Ghostly

by Audrey Niffenegger

  ‘His face flushed. He had full cheeks; he looked down at his tie; I guessed I’d offended him. To apologise, I added, “You’ll have girlfriends here, and I’ll be busy with coursework and people I meet in Syracuse.” He flushed deeper. A drink later, I asked if he’d come up to my place; I loved his humor, and thought it would be nice to have one last roll with him. It’d be quick, I figured, and I could pack once he’d left. When we reached my tiny fourth-floor studio and started making out on my moldy old futon, he asked, out of nowhere, if I’d ever slept with other black men; I said I had; we were already undressed; he said, half comic, half angry, “You like black cock?” I hesitated. To me, the question seemed odd, since it was evident that I did. Who, I wondered, wouldn’t like such a good thing?’

  The woman looked around the table.

  The rain was still beating against the tin roof. A painter got up and poured wine. The journalist took a bite of chocolate cake. He said, ‘This relates to the ghost story?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  He waved his arm. ‘Then go on.’

  ‘In retrospect,’ the woman said, ‘I should have said something sensitive, like, “I like your black cock,” or “I like you,” but I just nodded. He said, “Say it,” and so I said, “I like black cock,” and he proceeded to love me so vehemently that afterward I fell asleep without setting my alarm or peeing, as all women must after sex.

  ‘When I woke, it was nine and my parents were waiting; my father was irate. He asked why I wasn’t ready, and I told him I’d overslept; he swore and hit the trailer. My mother made him sit in the car with her while my pale, skinny sister helped me pack and carry boxes down the stairs. On the road, my father sped. The day was sunny, and, once we were out of the city, hay fields stretched beyond the highway. It looked as if we might still beat the weekend traffic. My father even turned on his radio station that played the Beach Boys, and hummed. My mother watched pine trees pass by, read her study-group Bible, and chewed chocolate truffles; my sister read a fantasy novel.

  ‘Eventually, my mother touched my father’s thigh. She murmured, “We’ll get home tonight, don’t worry.”

  ‘Just then, I felt a horrible pain in my crotch. Or, more precisely, in my urinary tract. I knew why I had it. I also knew that my parents would know, and how angry they’d be. As subtly as possible, I stuffed my fist in my crotch. I held my book in my lap. But the pain got worse. After an hour, I tapped my mother’s shoulder, and whispered that I needed a clinic. I begged her not to say why.

  ‘She stared at me; her eyes narrowed.

  ‘My father asked what was wrong; my mother announced that I had a U.T.I. My father cursed and said we couldn’t stop, or we’d never make Syracuse in time. My sister, who was thirteen, asked what a U.T.I. was.

  ‘My mother, her lips curled in disgust, informed her that a U.T.I. was a disease that married women got; my sister remarked that I wasn’t married; no one replied.

  ‘In the next town we found a clinic, but there was a line; getting medicine took three hours. When I returned to the car, no one spoke. We pulled onto the highway, and hit traffic. It was dusk when the hills of Syracuse came into view.

  ‘On the street that was to be mine, rusted filing cabinets sat in overgrown yards. My address was a tall, narrow Victorian with a second-level porch that tilted downward as if it might fall off; the house was deep, Pepto-Bismol pink.

  ‘The front door was locked. But I spied a rickety wooden staircase in back, so I walked up the driveway and climbed it; the second-story back door opened to a dusty kitchen. Dirty mops and old buckets littered the floor. In the bathroom, nails and asbestos poked through the exposed attic roof beams. A claw-footed tub stood mid-room; its bottom was stained a radiant orange-green. The toilet sat below a rusty old-fashioned standing tank that almost reached the ceiling.

  ‘On my return to the car, I passed two black boys tossing a football in my neighbor’s driveway and, seated in a lawn chair nearby, a middle-aged man with an unusual look. He had a normal, if markedly masculine, body: dark chest hair burst out of the top of his blue-checkered button-down shirt. What was unusual was his large egg-shaped head and a forehead that encompassed nearly half his oddly appealing face. He had almond-shaped brown eyes, olive skin, wide cheeks, and fierce eyebrows. He frowned slightly as he wrote in the book—a thick manuscript—in his lap. As I passed him, he looked up. His hand raised in a small wave. I said hello, without intending to chat, but once I’d spoken the man greeted me and said, “So you’re the new girl.”

