G is for Ghosts

by Rhonda Parrish

  Jade had her purse and keys. “I think I’d better go.”

  “Wait—that wasn’t—we can—”

  “Good night.” And she was gone, leaving me hanging after making me think my daughter was watching us.

  Leaving me hanging after everything.

  I went upstairs. My laptop was in the study. When I flicked on the light, The Persistence of Memory faced me.

  There were other Dalí works which better fit my mood. Why had I chosen such an over-popular piece, like a stupid pretentious teenage fan instead of a proper scholar? I should have mounted The Lugubrious Game. Emelie was too young to understand it.

  Ants swarmed in the print before me, Dalí’s disgust mirroring my own. I looked at the fly—rot, according to most interpretive theories—crawling on the leftmost watch. Some critics observed it had a human shadow. I didn’t think it looked strictly human, but it was true that its shadow did not match the fly and the light. Dalí was too particular to have done that by accident.

  I took my laptop into my bedroom to fill the void Jade had left.

  “Don’t you see that shadow, Daddy?” Emelie asked over breakfast cereal.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “It looks like a person.”

  I smiled. “I interpret art, honey. I’m used to finding people in all sorts of places where no one else sees people. But I don’t see that one.”

  “It looks like Mommy.”

  “Stop it.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think. What did that mean? What would that do? I’d have to call the therapist again, instead of waiting for her to return my call.

  Emelie, chastened, looked down at her cereal.

  What did it mean, that she thought a shadow looked like Danielle? Was it just a childish affectation, or was it a sign of something wrong?

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I’m just—I didn’t sleep well last night. What do you want to do today?”

  “Ice cream,” she said.

  “Well, we can have some ice cream for dessert tonight, sure. But what—”

  “Ice cream,” she repeated. “Strawberry.”

  I thought of last night, and I thought of her shadow, and I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I got up and got the ice cream from the freezer.

  Emelie started to get worse. She cried at night, even with the nightlight on. She kept looking in the corner with the alleged shadow, even though she didn’t mention it again. And then Miss Carthage, her teacher, called me. “This is probably silly,” she prefaced, “but just—given the circumstances, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “I’m always happy to hear an update on my daughter,” I assured her. “What’s up?”

  Miss Carthage blew out her breath. “Well, we have computer time, as you know, both directed learning games and some free exploration time. The system is locked, the kids don’t have free access to the whole internet of course, but they have encyclopedias and things.”

  I nodded, though Miss Carthage couldn’t see me over the phone.

  “And today, Emelie asked me how to pronounce a word on a page she was reading—which isn’t unusual, and I encourage the kids to ask, but—but she asked me how to pronounce poltergeist.”

  “I—what?”

  “And I know it’s probably nothing, but just—she’s been moody and unfocused in class, which is to be expected, of course, and I haven’t been making much of it, but given her behavioral changes and this—I just wanted you to be aware of her choice of reading matter. She always says she’s been enjoying her sessions with Miss Wendy, but I thought you should consider with her if Emelie should be left to explore in her own way or if she should be directed to something else. I didn’t want to make that decision without consulting with someone.”

  But it wasn’t her reading matter which concerned me. What concerned me was impossible, too ridiculous to be considered, but—

  “Thank you, Miss Carthage. I really appreciate the call. I’ll update her therapist and we can discuss it.”

  That night, Emelie was quiet throughout dinner. She didn’t even ask for ice cream afterward. When we went up to her room to pick out a puzzle, there were books strewn all over the floor and puzzle pieces scattered as if sown like seeds. Emelie began to cry.

  I couldn’t believe I was typing “poltergeist” into a search box. I was an academic. I was about to make dean of the college. I wasn’t the kind of person to search for spooks.

  I hit Enter.

  The results were about the level of unscientific dreck I expected. I mostly skimmed, but I was able to pick out that poltergeists were the kind of ghosts that threw things around.

  Things like puzzle pieces and books?

  But this made no sense. Even if Danielle had come back—no, that was too absurd to say even hypothetically. But for the sake of exploring all options, even the stupid ones: even if Danielle had come back as a ghost, she had no reason to haunt her daughter.

  No! Stop! Emelie!

  Even if her daughter had been her last conscious thought—

  No. I was obviously feeling the strain of all that had happened and of trying to keep my daughter healthy and balanced in the wake of her mother’s unexpected death. This kind of thinking wasn’t going to help either of us.

  The screen still glowed with helpful text. Ghosts might remain because of strong emotional attachment, or because of emotions connected to their passing.

  That would be her love for Emelie—that would be a strong emotion. It wouldn’t be anything else. It wouldn’t—

  I closed the browser window and cleared my search history.

  I started the printer—no matter the wonders of the paperless office, there was still an advantage to printing for editing—and went down the hall to Emelie’s room. “I’m going to run to the mailbox. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.” She was playing with her dolls, newly recovered from the emergency re-capitations I had given them this morning. I’d looked in her room as I went for my first cup of coffee and spotted the three on the floor near their pink car, all with their heads across the room. I’d managed to get them repaired before Emelie woke up.

