I sprinted around the house, following Mom’s instructions to the letter. Racing to the finish, I ploughed into the kitchen like a wrecking ball, slamming into Ken. I tried to shake his hand to end it, but he kept moving it away. I yelled, “Hey,” with mock outrage, then latched on to his arm, held it still, and finally was able to grab his hand.
Mom said, “Yeah. She’s shy.”
“Clearly. And strong. Wow.” Ken let his arm hang like it was dead.
“What was my time? What was my time?”
“Fifty-two seconds.”
“I can beat that.”
I ran the course two more times, with my personal best being forty-six seconds. After the third run I told Ken that he should write my obstacle course into the show. Mom’s and Ken’s smiles dimmed a bit at that, and they both took synchronized sips of their coffees.
Mom said, “Why don’t you go outside and burn off the rest of your energy? You probably shouldn’t be sprinting around the house with all the expensive equipment we have in here now.”
“No.” I tried not to sound whiny, but there were way too many o’s in my no.
Ken said, “I’ll go outside with you. Can we kick the soccer ball around?”
“Yeah, okay!”
Mom said, “Ken, you don’t have to.”
“No, it’s okay. I want to get outside. Nice, crisp fall day. And I want to see what kind of soccer player Merry is. I’ve heard she’s real good.”
I sprinted out of the kitchen to get a sweatshirt, afraid Mom would change his mind somehow. I heard her say, “She’s relentless.”
LEAVES COVERED THE BACKYARD, AND the wind had blown a pile into my small, rickety soccer net. Thin white PVC pipes struggled to hold its barely upright shape. The crossbar sagged in the middle. Ken wasn’t outside yet so I cleared the goal of as many leaves as I could, and pushed the rest though the square holes in the netting. The leaves were wet and I wiped my hands on my jeans and inspected them for ticks, even though it was too cold for ticks.
I marched around crunching leaves and keeping the soccer ball between my feet while waiting for Ken to come out. I had a white fleece sweatshirt on, with multicolored peace symbols all over it. It was tight and too small, but it was my favorite.
Ken walked out of the back door wearing a thick brown and green sweater and a scarf. He bounded down the small back porch, rubbed his hands together, and said, “Brrr, it’s colder than I thought. We’ll be warm after I score a bunch of goals on you, though.”
I said, “Bring it on, old man!”
We jumped right into a game of one-on-one. It was slow going with all the leaves in the way. It was tough to get solid footing. Ken took it easy on me initially, which made me play harder. I did get the sense Ken used to be very good, but his feet were heavier now and weren’t keeping up with the rest of him. He fell a few times and he stepped on my foot once. I didn’t let on how much it hurt. As the game went on, he got winded and I had the advantage of knowing how to use the slight downward pitch of the backyard. I won the slightly rigged game five to four with a goal that almost knocked the net down; the ball skimmed off the crossbar and wrapped around the left post.
After the game we passed the ball back and forth. Ken was down toward the bottom of our yard, I was at the top.
“You’re a very good player, Merry. I’m impressed.”
I said, “Thanks! Your cheeks look like big red apples.”
Ken kicked me the ball and then bent over, putting his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “Well, you kicked my butt, Merry. Your cheeks look like little crabapples.”
“Crabapples? What are those?” I laughed. I imagined apples with pincer claws and how difficult it would be to pick them off a tree and bake them in a pie.
“They’re little and more purple than red. Can’t really eat them. Believe me, I’ve tried. We had a crabapple tree in my front yard when I was a kid.”
The lazy passing morphed into a playful competition. Our passes became crisper. We both switched legs and stopping techniques. Ken let the ball roll up his foot and into the air, then kicked it with his other foot. I tried to do the same but the ball rolled up my leg and hit me in the chin.
“Ow!”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
I asked, “Did you know that I have to ask permission to go into the confessional room now?”
“Yes, I heard that.”
“It’s not fair because everyone else in my family can go in whenever they want.”
