The Ghost Notebooks

by Ben Dolnick

  Hannah had stopped waking me up when she heard things at night, but as often as not now, at some point after midnight I’d hear her stand up and leave our room. This would always be in the absolute dark, when I was thickly asleep, so I would only register it blurrily; sometimes I wouldn’t notice that she’d left at all until I reached over and found her side of the bed empty. In the morning she’d be back, and when I’d ask her how long she’d been up she would just make a noise that meant she didn’t know, then roll over to get a few minutes of sleep before the museum opened.

  Lack of sleep seemed not to be affecting her quite how I would have expected. She was shaky, preoccupied, but she was energetic, too, in an unsteady way. She came to me one afternoon—after weeks in which we’d hardly mentioned our wedding—with a heavily underlined ten-page printout about catering options, then the next day she told me to disregard it, that she was working on another. On the occasions when visitors did come into the museum, her tours went longer than I’d ever heard them. I’d hear her voice through the floor: “It’s crazy, right? The weird thing—maybe Donna already told you—is that we don’t even know if he ever meant to put them in any kind of order. He may just have wanted it to be jumbled up like this. Did you already see his study?”

  She’d started exercising, too. Dislike of the gym had always been one of our bonds (for her this meant a pleasant softness around the hips; for me it meant wheezing at the tops of stairs), but now she was running each morning, out along Culver or on the little trampled path by the river, starting to get the prominent-collarbone look of the scarily fit. It was to try to help her sleep, she said. It was to give her an appetite.

  I walked back across the fields behind the museum one Saturday after breakfast and she was sitting on the riverbank in her gym clothes, her headphones in her lap, looking out at the water, sweating. “Are you okay?” I said.

  “I just saw a heron,” she said, not looking at me. “He was up on that branch and then he just sort of dropped down and whoosh. I was going to take the canoe and see if I could find him.”

  At the museum the amount of work she did seemed to be in inverse proportion to the number of visitors we had: she wanted to form a partnership with the library; she wanted to plan a textiles exhibit. She was constantly in her little office under the stairs, scribbling in her notebook.

  One afternoon Hannah came down from upstairs carrying an old cardboard Staples box. Donna, who’d been sitting reading at the welcome desk, leapt up. “Where’d you find that?” she said. “I thought he would have taken it with him. Careful, I wouldn’t be surprised if you find old tuna fish in there—the guy was a first-class slob.”

  Hannah walked right past her.

  The box, which had belonged to Jim, was spilling over. Hannah had found it in the back of the storage closet. She carried it into our room, where she dropped it in the middle of the rug with a dusty thump. There wasn’t tuna fish, but there were, piled in no discernible order, years of printed-out email correspondence; receipts from paint purchases made at Williams Lumber in 2008; flyers for the 2009 Spring Harvest Festival; notes on a lecture someone had given at the Rhinebeck Historical Society about nineteenth-century surgical practices; minutes from museum board meetings.

  “You found his miscellany drawer?” I said.

  “I think I found his brain.”

  She spent the rest of the night sorting through it, covering one edge of the rug in our room with little stacks of paper, organized by subject.

  “Look,” she said, holding up a piece of notebook paper covered in a drawing. I was at the sink, cleaning up after a spaghetti dinner of which Hannah had taken five bites.

  The drawing looked like what a medieval person might have made of the solar system. Concentric circles, dotted lines, scribbled labels. In one corner there was a dark patch where someone had written something and then blacked it out. Across the top there was an 845 phone number in faded pencil.

  “What could this possibly be?” she said. It was the happiest I’d heard her sound in weeks.

  “Maybe he doodled when he was on the phone,” I said.

  “Here’s another,” she said, unfolding a paper with a smaller, equally incoherent drawing.

  The next day the papers were packed up, the box back in the storage room.

  That, apparently, was where Hannah was spending most of the time when she couldn’t sleep. Organizing, she said. Reading old papers—of the museum’s, of Wright’s. Going through the collection. Thinking through how she could change the museum’s marketing.

