Ghost, page 8
Robert, Ophelia, Martha, Lloyd, Andrew, are all attempting to maintain business as usual. David can’t look any of them in the eye. He is the fool who caused it all. He should quit his job at once and leave the premises. But there is a man with a camera outside, apparently trying to take pictures of people coming and going.
Trying to hide, in his embarrassment, David goes downstairs and looks for a room where he might remain unnoticed until nightfall. As always, he is perplexed by all of the passageways and doors. It seems that every week he discovers a new room in the mortuary; the place is an endless warren of rooms, some of them hidden and accessible only by interior doors, some without windows, some the former bedrooms or sitting rooms of past generations of the family. He decides to cloister himself in one of the downstairs washrooms, which he can almost imagine as the principal’s office—the toilet seat is the bench, faces jeer through the four walls.
It is cool and silent in the washroom, and he has just taken off his tie when Martha knocks on the door. The evil woman has found him. But even Martha seems subdued and shaken, almost docile. “Mr. Kurzweil, I’m sorry to disturb you.” The Holland family, scheduled for an appointment with Martin, has asked to meet with David instead. It is not that Martin is indisposed, Martha explains; it is just that the family would prefer to meet with him. I can’t see anyone, he groans through the closed door. They say they’ll wait to meet you at your convenience, says Martha. They have some “special requests.”
It is almost midnight when David arrives at Ellen’s house, taking his shoes off as he tiptoes around the dark shape of Sam sleeping on the couch. A tiny light in the kitchen faintly illuminates the path through the living room to Ellen’s bedroom. For a few moments, he pauses by the window and looks out at the lake. At this hour, it appears as a shapeless black desert, with lights flickering like campfires on the opposite shore.
“Do you think Sam saw you?” whispers Ellen.
“No, I was very quiet. I had to be with you tonight.”
“Do you want to take a shower?” Ellen has been in bed and is wearing her nightgown. He can’t answer any questions now, please; he can’t think. In the darkness, he feels for the drawer where she keeps his pajamas. When it comes to organization, Ellen is a perfectionist. She has a certain drawer for scissors and tape, another for paper and pens, a certain box for batteries and candles. Her own clothes she keeps neatly folded in drawers. He puts on his pajama top and leaves off the bottoms. Her breath. She envelops him. She is his flower, and she has not chastised him once about the article, even though she must be as embarrassed as he is—her colleagues at the library surely have discussed it, and he can’t imagine what they’ve said, the whisperings and ridicule she must have endured today as she sat at her desk. But not a single disapproving remark from her. “I’m so sorry” is all she says, and she kisses him at the base of his neck.
With the fragrance of her all over him, they lie side by side in her bed. They lie listening to each other breathe. Slowly, David begins to recover his mind. For a few minutes today while he sat in the basement washroom, he had the fleeting sensation that whatever happened on April 23 was it, or close to it. Has he been offered a glimpse of the meaning that always eluded him? The thing that he saw, whatever it was, surely meant something. It has frightened him, but it meant something. Why him? Perhaps because he has been searching for something in a way that other people have not. He was prepared. He was a cocked spring. Not that he ever considered himself special. But he has made certain decisions in his life. People are the sum of their decisions, aren’t they? Harry has gone one way, and he has gone another. Bethany has gone one way, and he another. At times, he has felt the world opening up around him, shifting, cracks forming in the wall of experience, and he has been poised to see through those cracks. The supernatural he cannot accept. But he does believe that there is something unseen behind common experience, some totality, which can be glimpsed only between the cracks. He has read that people near death understand something. What is it they understand? Do they understand the flash of their lives against the totality, against the infinity of time before and after their single chirp of life? Do they feel a connection? Sometimes he strains to remember fragments, sounds, anything from before he was born—an absurd idea, of course, but isn’t it equally absurd to think that the world existed before him, that there was a time when he didn’t exist, when he had no thoughts, when the impulses and bursts in his brain, whatever constitutes thought and consciousness, did not exist, when the billions of tiny cells of his brain and his body were just random atoms scattered in the soil and the air? How do those bits of unfeeling inanimate matter congregate to make something living and thinking? What meaning is in it? Surely there must be a meaning for something so elaborate and complex. Could it all be an accident? Perhaps a fissure in the wall appeared in front of him that late afternoon in the slumber room. He saw it. What did it mean? He saw something, he almost understood something. The grand sweep and the totality emerged for a moment from the haze, and he brushed up against it.
