Notes from Ghost Town (21 page)

“Thank you, Heather,” I say, forcing the small part of me that really means it to inflate. “And I really am sorry I forgot about the fitting today. I feel awful.” Once I say it, I realize I really do.

“Oh, honey, it’s really not a big deal. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. I’d have probably forgotten it, too, if I wasn’t the one getting married.” She looks between me and Dad. Her eyes bug out a little bit. I try and guess the color of her button-up—much darker than her skin, lighter than the night sky; a shade slightly richer than a
stop sign. Burgundy, maybe, or dark red. “Have you two eaten yet? I fed Wynn earlier, but I’m starving.”

Dad shakes his head. “I was waiting for you.”

“I ate a couple of hours ago,” I say quickly, still focusing my eyes on Wynn so I’m not forced to make eye contact with either of them. “Maybe I can take Wynn out for a walk while you two get some food?”

Dad and Heather exchange a glance. “That would be great, Olivia,” Heather says, hand to her chest. “It’d be really nice to have some alone time. It’s been a little while.”

“Yessssss!” Wynn says, bouncing in my arms. “Yes yes yes!”

“Cool. We won’t be gone too long. By the way, Heather,” I say, deciding to test my powers. “I like that color on you. It’s great with your skin.”

She stretches an arm out, tugs at the sleeve. “Yeah? I wasn’t sure about this dark red with my hair.” She winks. “But if a painter says so, then it must be true!”

A shiver runs through me—
I was right
. Momentarily, I feel elated, like I’ve bridged some gap, transcended the Gray Space, for just a moment.

“No problem.” I continue to avoid Dad’s eyes. “We’ll see you later, okay?”

“Home by nine for bedtime,” Heather calls after us. “That’s just for tonight, Wynn! So don’t get used to it!” As Wynn and I slip into the hallway, I nuzzle my nose into the top of her head.

“Where should we go, Wynn?” I ask her, before putting her down so she can slip on her shoes. “The beach?”

“The beach! Nine! Wowowowowow.”

“Oh, and Dad?” I shout from the hall. “Long story, but I have to borrow your car, okay? I lent mine to Raina!” I haven’t explained the slashed tires, or the tow.

And I figure what’s one more lie, on top of all the others?

Wynn sticks half her body out the window of the car the whole short drive to the beach, like she’s a caged animal, released just today to the outside world. I point to Elysian Fields as we pass it; “Look Wynn, Ghost Town,” I say, and she repeats it, with awe, amazement, like they’re the first words she’s ever spoke: “Ghost Town.” Outside: the smell of milkweed, crinum lily—sweet and grassy, just slightly acrid at the end of it. Wynn sniffs deep, wriggling around in her seat. “Does that mean ghosts live there?”

“I don’t know, Wynn, maybe. That’s not what it’s really called. Raina and I made it up.” I inch Dad’s Chevy into the beach lot, just two streets away from the winding entrance to Ghost Town. I can’t bear to park in front of the actual place—some fear of leaving any part of myself there alone at night pricking at me when I consider it.

“I’m scared of ghosts. I hope if they live there they stay in there. Even Pop-pop Wooshie.”

“Don’t worry, Wynny. You’re safe.”

“Promise?”

I cross my fingers so she can see them. “Promise.”

There’s just the tiniest lip of sunlight left by the time we reach the actual beach, sandwiched between the different darks of sky and ocean, so the horizon looks like one huge, horizontal Oreo cookie. Ghost Town looms, practically within spitting distance. Wynn clutches my hand tight and we run through the sand—my old house is up ahead and we start walking toward it. “Shhhhh shhhhhhhushhhhh …” Wynn imitates the wave sounds, jumps around on little peaks in the sand, makes them flush with her sandals. “Shhhh shhhhhhushhhhhh.” I point to it ahead—the sturdy, boxy, two-story house I know better than any place in the world. “That’s where I grew up.”

“The
purple
one?” Wynn asks, so excited about this that her voice squeaks.

“The purple one.” It only looks a sick ashy shade to me now.

“Wowowowowow.” She pauses, grips around my leg now. “It’s like a
princess
house.”

My heart hammers in my chest—haven’t been inside the place since last summer, right before I left for art school, when, aside from the divorce, everything was still pretty much normal and Mom wasn’t a murderer and Lucas Stern was a living breathing human being. But, suddenly, I need to be closer. “Do you want to see it, Wynny?” I kneel on the sand, meet her at eye-level.

