Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

Ruck, immobile, an air of calm. His posture, relaxing. “You said her name.”

  “Libby. Libby Meade. There, I said it again.”

  “I’ve been waiting days to hear you say her name. Years, even.”

  Morose. “Have you, now.”

  Totally chill, Ruck fished out a smoke. “You ready to talk about some shit?”

  “If we must. No smoking in here.”

  “You was sucking on that bong earlier like it’s going out of style.”

  “That’s different. Melanie, she’s the Nazi about it. She’d kick our asses, dude.”

  Ruck, nodding, accepted this line of reasoning. Putting down his drink and taking Billy by the arm, he said, “On the balcony, then.”

  Outside, the city and the campus lay splayed before them, streetlights and windows in buildings glowing like stars fallen to earth.

  Ruck, leaning way over the sturdy metal railing, drawing in the smoke, cut to the chase. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. I was young, foolish and—full of myself.” And if you hadn’t intervened, she’d have fallen in love with me. She’d have been the one to fix me of the whole accidents problem. But, Christ; he couldn’t say any of that.

  Bold. “I loved her.” Some true gospel he felt willing to risk expressing to his old chum. “There, I confess. Happy? Feel better?”

  “And so ‘love’ manifests in the form of you raping her, right there on my own bed,” in a voice steady and dispassionate, “like it wasn’t nothing. Like she’d be into it.” Ruck, gesturing across campus in the direction where University Terrace, torn down in the late 90s, had stood, flicked ashes. “Damn, son.”

  “We were all fucked up.”

  “An excuse, but partial.” Ruck, again counting off the charges, phrase by phrase: “In my room; on my bed; under my nose; against her will.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Fucked up or not—that’s your idea of friendship?”

  “Enough.”

  “Or of ‘love’?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Are you nuts, beau?”

  “No.”

  Ruck, smoking and nodding in the dim evening light. “All right.”

  Billy, desperate for his friend to understand, clutched at his denim sleeve. Ruck’s body odor stung his eyes. “Almost nuts, sure. But that whole night with Libby, it was a total miscalculation—an accident—but most important of all, no, I didn’t rape her. You stopped us.”

  “‘Us’?”

  “You stopped me.”

  “An accident, eh?”

  Well—now Ruck was talking his language.

  “Yes. But you swooped in there like the caped crusader. Like James freaking Bond, saving the entire world. A hero.”

  “Sounds more like rose-tinted glasses talking.”

  “Of course, it was only that you fell off the roof, but the effect was all that mattered—like breaking a wicked spell. Hell of a thing, I tell ya. At the most anomalous moment in my whole life, my low point, you swing in to save her. From me,” Billy concluded as tears leapt over his eyelids. He made no move to wipe them away. “Which was the best thing. For all of us.”

  Ruck sat down heavy in a canvas deck chair. “I saved her, did I?”

  “You did. You saved me, too. Thank god.”

  “Do me this one favor. If you loved her so much, then tell me about her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tell me about Frances Elizabeth Meade.”

  Billy, not knowing where to begin. Wheels turning. Gears grinding. Now, the gulf of years seemed vast indeed. Groping for ideas, for words. Panicking.

  “Tell me who she was, Bill. Or, can’t you?”

  “Stop it.”

  Ruck’s disgust now palpable. “You didn’t even know the girl. How could you love her, dipwad?”

  Billy, eyes dancing faraway across the nighttime cityscape. He felt bothersome inside. If Ruck didn’t watch it, they’d find him in the hedges fifteen stories below. “All too easily, Mr. Bond—you of all people ought to know that.”

  “Granted. But go on, now. Tell me one blessed thing about her. Just one little detail about who she was—who she really was, in here,” placing an open palm on his chest, “and then I’ll believe your innocent and wholesome tale of love.”

  “I remember her eyes the most—oh, those beautiful eyes. And she was smart, and so confidant… and we seemed to have similar taste in movies.”

  Ruck, nodding with deep satisfaction. “You through?”

  Billy, shrugging, imploring: What more do you want? “Her smile. That little crooked smile of hers. And the bumpy nose.”

