The Haunting of James Hastings

by Christopher Ransom

  ‘Everything okay?’ I would ask.

  And after a ten-second delay, she would answer: ‘What? Oh, you can change the channel if you want.’

  I stopped asking what was wrong. Ostrich. I think they call it playing ostrich.

  This wasn’t working, this little pretend vacation. A week into it and we were acting like a married couple with nothing left to say to each other. She got up to use the bathroom often and stayed in too long. A couple hours after going to bed, she would go downstairs in the middle of the night and open the refrigerator door, staring into it for minutes before closing it, and I would lie in bed knowing she wasn’t moving and knowing there was nothing much more than leftovers and milk inside. Then she would come back to bed and toss and turn for a while, her sleeplessness keeping me at bay. Something about all of it was bothering her. She was trying to make a decision. Was it about me? About us? The house? I had no idea.

  I slept for twelve, fourteen hours at a go and took naps in the afternoon. Every morning I awoke with plans to do something, get organized, read the paper, mow the dead lawn. But I was disorganized, fuzzy-headed, unmotivated. She went through a manic cleaning phase for two days. I offered to help but Annette said no, not after loaning her seven thousand dollars.

  ‘I can clean my own house, thank you. And you need to rest.’

  ‘No, I don’t. There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I told her.

  And there wasn’t, physically. I had suffered no injuries in West Adams. Just the shock. But the hell of it was I did need to rest. I spent a lot of time on the couch, reading a few of the paperbacks Arthur had left behind. Manly escapist fiction. Renegades and ex-KGB trash. And one fat historical romance, The Bronze Horseman, consumed me for two days straight and damn near made me bawl. I asked her if she had read this and she said it belonged to ‘one of his whores’ and threw it out when I was done, disgusted with me for enjoying it. I sat by the pool all afternoon and drank beer. She didn’t drink, didn’t swim, didn’t like the sun. She complained of the heat, the dead silence. She had no friends out here.

  ‘Did you ever talk to someone?’ I said one night after dinner. ‘About Arthur?’ She didn’t look up from her plate of ribs and corn on the cob. ‘I went to a doctor for a few months after Stacey,’ I said. ‘It didn’t seem to help then, but, looking back, I think it might have.’

  Annette slid her chair back from the table. She stood glaring at me, lifted her plate and threw it at the wall. The plate shattered and a trail of barbecue sauce oozed down to the carpet. She blinked, her face red, and then marched upstairs and slammed the bedroom door.

  I cleaned up the mess and began to form farewell speeches in my head. If something doesn’t change by tomorrow, adios . . .

  In the morning she woke me on the couch and apologized. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, could I forgive her. I told her it wasn’t a big deal. I had been there.

  ‘Do you want me to give you some space?’ I said.

  ‘No. I need you here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s strange, but I feel closer to you here than I ever have.’ She stretched out on the couch on top of me and kissed me. We enjoyed a moment of quiet pressed together. ‘If we got some new furniture, we could waste the summer here.’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I’m beginning to think it would be easier for you back in West Adams.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where we are,’ she said. ‘We have to get better inside first.’

  ‘I guess that’s right,’ I said.

  ‘I found a credit card in Arthur’s desk. I think we should try it out.’

  We went shopping for furniture. I really believed it was the grief inside her until we went shopping for furniture.

  23

  About thirty minutes outside of Sheltering Palms, but not yet into the nearest town (Palm Desert, I think, though I couldn’t have found it on my own), we came upon a huge empty parking lot with three giant stores - furniture, carpet and tile, and a third for bathroom fixtures - connected into one supermart that defied every law of commerce by being open for business. I counted four cars in the parking lot. They had to belong to the employees. Who or what was sustaining this enterprise I had no idea. By winter these stores would be gutted.

  Inside the furniture outlet we picked out a new dining-room table, a leather couch and loveseat, and a few accessories to fill the gaps in the house. Annette became more animated as we stepped into the showroom, the scent of new upholstery reviving her spirits. The salesman, an ancient whose nametag read Suzanne, introduced herself as Sue-Zahn and I could see most of her skeleton through her parchment skin. Her knuckles were the size of walnuts and roped with green veins. She came on like a bulldozer, though, giving us the hard sell, pursing her drawstring smoker lips and flapping her reading glasses chain when I began to balk at throwing in another matching end table or debated the merits of spending an extra $149 to Scotchguard the reading chair and ottoman.

  ‘You want to invest in furniture to keep as you become a family together,’ she said in a voice tanned by brown Moore cigarettes. ‘We don’t do disposable here. Anybody can fill a house. We’re in the business of furnishing homes, and we deliver at no charge.’

  Annette kept nodding, smiling. They had me boxed in.