In the lobby, Raymond is playing computer games in his pajamas. Overhead, the floorboards creak as the tenants move around in their rooms, getting dressed and ready to go to the diner for breakfast and then out to their jobs—the sudden whoosh of a toilet being flushed. Too tired to mount the stairs to his rooms, David walks next door to the diner. Gunther is already at work in the kitchen, and his music escapes through the swinging door along with the smell of bacon, eggs, pancakes, coffee. But the diner is empty. It is only 6:30 a.m., and the tenants of the apartment building—the diner’s only customers—don’t start coming over until 7:00. Marie walks from one table to the next, humming a song, wiping the red Formica tops and filling the paper-napkin dispensers. In the slanting light of the morning, her hair shines and glows. He stands at the door and she sees him. By now, after the night with Ellen, his anger has completely dissolved. Marie meant no harm. She looks at him with her usual cheerfulness, but also with an uncertainty, a tentativeness. “The guys have been asking about you,” she says. She turns to the kitchen door. “David is back.”
Gunther comes out of the kitchen, a big smile on his face. He walks over and shakes David’s hand, the first time he’s ever done so, his hand oily with butter. “I’m making blueberry pancakes this morning. In your honor. You take whatever table you want.”
“Isn’t it early?” says David.
“No problem,” says Gunther. “You hungry?” David nods. “Well, you take a seat anywhere you want, and I’ll bring out the pancakes.” A Christmas ornament permanently hangs from the kitchen door, and it swings back and forth as the door opens and closes.
David sits down and Marie sits next to him. You’ve seen the paper? asks Marie. Yes. “I’m not the one who called that reporter lady,” says Marie. “I wanted to tell you straight off. I’m sorry. I know you told me those things in confidence.” Her upper lip is quivering, as if she’s about to cry.
“Marie, don’t worry about it.” He places his hand over her hand. Marie’s lip is still quivering.
Gunther brings out the pancakes. He puts a plate in front of David and a plate in front of Marie, the fancy plates he reserves for birthdays.
Marie is beginning to regain her composure. “But you did do people a service,” she says. “People should know. People have no idea.” Marie pours syrup on her pancakes, just a little, she says, because she’s watching her weight. Her husband, Sterl, would like to meet him, she says, if he wouldn’t mind coming to their house. Perhaps she could make dinner for him some Sunday at her house. It would mean the world to her. Sterl has never given much credence to her “experiences,” she says, but it’s different with David, an educated man, and Sterl would like to talk to him. Please, would he come? David feels himself being drawn into a swamp, but he can’t say no to Marie. She has been so kind to him, and she has so little of a life outside the diner and apartments. Just now, she tells him, her son is in jail for writing bad checks, and she has no idea how she will get him out. She doesn’t even know if she wants to get him out. Yes, he’ll come, David says. Any Sunday.
A few of the men begin wandering in. “Blueberry pancakes in David’s honor,” Gunther yells out from the kitchen. Marie brings out the pancakes, and the men begin eating.
“Why can’t we have blueberry pancakes more often,” complains Henry. “I’ve asked for blueberry pancakes a million times.”
“Pancakes ain’t got no protein,” says Winston, eating his pancakes.
“You one of those health freaks?” says Raymond. “Or you just watching your figure?”
“Winston is watching his figure,” says George.
“Good article in the paper,” someone says.
“That’s ’cause your name was in it. I talked to that gal too, and she didn’t put my name in it.”
“’Cause you’re a jackass.”
“Good article.”
“Yeah. I sent a copy to my girlfriend.”
“Like shit you have a girlfriend.”
“We got a bunch of celebrities,” Henry says, and grins at David. “Hiding-out celebrities. Somebody ought to get us a book deal.”
“You have any more pancakes back there, Gunther?”
Upstairs in the apartment building, David finds several notes under his door. “I take my hat off to you. You’ve got steel balls,” one note says. Another note: “I’m not changing my mind about ghosts, but we’re all friends here in this rat’s nest.” An envelope contains forty dollars, a payback of the money David lent Raymond two years ago. Raymond isn’t taking any chances.
