by Sean Stewart
Aunt Sophie grunted. "So I lied. What the hell am I going to say on New Year's Eve, eh? What's the point in ruining a nice party?" She shook her head, and absentmindedly tapped her cigarette ash into the kitchen sink.
"Couldn't you have done something? Sent him to the hospital for a checkup or something?"
"Well, I thought about it, but then decided, Nah, hey—let the little bastard die," Aunt Sophie snapped.
Laura swallowed. "Sorry." Of course Aunt Sophie would have done everything she could to save her brother. Laura flushed and returned to her cabbage, although she had already reduced it to wafer-thin filaments.
"It's not so damn easy as all that. Oh, sure, when I was younger I used to think: Hell, I know what this means. I'd better jump in and straighten out Mary Furillo before she marries Jackson, the toad; or, I'll just tell Dante to let Jet do the sawing, but you can never be certain what the coins mean, heh? And the more you know, the less it seems you can do anything about it. And the worse the news, the less anybody listens. . . ." Sophie trailed off into silence. "I asked Anton about it once," she said at last. "Not in so many words, of course. He was always so smart. 'The Cassandra effect,' he called it."
She stopped, and took another drag on the cigarette between her shaking fingers. "There was nothing I could do," she said at last.
Nothing she could do. Not just about her little brother, Laura guessed, from the weary way she spoke the words. Nothing she could do about Anton, and Pendleton, and Jet, and all the tragedies of her long life.
Aunt Sophie stood at the stove, looking back in time. "When I was a girl, there wasn't any of this," she said. "My father could push a coin through your ear and pull it out your nose, but it was all a trick. That's what made it fun. Because when the magic is real, then all the rules are gone. Nothing's safe anymore." She shook her head. "We're lost. ...Prophets and angels, charms and voodoo dolls and walk-aways and finger-spells: where the hell is it going to end, heh? Look at Columbus, or Magellan: looking back, historians call you an explorer, but at the time, you're just lost. We know so much, and we can do so little. We learn all these secrets and they don't help a damn."
"You know who you sound like?" Laura laid down her knife and met Aunt Sophie's eyes square on. "You sound just like Jet."
* * *
Well, that observation hadn't gone down too well, but Laura was still thinking about it an hour later, after lunch had been eaten and the dishes cleared away.
The whole family had this mythology about Jet, the Outsider. The Changeling. And yet, to her eyes, he was just as inextricably part of the family as Dante or Sarah or Aunt Sophie herself. He had a room on the first floor, just underneath Dante's. He had taken half the pictures now hanging on the parlor wall: Dante sculling on the river, Sarah at her graduation, the older Ratkays working in the garden.
Consider the photograph of Mrs. Ratkay's cherished Lombardy poplars. It was a black and white shot he must have taken lying on his back, looking straight up into their arms as they towered gracefully into a burnished sky, their leaves glinting, like coins. Obviously he had taken it to please Gwendolyn. What difference was there, really, between that photograph and the little clay pencil-holder on the mantelpiece (too shallow to hold pencils and so filled with mints left over from Halloween) that Sarah had made her mum in her Grade 1 art class?
Really, the whole business made Laura itchy and impatient. At this very moment, according to Dante, Jet was out in the City, looking for the Sending he thought had stolen his soul. Why he was doing such an absurd thing when he should be at home feeling wretched with the rest of his family, Laura couldn't fathom. She could have kicked him. A family, a real family with brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, old wars and stories and secrets: that was too precious a thing to abandon for the sake of a little personal growth.
Compounding her impatience was the uncomfortable feeling that she should really be at work. After finally deciding on a favorable orientation for Mr. Hudson's solarium, she had gone back to her initial plans and found to her dismay that there was something dead in them. Oh, the extension as she had sketched it was bright and airy and altogether attractive, but it seemed somehow. . . superficial.
