Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

by Charlie Jane Anders

  A few hours after the big presentation, I stumble into one of the 100 company chatrooms and notice a couple of the C–level execs talking about the upcoming workforce reduction—and then they notice that I’m lurking, and immediately bail and delete their own conversation. I look up from the screen, where the words “possible strategic layoffs” are fading to white, and see my ghost. She’s closer to me than ever—just peering over my cubicle wall—and I can hardly see through her at all.

  3. Family

  My mom and her new bride take me to brunch at a Moroccan diner, and I’m scared Mom is going to ask me to give her away. Cassie, my soon–to–be stepmom, is pale and skinny with random tufts of platinum hair coming out of her shaved head. Glam Tank Girl. Her skin is amazing, like she must just have microdermabrasion all over her entire body once a day or something. My ghost is sitting at the next table in a sundress, drinking a mimosa. My mom is telling me how she and Cassie are going to be married by a gay Buddhist who turns your sexual guilt into a stuffed animal as part of the ceremony.

  I grew up in a really strict religious household, in a plantation house whose dark wood foundations were being slowly devoured by termites. My mom was raised Presbyterian in Mexico City, and she married this WASPy charismatic preacher who is just a grabby pair of callused hands and a red face in my memories. Before he met my mom, I heard my dad might’ve done snake–handling, which I wish I’d gotten to see, because fuck yeah snakes. The one time I made the mistake of telling my dad I thought I saw a ghost, he and a few of his deacons prayed over me for a full twelve hours, not letting me sleep. One of the deacons had breath that smelled like sour milk and I started to lose my mind. My mom’s family might at least have accepted a ghost as normal and just told me to visit some graveyards, pay some respect.

  My parents were neo–Calvinists, which means they believed in predestination, kinda sorta, and the idea that your fate after death is sealed while you’re still alive. My mother used to tuck me in every night and tell me that she was afraid my soul was already damned. Now, Mom’s telling me that she and Cassie have written their own vows, and there’s a lot of stuff about giving yourself permission to love without expectations. My mom’s family is not coming to the wedding, except for Crazy Aunt Letitia, who was cut off before I was even born. My mom has kind of a butch haircut that makes her face look a lot squarer, and she’s wearing suspenders over a T–shirt. She looks really good. She looks younger than I feel. She keeps laughing, which is a sound I never even heard until a few years ago. Gloria, she tells me, I really want this day to be special for you as well as us, I want you to feel free.

  When I was a teenager, sneaking out after curfew, going to smoke in the woods with the other dead–end kids, my ghost egged me on. My parents locked me in, my ghost let me out. My parents yelled at me, my ghost stood in the corner, arms folded, and glared at them. Jesus has a plan for you, you need to surrender, my mother pleaded, while my ghost studied her hands. Back then, I didn’t even recognize myself in her—I just thought she was some random ghost, haunting this old South Carolina house. That place was a natural ghost habitat, with so many gloomy corners and moldy back rooms full of barbed rust.

  Cassie is saying she wants us to be friends, something she’s said before, and holding my mother’s hand across the table in front of me. She’s got movie–star blue eyes and she really seems to be crazy about Mom.

  They are waiting for me to say something. Something like, I feel super lucky that we have this second chance as a family. Something like, I’m so happy for the two of you. Those are things I absolutely do feel, though I can tell without looking that my ghost is annoyed by all this hippie–dippie nonsense. My ghost is not okay with this midlife reinvention on the part of the woman who spent so many years telling me I had no choices.

  I look at the fried eggs and hummus on my plate, breathe, and say the best thing I can think of: I’m glad you finally figured out your deal. Wish you could have found yourself sooner, but maybe you guys can have a new baby with a turkey baster and give it the perfect childhood, with Montessori and organic candy and no judgment, it’s never too late, amirite? When I look up, I see that my comments did not land the way I hoped—my mom looks crushed, actually weeping for fuck’s sake, and Cassie is comforting her. My ghost, though, has scooted her chair closer, and is practically part of our party.

  4. Therapy

  Dr. Jane can kind of tell from my gaze that my ghost is standing right behind her chair. She keeps twitching, as if her office furnishings will fly through the air any minute. She’s a frumpy fifty–something lady in a giant cat sweater, and I think I respond to her partly because she’s so unlike my mother. She smiles in a distant but nurturing way and asks me what the week brought me. Like the week is a hunting dog that drops rabbits at my feet, or something.