  ‘I nodded.

  ‘His long legs stretched in font of the old chair. His khaki pants were wrinkled, his leather shoes scuffed. He gestured toward the car.

  ‘ “Them, too?”

  ‘I explained that my family was helping me move, and leaving that night.

  ‘ “So it’s just you,” he said. “Good.”

  ‘When I asked him whether he lived in the adjacent house, he shrugged and gestured toward the kids.

  ‘ “Tom takes people in,” he said.

  ‘I decided that meant he was homeless.

  ‘I’d just said, “Nice to meet you,” and started moving toward my parents’ wagon when he pointed at my house and said, lightly, “You know, that house is haunted.”

  ‘Once he said it, it made sense—I’m not one to believe in ghosts, and, as far as I knew, I had never seen one; but the apartment felt stuffy. If it was haunted, though, I didn’t care. What unsettled me was the man’s intimate demeanor and offerings about the house I hadn’t inhabited yet.

  ‘ “Oh, really?” I said.

  ‘ “Don’t worry.” His hand moved across the manuscript. “He can’t do anything to you unless you give him permission.”

  ‘What do you mean, “give him permission”?’ I asked.

  ‘The man shrugged. The evening breeze blew his curly dark hair. My father honked the car horn.

  ‘The man looked down at his papers with embarrassment. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Summon him with a Ouija board, ask him to tell you secrets, take his stuff. That’s true with any ghost. They can never affect you unless you address them and invite them to appear.” He smiled disarmingly.

  ‘I thanked him for the advice. He remained there, reading his manuscript, while my family and I carried boxes into the house. My parents seemed not to see him. At one point, a middle-aged black man opened the back door of the neighboring house, peered across the driveway, ignored the man, and told the kids to come inside. Only my little sister noticed the man. She looked at him once, jerked her head down—she had a tic—and asked who he was; I told her that he was a vagrant.

  ‘My sister said, “Weird neighborhood.”

  ‘My father reassembled my futon while my sister and I carried in boxes, and I was feeling pleased that my parents were helping me move in but curious why they weren’t hurrying home, when my father announced that we should get food. My mother said they weren’t staying: the apartment was disgusting, and I had only one bed; she wanted a hotel. My father replied, No way in hell was he spending money when he’d driven nine hundred miles to save me money; they could use my bed.

  ‘I knew they could afford a hotel, because my mother collected designer clothes and bought herself ruby and emerald bracelets on a regular basis. I felt humiliated that I had the U.T.I.; I wanted to be alone. Mostly, I did not want them to sleep in my house—for their presence in it to infect my new life in Syracuse, however absurd that sounds. I wanted them to leave. I almost offered to pay for a hotel. But I knew hew ungrateful my feelings were—undaughterly and unnatural. They’d done me a favor. Of course they could have my bed, I said.

  ‘We drove to get takeout Chinese, then brought it back and ate it straight from the cartons, in silence, while sitting on the living-room floor.

  ‘Eventually, I spoke. Perhaps I couldn’t take the silence.

  ‘I said casually, “The house has a ghost.”

  ‘My sister pushed a carton of greasy noodles toward the center of the
room.

  ‘My father put a piece of broccoli in his mouth, then a piece of long red beef, and chewed. He stared at me.

  ‘My mother gazed at the windowsills. On one were three dead flies. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said, “Except for the Holy Ghost, who lives with God and is part of him. Once we die on earth, we’re done here. After people die, they go to Heaven to be with God. Unless they go to”—she looked at me—“Hell.”

  ‘My father pulled my sister’s lo mein toward him, stabbed a chicken gristle-blob with his fork, and ate it.

  ‘ “This Chinese food is delicious!” he yelled. “I bet the ghost would like some! Rachel, what do you think?”

  ‘My sister stored at him. Our father was a duplicitous, lascivious, agnostic Yankee skinflint who could go from jovial to enraged in a second. He liked to joke.

  ‘I felt nervous and repeated the man’s superstition—the ghost couldn’t affect us unless we invited it to appear.