“Yes I do want to see it, Livie. Can we really go? Can we go now?” Her big round eyes are glittering.

I stand up, take her hand again in mine. So tiny, so warm.

“Wowowowowow.”

“Wynn—stop doing that.” She zips her lips. Tosses away the key.

We climb the dune separating the backyard from the beach, pulling off our sandals to better trek through the gritty sand, and the clusters of big, ferny pawpaw poking out between the tall grasses. I search for evidence of Mom along the way—a ring she might have lost, a thin silk scarf flown off her neck long ago, wrapped between the weeds—but there’s no trace of her. “My mom and I used to do this every day. She’d carry me when I was really little. Do you want me to carry you?”

“Nope. I like the sand in my toes a whole lot.”

“Well, aren’t you an independent lady?”

“That’s what Mommy says. She lets me pick out what I want for lunch, too. She lets me pick out cookies.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you pick out today, then?”

“Ummmm. Chocolate chip ones,” Wynn announces. “And she lets me pick out what shape I want my sandwich in and I wanted a heart. And she let me put the cookie cutter on the bread and I got to cut it myself.” Wynn swishes the bottom of her pj’s as she walks, extra slow, so she can dig her toes in.

It occurs to me that Heather is a really good mother. She raised Wynn by herself, after everything that happened, but has never once complained. She’s strong. And
so I guess a small, stubborn part of me understands why Dad is drawn to her. Why he needs her. Why she’s good for him.

“My Mommy used to let me pick out my lunch, too, but I don’t know if I ever got to cut
my
sandwiches into a heart, so you must be a
really
lucky lady.” I point to the space beneath the stilt-raised house, about three feet high, the cover of rocky dirt beneath it. “My best friends and I used to sneak away and play games under there.” We stop and Wynn puts her hands on the side of the house and swings herself underneath.

“Raina?”

“And Stern.” I swing myself underneath the house, too, then, and we sit there in the dirt, side by side.

“Do you still play with them?” Wynn asks, grabbing a fistful of soft, milky dirt and releasing it back to the ground.

“Well, sort of. But, it’s different when you get older, Wynn.”

“How come?” She wrinkles her nose.

“It’s harder. And your friends change … and you change.” I leave out:
And you fall in love, and they kiss you and say it was just a mistake, and they die, and your eyes stop working right
.

“Oh.” Wynn reaches for my hand, her eyes big and scared. “Can we go now?”

We skirt past the side of the funny beautiful purple house I grew up in, the moon big behind us. Mosquitoes
hover in tight swarms. Wynn tries to shoo them away with her whole body—bouncing and wriggling around when they come at her. I feel cloaked in some mist of childhood here—small and sort of scared, but filled, too, with a sense of wholeness and protection.

The area of grass and palm tree and dirt where Mom’s vegetable and herb garden used to be is littered, heavily, with trash and pieces of glass. Several windows are broken, spidery cracks all through the glass, spray paint bright on the front door:
Child killer. Devil. 666 I HOPE YOU ROT
.

I have the instinct to shield Wynn’s eyes, but I don’t. I freeze. Because there’s someone coming toward us, from the other side of the house—someone small and hunched. There’s a shopping cart behind her, loaded with trash, and she’s mumbling something, seemingly at us. Wynn hugs around my leg. “What’s that, Livie?”

I put my hand on her head. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Here—” I urge her off my leg, take her hand, and we start to walk back around the other side of the house, away.
Creak-a-creak-a-creak-a
: her shopping cart follows us. Cans jangle within it.

“Chica.”
The ragged, accented voice is familiar—the stoop of her back, the wild frizz of her hair, the haloed quality of it in the moonlight. Of course—this is the beach she always stalks, late at night, digging for “treasure.” I turn to her. To Medusa.

“I don’t have anything to give you, Medusa. I’m sorry.”
I keep a tight grip on Wynn’s hand. Wynn is staring at her, even bigger-eyed, sucking her thumb. I pull her along.
Creak-a-creak-a-creak-a
.

“I see you,
chica
. I see.” She pauses, her footsteps still close behind. “Ten
cuidado
. Be careful.”

Something icy scales the length of my back. Wynn stares up at me. “Why does she talk funny?” she asks.

“She just does,” I whisper, picking her up, drawing her close to me. She wraps her arms around my neck. Curious, and a little desperate, I stare hard at Medusa, at the shadows made in the deep, weathered creases of her skin.

