Nebula Awards Showcase 2003

by Nancy Kress

But Anna has to go to her tumble class. She’s learning how to stand on her head. How to fall down and not be hurt. Louise gets the woman to put the leftover mashed green potatoes in a container, and she wraps up the dinner rolls in a napkin and bundles them into her purse along with a few packets of sugar.

  They walk out of the restaurant together, Louise first. Behind her,Anna whispers something to Louise. “Louise?” Louise says.

  “What?” Louise says, turning back.

  “You need to walk behind me,” Anna says. “You can’t be first.”

  “Come back and talk to me,” Louise says, patting the air. “Say thank you, Anna.”

  Anna doesn’t say anything. She walks before them, slowly, so that they have to walk slowly as well.

  “So what should I do?” Louise says.

  “About the ghost? I don’t know. Is he cute? Maybe he’ll creep in bed with you. Maybe he’s your demon lover.”

  “Oh, please,” Louise says. “Yuck.”

  Louise says, “Sorry. You should call your mother.”

  “When I had the problem with the ladybugs,” Louise says, “she said they would go away if I sang them that nursery rhyme. ‘ Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.’”

  “Well,” Louise says, “they did go away, didn’t they?”

  “Not until I went away first,” Louise says.

  “Maybe it’s someone who used to live in the house before you moved in. Maybe he’s buried under the floor of your bedroom or in the wall or something.”

  “Just like the possum,” Louise says. “Maybe it’s Santa Claus.”

  •

  Louise’s mother lives in a retirement community two states away. Louise cleaned out her mother’s basement and garage, put her mother’s furniture in storage, sold her mother’s house. Her mother wanted this. She gave Louise the money from the sale of the house so that Louise could buy her own house. But she won’t come visit Louise in her new house. She won’t let Louise send her on a package vacation. Sometimes she pretends not to recognize Louise when Louise calls. Or maybe she really doesn’t recognize her. Maybe this is why Louise’s clients travel. Settle down in one place and you get lazy. You don’t bother to remember things like taking baths, or your daughter’s name.

  When you travel, everything’s always new. If you don’t speak the language, it isn’t a big deal. Nobody expects you to understand everything they say. You can wear the same clothes every day and the other travelers will be impressed with your careful packing. When you wake up and you’re not sure where you are. There’s a perfectly good reason for that.

  “Hello, Mom,” Louise says when her mother picks up the phone.

  “Who is this?” her mother says.

  “Louise,” Louise says.

  “Oh yes,” her mother says. “Louise, how nice to speak to you.”

  There is an awkward pause and then her mother says, “If you’re calling because it’s your birthday, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “It isn’t my birthday,” Louise says. “Mom, remember the ladybugs?”

  “Oh yes,” her mother says. “You sent pictures. They were lovely.”

  “I have a ghost,” Louise says, “and I was hoping that you would know how to get rid of it.”

  “A ghost!” her mother says. “It isn’t your father, is it?”

  “No!” Louise says. “This ghost doesn’t have any clothes on, Mom. It’s naked and I saw it for a minute and then it disappeared and then I saw it again in my bathtub. Well, sort of.”

  “Are you sure it’s a ghost?” her mother says.

  “Yes, positive.” Louise says.

  “And it isn’t your father?”

  “No, it’s not Dad. It doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

  Her mother says, “Lucy—you don’t know her—Mrs. Peterson’s husband died two nights ago. Is it a short fat man with an ugly moustache? Dark complected?”

  “It isn’t Mr. Peterson,” Louise says.

  “Have you asked what it wants?”

  “Mom, I don’t care what it wants,” Louise says. “I just want it to go away.”

  “Well,” her mother says, “try hot water and salt. Scrub all the floors. You should polish them with lemon oil afterwards so they don’t get streaky. Wash the windows, too. Wash all the bed linens and beat all the rugs. And put the sheets back on the bed inside out. And turn all your clothes on the hangers inside out. Clean the bathroom.”

  “Inside out,” Louise says.

  “Inside out,” her mother says. “Confuses them.”

