Ghost, p.7
Ghost, page 7
“Well, I’ll be a goddamn fish,” says Freddie. “I’m living with a bunch of loonies.”
A call comes in from a reporter at the newspaper. A reporter! David is summoned to the telephone by Martha the receptionist, who remains standing within earshot. The reporter wants to ask just a few questions about what David saw on the evening of April 23. April 23? What’s this about? Who’s talked to her? Out of respect for confidentiality, the reporter says, she can’t discuss sources. Is David familiar with the newspaper? Of course David is familiar with the paper. They keep a copy in the sitting parlor. “Excellent,” says the reporter. When might David be available? She could drop by anytime in the next few days. No hurry. She’s especially interested in seeing the dream room. She corrects herself. It’s the slumber room. It’s called the slumber room, isn’t it? She wants to visit the slumber room. Would that be possible? No, thank you, David says. No, thank you? The reporter doesn’t understand. David hangs up. You’ve made your own bed, says Martha.
Later that day, while David is planning the arrangements for a service, Martin comes to see him. “I just got a call from someone at the newspaper,” Martin says. “She says she spoke to you.”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” says David.
Martin gives David a long, searching look. “I appreciate that, David. But somebody talked to her.” With a glance into the hallway to see who is listening, Martin begins pacing the sitting room, circling the table with the white orchid and the William Blake. “This is bad, very bad…. She wants to come here, into our funeral home, our place. She’s intent on coming.” Martin is pausing between sentences, thinking through what should be done. Evidently, he was having his late-morning tea when the reporter called, and he seems unaware that he’s still holding his teacup. “Why would a reporter want to come here—with all that’s going on in the world?” He shakes his head and sighs. “I just can’t believe it. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to notify the staff. I hate to do that, to get people upset, but…the reporter might try to talk to some of the staff. Who knows what these people will do.” Martin’s neck is flushed red against his white hair. Strategies, reactions to crises, financial decisions, are not Martin’s forte. He much prefers to manage quietly, to attend to the embalming procedures, to soothe the grieving families through their distress. “Here, hold this,” he says, handing David the teacup, still oblivious that it is a teacup. Jenny has been called, he says. By telephone, Jenny has advised that they be polite to the reporter. They should not deny whatever “information” the reporter has, but they should not confirm any information either. Ideally, they shouldn’t say anything at all. Jenny has been out at the dressmaker’s, getting a dress for her grandniece’s graduation, and will be returning as quickly as possible. Martin gingerly explains that although he and Jenny have some disagreements about the nature of David’s “experience,” they completely concur that no one should talk to the reporter. Martin takes pains to emphasize this unanimity, as he always does when invoking the authority of his wife—after all, she has a university degree in management and he would be foolish not to heed her advice. “I appreciate your cooperation, David. That woman gets in here, publishes a story, no matter what, and it’s going to be very bad for us. I don’t know what she’s going to do.” Martin glances into the hallway again, an unhappy expression on his face. Then he returns to his office and closes the door.
HAS DAVID BEEN GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS? He isn’t sure. Is it he who is supposed to notify the staff? There is an unfamiliar vibration in the air, a faint hum, a sense of invasion. The tranquillity has been disturbed. As David meets with a grieving family in the casket room, he finds himself brooding about the reporter. Who is she? Who talked to her? What did they tell her? It must have been someone at the apartments—who else could it have been? Or possibly one of the staff at the mortuary. Although they haven’t mentioned anything, Ophelia and Robert have been looking at him strangely these last few days. Not to mention the despicable Martha. And even Andrew, the new driver, has given him funny glances. Without wanting to, he recalls a scene from grade school long ago, when he was punished for talking in quiet study hall and sent to the principal’s office. There, he sat by himself while his classmates gawked at him through the glass window. He was already considered different, the boy whose father had died, the boy with the glamorous mother who had boyfriends. In the principal’s office, people stared at him, and that smell—a chalky, mildewy odor.
Only Marie and Jenny are in sympathy with him. And Marie doesn’t quite count, since she believes that she has received signals from her dead mother. And now, this reporter, who probably wants only a sensational story to entertain her readers, who could never put the thing into proper perspective. But what would that be? There is no proper perspective. What did he see, what did he see? He wishes he had never seen anything. If something impossible happens for only five seconds, why can’t it just be snipped out like film, with the frames on both sides spliced together as if it never existed? Couldn’t he just tell everyone that he made a mistake? What exactly happened in the slumber room on April 23—odd that he has never thought of the date until now, when the reporter mentioned it. Somehow, a date attached makes it more monumental and definite, like the date Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He wishes that he hadn’t told anyone. Maybe, in time, he would have come to understand that he didn’t see anything at all. But…he did see something, something impossible. A few seconds of something impossible. And, he now realizes, he is frightened. What he saw frightens him. Someone is talking, Mr. Brockman or Brockford, the brother of the deceased. His voice sounds like a dog barking in the distance, yippety-yip, with a note of sadness at the end of each bark. The voice resonates with the pervasive vibration in the air, the new tilt of the building. The brother is saying that the family wants something “simple but regal.” His sister was an unpretentious woman, he says, but she achieved important things in her life. Has David read her obituary in today’s paper? She was on the Board of Selectmen. What? Obituary? No. Wasn’t the funeral home involved with the obituary? David should read it, Mr. Brockman or Brockford says. His sister was a significant person. But down-to-earth at the same time, says another family member. She died in her sleep, the way we all want to go. Something simple but regal. Evidently, none of the caskets in stock will do. David takes out a catalog. What did he see that late afternoon? April 23. At dusk on April 23. Five seconds. He closes his eyes and he sees it again. Is he losing his grip?
