THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston

by Thomas Kennedy Lowenstein

“Phillip,” she said. She was going to tell him what dying was like but when she closed her eyes it was right there and to try to speak of it might only encourage it and she was apprehensive. A high blue summer afternoon and Phillip had finally gotten her alone, inside the guest cabin, everyone else away at a picnic and they had talked about it, he had convinced her she was ready and old enough to decide for herself without consulting God or what someone else would tell her God would say. And she wanted to, of course she did; he had smelled good; they’d held hands all across the meadow to the cabin in the sun but once inside Phillip wasn’t just one smell he was every smell, sweet and hair goo and warm skin and as he pressed on her she tipped her head back and looked out the window: the sun was sparkling on the green water in the sound, the sailboats and rowboats knocking against the dock. She was ready, she knew it had to happen sometime and knew that it would change things utterly and even if the change was for the better she liked things as they were and also it was supposed to hurt, she was scared of that. Phillip smelling of warm—the tapping of the boats—the rafters above her—why not fall asleep with your head on the soft grass instead. But how much would it hurt?

  She opened her eyes and took a drag from her cigarette. The room was dark save for the light on the bedside table. There was a window above her but it was dark, too.

  “My father,” Mrs. Atlee said. “I was going to tell you….”

  Sam nodded, putting the book on the floor.

  “Well,” Mrs. Atlee said. “My father was a sonofabitch. Have I told you that before?” She looked at Sam and he shook his head. “A real sonofabitch. You’ve never seen a person more like a turkey hawk in a stiff suit than my father. We lived in a small town that was mostly marsh but, my God, if it had been the entire kingdom of England he couldn’t have lorded over it more than he did. Walking Center Street on his way home in the evening, only acknowledging the few people he thought worthy. The others he’d just look at. We could only play with certain other children, the ones he thought were of good enough family. Anytime we played with the wrong child or ate cookies at the wrong house on the way home from school we’d get a beating, and he’d do it calmly like it caused him no feeling at all. Once I got my nicest church dress dirty and he beat me with his belt and he said, ‘Little girls do not run after little boys, do you understand me?’

  “I remember one day after a spanking, I couldn’t have been more than five or six, burrowing my face into someone’s skirt and grabbing on to one of the legs underneath. I was saying ‘Mother’ over and over again. I think it was her, but maybe it was the nanny and I was asking for her. I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Atlee’s voice was a whisper. She took a sip of water.

  “Every weekend, or once a month—maybe it was all the time or maybe it just seems that way now, I don’t know. But we’d ride the train up to Boston, the train was so exciting, with all the steam and the way it would chug and get faster. We’d go up to visit Grandmother. We called her Nanna Leez. We’d all sit in the parlor in the Beacon Street house, right next to the common there, and the grownups talked so quietly and in such short sentences I didn’t think it was possible to understand them most of the time. I didn’t think they could really understand each other. We’d take lunch in the dining room. You’ve never seen such a table, Sam. Beautiful, dark wood, with all the candlesticks reflecting off it. Nanna Leez had two crystal bowls on it, filled with chocolates, with lids so heavy it was hard to get them off without making any noise. But if you could manage it before lunch started you could eat all the chocolate you wanted to. Of course, if Father caught you at it, well, good luck to you. Nanna Leez would just tell you you were naughty and look around to see if anyone else had seen you and if they hadn’t she’d just frown at you and give you one more chocolate and tell you not to do it again.”

  Mrs. Atlee stopped and touched her lips with her fingertip and coughed. Sam took the soggy end of her cigarette and put it out. She took sips of water, gasping, her face in a gray grimace against the white pillowcase. At length, she continued.

  “My father, Charles, had a brother, Theodore, and a sister, Isabel. They grew up in the house on Beacon Street. It had this great curving staircase that went up all four flights. The parlor and the dining room were on the second floor. I remember my grandfather had a war collection he kept in a tiny room in the attic, I remember seeing it when I was little. It had impossibly long muskets from a hundred years before, revolvers you could barely hold at arms’ length, rifles from the Indian Wars, civil war hats and sashes, polished swords. The cavalry sword scared me the most, it was so long, and the way it curved was terrible. There was even an Indian headdress. We weren’t allowed to touch any of it.

