by Shari Lapena
“He never talks about anything.”
They were quiet for a minute, processing it all. “I’m worried about him,” John said tentatively.
“Join the club. Mom’s losing it. She thinks he’s getting Alzheimer’s,” Dylan said. John started biting his nails. “Don’t let on I told you,” Dylan added. “She asked me not to.”
John was too worried to even be offended.
• • •
LATER THAT NIGHT, Harold was sitting on the john when Tom appeared from out of nowhere. Harold almost had a heart attack right then and there.
“Harold,” said Tom’s voice from beside the shower curtain, as if he’d stepped out from behind it. “How the hell are you?”
There was no mistaking that familiar, booming voice, too big for the room. And besides, nobody but Tom had ever walked in on Harold when he was using the bathroom—not even Audrey—but Tom had never thought twice.
Once he was over the shock, Harold was tentatively delighted. A friend was exactly what he needed right now. “Tom,” he said, almost shyly, “Is that really you?”
“Sure,” Tom said.
Then, from outside the bathroom door, his mother’s voice: “Harold—are you in there?”
“Mom!” Harold called out. “Where’ve you been?”
She ignored his question, saying, “There’s someone here who wants to speak to you.”
“I know Mom; he’s in here.”
“Oh. I’ll be going then,” she said.
He wanted to run after her, but where she was going, he couldn’t follow. Besides, he wanted to talk to Tom.
“It’s good to see you, Tom,” Harold said, and then realized what a stupid thing to say that was, seeing as Tom was invisible.
“Yeah, you too,” Tom said. He seemed to be moving around, even within the confines of the small bathroom; Tom never did stay in one place.
Harold didn’t know what to say next. What do you say to someone you haven’t spoken to in over fifteen years—for reasons that you can’t even remember? It wasn’t like they had much in common anymore. “Nice funeral,” Harold said awkwardly.
“Thanks.”
“Sorry about the—you know . . .” Harold felt he really should apologize for the scene he’d caused on Tom’s special day.
“Oh, hell, that’s all right,” Tom said. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was another awkward pause, while Harold wondered what to say and Tom opened the medicine cabinet and started shifting things around inside. He seemed to want something, but Harold had no idea what.
“Why are you here, Tom?” Harold asked at last. He felt a pang, an inarticulate longing for Tom to still be his friend. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Tom might be a ghost, but he was still the same old Tom; Harold would always trust him. He’d never had anything to fear from Tom.
“I’m just sticking around for a while, tying up a few loose ends,” Tom said.
“Like what?”
“Test results, that sort of thing. Probably nothing to worry about.”
That didn’t make sense at all—Tom was already dead, what kind of tests could he still be interested in? “Oh! You mean the autopsy results?” Harold asked. “Still the doctor, eh?”
“Yeah.”
Harold had a thought. “Could you do me a favour?” Tom had always looked out for him; maybe he still would.
“What kind of favour?”
Harold lowered his voice to a whisper. “Those others—could you tell them to leave me alone?”
“I wish I could, Harold.” The door to the towel cupboard below the sink opened, seemingly of its own volition.
“What do you mean?” Harold felt the chill of panic, a twinge of nausea. It was almost bedtime.
“I don’t have any control over anybody else,” Tom said. “You should know that.”
“But, could you just ask them, though?”
“Sure, I’ll ask them.”
• • •
IT WAS CLOSE to midnight, but Audrey wasn’t in bed yet, and unbeknownst to her, neither was Harold. She was in the kitchen baking Harold’s birthday cake for the next day. The electric mixer conveniently covered the sound of her quiet sobbing. She was careful not to let tears fall into the batter. It was Harold’s favourite—carrot cake from scratch, three layers. She’d skinned her knuckles grating the carrots, and now she had Band-Aids across three fingers of her right hand. Tomorrow morning she’d make the cream cheese icing he loved, doubling the recipe because Harold liked extra icing. Every once in a while she threw a malevolent glance at the television set.
She wasn’t thrilled with the bathrobe she’d finally bought him as a gift, but what the hell, he’d certainly use it. He seemed delighted with the television though, and she’d decided to let it go. She was letting a lot go, these days.
She set the electric mixer down and blew her nose. Then she got out the three round pans and carefully greased and floured them. She was proud of the fact that she’d made every single one of the family’s birthday cakes over the years, while just about everyone she knew bought the decorated ones from the supermarket—chemical cakes, Audrey called them. She’d never given in to that temptation, not even when the boys were little and they’d begged for the Thomas the Tank Engine cake, or the Hot Wheels cake, or the Spiderman cake. She’d made her own Thomas the Tank Engine cakes, Hot Wheels cakes, and Spiderman cakes—sullen children notwithstanding. She’d done them all, and they’d mostly turned out fine.
Ellen had never baked a real birthday cake in her life, as far as Audrey knew, and just look at her.
Audrey poured the thick, carroty batter into the pans, careful that the batter be evenly distributed. She could still hardly believe that Terry had snuck the ecstasy from Ellen’s dresser drawer. Ellen, Audrey remembered bitterly, had sat in this very kitchen, pretending she hardly even knew what ecstasy was!
