Ghosts

by Tess McLennan

  “You’ve never really talked to anyone about what happened, have you?” He must have sensed this from my reaction. I had stopped eating my burger, and my hands were now clenched up in two tight little balls

  “They tried to make Clem and I see a shrink, but we refused. Said we could handle it on our own. There’s only so much help you can get, you know?”

  “But you were just two kids…”

  “I suppose. Why do you want to know all this? You’re practically a stranger to me.”

  “Well I am a stranger to you. And because I think that part of the reason Britney beat you up was because you did something to her, but also because you’re Imogene Fuller, a household name. She probably is getting a pat on the back from her parents for beating up a minor celebrity.”

  “A minor celebrity… that’s a bit much,” I said incredulously.

  Henry laughed. “Probably.”

  I uncurled my fists and started picking at my French fries. His laughter set me a bit more at ease.

  “And is your Dad around?”

  “Well, he’s been dead a long time. Ten years today actually. But at least we know he is dead, you know? There’s got to be some relief in that.”

  “Silver lining,” Henry agreed.

  “Anyway, Jim was a lawyer, a crooked one at that…

  he had a lot of dealings with drugs and dealers. He got

  on the bad side of one of them and well, he paid for it.”

  I swallowed hard at the last part of the sentence. In the past, it had been one of those raw memories that I avoided speaking about – now it was almost like something that had happened to someone else. I spared Henry the more gory details about Jim’s death.

  Click, hiss, boom.

  “Do you miss him?”

  I shook my head. “I want to be one of those people who deep down loves their parents despite all of their flaws – but I’m not one of those people. Jim was a mean, old man, who liked to drink and who liked to use his belt buckle.”

  If Henry was shocked by this he didn’t show it. Instead he asked, “What’s it like not to love your parents?” He put another French fry into his mouth. “To not feel like you have to love them, because of blood and all that psychology shit?”

  “I can’t really tell you. I don’t know if there ever was a time I loved them. Marella was always running off, for as long as I could remember… Jim was Jim.”

  “I guess blood isn’t thicker than water after all,” Henry said, pushing his empty plate away. “My mother is a bit of a lunatic at times too. She’s into all this spiritual nonsense, but at the moment, it’s that UFO fanatic group they started a while back in Miller Creek. Sometimes it really gets under your skin. They all stand around discussing a whole lot of garbage.”

  I made silent note of the parallels between Henry’s mother and my own.

  “But you still love her?”

  “I have to. I can’t help it.”

  I desperately wished I could have been one of those people, able to love unconditionally. But it just wasn’t in my DNA.

  “So now we’ve got the elephant out of the room, I want to take you out again. We won’t talk about your parents, or the newspapers, or anything to do with that. I promise.”

  I agreed with him, and reached to get my phone out of my bag to get his number, before remembering that Britney had knocked it out of my hands before she pounced with her cronies.

  “My phone is broken,” I said sheepishly. “Can you write down your number?”

  Henry pulled out a card from his bag, and a marker. I gazed at the card, trying to make out the picture printed on it in the dim light. The picture was of an angel, with one foot dipped in a pool of clear water, holding two goblets in its hands. It appeared to be filling one goblet from the other, its face set in a serene expression, wings spread gallantly across the sky.

  “The Temperance card,” Henry saw me looking. “My mother gives tarot readings. I found it in my bag today.”

  I rolled my eyes, thinking again of Marella. “Another psychic? How many does this town need?”

  Henry nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I wonder if she could be the real deal, but I brush it off because I don’t like what she’s telling me.”

  “What does the card mean?”

  “It means a lot of things… Patience, compromise, ambition, peace. Something you have desired is going to come to fruition. It also means to keep balance and control in your life. Don’t rush your decision making, patience is a virtue, and will lead to you to the best outcome.”

  “You don’t seem convinced?”

  “Believe what you will. I’ve already told you about my mother.”

  He wrote his number on the card, and slid it across the table to me.

  Clem came running at me as I opened the door of the flat, her face full of excitement, which then fell into an expression of horror and concern. I had been so absorbed in my night with Henry that I’d forgotten all about the girls who had jumped me after work. My face had come off relatively unscathed, but my arms and legs were scratched up and bruised, and my clothes were torn. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was playing on the television. That movie always made me feel even more dull and lifeless than usual.

  “You look as though you got robbed!” Clem cried in alarm. “What happened? Where have you been! Are you hurt?”

  Clem was mostly calm and collected about everything, but when it came to me, particularly if I was sick or hurt, she became hysterical. I knew after the successive bowing out of our parents, brava, bravissimo, she was petrified of being left alone. When I broke my arm falling over a garden gnome, she cried for a week. I was more worried about how I was going to work to pay our bills, than my broken arm. Luckily, Johnny’s put me up in the office for eight weeks. I savoured the precious time away from the customers, with their pitying gazes and horrible female moustaches.

  “I’m fine,” I said calmly. I smiled at her to make my point even clearer. “Some girls decided to tangle with me after work. No big deal, someone helped me, scared them off.” I didn’t tell Clem the reason why the girls had come after me, or who had helped me. I wanted to keep something a secret for a little while.