  “Once Uncle Theo took me up there and I made aunt Isabel come. I remember him telling me, ‘This is the pistol your great-great-great uncle used on Bunker Hill.’ We had one candle with us, he wouldn’t turn the lamp on. He held that pistol in both palms.” Mrs. Atlee lowered her voice to imitate her uncle. “‘He was there until the bitter end, I can tell you,’ he told us. ‘And when the redcoats finally breached the hill on the third try a British sergeant came rushing at him and he raised this pistol and steadied it’—I’ll never forget how he said this, I think he was imitating grandfather—‘girls, to steady a weapon at a moment like that is the supreme act of will. Think of the smoke and the musketry around him, men fighting to the death hand-to-hand on every side, the British sergeant rushing at him with a bloody face and wild eyes and teeth bared in a terrible scream that he couldn’t hear with all the other screams. And at five yards—no more—he leveled this pistol and shot the redcoat between the eyes. And then two more redcoats were on top of him and he fought them off with a sword and backed down to Charlestown neck, fighting for every inch of ground. The sword was shattered in his hand by a ball, but he saved the pistol and had it with him through the whole war. Your great-great-great uncle.’ He was looking right at me. I held my aunt’s hand.

  “Then he held that pistol out and we stared at it. It was like the smoke and blood filled my mind, I was trying to imagine the worst noise I could, the worst screams. On our way downstairs I started crying and Aunt Isabel sat me on a chair and knelt in front of me and said, ‘No, never show them that.’ She told me how their father would tell them that story when they were little and her brothers would run to the Common whenever they could to play Bunker Hill, and she’d have to stay inside and watch from an upstairs window.”

  Mrs. Atlee sighed and adjusted the pillow behind her head.

  “She was brave, Sam, very brave. Her father made her do boys’ chores and she never complained, not once. She had to carry wood up the back staircase to every fireplace in the house. Can you imagine? A wisp of a girl. His children didn’t have to know how to work but by God they would. I remember my father telling me the same thing.”

  Mrs. Atlee slumped. Sam held a glass for her and she took a sip.

  “You should sleep,” Sam said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. But when she closed her eyes the cabin and Phillip and the grass hung splintered, twisting with the black blood of her insides and not just pain but all the pain she’d ever had, each ache and scab whirling her now to sleep. Why not fall asleep with your head on the grass, why bother with the pain and the change—now was good. Now was good, really.

  Her lips moved. She blinked.

  “Sleep,” Sam said.

  She knew he had no idea what that meant, or what it could mean. But she had to do it, sooner or later, so she slept.

  Chapter Ten

  Book Club Flyer

  Alice woke up because Ed was kissing her neck.

  “Hi, Sweetbird,” he whispered.

  She moved her cheek, nuzzling against him. She wondered when she’d have time to put up the flyers for the book club. She felt Ed’s arms around her.

  “Come on,” she said, patting his forearm. “Time to get going. C’mon, Eddie.”

  “I hate leaving you in the morning,” he said.r />
  “Yeah.”

  “What?” Ed asked.

  “You just don’t like coming home at night,” Alice said. Her nightgown was open at the neck and she saw her own skin and pulled it closed. Something about the morning, about seeing her own breast that way, made it look all used up.

  “That’s bull, Alice, and you know it.” Ed turned on his back. “I gotta work, Al.” His hair stood up around his head and his white t-shirt stretched across his belly.

  “I work hard, too, Eddie,” Alice said. “I don’t want to have this argument.” She got out of bed.

  “Al,” Ed pleaded. But she was walking slowly across the floor, rubbing her eyes.

  When the kids and Ed had left, Alice called Viv to tell her her phone number was on it.

  “Jesus, Alice. What’s the first book?”

  “I just picked one from the website. It’s called My Tiny Home or something. It’s short. We can change it if we want, they just said it was good to have a title on the flyer.”