  The storage room was, with the possible exception of the basement, the room in the house that I liked to go into least. It had been a baby’s room once, apparently, tiny and yellow, with bowing walls, a slanted ceiling, and so many notebooks and binders and banker’s boxes that you could only make your way into it sideways. And it wasn’t only papers in there: there were tools, broken mops, a bike tire, a taped-together bundle of what looked like banister rails. Hannah had wedged a little red cushion against the wall on the floor, to sit on. The windows were covered with some sort of velum-ish material, to keep light from damaging anything. I imagined her up there like an ant in its chamber, piling and rearranging, piling and rearranging.

  “Do you want me to help you?” I asked her one night. “You could read out loud and I could transcribe. It would go faster.”

  “No, I’m not going to make you do that,” she said. “No reason for both of us to be up.”

  That night or the next one, I happened to wake up when the clock said it was 3:14 in the morning. Hannah wasn’t in bed next to me. I decided—with the same sort of half-conscious lurch as when you decide to get up and pee—that I was going to go up and check on her. I wasn’t—I really wasn’t—trying to sneak up on her, but I was aware, as I climbed the narrow stairs, that I was setting my feet down carefully. The hallway upstairs was dark, but there was a light coming from the half-open storage room door. There’s a way to walk across a creaky floor—just pressing with the edges of your feet—such that it doesn’t make a sound; I wouldn’t have guessed I knew how to do it. Without saying a word, without pushing the door any farther open, I moved my head to look inside and—Hannah was on her cushion, on the floor, reading something in her notebook. She clapped it shut.

  “You’re spying on me?”

  “I wanted to see what you were doing up here.”

  She was standing up now, the notebook pinned under her arm. “Well, I’m reading. Congratulations. Go to bed.”

  “Why are you—”

  “Just go to bed. I’ll be down in a little.” She sounded annoyed with me but something else too—embarrassed, scared, a little apologetic. Couples should carry dry-erase boards for writing messages to each other; their voices convey too much.

  I did go back to bed, and a few nights later I was in the bathroom, rifling through the shelves in search of my tooth guard, when I came across her pill bottle. “Hannah Rampe. Risperdal, 1 mg. Take one pill every twenty-four hours, with water.” The bottle was full, heavy as a roll of dimes. The refill date was September 24th, and it was now October 25th. My body reacted to this discovery faster than my mind; a cold current ran down my legs. I knew, of course, that Hannah took medicine, I’d watched her place the little white pills on her tongue, I’d witnessed the weekly filling and snapping of her pill case more times than I could count. But I only realized now how long it had been since I’d last seen her take one. Her weekly pill case, on the shelf below, was empty. Maybe this was just a backup bottle, and she had her real one in the bedroom. Maybe she’d been taking them on a different schedule lately because of her trouble sleeping.

  I walked into our room holding up the bottle. I knew I needed to get this moment right—not a dad confronting his daughter with her stash of pot, not a husband catching his wife in a lie. Just a man wanting to get something straightened out. A minor confusion. She was kneeling by the radiator, adjusting the valve, and as she turned around I watched her expression chang
e from a smile into a defensive scowl.

  “Are you still taking these?”

  Her doctor, she said, had switched her onto something else. It wasn’t my business when. Since when did I monitor her medical treatment? No, I couldn’t see the new bottle. Was I serious?

  When Hannah lied there was a thing she did immediately afterward with her face and voice, a kind of snapping shut. Then she’d always move on, with unnatural speed, to some neutral, innocuous subject that had supposedly just come into her mind. This time she asked me if I’d remembered to turn off the lights in the exhibit cases upstairs. I didn’t fight, I didn’t press; I told her I hadn’t and so I trudged upstairs, feeling somehow both as if I’d caught someone at something and been caught at something myself. I switched off the lights before coming back to bed.

