Flying in Place (18 page)

“Three years,” Jane’s brother Greg said behind me. “Three years of frigging therapy and community service, and then the bastard gets to practice again!”

“Greg!” Myrna said warningly.

“They should’ve thrown the creep in jail. So what if they fined him? They should have taken away his license! That judge has oatmeal between his ears—”

“Greg, be quiet!”

“Your father can’t hurt you anymore,” Donna said, holding my hands very tightly. “He can’t live here again. He’s not allowed to come near you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I turned around and said to Greg, “It’s because of the judge’s prostate, you know. He gave us all those oranges.”

“No,” Myrna said. “He was very upset. He was. Emma, he agonized over that sentence. I’m not saying he did what was right, because I think your father should have gone to jail too. But the judge felt awful for you. He thought prison would make your father even meaner than he is now, and he wanted your father to get counselling so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. The judge tried to do the right thing. I don’t agree with his decision, but he’s a good man.”

“He’s an idiot,” said Greg.

“It doesn’t matter what he is,” Donna said quietly, “as long as Emma’s safe.”

Even though I’d fought so hard against my father, I couldn’t make myself care about whether I was safe or not. I went about life in a fog which lifted only during my visits to the lake, where I kept searching for glimpses of Ginny. The place which had once seemed so comforting was desolate now, because she wasn’t there. Later I learned that one of the Hallorans followed me every time I went there, to make sure nothing happened to me, but at the time I didn’t realize it. I always thought I was alone; I’d have thought I was alone if I’d been in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, because I was all by myself in a place companionship couldn’t touch. I’d told no one but my mother about Ginny’s ghost.

Myrna finally made her presence known one chill October afternoon as I sat on the end of the dock, looking out at the water. I was supposed to be at an appointment with another counselor, but I couldn’t take the questions anymore, endless questions, questions I didn’t know how to answer without telling people about Ginny. And if I talked about Ginny they’d really know I was crazy.

“Emma,” someone called behind me, and I turned at the familiar voice and Myrna was on the beach, holding up a sweater. “Aren’t you cold?”

I shrugged, and she trudged up the dock towards me. It didn’t occur to me to wonder that she was there. “Awfully cold out here,” she said, draping the sweater over my shoulders and sitting down next to me. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“What about? Your dad?”

I turned back to the lake, into the wind. “Yeah, I guess. Everything, you know?”

She couldn’t possibly know, and being Myrna she probably knew it. Instead of answering, she passed me an apple. “Here,” she said. “Thought you might want a snack.”

“To keep doctors away?” I asked, and she laughed. The little birds pecking for food on the beach scattered at the noise.

“Yes,” she said, grinning hugely. “Yes, to keep doctors away. God bless you, Emma. That’s the first joke you’ve made for—well, just for ages. Keep that up, you hear me?”

I hadn’t thought it was funny. I pulled on the sweater, a thick one of Tom’s way too large for me, and said, “Will it work on all those counselors, too? I mean, I know I’m probably crazy, but I’m sick of them. All they do is ask stupid questions.”

“You aren’t crazy,” Myrna said, and her vehemence scattered more birds than her laughter had. “You were never crazy, Emma. Your father’s crazy and your mother may be crazy, and what happened to you was certainly crazy, but you aren’t. Not one bit. Nobody thinks you are. Honey, you’re sane and sound and strong as God’s little green apples, or you never would have survived all that.”

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“No? Then tell me what I should understand.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

I shrugged again, and told her about Ginny: maybe because it was time to tell someone, maybe because Myrna had gone to the trouble of following me to the lake, maybe because I couldn’t find Ginny and needed to make her real by talking about her. Maybe I was trying to drive Myrna away, or maybe I was testing her to be sure she’d stay no matter what I told her. Whatever the reason, I told her, all of it, and she listened, and when I was finished she was silent for a long time.

“Well,” she said, just when I thought she wasn’t going to acknowledge the story at all, “well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it.”

“You think I’m crazy too, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It happened! Really it did. Ginny came and she told me the truth, things I couldn’t have known—”

“Ghosts always tell the truth,” Myrna said mildly. “That’s why people are afraid of them.”

We sat there as the sun sank lower and the little birds that sounded so much like Ginny hunted on the beach. “I think,” Myrna said slowly after a while, “that most of us never really treasure being alive. We take it for granted. I think Ginny wanted you to understand how precious it is.”

I shook my head. She hadn’t gotten it at all. “You don’t understand. Mom was right—Ginny was a better person than I am. She was! She was prettier and nicer and smarter—”

“I don’t know if she was or not, Emma, because I never knew her. I don’t think she could have been much smarter than you are, though. You’re a damn smart kid. And you’re every bit as pretty as anyone needs to be.”

I wrapped Tom’s sweater more tightly around me. I was shaking, and because I’d fled so far from my pain I thought my trembling was just the cold. “She was nicer! She was! She came back so I’d be able to stop my father, and I couldn’t do anything for her at all.” Little bits of darkness were flashing in front of my eyes, like an obsidian scalpel slicing open the sky. “All I did was hurt her, just like he did. All I did was make her relive the bad stuff.”

“You gave her back her name,” Myrna said gently. “You shared the lake with her.”

“But I couldn’t give her anything new! I couldn’t give her anything she really wanted! Disneyland or anything!”

“She wanted you to live. She wanted you to feel all the things she can’t feel anymore. Do you understand?”

“But she helped me! She did all those things to help me, and I couldn’t do anything for her at all!”