  “Did you do the little tear-off thingies at the bottom?”

  “What?”

  “You know, at the bottom of the flyer. So people can take your number—I mean, my number.” Viv laughed.

  “I forgot,” Alice said. She looked in a drawer for the scissors but of course they weren’t there. No one ever put things away. “Goddamn it,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, Hon,” Viv said. “Next time, I’ll do the flyer with tear-offs and put your number on it.” She laughed again.

  “My number’s on there, too,” Alice said. “I didn’t just put yours.” She sat at the kitchen table, looking at the dirty dishes. “Hey, Viv, does Bob use the computer a lot?”

  “What, Hon? Oh, God yes, he’s on there all the time.”

  “Yeah. Ed, too.”

  “You know what they use it for, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, for work. Ed uses it—”

  Viv laughed loudly, a sound like rusted breath. “No, no,” she said. “It’s for porn. All men use their computers to look at porn.”

  “I do not want to think about that,” Alice said.

  “Me neither, but it’s true. I read about it in a magazine. It’s like, only half or something admit to it, but they all do it. And the last time Bob tried to climb in bed with me at two in the morning, I told him to go somewhere else.”

  Alice laughed quietly. “Jeez,” she said. Kimoh. What was that? Someone from Ed’s job like he said, or some kind of porno thing?

  “Alright, Hon, gotta go,” Viv said.

  “Ok. I’m going to put the flyer up this morning. If anyone calls you, be nice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll tell ’em it’s a great book. What’s it called again?”

  Alice put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, loaded her cleaning supplies into her mini-van, and drove in the direction of her first job. She chewed a thumbnail and sucked on her knuckle and told herself not to be whiny, everything was all right.

  The sun, sharp and clear through chilly air, lit leaves and signs, fast-food restaurants and shopping malls. She turned into the parking lot of the redbrick library that reminded her of the elementary school she’d gone to. Inside, the first-floor study area was bright and quiet. An old man with choppy white hair was sitting at a table, sleeping.

  “Hi, Alice, how are you?” a plump librarian with enormous cheeks asked her.

  “Fine,” Alice said. But what was her name? Laura, Lauren, something. Little someone’s mother. Alice smiled and asked after husband, children. She turned to consider the community corkboard, full of announcements and posters.

  “Did you have something you wanted to put up?” the librarian asked.

  “Just a flyer for a book club,” Alice said. “You should come.”

  The librarian said maybe she would and showed her where on the corkboard flyers went. The sun shone through the windows and dust floated in the light.

  Alice thanked her and tacked the flyer up. Her sneakers squeaked on the floor as she left. She could leave another one at the supermarket and still be on time to her first job. Even thinking about cleaning brought back the smells of bleach and wet sponges and the food crusted to last night’s dinner dishes softening under a stream of hot water. Had she forgotten hand cream? She could buy some at the market, later, after her first job. The yellow rubber gloves she wore for cleaning were good but her fingers still got soggy in there and then dried out.

  She blinked. She was driving. This was a road and other cars and people walking in the clear sun. This was. Life. Her life. Of all the sacred things to notice. Of all the unsettling thoughts to have. When had she seen that movie of the suburb—a camera mounted on top of a building just filming a day, and the film played at high speed so the cars flowed and stopped, flowed and stopped and the people walking and cars driving were streaks of color and the streetlights and headlights came on suddenly as the sky turned orange and purple and dark. Some public TV thing in high school—a class on what? Like the movie on cells. Tiny blood cells rushing in the same fast, pause, fast pumping as the cars.

  Alice pulled into the driveway of her first job and, sighing, got out of the mini van.

