Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  “Now, you get everything into those bags. I don’t want none of them durn plastic ones.”

  To the Vandegrifts she offered one more shred of news, one fraught with portent, but making it sound nonchalant: “Oh—Devin’s coming home, by the way.”

  “He is? When?”

  “Real soon, we hope.”

  She stole a glance and saw Dobbs’s smile now troubled, as was his mother’s face. “Good,” he said. “We can’t wait to see him again.”

  “He said to tell y’all ‘hey.’”

  What a liar. Her brother had never been able to face his friend, perhaps the coldest part of the post-accident Devin storm of grief and hateful behavior. The world had been cruel to him, she supposed, so he started giving back—but with much emotional collateral damage. A car wreck wasn’t no excuse for how he’d treated Dobbs.

  “I need to witness to him. He’s got to let me, finally—please help me do that.”

  “Praise the Lord.” Miriam whispered. “Fifteen years.”

  “Well.” Imagining Devin not taking such a conversation too well. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Once I do? Everything’s gonna be made right again. With him—and with me, too.”

  She couldn’t possibly imagine what he meant—would Devin’s reappearance heal the lame? Doubtful.

  “I’ll make sure you’re first on his list.”

  “That’s right. We’re gonna get him fixed up. Sure as I’m sitting here.”

  Chelsea put the last box of frozen, processed meat products onto the conveyor belt. “Devin’s right hardheaded, as I’m sure y’all remember. But I’m hoping this time’ll be different.”

  “This time will be with God’s help.”

  “Yeah.”

  Fat chance. God hadn’t helped her do anything yet. The job, too vast, too complicated. Near as she could figure.

  God? He seemed weak and cruel, or perhaps worse, indifferent.

  A cold chill rippled through her. Bad thoughts again. Thoughts of Devin’s return gave her a cramp, hard and sharp, down in her pelvis. She was sure these pains were a normal part of pregnancy. On the way out of the automatic doors, she waved to the Vandegrifts while trying not to double over from the pain.

  All this stress over Devin. And the baby. That’s all these aches amounted to—worries. She’d quit worrying. Soon.

  Maybe Billy would take away her worries. Who knew what he future held? A girl could daydream.

  Eight

  Devin

  The drunk’s mind, racing and picturing the scene awaiting him in San Antonio.

  Billy had always been such a kind soul. Even now, with his old friend knowing what a hopeless waste of drunken flesh Devin had become, still being that guy.

  Devin, touched; for a brief moment imagining moving back home and trying to live again, hanging out together like best friends, scoping out the chicks, tossing back a few beers on Friday nights, growing old and fat and wealthy like two proper American gentlemen.

  Laughing with wistfulness, warmth; remembering the good times.

  The fantasy, turning dark: Sunday dinners with his mother and Creed and Dusty and their little monster of a child, or children, should his sister and her husband make the stupid mistake of reproducing themselves over and over again; his guts, twisting as he allowed himself to think about running into Libby and Dobbs: together, married, a house and jobs and their own children; a sweaty Dobbs lying on top of Libby, thrusting, obscene, moaning.

  Graven images.

  Devin, blotting out these visions by chugging the juice hot of the bottle, right in the middle of the room naked, stupid-crying and drunk-sick. Check.

  Such melodrama. How bad could going home be?

  Devin, rewinding the hazy playback to consider the possibilities: The last time seeing Creedence, the morning after his father’s funeral. Two years ago—or three? Ballpark was the best Devin could do on the passage of time.

  Closing his eyes, seeing his sister sitting on the huge deck at the back of their parents’ house: Creedence, sorting through a plastic grocery sack of old family photographs never properly scrapbooked: Polaroids and Kodachromes of trips to Myrtle Beach or Disney, or the time the family drove all the way to Abilene, Texas to visit Dad’s dying great-grandmother, a hundred years young.

  The thought of being forced to exist so long, waiting and hoping for the blessed end to come and wondering each day when when when, made the teenage Devin uneasy and aghast.

  Was he pushing forty, now?

  What would that make Libby?

  Same age, dipshit. You were the same age.

