Stranger Things Happen (23 page)

"Maybe he won't come back," Louise says, and Louise nods. What
if he does? Who can she call? The rude man with the heavy
gloves?

The woman comes to their table again. "Any dessert?" she wants
to know. "Coffee?"

"If you had a ghost," Louise says, "How would you get rid of
it?"

Louise kicks Louise under the table.

The woman thinks for a minute. "I'd go see a psychiatrist," she
says. "Get some kind of prescription. Coffee?"

But Anna has to go to her tumble class. She's learning how to
stand on her head. How to fall down and not be hurt. Louise gets
the woman to put the leftover mashed green potatoes in a container,
and she wraps up the dinner rolls in a napkin and bundles them into
her purse along with a few packets of sugar.

They walk out of the restaurant together, Louise first. Behind
her, Anna whispers something to Louise. "Louise?" Louise says.

"What?" Louise says, turning back.

"You need to walk behind me," Anna says. "You can't be
first."

"Come back and talk to me," Louise says, patting the air. "Say
thank you, Anna."

Anna doesn't say anything. She walks before them, slowly so that
they have to walk slowly as well.

"So what should I do?" Louise says.

"About the ghost? I don't know. Is he cute? Maybe he'll creep in
bed with you. Maybe he's your demon lover."

"Oh please," Louise says. "Yuck."

Louise says, "Sorry. You should call your mother."

"When I had the problem with the ladybugs," Louise says, "she
said they would go away if I sang them that nursery rhyme. Ladybug,
ladybug, fly away home."

"Well," Louise says, "they did go away, didn't they?"

"Not until I went away first," Louise says.

"Maybe it's someone who used to live in the house before you
moved in. Maybe he's buried under the floor of your bedroom or in
the wall or something."

"Just like the possum," Louise says. "Maybe it's Santa
Claus."

#

Louise's mother lives in a retirement community two states away.
Louise cleaned out her mother's basement and garage, put her
mother's furniture in storage, sold her mother's house. Her mother
wanted this. She gave Louise the money from the sale of the house
so that Louise could buy her own house. But she won't come visit
Louise in her new house. She won't let Louise send her on a package
vacation. Sometimes she pretends not to recognize Louise when
Louise calls. Or maybe she really doesn't recognize her. Maybe this
is why Louise's clients travel. Settle down in one place and you
get lazy. You don't bother to remember things like taking baths, or
your daughter's name.

When you travel, everything's always new. If you don't speak the
language, it isn't a big deal. Nobody expects you to understand
everything they say. You can wear the same clothes every day and
the other travelers will be impressed with your careful packing.
When you wake up and you're not sure where you are. There's a
perfectly good reason for that.

"Hello, Mom," Louise says when her mother picks up the
phone.

"Who is this?" her mother says.

"Louise," Louise says.

"Oh yes," her mother says. "Louise, how nice to speak to
you."

There is an awkward pause and then her mother says, "If you're
calling because it's your birthday, I'm sorry. I forgot."

"It isn't my birthday," Louise says. "Mom, remember the
ladybugs?"

"Oh yes," her mother says. "You sent pictures. They were
lovely."

"I have a ghost," Louise says, "and I was hoping that you would
know how to get rid of it."

"A ghost!" her mother says. "It isn't your father, is it?"

"No!" Louise says. "This ghost doesn't have any clothes on, Mom.
It's naked and I saw it for a minute and then it disappeared and
then I saw it again in my bathtub. Well, sort of."

"Are you sure it's a ghost?" her mother says.

"Yes, positive." Louise says.

"And it isn't your father?"

"No, it's not Dad. It doesn't look like anyone I've ever seen
before."

Her mother says, "Lucy—you don't know her—Mrs. Peterson's
husband died two nights ago. Is it a short fat man with an ugly
moustache? Dark-complected?"

"It isn't Mr. Peterson," Louise says.

"Have you asked what it wants?"

"Mom, I don't care what it wants," Louise says. "I just want it
to go away."

"Well," her mother says. "Try hot water and salt. Scrub all the
floors. You should polish them with lemon oil afterwards so they
don't get streaky. Wash the windows too. Wash all the bed linens
and beat all the rugs. And put the sheets back on the bed inside
out. And turn all your clothes on the hangers inside out. Clean the
bathroom."

