Upon entering my apartment it felt like I alone lived there, and this was fine. Again. As it had been the day before. Neutral and clean. I did not pause at doorways, or push consciously to avoid this way or that. Something about going out to work—the set point, the automatic path, the same way, the same time, the same day—mechanized me into passion to wallow in the simplicity of being here. The beating hearts and silent mouths around the office had shown me the accomplishment of the routine, trite and mundane: colds attended to promptly and thoroughly, a disciplined circadian rhythm leaning into lunchtime, nails filed and eyebrows waxed before a social disaster of running into a long lost face.
I had always thought that cycled person was not me. I loathed it when I had it. I felt suffocated. But it was not the real job around me. It was the load of space to clear out of the inside.
And when Summer disappeared again, I did not have to report her missing.
THIRTY
In putting away more of Mama’s old supplies and things, my neighbors’ part of cellar storage foreshadowed what my home turf might look like for the fast-approaching holidays: It would be lit up from stoop to roof with dots of Christmas lights, blow-up candy canes in the gangway and cement garden, wreaths and mistletoe on the doors, and maybe two life-size reindeers complete with sleigh. Gold and silver balls, glittery hanging angels, and felt gingerbread men lay atop other standard tree decorations in a milk crate like a seven-layer salad. I groaned loud enough to be heard on the second floor.
But here and now for Halloween, the new neighbors did not necessarily ask me if I minded a haunted house for a while. They warned me.
“We really get into the holidays,” Maria said on the afternoon I passed her and Sean sweeping dried leaves and windswept litter. Then they set out bright carved pumpkins and dried squashes on each side of our stoop steps.
Fran must have withheld their upstairs neighbor’s recent history and the mansion’s old maid’s death in her apartment there; by early October, Styrofoam tombstones appeared planted inside the gate. Strings of foam cobwebs, and interspersed plastic bones and skulls, connected the believable headstones. Either Maria or Charles finagled keys to the roof door’s padlock, as ivory sheets made into ghosts flew over the cornice, roped to some anchor at the very top. A life-size skeleton in a top hat and bow tie hung outside the first entry door. Thankfully, the trio confined the neon-lit witch faces and carnival masks to their street-facing windows. It was, of course, the new White people in the neighborhood who dared draw so much attention to the address.
More and more, the same boys with mouths so filthy Asha and I wanted to throw cold ice or a kettle of hot water on them stopped to point it out: “Dang, y’all, shit sick, yo . . .” The parents who normally pulled toddlers down the street were forced to stop. Some little kids even wriggled through to play in the “cemetery.” For the first time since I had lived there, two winos decided to drink from paper bags and take a rest on the stoop. Asha told me about it. She felt it prudent, alone at two o’clock in the morning, to mind her business and let them drink. Maria struggled in with overstuffed Costco bags smelling of chocolate, and asked: “So, you guys get lots of trick-or-treaters around here?”
Clearly, they missed Connecticut.
Holidays were for people who shared day-to-day life. Each opportunity for Halloween left me feeling like I belonged nowhere. Everyone I knew had a solar system, nest, pack, and habitat, an impenetrable sanctity. I once had it, on Trummel Lane, before Mama met Mr. Murphy. This intimate level of knowing others flicked through parts of my life, when I had had roommates and bunkmates. Now, I could see all the fuss.
“We’re taking Sean to the Harvest Festival on the Upper East Side. As if we don’t have enough pumpkins anyway. But these ones are less for carving and more for seeds, and the meat. Maria gets started early on Thanksgiving pies,” Charles let me know.
Me: “Sounds like a lot of fun. But y’all do your thing. I hope I get to sample a bit at the holidays.”
“Saint John the Divine gives such a wonderful event. Very safe. It’s ticketed only. An old-fashioned movie, with the organist. We always have hot soup and cider at the home before. The sisters would just love to see you, Autumn. We miss you,” Penny told me.
Me: “Thank you Penny. I miss you all too. You know, I’m working now. It’s just part-time, but it’s regular money. I’ll let you know how I feel. Tell everyone I said hello.”
