Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  Everything about Vivi, on the other hand, was obvious, from her makeup to her feelings. Jackson’s confirmation fiasco might not have been such a big deal if Vivi had just let Cady and her parents deal with it quietly. Vivi was a drama queen; she wailed when Shadow returned as much as if he had gotten hit, she clucked that they should call the police to locate Eric instead of just helping, and she complained openly that Grampa had missed Jackson cutting the cake, as if a thirteen year old boy could care in the slightest.

  A forgotten snippet of that confirmation day came back to Cady: when Grampa and her mother had finally gotten Eric back to Linda’s house and set him up on the couch with an electric blanket, tea, and a hot foot soak to warm up. Vivi had come over with a plate as a peace offering. “We saved you some dessert. Now, Eric, do you have anything to say to Jackson?” Vivi had asked, prompting him to apologize as one would to a small child.

  Eric had looked at her with neither affection nor malice and said, “If I believed that cake to be edible, I wouldn’t have left in the first place.”

  This was the only Eric that Vivi knew—the odd, arrogant, selfish boy who caused trouble. Unpredictable. Unstable. An attention hog. A danger to himself and others. Thinking about Vivi’s perspective reminded Cady of a truth of the last two years: They were difficult. Eric was difficult. Vivi’s was a fair assessment made under unfair circumstances.

  On the way back from the bathroom, Cady noticed Vivi had converted the guest bedroom into a scrapbook palace, with bookshelves full of her bedazzled photo albums. Such a quaint hobby, sweet but a little cheesy, like everything else about Vivi. Curious, Cady detoured inside.

  All of Vivi’s scrapbooks and photo albums had titles on the spine; Cady pulled an old one titled happy holidays ’72! She looked at the pictures, roughly able to identify which of the little kids were which of Vivi’s now-adult children despite their seventies haircuts and clothes. She guessed the man with sideburns whom she didn’t recognize was Vivi’s late husband, Cady recalled his name was Michael, but he looked happy and kind. In one Polaroid, he played on the floor with the kids on Christmas morning, in another he held up some sort of casserole with great pride. Cady wondered if he was as good a husband and father as these chosen photos made him seem. Cady had thought she remembered her family history with such clarity, but then she had “forgotten” Eric’s misbehavior in front of Vivi. Do we all pick only the best snapshots to remember in our mental scrapbooks and throw away the bad? Perhaps all photo albums should bear the subtitle The Past—The Way You Want to Remember It.

  Cady replaced the album on the shelf and turned to leave when something else caught her eye: a scrapbook in progress atop a desk strewn with colored paper, ribbon, tape, and scissors. It looked like a gift for Grampa. The pictures on the open page were of them golfing together, with little captions written in the loopy script of a Catholic schoolgirl, but Cady couldn’t help but be charmed. Maybe she had been too cynical. She had wondered if the only reason Grampa remarried so quickly was a fear of dying alone, but this woman clearly loved Cady’s grandfather, and judging by Grampa’s goofy grin in most of these shots, the feeling was mutual.

  “Do you think he’ll like it?” Vivi stood smiling at Cady from the doorway.

  “He’s going to love it.”

  “I can’t wait to surprise him.” A girlish smile appeared on her well-lined face, and Cady could imagine what a pretty young woman she must have been. “Did you see these?” Vivi crossed the room and, with some effort, bent down to the bottom shelf to grab a shoebox. “I rescued a bunch of photos from Matty’s old house. Lots of oldies but goodies in there.”

  Cady took the box from her and opened it; inside was a mishmash of old pictures, including some worn black-and-white ones of him and Grandma in the fifties with her mom as a baby. Others were more recent, of her and Eric as little kids. Cady held up a photo of Grandma and Eric together—Eric looked barely three—and felt her heart break. She missed both of them so much.

  “You’re welcome to take the box home. I thought maybe you and your mom could go through them together.”

  Cady fought the lump in her throat to say “Thank you.”

  “Which album were you looking at?”

