A Boy a Girl and a Ghost

by Robert J. McCarter

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “Son,” he says. “That will put you ahead of most every other boy.”

  I think back to when Helena and I met. Her screaming at Jeff Tate out on Main Street because he didn’t know what “no” meant and I know he’s right.

  We sit there for a time in the silent church, my stomach and my thoughts churning. There is so much I don’t understand, and with my father there that leads me back to him.

  “Can I tell you something?” I ask, my quiet voice sounding echoey in the empty space.

  “Sure, son. Anything.”

  “I… I’ve been doing some reading… and… um….” I just don’t know how to get it out.

  “It’s okay, Aaron. You can tell me anything.”

  I swallow hard and feel bad because I figure he doesn’t know what’s coming. “Well, I like girls… I mean… you know…”

  “You are attracted to women,” he offers.

  “Yes. And you are not.”

  He nods, his head down.

  “So… I don’t understand it, but I’ve been doing some reading and males liking males and females liking females is not new or anything, and it happens with animals, and…”

  Now he’s staring at me, his grey eyes hooded behind his glasses like he’s ready for it to be bad. Real bad.

  “…and I don’t have to understand it to love you.”

  He lets out a sigh and hugs me tight. I don’t have to understand my mother to love her and I don’t have to understand my father to love him. We are all different, but we are all people. We are a family.

  “Thank you, son,” he whispers, his voice thick.

  “And if you have a boyfriend… well, I would like to meet him.”

  He pushes back and holds me at arm’s length, searching my face.

  “Really?”

  I nod. I’m scared, it didn’t exactly go well when I met my mother’s boyfriend, but I’m so over family secrets.

  He smiles widely. “Well, I don’t have a ‘boyfriend’ right now, Aaron, but I appreciate your being open.”

  And then we chat there in that holy space about simple, secular things and I feel this closeness to my father that I didn’t know was possible.

  It’s not Helena that opens up the door to her house, it’s her father. He’s a rough-looking man with short black hair, a scar on his cheek, thick hands, and a broad chest. My breath catches in my throat when I see him. We haven’t met.

  “You must be Aaron,” he says opening the door.

  I swallow and nod, hating my tie again, and walk in.

  “She’s primping,” he says, walking into a small living room and plopping down in a beat-up recliner the color of mud. There is one single lamp lit in the room throwing yellow light on the stack of newspapers on the end table next to the chair.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mister Monfort,” I say, finding my voice.

  He nods, his mouth a thin line as he looks me up and down. I can almost hear him thinking “pipsqueak.” He’s a strong man, which isn’t surprising, his work at the warehouse would require it. As I study his face, I can see traces of Helena in the brown eyes and the prominent cheekbones.

  “She’s all I got, you know,” he says, casually, just throwing it out there like he’s talking about the weather or something.

  “What?”

  “Helena. She’s all I got.” He licks his lips and rubs his calloused hands together. I can hear the scrape of skin against skin, it seems way too loud.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. I don’t know what else to say.

  “She’s mighty fond of you, boy.”

  “Umm… I am very fond of her too, Mister Monfort.”

  He’s staring at me, blinking, leaning forward in his chair. It’s like he’s trying to look inside of me to see if I’m going to take his daughter from him or hurt her. Trying to determine if I’m worthy of “all he’s got.”

  “So, this cancer thing,” he says, slowly easing back in his chair. “How bad is it?”

  I hear footfalls above and wish Helena would get down here. “It’s bad,” I say. “This is my third round with it.”

  He bites his bottom lip, a gesture I’ve seen Helena do many times, and nods. “You gonna make it?”

  I shrug. “I hope so.”

  He smiles, it’s a small thing, but it makes him look handsome, more like I expected Helena’s father to look. “Hope is a good thing, ain’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Can never have too much hope.”

  I hear footfalls on the stairs and then Helena is there. She smells of perfume (some kind of flower) and has a light-blue dress with a white sweater on. Her hair is swept back from her face and held in place with barrettes and she has a smile on her red lips. She is the most beautiful sight.

  “Are you boys getting along?” she asks, her gaze going from me to her father and back to me. Mister Monfort is standing staring at his daughter.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m glad to finally meet your father.”

  “Daddy,” she says, going to him and kissing his cheek. His face lights up and he is truly handsome. He doesn’t seem like a worn warehouse worker anymore. He seems more like a handsome movie star suffuse with confidence. “What were you two talking about?”

  “Hope,” I say. “We were talking about how important hope is.”

  Helena insisted that we have dinner at La Familia. I suggested The Coal Creek Grill, a nice steak house just east of town, but she wouldn’t hear of it. It had to be La Familia. I didn’t understand until we got there.

  My father is the chauffeur, we sit in the backseat the short ride over holding hands and not talking.

  “Here we are, kids,” Dad says, pulling us up right in front of the turquoise-colored door. He’s looking back at us, a big grin on his face. I let go of her hand and say, “Just wait.” I get out my side and run around to her side and open the door for her. Her forehead bunches briefly but then she smiles widely and takes my proffered hand.

  “You kids have fun,” Dad calls from the car. “I’ll be back at nine.”