“I finally cut Oscar’s hair! I’ll email you a picture of his little fro. Too cute! So . . . Oscar’s Jimi Hendrix and Sara’s Janice Joplin. I got them tie-dyed scarves and pretend guitars. And kids really do trick-or-treat in Park Slope. The stores give out candy. Stay over if you want, if you can stand a Haitian man’s snoring. What’s your costume?” Cathy asked.
Me: “Dunno. A full-time, salaried nine-to-fiver nobody’s hired as such yet? But thanks a lot, Cathy. I’m just getting a lot of things back together now. I’ll bring you guys’ Christmas gifts in person this year, and stay over then.”
“We’re always looking for volunteers for the Police Athletic League community party, honest people for the toy and candy bag giveaways. About three hundred kids come through. Most of ’em unsupervised. You’d be a good chaperone for the little ones,” Montgomery said.
Me: “Oh, I haven’t volunteered in so long. It would be nice to do so. I’m sure the costumes are gonna be wild. The things kids in Harlem can come up with. If I feel up to it, I’ll come. Add my name to the volunteer list, just in case.”
“I used to give parties all the time. Caterers, bartender, hired help, the whole nine yards. This is my first stab back at it, scaled down though. I’m making my famous chili. One of my daughter’s old school friends is the DJ. Don’t you dare bring a thing. A costume’s required though,” Barbara offered.
Me: “Sounds like so much fun, Barbara! I haven’t been to a good costume party in, well, too long. I just imagine the subway on Halloween is spookier than the city on any given day. I’d have to rent a Zipcar. If I can afford it, I’ll drive out. But freeze me a bowl of chili no matter what. Don’t forget.”
The only holdout from these busy beehives of family, domesticity, and homesteads was Asha. She was already costumed: in button-down shirts, black pants, and closed-toed shoes for the phone sales Norma put her on. Apparently, her Georgia accent worked in her favor. She was quite pleased with Roth Staffing.
“I haven’t seen a $500 check in one week since my ex forged ’em at the currency exchange his aunt worked for,” she told me.
MY LONE CONTRIBUTION TO MY imposed haunted house came courtesy of Frank’s messy “hands-on” We Go On session; four sessions had made me officially, argh, a member. We worked among cardboard cutouts of Dracula and Frankenstein alongside paper ghosts. Frank had picked our pumpkins from a patch in the Bronx.
“I want us all to think about our best mood and show us with your pumpkin,” Frank instructed. “And there is never any such thing as a bad mood. Sometimes my best mood is a little pissed off, when I see things I don’t like in the world, or people try to get over on me. So, there’s no bad moods here. Okay guys, pick your knife and get to carving.”
“And don’t nobody slit your wrists,” Carolyn reminded all. “Pumpkins only, okay?”
We all reassured her. Our brand of humor was shared and allowed in this room. Every two weeks we could let it rip. Carolyn stocked up on candy for the time being, and for later with handfuls in her bag. This week, her ramble involved a new home-care worker position in the Bronx with a senior man who thought she was his daughter—for real.
“I keep telling him my name is Carolyn,” she told us. “He wants to keep on calling me Donna. And he wants to talk about ‘your ma.’ So, finally, after my third day, I said ‘If you wanna call me Donna, go right ahead. I get paid the same no matter what you call me.’ Thank God it’s only four hours, three times a week.”
“Four hours adds up,” and I explained. They were happy to know I had a gig now.
By now, the usual group members were the only ones besides Noel Montgomery, and me, who knew of Summer Spencer. I needed the static confidence of everyone else in my life who never knew Autumn only pretended to be so ordered.
“I’ve lived with a real ghost,” I said, my hand steady on the warped wood handle of a capable blade. “She was a twin sister I thought I had. Apparently I was the only one who knew her. She went through all the things I pretended I never did, and did all the things I thought about doing but wouldn’t. Except for some. Like, trying to jump off our roof last year. Still not sure why I had to go to a rooftop for self-pity. I could have just stayed in bed for that. In any case, I didn’t jump. And, what do you know? New neighbors move in and hang real ghosts from the roof. I hope that’s no sign history’s gonna repeat.”
