Ghost, page 6
“Do you believe me?” he asks.
She leans back until her head rests against his chest. “I believe you. If you believe yourself.” She looks at him in the mirror, then gently takes the brush back and continues stroking her dark hair. “Like this.”
He paces the room. He sits down on the bed. He gets up and paces again. The light is jumping.
“I hate to see you like this,” she says. “What can I do to help? Tell me.”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “Maybe I imagined it.” He paces. “But I saw it.” A wave of nausea sweeps up from his stomach. He sees it again. “Do you believe me?”
“If you think you saw something, then I believe you. But you said yourself that you aren’t sure.”
“How can you be sure of anything?” he fires back. “You see things with your eyes, and you know you saw something. That’s what I know. I saw something with my eyes. What’s being sure? What does that mean?” Why does she keep coming back to that, he wonders, the being sure? She doesn’t really believe him. He can’t blame her, for something crazy like this. He can’t blame her. Is he losing his mind? She’s beginning to love him, he feels it—a small plant that must be nourished. But now she’ll think that he’s nuts. He shouldn’t have told her. He doesn’t know what he’s doing now, what he’s saying. Everything is upside down. He kisses the back of her neck. That is real. He wishes he could stay forever in this room with her. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he whispers. “Just say it.”
“I do believe you.”
Still, she sits at her mirror in the jumping light, brushing her hair. It occurs to him that she hasn’t made direct eye contact with him. Why didn’t he notice before? She can say whatever she wants while she’s not looking directly at him, looking at him only in the mirror. She is using her mirror as a sly misdirection.
“Please don’t say that you believe me when you don’t.” There, he’s said it. People should be honest with each other. Suddenly, he regrets every dishonest thing he’s ever said and done, with Harry, with his mother, with Bethany, with Ellen. His sweet Ellen is not being honest with him. How does a person truly know the mind of another person? he wonders.
Finally, she stands up, a full head shorter than he. Turning, she embraces him. “I don’t want you to be upset,” she says softly. “I want to help. Maybe you’ll see it again, whatever it was. If it’s real, you might see it again.”
“But what if I don’t see it again,” he says, keeping his arms around her, holding her.
“Then you should write it down. Write down what you saw.”
“That’s not proof.”
She nods her head, as if agreeing with him. But…he doesn’t know what she thinks. Despite his strong feelings for her, he realizes that he doesn’t really know her. Does she believe him, or is she just trying to take care of him, as she did when he was ill with the flu and she came to his apartment and sat with him through the night? During that night, in his fever, he was beginning to give himself to her, even though he knew she was flirtatious, even though he knew she was the kind of woman who enjoyed the constant attention of men. She’s confessed that she’s had a half dozen relationships. “None of them keepers,” she says. There is so much about her. The way that she touches him. Like him, she is a reader. They talk about books, something he never did with Bethany, and she tells him that he is the first man who hasn’t been threatened by her intelligence.
I should tell somebody, he says. You’ve told me, she says. But shouldn’t I tell somebody else? Maybe somebody else has seen something like this. What am I saying? It’s all impossible. I saw something impossible.
On the wall, the bedposts are leaping.
“David. Be careful who you talk to about this. Some people won’t understand.”
“We shouldn’t discuss this anymore tonight.” He is exhausted and floundering, and he needs to mull over the confusions and fear by himself. Something has opened that should have remained closed.
She begins to unfasten her earrings, the small gold seashells that he gave her, and he helps her, placing them in the turquoise enamel box on her table. His hands are still shaking. Her friend Claire’s boy will be visiting for a few days, she says. He’ll be sleeping on the sofa in her living room, so they’ll have to be discreet. It is just that Ralph and Claire are having “married troubles,” and they thought it would be good if Sam got out of the house for a few days. Maybe David shouldn’t stay over for the next few nights, she says, not that she doesn’t want him to.
“Do you mind?” she asks.
“Of course I don’t mind. It’s your friend and your house.” She is too generous, he thinks.
“I was surprised that you ate lentils at the restaurant tonight,” she says, rubbing lotion on her bare shoulders. “I thought you didn’t like lentils.”
“I like lentils.”
“You do? You didn’t eat lentils when I cooked them here a few weeks ago.”
“Really?” He tries to remember the night and summons up a vague image of cookbooks on the kitchen counter, the immaculate table with each plate and fork perfectly set. She had on some Buddhist meditation music that he liked.
“Don’t you remember? The Indian dinner. There was a lentil-and-potato dish. And chickpeas and onions.”
“Yes. I don’t know why I didn’t eat your lentils. I like all of your cooking. You know that.”
“I put love into my cooking. I don’t cook for everyone, you know.” She laughs and musses his hair. Now she is kissing him, undressing him, touching him. He closes his eyes and lets himself fall.
Cliffs hang over him on both sides, glittering with strange things in packages, in boxes, in plastic cellophane wrap. Colored wire and glass, metal brackets, machines of various kinds, lightbulbs and plugs, scissors, thermometers, envelopes, clothespins, marbles. His father’s store. His father’s gentle voice, like a hand on his shoulder. He wanders down the aisles, touching the treasures, lost and found at the same time. He sleeps in the warmth.