  “Huh?” Cady had to pull herself from the shoebox photos. “Oh, an old one.”

  “Which?”

  She squirmed a bit. “Happy Holidays ’72? But you might not want to—”

  Vivi pulled it from the shelf before Cady could finish. She opened it and started flipping through the pages, her eyes softening around the edges.

  “I’m sorry if it’s sad or uncomfortable for you to look at them today.”

  “Why, because Mikey’s in them? Nah.” Then she looked up and said something that floored Cady: “Mikey approves of me marrying your Grampa—he told me.”

  A few months ago, Cady might have brushed the comment off as another wacky belief of her silly step-grandmother’s, but given the voices she had been hearing, it didn’t sound so silly. “How? Does he speak to you?”

  “He has his ways. When your grandfather asked me to marry him, the next day I saw a rainbow, and I knew that that was Mikey saying ‘Go ahead, Viv, be happy.’ ”

  It wasn’t anything like what Cady had been experiencing with the other voices, but it was clearer than anything she was getting from Eric. Cady would kill for a rainbow. “But how do you reach him?”

  “I don’t reach him, he comes to me. Oh, sweetie—are you crying?”

  Cady couldn’t hold it in. “Eric never comes to me. I’m listening, but …” she shook her head. “It’s never him.”

  Vivi came over and hugged Cady to her perfumed bosom, gently shushing her like a baby. “The spirit world gives us what we need, when we need it. You can’t chase it. Try to be open to whatever form the messages take.”

  Her words resonated, and Cady thanked her, meaning it.

  “There you go, don’t cry, you’ll ruin your mascara. Now let’s go back in, we’re going to start the ceremony soon.”

  The ceremony was surprisingly affecting. Grampa and Vivi recited handwritten vows with a sense of humor, promising “to keep the TV loud enough for me to hear it without my hearing aids, but to turn it off at dinner,” to keep each other young, with love, travel, healthy eating, and “watching one new show our grandkids like.” Everyone was laughing. Cady looked over at her mother: almost everyone.

  Afterward, they had a buffet set up in the kitchen.

  “This food looks good,” said Cady’s father, but her mother only shrugged. “What, you don’t think so?”

  “I keep remembering my mother clipping coupons when I was little. Dad was so stingy. Do you remember when she wanted to build the greenhouse? How he dragged his feet on that? Now he marries this woman and he’s spending money like water.”

  “Maybe he has regrets. Maybe he wants to live differently now.”

  “Nice of him to get it right for Vivi.” Her mother said her name like it tasted bad. “Forgive me if I’m not thrilled his new wife is burning through his cash on a fixed income. You want them to move in with us?”

  “God help him, no one should have to live with us,” her father sniped.

  “Mom, Dad, can we not?” Cady said, shaming them both into silence.

  They sat down at the largest table, reserved for family, but they were the only representatives of Grampa’s side. Vivi had three children, Michelle, Linda, and the wild thing, Mikey Jr. Her daughters were both attractive women, put-together, French-manicured tips on their nails, five good-looking kids between them. The only difference was Michelle wore her chocolate-brown hair straight and Linda left hers in crispy curls. Mikey Jr. lived up to the stereotype of the baby in the family and the only boy; Vivi and his sisters doted on him as if he was a teenager, though Cady was pretty sure he was pushing forty.

  As the meal was winding down, Cady’s grandfather st
ood up and clinked on his glass. “I want to thank all of you for coming. My Vivi has such a big family, it’s wonderful to see everyone and to feel so welcomed. I look out at my three beautiful girls, my bride, Vivi, my Kare-Bear, that’s Karen to all of you, and my baby granddaughter Cady, who I guess I have to concede isn’t such a baby anymore. I don’t know how I became so blessed. Thank you, Vivi, for bringing love into my life again.”

  The room gave a collective “aww” as Grampa leaned to kiss Vivi, his starched collar pulling tight against the loose skin of his neck.

