Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  “If this university adventure is what you’ve got it in your bonnet to try, darling? Then you go on and move over to that damn city, and that damn university with all those people you don’t know—blacks and Mexicans and Chinese, weirdos and perverts and drugheads and drunks? And, since I guess that’s what your stubborn self has made up its hard-headed little mind to do, that’s what you’ll do.”

  Creedence, fake-grinning and bugeyed with irritation. “Which is the case. Yes.”

  “But here’s the problem. I think it’s so late now to be worrying with going to college.”

  “Late how?”

  Hushed, humiliated. “You’re over thirty years-old now, darling. Women with husbands don’t go to college at thirty. They raise families.”

  Devin snorted. “Somewhere I hear the Leave it to Beaver theme, Mama. Mercy.”

  “I tried that. Remember?” Creedence suffered a quivering chin. “I tried it. And fucked it up big-time.”

  “Colette—watch your mouth at this table.”

  “Yeah, you little motherfucker.”

  Devil-eyes at the son. He could but wink back.

  Devin, noting the vibration in the room now cranked to eleven—ever since sobering up, extraordinary in his sensitivity to people’s energies. Maybe he always had been. Hell, maybe that’s why he liked to get stupid with drink, its soporific beneficence having proved numbing to his empathetic tendencies.

  Mama lowered her voice. “Be that as it may, but divorcées in their thirties traipsing off to college to prove some point, why, it sounds positively ludicrous. Giving up a good home and husband to run off all willy-nilly with a pile of zit-faced teenagers almost half your age? As though you can do things over and make them all different, somehow?” She gazed to the ceiling, prayerful. “Lord have mercy on them, they know not what they do.”

  “Higher power,” Devin mumbled, sipping tea. “Yep yep.”

  “Now, what you ought to be doing instead of all that mess is trying to make another sweet little baby with your husband Dusty—”

  “—Mama, I swear, don’t go there again—”

  “—before it’s too late.”

  “That train has left. Thank god.”

  “Lord help me. And I had taken to calling you and Dusty ‘established’ to the others downtown,” a euphemism for her fellow ELMS. “I’m humiliated beyond measure. Humiliated,” she wept.

  “By my going to college.”

  Boo-hoo-hoo, Eileen said.

  Devin produced the Zippo, snap, the first inhalation and humming to himself with commercial-worthy consumer satisfaction on his face; listening and gazing at his cigarette with affection, a loyal little pack of pals consistent in their friendship, carried close in a breast pocket nestled next to his flopping, thin-walled heart.

  He thought it time to referee and bring everyone down to earth. No one may have wanted to discuss the fact this his mother had only months to live, so they may as well pretend, for an evening, to like one another.

  “Mama here knows you deserve a second chance. Like I got one. She’s just gonna miss you, angel face.” He reached across to Eileen’s bumpy, arthritic claw lying on the table by her ashtray. “We’re both gonna miss you.”

  Eileen cussed and shoved his hand away. “I have plenty to occupy my time. I’m only being realistic about her chances of a return on the investment. Colette had no need to go to college, any more than you did, son. Look at what that wrought, in your case.” Scoffing and bitter. “If I may say so. Your father’s dream, like all entrepreneurs, was to apprentice you into the insurance trade like him. But you never even gave him the chance.”

  Devin, all pretense of amusement vanishing. All that talk skittered off him, but she needed to encourage the girl. If this pretense was to earn its worth and long stay at the Rucker mansion.

  Not much time left.

  Seriously.

  His lips, working in soundless fury.

  Damn if she didn’t get him, though. Again. Like she always had.

  His mother.

  But Chelsea—Creedence—erupted on her own. Screaming like a crazy-woman, her plate of food went sailing across the room with a crash. Ginger-tom Arthur exploded from his perch on the empty, fourth chair—Dwight’s chair—to bolt wild-eyed across the table straight through the platter of fried chicken, planting one hind foot with gray litter box grit between the pad smack-dab in the middle of a Pyrex dish full of creamed corn; the cat leapt off the table in a huge arc and scampered out of the room as though El Diablo Gato himself in furious pursuit. A further stampede, a symphony of sharp kitty-claws skittering against hardwood flooring; the mad scramble continued all the way up the stairs.