  “I think it’s pretty confused already. About clothes, anyway. Are you sure this works?”

  “Positive,” her mother says. “We’re always having supernatural infestations around here. Sometimes it gets hard to tell who’s alive and who’s dead. If cleaning the house doesn’t work, try hanging garlic up on strings. Ghosts hate garlic. Or they like it. It’s either one or the other, love it, hate it. So what else is happening? When are you coming to visit?”

  “I had lunch today with Louise,” Louise says.

  “Aren’t you too old to have an imaginary friend?” her mother says.

  “Mom, you know Louise. Remember? Girl Scouts? College? She has the little girl, Anna? Louise?”

  “Of course I remember Louise,” her mother says. “My own daughter. You’re a very rude person.” She hangs up.

  Salt, Louise thinks. Salt and hot water. She should write these things down. Maybe she could send her mother a tape recorder. She sits down on the kitchen floor and cries. That’s one kind of salt water. Then she scrubs floors, beats rugs, washes her sheets and her blankets. She washes her clothes and hangs them back up, inside out. While she works, the ghost lies half under the bed, feet and genitalia pointed at her accusingly. She scrubs around it. Him. It.

  She is being squeamish, Louise thinks. Afraid to touch it. And that makes her angry, so she picks up her broom. Pokes at the fleshy thighs, and the ghost hisses under the bed like an angry cat. She jumps back and then it isn’t there anymore. But she sleeps on the living room sofa. She keeps all the lights on in all the rooms of the house.

  •

  “Well?” Louise says.

  “It isn’t gone,” Louise says. She’s just come home from work. “I just don’t know where it is. Maybe it’s up in the attic. It might be standing behind me, for all I know, while I’m talking to you on the phone and every time I turn around, it vanishes. Jumps back in the mirror or wherever it is that it goes. You may hear me scream. By the time you get here, it will be too late.”

  “Sweetie,” Louise says, “I’m sure it can’t hurt you.”

  “It hissed at me,” Louise says.

  “Did it just hiss, or did you do something first?” Louise says. “Kettles hiss. It just means the water’s boiling.”

  “What about snakes?” Louise says. “I’m thinking it’s more like a snake than a pot of tea.”

  “You could ask a priest to exorcise it. If you were Catholic. Or you could go to the library. They might have a book. Exorcism for Dummies. Can you come to the symphony tonight? I have extra tickets.”

  “You’ve always got extra tickets,” Louise says.

  “Yes, but it will be good for you,” Louise says. “Besides, I haven’t seen you for two days.”

  “Can’t do it tonight,” Louise says. “What about tomorrow night?”

  “Well, okay,” Louise says. “Have you tried reading the Bible to it?”

  “What part of the Bible would I read?”

  “How about the begetting part? That’s official sounding,” Louise says.

  “What if it thinks I’m flirting? The guy at the gas station today said I should spit on the floor when I see it and say, ‘In the name of God, what do you want?’”

  “Have you tried that?”

  “I don’t know about spitting on the floor,” Louise says. “I just cleaned it. What if it wants something gross, like my eyes? What if it wants me to kill someone?”

  “Well,”
Louise says, “that would depend on who it wanted you to kill.”

  •

  Louise goes to dinner with her married lover. After dinner, they will go to a motel and fuck. Then he’ll take a shower and go home, and she’ll spend the night at the motel. This is a Louise-style economy. It makes Louise feel slightly more virtuous. The ghost will have the house to himself.

  Louise doesn’t talk to Louise about her lover. He belongs to her, and to his wife, of course. There isn’t enough left over to share. She met him at work. Before him she had another lover, another married man. She would like to believe that this is a charming quirk, like being bowlegged or sleeping with cellists. But perhaps it’s a character defect instead, like being tone-deaf or refusing to eat food that isn’t green.

  Here is what Louise would tell Louise, if she told her. I’m just borrowing him—I don’t want him to leave his wife. I’m glad he’s married. Let someone else take care of him. It’s the way he smells—the way married men smell. I can smell when a happily married man comes into a room, and they can smell me, too, I think. So can the wives—that’s why he has to take a shower when he leaves me.