  ‘My father held out both hands palms up. “In that case,” he yelled, “I invite the ghost to have his way with whoever he finds in the house!” He lowered his voice. “I can speak generously because I’m pretty sure the ghost will choose one of my young attractive daughters.”

  ‘My mother wailed my father’s name. My sister looked at the floor.

  ‘ “Or my attractive wife,” he added.

  ‘He hummed “Runaround Sue.”

  ‘I arranged the futon for my parents, made a blanket-bed on the dining-room floor for my sister, and slept on the floor myself, using a sweatshirt as a pillow. I felt bad that my sister had come on this journey and learned what a U.T.I. was. Through the night, a breeze moved the bedroom door, which my parents had left ajar, back and forth, and the creaking woke me; several times I dreamed that a man, my father, left the bedroom and stood, half menacingly, half perplexedly, over my sister’s form. I thought, Please don’t let it take her; if it has to take anyone, let it take me. She hasn’t done anything; let it leave her alone. It seemed as if I’d just thought this when I woke. Everyone else was up.

  ‘While I slept, my mother had scrubbed and mopped the entire flat. It was “filthy,” she said, “disgusting.” Before they left, my father handed me two quarters, which he’d discovered in a bedroom closet, and a man’s ring, which he happened to find atop the old toilet tank. “Pretty grody up there,” he said.

  ‘The ring was large and had a blue-green stone shaped like an elephant, outlined in silver. Trunk and tail were tucked; the torso was an octagon. My mother said the stone was a Paraiba tourmaline, nice but occluded. A shame, she said; it weighed at least thirty carats. She showed me a dark blot in the elephant’s torso and said, “Flawed.” I dropped the ring onto the necklace I always wore, a simple chain with some charms—a rose quartz, a silver goat head—and forgot about it.

  * * *

  ‘I settled into Syracuse. Because of precipitation from the Great Lakes, snow arrived in September and stayed through May. I learned that its population declined in the seventies and eighties, when General Electric moved west and that, owing to industrial contamination, its lake, Onondaga, was among the most polluted in the world. Personally, I thrived: I started classes, ran in the local park, and read copious books, especially the absurd dead Russian writers.

  ‘One night, soon after moving into the house, I put on tight pants, a top that showed my midriff, and a thin leather jacket, and went to the neighborhood bar, Taps. Once there, I did something uncharacteristic: I picked out a man I normally wouldn’t have chosen.’

  The woman rose and put plates in the sink. ‘For some reason,’ she said, ‘I’m not attracted to men who are Christian or “white.” Perhaps it’s self-loathing.’

  The rain poured down.

  The fantasy writer sipped his wine. ‘I’ll take a piece of chocolate torte,’ he said. ‘But one without raspberries.’

  She flicked the raspberries off a slice and served it to him.

  ‘The bar was a former funeral parlor, long and dark, with no windows. But it had pool tables, cheap drinks, and free popcorn. It was owned by a Greek family who had lived in town a long time. Locals liked it, and graduate students went there to shoot pool and discuss literature. The man—I’ll call him Paul—was a year ahead of me, the program’s best writer. He already had a literary agent; his professors predicted that he’d be famous.

  ‘I heard this before we met, from other students; also that he was engaged.

  ‘I introduced myself to Paul. When he asked where I’d moved from, I said Manhattan. He appraised my outfit and said that I wouldn’t like Syracuse. When I asked why he said I was a “sophisticated city type.”

  ‘I told him I’d grown up in Maine, bought the jacket at an outlet.

  ‘ “But you wear jewels,” he said, and pointed to the ring on the chain around my neck.

  ‘I laughed and said it was flawed.

  ‘He plucked it from my shirt and mock-examined it, said he didn’t see any flaws.

  ‘When I looked at him, I was repulsed. I feel like a traitor, even now, saying this. Others found him handsome, but I was repulsed. He had silky blond hair, green eyes, a cherubic face, and rosy skin. Usually, I don’t feel comfortable around pink-skinned Christian men; they seem porcine, stupid, and swollen. I like tall, dark, big men; Paul was five feet eight and skinny. Yet I was drawn to him. He made me feel as if we shared a secret and he’d never judge me for anything. He’d boxed in college, but was so gentle, I’d later learn, that when he found a spider in a house he carried it outside. His mother had multiple sclerosis and was in love with him. She tied pink ribbons around her slender waist whenever he visited, and repeatedly told him that he was the kind of boy she wished she’d met at his age. He wrote by hand, in cursive sentences that wound on for pages, riffs that “rolled like music,” our teachers said, and loved gerunds. His fiancée had lupus and lived in Virginia, where he was from, because of her job.

