Frank understood now. These days. The meadow was good after all. Lauren had been right. Moving, exercising, getting a good night’s sleep.
Oh, to see Lauren again.
Frank walked. As the almost cartoonish nature of the deep dark woods had him thinking of movie sets like The Wizard of Oz, where the browns were perhaps too brown and the greens too green, but in the end thank God for that, or those same woods might’ve been a bit scary to traverse. And who could be scared when salvation lay in the Lauren meadow less than a mile away, here on a perfect summer afternoon, a Saturday no less, away from the office, away from the home, and away from the windows of that home, the windows Lauren used to longingly look through as though constantly wanting to be out in the world, out moving and walking, exercising, eating well, breathing fresh air, anywhere but near Frank and the television and a dinner of pizza and fries? Frank got it. Now, these days. In the six years since Lauren’s passing, he’d shed some six or seven pounds, eaten more vegetables, taken more walks.
Like this walk.
The walk that brought him to the end of the woods and thus to the sunlight glossing the colorful meadow before him. Oh, to see this meadow reflected in Lauren’s eyes: the reds and purples, the whites and yellows and greens. The smell changed, a better smell, the second he crossed the boundary of woods and meadow; a new smell so sudden it was as if he’d been in the meadow all along, as if the woods were morning and this, here, at last, the day.
Ahead, the meadow stretched a half-mile until it faded into a grassy hill that rose to meet more woods. But for the moment, the space looked like forever, open and hopeful.
No guilt out here. Nowhere to hide at all.
But that wasn’t entirely so. No. As Frank squinted into the sunlight ahead he saw something that possibly didn’t belong. Surely a thing that hadn’t ever been in the meadow before. If it was a city sign, he couldn’t read it from this distance, rectangular and raised, probably telling people like Frank there would be NO TRESPASSING on a perfect day like today.
Frank didn’t turn back, and the closer he got, the less he believed it was a sign. In fact, whatever it was, it seemed to reflect the blue of the sky, the meadow itself, so that, from this distance, it looked something like a painting upon an easel, left behind by an artist who had decided a lone widower ought to find it, encounter the reality and the rendering at once. Frank could easily imagine a man or a woman having fallen for the still air, the peaceful quiet, the inherent health and beauty of the meadow. He looked for him or her. The artist. As the unavoidable floor of flowers and tall grass crunched underfoot, he looked for who had left this painting, this picture, this inspiration, proof of a good place that Lauren loved so dearly.
But as he approached, as he continued to out-walk the guilt he’d felt coming, he saw it wasn’t only sky and meadow in the frame but a person, too.
He raised a hand and waved. The person waved back. That person was himself.
A reflection, then. The back of a metal sign? Reflecting the meadow, the sky, himself?
Frank continued, hands in his pockets now, feeling less alone, more like he was being watched, more like whoever had put the sign up was still here, nearby, close enough that he or she might pop out from behind a tree, say, hey there, you look like you thought you were alone, you look genuinely surprised.
You look guilty.
Frank stopped walking. He had to. Because he’d gotten close enough now to see the thing was clearly not a sign, and since it was also not a painting he had to make sense of what it actually was.
A window. Suspended, it seemed, above the meadow.
There was no debating it. The rectangular frame, the chipped wooden crossbar that indicated the split between the panes of glass, the place a person might put their hands to push it open.
Frank laughed. What else was there to do? And how might one rename “sense” if there was something in the way of making it? He didn’t doubt it was a window. It was undeniably so. So how to explain it? He looked to the far boundaries of the meadow, expecting to see stranger artists than the ones he’d imagined only moments ago, this window being some sort of theater, an installation, performance art, something. There was clearly no stand propping the window up and certainly no arching branch above for it to be hung. Yet… there it hung. Unwavering. As though lodged into a house he could not see.
Frank didn’t like it. Didn’t like the feeling it gave him. As if the window itself was more alone than he thought he’d been. As if, even, someone were looking out from the window, a face on the other side of the glass, not his own reflected.
