A Boy a Girl and a Ghost

by Robert J. McCarter

  I swear to god I don’t understand women—or girls. There is a mystery there that is beyond me. What about our relationship made Helena expect I would call her instantly, tell her first? We’re friends. Do friends do that?

  “Truth or truth?” I ask.

  She nods sharply, once.

  “I was scared,” I say. “I thought of calling you, but hadn’t really gotten a grip on it myself. I didn’t know what, or if, I was going to do anything about it.”

  She sighs and nods, but this time slowly, softly. Her head falling into her hands. She sniffs again.

  “What are we, Helena?” I ask, my voice unsteady. “That you not hearing this instantly is so upsetting?”

  Her jaw moves silently, her head still in her hands. She then slowly raises her head and looks at me with such intensity that I fidget in my seat and regret asking the question.

  She licks her lips and smiles a wistful 20-watt smile. “I don’t know, Wade. What are we?”

  “Friends,” I offer. “You’ve said it a thousand times.”

  “Does this feel like a normal friendship?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “Never has.”

  I see the tears welling up in her eyes and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t know what’s going on in that beautiful head of hers. “No… it really doesn’t feel like friendship,” she says. “At least not just friendship. I find myself caring for you more than I want to.”

  “So what are we?” I ask. We are under the umbrella of Truth or Truth. It’s safe to ask these things, isn’t it? Safe to hear the truth, right? I almost laugh at that thought. I’ve been hearing way too much truth lately. Truth is often the most dangerous thing there is.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Wade. I really don’t know. But, please… let me be here with you for this. Let me be part of it.” She pauses, leaning forward on the bed. “Can you do that?”

  I nod my head, unsure of anything except that I want Helena Monfort to be part of my life.

  My life has become a series of painfully awkward encounters, a new surprise around every corner.

  Helena and I talk for a long time. Not about us. Not about what our relationship is or isn’t, but about family and ghosts and Cancer.

  I don’t hold anything back. I tell her all of it… my fears, my concerns, my utter lack of understanding when it comes to my parents.

  She is firm on that topic, though. Unwavering. That I have two parents that love me and will clearly sacrifice a lot for me, and that makes me a very lucky kid.

  After a long time, but not long enough, she announces that she’s got to go. Her shift is about to start.

  “Thanks for…” I stammer. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to face my parents. “Thanks for everything, Helena.”

  “Sure,” she says, her hands wrapped around her chest again.

  We stand there awkwardly in the middle of my room avoiding eye contact. And then she’s hugging me. To call the hug fierce is an understatement, she’s holding me so tightly. And I hug her back just as hard. I don’t know what Helena is to me, but in such a short time she’s become so important.

  And then she’s gone, and I’m left with her peppermint and cigarette scent. I run to the bathroom and then back to my room, locking the door, turning the lights off, and pulling the blankets up all the way to my nose.

  It is a long time before sleep comes for me. One thing she said keeps running through my head: I find myself caring for you more than I want to.

  22

  Saturday, July 2, 1977

  Last night I dreamed of Uncle Don, his big strong arms hoisting me in the air when I was maybe six. His bright face and blue eyes so joyful. He’s tossing me up in the air just a bit, so I feel that brief moment of weightlessness. Like I can fly, free from the confines of the hard earth below.

  I’m really too big for this game, but Uncle Don is strong enough to still do it with me. And it seems to delight him so. Or, rather, I think my delight is what is a joy to him. I laugh, and each time he puts me down I ask him to do it again.

  I think it was summer and he was over for a picnic in our backyard. Aunt Janis and my cousin Bo are there, but Uncle Don still finds time for me. To toss me in the air over and over until he must have been so tired. But still he did it. Never quitting. Giving me that brief moment of weightlessness.

  A banging on my door wakes me up from the dream and I come to consciousness missing my Uncle Don. I don’t want to be awake and pull the cover over my eyes to shield them from the sunlight streaming in my dormer window.

  “Aaron,” my mother says between knocks. “Are you okay, honey?”

  As my reality comes crashing back down on me, the question just seems ridiculous. “Fine,” I growl, burrowing myself further under the covers.

  “It’s opening day,” she says. “Romeo and Juliet at the new Globe Theatre. You don’t want to miss it, do you?”

  I peek my head out and look at the clock on my bed stand. It’s 9:53 a.m. I’m surprised they let me sleep this long.

  “Your father is so looking forward to it,” Mom adds.

  I groan and sit up, rubbing at the sleep caking my eyes. I was out for a long time and do feel a bit better. “All right,” I say. “I’ll be up in a few.”

  I sit there for a few minutes pondering my mom’s behavior. Are we pretending that none of this happened? That we are still the tidy little “Leave it to Beaver” family toddling off to see a green show and a play? Pretending that nothing has changed?

  As I make my bed, a part of me wants that so badly. To just pretend that none of this has happened. That everything is okay. That I am safe and sound.

  A green show is kind of like an Elizabethan equivalent of a warmup act, a kind of a variety show. There is music and dancing and general bawdiness, often performed by some of the actors in the upcoming performance. In the old days, it was all the same troupe, I think at the Shakespeare Festival it’s a bit of a mix.

