At first Eliot had seemed exotic: twenty-nine to Ann’s twenty-one, divorced, with a real job as a junior-college English teacher and half a novel sitting on his, desk. He was a regular customer at the Spanish restaurant where she waited tables. He always sat in Ann’s section and started leaving her giant tips. Eventually he asked her out. “You disturb me,” he had told her, “but you intrigue me.”
The line sounded stupid when Ann thought about it later, but by then she had already slept with him and had mistaken his tentativeness for tenderness. At least when Eliot went down on her, her clitoris didn’t feel as if it were about to be sucked out by its roots. At least when Eliot’s penis (she could not help noticing it was thinner and much pointier than she was used to) was inside her, it didn’t feel like an angry fist battering her cervix. At least Eliot waited until she was wet. These days, such things were luxuries.
Also, Eliot had had a vasectomy. He was very proud of it and sometimes wore a bright orange button that said I Got Mine! If you asked him about it, he would launch into a speech about how None of Us Have the Right to Bring More Children into This Cruel, Overpopulated World. Ann didn’t care for the button or the speech, but it was nice being able to go off the pill. Her sleep patterns and her depression patterns were so erratic that she had been forgetting as many as she remembered.
So it didn’t matter when she read the half a novel and couldn’t think of anything to say about it. It was a study of a rural family in Virginia. It was Tough and Gritty, but Sensitive. The hero turned out to be the youngest son, Edward, who went to the University and became a teacher of English. Edward was also the only character who didn’t talk in dialect—Eliot had written his doctoral thesis on William Faulkner, and had never really gotten over it. It didn’t matter that Eliot talked sneeringly of her “redneck boyfriend”—whom he had never met and never would—and derived a perverse glee from hearing that Steve was a college dropout. It didn’t even matter that underneath all her self-righteousness she felt like the lowest land of lying, betraying bitch. None of these things mattered to her in the slightest.
Until Steve found out.
Ghost knew about it first, of course. He had always been able to see inside her head, the way he could see inside Steve’s head and almost anyone else’s if he chose to. Ann had seen Ghost looking at her strangely, then looking away when she stared back at him. He would not question her or accuse her, but she knew he knew.
She had let herself into their house one day while Steve was at work. She stood in the doorway of Ghost’s room, watching him write something in a spiral notebook. When he finally looked up, he didn’t seem surprised to see her. His pale blue eyes had been calm but guarded.
“Are you going to tell him?” she said.
For a long moment Ghost only looked at her, and she didn’t think he would answer at all. Then he lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug and shook his head no—but in those small movements Ann saw what pain it was causing him to keep such an ugly secret from Steve. All the guilt and the sorrow washed over her then, and she fell on Ghost’s bed, buried her face in his musty-rose-scented heap of blankets, and sobbed out the whole sordid tale. Ghost patted her back and stroked her sweaty hair, and all the time she knew she was telling him things he didn’t want to hear. But he listened anyway, because he was Ghost. Because he was good.
And of course Steve found out anyway. Whether he sneaked into her room and found her carefully hidden journal, or whether the unspoken communication between him and Ghost was so strong that he picked it up without Ghost having to say anything, Ann never found out. Everything happened so fast. Steve came over one night when her father was out, and he knew. He didn’t come right out with it, though. He talked around the edges of it; he was manic, almost raving, then sullen. She could see in his eyes that he hated her.
“All right!” she shrieked finally. “All right! I fucked somebody else and I liked it! He’s a better lover than you. He’s smarter than you. He’s not a goddamn drunk—”
She was just getting warmed up when his hand flashed out and slapped her hard across the face.
The blow had enough force behind it to throw her backward onto her bed. She lay there for a moment, her heart and mind stunned. Steve had never hit her. No one but her father had ever hit her. Her cheek and jaw went numb, then began to tingle. Steve would beg her forgiveness, surely. But he stood over her, his dark eyes blazing, and when she tried to struggle up he planted the sole of his boot square in her crotch and shoved hard. A lick of pain shot through her.