Frank stepped aside, but there was nowhere to hide in all this open meadow.
A cloud covered the sun, the reflection in the glass slipped away. Frank no longer needed to squint at the houseless window.
What he saw scared him deeply. Space. Room. An impossible, dim-lit depth behind the glass.
An under-exercised part of his mind told him he had two choices and two choices only: go straight home and stay forever afraid of what he’d seen in the meadow, or make sense of this now.
“Hello?” he called. Because he had to. Had to make a sound, prove he was still Frank in the meadow.
A face behind the glass. Maybe. Swallowed by the reflection of the meadow, as the sun shone again.
“Lauren?”
He hadn’t told himself it’s her, hadn’t even decided if it was a face at all. But her name came out all the same.
Frank stepped back from the window.
He thought of his dead wife standing by the window at home, thought of her longing to go outside. She did that a lot, especially near the end of things, the days when she grew increasingly sick, as her weight dropped considerably, as she struggled to flash healthy smiles in his direction, Frank still sitting on the couch, smiling able-bodied in return, thinking, I’ve been poisoning you for a week. How long does it take?
Movement behind the glass? Frank stepped back from the window. Again. A little more.
How long, indeed! Perhaps that answer lay in the very method and delivery of the poison, as Frank had slipped it into the one thing Lauren wouldn’t mind staying home for, the one thing she enjoyed almost as much as the meadow: good, healthy food.
How torturous those days had been, being forced to sustain a feeling of righteousness, when a single violent motion could’ve done the trick in seconds or less!
A tapping on the glass? Frank came out of his reverie, his nerves electric with the heat of sudden fear. As if the explanation for the suspended window was about to be given straight out under the blinding sun, clear as the growing guilt.
He stared for a long time at the glass. No tapping, no. Nobody at the glass to tap it. Rather, a new cloud had come, lessening the reflection once more, exposing more of the depth behind the impossible glass.
A room, absolutely. A dark room right here in the middle of the blazing afternoon.
Frank ducked, momentarily, looking to the flowers and tall grass beyond the suspended window, as if he might see there an expanse of darkness, a long stretch of an empty room impossibly placed in the meadow.
Life behind the glass? No. Frank didn’t think so. Frank refused to think so.
Widower. Window. Window. Widower.
“Go home,” he told himself. “Get some sleep. Drink some water.”
He turned his back on the glass. Saw movement, new colors emerging from the woods.
A man in blue?
Two.
Frank, he thought. Hide.
But where? The woods were too far. The flowers and tall grass too out in the open.
Frank imagined the men pointing at him on the meadow floor.
That’s him. Guy who poisoned his wife’s vegetables. His wife who meant no harm. His wife who was right. Walks are good. Water and fresh air. Get up off the couch. Don’t hide from the real world, Frank.
Frank looked to the sky, as if there might be a rope ladder, something to remove him from the meadow.
&
nbsp; He looked to the window.
To the darkness beyond the glass.
Then, incredibly, he was placing his hands upon the chipped wood of the lower pane’s frame, pushing the window open.
He heard the men talking as he lifted his leg through the nothingness beneath the window. As he planted a shoe on the sill. As he climbed into the suspended, foundationless frame.
On the other side, his nose to the glass, he watched the men approach. Their strong forms testing the stitches of their uniforms. Frank ducked to the side, watched them by way of peering, leering, imagining them pointing to the window, saying, It took us six years but we found him. He’s in there. In that room. Hiding from the real world.
They were in range of the window now. Must have been able to see it. But neither pointed. Neither squinted. Neither said, What’s that suspended in the meadow?
Instead, they talked. Nodded to each other’s words Frank couldn’t hear.
Or could he? Certainly he’d heard something. Words indeed. Words from the dark room he stood in.
He turned. Saw life in that darkness. No. Saw death. Saw a ghost and poisoned food.
Oh, to see Lauren again.
Frank tried to open the window. Pounded on the glass.
