Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  They sat down together and talked a little about Cambridge. Emily learned that Kyle had dropped out of Harvard Business School to protest the war in Vietnam. He'd never gone back and was casually vague about what he did for a living.

  "For the past twenty years I've dealt in a little of this, a little of that," he said amiably, lighting up another cigarette. "D'you mind?" he asked as an afterthought.

  "Not at all," Emily replied stoically.

  He sent a stream of smoke scudding through the side of his mouth. "So tell me about Talbot Manor. Is it the same pile of rubble it was when we lived there in the early seventies?"

  "I wanted to ask you who all was there," she asked after filling him in about the renovations.

  "Gawd, that's hard to say. We came and went. I mean, someone'd crash there for a few days or weeks and then move on. You know how it was." He sized up her youth with a grimace and a sigh. "Or maybe you don't."

  "I have a pretty good picture," she said. "So you were in a commune. Was there anything special that bound you to one another -- the antiwar movement, the Whole Earth thing, something like that?" What she really wanted was to know whether he was part of a religious or drug cult of any kind.

  "Nah. Everyone was into, y'know, something, but we weren't all into the same thing. One of the women used to tie-dye shirts and sell 'em on the corner. Then there was Varuna. She worked with clay and kept a pet chicken. She had a potter's wheel up on the top floor of that tower -- jeez, we had to haul that concrete kick wheel up there for her, must've weighed a coupla hundred pounds. Some of the stairs actually collapsed under us, but we managed to save the wheel. Course, Bill -- Bill something -- did break a leg. I can't believe I've forgotten his last name."

  He took a deep drag of his cigarette, held in the smoke reflectively, then sent it off like a missile. "Yeah, those were the days."

  Emily was busy scratching down the memories of the shaggy leftover from Woodstock. A pet chicken in the tower; at least now she had a good idea where the small bones had come from. "So you had a kind of arts and crafts commune, would you say?"

  He flicked an ash into an empty saucer. "Well, no one took the trouble to apply for a retail tax number or anything, if that's what you mean," he said dryly. "Like I said, we did a little of this, a little of that. Whatever it took to get by."

  The Bob Dylan album launched into the plaintive "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," and Kyle became thoughtful. He had the look of a man who'd been hurt by a woman a long time ago. Still, after a moment he shook himself free of the memory with a lame smile --Emily suspected he was the kind who got emotionally sideswiped often -- and returned to the conversation.

  With his elbows propped on the black tabletop, one hand folded loosely over the other, a plume of smoke snaking from the cigarette he held, he looked attractively sinister. "Now. What is it you really want to know?" he asked with a flash of sudden, shrewd intelligence.

  "Since you ask," she said with a level look, "what was your connection with Maria Salva? You'd have known her by the name Marie. She lived in France and sent you quite a few letters at one time." It was pretty brazen bluffing, considering Emily hadn't had the wits to look at the return addresses on the other sides of the envelopes when she was in the tower.

  For a long while -- too long -- Kyle looked puzzled, struggling with the information. Finally he put it together. "Marie ... right! The kid who got thrown in a convent! How do you know about her?"

  "I'll tell you after you tell me," Emily answered lightly.

  "Isn't much to tell. It's probably been fifteen years or more since I've thought about her. I remember how it started. Varuna came into my room one day with a letter addressed to the caretaker of Talbot Manor. No one wanted to bother with it, and I had nothing to do, so I thought what the hell. The letter was one of those teenage ramblings, you know how kids are -- all earnestness and naïve sincerity."

  He motioned the waitress for a refill on his coffee. "Apparently the kid had journals or something of ancestors who were supposed to have lived in Talbot Manor; maybe they were Talbots, maybe not, I don't remember. So she was on this Roots kick, you know? Where you want to trace your lineage? Only she seemed really into it; she yearned to walk the halls, feel the pain, that kind of thing. She seemed a little around the, uh, bend, you know what I mean? A little too intense, even for a teenage girl. I should know; I've got one of my own now. Somewhere."

