The Ghost
By Harry Calhoun
It's a small apartment, so you tend to be acutely aware of any movement.
So when that creaky bare oak floorboard squeaks, in the narrow hall from the bedroom, I glance up from the couch. Over my book, I see the form moving from darkness, toward the pool of light I inhabit. A strange, yet familiar motion.
A slim t-shirted body appears. Pulling open the bathroom door, to the right
just beyond my dimlit oasis, she smiles. As if she knows me, or knew me. Then tosses a silly endearment -- "Pookie," or somesuch. Somehow it sends waves of sadness through me. Her brown hair swings insouciantly over her shoulder as she disappears through the doorway.
So mundane. The bathroom. The sight itself is familiar enough that I take a hit from my beer, pause to notice Schubert's "Tod Und Der Madchen" low on the radio, then go back to reading.
The figure comes out, silently, with the same enigmatic smile. Mona Lisa has not flushed, the giveaway that things are comfortable, intimate.
Or can the ghost not manipulate the lever? We know that women can put out the hint of the toilet tissue roll, but cannot bring themselves to attach it
to the spindle.
All right, I'm making light. We whistle when we're frightened.
Perhaps "ghost" is too strong a term ... not for what I have seen, but for some sensibilities. Ghost: A spirit that lingers then its body has gone. Or perhaps a spirit that lingers when its spirit has gone. Either way, it seems implausible, but folklore dies as hard as love, devotion, and trust.
Anyway, I nuzzle back into the couch. Fear, sadness, and emptiness eat at my
tranquillity. An uneasiness that's classically symptomatic of ghostly visitations. Still, I feel the same certain comfort I've always felt in my current relationship. Uneasiness isn't enough to trigger the fight-or-flight mechanism, at least not for me. But there is the eerie, profound feeling of loss ... as if something has died.
I shake it off and go back to reading. It's hot and clear -- not classical spectral weather, no lightning or rain -- and I turn the fan toward me. My wife, she is still that, at least for now, doesn't like air conditioning. Me either.
That won't have to change.
The classical station signs off. I've taken to sleeping on the couch a lot lately, as if I fear going to bed. Or do I fear something deeper?
To the kitchen for a brandy, a stiff one. Hemingway used to call liquor "the giant killer." We'll see if it puts ghosts to rest as well. I drink it down. I take more of the experiment back to the couch with me.
There, I sigh and put down the book. Perversely, I almost want to see the ghost again. A comforting look back . A past life, very recent past life, perhaps. Imagine what it will be like without discussing this history.
I reach for the beer, take another hit, suppress an urge to cry. I know it is just the alcohol. I know better than to drink like this. It makes people see things, lays bare their emotions. Seeing things, bare emotions, optimize the chances for ghosts -- shades, phantoms, illusions, name them to your liking -- to appear.
Now this is the weird part. I wake up in my bed. I must have staggered in in the wee hours. Beside me lies my wife, peaceful and pretty as ever. A little more distant, perhaps, ensconced more firmly on her side of the bed. But there. And she wakes, we have coffee, strawberries, split a small omelet. We shop for groceries. This is no dream. This, I think, is no ghost.
But evening draws inevitably its dusky curtains. On the couch, she plays listlessly with the remote, the 39 stations with no intelligent programming. At least she is dissatisfied. I wish she didn't know this much. But I can almost sense her beginning to fade, to retract as if some cicada into its larval shell.
That night I hide on the couch 'till late again. No wonder anyone would hate such a coward. The ghost appears a few times. Once, I waken and swear it is gently kissing my cheek. But mostly I hear it moving about in the bedroom, now become her bedroom, funny how hauntings take over a place. But the ghost is quiet. Mostly it reads in the bed, leaving its sweet, human, unperfumed scent on the pillow, the sheets. I will miss this quietness, this simplicity. It is simply amazing, but makes the concept of ghosts all the more believable, that something so unspectacular stays with you.
I think about the next day. We'll do that together, as if we still inhabit the same world. I try to write something, resist it, then I do write something. Putting it down on paper might help keep the ghost alive, but I'm not sure that's bad. What's that old phrase, "to give up the ghost"? No. I don't want that, for her, or me, and unfortunately, I don't want that for us either. A lot of good wanting does, when you come up against the forces of death, the supernatural something that makes void a permanent resident of our
lives.
She says the is leaving soon, making this as painless as possible.
I know better. Already her smile seems to hang in this air. Even her
silence is missing.
Hurt, like evil, leaps into a void.
I think I see a shadow in the corner of the room.
No. I see a shadow in the corner of the room.
I may have to live with it. Keep it there , but somehow keep it from
growing.
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