  ‘I’ll have Derek write this up,’ Suzanne said. ‘And meet you over in the hutch parlor. All our native woods are fifty per cent off until tomorrow.’

  ‘Ooh, thank you,’ Annette said, pulling me along as she weaved through an obstacle course of recliners. Two boys with identical haircuts and matching clothes, one a foot taller than the other, engaged in a game of tag around us, using the chairs for cover.

  ‘Are we really ready for a hutch?’ I said. ‘I thought hutch status was reserved for people with grandkids.’

  Annette smiled over her shoulder at me as the shorter of the two - a squealing, gap-toothed stick figure in need of a flu shot - rounded a maroon lounger and his taller brother pursued him in shrieks of gaiety. The little one kept whipping his head from side to side as he ran, oblivious to us. As if sensing the collision, Annette whirled just in time and he slammed into her midriff. He made an oof sound and bounced off her as if hitting a baseball pitch-back, seeming to levitate for a moment before landing flat on his back. Annette bent over in pain, staggered a bit and then went forward and crouched over him in a concerned manner.

  I glanced at the taller boy, who was steeling himself rigid beside a plaid recliner, waiting for me to scold him. I shrugged and looked around for their parents. The only other couple - a pair of heffalumps on the far side of the showroom - had their backs to us, admiring the grandfather clocks. I heard urgent whispering behind me, then heard Annette say, ‘Ouch!’ This was followed by a crack. The accomplice brother and I gaped at each other in confusion. When I looked back, she was leaning over the fallen boy, holding a wad of his shirt in her fist, whispering and shaking him.

  ‘Breathe, just breathe,’ she said.

  The boy was flat on his back, his mouth locked open, emitting clicking sounds. I was gripped with bystander syndrome, trying to understand how such a simple collision had turned into this. He was choking or beyond choking, perhaps seized.

  ‘Breathe!’ Annette said, and slapped him across the face. She shook him harder and still he could not gasp that next breath. She slapped him again, this time with the back of her hand. The side of his face was turning red.

  ‘Get off him!’ I rushed in and shoved her aside.

  She grunted and released him. I did not know CPR. I put my hands on his chest. His heartbeat was going staccato and his mouth hung open, so I tilted his head back as he continued to turn green. His eyes locked on mine and I nodded to him. ‘It’s okay, bud,’ I said. ‘Relax, just relax now.’

  I glanced back for help. Annette was marching toward the front desk, arms limp at her sides. The older brother kept looking from me to his brother and back, terrified.

  I massaged the boy’s cheeks and pus
hed two fingers into his throat. His tongue was where it was supposed to be, but his throat was full of fluid. I lifted him into a sitting position and scooted to his side. I clapped him on the back and he immediately coughed blood that flecked his lips and dripped onto his shirt. I flung myself away in revulsion. Arms thrashing, he inhaled an enormous breath and scrambled to his feet, allowing gravity to send twin threads of blood from his nostrils to the floor in a weaving line as he fled. He went through the front doors, releasing a howling sob only after he had reached the sidewalk. Outside, his big brother grabbed him and pressed him to the storefront, interrogating him by the looks of it, and both boys kept glancing at us, their faces drawn in fear.

  The two fingers I had pushed into his throat were red-tipped, as if dipped in paint. I wiped them on my pants, at a loss for what had just transpired. I assumed Annette had gone to call for help, but when I caught up to her at the payment center, she was just standing there, palms flat on the glass countertop, her expression blank.

  Suzanne was printing our invoice and her confident demeanor had been replaced by a stiff urgency. She did not look at either of us. She tore the invoice from the printer and slid it toward me, then pulled her hands away hastily and fumbled with the chain attached to her glasses. Her gnarled hands were shaking, her lips curled under her teeth. She stole a glance at the couple on the other side of the showroom, possibly debating the wisdom of calling them over. I realized she did not know the extent of it, had not witnessed the collision. But she had been scolded, and she knew something in her store had just gone very wrong.

  ‘Well?’ Annette snapped at me. ‘Are you going to sign for the delivery or do you just want to forget it?’

  ‘What?’ I looked into her eyes. The left one, the one that had turned blue while I was in the hospital, was dilated and open wide. The green one had gone lazy and lifeless. Whatever is in her, it changed one of her eyes. Took control. As if they’re now wired to different lobes. She slid the delivery invoice at me and slapped it against the glass, daring me to protest.

  I stood there bent over the paper, the pen hovering, unsure of my next move.

  ‘Sign it and give her your card, James,’ Annette said. ‘Pay the woman, for fuck’s sake, so we can get out of this pigsty.’

  Suzanne jumped. I guessed the dead man’s credit card hadn’t worked. I handed over my Visa. Suzanne shot me a terrified glance and ran the card.

