by Tania James
“Gina, they all come with baggage. Lucky for you, this guy also comes with a very attractive dowry.”
Barb told her about Hank Tolliver, born in 1935, expired in 1990. In life, Hank had been an orthopedic surgeon who died from a pulmonary embolism at age fifty-five. He had no children and one ex-wife: Helen.
Gina recognized his name from the Tolliver House, a country mansion of alabaster brick and gray shingle, with a tower that shot straight into the sky. As a little girl, when Gina’s school bus passed the Tolliver House, she would press her nose against the window and imagine herself trapped in its fairy-tale tower, tall enough to skewer a cloud. “Hank has no heirs,” Barb said in cajoling tones. “And he was smart enough to hire people to manage the house for ten years, in case he was to return. So if you two hit it off, the Tolliver House goes to you. If not …” Barb shrugged. “It goes to his second cousin Gardner, at the end of that ten-year period.”
Gina stared at Hank’s photo for a long time, trying to imagine herself beside such a beautiful man, in such a beautiful house. His hair was lush and combed back, his forehead broad, a faint raking of wrinkles at the corner of each eye. (“He looks sad,” said Gina. “Oh, that’s just his face,” said Barb.) Gina sensed a kinship in his handsome, wounded gloom.
According to the terms of the contract, Hank would come home most evenings, like a normal husband, but the days would be hers alone. He would never expect her to have dinner waiting; ghosts did not eat. He would never want her to plump up with his child and set her life aside; ghosts did not engage in intercourse. Theirs would be an open marriage. “So you can tend to your carnal needs whenever necessary,” Barb assured her. Gina gave a nervous laugh; Barb did not.
“Good. Great. Only …” Gina hesitated. “What if it doesn’t work out?”
Barb paused to administer a disapproving look. “Financially, divorce is an unwise decision. Both parties lose everything.” She explained how Gina would forfeit all the assets she had gained through the marriage, how Gina’s ex would have to depart the world all over again. “Thus far, I’ve had an excellent track record, so I prefer to work with people who share my outlook on the bonds of marriage.”
Gina nodded in solemn agreement.
Prior to their first date, Gina found on her doorstep a bowl of blushing peonies, with a note that said: Looking forward! HT. Somehow he had learned of her affection for peonies. As the days went by, her living room brimmed with a lush, leafy smell.
On a cloudless Saturday, she met Hank at the Tolliver House. When he opened the door, she stuttered her hello; he was so handsome. “Gina,” he said, stepping aside to let her in, smiling as if he’d known her forever.
Hank toured her through every room. She opened the mottled burl doors of an antique Austrian armoire and leaned into the sweet stale smell. She cooled her palms against the marbled Jacuzzi across from a dressing table, where fruit-scented bath balls sat in a basket like a clutch of colored eggs.
“You don’t have to show me everything,” she said. “If it bores you.”
“Bored?” He stroked the faded brass hinges on the bedroom door, each hinge engraved with a delicate fleur-de-lis. “I don’t think I can get bored, not this time around. Everything feels new.”
Gina found it hard not to stare at him. In a matter of minutes, he had capsized all her movie-fed notions of ghosts—the tattered clothes, the corroding flesh, the tortured soul. He looked polished, debonair, in loose slacks belted high around the waist, a polo shirt, and wingtip shoes that made no sound.
Finally he took her up the winding staircase of the alabaster tower. One great round window opened onto a park, where golf carts went whizzing across the green dips and swells, around the weeping willows, shivering their tresses. Hank had put on a Patsy Cline record, and Patsy’s longing voice seemed to push faintly through the floor: Oh, the wayward wind is a restless wind / A restless wind that yearns to wander …
“Barb said you were married once,” he said.
“I was. His name was Jeremy.” She rushed through the rest. “He was riding his bicycle. There was a car. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.”
Grimacing, Hank removed a handkerchief from his pocket. For an alarming moment, Gina thought he was going to weep. Instead, he sneezed.
“Sorry,” he said, after honking into his handkerchief. “About your husband.”
She appreciated his insensitivity, how he didn’t follow up with an oozy apology. Death was just another detail.