“You cunt,” Steve said. His voice was quiet, inflectionless. “I know how to make sure you won’t do any more fucking around for a while.”
And Steve’s hands went to his belt buckle.
Ann threw herself back against the wall. Suddenly Steve was on the bed with her, pinning her there, trapping her. She thrashed against him and felt him getting hard. Seeing him excited by her terror scared her worse, made her limp. She kept trying to push him away, but she was weak now, and he was so strong.
He yanked her skirt up, thrust two guitar-callused fingers into her vagina. They were dry and felt as if they would tear her open. Now he had her hips pinned beneath his. His jeans were down around his knees. His cock was shoving at her, battering into her. She felt it thrusting through her dryness up into the unwilling heart of her womb, and most of her did not want it there—but it was Steve, and he had always fit inside her so damn well, and almost before she realized it she was coming. Coming against her will, coming in pain and humiliation, but coming hard nonetheless.
Steve mistook the throes of her orgasm for struggles and thrust her arms back against the mattress. His big hands were like vises around her wrists. Ann felt delicate bones grinding together; in a moment she thought they might snap. She threw her head to the side and sank her teeth into the ball of his thumb until she tasted blood. Now he was pounding into her so hard that he didn’t seem to notice the pain—but his grip loosened a little, and then he was shuddering to his own violent orgasm, and the rape was over.
“There,” he breathed, lifting his head to stare into her stricken face. “There. See how you like fucking your new boyfriend now.”
After he had stormed out and roared away in his car, she wondered why she felt so dirty.
That had happened more than a month ago, and it was the last time she had seen Steve. She knew he had tried to call a couple of times—or someone had called at 3:00 a.m. and hung up when she answered—but she did not care, could not care. She made Eliot her refuge, her sanctuary. He was so good to her that she grew impatient with him, then completely sick of him. But she could not let go. She was afraid of that empty space in her life. She was afraid she might let Steve fill it again, and that would kill her shaky self-respect forever.
She nestled deeper into her pillows and contemplated going back to sleep. These days it was not unusual for her to sleep fourteen or fifteen hours at a stretch. She was just drifting off again when the doorbell rang. She tried to ignore it. The sound lingered in her ears, made her heart pound. “Go away,” she whispered.
The bell rang again. Ann swore, and as if in response it rang a third time. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, fought off a headrush that made the room spin giddily around her, and went with great reluctance to see who was at her door.
The boards of the old wooden porch shifted uneasily under Ghost’s feet. The Bransby house was a Victorian monstrosity gone to seed, its paint peeling, its edges softening. He had not called before riding his bike over here because he was afraid Ann might refuse to see him, but he knew by her beat-up little car in the driveway that she was home. He also knew that her father was gone, probably to an AA meeting or to the library over in Corinth, the only places he ever went that anyone knew about. That was good. Ghost had always been a little scared of Simon Bransby.
He was trying to decide whether to leave or ring the bell again when he heard steps inside the house—slow, dragging steps, in no hurry to reach the
door. Eventually Ghost heard Ann fumbling with the chain. Then the tumblers of the lock slid back, and she stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, her face half obscured in the gloom of the foyer.
At first Ghost thought Ann had two black eyes. But as she blinked at him, he realized it was only her makeup, smeared around her eyes as if she had slept in it. In fact, though it was two in the afternoon, she looked as if she might have just woken up. Her long autumn-colored hair was tangled. Her black dress was rumpled and hastily buttoned.
For a long moment Ann stared at Ghost, his rainbow-painted bicycle beside him on the porch, the colored streamers tied to the brim of his old straw hat. She looked as if she might burst out crying or slam the door in his face. But at last she moved aside and said, “Come on in.”
Without another word, she turned and walked back down the hall, away from him. Ghost shut the door behind him and followed. To the left was the dusty parlor, where several weeks’ worth of newspapers were strewn about the floor and heavy draperies were closed against the day. Ghost wondered who had drawn them—Simon? Or had it been Ann, who used to keep the house sunny and clean?