  Devin, for his part, had come out of his chair, knocking both the lit cigarette into his lap. He did a shimmying Devin-dance, slapping burning tobacco from his jeans.

  The energy settled. Creamed corn ran down the canvas of a Thomas Kinkade print which the cat had flung from its paws. Mama and Creedence both had visible auras, hot red light all around their heads. Devin tried not to bust a gut.

  “For god sakes—look at this mess.”

  “I’m sorry.” Creedence, her head in her hands. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Damn right you will.” Coughing. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Either one of you.”

  “Devin wanted to give you a chance to tell me, for once, you thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “The two of you wouldn’t know the right thing if it come up out the commode and bit you both on them dimpled little pink butts I used to wipe.”

  But for all her vitriol, Devin, noting that his mother’s words came weak and weary. His Mama, barely able to get out of bed in the mornings. Time was short. She considered embarking on a course of radiation for a fresh spot of cancer on a nearby bone to the main tumor. He hoped she wouldn’t, nor that any reasonable doctors would dare prescribe such a course of treatment. Not in her frail condition.

  Devin, peering into her cloudy, tearstained eyes, the blue so pale against the red of her hair and thinking, How my sister’s matured into such a beauty. Watching her take long walks and eating salads, her freedom from Dusty melting away a layer of ennui and dissatisfaction like snakeskin, molting off and revealing a fresh face. Devin, wanting her to succeed, to grow. His mother wouldn’t be around to see in any case.

  “At least Uncle Hill says it’s time for me to get on with my life,” Creedence said, clearing the table. “At least I got that going for me.”

  “That’s because he loves you.” Devin, a quiet, affectionate tone, regarding with newfound marvel his sister’s cute, freckled features. “Like his own daughter.”

  Mama, pausing in the doorway, catching Devin’s eye. “Of course he does.”

  Creedence, ignoring her mother to focus on Devin: “Him and Daddy were like brothers, he always says. He showed me a picture he carries in his wallet from when him and their other friends were in high school together. I thought he was gonna cry when he showed it to me.”

  “The bond between men is strong,” Mama said.

  Devin, a moment of grace—none of it mattered. Every bad feeling he’d ever experienced faded away, all problems and horrors mitigated, the feeling of connection with his sister, and his mother, like being washed in the blood.

  He went to Creedence, held out his arms. She set Mr. Bubbie, who had jumped up on the table and started licking corn, down on Dwight’s empty chair. A hug, held, the bussing of cheeks. “I missed my little sister.”

  “We’re gonna make up for lost time.”

  “You betcha.”

  Creedence, yelling into the kitchen where their mother stood stooped over the sink, scrubbing dishes like always: “Mama, I’m gonna go find Arthur and Pickles. I done scared them half to death. Then I’ll help in yonder.”

  “Just let me take care of it,” Eileen called. “You’d just be in the way.”

  “See? That’s why I never learned to cook worth a poot. She didn’t never have no pa
tience with me in the kitchen.”

  Devin, plopping back down in his chair, picked up Creedence’s unfinished tea. He sipped and fished around in the cigarette pack with his free hand, finding one lone, crooked smoke waiting to be sparked.

  At the last second, Devin, reconsidering. He put his brave soldier back into the reserves to wait for a later skirmish with his lungs.

  He watched his mother dumping cat-adulterated food into the garbage disposal. He stood in silence until Eileen glanced, furtive, at him in the kitchen doorway.

  “Oh—you scared the mess out of me.”

  “Let me ask you something, girlfriend.”

  Eileen’s eyes shone like two opaque, hard stones set deep in the recesses of her brow. Her cheeks hung hollow. Displeasure with her firstborn oozed out of her like a fog. “Now what, son?”

  “You did love Daddy. Didn’t you, Mama?”

