Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "Where's my dad?" she asked. She glanced at the wall clock, then answered her own question. "Oh. Wheel of Fortune."

  "My mother's addicted to it, too," Lee said. "Need any help in here?"

  "No, really ... I'm sorry, I haven't offered you a drink. Would you like anything?"

  "I'll pass," he said, lifting himself up onto a high wood stool.

  "I'm afraid we're not an apéritif kind of family," she said coolly.

  His eyebrows lifted. "It's good to see you completely recovered."

  She knew exactly what he meant. "Okay, I'm being defensive. You caught me by surprise; I wasn't expecting you."

  "I didn't assume your family would keep my coming a secret."

  "Oh, I'm sure they have some stupid idea in their heads that -— well, you know what I mean. You heard my father out there."

  "And you heard my mother when you were at my place. I doubt that she sounded much different. That's how parents are with unattached kids."

  Emily thought of Margaret Alden by her peonies. No, it wasn't quite the same.

  Lee picked up on her hesitation instantly. "Are you suggesting my mother didn't approve of you?"

  Emily shrugged and dumped the peas into a saucepan. "I don't really know how she felt about me."

  "She felt strongly enough to visit you at the hospital. As did Hildie. And the kids. And Grace."

  "They did? I didn't know that. I ... I do remember some visits. I know I remember Mrs. Gibbs ... but mostly it's a blur."

  "Do you remember mine?"

  It seemed to her that it cost him something to ask her that. She heard it in his voice, in the way he kept it low and controlled.

  "Yes," she answered quietly. She walked away, to the refrigerator, which she opened and stared into blankly. Why am I here? She had no idea.

  She closed it carefully, as if she were closing a door to a chamber of her heart, and without turning around, said, "I remember one time ... I don't remember your words, but I remember the sense of them ... that you were calling me back ...."

  "And you came back --"

  "No, that's just it, I didn't."

  Chapter 28

  "Don't you understand, Lee? I didn't come back," she repeated, staring straight ahead. "Not voluntarily. I kept right on going ... something drew me ... irresistibly ... an indescribable feeling of joy ... I had no intentions of coming back." It was the most painful thing she'd ever said, to him or anyone else.

  With a deep sigh she turned around to face him. "I don't know what happened at the end," she said with a helpless look. "I think I got tossed back – rejected -- as if I were undersize or something." She tried to smile and make light of it, but it was the first time she'd spoken of her near-death experience, and the smile seemed to be trapped in the lump in her throat.

  "I vowed I wouldn't tell this to anyone," she added. "And yet here I am, chatting all about it over pork chops -—"

  As if to demonstrate how bad her timing was, the smoke alarm went off from the smoking oil. The piercing squeal brought George Bowditch thundering into the kitchen. "Holy hell, who put the battery back in?"

  Rattled, Emily switched on the stove exhaust and turned down the flame. "I did, and it stays in. There, it's stopped already. Lee, set the table. Dad, finish your program. We eat in ten minutes. Dammit, anyway!"

  The two men exchanged glances. Her father shrugged and left the room. Lee scanned the glass-fronted cabinets and took down dishes for the meal. It was impossible for Emily to read his thoughts as he set the table for her in silence. Was he shocked by her admission that she'd wanted to die? Annoyed that he'd let himself wander into this loony bin? Wishing she were more like Sarah or Jean? Or was he just being a good Samaritan and counting the minutes until supper was up?

  The strained silence as they sat down to eat didn't last long. Emily's father, a true native of the Granite State, was an expert on politics. Everyone in New Hampshire knew why Lee had almost lost the Massachusetts primary, and everyone knew why Lee had pulled through by the skin of his teeth.

  "I'm so glad it was Stanley," Emily said during a lull in the conversation. She had a flashback of Stan sitting beside her hospital bed and a sharp sense that she'd felt great affection for him. "You must have been stunned when you picked up the Journal the day the story broke," she said to Lee.

  "I had advance word, actually. Stan sent me a copy of the story along with a note apologizing for being so slow out of the gate."

  That tidbit was meant entirely for Emily, to let her know that whatever problems Stan had had about Lee, he was trying to put them behind him. "I really am glad," she said, and she meant it.