“HELP!” he cried. “LET ME OUT!”
The men in blue were so close now. Weapons at their hips that could so easily shatter the glass. Hands that could so easily open the window.
“HELP!”
Frank’s hands were wet from the glass. As if the pane were made of tears.
More words from the darkness. Movement, too.
One officer looked in the direction of the window as they walked, his eyes and nose less than a foot from the glass. Frank pounded. The man in blue seemed to look through the glass, straight through the room itself, tilting his head, briefly, as if perhaps hearing the almost undetectable sound of poison being sprinkled into a bowl of soup. Then he was nodding again, walking past the window, in step with his fellow officer. Frank heard their muffled words, heard them loud enough to understand them, as a cloud covered the sun again, bringing to life a reflection here, inside, this side of the glass.
“How it should be,” one officer said, “in the end.”
“You believe in that?” asked the other. “After what we’ve seen?”
But Frank couldn’t see them anymore, as they’d passed from view, as the whole of the meadow was replaced with the dim-lit reflection of the room.
And a face, too. Over his shoulder.
Coming to look out the window.
Oh, to see Lauren again.
Oh, to see Lauren.
Oh.
THE CHAIN WALK
Helen Grant
At any rate, I wasn’t cruel to her, Fraser said to himself as he stared down into the open grave.
He could feel the first drops of rain on his face. Scottish weather was always unpredictable, especially along the coastline. Sunshine had been forecast, but now fat raindrops were running down his cheeks like the tears he was unable to produce. Fraser felt mildly irritated with himself for having forgotten to bring an umbrella; there was something melodramatic about standing bareheaded in a downpour at the side of a grave. Mostly, however, he wondered about the coffin.
It’s what she would have wanted – that was a phrase that had been bandied about rather a lot while the funeral was being planned. Ishbel had been into nature and the environment; even in the last stages of her illness, she had loved to sit by the window, watching the birds on the bird table and the changing colours of the sky. Cremation wasn’t for her, nor confinement to a solid wooden casket. A biodegradable coffin, that was what she would have wanted – an ecologically friendly burial that would allow her to dissolve naturally into the earth’s embrace. Fraser had gone for cardboard, which coincidentally was inexpensive too.
Now he looked at the coffin with its printed pattern of leaves and flowers and wondered what would happen if it got really wet.
The rain was getting heavier; his hair would soon be plastered to his head. He blinked against the water running into his eyes, and the blurry mourners on the other side of the grave swam back into focus. Ishbel’s sister Kirsty was weeping so hard under her umbrella that her mascara had run. Black was bleeding down her plump face, marring skin surfaced to perfection with foundation. She was pitiable in her grief, Fraser knew that. He couldn’t wait for the funeral to be over.
He looked down into the grave again and saw that the coffin was now sitting in a centimetre or two of rainwater. The lid was shiny with it. He imagined the water rising, rising, until the coffin was floating, bumping gently against the sides of the hole like a boat straining at its moorings. Or would the cardboard begin to disintegrate before that happened? He didn’t know.
Lost in thought, it took him a few moments to realise that the ceremony was over. Kirsty was turning away, leaning heavily on her brother. The mourners began to drift towards the waiting cars, eager to get out of the rain, to get to the wake where the comfort of food and drink awaited.
Fraser was in no hurry to follow them. It meant at least another hour of talking about what had happened and enduring the condolences. He wouldn’t have dared to say to anyone: It’s a relief. All the same, he didn’t want to hear anyone say how very sorry they were. He particularly didn’t want anyone to squeeze his shoulder, making a happy-sad face at him to show their sympathy.
He glanced down once more at the coffin, and then looked about him, orienting himself in this new, Ishbel-free world. A flash of yellow caught his eye: discreetly positioned behind a tree, a small digger waited to fill in the grave. Fraser supposed he had better follow the others. He didn’t want to watch clods of earth splashing down into the open hole.
