The Household Spirit (32 page)

Three minutes later, his car arrived.

It pulled into the driveway, spectral and slow. He was coming home from a night shift. Harriet had said that she'd asked him to behave for one day exactly as he normally would but to not look at the cameras or turn off any of the lights. The car moved from one screen, disappeared, then came to rest in another screen. The headlights died. It took Mr. Jeffries a minute to open the door, get out.

He stood.

It was like watching a time-lapse video of an assassination. He sleepwalked into his house. Emily felt like she shouldn't be seeing this, it was too intimate, but she couldn't look away. She needed to see his face.

Emily was now completely on his time.

He moved from screen to screen. Emily had time to anticipate which screen the ghost would move into next and she adjusted her position accordingly, scooting herself in a circle around the room, thinking: As long as I can see him, he is safe. I must keep Howie safe. He went to the kitchen. Hovered. Opened the refrigerator and removed a can of ginger ale that Emily knew he hated. Like he was showing the camera, joking almost. He put it back. How he loved his daughter, Emily thought. This, finally, was his sailboat.

It took him twenty minutes to go upstairs. He disappeared for two minutes, probably while climbing the stairs, and Emily felt abandoned. The house became sinister, blaring with menace. She thought that anything could be hiding in there, waiting to hurt him.

Come back please.

He reappeared in the bathroom. He washed his face. He seemed to stare at his face for a long time, but Emily still couldn't quite see it. He was the only thing colored normally, and that, of course, made him look faded, as if he were disappearing. He wouldn't turn to her. Emily badly needed to see his face. Just one last time, she thought.

He brushed his teeth; and he flossed with the meticulousness of someone sewing up a wound. He continued to look at himself in the mirror, and leaves, outside the window, hung suspended in the air.

The bathroom mirror had been painted silver, Emily suddenly realized. There was no face looking back at Mr. Jeffries. But still he stared, as if the video had been paused.

He shut the bathroom lights off.

Emily gasped.

He wasn't supposed to do that, was he? She waited. Perhaps he was going to the toilet, but Emily didn't think so. She watched, for what felt like minutes, holding her breath, and there: she saw him.

Emily could just make him out, and she realized, with a jolt, that he'd been there the whole time. She had been looking right through him all that time. The shape of his head was discernible.
Howard Jeffries standing in the dark of the bathroom at the window, looking out. Did he see in slow motion, too? Emily wondered if his sight had gone ahead, in real time, gazing out into the future while the world around him ground to a halt.

He was looking at Emily.

He knew that she was there, looking at him. They were still keeping each other safe.

Thank you.

Emily began to cry.

Thank you for saving my life
.

Suddenly the room that Emily was sitting in ceased to exist. The screens disappeared.

This was not part of
The Household Spirit
.

Emily heard a few cheers from the other room. Shouts of “Blackout!”
Wooooo
s and laughter and calls for looting; a wineglass shattering. Emily was paralyzed. Seconds later, the power returned, but the digital projectors had reset themselves. They showed only blue screens that blinked
ERROR
.

ERROR
behind her. In front of her. To the side.

ERROR
.

ERROR
.

ERROR
.

Harriet burst into the room, looked about. “Well, that's that,” she said. “Sorry for abandoning you. Guess there's no point turning this back on now. Ethan's here, by the way. He had to walk twenty blocks and looks like a fucking Sasquatch…”

ERROR
.

ERROR
.

Emily, still sitting, said, “You can't just leave him there, Harriet.”

“Wait, what?” Harriet said. “Emily, are you all right?”

ERROR
.

Emily laughed; she shook her head no. She wiped the tears from her eyes. She just needed to see the end, she said. Emily needed to see what happened next. Harriet understood. She touched Emily's
shoulder, then, without a word, went over and got the projectors working. She said she'd be back shortly. The momentary blackout had reignited the party.

The screens, once again, showed Mr. Jeffries returning home. But Harriet had sloppily synced the videos and now there were two Mr. Jeffries, then three. Four. He brushed his teeth at the same time that he opened the refrigerator for the ginger ale. He got out of his car after a long night of work. Then his car, on another screen, pulled up the driveway. Emily stood. You need to get as far away from here as possible. She was surrounded. She could not move. But then she heard it, like a hand reaching into her panic and waking her up. It sounded as if it was coming from the screens, from deep inside Emily's memory of home: a door opening, a blizzard, and the joy of a little girl shouting, “Daddy!”