  I’m freaking out, I say. The toolkit broke.

  What broke the toolkit? she asks.

  Everything. Everything broke the toolkit. My ghost is 100 percent not ignorable any longer. My ghost is right up in my business. All of the coping mechanisms are kaput because the ghost jams them up. All that stuff about connecting with Dia de los Muertos and remembering that the dead are part of life, it didn’t work. You try telling jokes with your own ghost sitting right there with a dead grimace on her face. You try leading a meeting. You try having an honest–to–god processing conversation with your adorable boyfriend, who keeps trying to claim he’s a feminist because he’s letting you support him financially. Just try it.

  Your ghost only has the power you give it, says Dr. Jane. She doesn’t believe that any more than I do—she’s the one who had to invest in all new office furniture—but she probably thinks that’s a good therapist–y thing to say. Goddamn positive thinking. She’s the only one but me who’s ever seen my ghost in action and the only one I’ve told since I was a kid.

  You’re doing so well, Dr. Jane says. You’ve gotten a promotion at work. You’re in a position of authority over people. You’ve been getting better comedy bookings, at bigger venues. You’ve got a boyfriend whom you adore. You’ve been rebuilding your relationship with your mother. Just think how much better your life is than when you were first coming to see me.

  I don’t know, I say. I don’t know if any of that is true.

  That’s how it sounds to me, from the outside looking in. It sounds like you’re being a successful grown–up, which is pretty much never fun for anybody, says Dr. Jane. And your ghost? Your ghost was really useful when you were a teenager trying to break out of a bad situation, but now she’s just in your way.

  I glance up at my ghost, who is looking at my therapist’s hand puppets on the shelf, apparently not listening to any of this. I can never tell how much language she understands—like, does everything just sound garbled and weird to her? I’ve asked her yes–or–no questions, point blank, and she never nodded or shook her head or anything.

  I don’t feel like my ghost is helpful or unhelpful, I say. I feel like she’s waiting. I feel like, every time I fail at something, she gets stronger. Every setback, I see her more clearly. Like, she’s getting power from my screw–ups. Or like I’m getting closer to turning into her.

  Maybe—and here, Dr. Jane looks nervous, because she’s afraid the ghost will start trashing her office again—maybe it’s partly just in your mind. Maybe you just think the ghost is getting closer and more solid. I can’t see what you see, so I can’t tell for myself.

  I don’t know. I have a strong sense that my ghost is feeding off my self–destruction. I need a new toolkit.

  There’s no new toolkit. Dr. Jane scrunches her big brow. There’s just the coping mechanisms I already taught you. Don’t try to figure out what your ghost’s agenda is, or what your ghost wants. Try to figure out what you really want. What do you actually care about?

  Pffft. As if I could possibly know that.

  5. Arrowheads

  At the karaoke bar, I foolishly put myself down for a Shakira song—some people say
I look like Shakira, but nobody ever says I sound like her. And my ghost is at one of the spit–catching tables up front, nursing a margarita. Wearing a dress with a million ruffles.

  The screen with the lyrics might as well be Swahili writing, beamed into the void. Raj is up front dancing, cheering me on and clapping, but all I can see is the ghost’s face, which isn’t even looking at me at all. (She’s never looking at me whenever I look right at her, I realize for the first time.) She stares at Raj, like she remembers loving him, way back when. Sadness, resignation, on her face. Like she remembers this time, when her life was almost good.

  I topple forward off the stage and fall on my knees on the grungy floor, at my ghost’s feet. I can’t breathe, much less sing. The crowd is still not sure if I’m doing a dramatic dance move or having a medical situation. I can’t even hear the music with my ears pounding. Raj comes to me and asks if I’m okay, and I say, Like you care. The song is over. I go home.

  My ghost stands between me and the whiteboard in a meeting at work. I’m sitting and watching Marcia talk about the drop–dead deadline for the Remixr launch, but I can’t even read the words she’s pointing to. My ghost keeps shaking her head in syncopation with Marcia’s droning. Today my ghost is wearing a bikini, revealing a tattoo on her stomach that I cannot read at any cost to my eyesight.