The wake was a short drive away in Elie, Ishbel’s hometown. Kirsty had never moved away, so her house was the obvious place to hold it. Kirsty hadn’t done any of the catering, though. Her sister-in-law Catriona had made platefuls of unappetising sandwiches, egg mayonnaise or ham between dog-eared triangles of plain bread. There was plenty of weak tea, and not nearly enough whisky. She handed these things round, and Kirsty sat on the overstuffed sofa with a handkerchief pressed to her face and the panda eyes of grief. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry.”
Fraser endured it as best he could. After a quarter of an hour, he went and stood by the patio doors, looking out at the garden and hoping that people would have the sense to leave him alone. The glass panes were still spotted with raindrops, but the sun was already coming out. It was Scottish weather altogether: sodden one moment and radiant the next. Fraser remembered a hillwalking trip long ago, when he had experienced rain, snow and blistering sunshine all in one day. Today was almost as extreme; soon he saw a faint vapour rising as the patio stones and the neat square of lawn dried out.
Fraser wanted to turn his mind to the future. His life was entirely his own now, after all; it was not unreasonable to plan. In fact, it was healthy.
I did the right thing, he said to himself, and indeed, he did have the sense that he had achieved something. I stayed when other men would have left. She never knew, he told himself. She thought I loved her, right up to the end.
After that, he deserved what he had earned: the small inheritance, the future freedom.
She died happy, Fraser said to himself.
Still, he couldn’t make his thoughts stay on his own prospects; they kept turning back to the falling rain, the wet hole in the ground, the water soaking into the printed cardboard. In his mind’s eye, he saw the clods of earth dropping from the bucket of the digger; he saw how thick and sticky they were from the saturating rain. He imagined them thumping down onto the damp cardboard lid, buckling it. It would be like covering the coffin with wet cement. If Ishbel had lain there alive, she would soon have been so compressed that she could not have expanded her chest to take a single breath. But Ishbel was never going to take a breath again.
Watching the sunshine, and the vapour rising from th
e garden outside, he wondered if the same heat was making tendrils of steam rise from the freshly covered grave.
When someone laid a hand on Fraser’s arm, he started violently.
“Fraser,” said his brother-in-law, a slight slur in his voice; it seemed he had made the most of the limited whisky supply – or brought his own. He peered into Fraser’s face, which must have been etched with the shock of the sudden jump, and interpreted the expression as grief. “A terrible thing, Fraser,” he said. “A terrible thing.”
“Yes, Callum,” said Fraser, “it’s a terrible thing.”
He made up his mind to leave then, before Callum poured out any more of his maudlin whisky-fuelled condolences on him. He thought there was a very real risk he might put both hands on Callum’s chest and shove him away as hard as he could. So he shook his head to indicate that the wicked mysteries of Fate were beyond him, and slipped past his brother-in-law, making for the front door.
In the hall, he met Catriona carrying a plate of biscuits.
“I need a wee bit of air,” said Fraser, doing his best to look tragic. He opened the door and escaped.
It was warm in the sunshine and he couldn’t wait to get out of his funeral suit; the stiff new shirt and sombre tie were irritatingly restrictive. He walked back through the town to the inn where he had taken a room. As soon as he was alone with the door closed, Fraser ripped off his formal clothes, leaving them scattered all over the bed.
Thank God it’s over. He didn’t examine that thought too closely.
He briefly considered taking a shower, but the memory of the water pattering down into the open grave was still too fresh. Instead, he pulled on jeans and a sweater and flopped into a chair. He supposed that later he would go downstairs and order a meal and a large Scotch, but for now he would do nothing at all. It would be a luxury. When he looked back at the last days, weeks, months – years even – he saw nothing but an unending stream of obligations. Appointments, waiting rooms, meetings, household chores, letters, test results, handholding, and talking, talking, talking. The memory of it made him want to put his hands over his ears. All that talking, and yet it hadn’t brought him closer to Ishbel. The things she had wanted to say had seemed to take her further away from him; they were radio signals from a foreign country. And now there was silence.
Phantoms Page 15