A few days later, Martin asks to see him in his office—a difficult morning when two families have initiated new cases and Thayer has just quit. David waits in the hallway outside Martin’s door, above which is a seventy-five-year-old sign in flaking gold paint spelling FINAL PEACE.
Martin stands up from his computer screen. “Is anything the matter?” he asks. “You haven’t been yourself in the last few days. You seem…nervous.”
So it is obvious, as David thought. Of course it’s obvious. He’s been nauseated, exhausted, having trouble remembering routine tasks. He could say that he’s been worried about his mother, or that he and Ellen are having problems, but he lacks the energy to prevaricate. With a sigh, he sits down in the Windsor chair next to Martin’s desk, on his good left side, and tries to tell him what he saw in the slumber room. However, just as when he talked to Ellen, he finds it difficult to put the thing into words. While the image still vibrates and burns in his mind, he cannot easily describe it. Somehow, he felt the thing as much as he saw it.
Martin listens, saying nothing. After David is finished, Martin still says nothing, but he has taken up his glass paperweight and is turning it over and over in his stubby fingers. He seems to be staring at the bookcase on the other side of the room. “What do you want me to do?” he finally remarks. He is concerned, he must admit. David is the best employee he’s had for years—even better than Robert, but that’s confidential—he’s been teaching David everything he knows, like his father did for him…. It’s not just David’s growing importance in the funeral home, he wants to make clear, it’s not just a business matter. This is an extended family. He has a great deal of affection for David, he wants him to be happy and safe here, and any problem of David’s is his problem as well. They’ll put their heads together on this.
But despite his caring words, Martin seems shaken, as if he’s been betrayed. He rises and lumbers around his desk, then across the room. “Why don’t you take a few days off,” he says. “Give yourself a little holiday.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” says David.
Martin nods, a worried expression on his face. He smooths back his white hair. “I’m not doubting that you think you saw something.” He hesitates. “Funeral homes have their own…ambience, an unusual ambience. Let’s face it. We live here with the recently deceased. For most people, that takes some getting used to. That takes a mental adjustment. And you were probably tired. You have to consider that, don’t you think? It was the end of the day, and you were tired. I’ve imagined things when I’m tired. Sometimes I see double when I’m tired. I see two doorknobs when there’s only one. That kind of thing. Don’t you think…something like that could have happened?”
“It’s possible.”
“Good.” Martin returns to his desk and sits down. He seems partly satisfied, partly relieved, but he is gazing at David with his milky eyes as if he’s not completely sure that David is with him. And David can see that Martin doesn’t believe him. From now on, Martin will never fully trust him. All of this is conveyed without words, in a subtle shift of the face. “I want to make another suggestion,” says Martin. “You know, David, you have a great range of abilities.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean that. Jenny tells me that your new accounting system is brilliant. And you’re wonderful with the families.”
Martin picks up his glass paperweight again. “I want to make another suggestion, just a suggestion. I’m wondering if it might be a good idea for you to see someone.” Someone? A doctor, a therapist or a psychiatrist, Martin explains. “To help with the stress you’re going through now. Some help of that kind would be worthwhile in any case,” says Martin, “whether you actually saw something or only imagined that you saw something.”
“Martin, Martin.” A knock on the door. Jenny enters, holding a suit of clothes wrapped in plastic. “Hello, love. The cleaners said that they did as much as could be done with the spot, so here it is, ready for tomorrow. I took a peek, and they did a pretty good job. You’d have to be really close to see anything. That’s one advantage of always wearing black.” She gives a little laugh. “David, I didn’t see you. Sorry.” She glances back at her husband and can see that he is disturbed, not by her intrusion but by something else. With her good nose for problems, Jenny stands for a moment and then sits down in the second Windsor chair. “Thayer has quit—I know that.” She waits, understanding that the issue is not Thayer.
“David saw something in the slumber room a few days ago,” Martin says. “Something…not normal.” And he repeats everything David told him in a flat, level voice, careful to use the same words David used, as vague as they were.
“That’s amazing,” says Jenny. She turns to David. “You saw something?”
“Yes.”
Jenny has an expression of excited shock.
“David has been quite upset the last few days, understandably,” says Martin. His voice is anxious, not a voice David hears often. “I think he should take a little time off. I also suggested that he might see someone, a doctor. He could see that fellow your sister went to last spring.”
“You mean Dr. Gupty?”
“Yes, that’s his name. I couldn’t remember it.”
“Dr. Gupty is a shrink,” says Jenny.
“Yes.” Martin pauses. “I thought a psychiatrist could give us some help. Whether David actually saw something or—”
“Why should David go to a shrink?”
“Well, I just thought—”
“That’s insulting, Martin.” She turns to David. “Forgive us, David, for talking like this in front of you. It’s just a friendly little squabble between two old married people.” She turns back to her husband. “David has had an extraordinary experience. He doesn’t need to see a shrink. It sounds like you don’t believe him.”
“Come on, Jenny, that’s not the point.”