To the right was the half-open door of Simon’s laboratory. Ghost tried not to look, but the dull gleam of sunlight on glass caught his eye—the test tubes, the aquariums, the vials of weird fluid. He’d been in there a couple of times with Steve, though Ann’s friends were not supposed to go in the room. The contents of the aquariums were innocuous enough—toads and mice—but the laboratory felt like a place of pain. And there was a big refrigerator with a chain and padlock on it. Even Ann didn’t know what was in there.
Ann reached the kitchen table and propped herself against it for a moment, then collapsed into a chair. “Make some coffee, would you,” she said. Ann’s voice was hoarser than usual, nearly toneless. She curled her bare toes around the rung of her chair. Her red toenail polish was chipped and faded, as though she had not redone it for weeks.
Ghost found the coffee in the freezer and started making it. He used only his grandmother’s old Corningware drip pot at home, and he had already put water on to boil before he realized that the Bransby kitchen had an automatic coffee maker. It took him several minutes to figure out where the coffee went and where to pour the cold water in.
“You’re not a part of the machine age, Ghost,” said Ann. She lit a Camel and narrowed her eyes at him through the smoke. At last she asked, “Why did you come over?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Oh? And how am I doing?”
“You look bad.”
Ann gazed levelly at him. “Thanks. You look a little spooky yourself.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Ghost pulled the coffeepot out from under the drip-spout too soon. Hot coffee hissed against the burner, and he hurriedly put the pot back. “You’re beautiful, Ann. But you look sad. Twitchy. You look like those kids you used to make fun of at the Sacred Yew—black clothes, black eyes, dead white skin. What are you doing?”
“I’m in mourning,” she said. “I’m mourning the death of a relationship.” She got up and pushed him away from the coffee maker, expertly slid the pot out, and poured them each a cup. Ghost put lots of milk and sugar in his. Ann left hers black, which meant she was doing some land of penance. Ghost knew she hated black coffee.
“Steve told me he hadn’t seen you for over a month,” he said. She flinched at the name, but he made himself go on. “Things must not be too good with your new guy if you’re still in mourning.” It was out: he had crossed over into territory that was officially None of His Business.
“Look, Ghost.” Ann swung around in her chair, faced him. “I worked last night, okay? I was at that shitty restaurant until midnight. Then I drove out to Corinth to see Eliot—more precisely, to fuck Eliot. We fucked until four in the morning because that’s about all we can do together anymore. Then I had to drive back here because Simon usually wakes up around six, and he gets crazy if I’m not home. So I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours doing two things you don’t know much about—working and fucking. I’m tired. Now lay off me.”
“Okay,” Ghost said quietly. The attack on his areas of ignorance didn’t sting much, but the reference to fucking Eliot did, because he knew it would drive Steve up the wall. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want. I brought you something, though.” He put a cassette on the table next to Ann’s coffee cup. The words LOST SOULS? were printed in multicolored crayon on the liner.
Ann stared at the tape, then up at him. Her tough composure wavered. Her carefully arranged expression began to crumble. “Oh, Ghost…” She picked up the tape and pressed it to her lips. A couple of stray tears made crystal tracks through the smudged black makeup. “I miss you. I even miss Steve. But I can’t go back.”
“I know.” He knew some of what had happened between them, not all. Steve hadn’t told him everything, but most of it got through anyway. And the rest—well, he guessed he could see it now, in Ann’s deathly pale face, in her smudgy, haunted eyes.
She and Steve had always been stormy together. Steve had blithely dated his way through high school, getting laid but never quite getting involved. His tastes were diverse. The only girls he couldn’t stomach were the ones who seemed to make themselves up according to some redneck template, with the bleached-blond bubble hairdo, the feverish streak of blush across the cheeks, and the eyeshadow of colors never seen in nature. He had casual girlfriends of all other types: hippies who liked to get stoned with him, preppies who thought him wild and slightly dangerous, smart girls who appreciated his compulsive reading habit.