  “You could get that from a picture.”

  “Her sardonic, fatalistic Gen X worldview.”

  “That’s all of us, dude.”

  True enough. Billy sat in shame.

  Ruck, lucid yet trancelike: “Now listen up, William, and let me tell you about Libby Meade. She loved animals. Loved Prudy, couldn’t wait to get another cat for her to have as a companion. She loved photos—taking them, looking at them. Scrapbooking, that kind of sentimental shit a man like me’s got no blessed use for.”

  Ruck drank deeply of the Crown Royal before continuing. “Despite her family being kind of screwed up—Daddy a weirdo drunk like me, some Freudian thing, maybe, that she liked me? who knows?—she loved looking at pictures of everyone. Loved taking pictures. Her and her brothers, back when they were little.”

  A snatch of The Cure’s ‘Pictures of You’ flitted through Billy’s consciousness. Eighties tunes reduced him to rubble. “She had a Canon AE-1 when we took Still Photography together.”

  “Taking pictures—that’s what got her interested in movies. A teacher asked her, do you have an interest in the visual arts? Before that, she told me, she hadn’t even thought about ‘visual arts’ as a thing somebody could do for a living. One moment changed her life.”

  “Oh—this is solid gold, Ruck. Bless you.”

  “Least I could do for my old boy.”

  “I always dreamed of having a brother,” putting his hand on Ruck’s forearm. “You were the closest thing.”

  Ruck, shaking off Billy’s paw and sparking up a fresh smoke, leaned with his back against the railing. “Lemme see what else is in our storehouse of intimate knowledge… she loved butterflies. She loved giving butterfly kisses. Know what those are?”

  Billy, rueful, ached at the idea of being close enough to Libby to receive any kiss at all. Slack-jawed, he absorbed with detached wonder these fresh details like springtime blossoms.

  Like an incantation: “Photographs. Scrapbooking. Butterfly kisses.”

  “She had secrets, too.”

  Billy, breathless: “What were they? Tell me,” in grave desperation. “I beg you.”

  Ruck, shaking his head. “I can’t.”

  “Oh, fuck you, you can’t say something like that and then—and then not—”

  “I only knew her about five years. Not nearly long enough to learn them all.” Gripping the rail. “I killed her before she got the chance to finish showing me, or any of us, who she really was. Or was to become, anyway.”

  Billy stood facing away from Devin, now, at the rail. “The book says, ‘you might be through the past, but the past ain’t through with you.’ I never understood that before. I do, now.”

  “What book would that be?”

  Billy, snot running out of his nose, wiped his mouth. He leaned his weight on the rail, prepared himself for what he had to do next. Cold fire exploded in his gut, but he kept his fear of what awaited below to himself. “Only another stupid movie line.”

  “That was my death in the car. Mine.”

  His antennae twitching, he relaxed his hands. “What do you mean?”

  “I knew death was coming—by then, I had known it for years. Had had this knowledge foretold to me from almighty God,” shouting and gesturing like a black preacher. “By a man in a pool.”

  The idea settled around them, fogging their sha
red air like mist. Billy, thinking Ruck on a tangent.

  “But death kept missing me. That day, it missed me and took her. And that, my boy, has been a tough row to hoe.”

  “I understand, now, brotherman. Enough.”

  “You say I saved her. Maybe that night on the roof. Yeah. Saved her from you—”

  Interjecting, “Yes! And by extension—”

  “—or else condemned her to me,” like a prison sentence.

  “Dude. Poetic, but nonsense.”

  “What if she’d fallen in love with you?”

  Billy, aghast. “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe she’d still be here now. Wouldn’t she?”

  Gorge rising again. “That wouldn’t have happened. I was out of control.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, dicknut.”

  Billy, flummoxed in mind, but the truth already settled in his heart like lead. “Go on.”

  “What if you took her ass to dinner or to a goddamn movie instead of shoving her down and, and—? Don’t you see?”