The problem was, she didn't really know that much about Mr. Hudson. Here, now: essence of Ratkay was everywhere throughout this house. Jet's photographs and Dante's high-school baseball trophy; two posters advertising an old show of Sarah's rolled up and stashed behind a coat stand; the smell of borscht and fried onions; Gwendolyn's historical novels lying open on every other table; the imposing tallboy in the dining room filled with bottles of whisky and claret, gin and sherry and Tokay and good French wine. Like Scotch aging slowly in an oaken cask, Dante's family had aged together within these walls.
Dante's sister Sarah startled her, running down the stairs and into the parlor. Her face was white and she was crying. "I need your help," she said.
Coming into Sarah's room, the first thing Laura thought was: bad luck, to sleep in a room with no mirrors.
There was a vast flowered Magyar quilt on the bed and a set of red-checked curtains that seemed vaguely ironic. A beautiful collection of dolls sat atop Sarah's dresser: an English girl with blue eyes and a porcelain face, a Spanish senorita with a black dress and a crimson fan, and a sharp-featured doll with the most incredible fall of copper-colored hair. A small pile of neatly folded clothing lay beside each of them, along with a selection of miniature combs, bows, ribbons, and barrettes.
"I heard the thump, thump, thump, from downstairs," Sarah said quietly. "I couldn't think what it could be, so I came up to look. When I was just outside the door, the thumping was louder and I could hear the bedsprings squeaking. It stopped as soon as I opened the door. That's what I saw."
A pair of muddy shoes lay discarded on the floor at the foot of the bed. They were dingy white canvas sneakers that had seen a lot of action. They might have fit an eight-year-old girl.
"A niece?" Laura suggested. "Cousin? Someone visiting for the funeral?"
"My daughter," Sarah said.
"I didn't know you—"
"I don't." Sarah closed her eyes. "It's just that we don't know anything about ghosts, you see. Even Dante hasn't got a clue. We were brought up as atheists, on moral grounds. But I can't deal with it anymore. Every time I turn around these days, she's there."
"Now, hold on," Laura began uneasily. She really didn't want Sarah to confide in her. "I don't know anything about ghosts either."
"You know more than we do," Sarah said fiercely. "I've heard Dante talk about it. The Chinese know what to do with angels. He told me you burn charms to appease your ancestors every day."
"Now, wait a minute," Laura said indignantly. "You make me sound like I just dropped off the boat from Easter Island."
"I mean it's obvious what's going on. It's just like a minotaur, only instead of fear conjuring a monster, it's guilt; it's my guilt coming back, but I know that already. The lesson's over. Class dismissed!" Sarah cried fiercely.
Laura winced. Despite her best efforts, she hadn't managed to dodge Sarah's secret. "You're being haunted by a ghost," she said, resigning herself.
"Not. . . haunted exactly," Sarah said. She glanced back at the shoes. "More like pestered."
Laura laughed. "At least she took off her shoes before bouncing on your bed!"
"Yeah." Sarah tried to grin. "I don't know where she learned her manners."
"Not from the father, I assume."
Sarah snorted.
Laura reached out to touch the red-haired doll; paused; looked to Sarah for permission.
Sarah nodded. "The father was slime. He had incredibly low standards for women, though, which at the time I confused with love. His condoms were bright green and glowed in the dark. I'm not kidding. I figured there might be trouble when I read the small print at the bottom of the package: 'Novelty Only. Do Not Use During Intercourse.' "
Guiltily Laura laughed.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, looking
at the sweep of poplars outside her window. "Technically it was a miscarriage, but it might as well have been an abortion. Pro-life people think women don't care, you know that? They think we just toddle down to the clinic on a lunch break, whistle gaily to ourselves, and then hustle off to our next date." She touched the cameo pinned to the front of her vest. "Well it isn't like that. You don't forget."
Laura held the doll in her arms. She was strangely heavy, much heavier than Laura had expected. Her arms and legs didn't have the roly-poly quality so many dolls did; they were the wiry, active limbs of a two-year-old. Her sharp nose tilted up at the end and there was mischief in her green glass eyes.
"It's not as if I'm stupid," Sarah pointed out. "I always knew what I was doing to myself. I kept track of how old she was. I worked out the day she would have been born—not just the due date, but a week later because the first child is usually late. I knew it was wrong to torment myself, but I had to do it. I deserved it. And every year when her birthday came around I always thought I should do something: put flowers on a grave, throw a party, get drunk. Something. Last year I had to do a show at Jokerz."