“Well, you have been going in there a lot, and there’s only so much we can show in an hour of TV, which is more like forty-two minutes with all the commercials, and more like thirty-two minutes with the post-commercial scene resets—Whoa!”
I kicked the ball extra hard and a little wide of him. The ball went crashing into the line of tall bushes at the end of our property. I said, “I like to talk. I can’t help it!”
Ken had to go in deep to pluck the ball out of the bushes. He walked back up the hill to me with the ball cradled in his right arm. He said, “That’s it. I’m cooked, and I have to do some work.”
I wanted to shout No, stay out here with me, but I fought the urge. Instead my whole body slumped and went slack.
Ken said, “Come on. I have a great idea. Follow me out front.” I grabbed the soccer ball, quickly scrambled up the porch to the back door, tossed the ball into the catchall shoe bin in the mud room, then ran back to Ken. I walked with him around the house, let him lead even though he was taking us the hardest way to go. His scarf got caught as we weaved through and dodged low-hanging tree branches before we finally emerged into the safety of the driveway.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
I ran up beside him and said, “I don’t think my parents are going to let me watch the show when it’s on tonight.”
“You probably shouldn’t. It’s not a show for kids.”
“But I’m on it!”
“I know you are, Merry. I know it’s frustrating, but I can show you some edited parts, the parts with just you and nothing too scary. Is that okay?”
“What’s the big deal? It’s supposed to be real, right? Just like Finding Bigfoot. It’s all about what really happened, and I was there when it happened.”
“I don’t know quite what to say to that. Yes, you were here when it happened, but you weren’t with your sister all the time, you didn’t see everything, did you?” He paused and I shrugged. “You should probably talk to your mom and dad about it. It’s—It’s a scary show. Too intense for you, I think.”
We walked across the front lawn to the TV crew’s trailer, which was parked half on the street, half on our front yard. Its passenger-side tires had sunk partway into the lawn.
“I’ve told everyone at school and they’re all going to watch it. So I don’t know why I can’t watch it too.”
Ken didn’t say anything to that. He knocked on the trailer door, and called out “Everyone decent in there?” Then he whispered down to me, “Tony will change his clothes right in the middle of the trailer.”
“Ew, creepy.”
“Totally. So, you wait here. I know he’s in there. He might be napping.”
Ken disappeared inside. I backed away from the trailer and tried to watch his progress through the trailer windows. I couldn’t see him. I did watch the trailer tilt and shift as he walked its length. Ken wasn’t gone long and came back out carrying a small black nylon bag. He didn’t say anything, just dangled it in front of me and then walked to the front steps. I nipped at his heels.
“Here, let’s sit. So we’re going to call this the Merry-cam.” He opened the bag and took out a small handheld camera.
“Cool!” I took it and turned it carefully over in my hands. Its metal and plastic was cold and beautiful. It was practically all lens with a small pop-out screen tucked to its side.
“It’s yours to use however you want. You can film all you like. You can do your own confe
ssionals whenever and wherever you want. I grabbed this for you too.” Ken took out a small black notebook wrapped in a red rubber band from his pocket. It looked just like his, but was half the size. “You can use it to write down a short description of the stuff you filmed that you think is important and could be on the show. When you have good stuff or when you fill up the camera’s memory, we can download it, go through your notebook, and decide what we should watch and what we should delete.” Ken showed me how to turn it on, how to delete the file if I didn’t want it, how to zoom, how to turn on a small spotlight, and how to charge the battery.
“Just promise you won’t go to Barry with your footage. You have to come to me first. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We shook on it. Then he said he had do some work and headed back to the trailer.
I ran inside and didn’t tell Mom about the camera. I wanted to already have used it so it would be harder for her to tell me that I couldn’t have it. I wondered if Marjorie had her own camera too, and thought about showing her, but decided against it. She might try to take it away and use it for herself. I went up to the confessional room and turned the camera on. I said: “This is Merry’s first video. And I don’t need you anymore, confessional room.”