  Creedence, calm and quiet that damp October morning; unreality settled over the scene. Methodical, she sat going through the photos and placing them into organized stacks on the round patio table wiped dry of the dew. She wore an old gown and robe, new, fluffy-red bedroom shoes on her feet, long legs crossed, one slipper dangling and exposing a narrow pink heel.

  Devin, thinking how she’d always hated her slender feet, how when barefoot she’d scrunch her long toes into little fists, try to hide her deformities. Creedence, always thinking the rest of herself ugly too, the reality simply not jibing; Devin, always trying to reinforce the concept of her frecklefaced pulchritude, but failing: Rucker women tended toward the stubborn, and his reassurances had never taken, not that he knew. Maybe she finally thought she was pretty, now. He’d ask.

  The bag of photos, the morning dew, her white, freckled legs covered in goose flesh from the breeze that swept in through the long back yard dotted with hardwoods and pines amidst other gardening and landscaping projects, a sloping, manicured expanse resplendent with greenery, clusters of azaleas arranged around dogwoods and Japanese maples and older oak trees, bright red mulch from the Home Depot, a smattering of forest pansy redbuds scattered along the tree line where the woods behind the house began to get thick, bushes which in April bloomed brilliant with rich purple, the flora bursting with vibrant color like a scene out of a Southern Living magazine cover.

  Devin, head pounding with each beat of his diseased heart, a hangover for the ages, watched from inside the sliding glass doors: my sister, how cold she looks. Planning, then, to get her a sweater for Christmas, or her next birthday. Should he live that long.

  Sliding open the heavy door, shivering, hacking up thick, bitter spit, he shuffled out and stood behind her.

  Without turning to face him: “Everybody in these damn pictures—they’re either dead, or else someone I loved a long time ago, but now can’t stand no more.” She cut her eyes back at him, finally.

  Devin, swaying back and forth in stained white t-shirt and faded Felix the Cat boxers, underwear his mother’d sent for Christmas some holiday long in the past, the cartoon animal on his thigh sporting an insouciant, knowing wink and a word bubble—Life is Just a Bag of Tricks!

  “I don’t know who half these durn people are, even if I ever did before.”

  “I’m sure they feel the same way about you. After yesterday.”

  Drunk as a coot before his father’s funeral had even begun, of course. Causing some scene. Devin, his back hurting, recalled being pulled off his mother at the gravesite by strong arms. Maybe old Uncle Hill Hampton. Hot breath hollering in his ear to quit showing his ass. A funeral fight scene like out of a movie.

  “So you can’t stand me no more? That what I’m hearing?”

  “Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.” Strained, an aggrieved stage whisper. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Sincere: “Which part you mean?”

  “You tried to strangle our Mama, damn you.”

  Trying to light a smoke and dropping his lighter, he explained best he could: “Guess it all got to me finally, I reckon. What you want a motherfucker to say?”

  “Like our mother had anything to do with the things that’ve happened to you. That you’ve pulled. You haven’t changed in twenty years. Getting drunk and hollering at her—y’all at each other. You think I didn’t see all th
at go on?”

  Fury, rising but forestalled; throat clenching shut at his sister’s truth. His mother, for all her sins, not having much of anything to do with what’d happened to Devin. Not the substantive tragedies, anyway, like losing Libby to Dobbs.

  Ah, but Creedence, uninitiated, not realizing how Mama’s sins were concealed like esoteric truths are kept from the profane masses. More than Eileen’s daughter would ever find out, at least if Devin had any say in the matter. And he did. Keeper of the key to the vault. A sad duty.

  “You even care about any of us any more? Or yourself, for that matter?”

  “You, I do. Not so much for myself.”

  “You act like you’re the only one that’s ever had to suffer,” clenching her teeth and dumping stacks of photos back into the plastic sacks.

  “I’ve seen some shit you ain’t.”

  “That don’t make you special. People get hurt and killed every day.”

  A flash of light, a booming echo—phantoms, but real. “Nobody knows what I been through. Nobody but Prudy.”

  “Why do you hate her?”