“Jeremy used handkerchiefs, too,” she said, so quietly that Hank seemed not to have heard. He was looking down at the sidewalk, where a woman was tugging at her Labrador’s leash. The dog was whimpering and wagging its tail. The woman flung a suspicious look up at Hank before scooping the dog into her arms and hurrying away.
Hank emptied a sigh at the glass. “People,” he muttered.
“Do you know Jeremy? That was my husband’s name. Jeremy.”
Gina was about to add that Jeremy’s eyes were blue at certain times and gray at others, but Hank said gently, “It doesn’t work that way.”
Gina nodded at her shoes, feeling stupid.
Gina’s parents refused to travel up from Florida for the wedding. “You want to marry a ghost, then marry a ghost,” her mother said over the phone. “Call me when you find your head.”
“Mom, did you even read the article I sent you?”
Her mother gave an unconvincing grunt.
It was the same article that had first piqued Gina’s interest in ghost marriage, and she’d even highlighted certain lines for her mother’s edification: “In nineteenth-century China, it was perfectly acceptable for a young woman to marry a dead man, an arrangement called a ‘ghost marriage,’ which enabled families to consolidate their wealth and power and allowed enterprising young women to pursue their ambitions without the interference of a living husband or children.” According to the article, the practice of ghost marriage was being revived in several parts of the United States. The statistics for the success of ghost marriages were quite high, and most women polled described themselves as “very satisfied” with their unions.
She sent the same article to her sister, Ami, who had manufactured an excuse so as not to attend the wedding. Apparently, she had volunteered long ago to chaperone her daughter’s third-grade field trip to Shakertown, and she just couldn’t leave the teachers hanging.
Gina supposed that Ami had a right to be annoyed. Ami’s wedding had been carefully designed by their mother, and not one decision—from the choice of groom to the choice of boutonniere—had been settled without the opinions of Gina and her mother, followed by a nod from her father.
“Yeah, I read the article,” said Ami, when Gina called. “But it’s not like all these ghost marriages work out. What about that crazy woman with the diaries?”
“Mary,” Gina said quietly. “Mary” was the sole counterexample, a woman who had fallen in love with her ghost husband “Mike.” If only I could get closer to him, she had confided in her diary. She became obsessed with the idea of touching him, and it seemed to her that if humans could touch humans, then surely ghosts could touch ghosts. She shot herself in a Kroger parking lot.
“See?” Ami said. “They don’t all have happy endings.”
“But there’s never a happy ending,” Gina said.
Ami ignored the remark. “I don’t know, Gina. I still think you could’ve held out a little longer. You never even tried Soulmates.com. Even I did Soulmates.com.”
And on and on they went in circles of accusation and defense, like strands of hair swirling a drain, like sisters.
Hank and Gina married at the courthouse with Barb as their witness, as well as Lucille, Hank’s former cleaning lady. Throughout the ceremony, Lucille stared at Hank in a dreamy daze, as if witness to a miracle. Afterward, they all stood outside the courthouse, glowing, and even Barb produced a close-lipped smile. “Thank you,” Lucille whispered in Gina’s ear, with a clenching hug. “Thank you for bringing
him back to us. Call me when you need a cleaning.”
Lucille then made the mistake of trying to hug Hank. No one had told her that Hank couldn’t be hugged; one could just as easily plant a kiss on a breeze. In her attempt, Lucille lost her balance and fell forward onto the sidewalk. Hank and Gina helped her to her feet, while a shaken Lucille brushed the gravel from her knees. “He can touch,” Barb lectured, arms folded, “but he can’t be touched.”
After the wedding, Gina and Hank entered a period of sweet, cyclical domesticity. Sundays were Gina’s favorite day, when she would bake muffins or biscuits while Hank sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Though he couldn’t eat, he loved the smell of baked goods. (“The Bundt cake was my favorite part of your Bio Video,” he told her.) Whether or not her cakes and muffins turned out, Hank was happy so long as the air was laced with butter and burnt sugar.