  I hate her so much. She’s going to fuck up everything for me, one way or the other. She’s fucking smug, is what she is. She’s already lived all this shit and she’s over it, and she won’t let me just live it for myself.

  Marcia is asking me a question. I stare past my ghost, and say something about security audits that I think is probably relevant to what she was talking about the last time I paid attention. Security is for version 2.0, Marcia says. We need to launch this thing.

  Raj and I are at the mall, shopping for a wedding present for Mom, and we’re on the escalator behind three kids who are reading an internet tutorial on how to shoplift. Raj is excited: This mall has three different shops for just socks, socks are the best! Did you know that in the 1970s nobody wore socks? It caused this thing called stagflation, what would happen if you actually blew up a stag party? Raj runs off the escalator, and nearly gets away from me. My ghost is right there at my elbow, though.

  My ghost sits near my bed at night, watching Raj sleep. My ghost watches Raj perform at the comedy showcase—his big break!—and laughs without making a sound. When I sit in the toilet stall, eavesdropping as Marcia and Sandra from Accounting wash their hands and whisper about the upcoming Rationalization, my ghost is out there next to them, also washing her hands in ghost water.

  It’s like arrowheads are embedded in my back, on either side of my neck, so that even raising my head or lifting my arms causes excruciating pain. I chewed through too many mouthguards, until I gave up on guarding my mouth. I feel like a bomb that’s lost its detonator, like I will just go critical forever, without ever getting to explode.

  At dinner, my ghost sits in Raj’s lap as he tries to talk to me about our relationship.

  6. Wedding

  Hey, Raj says. I know this is a weird thing for you. Your mom, turning into a lesbian cougar. I wanna tell you that I’m here, and I get it, and I’m on your team.

  Raj is touching my hand, leaning over, talking in my ear. We’re right up front at the wedding, surrounded by young queer people in incredible fashions. I always thought a tux was a tux, but it turns out that tuxedos have personalities. The sound of Raj’s voice is making me feel grounded, like I have a core after all. And what he’s saying makes a certain amount of sense. This is a weird thing for me, after so many years of defining myself in opposition to my parents. It’s like I don’t know who I am.

  I don’t even see my ghost anywhere. I don’t, like, scan the entire room looking for her—I just take the win. Maybe she’s hanging back and letting me have this day to myself. Or maybe, I’ve been working on having a more positive attitude, and that makes it harder for her to intrude her ass in there. I try to set up a virtuous circle, where I feel more centered, which means I don’t see the ghost, and that in turn helps me be even more centered. It could work, right?

  I ought to recognize how cool this is, I tell Raj. All of this. Getting to be true to yourself, and make your own family, and throw the stupid rules out the window. I don’t want to wait until I’m my mom’s age before I let myself open up my heart.

  Raj squeezes my thumb like he gets it, and he feels that way too, and this feels like the start of a whole conversation that we’ll have to have later.

  But then the ceremony starts, and everyone is whooping with joy and the officiant, who has a U–shaped beard and no mustache or hair, pronounces my mom and Cassie wife and wife. My mother looks like some whole other person, unrecognizable even as the butch dyke I had just started getting used to. She’s wearing makeup, and a puffy white dress with a black bow on the front that looks like a bow tie. My mom holds Cassie with all her considerable arm strength, and then she beckons me to get in there. My mother poses, sandwiched between two women in their mid–twenties, and Mom looks more alive than I can remember. She whispers in my ear that I’m beautiful and she’s so proud of me, which feels like something I ought to be telling her instead.

  The Veterans Hall is a celebration of walnut, from the recessed–box pattern on the ceiling to the long, tall panels on the walls. Even the plaque about those who gave their lives appears to be walnut. I concentrate on dodging the bouquet, but then Raj catches it. He giggles and we make out, right in front of everyone. More cheers.

  I spot my ghost at last, but she’s just another face in the crowd, over by the hors d’oeuvres table.

  The bouquet has one dead bud in it. In among the posies, morning glories, pink roses and the obligatory babies’ breath, there’s this little gnarled fist, clutched around a gray mouth that never opened. Blighted. The inward–facing petals look like an overcooked crepe. I stare into its dark heart, and then Raj is talking in my ear about taking a trip, just the two of us, to Big Sur, California, where every five yards there’s a rock that Henry Miller had kinky sex on top of. Yeah, I say, let’s be Henry Miller sex tourists. We laugh and kiss, and all the young lesbians are cheering my mom, whom they all love like a den mother.