“Of course that’s the point. You either believe him or you don’t.”
“I’m trying to help him,” says Martin.
“No, you’re not. You just don’t believe him. You don’t believe in anything that’s not right in front of your face.”
“That’s not fair, Jenny. That’s not fair. David told me himself that he’s not completely sure. Didn’t you say that, David?”
The conversation has made David even more uncomfortable than he was before. He’s lost part of Martin’s trust, and now he’s wedged himself between Martin and Jenny, something he never wanted to do—he’s been on such good terms with both of them, he’s eaten dinner with them. Now everything is in doubt, just when he was starting to settle into his life here. But how could he expect anything to stay the same after what’s happened? The world has been cut in half. This is just the beginning. A ticking. For the first time, he hears the clock. He looks up at the clock on the wall, the enameled face in its wood and brass case, the ticks moving outward like circles in a pond.
“David? Didn’t you say that you’re not sure of what you saw in the slumber room?” It is Martin’s voice.
“How can you be sure of anything?” says David. “I guess it’s possible that I imagined it. Yes, that’s possible. But I don’t think I imagined it.” He cannot look Martin in the eye.
“I believe you,” says Jenny. She turns to her husband. “There are too many stories of this kind for it all to be made up.”
“How can you believe what David says when you weren’t there?” says Martin, waving his arm in frustration.
“Why do you believe things that I tell you?” says Jenny.
“That’s different,” says Martin. “If you told me you saw a ghost, I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Really.”
Martin doesn’t answer.
For a moment, Jenny stares at her husband. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s agree to disagree. But David is not going to a shrink. If he wants to take a few days off, he should. But he doesn’t need to see a shrink.”
Somehow, word has traveled around the apartment building. From behind the counter of the diner, Marie gives David a sheepish look as she puts toast and fried eggs on the platters. So it was her.
“Be a good guy,” says Henry, a huge red-faced man who has lived on the second floor across from David for longer than anyone can remember. “Tell us firsthand what you saw. Tell us straight.”
Marie scowls at Henry and slaps a pot of coffee down on his table. “Don’t hassle him,” she says.
“I’m not hassling,” says Henry. “You’re one to talk.”
“Yeah,” says Raymond, who is still wearing his pajamas under his raincoat. Raymond usually doesn’t get dressed until midafternoon, when he saunters into the lobby and watches movies on the video player. “David has his own pair of lips. He can talk if he wants to. Tell us, David. We want to hear it from you. What did you see?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” says David.
“Come on,” says Henry. “Tell us.”
“Leave him alone,” says George, who is sitting at David’s table. George slices a knife through his eggs, letting the yolk ooze and run, takes a bite, and frowns. He looks over at Marie and winks at her. “If David doesn’t feel like talking about it, then he doesn’t have to talk about it.” He puts his arm around David.
“I heard that you saw some goddamn ghost,” says Freddie. He starts laughing. “Hoo, boy.”
“So what if he did,” says George.
“Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts,” says Freddie.
“I don’t have to talk to you about what I believe and what I don’t believe,” says George. “I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t believe in stupid people who think they know what’s what about everything. David says he saw something. Let’s leave it at that.”
“How do you know David saw something?” says Henry. “Let David speak for himself.” Some of the other men nod in agreement—by this time, about a dozen have walked over from the apartment building and are sitting and eating at the Formica tables or standing around David, friendly, trying not to crowd him. A CD machine in the kitchen is playing Wagner, the usual morning fare, and Gunther, the German cook, who has apparently been listening to everything despite the music, comes out of the kitchen to hear what David has to say.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” says David. “Please. Aren’t there things you don’t want to talk about? It’s like that.”
“But you told Marie,” says Henry.
“He told me in confidence,” says Marie, standing next to Gunther.
“Look, we’re all in confidence here,” says Henry. “Anything said here in this diner right now is in confidence. We’re friends talking to friends. All I’m asking is for you to tell us what you saw, David. You told Marie. Tell us.”
“It’s not easy to describe,” says David.
“Show some regard,” someone says. “David doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” says Henry. “You don’t want to talk about it. Okay. I’d just like to know whether I have to worry about a ghost floating into my room tonight. If it does, I’m calling you.”
Freddie howls with laughter. Some of the others are laughing as well.
“This is great stuff,” says Alfred, the retired dentist, from his table across the room.
“Maybe somebody would like to mind-meld with me,” says someone else. “I’m feeling paranormal.” There is more laughter.
“You guys are bigots,” says George.
“Yeah. A lot of people have seen spirits,” somebody says.
Freddie whistles and flaps his arms while weaving in and out between the tables. “I’m not too happy about living with some loonies who believe in ghosts,” he says. “That’s all I’ve got to say.” He looks around the diner. “Who in this room believes in ghosts? Raise your hands.”
“Don’t, Freddie,” says Marie. “You’re making fun.”
“No. This is serious,” says Freddie. “Everyone who believes in ghosts, raise your hand.”
Marie raises her hand. Gunther raises his hand. After a few moments, about half the men raise their hands. And half don’t. Everybody is eyeing one another.