When he walks out of the casket room, he finds Martin waiting for him in the hallway. “Have you received any more telephone calls since this morning?” whispers Martin.
“No,” David whispers back. Inadvertently, he has placed himself on Martin’s right side, his deaf side, and he must repeat himself on the good side before Martin hears him. After which Martin hurries back to his office and closes his door. It occurs to David that he’s never seen Martin hurrying before.
At least Jenny is back. Jenny is the calm center. She smiles at David when she passes him in the hall, smiles and shrugs her shoulders as if she doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Jenny will take care of things with the reporter.
There’s a funeral this afternoon for the Kane family. The pallbearers and traffic assistants, hired on a half-day basis, stand about in the hallway in their black coats and gray gloves. Even they seem nervous, keyed up, sensing the unusual oscillation in the air. The front door opens and closes, opens and closes. Bouquets of flowers arrive, and the men hold the flowers in their gray gloves.
In the arrangement room, David finds Ophelia and Robert. For the first time, he can see that there is something between them. Youth, of course, but more. “Tell us the truth,” says Robert. “What did you see?” David hesitates. Does he have to struggle through another unsatisfactory explanation, another attempt to describe what can’t be described? “I’m sorry,” says Robert, seeing David’s discomfort. “You don’t have to go over it again. But you do think that you saw something strange?” David nods. “See,” Robert says to Ophelia.
“See what?” says Ophelia, beaming with pleasure. “I’m the one who told you, remember. Something’s finally happening at this place. Isabelle Poole said it to me this morning. Something’s finally happening at the funeral home. And she didn’t even know that we might be in the papers.” In the papers? Well, Ophelia blurts in excitement, Martin has told them not to speak to any reporters. But he wouldn’t be saying that out of thin air, now would he. Reporters! It has to be about what David saw—nothing else interesting has ever gone on. Something’s finally happening, says Ophelia, just when it was becoming impossibly dull. She was going to leave early today after the funeral—she’s been getting a touch of flu—but she thinks she’ll stay around and see what’s “on the agenda.” Indeed, Ophelia’s face does appear a bit flushed. The soft red of her cheeks and the bright red of her lips contrast strongly with the blue-green of her eyelids and the habitual dark mascara. Strands of her straw-colored hair, held up in a bun, slip down into her face.
“Lower your voice,” says Robert. In the hallway, the men are drinking coffee in paper cups and laughing.
“Don’t you want to be in the newspaper?” says Ophelia. “If you tell me you don’t, I won’t believe you. Everybody wants to be in the papers. Mostly, it’s just a bunch of rude celebrities who’re in the newspaper. Why shouldn’t it be us? Actually, it should be David. David, you’re the one the reporter wants to talk to. You’re the one who saw the ghost.” She pouts. “I’ve been here a lot longer than you have, and I haven’t seen any ghosts.”
“Ophelia.” Robert leans over and gives Ophelia a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Yes, I know. I’ll shut up. At least something interesting is going on. The last interesting thing that happened to me was the yellow hat I got on sale after Christmas. But I haven’t had any place to wear it.”
“What do you think it was?” Robert says to David. “What you saw?”
“I don’t know,” says David. Although Robert seems friendly, David can feel an edge of skepticism in his voice.
“I heard you saw a ghost,” says Ophelia.
“I never said it was a ghost,” says David.
“But it was a ghost, wasn’t it,” says Ophelia.
“I don’t know what it was,” says David.
“Sometimes light can have weird effects,” says Robert. “It was late afternoon, wasn’t it. The sunlight in late afternoon can be weird. You can see things that aren’t there.” He takes a forbidden cigarette out of his pocket, fingers it, and begins talking about mirages in the desert, the “refraction of light,” and how people can see entire cities teetering over the hot sand when there’s nothing at all.
“Don’t try to talk him out of it,” says Ophelia. She turns to David. “Robert is going to graduate at the top of his class at college. He’d never tell you that himself. He’s a genius, like you. And after that, I’ll bet he gets married. But not to me. I’ll never get married. I’m twenty-four, and nobody’s even asked me.”
“Kenny asked you,” says Robert, grinning.
“Oh, Kenny was just a stupid boy.”
“Well, I think it was some kind of weird light effect,” says Robert. Ophelia frowns at him. “Listen,” says Robert. “We work backward from what we know. Right? I’m betting a zillion to one that there aren’t any ghosts and there’s never been any ghosts. That’s where we start. So if you saw something like a ghost, either it was some weird light effect, or you imagined it. It’s got to be one of those two things. No offense, David. That’s my opinion.”