In the shower, the embarrassment returns, and the confusion. His life has been flung out of control. How thin the surface between sanity and insanity, he thinks. How quickly the membrane can break. From one instant to the next, a person can fall through the ice. He feels like he has walked into a novel by Kafka.
With a clenching in his stomach, he wonders who has read the newspaper article. Perhaps even his mother has read it—and if she hasn’t read it herself, she has friends who will happily recite it to her, the same friends who were always jealous of her beauty. They would be polite, of course, but they would be vengeful and pleased. “Poor Madeleine,” he can hear them say to one another, the pit of snakes. “Madeleine’s son, David, an intelligent boy when he was younger, divorced for some time, no children, thank God—we don’t see him very much these days—he must be in his forties now. For years he worked in a bank but now, apparently, he works in a mortuary. Yes, that’s right, a mortuary. Madeleine’s son is an assistant in a mortuary. And evidently he’s seen a ghost! Ha, ha. It’s all in the papers. Madeleine must be absolutely red with embarrassment. We should give her a call.”
It was at his uncle’s house, the summer after he graduated college, and his mother and her friends were gathered there, laughing and talking and drinking Bloody Marys around the outdoor table, and the air sagged with that sleepy haze of summer, that heavy blue light. They were talking about somebody’s daughter, from a family of means. The girl had gotten secretly engaged to a cocaine addict and brought him home one day, a terrible idea. The young man was all dressed up in a suit and tie, but his eyes were dilated and he chattered nonstop “like a monkey.” Then one of the women with her Bloody Mary said that parents never know what is going to happen to their children, regardless of the example they set at home. And another woman looked directly at Madeleine, with David sitting there, and said not to worry. “David is a straight arrow.”
They will relish his downfall.
What will his mother think? She will handle her friends; she is much too self-assured and serene to let her malicious friends get under her skin. But what will she think of him? Certainly she’ll guess that he’s lied to her all of these years about his exalted position at the bank. He must speak to her. What will he say? He doesn’t know, but he must speak to her. He dreads the encounter.
But his mother will have to wait. Today he must assist with another funeral. Julia McConoghy has died at age forty of breast cancer. With the rain coming down in buckets, everyone enters the front door of the mortuary with mud on his or her shoes. First, an hour early, is the grieving family—Patrick McConoghy, Julia’s husband, and their two daughters—then three women friends with their hats and coats and umbrellas sloshing about, a florist delivering flowers from an uncle who is too frail to attend, Andrew with water pouring from his cap and cursing the foul weather, two pallbearers. As soon as Martha has cleaned up the carpet from one person, another walks in the door. To make matters worse, they are short on staff, for three of the pallbearers have abruptly canceled for the day, and the McConoghys have no family to do the job.
David has been in and out of the garage helping Andrew clean the hearse, then searching for umbrellas. “Did you count them?” he asks Jenny. “I found only twenty-three.” The umbrellas were all supposed to be in the garage shed, but David has been discovering them scattered about in coat closets, in the basement, in the trunk of the hearse.
“We might have enough,” says Jenny. “Only a few people have called in.”
Martin has just come in from the rain after checking on the cars. He’s taken off his boots and is walking around in his wet socks. For the last hour, he’s been making phone calls, going through the list of temporary help to hire a couple more pallbearers for the day. Martin seems to be ignoring the embarrassment of the last few days, covering his humiliation because he is a professional and because he will not fail the grieving families. The rhythm of the funeral home, carrying on its dignified business, is what he knows. And his spirits have been boosted by an angry letter from Bertram Bigelow, director of one of the rival funeral homes, who complained that the ghost article was just a “sneaky ploy” by Martin to increase business. Years ago, Mr. Bigelow visited Martin’s funeral home on the pretense of some kind of merchandise partnership and took the opportunity to have a good look around, tramping from room to room and viewing the decaying shabbiness with satisfaction.
Jenny gives Martin a kiss in the hallway. “Take off those wet socks, or you’ll catch a cold.”