  He pulls off and we’re standing in the La Familia parking lot, our hands clasped. There are Christmas lights on the front of the rather plain brick building. That and the colorful door are their festive decorations.

  I take a step towards the front door, but she doesn’t move. She nods her head to the side and pulls me around to the back of the restaurant.

  Fran Diego herself greets us at the back door. “It’s all ready, amigos,” she says. Fran is the owner of the restaurant. She’s a plump fifty dressed in the same kind of skirt and blouse that Helena wears when she works here.

  I throw Helena a questioning look, but she just squeezes my hand and pulls me forward.

  We walk into the kitchen. It’s crowded and hot, three dark-skinned men working at steel counters and a fryer and stove. I see their faces light up when they see Helena, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s my hand she’s holding.

  “Hola, chicos,” she says as we pass through. Their enthusiastic greetings echo back.

  Fran leads us past a long stainless-steel sink and to a door. I figure it leads to the restaurant, but it doesn’t. It leads into a storage room. It’s a fair size, maybe twelve feet on a side, with big metal and particle board shelving all around. On the shelves are sacks of flour and beans. Huge cans of green chilies, napkins, and the like. But it’s what’s in the middle of the room that is important. A small round table with a white tablecloth, two chairs, and a wine bottle in the middle of the table.

  In the wine bottle is a white taper candle burning brightly. Helena squeals with delight and gives Fran a big hug telling her, “Gracias, mi amiga. Gracias.”

  Fran beams at both of us and says. “I’ll leave you two alone now. Enjoy.”

  She closes the door behind her, muffling the sounds of the kitchen and we are alone. Candlelight, Helena, and a private place for just the two of us.

  I swallow hard, step forward, and pull a chair o
ut for her. She smiles and sits as I scoot the chair in and go to the other side. I’m frankly speechless because of what she’s done. She arranged this for us. For our first date. I’m quite nearly overwhelmed. I find that my emotions are much stronger since my little dance with the afterlife, both tears and laughter are close.

  After I sit, she holds out her hand, resting it on the clean white tablecloth palm up. I put my hand in hers and let out a sigh.

  This is no normal date. This is Helena and I. We who met in a graveyard. We who have dealt with ghosts and solved murders. We who can’t stop holding hands.

  I know it seems mundane, this always holding hands. It’s tame. It’s old fashioned. It’s the most innocent of physical intimacies. But I love it.

  She held my hand when I woke up in the ICU with that tube down my throat, and I hope she’ll be holding my hand until we’re old and grey, our hands wrinkled, our knuckles swollen by arthritis.

  Our evening is magical. Fran brings us our food, never saying a word. It’s like the world is just us two. We talk about Lionel and Big Ed Lopez. We talk about her mother and her fears of the same thing happening to her. We talk about my cancer and how uncertain the future is. We aren’t like some couple on a first date that don’t know anything about each other. We know each other so well.

  We laugh. We have a few awkward pauses. We sip our sodas and stare into each other’s eyes.

  At the end, when we both know my father is waiting and it’s time to go, I say, “I love you, you know.” I don’t know how it happened. I’m just so relaxed it just slips out.

  Her eyes go wide and she blinks. I hold my breath and am afraid I’ve said too much. It’s a first date, these aren’t the kind of things you say.

  But then she’s standing and yanking on my hand and then we’re inches apart and I’m looking up into her amber eyes. They’re so big, so deep, and I see a sheen of tears on them. My heart is thumping in my chest sounding like some huge bass drum.

  She then lets go of my hand, puts both of her hands on the sides of my face. She’s so serious and I dare not say another word. And then she pulls my head towards her, leaning down a bit, and kisses me.

  It’s not a long kiss, but it’s Helena and it’s my first kiss. Her lips are wet and so soft. I smell the salsa on her breath, and the tobacco and mint smell below that. Her lips are firm and feel amazing against mine.

  After it’s done, she’s standing in front of me crying and laughing at the same time. I’m dizzy and don’t really understand what she’s going through. But then I feel the tears on my own smiling face and I get it. This kiss is something I didn’t think would ever happen. That I would meet someone like her and feel like this.

  It’s surprising to me, but she must feel the same way.

  “So, I guess this means that you love me too?” I ask, the biggest smile on my face.

  She laughs hard, nods, wipes the tears from her face and then she’s kissing me again.

  I don’t know what the future will bring. But this is the end of the story. That first kiss with Helena in the storeroom of La Familia is the perfect place to stop.

  I do have one more thing to say, though.

  Cedar Breaks National Monument is not far from here, just forty-five minutes up on the top of the Colorado Plateau. It’s this sandstone bowl that has eroded in the most fascinating way. Large salmon colored towers of rock, called hoodoos, populate the land like sentinels in the most mystical of temples.

  It is just rock and water and time. The power of erosion. But it’s not the kind of place you would ever imagine seeing on this planet. It’s magical and powerful and surprising. It’s holy.

  It’s the higher-altitude, smaller cousin of the better-known Bryce National Park, but I like it better. Fewer people and I love the spruce and fir forest up at its 10,000 foot elevation.