  Her flyer hung in the library. The old man looked up and the corkboard had changed again. He couldn’t read the new thing and he didn’t want to get up. He scratched his chin and remembered shaving for the first time in his parents’ house with cold water and his father staring at him and wanting to do it right. Then he slept again. A heavy nanny pushing two smiling children in a baby carriage read the flyer and thought she’d like to do that if she could get the night off and chewed her gum without writing down the number. The sun slid past the upper windows and the old man shuffled out the door. A housewife, two grandmothers, a janitor, a mailman. No one looked. The flyer stayed tacked to the corkboard. Outside was dark. A new librarian came on duty, a pebble in her shoe, her clothes drooping and underneath them her linen day-old; she’d been running late and no time for laundry. Her earrings dangled like planets.

  Sam stopped at the library on his way to see Mrs. Atlee again. He wore a dark suit and an overcoat; his tie was loose. He wasn’t sure what Mrs. Atlee would like so he picked three books, checked them out, and paused before the corkboard. Frowned. Put the books down and wrote the phone number for the book club on the back of a cash machine receipt he found in his wallet. He wondered if he would actually call. People reading books in an artificial group. But what if it was like reading to Mrs. Atlee—what if that connection were possible even with people you just met.

  He tucked the number into his pocket. He knew he probably wouldn’t call.

  Chapter Eleven

  Isabel and Norma, 1910

  “Norma.” Isabel’s voice cracked. She touched her mouth with her napkin.

  The restaurant had high ceilings and a long bar. The dining room was a step higher than the entrance and the bar area, and well lit; the tables were set with white tablecloths, the wooden chairs thin.

  “Iz,” Norma said quietly. She wore a light blue dress with a high collar and squeezed a handkerchief in her small hands.

  Isabel pushed her fork into the mashed potatoes on her plate. “If you would just wait,” she managed.

  “Wait?” Norma forced a laugh but it caught in her throat and sounded harsh.

  “Wait for what?”

  “I should’ve left you in jail,” Isabel said.

  “Don’t play,” Norma said, taking a sip of wine.

  “Listen, Norma. In a very short time I will have possession of the farm. You can live there—we can live there together.”

  “No,” Norma said. “I want to get out of Boston,” she added, softening, softening.

  “The farm is not in Boston,” Isabel said.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s even worse—it’s nowhere. Nowhere, a long train ride from Boston. “I want a bigger city, something—”

  “You haven’t even seen it. At least wait until you’ve seen it.”

  “Iz,” Norma said, reachin
g out. “I’m sure it’s beautiful. I know it is.” Her hand lay untouched on the table. She withdrew it and smoothed her skirt.

  “If you would just see it,” Isabel said.

  The waiter came to the table, leaning over his belly to inquire.

  “Fine,” Isabel said, though neither of them had taken a bite.

  The waiter bowed slightly and left.

  Norma bit into her fish. “Iz, please, let’s not spoil our supper. You look lovely in that dress.”

  “Pah,” Isabel muttered. “It’s a rag, and an uncomfortable one at that.” She plucked at her deep green skirt. “If you would only wait to see it,” she went on, rearranging her silverware. “I promise, Norma, you will it love it. Absolutely. It has a guest cottage that could be all yours. You need not speak to me, really.” She tried to laugh.

  “What a wretched thing to say,” Norma said.

  “I only meant it as a figure of speech. Do try to be less sensitive.”

  Norma took another bite. Isabel cut into her steak, as if reluctantly.

  “Don’t you want to leave Boston, Iz?” Norma asked. “You do, that’s why you’ve taken the farm. But it’s not far enough for me. And it’s not big enough—the town, I mean.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Europe.”

  “Nonsense,” Isabel said. “You cannot go traveling around Europe alone.”

  “Can’t I? Who says? Boston says, you mean.” Norma’s fingers turned white where she gripped her fork. “Then I shall wear a suit,” she said.

  Isabel smiled. She lifted her chin thoughtfully, wondering if Norma had seen the envy in her eyes.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  Norma paused in her chewing but resumed quickly. “What about the farm?” she asked. “And getting the kennel built?”

  “I will do it when we return. We won’t be gone forever.”

  “Iz—”

  “What?”

  Norma bowed her head.

  “What?” Isabel asked again. She clenched her jaw, working the tip of her knife into the red meat on her plate. Don’t play with your food, she told herself, directly from her father’s mouth.