  There are four men and four women on the small stage on the lawn of Southern Utah University, with large fur and spruce trees providing shade for the audience that is either sitting on the lawn or standing. There’s a mandolin, a flute, a little drum, and a few other instruments. They wear colorful costumes and it’s slap-sticky and funny, but I’m not paying much attention.

  Billy is there and we’re sitting a bit away from our respective families, whispering to each other. I bring him briefly up to speed. He interjects his favorite curse word at appropriate intervals.

  “What now?” he whispers when the brain-dump is over.

  I shrug. “It’s the weekend. We won’t hear from the doctors until Monday at the earliest. As far as the family goes… I haven’t the slightest clue.”

  I worry a bit about how Billy will take the “gay” thing. Christianity, in all its forms, is notoriously intolerant of it. I swear him to secrecy before I tell him.

  Another part of the green show is women roaming the lawn in period costumes (skirts and bodices that show off a lot of cleavage) selling tarts. “Buy a tart from a tart,” one says in an English accent as she passes by. She’s practically spilling out of her top and smells of pie and cheap perfume. Billy’s eyes follow her hungrily.

  “And Helena actually said that,” he whispers. “About caring more for you than she wants to?”

  I nod. The tart selling tarts has distracted Billy in a rather predictable way.

  “Dude,” he says, “you gotta make a move.”

  I just stare at him. With a murder to solve, my family in shambles, and the threat of Cancer on the horizon, he wants me to make a move on Helena. I laugh. I love Billy, and his predictable teenage-maleness is refreshing. Of course it’s the girl I should be focused on in his world.

  “A move. Like what?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Kiss her, man. Just grab her and kiss her. Find out if there is something there or not.”

  The thought terrifies me and I’m sure that terror shows on my face.

 
He bangs his elbows into my ribs. “You gotta know, don’t you?” he asks. “I mean, if there is one thing in this world you gotta know, that’s it, isn’t it? I mean, shit, man—”

  Billy is interrupted by one of the tart sellers. “Would you gentlemen like a tart?” she asks.

  With our eyes locked, we didn’t see her walk up, but as she squats down in front of us, the strange minty scent of her quickens my pulse and I know who it is. Helena.

  She’s smiling big and pulling some warm tarts out of her basket. “These are broken, I’m afraid,” she says as she pulls perfectly good tarts out of her basket and breaks them as she puts them on a napkin and hands them to us. “I can’t charge for them.”

  Billy utters a strangled gasp before going silent. Helena is in one of those cleavage enhancing outfits and the view is… well… it’s rather stunning.

  “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I say. I’m very consciously looking in her eyes. I’m quite sure Billy does not have that much decorum.

  “I told you,” she says, pointing to the south a bit, “under our tree last week. Remember?”

  Last week. It seems like a year ago. But I do remember her telling me that she’d be here working.

  “How’s it going?” she asks, glancing at my parents and waving. They are looking at us—which they’ve been doing a lot of.

  I shake my head. “Got up late. Hardly a word this morning. Seriously not looking forward to this evening.”

  “You can handle it, Wade. You believe that, don’t you?”

  I nod, but there is no enthusiasm.

  “You can. Trust me.” Her brown eyes and gentle smile make me want to believe.

  “Yeah. I can handle it,” I say.

  Her smile gets wider and she turns to Billy. “Mr. Chadow. If you ever expect a girl to pay attention to you, the absolute wrong approach is to unblinkingly stare at her breasts for minutes at a time.”

  “I… Um… Sorry,” he stammers, his face going beet—and I mean beet—red.

  Helena stands up gracefully and says, “I expect a call from you tonight.” She sweeps away selling her tarts. I ignore the green show and Billy and just watch her.

  She moves with such confidence and grace. How can she be so young and do that?

  “She wants you to call her,” Billy whispers. “You gotta make a move, man, you just gotta.”

  The Adam’s Shakespearian Theatre is a beautiful replica of the original Globe Theatre, with a stage that is two stories high (great for the balcony scenes), floor seating in front of the stage under the opening in the roof, and covered seating along the rim of the structure, two levels of it.

  Before the play starts, there is a ribbon cutting ceremony. The president of the university gives a speech. And then Fred Adams, the man who founded the festival, gives another speech and cuts a big red ribbon that is set up at the front of the stage. It is, frankly, a bit boring until this odd fellow gives the final speech before the show.

  He is short with a bit of a belly and bald, a strip of brown hair around his head. He has a huge smile on his face that makes me smile. All the pomp and circumstance is over and it is just him on the stage. At first I think he might be one of the actors, but he is dressed in tan slacks and a tie.

  “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Adam’s Shakespearean Theatre,” he says, gesturing broadly. His voice is a resonate baritone that fills the theatre easily. He has a presence on the stage which makes me think again that he must be an actor.

  “Who is he?” I whisper to my father. The man looks familiar, but I can’t place him.

  “Banquo,” Dad answers with a mischievous grin. Banquo is a character from Shakespeare, the ghost that haunts Macbeth. I am going to ask about that when he says, “Just listen.”

