The Ghosts of Now

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  It takes a few minutes to find the right person to speak to when I call the police. The operator who finally talks to me has more questions than I have.

  “Yes, we do keep a record of who calls,” she says. “But that’s not exactly public information—unless there’s a good reason. Why do you want to know?”

  “I—uh–want to thank whoever called,” I say. Mrs. Burrows looks up quickly. I turn my back on her, so I can’t see her.

  “Oh,” the police operator says. “Well, that’s nice, I guess. Just a minute.”

  She comes back with the name of Gerald Clary. Even his phone number.

  “Was he the only one?”

  “That’s the only name we’ve got.”

  “If someone else called, too, would you have that name?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, if Mr. Clary had already called, would you just tell the next person ‘never mind’ or something like that and not take his name?”

  “We record every call that comes in. It’s on tape as well as written down.” She sounds a little antagonistic.

  Something else occurs to me. “What if the call was anonymous?”

  “It would still be recorded. I thought you said you wanted to thank the person who called in. Just what are you getting at?”

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. “I just wanted to know who called. Thanks a lot for your help.”

  I press down the button on the phone, hold it just a second, then lift it to get a dial tone. I dial the operator and ask for Dr. Crane’s office.

  Someone is in the middle of telling me that Dr. Crane is not in and she’ll take a message when the doctor himself walks into Jeremy’s room.

  I simply hang up the phone and turn toward the doctor. “I’m so glad to see you,” I say. “I have an important question to ask you.”

  He takes off his glasses and squints at me as though I were a bug. Then he says, “I’ll take a look at my patient first, if you don’t mind.”

  Dr. Crane checks Jeremy’s chart, then takes his pulse. He lifts Jeremy’s eyelids and bends nearly into his face as he stares into his eyes with a little light. He keeps doing all the things I guess doctors must do. Finally, he nods to himself, makes a notation on Jeremy’s chart, straightens, and looks at me.

  “How is Jeremy?” I ask.

  “You’re his sister?”

  “Yes. How is he?”

  “No changes, to speak of.”

  “When will he wake up?”

  “That we can’t say.”

  He twiddles with the stethoscope that hangs over his dull brown business suit and moves toward the door.

  “Wait, Dr. Crane. I need to ask you something important.”

  He stops, takes off his glasses, rubs his nose, and puts them on again. “I thought I had answered your question.”

  “No. Not this one. I need to know if—well, if Jeremy had been drinking before he was brought to the hospital.”

  He frowns. “You think he had been drinking? Your brother is pretty young to be drinking, isn’t he?”

  “Jeremy’s friend, Boyd, told me he had been at a party, that he’d been drinking. I don’t think he—that he was right, and I need to be sure. Would you have by any chance checked to see if there was alcohol in his blood?”

  “We would have checked, and not just by any chance, young lady. We’re very thorough here, just as we would be if we were in a big city.”

  I suppose I can’t blame him for being irritated about Dad bringing in a specialist. Maybe I’d feel the same way if someone thought my work wasn’t good enough. But he shouldn’t take out his grumpiness on me.

  “Was there any trace of alcohol?”

  “No,” he says. “No trace of alcohol at all.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’m speaking to his back as he goes through the door. Okay. I’ve found out what I needed to know. Boyd’s story was nothing but lies, and I don’t know why. And I don’t know where to look for the truth. If only Jeremy could tell me.

  Mrs. Burrows gives a little sniff. “It’s none of my business, of course,” she says, “but it looks as though you’re deliberately trying to get a very nice boy into trouble.”

  “What?”

  I blink at her, watching her lips press together and open again before she adds, “It doesn’t really matter who said what or why, does it?”

  “I don’t understand this conversation.”

  “Probably not.” Her knitting never stops. “But when you say ‘Boyd,’ everyone in town knows you mean the Thacker boy, and what’s the point of suggesting that he tells falsehoods?” Without a pause she says, “He mows my lawn in the summer, y’know. Lovely boy.”