  Emelie had never pulled the heads off her dolls before. I’d hoped she would ask how their heads had gotten back after she’d taken them off, but she didn’t.

  “Do you want to come with me?”

  “Not really.” She walked a doll to the car and slid it into the driver’s seat. “I’m busy.”

  I smiled and went out to the mailbox. Our front yard needed mowing; I’d been occupied. Across the street, Jason Tanner was mowing his own grass, and I could feel his judgment crossing the pavement to me. I gritted my teeth and waved.

  He waved back and slowed his machine. “Hey, you want me to do yours when I’m done here?”

  “No, that’s all right,” I called back, irritated at his suggestion I couldn’t take care of my own yard.

  “No worries, just let me know. I know you’ve got a lot to take care of right now.”

  And I couldn’t handle it, was the rest of what he meant. That I couldn’t take care of my daughter and get my girlfriend back and make dean and cut my grass, because that last was just too much.

  I waved as if everything was fine, and I went back inside with three bills, a coupon mailer, and a postcard for a discount oil change.

  I heard the music from the door. It was too loud. And it was Danielle’s music, some sweeping choral piece.

  I ran up the stairs. Emelie sat in the doorway to my study, sobbing uncontrollably. “What’s wrong?” I gasped, running to her and kneeling.

  From here I could see into the study. My freshly printed pages were strewn about the room, torn and crumpled. The speakers were blasting in choral fury.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Emelie shook her head, wailing. “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!”

  I cradled her to me, as if I could shield her from the mes
s. I said something soothing—”I know, honey, I know” as if it could make any difference.

  I recognized the music now: a “Dies Irae.” Day of Wrath.

  I left Emelie in the doorway and went into the room—it wasn’t as if there was anything in the room that could harm her, obviously, but there was no point to taking her into something which frightened her—and turned off the music. I looked down at the thesis Danielle had resented—had resented for its practical themes, had resented for how it was boosting my career beyond hers. It was backed up, and I could always print it again, but to see it so attacked…

  Could ghosts affect computer memory?

  I suppressed the ridiculous thought. I did not try to answer it with a more rational one.

  “Come on, Emelie. I think we should go out to dinner.”

  “Are you mad?” she whispered.

  I hesitated. Did she think I was angry at her? Did she think I was angry at Danielle? I took a breath. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She looked from her bedroom to the study and back. “I heard the printer, and then it just all went crazy, and the music turned on.”

  I was not hearing this. I was not living this. “How do you feel about chicken nuggets?”

  She smiled through her tears. “Can I play on the playground?”

  I cleaned up the study after Emelie went to bed, with two nightlights and her dolls tucked into bed with her. Then I went to my own bed, wide and empty, and sat upright into the night.

  Emelie was a good girl. I could not imagine her throwing my printed pages about the room even in a tantrum, which she had largely left behind a few years ago. Nor did I think she knew enough Latin to choose the Dies Irae over any other track in Danielle’s playlists.

  But the alternative was unthinkable. Inadmissible. Ghosts were a fiction, and not a well-done one.

  I opened a browser in incognito mode, as if keeping it from my search history maintained some sort of barrier.

  Ghosts, I learned, from a variety of dreadfully unscientific sites with dreadfully unaesthetic design, might linger for any number of reasons. Poltergeists, the kind that threw things around, destroyed toys, and played music, were traditionally linked to girls and young women.

  Something to do with Emelie, then?

  No, I was veering toward unreasonable again. There was no such thing as human spirits returning to complete unfinished business, or to watch over their loved ones, or—

  And yet, Danielle might have a reason.

  No!

  I shoved the thought away fiercely. That was tantamount to admitting that I might believe this nonsense. And anyway there was no reason to linger.

  No! Stop! Emelie!

  She had always had a heart condition. She ran to keep her heart strong, though she didn’t enjoy it. I hadn’t made that up, and it had been easy to verify in her medical records. The coroner had no reason to doubt why she had fallen after a run.

  And Danielle had no right to act so betrayed—if she had been enough, if she’d been willing to be more, I wouldn’t have needed the videos. I wouldn’t have needed Jade. It was just another sign of how unwilling Danielle was to even try, that she came directly into my study from her run to confront me, all sweaty and mascara-streaked and not even bothering to try to look good to earn me back.

  I closed my eyes against the unwelcome memory. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so defensive—but it was her fault for making me so angry, for demanding to know how long it had been going on, and why. Why, as if she had nothing to do with it…

  It wasn’t as if I ever consciously decided to hurt her, much less kill her. I was as surprised as she was when my hand went to the back of her head, when I shoved it down into the desk’s corner.

  No! Stop! Emelie!

  And even at the end, she tried to manipulate me, tried to call our daughter’s name to use her as leverage against me.

  It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.

  I needed to get Emelie to her therapist, figure out what was going on here.