  Billy, his jaw clenched, shook with fury, an odd one, a bizarre admixture of anger and admiration. Ruck, the alleged end-stage mad alcoholic, had been reading his fucking mind the whole time. Moving him around like a chess piece.

  God help me—I’m in the presence not of a drunk, but a master.

  Devin’s perspicacity only sharpened: “Maybe you’d have dated and broken us up, and all would’ve been well. That night, you were out of your head. I accept the excuse—you’d never have done that to her otherwise. Why do you think I was willing to forgive and forget? I knew how easy it was to love Libby. And I knew how fucked up you were. And—after all, it had worked out. The worst had not happened. But enough to ruin it forever. From her perspective. Which I get. Boy—looking at you again, do I get it, you fucking ape.”

  Crushed into nothingness. Devin was making this decision easy. His throat clenched. The wind tousled his hair. He pushed forward against the railing. “If only we had the DeLorean, then we could go back and fix all this.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “We’d only create paradoxes.”

  Ruck snorted. “I’d say we’re full up on those.”

  “My brother, don’t ever take back that forgiveness you showed me back in the day. And that you obviously hold for me now. It’s too important. To lose it would finish me.”

  “People like you don’t got a clue what ‘finished’ feels like. About being broke and alone and on your last damn leg. About needing to fuck strangers to put food on the table. But, yeah. I forgive you. Like I said—it all worked out. Mostly.”

  Ruck stood, draping his arm around Billy. He leaned against his friend. Soothing and crisp, the air held a cool hint of the season that’d passed rather than the hot Carolina summer to come.

  Billy, one foot poised on the bottom bar of the railing, pondered, “I never asked, but: What happened to your cat?”

  Ruck, casual, plumed smoke from his nostrils. “Died.”

  Billy, a fresh wave of grief, a finality he’d never before felt: Libby, gone; Libby’s pet, another of the survivors, now also consigned to memory. Dust upon the pages of a forgotten book. “I guess she was old. For a cat.”

  Devin sounded nonchalant. “Well, yeah, but not exactly. See, I got so durn drunk after my Daddy died that, well, I took off for a spell, and…”

  “And what?”

  “Aw, you know. I let my beloved pet starve to death.”

  “Fuck you—no way. You didn’t. You couldn’t. Not Prudy.” Billy’s desire to kill himself turned to disgusted rage. “You stupid redneck.”

  “Yes, I did. Went away for a couple weeks, and forget to tell my old girlfriend to feed her.” Shrugging, he picked a flake of brown tobacco off the tip of a darting, reptilian tongue. A blackness surrounded Devin Rucker which belied his chill countenance. “You know how it goes.”

  Billy, dumbstruck, felt aghast for his friend. For himself.

  “But, look here—do you remember Libby, Billy? Tell me the truth.”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” He no longer cared how it sounded: “On some days, she’s all I think about, still.”

  “Lucky you. Because I barely can.” Ruck, crumbling, dropped the act. Sniffling, he extracted a small photo creased and dogeared from years of handling: Libby’s high school senior portrait.

  Holding the wallet-size picture out to Billy.

  Trembling, he reached for it.

  The image leapt out from the paper: Pulchritude and youth, dark eyes staring straight ahead. Not truly smiling, a look of dignity, of determination: a young woman ready not only for the lifetime ahead, but also the tragedies and trials accompanying the joy, adventure and success; a face exuding strength, capability, and tenacity.

  Brilliant; beautiful; breathtaking. Billy’s epiphany came quiet and without warning, stabbing him in the gut like a silent assassin:

  Libby was the strongest, most centered person I’ve ever known. Everything I am not. No wonder. No wonder I loved her.

  Love her.

  Crying out, sudden, he shoved the picture away. “Don’t make me look at it,” he shouted.

  Kurosawa’s wind machines kicked into action at this moment of highest drama and emotion. Ruck, spastic, fumbled with the photo. Picked up by the wind, it disappeared over the balcony, fluttering into the darkness.

  Billy, screaming in grief, lunged for the rail: “Oh my god—!”

  At the last second before Billy’s weight sent him over, Ruck hollered and grabbed his old pal away from the railing. The force, however, sent them both tumbling backward and through the glass of the patio door, which shattered in a huge explosion.