While the batter rose in the oven, Gina listened to Hank tell of the city as he had once known it. In high school, he lived around the corner from the Hilltop Theater, in the East End of town. The Hilltop was where he took his girlfriend on dates. He also liked hanging around Benny’s Billiards, where he’d shoot pool or play cards or work the pinball machines until his mother called and had Benny send him home for dinner. There was no point in lying to Mrs. Tolliver about where he’d been; she knew by the traces of oil on his shoe soles, the same oil that Benny used to wax his floors.
Here, he laughed just like Jeremy—Hah!—a single huff that punctured her heart.
To Hank, Gina confessed her hope to someday open a sophisticated beauty parlor that would double as a bar. She had heard of such a place in New York, where a woman could sip from a martini in one hand and receive a manicure on the other. Why not in Louisville? She was sick of salons with names like Swift Clips and Mane Attraction. She envisioned a black-and-white tiled floor, counters edged in chrome. Hank loved the idea. He suggested a jukebox and maybe, on some nights, a live band. “I’ll keep an eye out for spaces to rent,” he said.
They talked all morning, until 11:00, at which point Hank gave her a brisk kiss on the cheek, put on his hat, and headed out the door.
After he left, Gina would garden, or watch TV, or try a cardio hip-hop DVD, hoping he wouldn’t come home early and catch her in action. She had quit her job at Swift Clips, but she still made occasional house calls to her oldest clients, the ones for whom driving had become a hazard. Several of the women remembered Hank Tolliver. When Gina told Mrs. Fenton about Hank and his girlfriend going to the Hilltop Theater, Mrs. Fenton laughed. “Girlfriend or girlfriends?” she said. “I don’t think he could keep track of them all, that old sly boots.”
Whatever she did during the day, Gina always made sure to be home by 8:00 sharp. At that hour, a humid coolness would sweep through the house and a vapor would creep up the mirrors. She would hurry down the stairs, tracking the scent of smoked dirt as it grew more potent, until she found Hank hanging his trench coat in the closet. He always greeted her the same way: “Hey, kid, where ya been?”
But Hank seemed preoccupied in the evenings. Sometimes they played a board game or watched a movie, but most of the time he was in bed by nine. “All that walking,” he’d say, though he never explained where he went, never asked her to join him. He simply wished her good night and retired to the guest room. In the contract, he had ceded the master bedroom to her, an arrangement she now regretted. She had never lain in a bed so big it made her lonely.
•
Over the next few days, Gina began to wake up earlier, thumping down the hall in the hopes that she would wake Hank. He seemed surprised to see her out of sweatpants, her hair up and fussy, pearl studs in her ears. Some nights she slept in rollers.
One morning, as Hank was folding up the newspaper, she asked if he might stay home tomorrow, since Ami was stopping by for lunch. Hank paused, smoothing his hand over the crease of the paper. “The sister who didn’t come to the courthouse?”
“There was that field trip,” Gina said quickly. “It might be nice for you both to get to know each other.”
“She didn’t want to know me before. Why now?”
“People change,” she said. “I’ve changed.”
“Yeah …,” he said, and looked away.
Gina stared at him, suddenly afraid of what he might say next. “Never mind. Forget it.”
She got up from the table but was stayed by a subtle sensation across her palm. This was what it felt like when Hank took her hand, not the blunt force of human touch but something delicate, like a soft cloth wrapped around her skin.
“The contract said mornings and evenings, Gina. I can’t be here whenever you want me to be.”
She shook his hand off. “Where do you go all day?”
Abruptly, he rose from the table and said he had to get going. She felt a kiss glance off her cheek.
Watching him head for the door, she blurted, “I looked in the guest room last night. You weren’t there.”
Hank stopped. He turned halfway, his brow creased. “That’s allowed. Check the contract.”
He continued out the door, his peaty fragrance dissolving from the room.
•
Later that night, unable to sleep, Gina crept up the stairs to the guest room. The door was closed, a faint slip of light beneath it. She tapped her fingernail against the door. “Come in,” he said.
Hank was sitting up in a bed so high, it required a wooden step stool to climb aboard. He wore red plaid pajamas. The bedside lamp brightened the side of his face and the cover of the book he was reading: The Count of Monte Cristo.
Hank lowered his glasses. “Hello, warden.”
He watched her walk to the other side of the bed and climb on top of the covers.
