. I shivered and pushed away my disappointment and relief. What should I do next?

  Then I remembered that Stan had said to pray. I’d never prayed before, but I’d seen other people do it, so I tried.

  I got on my knees and mumbled into my folded hands. Private stuff about how I was worried about Mom and how I missed Dad and wanted to see him again. Then I lit a couple of matches because the rustling noises around me were spooky. I started wishing again that the Jackal were with me, but he was probably sleeping or jamming guitar in the dark with his headphones on. So I just sat and waited for Dad to come.

  The thing that I didn’t plan for was the wait. And that I fel
l asleep. And that Dad’s ghost didn’t appear. The worst was that I fell asleep on top of my father’s grave.

  I dreamed that I was deep in the ground with Dad. Buried alive, with him dead. Choking and suffocating on the dirt and stale air. With the maggots and worms and stink of crumbling flesh and bones. It smelled worse than the dead flowers in the hospice.

  I woke with a scream. Tears had wet my cheeks. Someone was standing over me. A silhouette of a person outlined in the moonlight. Was it my father? Waiting for me to wake up? Waiting to give me the answers? To tell me why I had to suffer this life?

  I had forgotten that the Jackal was like the animal I’d named him for. I had forgotten that he could sniff me out. He was a creature of the night. Not like me. I belonged in the daylight, but the night kept creeping toward me until I couldn’t avoid it any more.

  The Jackal squinted to read Dad’s tombstone in the light of the moon. He was wearing his usual ripped blue jeans and black leather jacket. “What’s up?”

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks and told the Jackal about Stan and how he had said he could talk to ghosts.

  The Jackal looked at me, but his eyes didn’t change. He didn’t get that look of pity even though he saw me weak. Not strong like him.

  “Awwh, there’s no ghosts here,” he said. “Just a bunch of dead guys. Let’s beat it.”

  We did. I pretended to trip over the bones of a dead guy on the way out, and the Jackal laughed. I didn’t want him to think I was soft.

  * * *

  I KNEW I WOULD TRY AGAIN. I had to. But it didn’t happen how I thought it would.

  The next Saturday, the Jackal and I were on our way to the arcade in the row of stores across from the Building. Mom was at the hospital for some tests. I was worrying about her and about how I would take care of myself and her if she got sick.

  “I’m going to whip your butt in Kick-Off,” the Jackal said, trying to trip me as we passed the tattoo place. Kick-Off was a great two-person soccer game at the arcade. It was the only kind of soccer that the Jackal ever played.

  “Just try it,” I said, jumping over his leg. Then I was remembering the times I had played Kick-Off with Dad. He had loved that game.

  The tears gathering behind my eyes almost burst like rain clouds. Blood drained from my head. I probably looked as pale as a ghost.

  The Jackal pulled me back from the storm. He nudged me and said, “Davie-boy? You see a ghost?”

  We laughed together.

  As we passed the big grocery store, the Jackal made the automatic doors open and shut. I stopped, laughed again, and made the doors open, too. The store manager, a grumpy woman with thick glasses, glared at us through the huge windows. The Jackal made to crack the window in front of her with a karate kick, and she ducked. We laughed some more, because his foot never even touched the window. She shook her fist at us and I made the doors open one more time.

  It was when the doors were open that last time that I could feel Dad. I could tell it was him because it stunk like flowers, and I mean stunk. Not dead flowers like in the hospice, but fresh roses like he used to bring Mom, mixed with a bit of his own smell. It stunk so much that my eyes were watering buckets and my nose was running.

  Of course, if you must know, there was a huge flower display just inside the automatic doors. Racks and stacks of roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, and mixed bunches in plastic wrappers. I suppose that I did get a good whiff of those flowers, but that doesn’t matter.

  Because, as I sobbed and wiped at my nose with the back of my hand, I wasn’t so mad at Dad anymore. Somehow, in that moment, I forgave him for leaving us. It was the smell. Oh, that smell! I knew he was there. I knew that he was watching Mom and me. That he was with us and always would be. No matter what happened.

  That day, after I let the Jackal beat me in Kick-Off, I bought the fullest bunch of red roses that I could find from the grocery store. The Jackal helped me pick them out.

  “Let’s do this right,” I said.

  We headed for the cemetery. The Jackal stopped at his place for his acoustic. It wouldn’t be as good as the electric, but I didn’t mind. I went ahead and set the flowers on Dad’s grave.

  “Let’s rock this place!” the Jackal called out to me as he came strolling down through the thick tree trunks and rows of stones. He had his acoustic over one shoulder and a jar of water for the flowers.

  “Thanks.” I put the flowers in the jar and set it in the grass beside Dad’s grave. The Jackal put one booted foot up on Dad’s stone, rested the guitar on his leg, and did a quick tune up. I moved to the end of Dad’s grave.