Marjorie’s bedroom door opened behind me. I turned around and Marjorie was in the hallway, yawning and stretching, hair all over the place, sticking out at odd angles. I pointed the camera at her. “Marjorie. Look what Ken gave to me!”
She groaned, blocked her face with one hand, gave me the middle finger with the other.
ON OUR PREMIERE NIGHT, WE had a full house: Barry, Ken, Tony, Jenn, a handful of other crew I didn’t know by name, a tall man in a jacket and tie, and Father Wanderly as well. Everyone milled about the first floor, eating pizza and drinking out of red cups. Mom and Marjorie were the only ones missing. They were upstairs in Marjorie’s room, hiding from all of us.
The atmosphere was strange; sort of an almost-party. Crew exchanged fist bumps and handshakes when they thought no one was watching. Dad and Father Wanderly gravely thanked each person for their participation, told them they were all doing God’s work, reaffirmed that this process was going to help Marjorie get better. Ken kept to himself, appeared to be very nervous, and looked at me like he was wondering if my parents were really going to let me watch the episode. I walked around with my camera filming it all. I caught a snippet of a conversation going on among the tall man in the jacket and tie, Barry, and Father Wanderly. They used words like capital, contributions, and campaign. When Barry saw me, he waved for me to come over to them, and introduced me by saying, “This little star is Merry.” He never told me the other man’s name, or if he did, I no longer remember it. Barry said, “There would be no show without his help. His generous help.” The men all laughed, the one in the tie laughing hardest. I didn’t like him. He was too tall and stood like he had metal rods inside his back. His brown jacket had dark patches on the elbows, his hair was a weird color, like an almost brown, not a real brown, his skin looked fake, and everything was too close together on his face. He told me I was a special young lady and that he was excited to meet me. I said, “I know. Thanks.” The three men laughed like I’d said the funniest joke in the world and then moved me along. So I went around the party stopping the people that I knew for a brief interview in which I asked them a purposefully silly question. I worked my way back to Father Wanderly eventually. He was standing alone next to the dining room table munching on miniature pretzels.
I asked him, “Would you rather have legs the size of fingers or fingers the size of legs?”
He said, “I can’t say I’ve ever been asked that before. Both options sound dreadful, don’t they,” and then he waved bye to the camera.
Marjorie and Mom were still upstairs. Marjorie was always in her room with Mom, Dad, or occasionally Father Wanderly and a cameraperson. Since my basement confessional all things Marjorie had been quiet. She ate lunch and dinner with us, went to school some days, and on others she did not. She listened to music a lot. She texted and received texts in random flurries. She occasionally watched TV with us, but mostly she was the ghost of our house, haunting her own bedroom. I began to really believe she was faking and that nothing was wrong with her. Despite my promise to not say anything, I thought about telling Ken what she’d told me. I didn’t want to risk doing anything like that right then because I wanted to stay under everyone’s radar and somehow manage to watch the show.
Right around my usual bedtime, which was forty-five minutes before the 10:00 P.M. premiere of the pilot episode, Mom came downstairs and announced that it was time for me to go to bed. There would be no arguing. The whole downstairs group waved at me and issued a reverent and relieved chorus of “Good night, Merry.”
Dad followed me up the stairs, kissed the top of my head, shoved me into the bathroom, and wished me a quick, “Good night,” before heading back down to the party.
In my room, Mom had untied my robe belt from the doorknob and was already sitting on the edge of my bed and fiddling with the alarm clock radio. She tuned it to a station that advertised playing “bedtime magic.” She said, “I’m going to leave the radio on in case things get too loud downstairs.”
I didn’t argue with her. I would just shut the radio off after she left. Instead, I breathed in her face.
“Yuck, what are you doing?”
“I just brushed my teeth. Smells good, right?”
“Yes, smells wonderful. Get in bed. Are you going to sleep in your clothes again?”