Martha comes to the door and says that it’s the reporter again on the telephone. This time she wants to speak to Ophelia. The reporter is going down the staff directory, says Martha. She says there’re no train wrecks today and she’s got nothing else to do. She wants to speak to Ophelia. She wants to speak to me! says Ophelia. She hesitates. Tell her that I’m not here. You should tell her yourself, says Martha. I’m not the errand girl. Please, Martha, says Ophelia. I’m not allowed to talk to her. I don’t get paid enough for this, Martha mutters under her breath.
Looking out the window at Andrew as he backs the hearse into the driveway, David realizes that he dreads going to his apartment building tonight. It’s been a horrible day, and the men will jab and jeer at him as they have for the last week. He should go to Ellen’s. But her friend’s son will be there on the couch. What should he do? In the driveway, the hearse kicks up bits of gravel, which pelt the window like hard rain.
FOR HOURS, A BLUE MIST HAS FLOATED over the lake, like gauze caught between the glass of the sky and the glass of the water. Every few moments, the mist slightly parts and David can see the faint outlines of things on the opposite shore, the roofs of houses, trees, automobiles.
Ellen, sitting next to him, reads from her novel. At each chapter, she pauses and eats a few grapes left from their lunch. This place is as precious to her as to him. In the midst of all the confusions and dislocations, they have stolen this afternoon for themselves. The low-lying branch of a gum tree hangs just over their heads, giving them a feeling of being hidden, a secrecy. The afternoon is cool, with the absence of sun, and she pulls her sweater more tightly about her and moves closer to him. He reads as well, books that he’s signed out from the library. He is surrounded by books, happy with books even when he’s disturbed.
“Linda is pregnant,” she says, looking up from her novel.
“Your sister Linda?”
“Yes. Three months. Mother and Dad are ridiculously happy. This will be their first grandchild.”
He nods. But he is only half listening and stares out at the mist. He studies how things shimmer and fade, then slowly come into existence again. What happened that late afternoon? Was it a trick of the light, as Robert said? Or was it something else?
Someone is grilling nearby, and the smoky smell of roasting meat moves through the air. The smoke sails out over the lake and mingles with the mist, which grows thicker and thicker until nothing can be seen. The lone canoe on the water, together with its canoeist, vanishes.
“Linda is five years younger then me,” says Ellen with a sigh, “and she’s already having a baby.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime.”
“You will.” She looks at him reading. “You think you’re going to figure it out with books? Maybe you will. I’ve never figured anything out from a book.”
He reads from Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry, a crumbling nineteenth-century edition that sends up a puff of red dust when it’s opened: We may lay it down as an incontestible axiom that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the experiment. What could be clearer? Nothing appears out of thin air.
And from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: The world…is corporeal, that is to say, body; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, length, breadth, and depth…every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe. Body and matter, that is all that there is.
But in apparent contradiction, the words of Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man: A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man’s reason… What spiritual agencies?
He closes his books. Looking out, he watches two green-headed mallards glide out of the mist and touch on the lake in a wraith sweep of dream wings.
An article appears in the newspaper. MORTUARY WORKER CLAIMS TO SEE GHOST. Marie is quoted, speaking guardedly about her conversation with David—his privacy must be protected, she says—but elaborating on her own experiences with the spirit world. “Ignore it at your peril.” Several men at the apartment building are also quoted, describing in much more detail what Marie told them about what David told her. Ophelia is quoted at length. Described as “a pretty and engaging young woman,” Ophelia, in fact, appears to be the principal source, and she goes on for two columns about the ghost that David saw, how it rose out of the body of the deceased and floated about the room for nearly half an hour while whispering the names of various spirits in the “other world.” According to Ophelia, the ghost was a shimmering, cloudlike thing that slowly changed colors from blue to pale yellow. Finally, it sailed out the window.
Inside the mortuary, the newspaper article explodes like a bomb. Martin begins shouting, something no one has ever heard before. “How could you!” he shouts at Ophelia, behind his closed office door, but everyone can hear.
“She followed me on my way home,” wails Ophelia.
“Even so. Why did you tell her…that preposterous story? How did you come up with all that malarkey?”
“I don’t know,” cries Ophelia. “It just came out.”
“I should fire you,” says Martin. “Not once in a hundred-odd years…And now…Our name…used like that…”
Ophelia comes flying out of the office in tears.
And the telephone is constantly ringing, for Ophelia and for David, but mostly for David—people he’s never heard of, strangers wanting to speak to him, wanting just fifteen minutes of his time. When Martha stops picking up the phone, people leave long messages on the answering machine describing their personal experiences with the netherworld. A man says that his dead wife comes back each night at bedtime to check on her family. She walks the upstairs hall, opening and closing doors. A woman claims that she once walked through a solid door. Some of the callers invite David to séances. At the front entrance, people leave cards and notes and a picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
David’s initial anger at Marie and Ophelia has partly been replaced by embarrassment and shame. Martin is walking from room to room in a daze, mumbling that he has disgraced his father and his father’s father, while Jenny follows one step behind and tries to comfort him. “Nobody really believes what they read in the papers, love.”