  “I don’t hate my cat.”

  “Our mother.”

  He couldn’t tell her the truth. “You talk to Daddy before he kicked?”

  “Talked to him every day, you son of a bitch.”

  “You think she gave him what he needed?”

  “Daddy?”

  “Who else?”

  “They wouldn’t’ve stayed together so long otherwise.”

  “And if I hold a different view, for the sake of propriety,” a word he could barely pronounce through the tremors he felt all the way into his tongue, “I’d as soon keep it to myself. For everyone’s sake.”

  “I think under the circumstances, that’d be best.”

  “Another time.”

  Leaving his sister and mother that night with their grief, he not seen them since, neither to say ‘boo’ at Halloween nor ‘Hallelujah!’ at Christmastime.

  But now? Now, Creedence pregnant; their mother sick, or some such bullshit; and so, Devin, having to go home. A clusterfuck, this.

  It would be fine. He could drive two thousand miles on beer and the occasional nip on a flask. He would get through fine; get himself settled in South-Cack in time to have a good long binge.

  Sounded like heaven; like worthy aspiration.

  Leaving, now, for good. But he couldn’t depart Denver yet.

  Driving around, thinking about Millie. She had been good to him, back when he needed a friend. Needing to say a proper forever-goodbye.

  Intending to let her know he’d never come back this way, no sir. Not now; not ever.

  She’ll be relieved to hear it.

  A call made, surprising agreement, and a half hour later, Devin, sitting across from Millicent Haverford at the diner they’d once frequented for lunch, back in the days when they worked at the Community Thrift store where they met. A bizarre interlude, those days, both the romance and the steady job. He had been drinking way way way too little at the time, not with holding down a regular gig.

  The diner: red vinyl stools, polished chrome, a checkerboard floor, milkshakes so thick a spoon would stand on its own, a jukebox stocked with cheesy 70s pop hits. ‘Already Gone’, as The Eagles now reminded him. Yep-yep.

  And yet, retaining a shred of errant decency buried somewhere in his mania, enough to bid him to tell Millie goodbye in person. Well, the real deal, honest-to-god, goodbye-goodbye, anyway. The first iteration had been thoroughly covered when they broke up, and in unpleasant detail.

  Devin, sliding into the booth, hoped his breath t’weren’t too fiery and sour; he’d needed multiple bracers.

  “It lives.” She always could be a smart-ass. “It moves and breathes.”

  “Babygirl,” an old term of endearment. “Let’s sit a spell and get caught up.”

  Millie: healthy, radiant, thin, had stayed sober. That much clear. “First: don’t call me that.”

  A gravelly, wasted croak. “Looks like you might’ve lost some weight.”

  Millie regarded him with cool suspicion, but a measured softness dwelling in her eyes. A tall, midwestern farm girl with strong shoulders, like a swimmer, she’d slimmed down by twenty pounds since they were together. But of course, Millie, sober for several years, now. “Taking all that excess sugar out of the diet’s bound to change anyone’s body into a beanpole.”

  “See, that’s never been a problem for me. I don’t need to change to lose weight. Dang if that ain’t the truth.”

  “Anyone with a sincere wish to change, changes. I’ve seen it happen with you.”

  Ignoring the remark. “Dry wasn’t sober.”

  “It was a start.”

  “I reckon I can’t smoke in here, huh?”

  Sarcastic. “No one has smoked in restaurants for twenty years. Thank god.”

  Devin’s rage, unbridled and sudden, burbled up like blackest pitch: “Bastards. Laws and rules, and more laws on top, and I’ll be damned if a goddurn man can’t take a shit no more without some pencil neck peeking over his shoulder.”

  Millie ain’t got time for this mess. “So to what do I owe this alleged pleasure?”

  Devin, holding her gaze for the first time since he’d sat down, dropped the rage-monkey bit. Felt the muscles in his face relax. His hands, shaking hard, though. He hid them.

  “Want to get right down to it, do ya?”

  “Well?”

  “No big whoop. I just might not be back this way for a while—for good, like—and I figured, the way we finished up. It wasn’t the most graceful scene.”