  I descended to the kitchen for that critical first cup of coffee, even more important today. I found Emelie at her usual place at the table, a little early. Her eyes were wide as she turned silently to me.

  It took me a second longer to recognize that the smell of coffee was not coming from the automatic coffeemaker, but the room itself. Coffee pooled on the counter, on the floor, in the sink. It dripped into a puddle on the tile, slow and steady.

  I looked about the room, caught between shock and maintaining a calm front for Emelie. I tried to swallow. “Did—did you do this?”

  “Energy.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Coffee is energy.”

  Danielle had said that nearly every morning, as she savored her first cup.

  “No school today,” I said. Emelie blinked in surprise. She loved school. “There’s a special meeting today with Miss Wendy.”

  Emelie rolled her lips together, but she said nothing.

  “Oh, honey, you’re not in trouble,” I said. “It’s not because you’re in trouble.”

  “Why would it be for being in trouble?” Emelie asked. “You said therapy wasn’t for being bad.”

  She had read into my denial. That was such a Danielle thing to do, asking where I’d been when I said it didn’t matter.

  “I know. And that’s true. But it’s a special meeting today, and we don’t want to miss it. Why don’t you have some Sweet Sparks while I make some phone calls?”

  “Sugar is too much energy,” she said, almost a whisper. “It’s not good for me.”

  Another Danielle-ism, something that would not be out of place in any room that wasn’t dripping with coffee.

  “It’s okay today,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to call.”

  I fled to my study, closed the door against Emelie’s ears. I used every profane word in an art historian’s ample lexicon against the receptionist until she made a slot to see Emelie that morning. I called the university to cancel my classes. I came downstairs to find Emelie at her place with a bowl of granola half-eaten in front of her. Elsewhere in the kitchen, Sweet Sparks were soaking into the puddled coffee, and the empty box lay on the floor.

  “Not me,” Emelie whispered. “Not me. Sugar’s not good for me.”

  I said nothing, not trusting my voice. I shouldn’t have left her downstairs. I held out my hand, and we went out to the car.

  The waiting room was professionally comforting, repulsive on every level. The patterns, the soft fabrics, the muted tones, all outdated attempts at soothing a troubled social psyche which had never grown up to face the pragmatic needs of a post-modern world that recognized there was no cure for itself. It was the aesthetic embodiment of therapy’s deceptive practice, talking yourself out of shame you shouldn’t feel in the first place. If anything, “believe in yourself” made even less sense than belief in something supernatural. Danielle had gone to church for God’s forgiveness, but at least she hadn’t pretended you could forgive yourself.

  I did not need forgiveness. It had been an accident, caused if anything by Danielle’s own strident anger. It was not my fault.

  After forty minutes, they called me in to join Emelie’s session, something that had never happened before. Emelie was sitting on a chair near Miss Wendy, holding a stuffed giraffe and sniffing, but she did not look particularly upset. A fly buzzed against the window. There was an old-fashioned clock on the wall, ticking like a cotton-muffled watch.

  Miss Wendy gestured me to a larger chair across the room. “Emelie and I have been talking,” she said gently, “and she has decided she would like to share something with you.”

  “What?” I asked, stupidly. “About the coffee?”

  “She knows,” Miss Wendy said. “She knows what happened.”

  Ice crystalized through each vein, and my heart stopped beating. I marveled for an instant at Miss Wendy’s calm demeanor and then as quickl
y dismissed it as a therapist’s necessity. The more important question was what to do. Therapists were legally bound by confidentiality, weren’t they?

  Emelie sniffed and spoke into the giraffe. “I read about the energy.”

  But therapists also were bound to protect children, and she might think Emelie was at risk if her father had killed her mother. But I would never hurt Emelie, I wouldn’t, there would never be another accident, it couldn’t happen, it hadn’t even been my fault—

  “I read how ghosts are really just energy, left over. Energy moving things around. And I thought maybe if I helped with the energy, it might help keep…”

  Energy, left over. Like the lingering adrenaline numbing my fingers as I stared down at Danielle’s vacant eyes and the seeping gash in her temple. Like the useless emotion that plagued me though it had not been my fault.

  “I knew I was making a mess, but I thought it might…maybe we could feel like Mommy was still there…”

  Stacked papers slid off the desk, settling over Danielle and floating to the room’s edges.

  “I started her playlist. I didn’t mean to make you mad. I asked if you were mad.”

  I stared at Emelie, my mind whirling and grasping, faintly realizing at last that what she was saying was not an accusation, was not even a ghost story. My heart pounded in my ears and through the room.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill her.”

  The words hung in the air like smoke, intangible but choking. I had not meant to say them. I saw Miss Wendy go professionally still, saw her hand move just an inch, saw her fingers depress a button.

  I could stop her. It wouldn’t be my fault—she had called me in here, she had twisted my daughter into this—but I didn’t know if she had a heart condition. And Emelie was watching.

  A fly buzzed against the window.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I said to them both.