Ellen was her best friend. Audrey had thought they had no secrets from one another. She was certainly glad now that she hadn’t told Ellen that Harold might not be Dylan’s real father.
Only, she longed to call Ellen, and talk to her about Harold. There was no one else she could unburden herself to about what had happened at the police station tonight. But now she supposed her friendship with Ellen was over.
She heard Harold coming down the stairs. She quickly wiped her nose again before he appeared in the kitchen.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said. He was wearing his old, tattered bathrobe—the one she would thoroughly enjoy throwing in the garbage tomorrow.
He shook his head. “I was reading.” He looked at her more closely. “You’re crying,” he said.
“No I’m not.”
“What’s the matter?”
He certainly could be dense. Well. She couldn’t exactly say she thought he was getting Alzheimer’s—that she was sad and terrified for both of them. Really, now that she was looking at Harold, it put Ellen into perspective.
He shuffled up to her and raised his arms to put his hands on her shoulders—displaying the gaping hole in one of the armpits of his bathrobe—and said, “I am not a peeping Tom. That woman is nuts.” His indignation had returned, now that he was over the shock. Audrey sniffled and nodded. “Carrot cake—my favourite,” Harold said, looking past her and noticing the carrot peel all over the counter.
“Harold—what were you doing at that house tonight?” She had to ask.
“I don’t know. Just wanted to see it, I guess.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Audrey knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. She turned away and started wiping up the carrot peel on the counter. She ought to know better than to expect any more from Harold.
But then he surprised her. “You think I’m going crazy, don’t you?”
“No, not at all,” Audrey protested, turning back to him, the J-Cloth in her hand stained orange.
“Dylan told me you think I’ve got Alzheimer’s.”
&n
bsp; “I can’t believe he told you that!” Audrey gasped.
“I don’t have Alzheimer’s,” Harold said with conviction.
“What do you call it then?” she said.
Harold cleared his throat nervously and suggested, “Maybe we’d better sit down.” He sat down at the kitchen table and then Audrey sat down too, wondering what was coming next. Perhaps he’d been sniffing model glue in the basement, who knew? Nothing would surprise her anymore.
“I’ve been hearing voices,” Harold finally confessed, “ever since I got hit on the head by that tree.”
“I knew it!” Audrey cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I was hoping they’d go away.”
“What kind of voices?” Below the table, Audrey was gripping the edges of her kitchen chair.
He hesitated, afraid of how she’d take it. But finally he said, “Voices of dead people.”
“Like—famous dead people?” She was remembering the weird note—Elvis and Amelia Earhart.
“No. My mother mostly.”
She couldn’t help it; Audrey knew she looked appalled. Scenes of the movie Psycho flew unbidden into her head.
“It runs in the family,” he said, leaning closer to Audrey, telling her his secret at last. “My mother used to hold séances when I was a kid. We had ghosts in our house all the time. I never told you because . . .” he trailed off. “I just never told you,” he said. “I’ve never told anybody.”
It was a relief, Harold realized, to get this off his chest; it was like handing over a heavy suitcase to someone else.
Audrey, in comparison, felt like she’d just taken a heavy suitcase in the stomach.
“I’m like a portal to the other side,” he said, as if sharing this with someone else had made him realize it for the first time.
Audrey was speechless.
“So you see,” he said, with an attempt at a reassuring smile—“I’m not crazy at all.”
Audrey stared back at him. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“You don’t believe me, do you,” Harold said.
“I don’t know what to believe,” Audrey said finally.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Audrey lay rigid in bed, infected by Harold’s anxiety. She usually fell asleep as soon as she hit the pillow—a sure sign of sleep deprivation, she’d read that in a magazine—so she’d had no idea that Harold lay awake, wide-eyed, every night for hours. He had his arm around her too and he was hugging her to him, which he hadn’t done in years. It was uncomfortable. It was hard to believe that they used to sleep in each other’s arms all night, but that was when they were young, before their muscles got stiff from holding any one position for too long.
She was going to be exhausted tomorrow.
At last she heard his breathing settle; he was finally asleep. She extricated herself carefully from his embrace—it was like rigor mortis—and turned off his light.
Audrey didn’t believe in ghosts, but she was cursed with a lively imagination. She lay listening in the dark, covers pulled up to her chin, wondering bleakly what the future would hold. At last she fell asleep and dreamed about children in ghost costumes (white sheets with holes cut out for eyes) jumping out of Harold’s birthday cake, which had grown to such monumental proportions that she’d had to use a ladder to ice it. When Harold saw the ghosts, he fainted and hit his head on the sharp edge of the aluminum ladder. Audrey tried to bandage him up to stop the bleeding but she overdid it, and he wound up looking exactly like an Egyptian mummy.
• • •
HAROLD HAD ARRANGED to take his birthday off work; even with his recent spate of sick days, he still had so many vacation days to use. In all the excitement the night before he’d forgotten to mention this to Audrey, so now she was shaking him awake, telling him he was going to be late.
“I’m not going in today,” Harold mumbled crossly into his pillow.