Laura looked at her.
Sarah almost smiled. "I was doing great, right up to the moment I spat on a guy in the front row."
Laura winced.
"And it's not as if it doesn't happen to ten thousand girls a year in this country. Or more," Sarah said restlessly. "God, that's the part that galls me. Who would have thought I'd be so bad at it? Me, of all people? I've always been tough, I've always been a fighter. And this wasn't even a real tragedy. I mean, it wasn't like Aunt Sophie, who lost her husband and her child when they were both real. There are women out there whose real flesh and blood children are hit by cars or kidnapped or, or whatever. They manage to go on. But I can't."
"You only see them from the outside," Laura said softly. She wondered what she had felt like, sitting in her mother's lap. "Even the most successful women have their ghosts."
"The whole idea of ghosts used to terrify me. Dante thought it was hilarious. He would tell ghost stories to me until Jet made him stop, and then I'd lie in bed at night with my eyes open and the light on for hours. Because it's what might have been, you see? It's unfinished business. It's death itself that scares Dante, but I figure if you go out with your accounts balanced, big deal. We're all going to buy it in the end. But to go out with something horribly wrong, to have that gnawing at you and gnawing at you . . ." Sarah closed her eyes.
Laura picked through the little box of doll accessories and took out a tiny tortoise-shell comb. Slowly she drew it through the doll's long auburn hair. Of course, it wouldn't be like this with a real child. A real child wouldn't sit so long. A real child would kick and squirm. But still.
"I know you aren't really an angel. But I have to do something, you see. Mom really needs me now, but I'm no use to her like this. Obviously I could use a good strong dose of therapy, but I can't wait ten years to be functional again. I mean, God, what if Dante's right and he goes too? Who's going to hold this family together?"
Women, Laura thought. The women in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and crying.
Hair split heavily around the teeth of her toy comb like honey flowing, a river of it, stroke after stroke. Of course a real child might want to cut her hair short, or wear a baseball cap, or might be bald—you couldn't say. But still.
"So I need a, a charm, a ritual, anything. Something to ward her off, just for a few days. Something to lull my subconscious to sleep at least until the funeral is over. Then maybe I can find time. I mean, things can't go on like this; that's obvious."
But if she were sleeping, Laura thought, a real child might feel a little like this, resting in the bend of your arm. If she were sleeping, she might lean back like this while her mother combed her hair, one slow gentle stroke at a time. She would be warmer, of course. But still.
"I have to let go, I keep telling myself I have to let go—but it's easier said than done, you know?"
"Why?"
Sarah blinked. "Why what?"
"Why do you have to let go?" Gently Laura put the doll back on Sarah's dresser. Sarah was looking at her confusedly, like a woman' suddenly woken from a dream. "That's the trouble with you atheists," Laura continued irritably. "You can't stop thinking about yourselves. Me mine, I did this, my subconscious, I'm torturing myself, blah blah blah." Laura nudged the pair of sneakers with her foot. "This doesn't have anything to do with you.
Sarah stared blankly at her. "What?"
Laura could have kicked her.
"You just don't get it, do you? There is a ghost in the house!" Laura cried. "Don't keep treating her as if she were just a bad dream, just something you made up. She's real, Sarah. Every bit as real as you are." Laura pulled her best Annoyed Oriental face. "You round-eyes are so stupid sometimes."
Sarah blinked. "So, uh... Okay, she's real. So, what am I supposed to do?"
"Find out what she wants and give it to her, I expect. Isn't that how you placate ghosts in the West?"
"How should I know what she wants?"
"Don't be coy," Laura snapped. "It's perfectly obvious what she wants."
Sarah's shoulders stiffened, then slowly sagged. "Me," she whispered. "...How am I supposed to give her that, Laura? I've already failed my one chance."
Laura shrugged. "Just be open, that's my advice. She'll let you know if she can." Laura grunted, nudging the sneakers once more. "I get the feeling she'll get what she wants, sooner or later."