  “My name is Arthur McBride, but my students here have dubbed me ‘Banquo,’ after Macbeth’s ghostly conscious. I have been a student of Shakespeare since I was old enough to read, and it has been my most distinct pleasure to tarry here in your fine city for the last five years working to make this theatre a reality. Helping to bring Shakespeare to the Desert Southwest.

  “This is the most realistic reproduction of the Old Globe Theatre in North America. It was in a theatre that looked like this, under similar skies, that William Shakespeare presented many of his plays over four hundred years ago. It is his tradition that we honor here, presenting his works in the same environment that they were first presented in.”

  He stops, steps forward, and takes a deep breath. “But we have made some minor improvements. The seats, for example, are much more comfortable, and the female parts will be played by women, not boys in wigs.” There is a smattering of laughter.

  His speech goes on from there, and while I remember some more of it, what sticks with me is his passion. He loves Shakespeare’s work and has devoted much of his life to its study. It’s almost as if he has become an embodiment of Shakespeare’s work, making it his mission to teach the younger generations of its majesty and power.

  I am left with that delicious feeling of his passion and joy. I want a life like that, something that I am so passionate about I can spend all of my days with it and be happy.

  Two thoughts pop in my head in that regard: Helena and books. All of my days with those two things and how could I not be happy?

  The play is glorious, just glorious. For a few hours there, sandwiched between my mother and my father, I almost forget about all my troubles as I watch. In the first act when Romeo first sees Juliet he says:

  O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

  It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

  Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;

  Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

  And I think of Helena, how can I not with that poetic description of beauty. As the play unfolds and forces conspire to keep Romeo and Juliet apart, I keep rooting for them even though I know their fate.

  The last line of the play sums it up: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Love, misunderstanding, and tragedy all mixed together in one of the most celebrated works of English literature.

  The thoughts of my life that do intrude continue to be mostly of Helena. After seeing her in her “tart” outfit and the new ambiguity of our relationship, I can’t but hope for more. Even if it is a tale of woe, I want more with her. I want as much as I can get.

  The other thing that catches my attention are the ghosts. Not that I can see them clearly, just the wisps of light seen out of my peripheral vision when my eyes are closed. I notice it first when I blink. And then I start closing my eyes briefly—trying desperately not to draw my parents’ attention—and really see them.

  It’s odd. As the actors move across the stage, the wisps of light, the ghosts, follow them. It takes a bit to dawn on me, but I soon realize that the ghosts are performing the play too. There is a ghost Romeo and ghost Juliet, a ghost Mercutio and all the others. They know the same blocking the actors do. They time their movements perfectly with the actors.

  And once when I look up at the clear blue sky, I close my eyes and see more wisps of light just above us. There is a ghost audience.

  When I realize what’s going on, that there is a parallel performance and audience of ghosts, I smile the biggest smile. I’m not sure I can explain why, but it is a delight to me. It gives me hope to know that if I am a ghost, I can still watch plays or maybe even perform in one.

  It may seem like a small thing, but in that moment, something clicks in my head, that isn’t so small. Maybe death isn’t so bad after all.

  Dinner is quiet and oh so stilted again and I can’t wait for it to be over. There is some awkward sitting around and pretending (at least on my part) to read in the living room before my parents head up to bed.

  After they do, I’m in the pantry and on the phone so fast it would make you dizzy.

  She expects a call, I’m going to call.

  A man with a deep voice answers
the phone. “Hello.”

  I’m taken aback for a moment. Who is this man answering Helena’s phone? But it only lasts a moment, it’s her father, of course. And then there is a whole new terror. What if he doesn’t like me? What if he doesn’t approve of our friendship?

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” he says.

  “Umm… Hello, Mr. Monfort,” I say, getting my nerves under control. “This is Aaron Wade. Is Helena there?”

  “Just a moment,” he says, his voice flat and he sounds sad. What could be sad about someone calling for his daughter? My mind starts racing out of control worrying that so many boys are calling for her that he is tired from having to answer it all the time. That he automatically hates me and doesn’t want me near his daughter. I know Helena has started dating someone new… what about that and our “not a normal friendship?”

  “Hey, Wade,” Helena says when she gets on the phone.

  My palms are sweating and I’m all worked up at this point. The uncertainty of it all is driving me nuts. “Hi,” I say. It’s all I can get out.

  “How’d it go with the folks?”

  “We seem to have lapsed into eternal, non-communicative silence,” I say.

  “So… do something about it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Start the conversation,” she says. “You’re a big boy now. If your parents can’t get the ball rolling, you should. Figure out what you need, what you want to know, and start the conversation.”

  I chew on my lip, thinking about it. It’s a good idea, but I cringe when she calls me “big boy.” Then the thought flips to her. I want to have a conversation about “us” and if she’s not starting it, then I should.

  “Umm… I… You…” I stammer. Great start

  She laughs, it’s rich and thick. “Spit it out.”

  I take a deep breath and pretend I’m as cool and collected as my father normally is. “I was wondering if we could clarify things a bit. I’m wondering what ‘not just friendship’ means.”