“Emma, no one can help her. That’s what being dead means. But a lot of people are trying to help you. The best way for you to honor Ginny is to let them.” Myrna’s voice was sharper then, and I realized dimly, for the first time, how much trouble she’d gone to for me: making all those counselling appointments that I never kept, taking me into her house even though I hardly spoke to anyone there.

I bent my head in shame, and Myrna said softly, “You gave Ginny what she wanted by not giving up. You gave her what she wanted by fighting your father and staying alive. And you can keep giving her what she wants by living a full, rich, feeling life. That’s what she was trying to tell you. That’s what she wanted most of all.”

“How do I do that?” I said helplessly. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You’re already doing it. You’re doing it now, Emma; you’re doing it this minute, even if you don’t know it yet, even if you still feel dead inside. That’s why Ginny hasn’t had to come back.”

Abiding peace. I closed my eyes, and Myrna touched my shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “It’s really too cold out here. Time to go home for dinner.”

A few weeks after that,
I visited my mother in the hospital. It was a nice place, a clean cheerful place; when I got there Mom was sitting next to a window, wearing an old denim skirt and a sweater and brushing her hair while she looked out at the birds. “Hi,” she said when she saw me. Her eyes and nose were red, and she sounded like her head was stuffed with cotton. “Are you okay?”

“I guess so. Are you?”

She twisted the brush in her lap, pulling out individual strands of hair. “Yes. I am. Don’t worry, Emma. Or feel guilty, that’s not right, you shouldn’t—”

“You don’t sound okay.”

She bowed her head. “Well, not yet. But I’m getting there, really I am. The doctors say so, anyhow. I’ve got this terrible cold now, which is why I’m sitting around in my room. Ordinarily—” she laughed “—I’d be at occupational therapy.”

“Yeah? Like what? You have to teach people to write poetry or something?”

She looked up at me and almost smiled. “No, it’s things you do with your hands. I’m on a strict diet of concrete nouns, believe me…Pottery—there’s a real studio with a wheel and a kiln and everything. It’s relaxing, the way housework was when—well. I like the way the clay feels, and I’m getting pretty good at it.”

“Is that yours?” I asked, nodding towards a white pot sitting on the windowsill.

She nodded eagerly. “Yes! It’s not very pretty, it’s a little crooked and the glaze is uneven, but it was the first one I ever finished. All the others cracked before I could fire them or exploded in the kiln, but this one—”

“Oh,” I said. “I get it. It’s a metaphor. I’m your whole crooked pot, is that it?”

She looked stricken, and I felt miserable. Tom had helped me carve a pumpkin for Halloween, and it hadn’t been perfect and it hadn’t won the contest, but that was okay. I still liked my pumpkin, even if it didn’t have a blue ribbon. Maybe that was how Mom felt about her pot. I shouldn’t have been so nasty to her.

“Sorry, Mom. I guess I didn’t mean that.”

“I think you did,” she said stiffly, “but it’s all right.” I looked up again. She was blushing.

“I’m sorry, Emma. That I ran out of the house when you started screaming. I’d thought the key would be enough to—”

“Yeah, well. He had another one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Where did you have it hidden, anyhow? I’d been looking for it for years.”

“It was in the cemetery,” she said. “Under one of the flower pots. I knew you and your father would never look there, but Donna—Donna always found all my hiding places. Even when we were little. That’s why I didn’t want her going to the cemetery by herself. And I was afraid she’d go back after we left, so—so I took it, when we were there. That’s why I had it. To give you.”

I didn’t answer. She really did sound crazy. Blushing again, she fiddled with the hairbrush. Then she smiled. “I talked to her last night. Her latest cancer tests were negative. She’s going to Bermuda to celebrate.”

“I know,” I said. Donna and I talked on the phone once a week, and I was supposed to visit her in New York sometime, but I didn’t want to tell Mom that yet. “So, do they make you talk to shrinks?”

“Yes. Of course. Doctors and the other patients and myself. That’s why I’m here. The rest is just to pass time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m seeing shrinks too.” And talking to myself a lot, but I didn’t say that. “Do you like yours?”

“Well, no. But they aren’t here to be liked, Emma.” She sneezed and said, “Do you like yours?”

“No. They ask too many questions.”

She nodded, wiping her nose on a pink tissue. “Do you answer them?”

“Sometimes. When I want to. Do you?”

She rubbed a hand over her face. “Well, sometimes. When I can.”

I looked at the floor, wishing I were anywhere but here. “Yeah. Well, listen, thanks for calling all those people, anyway. You, uh—you didn’t take that pill Dad gave you, did you?”

“Of course not. I learned a few things from Ginny too, you know. Did she tell you how much she hated taking pills?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, she did. Vitamins or medicine or anything. She was always like that, even when she was still eating. She’d pretend to swallow them and spit them out when she thought I wasn’t looking. So that’s what I did.” She blew her nose and looked down at her lap. “There, you see? I still know more about her than you do.”

“I know you do. But six months ago you wouldn’t have told anybody she spit out her vitamin pills.” My father had told me that women in Mom’s family went crazy and got sick and died, but Donna hadn’t died from her cancer, and my mother was learning how to live with things that weren’t beautiful. I smiled at her and said, “You must have good shrinks, Mom.”

She winced. “I’ll tell them you said so.” We were both silent for a few seconds, and then she said, very quietly, “I still miss her.”

“I know,” I said, thinking about the lake. “So do I, Mom.”

“Emma?”

“What?”

“Don’t die. Okay?”

How was I supposed to answer that? Blinking to keep my vision steady, I stared at the white pot and said, “Not any sooner than I have to.”