ON GHOSTS

When asked, most people will tell you they don’t believe in ghosts. I know this, I’ve asked. I also know that with a little pressing it emerges that everyone has a ghost story. In an otherwise ordinary life of toil and struggle there intruded in this house, in that room, on that night, something extraordinary, inexplicable, something not of this world. One heard something: footsteps on a stair, a child crying, whispering voices in the hall; another saw something: a curtain rustling in a closed room, the impress of a head upon a pillow, a locked window standing open, a shadow stretching across a floor and up a wall. There was an oppressive atmosphere of sadness or malevolence, sometimes associated with a crime or a tragedy that one sensed upon entering the scene. Even the most thoroughgoing materialist has some little anecdotal evidence, some moment of doubting all, now easily recalled, and eagerly dismissed.

Ghosts. Great Caesar’s. Hamlet’s father. Christmas Past.

Violet was right. My mother died in a cold, dark little room in a scarcely respectable boardinghouse not far from the old Philadelphia station. We could hear the engines, like tired cart animals, wheezing and coughing at the end of their runs. We had once had better lodgings, but as the money ran out and her illness wasted the flesh from her bones, our options had dwindled. I wrote pleading letters to distant relatives, but as we kept changing addresses, I could never be sure there had been no reply, so I wrote again, reminding them of the new address.

In exchange for our miserable room and two meals a day, I did the washing up, assisted the laundress, cleaned the downstairs parlor, and ran errands for the proprietor, a blowsy, furious Irishwoman who could never be satisfied. That night I came in, exhausted from a run halfway across town in the bitter cold with only my cloth coat to protect me from the chill. I lit the lamp and carried it to the bed stand. Mother lay on her side, her breathing labored, her eyes wide and staring at the open door of the wardrobe. I stroked her forehead, which was damp and cool, arranged her blanket, and spoke reassuringly of the bread and cheese I’d saved from my dinner, though I knew she’d lost interest in food and was unlikely to be tempted. She seemed not to hear me or even to be aware of me. I turned away to pour some water from the pitcher into the glass, and when I looked back she was moving her legs under the blanket, flailing her arms as if she intended to rise from the bed, which I knew she hadn’t the strength to do. My effort to capture her hands was stymied when she suddenly gripped both my wrists hard, pulling me closer. I tried to break away; I was truly frightened by the power and fierce animation that had come over her. She raised herself from the pillow, moving her dry lips, her eyes burning with the urgency of her message. “I want to stay here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here. I must stay here.” The effort to say this much – she had scarcely spoken for several days – exhausted her and she fell back, releasing my wrists. She lay panting while I looked down at her in the gloom, trying to think what I should do. Water, I stupidly thought, and turned away again. I heard a long intake of breath, followed by a quick plosive puff of air, like a child making a wish as she blows the fuzz from a dandelion. When I looked back her sunken eyes were closed, her mouth ajar, and I knew at once that she was gone.

She who had wanted, in spite of our poverty and friendlessness, to stay here.

I went to the door, stood there, but couldn’t open it. Something heavy and adamant stayed my hand. I approached the bed again, noting with a shudder that Mother’s eyes were now open, lightless and sightless. I crossed to the wardrobe – why, I asked myself, had it been left open? I could hear my own heartbeat, but otherwise the stillness in the room was confounding.

I stretched out my hand, laying my palm flat on the smooth wood of the panel. “Phoebe,” Mother said, in the exhausted, petulant voice I knew so well. “Don’t close the door.”

With a shout, I darted to the hall door, threw it open, and rushed out onto the landing. Mr. Widener, a fellow boarder, stood on the stair gazing wonderingly up at me.

“Sir,” I cried. “Please help me. My mother has passed away.”

I was fifteen years old.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 601