  Those cold old eyes cut across the room and sliced into him. Her floral-print housecoat hung loose on her body as she dried her hands. “I had to, didn’t I?”

  He asked what she meant.

  “He was your Daddy—wasn’t he?”

  “I never thought about it that way.”

  “Of course I loved him. Now you best watch your smart mouth in there,” she admonished, “in front of your baby sister. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It better be. And if you ever ask me such filth again, I’m going to whip your ass like I did when you were little. Like no time has passed at all.”

  “Mama—I believe you would.”

  Cursing, she went back to the dirty dishes, slamming the Pyrex almost hard enough to break it.

  Only after closing the swinging door behind him did he let out his breath, bitter and hot. Swearing in the dim gloom of his past, a museum exhibit of his adolescent predilections, that neither tears nor rage would salve what ailed him. Struggling for over an hour with the compulsion to go.

  Get.

  Potted like a plant.

  But holding fast. Shaking it off.

  What’d occurred with Eileen, he said to himself, was good enough. Nothing left to say, not at least between him and his mother. A moment, this. What had he expected?

  He enjoyed a realtime epiphany: ‘this’ surely had to represent growth. Was any of what went on with his folks and their friends his business? Mulling it over in his old room he began to feel stuffy and stale, trapped inside a musty tomb in need of a good airing-out.

  His sister had the right idea—to escape Edgewater County seemed like a plan, the first real one since his resurrection. Whatever enthusiasm he mustered, however, also came tempered by notions of a few chores remaining undone.

  T’weren’t anything earth-shattering.

  Nothing he couldn’t pull off.

  Only paying tribute to Libby, finally.

  No sweat—I got this.

  Seventy

  Creedence

  Her holiday drawing project, not only the most complex and challenging piece she’d ever attempted but also an important family Christmas gift, interrupted:

  Again.

  By Billy Steeple.

  Calling now almost every day.

  Hinting at first, now more direct about how the two of them ‘getting together’—to catch up, as he kept suggesting—had become his ‘primary action item.’ Must be some university speak.

  Together. To discuss Devin’s progress. And whatever else arose.

  Arose. His word.

  Whatever his intentions, the idea, thrilling and naughty.

  A stumbling block—Chelsea, wondering if Billy’s little trophy-girl would be in attendance.

  In a rush of hot resentment, with envy green like puke gushing from Linda Blair’s mouth, she blotted out Melanie’s face, her existence. Assumed she’d done wrong by Billy, treated him poorly in the sack and otherwise.

  Yes—she hadn’t been a good lover to him.

  A hungry divorcée like Creedence? Mercy. She’d do him right. Billy was no fool.

  Would let him do it over and again and over again.

  Now let’s make up for lost time. She planned this practiced catch phrase for the moment when, gently and patiently and in a state of high romance, he at last slipped inside her.

  For now, however, it was only another hot bath night. Which helped for a few blissful moments of release. Afterwards, however, left empty and alone but for Devin, her sick Mama and all the cats.

  A voice deep inside whispered how she might need more than a good lay; that this path with Billy could be wrong.

  She ignored the advice. It wasn’t the first time. Billy: an inevitability, now.

  But the irritating good girl inside remembered again how her fantasy man already stood spoken for, and by a woman far more attractive and intelligent than Kookie Colette Rucker could ever hope to become.

  And furthermore, wondering with a kind of self-consciously icky awe, what right did some dumb cracker from Chilton had to take Billy away from a rich, beautiful Pinckney girl from Charleston?

  None.

  Chelsea, nothing, a nobody. Jerking off in a bathtub in the middle of nowhere.

  Pathetic.

  And yet, Billy, calling again. Persistent in his need to make breathy, seemingly innocuous small talk.

  Until murmuring: “Creedence—later on, if you could meet me soon, I want to eat out your asshole.”

  She couldn’t speak. “You want to do what?”

  “Don’t you know how much courage that took?”

  “Billy—I—there’s no way I understood you right.”