  Vivi’s elder daughter, Michelle, stood and made a short speech about how grateful she was for her mother to find love after her dad passed, and how Michelle thought her late father would have liked Cady’s grandfather if they had met.

  When Michelle sat back down, Vivi was busy grabbing her cheek and kissing it, so Cady’s grandfather put a hand on her shoulder and stood up again. “Wow, Michelle honey, thank you for your kind words, no thanks for making an old man cry in public.” Grampa and everyone laughed. “I don’t want to put my family on the spot, but, Karen, do you want to say anything?”

  Cady glanced over at her mother; she looked exhausted, her eyes a little red. Cady didn’t know how many champagnes deep she was, but she was guessing a speech was a bad idea. Before her mother could answer, Cady said, “I’d like to say something.”

  “Oh?” Grampa looked surprised. “Well, that’s wonderful! Everyone, my granddaughter, Cadence.”

  Her mother shot her a grateful glance, just the confidence boost Cady needed. She smoothed cake crumbs off her skirt and stood up. “Hi, everyone. I just wanted to say that it was really a pleasure getting to be a part of today and celebrate my grandfather and Vivi’s marriage. Our family has been through some hard times recently, and to get to celebrate something so positive and happy has been a gift to all of us.” She sneaked a sip of water. “We’re still getting to know you, Vivi, and your family, but just today when I got a chance to see your scrapbook room, I was struck by how perfect you are for my Grampa and for our family. He is so lucky to have found a woman who understands the importance of honoring the past, but who also gives him the courage and hopefulness to move forward and start anew. I feel like that special combination is what all of us want, even those who are no longer with us.”

  Vivi dabbed away tears, Grampa nodded solemnly.

  “Um, so, cheers!” Cady said, raising her glass, and the entire table clinked glasses and laughed. Cady sat down.

  “Nicely done,” her father said quietly, filling her with pride. Even her mother smiled. Grampa reached over the table to take her hand in his warm leathery one. He seemed too choked up to speak.

  Vivi came around behind Cady’s chair and put her soft, plump arms around her shoulders. “Cady, that was so lovely, thank you so much, you sweet angel. Karen, you never told me you had a poet in the family all this time.” She tapped the table with her pink fingernails. “I had no idea you had such a gift for public speaking, Cady. It’s nice to see you finally have a chance to shine.”

  Cady was about to thank Vivi when her mother snorted. “She’s shined, she’s always shined,” she said, sounding a little slurry.

  “Well, I’ve always known Cady to be the quiet one,” Vivi said, taking an open seat beside Cady so that the two women were on either side of her. “But maybe this is just the first time I’ve gotten to see her in the spotlight, without any distraction.”

  “What do you mean by that?” This time there was no softness to her mother’s pronunciation; her words cut like acid.

  Vivi sighed. “I was trying to pay your daughter a compliment. Don’t turn it into something else.”

  “But so we’re clear, the ‘distraction’ was my son?”

  Cady sucked her body into the back of her chair as flat as she could.

  Vivi looked at Grampa across the table and said, “I can’t say anything right with her.”

  “She didn’t mean anything by it,” said Grampa to her mother.

  Cady’s mother ignored him and spoke directly to Vivi. “You can’t say anything right, because you’re being insensitive to my son’s memory.”

  “It’s not insensitive to acknowledge that it was a struggle.”

  “For you?” her mother said incredulously.

  “For everyone. You can’t pretend it didn’t affect us. We could never have had a wedding celebration like this.” Vivi lifted her penciled brow. “Why do you think we eloped?”

  Her mother turned to Grampa. “Dad, is that true?”

  “Well …” Grampa’s mouth hung open, his eyes darted between the two women in his life, his lips quivering in indecision.

  But his silence was answer enough. Cady was shocked too. She had always thought their marriage aboard the cruise ship was an act of romantic spontaneity, not a planned escape from Eric.

  Her mother, shaking her head, fixed on Vivi. “It’s not enough to trample on my mother’s grave, you have to shit on my son’s too?”