  I turned and watched the two boys out on the sidewalk. The taller brother was trying to locate his parents, perhaps estimating his chances of finding them without running into us again. Annette shoved the paperwork and my Visa card into my chest and stomped off toward the front doors.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I began, turning back to Suzanne. ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘I want her out of my store,’ the old woman said. ‘And I don’t want to see you in here ever again. You can expect a visit from the police.’

  The front doors burst open and the boys ran past Annette, shouting, ‘Mom! Dad! Mom!’

  Annette did not look at them. She went through the doors and crossed the parking lot. I had to go quickly or else she would drive off without me.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Suzanne said, staring at the one wearing a bib of his own blood. They reached all six hundred pounds of Mom and Dad, who began searching the store with increasingly angry expressions.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was an accident.’

  I hurried to the front doors.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Suzanne called after me. ‘Hold it right there!’

  The sun hit me hard as I crossed the parking lot. I saw the Mustang’s green flank reversing and ran to it, slapping the sidewall before she could speed off without me.

  ‘Annette, stop!’ I fell into the front seat and Annette rammed the shifter into park. I was panting. Sweat leaked down my sides, into my waistband. ‘What did you do? What was that?’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘He ran into me.’

  ‘He was choking on his own blood!’

  Annette just stared at me.

  ‘Did you hit him? For the love of Christ, did you slap that little boy in the face before he started choking?’

  ‘He bit me!’ she said. She held up her hand. There was a half-moon of purple indentations and whitish flesh cut open but not bleeding. ‘That little mongrel ran into me and when I tried to help him and make him apologize, he bit me.’

  ‘No . . .’ my voice trailed off. ‘He wasn’t breathing. You were shaking him. I saw you.’

  ‘I was trying to help him,’ she said. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  I ran my hands through my hair and rubbed my eyes. ‘I don’t understand why he was bleeding like that.’

  ‘Oh please,’ she snapped. ‘How could you think - no. You know what? Fuck you, James.’

  She rammed the shifter into gear and we lurched out of the lot. We did not speak during the ride home. I told myself she was sick. Mentally or physically or both. She had hit her head and something wasn’t right. She was not in control of her actions any more. She drove so recklessly I feared further argument would send us careening into a ditch.

  At home, back in the garage, I stared at the bike. Annette turned the car off but did not exit.

  ‘James?’ she said softly.

  I ignored her.

  ‘James?’

  ‘What?’ I nearly shouted.

  ‘I didn’t slap him.’ She looked tired, sorry for making trouble.

  I waited, staring into her flat, lifeless eye. The green was dead, the blue alive. One was stronger than the other.

  ‘Kids have accidents,’ she said. ‘Every day. People die every day.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What does it mean? It means what if it hadn’t been me he ran into? What if he ran into a car? What if he ran into a ditch and fell on a broken bottle?’ Louder and louder. ‘What if he was playing with a knife and stabbed his brother in the neck? What if he found the gun and blew his own god damn head off!’

  ‘You’re sick,’ I said. ‘You need help—’

  ‘He could have died!’ Annette shouted. Her entire face went red and the veins in her forehead pulsed. ‘He could be dead! Dead! Do you understand me? Do you understand me? ’

  I could only stare at her, and that was difficult bordering on unbearable.

  She got out of the car, slammed the door and went inside.

  I sat in the garage for a while, looking at the BMX bike.

  24

  She wasn’t on the first floor. I waited a few minutes, running a sponge nonchalantly around the kitchen counters, humming nervously. I kept seeing that boy’s face. If I had not lifted him, he would have drowned in his own blood. And I could not escape the feeling that she had wanted him to die. That she had been pushing him to the edge.

  In how many ways was I culpable? The store had my credit card info. The police would find my address, but not me. They wouldn’t know I was here. Except, dingdong, dumbass - you have a furniture delivery. They could be on their way right now. I almost hoped they were.

  And I was guilty of riding along with her as she became a danger to others. This was a wake-up call. I needed stop her. I needed her to understand that her aggressive . . . assault, yes, it was an assault . . . was unconscionable. I would not allow it to happen again. And if she did not immediately agree to see a physician and a therapist, and acknowledge how awfully she had behaved, I would leave her. Tonight. Simple as that.

  I went up the stairs. The master bedroom door was locked.

  I knocked. ‘Annette, open the door.’

  Silence.

  ‘Annette, we need to talk about this. The police are going to come sooner or later. I’ll talk to them if they come. I will tell them what happened. Do you hear me? You’re going to have to deal with this.’

  If she stirred, she did so in silence.

  ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,’ I said to the door. ‘We will talk about this. Otherwise I’m
gone.’

  I went downstairs and stood in the kitchen and chewed my nails. I drank a beer, and then a second beer. Gone to what? Where are you going to go? I went into the living room, hooked up the Blu-ray player and watched something starring fire.