"Inside out," Louise says.

"Inside out," her mother says. "Confuses them."

"I think it's pretty confused already. About clothes, anyway.
Are you sure this works?"

"Positive," her mother says. "We're always having supernatural
infestations around here. Sometimes it gets hard to tell who's
alive and who's dead. If cleaning the house doesn't work, try
hanging garlic up on strings. Ghosts hate garlic. Or they like it.
It's either one or the other, love it, hate it. So what else is
happening? When are you coming to visit?"

"I had lunch today with Louise," Louise says.

"Aren't you too old to have an imaginary friend?" her mother
says.

"Mom, you know Louise. Remember? Girl Scouts? College? She has
the little girl, Anna? Louise?"

"Of course I remember Louise," her mother says. "My own
daughter. You're a very rude person." She hangs up.

Salt, Louise thinks. Salt and hot water. She should write these
things down. Maybe she could send her mother a tape recorder. She
sits down on the kitchen floor and cries. That's one kind of salt
water. Then she scrubs floors, beats rugs, washes her sheets and
her blankets. She washes her clothes and hangs them back up, inside
out. While she works, the ghost lies half under the bed, feet and
genitalia pointed at her accusingly. She scrubs around it. Him.
It.

She is being squeamish, Louise thinks. Afraid to touch it. And
that makes her angry, so she picks up her broom. Pokes at the
fleshy thighs, and the ghost hisses under the bed like an angry
cat. She jumps back and then it isn't there anymore. But she sleeps
on the living room sofa. She keeps all the lights on in all the
rooms of the house.

#

"Well?" Louise says.

"It isn't gone," Louise says. She's just come home from work. "I
just don't know 
where 
it is. Maybe it's up in
the attic. It might be standing behind me, for all I know, while
I'm talking to you on the phone and every time I turn around, it
vanishes. Jumps back in the mirror or wherever it is that it goes.
You may hear me scream. By the time you get here, it will be too
late."

"Sweetie," Louise says. "I'm sure it can't hurt you."

"It hissed at me," Louise says.

"Did it just hiss, or did you do something first?" Louise says.
"Kettles hiss. It just means the water's boiling."

"What about snakes?" Louise says. "I'm thinking it's more like a
snake than a pot of tea."

"You could ask a priest to exorcise it. If you were Catholic. Or
you could go to the library. They might have a book. Exorcism for
dummies. Can you come to the symphony tonight? I have extra
tickets."

"You've always got extra tickets," Louise says.

"Yes, but it will be good for you," Louise says. "Besides I
haven't seen you for two days."

"Can't do it tonight," Louise says. "What about tomorrow
night?"

"Well, okay," Louise says. "Have you tried reading the Bible to
it?"

"What part of the Bible would I read?"

"How about the begetting part? That's official sounding," Louise
says.

"What if it thinks I'm flirting? The guy at the gas station
today said I should spit on the floor when I see it and say, 'In
the name of God, what do you want?'"

"Have you tried that?"

"I don't know about spitting on the floor," Louise says. "I just
cleaned it. What if it wants something gross, like my eyes? What if
it wants me to kill someone?"

"Well," Louise says, "that would depend on who it wanted you to
kill."

#

Louise goes to dinner with her married lover. After dinner, they
will go to a motel and fuck. Then he'll take a shower and go home,
and she'll spend the night at the motel. This is
a 
Louise-
style economy. It makes Louise feel slightly
more virtuous. The ghost will have the house to himself. Louise
doesn't talk to Louise about her lover. He belongs to her, and to
his wife, of course. There isn't enough left over to share. She met
him

at work. Before him she had another lover, another married man.
She would like to believe that this is a charming quirk, like being
bowlegged or sleeping with cellists. But perhaps it's a character
defect instead, like being tone deaf or refusing to eat food that
isn't green.

Here is what Louise would tell Louise, if she told her. I'm just
borrowing him—I don't want him to leave his wife. I'm glad he's
married. Let someone else take care of him. It's the way he
smells—the way married men smell. I can smell when a happily
married man comes into a room, and they can smell me too, I think.
So can the wives—that's why he has to take a shower when he leaves
me.