  I suddenly realised how sore I was, and sat down on the couch.

  “Immie, you’re bleeding.” Clem pointed at my arm, and scurried off to get Band-Aids and cream. I looked down at the blood. The scratch was deeper than the others, and would probably leave a scar. I must have bumped it as I entered the flat, and now it was seeping with blood again. I winced at the thought of Britney and her hideous talons.

  “Did they take anything?” Clem asked, as she cleaned the oozing scratch with an alcohol wipe, before squeezing some antibacterial cream onto a Band-Aid and placing it over the wound.

  “Just my pride.”

  “I think that was in a movie somewhere.”

  “Probably. I’m not particularly inventive. My phone’s broken though.”

  We sat in silence for a moment while she tended to some of my other scratches, when I noticed a letter on the coffee table.

  “You got in?” I leaned forward and grabbed the package, trying to keep my excitement from bubbling over. The words full scholarship seemed to be printed larger than every other word on the page.

  Clem grinned at me. “Yes, it came this afternoon!”

  I jumped up and grabbed her, and we danced around the room in happiness. The Band-Aids and cream fell to the floor in my haste, and it took me a few minutes to realise that I was crying.

  Later that night, I lay down on my bed, contemplating the events of the previous afternoon. Clem would leave for Western Australia in February, and much was to be done before then. We needed to find her a place to live, replace her dance shoes and attire… I was thankful for the scholarship, like I was about to hand over my economical reigns to another institution. Amongst my joy for Clem, was an impending sadness. I was going to be without her for the first time in two and a half years. We’d never spent a nigh
t apart since we’d moved into the flat, even after the garden gnome incident, when I stayed in hospital overnight. What would it be like to come home, and not have her be there? Perhaps I would move to Western Australia too, I thought happily. Nothing was stopping me, nothing was keeping me in Brisbane. I shook my head. I knew I couldn’t hold Clem’s hand throughout her whole life; I had to let go at some point.

  As I lay thinking, I began flipping the Temperance card that Henry had given me around in my fingers. Patience, compromise, ambition, peace. I placed it next to my bed and tried to sleep. Another day was ending, same as the day before. And the day before that. Everyone around me continued to change and move on, but I was always just the same old Imogene. Perhaps it was that sad something I would have to get used to.

  5

  The next few weeks were a flurry of activity – Christmas came and went, and New Year approached, the appeal of a bright and sparkling 2014 on the horizon, the promise of a remedy to all the problems that people couldn’t solve in the previous year.

  Johnny’s became unbearable in the holiday season. The only salvation for me was that I picked up another part time job taking Santa pictures in the shopping complex across the street. I hated that this was what I was all I was using my photography skills for – I hardly considered it art, but I conceded that even artists still needed to eat. With the extra money, I was able to buy Clem some decent Christmas presents. I wanted to make sure she had the most normal life possible, particularly at Christmas. Sometimes she yelled at me, saying I smothered her, and that she didn’t need me to take care of her anymore, she wasn’t a child, she was almost an adult... I realised, with a slight sadness, that it was exactly what I’d said to my mother some years ago.

  On New Years Eve, Johnny’s was at the height of organised chaos. In the deli, which employed ten times more staff than normal on this particular holiday, people ran everywhere, serving customers, slicing meat, thawing seafood and arguing with each other. I got in between two junior staff members who began a heated discussion about whose job it was to put the roast chickens in the ovens – it hadn’t been done, and the bain-marie was empty. Customers were starting to complain. One of the younger boys gestured wildly with his hands in his frustration, knocking a pile of plastic trays onto the hard concrete floor, and cracking them into a number of pieces.

  I was already feeling flustered, so I angrily gave them a lecture about working as a team, delegated them jobs to do and grabbed the dustpan to clean up the mess from the broken trays. It was one of those days where frustration could easily turn to tears, and I was fast getting to that point.

  I stood up from sweeping the broken plastic into the dustpan, and was greeted by a familiar, handsome face.

  “Hi there,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember me?”

  The Tarot card had mysteriously disappeared from the safe surface of my bedside table, and after turning the flat upside down looking for it, I admitted defeat and shrugged off the idea of ever seeing Henry again. It bothered me that something so small could just up and walk away – I hated the idea of losing things, the time wasted looking, the disorganisation. I asked Clem about it, for the first time having to reveal something private about my after-dark activities. I then told her about Michael and Britney, but she showed no surprise, like she knew all along. Of course, Clem was just as puzzled as me as to where the card had disappeared. But we had put it to bed, and Henry was soon forgotten in amidst the madness of the festive season.

  “Hi,” I responded. I had marinade splattered all down my front, and my makeup was melting from the heat of the ovens. I wished desperately that he didn’t have to see me in this state, on a day where I had been feeling particularly frustrated and miserable.

  Henry must have asked somebody about my roster, or somehow spoken to Clem, because he had come into Johnny’s a mere five minutes before the end of my shift.