  But Louise doesn’t tell Louise about her lovers. She doesn’t want to sound as if she’s competing with the cellists.

  “What are you thinking about?” her lover says. The wine has made his teeth red.

  It’s the guiltiness that cracks them wide open. The guilt makes them taste so sweet, Louise thinks. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she says.

  Her lover laughs. “Of course not.”

  If he were her husband, they would sleep in the same bed every night. And if she woke up and saw the ghost, she would wake up her husband. They would both see the ghost. They would share responsibility. It would be a piece of their marriage, part of the things they don’t have (can’t have) now, like breakfast or ski vacations or fights about toothpaste. Or maybe he would blame her. If she tells him now that she saw a naked man in her bedroom, he might say that it’s her fault.

  “Neither do I,” Louise says. “But if you did believe in ghosts. Because you saw one. What would you do? How would you get rid of it?”

  Her lover thinks for a minute. “I wouldn’t get rid of it,” he says. “I’d charge admission. I’d become famous. I’d be on Oprah. They would make a movie. Everyone wants to see a ghost.”

  “But what if there’s a problem?” Louise says. “Such as. What if the ghost is naked?”

  Her lover says, “Well, that would be a problem. Unless you were the ghost. Then I would want you to be naked all the time.”

  •

  But Louise can’t fall asleep in the motel room. Her lover has gone home to his home which isn’t haunted, to his wife who doesn’t know about Louise. Louise is as unreal to her as a ghost. Louise lies awake and thinks about her ghost. The dark is not dark, she thinks, and there is something in the motel room with her. Something her lover has left behind. Something touches her face. There’s something bitter in her mouth. In the room next door someone is walking up and down. A baby is crying somewhere, or a cat.

  She gets dressed and drives home. She needs to know if the ghost is still there or if her mother’s recipe worked. She wishes she’d tried to take a picture.

  She looks all over the house. She takes her clothes off the hangers in the closet and hangs them back right-side out. The ghost isn’t anywhere. She can’t find him. She even sticks her face up the chimney.

  She finds the ghost curled up in her underwear drawer. He lies facedown, hands open and loose. He’s naked and downy all over like a baby monkey.

  Louise spits on the floor, feeling relieved. “In God’s name,” she says, “what do you want?”

  The ghost doesn’t say anything. He lies there, small and hairy and forlorn, facedown in her underwear. Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants any more than she does. “Clothes?” Louise says. “Do you want me to get you some clothes? It would be easier if you stayed the same size.”

  The ghost doesn’t say anything. “Well,” Louise says. “You think about it. Let me know.” She closes the drawer.

  •

  Anna is in her green bed. The green light is on. Louise and the baby-sitter sit in the living room while Louise and Anna talk. “When I was a dog,” Anna says, “I ate roses and raw meat and borscht. I wore silk dresses.”

  “When you were a dog,” Louise hears Louise say, “you had big silky ears and four big feet and a long silky tail and you wore a collar made out of silk and a silk dress with a hole cut in it for your tail.”

  “A green dress,” Anna says. “I could see in the dark.”

  “Good night, my green girl,” Louise says, “good night, good night.”

  Louise comes into the living room. “Doesn’t Louise look beautiful,” she says, leaning against Louise’s chair and looking in the mirror. “The two of us. Louise and Louise and Louise and Louise. All four of us.”

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” the baby-sitter says, “who is the fairest Louise of all?” Patrick the baby-sitter doesn’t let Louise pay him. He takes symphony tickets instead. He plays classical guitar and composes music himself. Louise and Louise would like to hear his compositions, but he’s too shy to play for them. He brings his guitar sometimes, to play for Anna. He’s teaching her the simple chords.

  “How is your ghost?” Louise says. “Louise has a ghost,” she tells Patrick.

  “Smaller,” Louise says. “Hairier.” Louise doesn’t really like Patrick. He’s in love with Louise for one thing. It embarrasses Louise, the hopeless way he looks at Louise. He probably writes love songs for her. He’s friendly with Anna. As if that will get him anywhere.