“It won’t,” Barbara said.
My pumpkin became a jack-o-lantern with baby teeth, a winking eye, and perfectly arched brows of course.
I ESCAPED THE ROTH STAFFING office to find our stoop already busy and crowded with ne’er-do-wells who roamed the block, policemen who patrolled it, and real trick-or-treaters braving crisp fall weather. With spooky music, hourly repeats of “Thriller” blasted from apartment surround sound amplified by Sharper Image, a new Halloween tradition arrived on our block with Charles and Maria’s early afternoon start.
Asha had an ulterior motive to join the party: her recently printed flyers for Sugar Hill Holistic Care by Asha Goddess. After my abandonment of it, she had learned backroom web design well enough to professionalize a website on her own. We painted on clown noses and cheeks in lipstick. We found a use for long pink and blond wigs the strippers at Asha’s old joint passed down to her. I uncovered the ties and suspenders from my serious-businesswoman-fashion phase.
Our new neighbors, in much more elaborate Addams Family costumes, were quite pleased to recruit us. I got to know them on the stoop with my back against a shrinking, frowning pumpkin going black inside. At the landing were apple cider jugs, bottles of imported beer, paper plates of their son’s stove-roasted s’mores, and stove-top popcorn. I finally guessed the community attorney do-gooder Charles was the pothead. He was not really there, disappearing often to come back pink-eyed.
“So, are you ladies planning to stay here long?” Maria asked, as she stared at one trio of eager beavers, in makeshift ghost costumes and white face makeup. Their pretty young mother wanted pictures of them in our adjacent “cemetery.”
“Be careful not to fall over the cracks in the garden,” Maria smiled at them.
I tried to explain myself over a blaring of “Monster Mash.”
“I could see myself staying in New York, with the right circumstances,” I said.
The beer was Argentinian according to its label, soft and crisp like a cream soda. I gave myself license to one more, as I was not drinking alone.
“I’m buying property soon, but this ain’t the place for me anymore,” Asha said. “It’s outrageous now.”
“We’re looking to buy,” revealed Maria, not surprisingly. “We’re renting our old house. It was so far. Believe me. Charles is so much nicer now that he gets up at seven.”
The trio of picture takers moved on to another place halfway down the block on their route to find open doors in Harlem on Halloween.
“I had never considered living in the city,” Maria continued, “but we really like Harlem. It’s so convenient. “
“It is,” I agreed. What else was I supposed to say? I pulled marshmallow out of my wig, noting a smudge of one of my favorite lipsticks, MAC Vixen, on the graham cracker of my s’more. It would be a long time before I could throw bills down for it again.
“I came to Harlem from Chicago,” I recalled. “I thought it would be exciting to live where James Baldwin and Alicia Keyes and Maya Angelou lived. You can’t go wrong with that.”
“Oh, I did not know Maya Angelou lived here,” Maria said. “And who else . . . ?”
Asha began to recite what would have been a thorough sermon on Harlem’s heritage and its steady erasure as such and . . . More trick-or-treaters showed up.
“Hi, SpongeBob,” I told one grinning boy. He walked with his father in MTA uniform, a Duane Reade plastic bag in his little sweet hands. I reached my hands into our candy pumpkin and filled his bag nearly halfway for it.
“You guys really did it up here,” the deeply laugh-lined father said to us. “Haunted house in Harlem. Boy, oh boy.”
“That’s exactly what we were going for,” Charles said. He had appeared at the doorway yet again, with Sean leaning against the jamb in curious uncertainty to his new foreign community, just like I had been on Trummel Lane around his age.
“Well, when it’s not a haunted house, it’s a pretty nice place to come take care of yourself,” Asha said. She handed the gentleman a flyer. He looked at it with interest.
“What’s Reiki?” he asked.
“Well, it’s a process of touch to heighten your senses, relieve stress, and balance your bodily functions,” Asha told him.
“And she’s quite good at it, if I may say so myself,” I added.