  Emily nodded sympathetically, noting that Kyle was taking some kind of emotional hit even as he spoke.

  But just as quickly he recovered. "So I sent off some nice little answer about, yeah, how the place reeks of history, figuring that would be that. No such luck. Every two weeks I got another letter and more questions. She wanted room-by-room descriptions. She wanted to know every piece of furniture. She wanted photographs, for Pete's sake. Yeah, I remember now. As a kind of joke we all got in front of a tripod one night—we were zonked -- and sent off a group photo. I seem to remember it was a pretty funky shot."

  He shook his head, chuckling at the memory. "Next thing I know, I get a letter from her parents threatening me with the Mann Act if I go near their daughter. She's in Paris, I'm in Newarth, but never mind. They said she was being shipped off to a convent, just to make sure. Grissette. That was her name. Marie Grissette." Pleased that at least part of his memory was still intact, Kyle leaned back in his chair.

  "And you never heard from her again?"

  "Not a word. If there were any more letters, I never got them; I moved on."

  "What did the parents seem like? Could you tell?"

  "Well educated. Articulate. Uptight. Marie was their only kid, I think. I suppose it was the photo that freaked them out. A bunch of long-haired hippies in tie-dyed rags lying on top of one another. It was a joke, but I could see where a parent might not think it was all that funny. Poor Marie. I wonder where she ended up." He gave Emily another shrewd look. "I take it you know?"

  "Coincidentally, Marie's living in Talbot Manor," Emily answered with a bland face. She took another sip of thick French brew. "She's married to the present owner."

  "Whoa," Kyle said softly. "That's pretty heavy." He took out his Camels and tapped the packet across the edge of the table. "Still, it doesn't surprise me. Her letters were loaded with talk of kismet and karma. Strange kid. I'll have to go around there one of these days and say hi."

  He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and began patting his pockets for matches. "Or not," he said between compressed lips. "Newarth's always depressed me. I'm not sure why."

  But Emily knew. "Because there's a curse on the town, that's why."

  They parted amicably a few minutes later. The afternoon was warm and pleasant, and since Emily had just about had her fill of living like a cave dweller, she strolled the half dozen blocks over to the Longfellow House to take advantage of the outdoor concert series there.

  She found a quiet spot on the side grounds of the historic yellow house -- where George and Martha Washington had spent their seventeenth anniversary -- and settled in for an hour or so of classical guitar and violin. The crowd of a hundred was friendly and evenly split among the old, the middle-aged, and the young. Several couples came with infants packed neatly in carriers. Nearby a pretty woman with flame-red hair rocked her baby to the soothing sounds of a baroque sonata while her husband sipped bottled lemonade. A black Labrador with a red kerchief tied around its neck worked the edges of the crowd, panhandling for sandwich scraps, then lay down obediently next to its master, a John Lennon look-alike with steel-rimmed glasses.

  These are very nice people, she thought, pleased that she'd come. The music is wonderful. The sun is shining. And it's free.

  And she was alone. Her thoughts drifted inevitably to Fergus, who could be there just like that if he wanted to be. Under her breath she whispered his name, though she'd never yet succeeded in making him show.

  Fergus -- for once, for one wonderful once -- appeared alongside her, his legs pulled up in front of him, leaning back o
n his hands.

  "I love this," he said happily. "When I was a boy, I worked in a stable near a concert hall. Me dad knew the rear doorman, who used to let me sneak in backstage. The music's eighteenth-century, right? Ye're a wonderful woman, Emily Bowditch." He turned to her with a look that took her breath away. "I will not forget this." For the first time, ever, he reached his hand out to her, as if he wanted to stroke her hair. "If only I --

  "Anyway," he said, turning back to the performance, his jaw set resolutely. "Ye're a wonderful woman, Emily Bowditch."

  Emily listened to the rest of the performance in a state of exaltation, because the music was expressing exactly what she was feeling. The low strains of the guitar moved some unknown part of her soul, and the violin answered in an anguished, tremulous voice that exactly matched her thoughts.