  I asked him to get a cold drink with me at the café next to Johnny’s, and as we sat down, he inevitably asked me about why I never called him.

  “I’m sorry, it got a bit chaotic…” I didn’t want to delve into the story of the lost Tarot card, it sounded like an insincere excuse.

  “How are you doing anyway?” Henry asked me, the waitress bringing our drinks over on a silver tray.

  “How am I doing?” I repeated.

  “After Britney?”

  “Oh…” I suddenly remembered. “Fine… Haven’t given her a second thought.” I hadn’t seen a hair of Michael since that day. I was convinced that Britney had him tied firmly to the doghouse at home. “How are you doing?”

  “Not too bad… some crazy person tried to run me off the road before, it was nuts.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “People these days… so much anger.”

  “I know… why can’t we all live in peace?”

  After the initial small talk, we sat in silence for a moment. It wasn’t like the last time – this time it was uncomfortable. Something was simmering on the surface, but neither of us knew what to say first.

  “I’m sorry… I’m just tired today. Long day.” I shook my head and stirred my drink with my straw.

  Henry waved his hand in dismissal of my apology. “It’s okay. I saw you getting angry at those kids. Figured you needed some company. Or somebody to vent to.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t want to hear about the nonsense in my life.” Nothing ever went on in my life that was mentionable. The most defining thing about me was my infamous mother and father, and my talented sister. The only way I could define myself was by the actions of the people close to me. My sister did this… My mother did this… My father died like this… Otherwise, I was afraid I would cease to exist. I was just a collection of molecules that would disperse into the universe.

  “Because I want to know you.”

  I was sure he’d leave after five minutes. But five minutes soon turned into half an hour, and half an hour soon turned into two hours. Henry listened intently as I told him about Marella, her bizarre interests, her disappearance. The manhunt that had made national papers, my widely broadcasted plea for information to the public, detectives scratching their heads at the lack of evidence, and by lack of evidence, they meant absolutely no evidence at all. Marella Fuller had disappeared into thin air, leaving absolutely no trace of herself.

  I learned a lot about the law after Marella disappeared for what was to be the last time. Technically a person has to be missing for seven years to be considered ‘deceased’. Marella barely left a hair on her pillow, let alone any substantial clue that might have led detectives to her whereabouts – not a burnt out car, or a missing shoe on the side of the road, or a piece of torn clothing hanging in a tree, ripped off as she tried to flee from her attacker. I went through these scenarios over and over in my mind, but nothing ever materialized, no clue ever came about. In the end, I thought the judge was favourable towards us, sympathetic to our cause. He ruled that Marella be considered deceased, so that her Will could be executed, and Clem, who had been taken to a foster carer on the other side of Miller Creek, in a fit of tears and rage on both our parts, was allowed to stay with me as her guardian. Then I got a job at the supermarket, Clem continued dancing, and the story ended there.

  We talked about everything imaginable – what books we were reading, what news we’d heard on the radio, what we thought of the past year’s Federal election. I started to feel vaguely interesting. I told him how I’d lived in Miller Creek for most of my life, after moving rather abruptly from the city at an early age. I remembered it well, as I’d gone to sleep that night in one city, and woken up in another.

  We talked about Europe, a place we’d both seen, and the other parts of the world Henry had travelled to, his musical projects, his teaching at school. We talked about abseiling in Greece, and hiking in Nepal, and living in a cramped London flat. Or rather he talked about it, and I salivated over the stories, the experiences. He was writing a novel part time, and sometimes worked with
his sister volunteering at the hospital as musicians for patients in Cancer care and respite.

  As Henry talked, I couldn’t help but think again about what I had to show for the last three years. Sometimes I felt like a teenage mother, without the element of choice. I always envisioned that my life would turn out differently – I always envisioned it to be more like Henry’s, that I would have that mindset to savour every little thing that happened, good and bad, and turn it into something meaningful. My mind flashed back to the three months I spent in Europe, photographing the architecture, drinking beer in pubs and smoking cigarettes in Italian cafes. It was like a club I’d been let into for a little while, and then ceremoniously booted out of soon after. I held onto that tiny bit of life experience I’d been granted, savoured it, hoped it would be enough to sustain me in conversations with likeminded individuals. But years had passed since then, and the statute of limitations on talking about it had well and truly expired. The world was split into two types of people I realised: those who think, and those who do. I was stuck firmly in the former.

  “I know it sounds like a quote I stole off Pinterest, but my philosophy is to live life like I’m going to die tomorrow. Fear is just motivation. Every little thing is something special in my eyes. If I want something, I go after it. I don’t beat around the bush.”

  “Not many people can say that honestly,” I replied. I probably lied to myself by using a phrase like that at some point.

  “No… A lot of people say it. But they’re lying to themselves. I’m not lying.”

  I knew I was wasting away at Johnny’s, I knew I was wasting precious time. I would probably die there. I was the real life Walter Mitty. I hated that movie. And I hated referencing myself like the protagonist in that movie. If I had to write a book on my life, it would be two pages long. If that. Henry’s would be an entire novel.