“What do you mean you’re not going in today?” Audrey said. This wasn’t in her plans at all; she didn’t want Harold hanging around all day. She was exhausted as it was. She’d counted on the people at the office keeping an eye on him.
“I’ve got stuff to do,” Harold said testily, not liking Audrey’s tone. It was his birthday, after all. Forty-nine. But if she’d forgotten, he wasn’t going to remind her.
“Oh?”
He could see that Audrey was annoyed about something. He sat up. “I have to deal,” he said, annoyed himself, “with John’s careless driving charge. He needs representation of some kind. He can’t do it himself.” Harold had learned that some people did represent themselves on these kinds of offences, but he wasn’t going to let his hapless son John in a courtroom on his own. He’d hang himself for sure. “He has to beat that ticket or the insurance is going to go right through the roof,” Harold said defensively.
Audrey nodded, mollified. Suddenly she remembered why she had slept so badly, what he’d told her the night before, about the voices, the ghosts.
“What’s wrong?” Harold asked.
“Nothing,” she said, and got out of bed.
Audrey opened each of the boys’ bedroom doors, automatically called out Good Morning in her good morning sing-song voice—she had no idea that it was this voice that made them pull their pillows over their heads, they couldn’t stand it—and dragged herself downstairs to start on breakfast. She was useless without enough sleep. Her eyes burned and she didn’t have her usual pep. There was no beautiful, functional ballet this morning—she was dragging that heavy suitcase around with her like a ball and chain. Harold thought he was talking to the dead. Her husband was fully delusional. Putting the coffee on, she remembered her dream. Halloween was just around the corner—she must remember to buy candy.
When the rest of them finally trickled down to breakfast, Audrey was gripping her smiley-face mug, her coffee gone cold, and staring at the kitchen wall.
They were all a little startled to see her sitting down. Also, only Harold’s place at the table was set—with a glass of orange juice, a multivitamin, a coffee cup, a bowl of cereal, a spoon, and a pitcher of milk.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” John said, suddenly remembering.
“Yeah, happy birthday, Dad,” Dylan echoed.
Harold nodded acknowledgement and sat down. The boys stood uncertainly.
“What about breakfast, Mom?” Dylan said.
“What about it?” Audrey answered.
“Where is it?” Dylan said, still not getting it, not grasping that change was in the air.
There was an awkward silence. Audrey stopped staring at the wall and looked up at them. “It doesn’t exist yet.”
The boys looked back at her blankly. When she didn’t say anything further, they started to look uneasy.
“Meals don’t exist until they are made,” Audrey explained, in a voice completely different from her usual cheerful, good morning voice. “You may think they just appear, as if by magic, but that is not the case. Someone takes raw materials, applies human effort and maybe a little technology, and comes up with something to eat.”
Dylan got the hint and put some bread in the toaster. John got the peanut butter out of the cupboard. Just like that, they were making their own breakfast, and Audrey was asking herself what the hell took her so long.
“You’re taking the day off school,” Harold said a few minutes later, turning to John.
“What?” John said, his knife, with its dollop of peanut butter, arrested in mid-air. He had plans to skip school and meet Nicole—he didn’t want the day off.
“You’re coming with me.”
“To the office?” He was incredulous.
“No, I’m taking the day off too.” Harold methodically chewed a mouthful of bran cereal, wondering what had happened to the muffins, and leaving John in suspense for several seconds. “We have to deal with your careless driving charge,” Harold finally explained. “We’re going to try a few of those ticket-fighter places—I’m hoping we won
’t have to get a real lawyer.”
John’s heart sank.
“Can I come?” Dylan asked.
“No. You can go to school.”
• • •
IT DIDN’T TAKE as long as John had feared. They went to a couple of different places, and in the end, Harold decided it was worth the five hundred dollars to have a paralegal who knew what he was doing represent John at his trial, which was still months away. They were easily convinced by the paralegal that without expert representation, they were essentially taking their lives into their hands. A conviction was six points; the insurance would triple at least. The paralegal could try to bargain it down to a lesser charge, which might only be two points, minus the insurance ramifications. Of course, the cop might not show—in which case it would be thrown out—but did they want to take that chance?
Being equally risk averse, father and son shook their heads in unison—they did not want to take that chance.
A lawyer, the paralegal pointed out, would cost four or five times as much to do the same thing. Did they want to pay that much, for the same service? No, they did not.
There were things he could do. He could seek an adjournment, which might make it more likely that the cop wouldn’t show. They could leave it all to him.
Harold paid by cheque (his chequing account was back in order) and left feeling reassured that they were in good hands, that it was taken care of.
As a father-son bonding exercise, it wasn’t exactly what Harold would have chosen, but it was something. It was a start. Harold glanced at his watch and saw that they still had most of the day left. “Hey, why don’t we grab a bite and then maybe throw a ball around,” Harold suggested. They hadn’t done that in years.
John shot him a look of panic and said, “Thanks, Dad, but I really want to get back to school.” Seeing his father’s disappointment, John added, having no idea whether it was true or not, “I have a test.”
“Oh, in that case.”
Harold dropped John off at school and waved as his son went up the steps and disappeared inside. Harold sat there in the car.