  “I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” I tell her. “I’m just trying to find out what happened to my brother.”

  She doesn’t answer. I turn and gaze down at Jeremy with the same strong feeling that there are answers I need to find in order to pull him back. And I can’t talk to him. Not with Mrs. Burrows here.

  It’s not quite time for Dad to leave his office, but I call him anyway.

  Mrs. Burrows makes a little humming noise in her nose and says quietly, as though she’s talking to herself, “They charge fifty cents for each phone call.”

  Dad answers, and I tell him where I am and ask if I can get a ride home.

  “I’ll come over right away,” he says. “We’re at a standstill here, and I’d like to see Jeremy.” There’s a pause. “I suppose his condition hasn’t changed?”

  “No.”

  His voice sounds tired as he says, “I’ll be there in a few minutes, Angie.”

  He is there in just a few minutes, but he doesn’t want to stay. He sort of pats in the direction of Jeremy’s toes, makes some small talk with Mrs. Burrows, and leads me out of the room.

  Dad’s got something on his mind, and I’d feel like an intruder to break in, so for a while we don’t talk. Finally he says, “Angie, there’s something strange going on. Maybe you can tell me why.”

  I turn to look at him, and he adds, “This afternoon our land department got word from the bank that they won’t cooperate on some right-of-way leases that up until today looked as though they’d go through with no problems.”

  “I don’t know anything about right-of-way leases.”

  “No, but you do know that Grandy Hughes is president of the bank.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He sighs. “Never mind, Angie. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It couldn’t have anything to do with—”

  His voice trails off, and he’s back into his thoughts again. I hate this town. I can’t wait until next year, when I’m back in California.

  As we come in through the kitchen we hear voices in the direction of the living room. Someone is babbling on, with a chorus of giggles in the background.

  Dad and I look at each other.

  “I guess Mom’s got company,” I say.

  “That’s good,” he answers, his words rising as though they’re on a musical scale. “I’m glad that she’s got someone with her.”

  I follow him into the living room. Mom is there, leaning back against the deep cushions of the sofa. She has kicked her shoes off, and she waves a glass in our direction. “There’s Greg!” she says to the two women with her. “You know Greg.” She giggles. “And my daughter, Angie, whom youm don’t know.”

  They all think that’s terribly funny, and I can see that anything anyone said would be terribly funny. There’s an empty Scotch bottle on the coffee table, along with an almost full one and a shiny aluminum ice bucket that’s sweating and dripping all over the table.

  Mom sits up straight after a couple of tries. “Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Grein—my daughter Angie.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  Mrs. Dunlap squints through a film of cigarette smoke that’s the same gray-brown as her hair. She takes her cigarette from her mouth, smiles, and murmurs something, but Mrs. Grein bats her fake eyelashes at Dad and says, “My goodnes
s, Greg, if you’re home from work already, then I’d better get home and make dinner for Jake!”

  “It’s a little early,” he says. “I stopped by the hospital to pick up Angie and see Jeremy.”

  Immediately both women’s faces twist into serious expressions. “We came by to try to cheer up Barbara. That was a terrible thing. Simply terrible,” Mrs. Grein says.

  “We’d better go,” Mrs. Dunlap says. She stubs out the pink-smeared butt of her cigarette into an already filled ashtray and heaves herself out of her chair and onto her feet.

  Mrs. Grein fumbles inside her handbag for her car keys, dropping them a couple of times as she digs down for a glasses case. Finally she tucks her sunglasses on her nose and her handbag strap over her shoulder. She gets to her feet and holds out a hand to Mom.

  It’s anyone’s guess which one of them needs steadying the most. They sort of hold each other up, reminding me of a rag doll dance some kids did in a talent show when I was in seventh grade.

  “Maybe I’d better drive you home,” Dad says, and Mrs. Grein gets coy again.

  “Now, Greg, don’t look so serious. We just had a couple of little drinkie-poos.” I’m about to gag when she adds, “Nothing that would interfere with my driving. Evelyn isn’t worried about my driving, are you, Evelyn?”