  But Emily wasn't a composer; she couldn't analyze her feelings for Fergus in musical terms. All she had were words, and words weren't enough. How did she feel about him? What could she feel about him? Every once in a while she'd turn to look at him, and he'd return her look. They were sharing something very deep, very real, for the first time.

  The final rondo wound to a lively close, and everyone applauded. The concert was over. Emily turned, and Fergus was gone. People began to gather up their blankets and babies and backpacks. The Labrador made one last pass through the crowd and came back with a pork chop bone; for some reason it chose to drop down next to Emily to gnaw on its spoils. It was a friendly Lab and submitted with grace to Emily's pats on its head.

  "Hey, boy," she murmured, scratching its ears. "You made out pretty well this afternoon." She thought about Kyle Edwards and Marie Grissette, and then she thought about Fergus. She was aware of a rush of pleasure passing all through her.

  "And so did I."

  Chapter 20

  The next time Emily saw Lee Alden she was sitting in, of all places, a bar, and he was on television.

  The bar was near the Newarth Library, and the $3.99 supper special seemed too good to be true. As it turned out, the Reuben was a rip-off (soggy bread, rubbery corned beef) and the draft brew tasted more like a near beer. Still, if Emily hadn't ducked into the place, she'd never have known that Lee Alden was the featured guest on Bay State Live, a local interview and call-in show.

  Emily's table wasn't really close enough to hear the TV, perched high above the far end of the bar. Fine with me, she decided initially. She had no interest in tracking the perils of Lee's career. She had plenty of other perils to track.

  And wasn't it just like him to turn up on a five o 'clock show -- when women were in their kitchens, making supper with their counter TVs on? Oh, he knew where and when to reach his voters, all right. And how annoying that he was so photogenic.

  She sneaked a second look, then a third. By the time the waitress came by with her after-meal coffee, Emily had thrown up her hands emotionally. She pointed to the television and said, "Would you mind turning it up a bit?"

  "Sure, honey," the waitress answered, shifting her gum over to her right molars. "Ain't he a doll? Hey, Jack. Kick it up a little, will ya?"

  The bartender didn't think much of the idea. "How about you bring your coffee over here instead?" he said to Emily.

  So she took her cup and settled in at the empty bar with the waitress and Jack while the only other customers, three men and a woman, hovered around a video game near the other end.

  "You been followin' this guy?" Jack asked Emily. "He's some hot ticket. Never saw anyone so dead set on getting voted outta office. It's like he's got some kinda suicide wish."

  "Baloney," the waitress said. "He ain't afraid to say what he feels, that's all. Which is more than I can say about the rest of them jerks in Washington. What do you think, honey? What's wrong with a guy believing in ghosts?"

  "Well-l-l, I'm not exactly sure he does believe in them," Emily answered carefully. She glanced cautiously at the light fixtures. Stay out of this, Fergus, she prayed.

  "The heck he don't!" the waitress shot back. "The Enquirer says he's living with the ghost of his wife on some uninhabited island off the coast of Massachusetts."

  "What?"

  "I got out my atlas; I figure it has to be one of the Elizabeth Islands," she said, tearing off Emily's check from a pad and slapping it on the bar. "Where else could it be?"

  "Brenda's a stickler for detail," the bartender offered dryly. "Bren, I told you once, I told you a thousand times. Don't ever, never believe what you read in the papers. Right, miss?"

  Emily cleared her throat. "Absolutely." She moved over to the next barstool, closer to the television. "Let's hear what the senator has to say for himself," she suggested, desperate to know what was going on.

  They'd missed the whole beginning. At the moment the program's host was summing up the senator's record in Congress, toting up the legislation he'd proposed that had or had not passed. Put that way, it did sound dry.

  "Bor-rring," said Brenda. "Switch to Cheers."

  "And that brings us, Senator, to a subject that's been much in the news of late: your interest in the paranormal."

  "Wait!" cried Brenda and Emily together.

  Jack put the remote back on the bar. "That's it; he's dead meat now," he said, looking forward to the kill.