  “One, two, three, four …” the Jackal started.

  It wouldn’t bring Dad back or make Mom better. It wasn’t enough to make a difference, but it was something.

  “This one’s for you, Dad,” I said, then I began to sing, off key as usual.

  As the Jackal and I worked the tune, the leaves rattled in the wind, and the green grass spread around us in every direction. Every so often the stink of the red roses drifted up to me on the breeze. I hoped Dad was listening, wherever he was.

  Night Watch

  Allie

  Apt. 412

  DAD HAD DISAPPEARED TWO MONTHS AGO, taking with him the last few strands that held my mother together. Now, Brad was squeezing out sideways through the apartment door, his bag on one shoulder and his hockey sticks aimed back at me.

  “Bye,” he yelled.

  Mom, horizontal on the living-room couch, didn’t answer.

  I stood in the hall and watched the door slam. The apartment air was thick and close. I was alone with my mother.

  I imagined Brad impatient in the elevator and then jogging out to his ride. A van packed with bulky guys like so much baggage, pulling away from the Building as fast as it could go. This time it was a weekend hockey tournament. At eighteen, it was easier for him to escape. So I kept the watch.

  I avoided Mom. Instead, I purged the medicine cabinet. Only a few pills. Vitamins and cold tablets. I flushed them down the toilet. Just bandages left. She couldn’t do much damage with those. Then I tiptoed to the hall closet. I checked her purse and all the coat pockets, searching for her hidden stash. I knew she made secret purchases. Smuggled bottles of pills into the apartment. Yet I found nothing. Nothing except the letter hidden in my own coat pocket. I had it memorized.

  “Allie White has been accepted for the Arts Abroad program in Paris. Please confirm her enrollment by completing the enclosed course selection form and accommodation application. We are delighted to have Allie join us.”

  I shoved the paper deep down into my coat pocket. Paris, France, would never see me. How could I leave Mom for six months? Who would keep the watch?

  The closet door squeaked as I slid it shut.

  “That you, Allie?” Mom’s voice was shaky and full of threatening tears. Her body so thin it almost flattened into the couch.

  “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed. I wondered who she wished I were.

  * * *

  SATURDAY NIGHT AFTER SUPPER, Mom was curled up on her bed, crying into a book, pretending to read. I had watched her cry many times. Sometimes, at the dinner table, silent tears ran down her face into her food. Other times, heavy sobs sneaked into my dreams, interrupting my sleep.

  When I touched her shoulder, she startled. Her eyes were vacant. She struggled to recognize me.

  “Allie?”

  “Mom, I’m going out. Will you be OK?”

  She nodded, and I could only hope it would be true.

  I didn’t want to leave her unguarded, unattended. Yet Cori had pressed me so hard. She had demanded my attention.

  “You just have to come, Allie,” she had pleaded through the phone. “Ron has dumped me and in the worst way. And now my dad is in a rage.”

  “What did you say to your dad?” I asked, knowing that Cori had self-destructed again.

  “I just told him he was a fat, lazy slob who couldn’t get out of
bed without a hoist. Please, Allie, I can’t bear to talk about it on the phone. I need to see you.”

  Cori was determined to harm herself. So was my mother, who tried on death each day like a new dress. Does this one fit? Which shade of gray suits me best?

  I went to Cori’s, three floors down in the Building. In the refuge of her pink bedroom, the door shut to her parents, Cori dragged out each of her problems and held them up to me for some kind of salvation. I nodded and listened. I didn’t tell her about Paris. How could I?

  She didn’t know that in September I had written a 5,000-word essay on why I deserved a scholarship to Arts Abroad. She didn’t know that our art teacher, Mr. Rimmold, had said that I had talent—real talent—for art. No one knew how much I wanted to go, and now I would never get the chance.

  “And you know what his friend Steve said then?” Cori’s bottom lip quivered as she barely paused for my answer.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that …” Cori talked on and on.

  I watched Cori’s cherry lips moving, anxious eyes fluttering, red hair flashing. Until the feeling crept up the back of my neck like a spider looking for a nesting site. Until I could no longer hear her words. Until the spider crawled into my ear, lodged in my brain, and began to spin a web. Something was wrong. Call it a premonition. I went home.

  * * *

  THE SILENCE IN THE APARTMENT told me nothing. No empty pill bottles in the garbage under the kitchen sink, but no soft sobs of grief either. I found her in her room, still on her bed, lying flat on her back like the dead. I tiptoed closer, listening for the quiet breath of life. Her silence drew me in, panicked me. Until I laid my ear upon her warm chest and felt the faint stirring of life.

  Alive. For now. But what had she taken? Could she just be asleep? Not likely. My mother, who always woke with the birds after a restless sleep? Who cried out in the night, chased by whatever monsters, imagined or real, haunted her dreams? Who suffered sleeplessness for reasons I could not know?