  I’m dancing with Raj to the zydeco band. He’s busting out these ridiculous knee–bending moves and he eggs me on to dance as funny as him. I dance even worse, all neck and ankles. People are cheering. A young genderqueer person shoots me a thumbs–up and my mom waves from the cake stand. Cassie has her arm around my mom’s waist and the love is radiating outward from them, suffusing the entire room. I feel warm and exhausted and inexhaustible.

  And then my ghost is right there, dancing right next to us. She doesn’t dance, exactly—more like sway, so her bony wrists wave back and forth. She smiles at Raj, in a nostalgic way. These good times were good, her smile says, and then, well, you know. We all died.

  I stop dancing and Raj is so startled he nearly elbows me in the face. I can’t even remember why I was happy a moment ago, and I can’t imagine why I would ever feel happy again. The ghost is so close I can see the pearly embroidery on her white dress.

  Someone comes with a tray of champagne glasses, and Raj and I take them because there’s going to be a big toast or something. My ghost has a flute of champagne in her hand too, and she’s actually crying—her ghost tears land on her cheeks like the dew that catches the last of the moonlight. She’s just watching my mother and Cassie, and I have this moment of How dare you? That is not her mother, it’s mine, and this is my life, and I want it back. I want to care about things, without my ghost always throwing shade. My too–tight scalloped blue dress constricts my breathing. I glare at my ghost, but she’s staring at my mother.

  So maybe it’s time I took something of hers.

  I reach out and seize the glass of champagne from her loose fingers. It’s made of some kind of ghost material, ecto–whatever, but the stem is solid in my hand. I raise it to my face
and toss it back. It tastes like. . . bitterness, I guess. It tastes a bit like pukey backwash, stomach acid, but also a bit like Cold Duck, that weird “sparkling wine” the grocery store used to sell for $2 a bottle. It has an aftertaste of fermented dirt, bubbly regret.

  Before I even swallow, it hits me: Way past drunkenness, something like a head rush mixed with hypoglycemia and extreme sleep deprivation. Everything looks as though I’m seeing it from a great vast distance, through a pinhole, and maybe that’s what ghost vision looks like. The ghost glass is plucked from my hand before I can let it fall on the floor. I can just barely see my ghost looking around in a mad panic, like the worst possible thing has just happened.

  Raj rushes over to me as I sway–crash to the walnut floor. I feel like I’m having an aneurmotherfuckingysm. I feel my legs twitching, my hands flailing. Raj is holding my head in a hand and his fingertips are so gentle and my head at least is supported is overloaded with ghost juice is supported, my ghost vanishes like she can’t afford to get caught here with me. The music stops, to be replaced by the crowd freaking out, I’m drunk in a way I’ve never known was even possible.

  As I finally zero out, I feel the cold invade my veins, my bones, my lungs. Petrified, and then dead to the world.

  7. Drunk

  A ghost wedding is a funeral, only with dancing, and a cake instead of a casket. What do you give the newlyweds at a ghost wedding? Bone china. Ghost vows are much the same as the regular kind, except you vow to stay together for as long as death holds you. I can still just barely glimpse the wedding party of the living (Raj and my mother and Cassie, all freaking) but now I’m among the dead wedding guests. These people are skeletons, except as I move around them, their translucent skin comes into focus and they have faces made of gray mist. The whole dead wedding party is swaying and passing around plates of wormy moldy cake, clinking glasses like the one I chugged from. What do you write on the rear bumper of the honeymoon car at a ghost wedding? Just Buried. The band is still playing zydeco, but the beats keep slowing down and speeding up, and the accordion wheezes with rheumatism. There is a buffet full of eyeballs and tongues, still looking around and trying to talk inside their metal trays over cold candles. What kind of wedding crashers go to a ghost wedding? Dig–up artists. I keep laughing, only I am not per se breathing and every “hee” is slowed way down to the slowest pace of the zydeco drummer and I spin my whole body to keep pace with the spinning of the room, happen if I spin fast enough the room will stand still. I want to vomit but cannot.