  ‘That night, we played pool. Afterward, I invited him to my flat to play chess.’

  The woman paused.

  ‘I have morals. But they’re my own. If I make a promise, I keep it. If someone else breaks promises, that’s their business.

  ‘What I regret is that I spent six years with a man I wasn’t physically attracted to. I’m not sure why, or why’—the woman shrugged—‘he liked me. It was cold in Syracuse. The program was small. He was smart and kind. Even after smoking twelve joints, he told charming anecdotes. After we’d dated awhile, he called off his engagement.

  ‘I went to lengths to please him. He liked my apartment, but said my living room needed a couch; I got a tutoring job and bought a couch. He said my living room needed a TV; I bought a twenty-five-inch tube with a built-in VHS player. At yard sales, I scored coffee tables and lamps. Soon Paul was spending most of his time at my apartment. I’d always preferred solitude, but his presence made me happy. And he taught me how to write. In our first year together, he produced stories our teachers called masterpieces, and under his tutelage my writing improved so much that I was allowed to switch to the fiction track. We discussed our writing and our childhoods, dreams, and plans. I felt that I could be myself around him. He loved my cooking—he didn’t know that I had bought a tin of MSG at Price Chopper, and stirred tablespoons into my curries before I served them.

  ‘One night toward the end of my first year at Syracuse, Paul stayed home to work, and I wrote until late. I felt so content—in my work and life—that I slept with the lights off.

  ‘Usually, I leave the lights on when I sleep. It’s ridiculous, but I’m afraid of the dark, if I’m alone.

  ‘That night, I turned them off. I fell asleep with the bedroom door ajar. At 3 A.M., I woke, The room was dark. But I could see the outline of my bureau, and, in the light from the window, the outline of the bedroom door. Then the doorknob moved.

  ‘Nothing moved outside the door. But its knob turned back and forth, I could see the knob turning. It jerked all the way left, clicked, then turne
d right.

  ‘I was terrified. I lay rigid, watching the knob turn for several minutes, until it stopped. Then I flicked the lights on and called Paul. Almost every night after that, he stayed at my house. When he didn’t, I left the lights on.

  ‘Weeks later, a student who’d lived in the apartment before me told Paul why he’d left. He’d been lying in bed late at night, in the room now my bedroom, and the knob of the door—which he’d closed fully—had turned suddenly, and continued to twist. The student, a self-proclaimed goatfucker from Nevada, leaped out of bed, took his nunchakus out of his underwear drawer, brandished it, and yelled, “Whaddya want, Motherfucker?”

  ‘O.K., I thought A ghost who turns doorknobs. So what? I wasn’t thrilled to live in a haunted apartment. But it was big and cheap, and I’d had a good time there so far.

  * * *

  ‘One odd thing happened my second year in the program. I was at Taps, chatting with the owner’s son, the bartender—a Greek tough, mid-thirties, gold chains, hairy chest—when he pointed to the ring on my necklace and asked where I’d got it.

  ‘When I explained, the bartender asked where I lived. Then he asked to see the ring, and examined it. A guy had died in my apartment, he said. The ring was his.

  ‘The bartender had been a kid when the guy died, he said. He, the bartender, had hung out at the bar a lot, done his homework there, helped his dad, and he’d liked the ring because it was an elephant, and the guy, a regular, had let him play with it. The guy was no one special, the bartender said. He’d come from the Midwest to help with construction at the power plant. The guy was a self-taught type: he welded, built furniture, made the ring himself. Sat at the bar every night, drinking seltzer and reading physics textbooks. The guy died, the bartender said, because there was an accident at the plant. Some workers were exposed to too much radiation. One thing that made the guy weird, the bartender said: he’d refused treatment. The “treatment” was a crock—the guys who accepted it all died anyway, but in the hospital. This guy died in his apartment, while taking a bath.