  “Not any more than usual,” Evelyn says, and the three women laugh hysterically.

  By this time we’ve all reached the front door. “Thanks again for coming,” Mom tells them. They hug her again as they leave.

  “That’s not going to help,” Dad says. He frowns down at Mom, who curls her lip in a little pout.

  “Don’t be so stuffy, Greg,” she says. “I had to be so-sociable.” She has trouble getting the last word out, so she frowns, too, and adds, “Besides, it does help.”

  “You’re drinking too much lately,” he says.

  Mom stands up so stiffly that she loses her balance and puts out a hand to steady herself against the wall. “Oh? You mean you’ve been counting? Hmmm?”

  Dad doesn’t answer. He just turns and walks out to the kitchen.

  “I better make dinner,” I tell her. My voice comes out as cold as Dad’s had been, and Mom blinks at me. I didn’t mean to sound that way, but I can’t help it. For a few moments I wish I hadn’t come home at all.

  “Angie,” Mom says, and she clutches my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “You and Greg—you just don’t understand.”

  I don’t know how to answer her. Maybe I don’t understand. Maybe I don’t want to. But I think about Jeremy. I don’t know any more about Mom than I do about him. “I thought you’d be at the hospital with Jeremy,” I blurt out. “You weren’t with him when I got there after school.”

  Mom’s shoulders sag, and her voice is high, like a little girl’s. “I sat with Jeremy most of the morning, and he slept. He just slept, Angie.”

  Her fingers tighten on my arms, and the pressure hurts. Instinctively I step backward, pulling away. “I’d better do something about dinner, Mom.”

  “Angie, I did what you said. I told him that I love him.”

  I’m still walking backward. “That’s good, Mom.” Her face is crumpling, and she starts to cry.

  “He didn’t move. He didn’t answer me. I don’t think he heard me at all.”

  “Oh, Mom! Don’t do that, Mom!”

  “Angie!” Dad calls. “Where the hell is the bread knife?”

  I turn and run toward the kitchen.

  Dad is standing in the center of the kitchen, his hands at his sides, looking as uncomfortable as a pedestrian caught by a light change in the middle of rush hour traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. If I ever get married, my husband is going to have to know how to cook.

  “We could have sandwiches, I suppose,” Dad says. “Do you know what we’ve got on hand for sandwiches?”

  “I’ll fix something,” I tell him. I put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you talk to Mom? I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

  “Not now,” he says, and he drags a chair from the table, screeking it across the floor.

  “She was crying.”

  His mouth tightens, and he leans against the table, his hands against his chin in that gesture I know so well. “Leave it alone, Angie.”

  I pull out the rest of the leftover pot roast, slice it, and put it in a pan with some bottled barbecue sauce to simmer. I open a can of string beans and chop some lettuce, tomatoes, and green pepper in a bowl for salad. All this time Dad doesn’t say a word. He sits at the table, staring at nothing. I wonder if he’s thinking about Mom or Jeremy. I know he doesn’t want to talk, but I need to. And this seems like the right time, so I sit across the table from him, where he has to look at me.

  He still doesn’t say anything, so I blurt out, “Dad, I don’t think you’ve noticed that Mom’s awfully lonely.”

  He blinks a couple of times, staring at me. “I’m sorry, Angie. I’m trying to work out a problem. I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “A problem about Mom?”

  Again he looks at me as though he’s on a different plane entirely. Then he shakes his head. “This is a personnel problem, something at the office I’ve got to handle before tomorrow.”

  “Dad, I was trying to tell you about Mom. She’s lonely.”

  “Lonely? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. She has you children. She has me.”

  I think of how I felt when I had to say good-bye to Meredith. Was it like that for Mom each time she moved away from friends? “Maybe that’s not enough for Mom,” I say, and I know it’s the wrong thing when the lines under Dad’s eyes sag and he looks as though I’ve struck him. “That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I was thinking about friends, and—”

  But Dad shoves back his chair and stands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeats.