  Her screwed-down frown broke. Millie, snorting and laughing. “Understatement king enters conversation.”

  “But I thought about a do-over on the fare-thee-well, if you’d have it.”

  “What, like a spite-fuck? You got a better chance of hitting the Powerball, mister.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind.”

  Her eyes, gray and flaring, changed color depending on the light and time of day. “So—you remember those awful things you said?”

  Devin’s turn to scoff; Ruck’s time to lie. “‘Remember’ is a strong word for a sot like me. But I can imagine well enough.”

  “No, you can’t—it was worse.”

  Devin, knowing this truth. Guilt and shame imploded inside his drunk-sick gut; twin towers of steel and concrete collapsing into their own footprints at the speed of gravity, billowing clouds of disgust flooded the steep canyons of his quivering sick heart.

  “I was just trying to get rid of you. For you own good.” Millie didn’t deserve being saddled with a short-timer like Devin, he explained, for whom recovery was impossible outside of some sort of nebulous retribution to be had back home, where he planned now to go; a vague idea in his mind of killing someone and getting justice. The details would gel after he got on the road, got a few beers in him. He kept that part to himself.

  Devin, telling her to forget the past; nor to invite a future that included any further such scenes or sentiments as those he’d employed to scare her off. “I’d take what a drunk like me has to say with a grain of salt the size of a cantaloupe. You’re a sweet soul who done better by me than I deserved.”

  “That’s nice to hear.” She looked down. “But I’ll never trust you again. How could I?”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I can’t do this.” Her anger took a turn for the melancholy. “I’ve never been more wrong about anything. Gave you my whole heart. Told you my secrets.”

  “A Wisconsin girl and a Dixie chicken like me? Man, that wa’n’t gonna work no matter how hard we tried.”

  Millie’s turn for a mini-meltdown. Hot-blooded and aggrieved. Her eyes shone like steel. “You know what’s so pathetic about all this? Back when we were dry together, I’d have bet my life on the fact you were better. That I had helped you to pull out of whatever hell it was you were trapped inside. I wanted to bet my life on it. But Ruck, damn it—you repaid me by teari
ng my heart out and shitting all over it.”

  “Please don’t remind me.”

  “Forgiveness is a thing; I get it. But, boy,” her voice finally breaking, “you are a project. That’s all I can say.” She sat back and put a hand over her eyes, massaged her temples with thumb and forefinger. “A project.”

  “Suckers get born every minute, or so’s I heard.”

  “Tell me one thing to let me off the hook. So I’ll stop wondering.”

  “Off the hook? Now, that’s a deal. Shoot.”

  “What happened in South Carolina? When you went home that time? And came back a wreck all over again?”

  Black ice inside; dark boiling spots, blotting out her face. “I told you—my Daddy had died.”

  “And, what else?”

  Now, Devin needed a drink; he wa’n’t gonna put up with this mess. “If I didn’t let you in on it when we were fucking, I certainly ain’t gonna tell you now.”

  That seemed to hurt. Millie, flustered, dropped money on the table for the coffee she hadn’t drunk. “We’re done, now,” a hot, hissy exhalation of sad syllables. “Done for reals.”

  The sky leaden outside, a spring snow shower in the making; as she got into her Accord to leave, Devin’s worm turned and found his alkie-ass rushing over to grab Millie, hold onto her like a drowning man clutching a Styrofoam cooler of rock-salt cold tallboys, a life preserver in a raging sea of horrid lucidity.

  But, too late. Cursing himself. Millie—sweet to him. And, loving her back; loving her more than anyone since Libby.

  Until he made himself stop.

  Again: inevitable he’d end up hurting her. You couldn’t make them see it, though. You had to show it to them by manifesting the coming shitstorm in the moment, in the now. Make them want to run.

  Coughing and trying not to puke, Devin’s facade crumbled. Hot tears fell from behind the aviators.

  She glanced over, saw him weeping; put the car back into park before lowering the window.

  “And now, the tears.”

  “I’m weak, angel. There ain’t nothing you, nor anyone else, could’ve done to help me.”