“Gina—”
“I tried Ambien, I tried counting sheep. Nothing works.” She peeled back the comforter and wiggled her way in until she was laying on her back, the sheets pulled up to her chin. She closed her eyes. When Hank began to protest, she whispered, “Just five minutes.”
She kept her eyes closed. After a moment’s pause, she heard the book thump shut and the click of the lamplight. She felt him settle noiselessly into bed. He didn’t move.
“Why did you and Helen divorce?” she asked.
Hank gave a long, bored sigh. “I fooled around on her. More than once.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Nope.”
“And you don’t want to know?”
Hank rubbed his eyes. “Come on, Gina. We shouldn’t talk about that stuff. You read the Primer.”
Gina had skimmed it. A Primer to Interlife Relationships. She had found its tone condescendingly bright. Too much looking back will lead to a nasty case of whiplash. Leave past relationships in the past.
In a small voice, Gina asked if he ever missed Helen.
Hank flung off the covers and hopped out of bed. “It might be the mattress that’s keeping you up,” he said. “Sleep here tonight. See if you like this one better.”
Tucking his book under his arm, he left.
The next day, Ami came over for brunch. Gina toured her around the garden and pointed out the tomatoes that had just begun to plump. She liked them green and taut, lightly fuzzed in down, like newborns. Ami kept wrapping her sweater tighter and asking, “Is he here? Can he see us?”
Gina pinched a tomato from the vine and moved on, pretending not to hear. Ami and her family lived in a grand colonial house with a hot tub whose novelty had worn off among the kids, leaving her to dutifully boil alone once a week. Gina suspected that Ami was jealous, now that hers was no longer the larger house.
“All right, fine, I’m sorry,” Ami said. “It’s not that I’m against you marrying a ghost, in theory. I just don’t know anybody who’s done that. It’s a generational thing. Maybe in fifty years our kids will look back and think we were just a bunch of uptight assholes.”
“If we make it that far.”
“Just tell me you have a plan.
If something goes wrong.”
It wasn’t the first time Ami had raised that concern. Normally Gina would have dismissed her sister, assured her that everything would be fine. But the night before had left Gina with questions that took root in the fertile dark, and by morning had flourished into the inevitable: Hank was having an affair with Helen. Two weeks ago, this would have meant much less to Gina. But lately she’d found herself dwelling on him when he wasn’t around, thinking ahead to what they might discuss the next day. She was frustrated by his reticence in the evenings, when he returned to her slightly sad, and yet somehow fortified.
“I could divorce him,” Gina said. An image came to her, of Hank tracing his finger over the fleur-de-lis hinge. “But no, I couldn’t do that to him.”
“Why?” Ami’s eyes widened with more wonder than worry. “What would happen to Hank?”
“He’d go back there. Wherever he came from.” Gina wrenched a handful of sinewy weeds from the earth, wrung the dirt from their roots. “And I’d lose everything—the money, the house, the cars.”
“You could move in with me. Till you get your sea legs.”
“My legs are fine right here, Ami. This is my home.”
Ami bit her lip without reply. She drew a hand through Gina’s hair and twisted a lock around her finger like a vine. “Is that why you did this, Gina? For the house?”
“And someone to play Scrabble with.”
Ami released a curl, rested her hand on Gina’s shoulder. “No one could beat Jeremy at Scrabble.”
“No one but me.”
After Ami left, Gina went snooping around the house. Not snooping, she told herself, just a form of spousal tourism, harmless to the delicate ecosystem of their marriage.
But Hank wasn’t making it easy. He had eradicated the house of nearly every portrait and photo frame, an absence she had never noticed before. The Primer had talked a lot about making new memories, but completely razing the old seemed extreme.
She turned to her laptop and Googled “Helen Tolliver.” There was only one Helen Tolliver (now Helen Tolliver Dade) who was originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She was featured in The Springfield Gazette for earning blue ribbons at the Third Annual Pie Festival, where her mocha pecan won the Nut category and Amateur Best in Show. Her new husband, George, remarked: “I’d eat that pie off the floor, it’s so good.” But the article showed only pictures of pies, not people.