  I watch him stride from the room, his back as stiff as a toy soldier’s, and I smell the sticky-sour sauce that is scorching into bitter blackness on the bottom of the pan.

  I turn off the stove and stir dressing into the salad. “Dad,” I yell. “Dinner’s ready.”

  No one answers, so I walk back through the house. There’s a murmur of voices coming from the open doorway to their bedroom. Mom blows her nose, and her voice is heavy with drips and hiccups.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I repeat.

  “We heard you, Angie. Thank you,” Dad says.

  I don’t want this, and I don’t want dinner. I get my handbag, fishing out the car keys, and head for the door. There is something else I’ve got to do. Once in a political science class our teacher said, “In any argument look for the weakest link. That’s where you’ll be able to break through.”

  In this situation I know where the weakest link is. Debbie. It’s time to talk to her, face to face.

  But Debbie’s face is not what I get.

  I hear heavy footsteps coming to her front door, thudding across the polished wooden floor in the entry hall. The door swings open, and I look eye-to-eye at a short, slightly pudgy, balding man who has eyes like smooth, round stones. If this is Debbie’s father, she’s lucky she looks like her mother.

  “Mr. Hughes?”

  “Yes.” There’s no uplift of question in his voice, as though he doesn’t care who I am.

  “May I please speak to Debbie?”

  “Debbie’s not here.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Not for a week or so. She went to visit her aunt in Lubbock.”

  Over his shoulder I see Mrs. Hughes, craning her neck as she tries to peer out the door. I hear a muffled “Oh!” when she recognizes me.

  “I’m Angie Dupree,” I tell him. “May I please come in? I had wanted to talk to Debbie, but maybe it would help if I talk to you and Mrs. Hughes.”

  His eyebrows move together like two caterpillars in collision. Mrs. Hughes squeezes close behind him, whispering in his left ear. Only one word comes through, and that is “no.”

  “You’r
e trying to cause a lot of trouble, young lady,” he says. “Do you realize how much damage you’ve done?”

  “I don’t want to cause any damage,” I tell him. “But I must find out what happened to my brother.” The door is moving toward its frame, an inch at a time; so I quickly add, “Maybe everything will work out if I can just get the answers I need. I’ve found out some things that probably involve Debbie, but if you won’t talk to me, I’ll go back to the police.”

  “Hold on a minute,” he says. The door swings almost closed, and I hear vague mumbles and mutters behind it as Mr. and Mrs. Hughes discuss what I’ve said.

  It slowly opens wide, and the two of them stand there, glaring at me. “Come on in,” Mr. Hughes says.

  If it weren’t for Jeremy I’d run, but I’ve got to find out.

  I step inside and follow them across the entry hall, past the wide staircase, and into a paneled den complete with built-in gun rack and a coffee table with an orderly row of House Beautiful and Ladies’ Home Journal.

  I follow the direction of the hand Mr. Hughes has flung out and sink into one end of a love seat. They perch opposite me on a matching love seat.

  “Well?” Mr. Hughes asks, so I try to tell them what happened, including most of what Boyd told me.

  “That’s all it was!” Mrs. Hughes squeals like the tires on an old car coming to a fast halt. “It was a party! Just a harmless little party!”

  Her fingers fumble with the neckline of her dress, and she calms down a bit, adding, “Oh, we know the kids are too young to drink, but after all, everyone does it, and all the kids in Baby’s—Debbie’s—crowd are good kids.”

  “That wasn’t a harmless party. My brother was hit by a car.”

  “It wasn’t Debbie’s car, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Mr. Hughes says.

  I shrug. “You had Debbie’s car fixed in a big hurry. Then you sent the mechanic out of town on a vacation.”

  Their eyes meet as though little magnets pulled them together. He quickly looks back at me. “Where did you get that information?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  He gives a long sigh. “Listen to me, Angie. That night some of Debbie’s friends dropped her off at home. She woke us up and told us about the party. She said it had got out of hand, and there were a few kids who drank too much.”