  On the edge of this canyon grows the bristlecone pine tree. It’s a twisted little tree, that dangles on the edge of the canyon with lots of wind, little rain, and the inevitability of erosion pulling it down.

  Bristlecone pines are also the oldest living things on the planet (well, there is some debate on that, but for me they just must be the oldest). They live over two thousand years. I myself have stood in front of one of these twisted ancient trees marveling at the beauty of Cedar Breaks below them. These trees live in the harshest of circumstances, but somehow live the longest.

  I’ve been fascinated with them since my father told me all about them on a family trip to Cedar Breaks when I was six years old. The branches and bark twist as the tree grows. It looks stunted and twisted but is so very tough.

  I’ve come to look at myself and my life a bit like that. The winds of leukemia have twisted my life and stunted my growth. I stand on the edge of a precipice in harsh conditions always in danger of falling.

  But the view. My god, the view.

  I don’t know if I have another week or another sixty years, but I do know that I will be like the bristlecone pine tree on the edge of Cedar Breaks. I will be holding on and fighting for my life as long as I can.

  And I’m not silly enough to think my efforts, my will, determines my survival. Makes a difference, yes. Controls it, no. So much is out of our control, isn’t it?

  So, enough of this time spent writing, there is a life to be lived. Helena’s waiting downstairs, we’ve got plans. She’ll be there to hold my hand and I’ll hold hers just as long as I can.

  Epilogue by Helena Monfort-Wade

  June 2017

  I said no to writing this epilogue a dozen times. I told the editors, Tamara and Jin, that Aaron’s words should stand alone. That the summer of 1977 and all we went through was served just fine by his diary. But they wouldn’t give up. They said that people would pester them endlessly if they didn’t know what happened to Aaron and me.

  So here I am, finally writing it. But first a warning. Aaron did his best to end this in as close to a “happily ever after” as he could. Kind of a realistic happily ever after. And if you are okay with that ending, there is no need to read further.

  You can imagine for yourself what happened to us in the last forty years.

  If you are a pessimist, you might imagine that the Cancer (I’ll capitalize it just like Aaron did) got him and he didn’t survive until the end of 1977. That his parents were devastated and didn’t recover. That I couldn’t deal with the loss and slid into drug addiction.

  Or maybe you’re an optimist. You might imagine that the summer of 1977 was the last we ever saw of Cancer. That Aaron went to college and took over the bookstore. That we were married a few years later and had a passel of kids. That Aaron eventually took up writing and his works equaled that of his hero, Stephen King, and that if I told you his real name you would recognize it and be amazed.

  I will tell you this, that the truth is somewhere between those two extremes. So, take a moment and imagine what happened. If you are satisfied, close this book. If you would like to know what really happened to us, join me on the next page.

  Okay, I’m just going to rip the bandage off.

  Aaron Wade died on December 31, 1979. I hate New Years now. The holiday is absolutely ruined for me.

  While he overcame his “third strike” with leukemia and we had nearly two good years, it came back with a vengeance in late summer, 1979. There were no ghosts to warn him this time and the leukemia got into his central nervous system. It affected his mind. It wasn’t pretty.

  But those two years… they were so precious. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. And I did what he wanted, I held his hand every chance I got and was holding it when he took his last breath.

  I won’t go into the end, the horrible ending Cancer can afford you, but I will talk about some of the highlights of our two good years. I think Aaron would have wanted that.

  After that first date, our relationship progressed rapidly. No boy had ever treated me like Aaron did, and with his condition, taking our time didn’t make any sense. We were in love, in this silly, slo
ppy way that I had never imagined possible. Aaron took the advice his father gave him in that church before our first date and was an absolute gentleman, but the only thing to wait on was his health.

  I remember walking down the hallway of our high school hand in hand on his first day back to school. He was finally healthy enough to attend class, his hair growing back in. He had this huge grin on his face, he was so damn happy to be there. No one was ever very happy to be in high school, but he was. He drank in every surprised look of every boy that saw me with him. It delighted him to no end, and that delighted me, so I made a good show of it with the public displays of affection.

  Our lives fell into a pattern for the rest of 1977 and part of 1978. School, work, and spending as much time together as we could. He would go get his tests every three months down in Vegas and they always came back clear. It really started to feel like he was going to be fine, like we would have a normal life.

  In the spring of 1978, I graduated from high school a year ahead of Aaron. I stayed living with my father and worked more. Aaron tried to get me to go to college, but I wasn’t interested. I think that hurt him, he loved learning and books so very much.

  In fact, that was one of the two areas we had problems with that year. I was content to serve Mexican food at La Familia and spend as much time with him as I could. He wanted more for me. The other area we had issues with was my smoking. As soon as he and our relationship seemed stable, he started harping on me about it. Well, “harping” is not the right word. He really just went about educating me about the effects of smoking. Relentlessly.

  One day in early 1978, we were sitting in the high school cafeteria having lunch. Billy Chadow was there and few of our other friends. Aaron plopped a book in front of me that had this odd picture. It was this pink fleshy looking stuff with these awful grey areas marbled through it. Like rotting ground beef or something.

  “What is this?” I asked him.

  “What your lungs will look like if you don’t stop smoking soon.”