  In his blazer, striped tie, and gray flannels Lee looked typically at ease, as though being asked about ghosts were an everyday thing for a senator.

  Emily had never watched the program before, probably because she'd never been out of work so early on a weeknight before. She had no idea of the host's political bias, but he seemed to her a fair man.

  "You've admitted attending a séance recently in an attempt to establish contact with your wife, who died two years ago," the host elaborated.

  "That's not quite accurate, Jim," Lee said amiably. "I'd read an interesting piece in a magazine about poltergeists, and the house I visited had had on-and-off reports of some kind of disturbances within."

  "You mean the house was haunted?"

  Lee weighed the question. "I don't know. Apparently some of its owners thought so."

  "And what did you think?"

  "I thought it looked like an old house that needed work."

  "What about this Kimberly, this channeler?"

  "I'd rather not say too much about her because I understand she's just gone back to her parents to live."

  "You mean she's had a change of heart? She doesn't want to do séances anymore?"

  "I can't say that she ever wanted to channel. I think she was willing to give it a try, and it didn't work out for her. Historically such people have been sensitive and high-strung in the extreme. Whatever it is they do, it seems to be a demanding, exhausting effort."

  "You sound like you believe in these so-called clairvoyants, Senator."

  "I'd like to," he admitted. "I think we all would. I think that people who do have the ability to believe are in general happier than the skeptics."

  "I'd love to ask you more, Senator, but I think I'll throw the phones open and let our viewers have the chance now. Yes," the host said into a mike. "You're on the air. Go ahead."

  The voice that came on was sweet, young, and timid. "I wanted to know, Senator, if you've ever seen your wife in any way or at any time after she passed away?"

  The bartender chuckled maliciously. "That's cutting to the chase."

  Emily watched with trepidation. How would Lee get out of that one?

  "After she passed away? No," Lee answered after a pause.

  "Oh." The caller was obviously disappointed. "Then you're not --"

  "Living on a deserted island with my wife's ghost? Nope."

  "That's too bad," said the caller, and she really meant it. "It would've been such a romantic story."

  "That it would," said Lee with a half nod and a smile that made Brenda sigh.

  Another caller, this time a man. "Senator, if you don't mind my saying so, this is horse manure. No one much cares what you do with your spare time, as long as it doesn't c
ost anything. But I don't mind telling you, I resent any more money for SETI. Let's put the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence on a back burner for now. We've got other fish to fry up front. Well?"

  "You have a point, sir," said Lee. "There'll have to be cuts, and SETI is one of them. I don't like it, but it'd be unconscionable to go forward with an ambitious program until we've paid our bills and taken care of the many who're going down for the third time."

  Jack snorted. "See that? Backpedaling. I knew he would."

  Another caller, another man. "I've voted for you in the past, Senator, but I've never felt too comfortable about it. Now, with all these rumors flying right and left, well, I wanted you to know that I'm voting for Congressman Strom in the primary, and so are the guys I play poker with. I don't exactly trust the fella, but like I said, we don't go much for this supernatural stuff. We all believe you shouldn't be poking around in it, even as a hobby."

  In a carefully patient voice Lee said something about keeping an open mind, but the rest of his remark was drowned out by Jack. "Oh, yeah, that's how this one's gonna go," the bartender decided. "Gals for him, guys for Strom. That's because men vote with their heads, women with their hearts."

  "Men vote with their heads?" cried Brenda. "Who you kidding? Men never bother to think; they just vote a straight ticket."

  They were off and running on a track they seemed to have covered before -- politics. High-spirited and noisy, the two of them easily shouted down Lee and his call-in viewers. Emily was reduced to trying to read Lee's lips. All things considered, she preferred not to concentrate there; the memories of his kisses were still too painful.

  A customer came in, forcing an end to Jack's lively defense of his sex and allowing Emily to hear a voice say over the rolling credits, "Portions of this program will be rebroadcast on Sunday morning at nine-thirty on Bay State Week in Review."