  “You tried garlic?” Louise says. “Spitting? Holy water? The library?”

  “Yes,” Louise says, lying.

  “How about country music?” Patrick says. “Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams?”

  “Country music?” Louise says. “Is that like holy water?”

  “I read something about it,” Patrick says. “In New Scientist, or Guitar magazine, or maybe it was Martha Stewart Living. It was something about the pitch, the frequencies. Yodeling is supposed to be effective. Makes sense when you think about it.”

  “I was thinking about summer camp,” Louise says to Louise. “Remember how the counselors used to tell us ghost stories?”

  “Yeah,” Louise says. “They did that thing with the flashlight. You made me go to the bathroom with you in the middle of the night. You were afraid to go by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t afraid,” Louise says. “You were afraid.”

  •

  At the symphony, Louise watches the cellists and Louise watches Louise. The cellists watch the conductor and every now and then they look past him, over at Louise. Louise can feel them staring at Louise. Music goes everywhere, like light and, like light, music loves Louise. Louise doesn’t know how she knows this—she can just feel the music, wrapping itself around Louise, insinuating itself into her beautiful ears, between her lips, collecting in her hair and in the little scoop between her legs. And what good does it do Louise, Louise thinks? The cellists might as well be playing jackhammers and spoons.

  Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Louise may be tone-deaf, but she’s explained to Louise that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like music. She feels it in her bones and back behind her jaw. It scratches itches. It’s like a crossword puzzle. Louise is trying to figure it out, and right next to her, Louise is trying to figure out Louise.

  The music stops and starts and stops again. Louise and Louise clap at the intermission and then the lights come up and Louise says, “I’ve been thinking a lot. About something. I want another baby.”

  “What do you mean?” Louise says, stunned. “You mean like Anna?”

  “I don’t know,” Louise says. “Just another one. You should have a baby, too. We could go to Lamaze classes together. You could name yours Louise after me and I could name mine Louise after you. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

&n
bsp; “Anna would be jealous,” Louise says.

  “I think it would make me happy,” Louise says. “I was so happy when Anna was a baby. Everything just tasted good, even the air. I even liked being pregnant.”

  Louise says, “Aren’t you happy now?”

  Louise says, “Of course I’m happy. But don’t you know what I mean? Being happy like that?”

  “Kind of,” Louise says. “Like when we were kids. You mean like Girl Scout camp.”

  “Yeah,” Louise says. “Like that. You would have to get rid of your ghost first. I don’t think ghosts are very hygienic. I could introduce you to a very nice man. A cellist. Maybe not the highest sperm count, but very nice.”

  “Which number is he?” Louise says.

  “I don’t want to prejudice you,” Louise says. “You haven’t met him. I’m not sure you should think of him as a number. I’ll point him out. Oh, and number eight, too. You have to meet my beautiful boy, number eight. We have to go out to lunch so I can tell you about him. He’s smitten. I’ve smited him.”

  Louise goes to the bathroom and Louise stays in her seat. She thinks of her ghost. Why can’t she have a ghost and a baby? Why is she always supposed to give up something? Why can’t other people share?

  Why does Louise want to have another baby anyway? What if this new baby hates Louise as much as Anna does? What if it used to be a dog? What if her own baby hates Louise?

  When the musicians are back on stage, Louise leans over and whispers to Louise, “There he is. The one with big hands, over on the right.”

  It isn’t clear to Louise which cellist Louise means. They all have big hands. And which cellist is she supposed to be looking for? The nice cellist she shouldn’t be thinking of as a number? Number eight? She takes a closer look. All of the cellists are handsome from where Louise is sitting. How fragile they look, she thinks, in their serious black clothes, letting the music run down their strings like that and pour through their open fingers. It’s careless of them. You have to hold on to things.

  There are six cellists on stage. Perhaps Louise has slept with all of them. Louise thinks, if I went to bed with them, with any of them, I would recognize the way they tasted, the things they liked, and the ways they liked them. I would know which number they were. But they wouldn’t know me.