Ghost Story

Ghosts aren’t what people think they are. There are no “non-corporeal” entities floating around leaving gooey ectoplasm behind as they vanish through walls. They can’t stretch their faces into silly shapes and grotesque masks or change their shape to suck out your soul. In fact, I’m fairly certain that few if any people see ghosts. What we humans perceive mostly as “things from beyond” are actually lots of different psychological triggers going off at once. Those bumps in the night, hands of trees reaching out to grab you on a stroll through the park, howling and screams from the basement: just the human imagination at work. These things are not ghosts.
I never said ghosts don’t exist. I look at one right now, I have been for the last two weeks. I know who she is, she died two months ago and a six weeks later she appeared. I have been watching her for the last two weeks. Never saying anything, just watching.
I suppose I should have been scared that Mid March night when she walked into the bedroom. I was reading The Catcher in the Rye, a book I have hated since high school. I knew who she was even before I watched the moonlight shine through her face as she sat on the opened windowsill. I don’t actually know if she walked into the bedroom, I only really noticed her when she was sitting on the sill. I did watch her slide off the sill and gently walk around the room, pausing in places I’m sure had special memories attached to them, I had special memories in here too. Her hand glided along the dusty dresser in the corner. It tracked no dust with it and if it passed through the surface, as they do in movies, it left no residue. She turned slowly and looked at the bed, not at me, but at the bed. I pushed my glasses back up onto my nose and returned to my book. She wasn’t bothering me and so neither would I her.
She returned again the following night, earlier this time, while I was cooking dinner. It was pasta salata, pasta salad for those of you who don’t speak Italian. As usual it was just me and Fido, now my cat with an identity crisis, for dinner. Roshi, the other cat never came inside, but he resides here regardless. I was chopping onions and cucumbers when she walked into the kitchen. I saw her walk in this time. Fido meowed at me from atop the table and I returned to the various vegetables along the counter. As I chopped she walked around the kitchen in the same manner she had the bedroom. I ignored her until the pasta timer went off. She was leaning against the doorway, next to the stove. I knew the pose she had taken. I took the pot of pasta from the stove, drained it and began rinsing it. This was the first time she got remotely close to me. As I tossed the pasta ‘neath the cold spray of water, I noticed her head hovering next to my shoulder. She was watching the pasta. I paid her no mind and continued silently preparing dinner.
With the salad in order I turned to set the table. Fido sat atop the table in his usual spot across from where I sat and she was sitting to his left. Her hands were folded in her lap and her head hung low, as if examining her hands: I knew that wasn’t what she was doing. For a second I thought it odd that she was sitting in the chair. I recalled pulling the chair out earlier that day to eat breakfast and never actually pushing it in. I shrugged and set out three place settings. I sat down at the table, dished out a smallish portion to Roshi and was about to feed myself when I remembered her. Offering the bowl to her I waited for some sort of acknowledgement - none came. I dished out a portion for myself, set the bowl in front of her plate with a decent serving still remaining. Fido finished what he wanted and leapt off the table leaving me and the ghost to finish. I cleaned the last bit of noodle off my plate, grabbed Fido’s plate and took them to the sink and began washing them. I turned around to see if she had disappeared again, which she had, and noticed that half of what I’d left was gone. I finished cleaning the kitchen and went to bed.
I saw her briefly the next few days. She was sitting in the living room one morning when I left for work. She was gazing at the 200 year old Grandfather clock passed down to me by my dad as I ate lunch on Saturday. There had been no prolonged encounters since those on the first and second nights of her arrival. The first week of her stay ended and the next week began. I hadn’t given any thought to how long she wished to stay, not that it really matters, I can’t do anything about it anyway.
The next day sticking out of my mind is the second Thursday of her stay. The basement was originally a small area meant to entertain guests as well as provide a home for the tv. Not too long ago I had opened up the folding sofa-bed and used the area as a sort of second bedroom when I wished to fall asleep to whatever was on television. That night it was a cross dressing comedian known as Eddie Izzard. Early on in the routine I noticed her descend the steps and slip into the laundry room which was adjacent to my makeshift second bedroom. I returned my attention to Mr. Izzard. It wasn’t until later that I felt the queen size sofa-bed tremble ever so slightly. She was curled up beside me, but not touching me, like a cat. She was shivering. I guess in the past week and a half I had grown so adjusted to her that my next movement felt perfectly natural. Setting a blanket over her curled up body, I wrapped my left arm around her. She stopped shivering and moments later I fell asleep. I woke up to find myself holding an empty blanket.
It is now Saturday night, I didn’t see her at all yesterday. Now I am in the bed room. It has been an oddly warming two weeks. She stands in front of the long mirror on her side of the bed. I look at her for a second as who she was and for a moment she comes back to life. There is color in her skin, her scent in the air and a bit of humidity in her hair. She whips around and is staring me in the eye. Somehow I’ve startled her. The memory slips my grasp, but that moment was all it took. All but her eyes return to the colorless state she held before. Her eyes alone remain the seemingly dull green on the surface, but I know that if you were to stare into them for a few more moments you’d see the shimmering emeralds they really are. Her eyes are all I need. She’s not angry, just puzzled as to where I came from. Where I came from? She’s the one who left me. Her eyes sharpen as if insulted by my thoughts. Fuck you her eyes say.
“Well fuck you too. That’s what happens when you run out on people and then go die without a goodbye; they get stuck and can’t move on.”
I have known her and I know exactly what she’s saying with each look. Indifference. It’s your fault you can’t move on.
“Fuck you. I loved you so goddamn much. I would have jumped in front of that truck to save you given the chance and you fucking know it!”
Sarcasm. Fat lot of good that does me now.
“Yeah, especially since you’re the one who can’t move on. That’s why you’ve been here the last two weeks, visiting the cats and the house we lived in.” My tears are reflected in the mirror against her face and it takes me a moment before I realize that she is crying too.
We had had an argument a week before she died. It was about something stupid. I thought she was cheating on me when I should have known better. For years I’d know this guy before I’d met her and for the years that we were together he’d still been a good friend to both of us. She’d left for her mothers house. I stayed at ours. At the funeral he asked me what happened so I told him. He gave me a good slap across the face and told me that she loved me more than anyone else in the world. I knew that he would have never let himself come between us even before she died.
“I was just about to call you when your mom called.” I have crumpled onto the floor, my arms wrapped around my knees. I am still sobbing. “I wanted to apologize for being so fucking stupid.”
Painful shock. I was on my way home to see you.
“I miss you so much. I love you so much, please don’t leave me. Wake me up and tell me that all this isn’t true.” She has taken me into her arms so very few times. There was never really a need for it. But she does so now and there isn’t any warmth in her touch. I can feel her holding me but I don’t feel the warmth of her life because she doesn’t have any anymore.
Love. I’m so sorry. I love you.
There is no warmth in her touch, there is love. It is electric and powerful and something so much more than a simple warmth. I feel safe and whole and strong in her arms. The world is perfect and we are surrounded by clouds that cushion us from anything that might break this moment. My cheeks are soaked with tears. So are hers. Perhaps it’s the mysticism behind ghosts, but in this single moment she looked even more radiantly beautiful that she ever did when she was alive. Everything came flooding back.
The times she’d fallen asleep in my arms while watching tv. The late night discussions about our favorite books. The first time we’d made love. Not had sex, but actually made love the way only two people who are madly and passionately in love with each other can. I’d made her a pasta salad and set up a romantic candle-light “seaside” dinner. I’d actually gotten a big poster of an ocean sunset and set it up against the wall and set candles in front of it. She loved the cheesiness of it. She had been so beautiful then. She was so beautiful now.
“I love you.”