  The three of them lingered over dessert -- leftover blueberry cobbler -- talking more politics. In fact it was Emily's father who did most of the talking, with Lee an attentive audience. Politics had never been Emily's strong suit, so she was just as happy to sit back and watch the arch-Republican spar with the lifelong Democrat.

  There's something about the way men argue, she mused. They don't pull their punches or second-guess. They're blunt; heck, they're brutal. Yet at the end they can shake hands with no hard feelings. Was there a lesson in here somewhere?

  Lee caught her thoughtful look; she saw the color creep up from his neck as he cleared his throat and became particularly engrossed in her father's comments. George Bowditch carried on a little while longer about the need for a strong defense budget, and then he looked from his daughter to his visitor to his daughter again.

  "Time for the news," he said, rising abruptly from the dining table. "I'll have my decaf out there, Em."

  Lee stacked the dishes on the counter while Emily scraped them clean for the dishwasher. They chatted about the new bay Gerry was adding to his service station -- a nice, safe topic guaranteed to get them through a moment alone. When they rejoined Emily's father, he looked surprised, almost annoyed, to see them pop out from the kitchen so soon.

  Admit it, Emily told herself. You're afraid to be alone with the man. He's entitled to an explanation, and you're too cowardly to give him one. How do you say, "I passed you up for a ghost, sorry about that"? When she did try, the smoke alarm went off. Surely that was a sign of some kind.

  The three of them sat silently through the rest of the news and then the entire MacNeil/Lehrer report. Clearly her father had decided that he'd had enough of one or both of them; he seemed to ignore their presence altogether. Probably it was because he was used to living alone now. Whenever the family piled in on him for the day and stayed too long, he never felt any qualms about throwing them out.

  At the end of the news analysis her father ejected himself from his BarcaLounger and said, "It's late. I'm turning in. Good night."

  "It's only eight-thirty, Dad," she said, looking up in surprise.

  "Best put out an extra blanket for Lee. It's supposed to go down tonight."

  Emily whipped her head around. "You're staying the night?" she asked Lee, amazed. Her father hated having any overnight guest who hadn't actually been born in the house.

  "Didn't I mention that?" her father asked blandly. "Come get the blanket out of my room."

  Upstairs her father took a wool Hudson's Bay blanket from the shelf in his closet and handed it to his daughter. "This makes us even for the time I walked in on you and the Betts boy," he said with a wry smile.

  And then he turned off his hearing aid.

  When Emily came back downstairs, still in a state of shock, Lee was standing with his back to her, hands in his pockets, looking at a cheap little print of Whistler's Mother that had been hanging on the wall behind the sofa for as long as she could remember.

  At least it's not Elvis on velvet. But she became suddenly aware of the crazy mix of Yankee carpentry and discount furniture that filled the rooms of her father's house. There was no rhyme or reason or color scheme. The place had evolved, just like Lee's house on the Vineyard, except without taste. Out of the blue she had an image of her father having high tea with Lee's mother. Ha! was her f
irst reaction. Her second was, Dad could hold his own. We all could. It was a revelation.

  Lee turned around, and she found herself looking into his eyes, seeing her smile reflected in them. "He's great," Lee said simply, mirroring her thoughts about her father.

  "I'm not sure I even knew it, not until tonight," she admitted.

  "Emily . . . I didn't mean to put you through this. I don't plan to stay -—"

  "But you've got to stay!" she said in a knee-jerk panic. "This isn't like at your house. If you walked out, my dad would expect to know why. His feelings might be hurt. He might be afraid he'd been rude, which, of course, he has been, only he doesn't really mean it. It's just his way."

  "So I'm ... staying?" Lee ventured, confused.

  "Yes," she said, humbled by the sound of her own babble. "If you would."

  He was standing very near her. She caught herself sneaking a lungful of air, as if she were about to take a deep plunge into a depth of some kind, she didn't know what.

  "Emily, the reason I'm here . . . it seemed absurd to try to mail this to you ... and I didn't know whether you wanted your family to know about it ...." He took his hand from his pocket and came out with the rose-colored crystal, still on its chain, now with two of its links cut through and twisted, and offered it to her.