Ophelia, weepy for the last three days, is dispatched to buy more umbrellas. Of course we’re not going to fire you, Jenny whispers to her in the coat room. “Martin was just emotional. He’ll get over it.”
IN THE BASEMENT, DAVID HAS FOUND three more umbrellas, one of them broken and of little use. “I’m on my way up,” he calls to Jenny, and begins mounting the stairs. “You’ve got the last ones,” she shouts down. “I don’t know what happens to our umbrellas.” While he climbs the stone steps, David can hear Andrew in the garage, the engine of the hearse coughing, stopping, then coughing again. Evidently, something is wrong with the car. Something is always wrong with the car. But to everyone’s relief, Andrew can repair automobiles as well as drive them. A smell of gasoline drifts through the air. The staircase is narrow and winding, barely wide enough for a person. And now the broken umbrella won’t close. As David continues to climb up the stairs, he fiddles with the latch, trying to fix it. The umbrella, half open, drags against the opposite stone walls. “The carburetor is shot,” Andrew shouts up. “Tell Jenny I’m going out to buy a new carburetor.” “All right,” says David. “Will we be able to drive today?” “Yep,” says Andrew. “I’ll be back before we have to leave.” David continues up the spiraling staircase. Its stone walls are deeply indented with branching grooves, like the channels of ancient dry rivers. Its spiraling stone steps are also notched and grooved, uneven. Around and around he goes. His shoes tap on the stone steps like the tapping of his mother’s cane. Every few moments, he looks back at the steps behind and below, which vanish after six or eight feet because of the tight twist of the staircase. Today, he thinks, the soil at the grave site will be mud. There will be mud getting into the cars, mud getting out, mud on the path down to the grave. Doubtless, some people will slip and get mud all over their suits. Even with the umbrellas, everyone will get muddy and wet. He fiddles again with the bad umbrella. Unable to fix the latch, he forces it shut. With a crack, the supporting struts snap. At least the thing stops scraping the walls. The gasoline smell stings. He pinches his nose, but the sharp odor remains. Upstairs, a man’s voice can be heard talking to Martin in the reception area, apparently one of the new pallbearers. Then Martin’s voice as he dictates instructions. “Ophelia is back with the umbrellas,” Jenny calls down to David. “Two more will be enough.” “That’s all I’ve got,” David shouts back. For some reason, he remembers a day he and Lauren were taking their mother to lunch in the rain, just after Lauren’s divorce. They had two umbrellas between them. His mother kept shuffling back and forth, squeezing first under David’s umbrella, then Lauren’s, never able to remain dry. While they walked, Lauren enumerated all of the shortcomings of her former husband, as if to convince herself that the divorce was justified. Their mother listened without comment. Then Lauren began wondering how her children would adjust. In an unusual settlement, the court had decided that one child should live with Steve and one with her. Steve hardly cared. In fact, he was already dating another woman, who had her own children. Lauren began weeping, and their mother tried to comfort her, but she hurried ahead to the restaurant. Ten years ago, maybe twelve. Only shortly before, it seems to him now, Lauren’s second marriage, and the outdoor reception with the tinkling of bells and a train passing by in the distance with its windows glinting in the sun and the guests barefoot in the grass. David listens to his shoes tap on the steps as he climbs. His shoulder brushes against a protruding ledge in the wall. He steps away, then continues up. It will be a mud-filled day. And at the end of the day, he and Andrew will have to clean the cars. Then, for him, a long night with the preplanned funerals and the obit files. He hears Andrew again in the garage, tools clanking. “I’m back,” shouts Andrew. “I’ll let you know in a minute.” The engine of the car comes alive and throbs happily. “That was the problem,” says Andrew. “Glad to hear it,” David shouts back. Another pungent whiff of the gasoline. He holds his nose as he climbs. Everyone will get wet and complain, but he actually enjoys rainy days. In the rain, flowers and grass appear their most exquisite, as if they breathed water instead of air, more alive in the wet and the mist, with the rain softening the edges of light, coating the leaves with silky soft gloves. He touches the grooved wall with its ancient riverbeds, lets his fingers trail the stone crevices as he follows the spiraling steps. Tap, tap, his shoes tap on the stone steps. Twisting in their tight turns, the steps vanish ahead and behind.