  About the time Roy Earl and Melanie came through the door with the takeout food, Ruck and Billy, arms around one another like lovers, came to rest on the carpet in a shower of tinkling glass.

  Melanie screamed; Roy dropped the bulging plastic sack of Styrofoam containers and yelled out “What in the freaking fudge factory is going on here?”

  Devin, laughing, picked glass out of his mustache. “Well—that happened.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Billy called out, rolling over and facing them with his face covered in small cuts. “We’re not fighting. We’re okay, now. We’re fine.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Creedence

  Chelsea, alone in the emergency room examination bay with white, gauzy curtains pulled all around for privacy. Everything seemed so clean, neat and orderly.

  Thankful for the quiet after a whirlwind: the ambulance ride, getting checked over. The cramping. The dizziness. Dusty and Eileen’s stricken faces, his in particular. Looking like he was about to shit his britches.

  And now, Chelsea, truly alone: Estranged from her husband, yes, but following this miscarriage, her body was no longer the vessel for another life besides her own.

  Her brother. Why she thought of him, she didn’t know. How she ached for Devin. How she longed for the innocence of their childhood together, their absent friendship. Before he started drinking. Before the car accident. Maybe he’d come back and they could finally work all that out. Stranger things had happened.

  Crying to herself—hiding the tears from whom?—and guilty for not wanting the child, she worried that despite Dusty’s culpability, it had been her own will which caused the spontaneous abortion.

  Thinking: Maybe it was Buddy Lawler’s anyway, and feeling a rush of revulsion and despair like a gust of hot wind.

  Guilt, but also relief.

  Complicated, these emotions. Nothing as easy as they led on when you were little. Get a husband, get a baby, get yourself fulfilled. All else would work itself out.

  Bullcrud.

  Feeling queasy, like the hangover she had after that party with Billy and Devin, right before her brother left South Carolina like he was never coming back. Teenage girl hangovers had left her system with haste; wondering, now, if the aftermath of this experience would fade in quite so effi
cient a manner.

  The doctor, explaining that the miscarriage might have happened whether she’d fallen on the stairs or not: An extremely unfortunate but common event, miscarriages. The tumble after she tripped carrying the bag of groceries—that’s right, she only stumbled and fell; that’s what both Dusty and her mother had said to the paramedics, nodding to one another—may have simply accelerated a process already in motion.

  “These things happen, Mrs. Wallis. We don’t always know why. I wouldn’t worry about trying again in a few months. But be a little patient. It’ll be a while before your body’s back to normal.”

  Not far enough along to need a D&C, as a nurse explained, Chelsea’s body would rid itself of the remaining tissue over a period of a week to a month. The worst news? That she could expect to continue experiencing a kind of phantom pregnancy, likely manifesting as ongoing morning sickness and cramps. Joy.

  “You’ll have all sorts of odd little troublesome feelings.” The nurse, a huge African-American woman, spoke with a caring, patient tone. “You being clumsy didn’t have the first thing to do with this.”

  “No?”

  “We try to sort out what happens to us in life. Figure out ways to blame ourselves for things we don’t have in our control. But, sugar, the way it all plays out? It’s all only in God’s control, not ours. That’s the notion we got to give ourselves over to. That’s what makes it all add up.”

  Enough of this hooey. “I heard what the doctor said. When can I go?”

  “Let’s keep you a while. Check that bump on your head. See how you feel later.”

  After the nurse left, Chelsea lay listening to the buzzing of the fluorescents. She asked God that He get busy making all this add up.

  While waiting for an answer—it didn’t come; surprise!—the quiet was now disturbed by a murmuring of voices down the corridor. She heard Eileen’s raspy timbre, echoing, shrill and piercing:

  “You goddurn quacks better let me see my damn daughter,” coughing and sputtering and croaking. “And I mean right god-durn now.”

  Seconds later, Eileen, bustling and flailing through the curtain followed by a perturbed RN insisting, “Ma’am, you can’t be back here.”