But Louise doesn't tell Louise about her lovers. She doesn't
want to sound as if she's competing with the cellists.

"What are you thinking about?" her lover says. The wine has made
his teeth red.

It's the guiltiness that cracks them wide open. The guilt makes
them taste so sweet, Louise thinks. "Do you believe in ghosts?" she
says.

Her lover laughs. "Of course not."

If he were her husband, they would sleep in the same bed every
night. And if she woke up and saw the ghost, she would wake up her
husband. They would both see the ghost. They would share
responsibility. It would be a piece of their marriage, part of the
things they don't have (can't have) now, like breakfast or ski
vacations or fights about toothpaste. Or maybe he would blame her.
If she tells him now that she saw a naked man in her bedroom, he
might say that it's her fault.

"Neither do I," Louise says. "But if you did believe in ghosts.
Because you saw one. What would you do? How would you get rid of
it?"

Her lover thinks for a minute. "I wouldn't get rid of it," he
says. "I'd charge admission. I'd become famous. I'd be
on 
Oprah
. They would make a movie. Everyone wants to
see a ghost."

"But what if there's a problem," Louise says. "Such as. What if
the ghost is naked?"

Her lover says, "Well, that would be a problem. Unless you were
the ghost. Then I would want you to be naked all the time."

#

But Louise can't fall asleep in the motel room. Her lover has
gone home to his home which isn't haunted, to his wife who doesn't
know about Louise. Louise is as unreal to her as a ghost. Louise
lies awake and thinks about her ghost. The dark is not dark, she
thinks, and there is something in the motel room with her.
Something her lover has left behind. Something touches her face.
There's something bitter in her mouth. In the room next door
someone is walking up and down. A baby is crying somewhere, or a
cat.

She gets dressed and drives home. She needs to know if the ghost
is still there or if her mother's recipe worked. She wishes she'd
tried to take a picture.

She looks all over the house. She takes her clothes off the
hangers in the closet and hangs them back right-side out. The ghost
isn't anywhere.

She can't find him. She even sticks her face up the chimney.

She finds the ghost curled up in her underwear drawer. He lies
face down, hands open and loose. He's naked and downy all over like
a baby monkey.

Louise spits on the floor, feeling relieved. "In God's name,"
she says, "What do you want?" The ghost doesn't say anything. He
lies there, small and hairy and forlorn, face down in her
underwear. Maybe he doesn't know what he wants any more than she
does. "Clothes?" Louise says. "Do you want me to get you some
clothes? It would be easier if you stayed the same size."

The ghost doesn't say anything. "Well," Louise says. "You think
about it. Let me know." She closes the drawer.

#

Anna is in her green bed. The green light is on. Louise and the
baby-sitter sit in the living room while Louise and Anna talk.
"When I was a dog," Anna says, "I ate roses and raw meat and
borscht. I wore silk dresses."

"When you were a dog," Louise hears Louise say, "you had big
silky ears and four big feet and a long silky tail and you wore a
collar made out of silk and a silk dress with a hole cut in it for
your tail."

"A green dress," Anna says. "I could see in the dark."

"Good night, my green girl," Louise says, "good night, good
night."

Louise comes into the living room. "Doesn't Louise look
beautiful," she says, leaning against Louise's chair and looking in
the mirror. "The two of us. Louise and Louise and Louise and
Louise. All four of us."

"Mirror, mirror on the wall," the babysitter says, "who is the
fairest Louise of all?" Patrick the babysitter doesn't let Louise
pay him. He takes symphony tickets instead. He plays classical
guitar and composes music himself. Louise and Louise would like to
hear his compositions, but he's too shy to play for them. He brings
his guitar sometimes, to play for Anna. He's teaching her the
simple chords.

"How is your ghost?" Louise says. "Louise has a ghost," she
tells Patrick.

"Smaller," Louise says. "Hairier." Louise doesn't really like
Patrick. He's in love with Louise for one thing. It embarrasses
Louise, the hopeless way he looks at Louise. He probably writes
love songs for her. He's friendly with Anna. As if that will get
him anywhere.