  "Oh. That's why you came?" she asked, crestfallen. So it wasn't out of either morbid curiosity or a sense of unrequited love? It was just from simple courtesy?

  She looked down at the pale gem lying in the palm of her hand. The chain seemed less weighty somehow; the crystal, less mysterious. It looked like just another gaudy trinket, the kind you found in the jewelry counters of secondhand stores everywhere. Fifteen dollars. You could get it for twelve.

  When she looked up her cheeks were stained with tears.

  "I'll get my duffel bag from my car. Will you tell me which is my room?" he asked in a strained voice.

  Was it all a dream, then, after all? Fergus never was? And Lee was never to be? Stricken and confused, she looked up at Lee and whispered, "Your room ... yes ... it's upstairs ... to the left."

  She waited until he'd finished in the only bathroom and settled in the bedroom next to hers before she ventured out in her pajamas to wash up. When she returned to her room, which looked out on the back, she tucked herself into the rocker at the window and stared at the same stars she'd wished on as a child.

  Is it possible he doesn't care anymore? All evening long she'd been trying to avoid him. It never occurred to her that he might have been trying to avoid her. Yet he had driven up here, hadn't he? Ah. To return the necklace. But he had blushed and stammered once or twice tonight, hadn't he? Ah. Because he was afraid she might be getting the wrong idea.

  Emily had been assuming he'd stayed away after she awoke from her coma because he cared too much. But what if he just hadn't cared enough? As for her suspicion that he was warming up to Ben and Sarah and to Jean and Gerry just to get closer to her -— it was insulting to her family and to Lee. The more she thought about it, the more she was staggered by her sense of her own importance.

  She jumped up from the chair, incapable suddenly of sitting still, and began to pace the room. Her eye fell on the necklace lying on the dresser. She picked it up, fingered it idly, tossed it back. This has to be resolved. Tonight.

  There was a door joining the two rooms; Lee's had been a sewing room in days gone by. Nothing separated them now but a thin wall. It's always something. Money. Family. Status. Fergus. A coma, for Pete's sake. And now lath and plaster. Unwilling to put up with it anymore, she marched up to the door and banged on it. She heard him say, "Come in." And that's what she did.

  He was in his pajama bottoms, sitting in a chair facing the same starry view that she had, with his legs outstretched and his feet perched on the inside windowsill. The window was ajar. There were no lamps on in his room, only a shaft of light that poured in from hers. It fell across his chest, which was bare, but left his face in relative darkness.

  He said nothing. He didn't move. She seized on the sound of the hissing radiator as her excuse for exploding into his privacy. "I was wondering ... it's too hot for you, isn't it? My father keeps it unbearable. Just turn the knob clockwise on the radiator."

  Still, he said nothing. "Unless you'd rather just leave the window open."

  Nothing. Still. "Dammit, Lee! I need an answer!"

  "What was the question?" he asked in a voice devoid of emotion.

  "The question? The question? Do you love me or don't you?"

  "Gee." He laughed under his breath. "Let me think."

  She stood there, panting and frightened, like a small bird that alights on a sailboat a hundred miles from shore and clings to the rigging, hoping it won't be shooed away. Don't say no, she begged. If you say no, I'll die.. Suddenly it was as simple as that. Crystal clear, and as simple as that.

  He stood up from his chair and walked over to her. "Do I love you?" he repeated in a voice drawn bow tight. "I love you enough not to make you think you love me."

  She wanted a yes, was dreading a no -- but this?

  He saw her confusion. "Let me put it another way," he said, taking her by her shoulders. He brought his mouth down on hers in a kiss of such deep, searing intensity that it took away her breath, took away speech, took away choice.

  He's right, she thought dizzily. When he takes me in his arms, he can make me do whatever he wants. She was awed by it, this ability he had to electrify her and make her feel powerless at the same time.

  He let her go gently, gradually, as if he didn't want her to fall and be hurt. "I need more than that from you, Emily. Once it would have been enough, but not now.

  "How much more can there be?" she asked weakly, collapsing wobble-kneed on the side of his bed.