  “God, I hate these fucking cell phones. I said, I hope you could meet me, ‘if it’s no hassle,’ as I put it.”

  “Oh.”

  Her gut, like ice. How to play it.

  Coy.

  Coy was what men wanted. Wasn’t it?

  “My goodness. Meet to do what, exactly?”

  Billy, at first making it sound like coffee, or lunch. To reminisce; to see if anything he could do for Devin or Ruck, as Billy always called him.

  Then, as though she were dreaming, he said the words, she could hear them like a clear-chiming bell from on high:

  “Fuck this. I’m through being cool, reserved and discrete, Creedence Rucker. Here it is. I’m—I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. I’m calling you to arrange a rendezvous, in the parlance of olden times. I love you, and I must have you. And there’s nothing for it but to come clean. If you’ll agree to this, every dream you ever had will come true.”

  Creedence, telling this amazing man she didn’t know what to say. That this couldn’t be real. Like when she’d walked down the aisle with Dusty—unreal, but not a good unreal like this.

  How she’d almost been a runaway bride.

  How Mama had all but tied her up the night before.

  How she harbored doubts. Said so.

  “I know, I know—he asks on the phone? For real? What a dolt—”

  “—oh, no, I didn’t—

  “—and of course you know I preferred saying all that in person.”

  She sat waiting. A single syllable escaped, a hushed whisper. “When.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Where?”

  “A hotel downtown. It’s a Marriott property, at Hampton and Main.”

  “All right. I can get there about—about—two.”

  “Perfect. Plenty of time to get my freak—rather, finish up some pressing work here.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. “You—shall I bring a bottle of wine?”

  He chuckled. Said all that would be more than arranged.

  “Creedence?”

  Her voice broke: “Y-yes?”

  “I’m eager for us to make up for all the lost time.”

  She drew in her breath. Their minds as one, like with Mr. Spock on one of those old Star Trek shows Devin sat around watching half the day on DVDs he checked out of the Edgewater County Pu
blic Library.

  “I can’t think of nothing to say, Billy. Anything to say, I mean. Except—well, I’m real eager, too.”

  “We’ve wasted so many years, haven’t we?”

  They had.

  But today? Too soon. She needed to get fixed up right for him. The panic in her gut, not a good sign. She looked a fright today as it was.

  “Wait, I can’t. Mama’s got—an appointment.”

  “Drat. Really?”

  “Tomorrow? Please?”

  “But angel—”

  “Billy, is one more day too long to wait? Tell me it isn’t. Please.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well. All right. A little delay will only make the end result all the better.”

  “Won’t it? If we wait a little?”

  “Indeed. The extra day will no-question provide for an extra-fizzy frisson of excitement. You cruel bitch—I freaking love you for this.”

  To hear him calling her a cruel bitch in that ironic, Gen X way felt liberating and validating.

  Yeah—screw Melanie Pinckney. Miss Priss had plenty of time to find another college boy for herself on campus.

  “I think I might be in love with you, too.” But the words—they didn’t feel right in her mouth. “Thank you, Billy.”

  They rang off—same time, next day.

  Breathless, with tension inside that felt like a stomachache, Chelsea next hurried herself making a variety of personal care appointments. These were important, yeah, but tomorrow was also the day Devin said he was taking Mama for her first bone cancer treatment, and how Creedence should keep pretending—for now—until he could see how well the old coot handled being irradiated. That way the house would be empty, and she wouldn’t have to explain to anyone about her naughty errand all the way down in Columbia.

  She knew the timing was bad on all this. She had to choose, though—Mama, or her future. Creedence chose.

  Seventy-One

  Devin

  Devin, reclining on the sofa in the living room of Roy Earl’s duplex, hummed and waited for his buddy to finish an important, breathless businessman-type phone call.

  The living room belied his pal’s station—looked much the same as any other college-guy pad in the campus neighborhood: books on cinder block bookshelves, a Grateful Dead poster, a wall of books, CDs and DVDs like most kids all had.