  Those next few days Hannah treated me with a deliberate, almost apologetic gentleness. She showed me a new set of places she’d been thinking about for the reception. At dinner she made a point of finishing her slice of the undercooked apple pie I’d made (Donna had gone apple picking a week before and now we had apples piled on every surface in our room, enough to feed all of Hibernia). She seemed so mild and normal that I decided I’d probably been wrong; she really was on a new medicine and she’d just for whatever reason been embarrassed to tell me about it. Maybe the only actual thing the matter was that she was engaged to someone who treated her like the subject of a police investigation.

  We were standing out in the woods by the Wrights’ gravestones when Hannah burst into tears and told me that she’d been lying.

  This was at five o’clock on a Friday, just after the museum had closed after another day without visitors. We’d come outside to hang paper decorations in the trees—the house’s Spooky Halloween Festival was that weekend—and to see if Edmund and Sarah’s graves were in good enough shape for kids to do crayon rubbings. The sun was slipping down between the trees, and I was crouched in front of Edmund’s grave, trying to hold the piece of tracing paper still. Hannah’s wail was so sudden that at first I thought something had bitten her.

  “I lied to you,” she said, “I lied to you, I’m so sorry, I haven’t been taking anything, something’s wrong with me—”

  I rushed to her—a jumble of crayons and cardboard ghosts and pieces of tracing paper fell out of her hands as she started to silently weep—and, not knowing what else to do, I put my hands on her shoulders and started in on the useless, automatic script: What’s going on? Are you okay? Everything’s fine, what’s happening? Don’t worry. I felt, all through my body, a kind of microscopic expansion, like a million little antennae raising.

  The first thing she said once she’d gotten so she could speak again—by then I’d ushered her back to the museum, and we were sitting side by side on the front porch—was, “What if I’m not okay?”

  “You are okay,” I said. “You just need to be taking your medicine. We’re going to go inside and I’m going to call Dr. Blythe.” (Dr. Blythe, the therapist from her postcollege breakdown, was not a name I’d ever spoken before.)

  “What if we get married and you’re stuck taking care of a crazy person for the rest of your life?” she said. “What if I’m Mary Todd Lincoln? I would ruin your life.”

  “I’ve always seen a little of myself in old Abe.”

  She snuffled a laugh through her dripping nose, then started to cry again.

  “Do you hate me for lying to you?”

  “No. I’ll hate you if you don’t take better care of yourself.”

  “This hasn’t happened before,” she said. “I’m not sleeping, and when I do I’m having the weirdest dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  But she just lowered her head onto her knees and turned her face away from me; from the shuddering of her back, I could feel that she was still crying.

  After what felt like fifteen minutes—long enough that the sun had set completely, and there were goosebumps on our arms—she sat back up and said, “Are we going to be okay?”

  “We’re going to be fine,” I said. “We’re going to go inside and call Dr. Blythe, I’m going to make us dinner while you take a shower, then we’re both going to get in bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

  But that wasn’t what she meant.

  “Are we going to have a happy life?” she said.

  “Of course we are. What are you talking about? We’re going to have a great life. We already are.”

  She nodded quickly, trying not to cry again.

  “Don’t tell my parents about this, okay? I don’t want them to be scared. Promise.” I nodded, and then I watched her face break. “They should be nicer to you,” she said. “They should be happier for us.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “They will be. They’ll be just fine. Let’s go inside and call your doctor. Let’s stand up.”

  “Let me call, okay? Let me call.” Helping her inside reminded me strangely of the nights—there had only ever been a handful in our relationship—when she’d had too much to drink and I’d had to steer her into our bedroom, lower her onto the bed, help her off with her shoes and tights.

  Once she was in her office chair, phone in hand, I stepped out into the hall and closed the door. Her office was just a little room underneath the stairs, and that moment, standing alone on the other side of the door, feeling my pulse synced up with the tick of the grandfather clock, is, for whatever reason, one of the sharpest memories I have of this entire period. Studying the cracks in the paint on the door, standing so my feet lined up entirely within the floorboard. I had the feeling (and this was very likely delayed shock from our conversation) that we were acting out roles somehow, that the house was a set and that there was an invisible audience somewhere that was watching both me standing waiting and Hannah in her office; I could feel them holding their breath.