  He towered over her, hands on his hips, in a pose of classic confrontation. "There can be a lot more," he said impatiently, almost angrily. "There can be a wedding. Anniversaries. Kids. Little League. Shopping. Biking. Disneyland."

  He sat on the bed next to her and took her hand in his, dropping a sudden, wistful kiss in her open palm.

  "There can be Trivial Pursuit ... picnics ... birthdays ... tomato plants ... grandkids." He cradled her face in his hands. "There can be a whole long life together. I love sharing your bed, Emily. But it's not enough. I need to share your life."

  "Is that what this is?" she whispered. "A proposal?"

  "I know it's mundane," he said. "You've been through an unbelievable time, gone wandering through the stars, experienced incredible things. But this is all I am, Emily. This is all I have."

  A tear of joy rolled down her cheek, and then another. She said, "You're everything to me. Don't you know that? I do love you -- before, during, after the kiss. It's true, I did go wandering through the stars. But then I fell back to earth. And when I realized you might not be there to pick me up ... don't you see? That's why I'm here. That's why I barged into your room in a panic.'

  He broke into a sudden, broad grin of relief and wrapped his arms around her waist. "I thought it was to turn down the heat," he quipped, nuzzling her neck inside her pajama collar.

  "No, sir," she murmured with a crazy kind of glee, arching her neck to his kisses. "It was to turn it up."

  After that he wanted her to stay the night with him, but only after whispering in her ear, "Would your father be upset if he found out?"

  Emily laughed low in her throat, a laugh that was wise in half a dozen new ways. "He owes me for Tommy," she whispered back, and Lee knew enough not to ask who Tommy was.

  "I love you," he murmured in a voice hazy with pleasure, drawing her down on top of him. She pulled back, bracing herself on her hands and hovering above him, the better to see him, to drink in the wonder of him.

  Slowly his fingers opened each of the buttons of her pajama tops; carefully he pulled them aside, exposing her breasts. His fingers strayed lightly over the pink tips with a conjurer's touch, deliberate and magical. Robbed of strength and resolve, she foun
d herself lowering down on top of him, her soft flesh pressing the hard, muscled surface of his chest, their lower torsos separated by two thin barricades of cotton.

  "It's been a long, long time," he said in something close to a groan. "Probably you can tell."

  She laughed wickedly and pressed herself to him. "Ah, time." She rolled the word luxuriously over her lips, savoring the taste of it. "It's something we'll have so much of from now on."

  "Which reminds me, darlin'," he said, sliding his hands around her buttocks, holding her close. "Was that a yes to Trivial Pursuit?"

  She teased him mercilessly, her lips playing over his, her tongue testing and tasting his. "Hmm, didn't I say?" she asked, catching his lips lightly in her teeth, holding them with taunting good humor.

  He waited until she released him. Then he brought his hand quickly behind her head and held her mouth to his in a kiss of instant, annihilating eroticism.

  "Ah, Lee," she said when at last he let her speak. "Isn't it obvious? I'd rather pursue trivia with you than with anyone else on earth. Yes. I'll marry you. Yes."

  Chapter 29: Epilogue

  "So what do you think? Will we make a sailor of him?"

  Emily took her husband's hand and laid it over her swollen belly. "Feel that? She's loving every minute of it," she answered, grinning.

  Lee laughed, then drew his hand across Emily's cheek in a loving caress. "How about you, kiddo? No nausea?"

  "Not a bit. What's to be nauseated about? The weather's perfect; the sea's quiet; your boat moves like a dream. And have I mentioned I'm starving to death?"

  He looked startled, as if hunger were a concept untested at sea. "Really? Great," he said, rubbing his hands together. "I'd love a sandwich myself," he said, handing over the tiller to her and diving down the companionway in search of forage.

  "Don't forget chips!" she yelled down after him. "And a pickle! Two pickles!"

  She sucked in a huge lungful of clean sea air, happy to be alive, happier still to be alive for two. "This is bliss," she whispered to the elements. She knocked on wood, easy to do on a wood sailboat, and gave silent thanks to the gods who'd presented her with a man so considerate that he'd go without food before running the risk of making his wife seasick by eating in front of her.