“Yeah, they’re comfy.” I was wearing a long-sleeved Wonder Woman T-shirt and blue sweatpants. I liked sleeping in my clothes in case I had to run out into the hallway at night.
I put my pocket notebook, my camera, and my glasses on top of my dresser, and I plugged in the power cord like Ken had shown me. The red light meant it was charging. I placed the camera where I could see it from my bed because I wanted to see when the light would turn to green.
I crawled over Mom’s lap and under the covers. She playfully smacked my butt.
“Mom!”
“Sorry. It was right there. Hey, did you put that blanket over your house today?”
“Yes,” I said, and ducked deeper into the covers. Earlier that afternoon, I’d positioned my camera on the bed and had filmed myself throwing an old, thin, blue baby blanket over the top of my house. It was just big enough to cover the windows in the front.
“We can take the house back downstairs tomorrow if you want.” She didn’t ask why I’d covered it with a blanket, and she didn’t say anything about who or how or why someone had put it back in my room.
“Okay.”
The overhead light was still on in my room. Mom brushed my bangs off my forehead, and had trouble holding my stare. She looked older with her puffy, bloodshot eyes. She gave me an unsure, sad smile. I thought about telling her that her teeth looked really yellow, that she was smoking way too much.
I turned over onto my side, away from her, and asked her to rub my back. She rushed through singing a quick song, her go-to song, about falling down an avalanche.
“Are you going back to Marjorie’s room or are you going downstairs to watch it?”
“I’m going to go downstairs, have a glass of wine, or four, and I’m going to watch it. I don’t want to, but I think I have to.”
“I want to watch it.”
“I know you do, honey. You’re being such a good girl with all of this. I love you and am so proud of you.” Mom’s voice was quiet, quieter than the radio.
“Is Marjorie going to watch it?”
“No. She’s not.”
“Does she want to?”
“She hasn’t asked.”
I was out of questions so I closed my eyes. Mom shut off the light, then stayed and rubbed my back for another minute. When I opened my eyes again she wasn’t there anymore and it was a little after one in the morning. I sat up, mad at myself for having missed it all. If nothing else, I�
�d wanted to try to hear the show, or hear them watching the show.
The charging indicator light on the camera was still red. I didn’t care. I got up and brought the camera and notebook back to bed with me, shutting off the radio on the way back. I left my glasses on the dresser. Things were fuzzier around the edges but I could see well enough without them.
I sent my ears out as far as I could but I didn’t hear anything happening downstairs. I turned on the camera’s LED light and pointed it at the notebook. I reviewed the day’s work and decided I could delete the following: my full-sprint tour of the house and backyard; the ten minutes of spy-camming who came in and out of the crew’s trailer; the eight minutes of long-distance footage of the Cox kids playing basketball in their driveway; my taping Jenn taping me, with her turning away from the camera first and giving me a raspberry; the footage of Marjorie’s closed door.
I put my notebook under my pillow. I popped out the camera’s flip screen, deleted some of the files, and played back the most recent footage of the crew party downstairs. I watched the conversation between Barry, Father Wanderly, and the jacket-and-tie man. The mic didn’t pick up what they’d said, but they clinked their plastic cups together and passed handshakes all around their little circle. Then I watched everyone saying Good night, Merry; their collective call crackling in the camera’s small speakers, their faces jumpy and blurry as I walked past them. I kept rewatching and I tried to pick out individual voices to hear who really meant their Good night.
I may have fallen asleep while watching the video, because what I remember next is the camera resting on my chest, the flip screen dark but the LED light still on, pointed at my feet. There was a scratching noise coming from my left, from the other side of the room. It wasn’t loud, but it was constant, rhythmic.
I sat up, hit record, and aimed the camera out across the room like it was a powerful weapon. Its white light diffused through the room along with the scratching noise, which grew louder. The closet door was shut, the blanket on the cardboard house still there, my piles of books and stuffed animals intact.
A Head Full of Ghosts Page 12