But Ann was the first one he had fallen for. In her way, Ann loved Steve as fiercely as she loved her weird father, and Steve wanted her more than he had wanted anything since he had learned to play the guitar. But one of the first things that had drawn them to each other was also one of the first things to start tearing them apart. They both pretended to be so tough and cynical that there was no room left to give each other the gentleness they both really needed. Steve had always been like that, and Ghost knew his way around it; there was an honesty between them that surpassed any facade Steve could put up. But Ann wouldn’t play that game.
Ghost took a sip of his coffee. It was cold and too sweet even for him. He drank more of it anyway, because he didn’t want to ask the question that had come into his head. But it wouldn’t go away; it had worried him ever since Steve had come home that night, his shirt untucked and his eyes wild and a bite mark on his hand. So finally he spoke again. “That was a shitty thing Steve did to you. You could have called the cops on him—or told your father. What stopped you?”
Ann laughed. It was a humorless sound. “Right, Ghost. The cops. ‘Officer, my boyfriend—the one I’ve been sleeping with for four years—he raped me.’ ” She made her voice deeper and spoke in an exaggerated redneck drawl. “ ‘Sure, little lady, we understand. You been givin’ it away, and now you want to take it back. Why don’t you come on down to the station and maybe you can show us exactly what he did to you.’ I don’t think they would have been too sympathetic. And Simon—well—” The bitter smoke from her cigarette swirled around her head, obscuring her eyes. “Simon would have killed him.”
Ghost believed her. But she still hadn’t told him what he really wanted to know. “How come you did it, Ann? You loved Steve. Maybe you still do. How come you wanted to go running to that guy over in Corinth?”
For a moment Ann only looked at him with something flickering far back in her eyes, and Ghost thought she might throw her cup at his head. But then she looked at her burning cigarette as if she had just realized it was there in her hand, and she sucked smoke deep into her lungs, coughed a little, and answered him. Her voice was hoarser than usual. “I believe in whatever gets you through the night,” she said. “Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four a.m. knows all my secrets. And when I was lying in bed next to Steve feeling like I was about to fly apart a
nd he wouldn’t hold me because we’d been arguing about some damn stupid thing—well, I went looking for something to get me through the night a little bit better.”
Ghost couldn’t say much to that. Her point of view still bothered him, but he knew that was just because no matter how much he cared for Ann, he would always love Steve more. So he talked about mutual friends Ann hadn’t seen for a while—she had been afraid of running into Steve, and Eliot was apparently a virtual hermit with no close friends of his own and no interest in meeting hers. Ann hadn’t been getting out much.
Ghost gave her the news, such as it was. R.J. Miller’s supposedly male cat had a litter of seven kittens, six solid black and one a sort of green. Terry, who owned the Whirling Disc record store in town, had gone on vacation and left the assistant manager in charge. The guy had filled out the form wrong when making an order, and they received a huge shipment of Ray Stevens albums. When he got back, Terry started playing the records all the time as punishment. Twenty times a day or more they were treated to the annoying country singer performing classic numbers like “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” or “Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way).”
He told Ann these things and made her laugh a little. He didn’t tell her how much Steve was drinking, or that he had started robbing Coke machines again. She didn’t ask how Steve was either. But when he hugged her goodbye on the porch and rode his bike away, he thought she looked a little happier, a little less pale and drawn. Not much, but a little.
A little worm of worry for her had already begun to gnaw in Ghost’s heart. He didn’t count it as a premonition. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between them and his ordinary feelings. But any friend of Ann’s would be worried about her, seeing how she was now. If the worm kept gnawing, he would pay more attention to it.
He pointed his bike toward home. By the time he got there, the ugliest image he had picked up from Ann—Steve on top of her, shoving her down into the mattress—had almost faded from his mind.
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