  Now I heard Hannah’s muffled voice leaving a message for Dr. Blythe—I could only get the tone, which was ordinary, cheerful, apologetic, not the least bit weepy, as if she were calling to let him know about a scheduling mix-up. When she finally stepped out into the hall her eyes were dry and she was making the same sheepish face she did sometimes after fights. “Look at you standing there all freaked out,” she said. “I’m fine.” She took my hand and led us back out into the yard, to gather the decorations we’d dropped. It was hard to find the crayons in all the leaves. It had gotten even colder out. “Thank you for taking care of me,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  [Comment cards, Wright Historic House]

  Ana Magloire—Poughkeepsie, NY

  Very informative museum, keep up the good work, interesting encyclopedias, the garden space is nice.

  David and Judy Diamant—Keene, NH

  Stumbled on this gem while visiting sister (Alice Sussler), free afternoon. Wish there had been a bit more detail regarding food and cooking, as have great interest and expertise in food of the period and would be glad to return to make a presentation, including preparing authentic recipes, if your schedule and budget permitted it (whatachef@whatachefcatering.com).

  Raymond Farkas—Pine Plains, NY

  It has been years since I have had the privilege of visiting this fine little museum, despite the proximity, as life does intrude (2 back surgeries, 1 valve replacement, severe Lyme disease). Count me among the “huzzahs” that you have not given in to those who would prefer to see you closed. I am a veteran of the US Air Force (’51–’55, Bronze Star) and I understand that history is complex and that sharing one man’s story is a worthy and noble mission.

  Brian Gumley (age 7)—Hibernia, NY

  The graves.

  …

  Spring 2020—New York—Age 39

  You are sitting in a glass cube the air is damp it smells like bleach other moms sit next to you in red chairs they cross their legs open their bags you look out into the pool your son’s swim class is in lane three you can hardly tell him from the others little hairless bodies big heads in red caps blue kickboards every sound s
plash whistle turned blurry at the edges your sandal hangs your knees look old you didn’t know knees could look old the grout between the tiles is yellow the flyer on the wall says family swim on Saturday all ages welcome the mother next to you whose name you’ve never learned black hair is what you call her she says people keep telling us Corian that’s supposed to be just like marble but you can actually spill on it which oh my god can you imagine me telling Simon he’s not allowed to spill the back of your head hurts it’s hurt all afternoon strange you’re only realizing this now how many afternoons have you done this how many hours have you sat in this chair watched your son watched the clock above the lifeguard’s chair you ask black hair do you have Tylenol you realize from her face that she was saying something you hope it wasn’t important she looks into her bag she says I’ve only got these is that okay you say yes you say thanks that’s fine…

  5

  There’s an impulse, I’ve noticed, once someone’s gone, to comb through your memory for moments—the more recent the better—when that person last seemed perfectly normal. I just had dinner with him last week. I just got an email from her the other day. Part awe, I think, and part protest: but she was just here.

  Those next few weeks were full of these moments. The Halloween event, when Hannah wore her white sweater and knelt by the picnic table on the lawn helping the red-haired boy who’d spilled apple cider on his tracing paper. The afternoon when she stood talking in the entryway with the moldy-smelling man from Millbrook who was working on an article about defunct train lines. The morning when she was brushing her teeth and called for me to come quick (I can still hear her tooth-brushing voice, stretched out, all vowels), and there was a hawk standing watch on top of the locust tree.

  Hannah had told me, at various points in those weeks, how much better she felt now that she was taking her medicine again. She’d made an appointment to see Dr. Blythe when we went back to the city for Thanksgiving. Sometimes, for no good reason, the internet just goes out—this was how I decided to think about what had happened to Hannah that October. The wedding, the move, the museum, her medicine—who knew how it was all interacting? In every system of sufficient complexity there are periods of inexplicable, and usually meaningless, disruption.