“I didn’t know you did that kind of stuff,” Maria said. She reached over Asha’s lap and lifted the beer bottle paperweight off the pile of flyers to read one.
“I do. Just come right on down or let me know. An appointment would be better. I’m in and out. You’ll feel like a new person. My rates are negotiable.”
“I have a shoulder problem,” Maria went on. “My mother was convalescent for the last years of her life. It was what held us up from taking the leap to move here.”
One random day, I might tell her about my own mother and leaps.
“All the lifting and pushing and turning. I tell you. God, it just wore me down.”
“I can’t say I’ll repair it,” Asha told her, “but, I’ll make you forget all about it.”
“Deal,” Maria said, and they shook hands.
AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” played behind us from inside our house of so many spirits—past, present, and future.
WE WERE FORTUNATE IT WAS the weekend. No one had to work. It justified how the adults of our brownstone teetered from the stoop to our doors in the wee hours, totaled, long after the kids for whom Halloween was intended had vacated the streets. I did not care to join all the brag fests and boasting online, multiplied times ten on any holiday. However, just knowing I could have a competitive night to post if I did care made me less cringy at those in the game. Yes, everyone’s kid had the best costumes. Yes, all the couples dressed alike really pulled it off. Yes, all the best horror film diatribes made their case. I had my fill of distant relatives’ and faded associations’ curated best lives, and turned to a more productive internet addiction of battling my inbox. Job rejection emails mostly. However, a note from the office of Gabriel Johns curled into the stream.
Dear Mr. Armstrong and Miss Spencer,
I regret to bear bad news, but Mr. Johns has passed on. He took his last breaths Monday surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and workers. He is to be buried on the grounds soon. The family wishes for a private service.
I want to invite you both to the public memorial next month. The details are attached. It is an invitation extended in goodwill to so many people he considered friends, colleagues, and supporters around the world. As I understand you are in the States, no pressure to come. Mr. Johns was very pleased with the work you did on his legacy.
Best regards, Olivia
Underneath, another email in response, made visible in reply to the both of us. From Chase, the first taste I’d had of him in three months.
Dear Olivia,
This news breaks my heart. Mr. Johns was so kind to me and such an influence on me personally and my people. My heart goes out to you, and everyone there. I know he was not your boss but more your family. I will do my very best to make it to the memorial.
Yours truly, Chase
Chase still had his effect on me, after months of us not s
peaking or seeing each other. I knew our distance was not easy for him, but necessary. I no longer blamed him. When unfiltered by inner chaos, his effect on me was even more intense. I wept for both Chase and Gabriel, and ran my fingers along Chase’s words on the screen, needing to touch him in some way as I always had from the moment I first saw him. I did not respond. I fell asleep thinking of Mr. Johns’s advice, passed to those of us with more life left to live: Everything so easy today. Instant rice? Why such a thing? Even love. In my day you had to really, really love . . .
THE BUZZER STARTLED ME OUT of sleep. It took me some time to come to. A stumbler to a wrong address? An Asha Goddess suitor, or customer? But my buzzer blared once more. I wrapped myself in the maroon blanket at the foot of my bed. I walked to look out. I saw a bespectacled man in a familiar pea coat, standing back from the stoop landing just enough for me to see his face. I moved to the fire escape gate to open it, lift the window, and juggle myself out of it. He watched me.
It was Chase.
“Don’t fall, beautiful,” he shouted up.
“Well, stranger, I’m better balanced now,” I told him.
I was content to think I was still dreaming. However my senses were clear in surprise, unbiased and pleasured.
I patted my hair into some propriety and yelled down, “What do you want?”
He looked at me to think of what I wanted him to say he wanted. He had trouble deciding on this. So, he just reached into his coat pocket to pull out slips of paper.
“I have balcony-level tickets from a client, to The Color Purple on Broadway,” he yelled up.
I saw ads in the subway and around. I was happy for it, but out of its budget class.
“Oh,” I said. Then, “I’m sorry about Mr. Johns. I don’t think I can afford to go.”
“Well, I have a bit of work subsidy for it,” he said, softer now. “Maybe I can see . . .”
Speaking of Summer Page 25