* * *
Portrait
The monster in these pictures (dozens and dozens of them) stands just under six feet tall. Its teeth are small. Its talons are blunt. It is not roaring. In fact it was actually wheezing as I took these shots, but you can't tell that just from looking.
The monster in these photographs does not wear my soul on an amulet around its neck. It does not even wear a tie. The monster in these pictures wears a shabby, good-natured suit of cheap raw silk, worn at the cuffs.
The monster no longer wears his hair slicked back. Once black and gleaming with brilliantine, it is now gray and thin. Once the monster's smile was made of razors; now there's nothing there but a set of cheap false teeth.
Because Jewel's friend Albert, Confidence, the man who destroyed my life, who drove my father to suicide and turned my mother against me: when I finally met him face to face, he wasn't a monster anymore. He was a balding portly bookseller in a part of town that had been fashionable once but wasn't now. He was a decent guy, embarrassed by what he had been, sweating a little and smiling a lot.
And all I could do was shoot him, again and again, round after round, frame after frame.
It wasn't the camera that gave up at last. But my hands aren't made of plastic and steel, and they started shaking.
My eyes aren't glass, after all. Tears crawled from them, and I couldn't see.
* * *
Glass is a liquid. Laura learned that in an undergraduate course, looking at pictures of a cathedral seven hundred years old where the glass had run like a melting candle, leaving the windows thin at the top, thick and marbled at the bottom.
That thought, and remembering the feel of the doll cradled in her arms, and remembering the way the Ratkay home had made her own beautiful apartment seem so lonely: all those images swimming together in the hour of Ch'ou gave Laura the answer to the problem of Mr. Hudson's solarium. With a grunt she rolled over in bed, grabbed the notebook and pencil she kept on the night table and scribbled: WINDOWS.
She would find the windows from Mr. Hudson's first home, from the home he grew up in as a boy. She would use them, the same glass (maybe even the same frames, she hadn't decided yet), to wall in the solarium. Because no summer sky could be as beautiful as the one that floated over you as a child: no blue so deep, no clouds so majestic. No shade sifted through whispering leaves could ever be so mysterious.
But she would bring that back for him, she and Mr. Ling. Together they would make a place not only
for the great man Hudson had become, but for the small boy he would always be.
There are a lot of ghosts in all of us, she thought—and fell asleep.
DEATH TWITCHES MY EAR. "LIVE," HE SAYS: "I AM COMING." —VIRGIL
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Portrait
I have several pictures of Father's funeral, but the one I come back to has no casket and no flowers. Dante grabbed my camera and took it when the funeral was over and we were back home, receiving condolence calls. It's a quick shot, badly framed: Mother's back is turned and I'm a little out of focus. Really, this is a picture of potato salad.
Every day I read The New York Times; it is the lens through which I view the world. It is full of war and poverty, atrocity and magic, glamours sinister and suspect. There is very little in it about potato salad. But standing in the parlor the day of Father's funeral, feeling the press of neighbors' hands, watching the dining table disappear under home-baked pies and tubs of coleslaw and casseroles wrapped in aluminum foil, that potato salad seemed more real than the atrocities in The Times: as real as Dante. As real as Father's loss.
I had not expected to stay all day in the front parlor, but I did. I didn't say much, mind you. Stood silent, mostly, watching our reflections meet and touch and pass in Grandfather Clock's glass chest. But it was warm and sad and human, and the quiet talk was better company than silence; soothing as the wind whispering in the maple leaves, or the ceaseless murmur the river makes, singing its long way softly to the endless ocean.
When we die, are we nothing but a body, a broken machine from which all meaning flies? Is a soul like smoke, given off by the body's combustion, that wavers and flees when the corpse grows cold?
I thought so once.
But meeting Albert, who had once been Jewel's Sending, showed me I didn't understand much about souls. About living. There was something more than mustard and potatoes in that potato salad. There was a meaning in that room that had everything to do with the food on the table, and with Father, and with all of us who had lost him. He was a part of all our lives, and he continued in us even after he was dead.