  “That’s it,” snapped Michelle, as she stood up from her seat. “You’ve got a lotta nerve talking to my mother that way. It’s supposed to be her day.”

  Linda threw up her hands in disgust. “Just like at Jackson’s confirmation. This is what they always do, make it all about them.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Linda,” Cady’s mother said.

  With that, hell broke loose. Mikey Jr. jumped up and started yelling in defense of Linda, Michelle shouted at Mikey to sit back down, Linda remained laser-focused on Cady’s mother, and Vivi was trying to say something over them that no one heard.

  “Okay, time out.” Cady’s father wedged himself between his wife and the rest of the table, then turned his head to say, “Cady, get our stuff. It’s time to go.”

  They sidled quickly around the other tables of confused and curious guests as quickly as possible. Grampa, rushing as fast as his wobbly legs could carry him, caught up with them in the entry hall.

  “Karen, wait, you’ve got it all wrong. We were only waiting for Eric to get better, I always thought he’d get better.”

  Cady’s father tried to placate them, but her mother wasn’t slowing down and Grampa continued to try to get through to his daughter, scurrying after her, saying, “Vivi didn’t mean it to come out like that. Don’t leave like this, I love you, you’re my baby girl.”

  Cady’s mother spun around and held up a shaky finger to her father, but Cady could see there was more pain than anger in her eyes. “You have no loyalty, Dad. Not to Mom, not to me, and apparently not to your grandson.” She stormed out the front door with Cady’s father, apologizing, following close behind.

  Only Cady looked back at Grampa, who stood helplessly and watched, his birdlike chest heaving. His eyes fell to meet hers, and his entire face crumpled. Then he pulled her into a desperate hug.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair, choked up.

  She braced as he leaned his shaky weight into her. “It’s okay, everything will be okay.”

  When he pulled back, she saw his face was pale, his watery blue eyes were limned in red, and dried spit was caked at the corners of his mouth. As vibrant as he had looked when they arrived, he now looked enfeebled and distraught. “Take care of her for me, will you?”

  Cady nodded and kissed him quickly on the cheek before hurrying out after her parents. The car was running, her father sat stone-faced in the driver’s seat, and her mother was slumped in the backseat with her hand covering her eyes. Cady climbed into the passenger seat without a word.

  “You all right?” her father asked.

  Cady was shaken, unable to get her grandfather’s face out of her mind. She felt anxious and ashamed about the fight, they had ruined the reception, and she knew everyone would be talking about them. At the same time, she could tell her mom was in such pain—the pain of a grieving mother and of a little girl. And Cady had
no idea how to take care of any of it.

  21

  Cady flew back to Boston the next day. She had hoped going home could be a reset button to send her back to school refreshed and strengthened, but her nerves felt only more frayed. Andrea hadn’t replied to her apology texts or spoken to her since she’d returned, charging the air in their suite with tension. But Cady had only ever had one coping mechanism for stress anyway—work. Lamont Library’s café had a comforting level of hubbub. The café was at the front of the building; the entire front wall was made of glass, filling the room with light, and Cady had snagged one of the coveted squishy brown armchairs facing the window. She had her MacBook open and warming her lap, her Medieval Studies binder out, and her latte beside her, but she was struggling to get started. She was on tenterhooks, waiting for something. She was waiting for the ghosts to come back.

  She hadn’t heard a single voice or anything else unusual since the moment she left Harvard’s campus. Their absence had been a relief, but it was a slippery kind of hope that that trip home could have cured her of any mental health crisis. But then she no longer believed the voices were her mental illness talking. More and more, she had come to believe the voices were extrinsic, supernatural, or extradimensional. She didn’t know how or why, but she was intersecting with them here. They were ghosts of Harvard. But where did that leave her? Trying to do homework in a haunted house.

  A chat message pinged on her email window:

  How’s it going?

  The webmail provider identified the sender as abrousard@fas.harvard.edu.

  me: Who is this?