“What are you talking about?”

She mumbles under her breath, scratching at herself. “The shadow man,” she says then, suddenly sharp, eyes focused and direct.
“El hombre del sombra vendrá para ti también.”

“The shadow man?” I come closer to her—she reeks of soggy garbage; I breathe through my mouth. Wynn whines a little in my arms. “What are you talking about? Who’s the shadow man?” I narrow my eyes at her, waiting. “Jesus! Say something!”

Wynn grips more tightly around my neck and I put a hand on top her head, murmur a reassurance to her.

Medusa goes blank, shuts down. Her eyes seem to swim in their sockets, tick around like a clock. She’s mumbling now, starts biting at her hands.

I turn and walk briskly away from my now-ramshackle old home, back down the dune, across the beach, up to
my car. I can still hear the sounds of her babbling halfway to the parking lot.

I place Wynn into the front seat and buckle her in. She’s awake but oddly, stoically quiet. Medusa’s warning continues to echo inside of my head the whole ride home:
Ten cuidado. Be careful. The shadow man. El hombre del sombra
.

She’s a crazy person
, I remind myself.
A babbling, confused homeless woman
.

So why am I shaking so hard?

F
our days.

“Olivia?” Hound-dog-faced George, Boss of the Carousel, stands over me.

“George. Hey.” I straighten up on the bench where I’ve been dozing for the past half-hour in lieu of the hawk-eyed carousel-watching I’m paid minimum wage to do. “Sorry—I just shut my eyes for a second.”

My sleep last night was filled with that jittery monsters-hiding-in-the-closet fear that used to grip me nights as a little kid. Back then, I’d just run into Mom and Dad’s room, wedge myself between them in their bed, and
bam
—out like a light.

I’m already in hot water with George. He called Ted Oakley, who knows George well and got me the job. Ted passed on George’s disappointment, along with confirmation via Austin that I had, in fact, called out of work all weekend, to Dad this morning, like a big, crappy game of telephone. And Dad called me before I could sleep through my alarm to tell me if I didn’t get my butt
out of bed and haul on over to work there’d be major hell to pay.

So, here I am.

“The carousel’s looking
pre-tty
dirty. Did you wash it last week?” George crosses his arms over his belly, stares down at me. Milky gray sweat beads up on his rat-gray skin. It looks like there’s dark dirt, settled into the folds of his face. “You know, Olivia, it’s part of your work here to hose that carousel off. Every single week. While there’s no one on it right now, I’d say it’s a great time to—”

“—wash it down. Yes, sir. Yep. On top of it, George,” I interrupt. I try I stand up from my bench, put on a cheery smile, avoid answering his last question because, no, I did not wash the stupid carousel last week. I skip off toward the supply shed on the other side of the park before he can get on my case about anything else I’m failing to do to stupid Park and Rec standards.

“I’ll be back later to check in,” he calls after me.

I track the hose from the shed back to carousel. Aiming first at the base and platform and then at each pole-suspended pony, I douse the whole structure in a wide, lazy circle. Grainy gray dirt drips down the ponies, scalp to nuzzle; it snakes down their manes and long white noses, settling there in new little dirt clumps so that they’re just as dirty-looking as before, but in a new way.
Great
.

Cleaning the carousel is always a two-part process: a wide sweep followed by tedious detail work, wiping the rearranged dirt from each pony’s head and mane. I have
no idea how the carousel gets so damn dirty, since it probably has a grand total of forty paying customers a week. Maybe dirt gnomes come at night, just to screw with me.

I turn the hose off and wind it back onto its giant plastic spool in the shed. Digging out a dusty bucket, I squeeze in some liquid soap, turn on the spider-web-covered faucet protruding from one wall. As the water slowly fills the bucket, I can’t help but think of Raina. If she were here, we could make fun of hound-dog George together, of the ridiculous tasks we’re both forced to do, for crap money, at work.

I sigh, jostle the bucket around with my foot a bit to redistribute the bubbles. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that at her in the car. She did a nice thing for me, and I repaid her by being a total bitch. So she thinks I need some help. Who wouldn’t?

Once the bucket is full, I drag it across the grass by its tendon-thin metal handle and set it beside the carousel. I dip a sponge in, soaking my arm up to the elbow.

The work is slow and painfully boring. I move down the line, doing a sloppy job, struggling to wash the dirt from each painted plaster face and mane with maximum efficiency and minimum effort.