I noticed a huge ditch between the road and the field, somewhat hidden by the way the land fell. I was reflecting that in the U.S. there’d be guardrails here and you’d have to sign a form swearing you wouldn’t litigate before they’d let you drive it.
I was about to turn and say this to Miles when he made a horrible sound, halfway between a sob and a scream. The look of horror on his face would have brought me to my knees if I’d been standing.
He must’ve taken his foot off the gas, because the car dramatically slowed. He lifted his hands off the wheel and pressed them to his face. The road was fairly straight, and the car drifted lightly to the edge of the ditch before coming, completely undriven and unoperated, to a stop. The heavy air, drooping with pollen, flooded through my open window.
Behind his hands, he was … I don’t know … hyperventilating or crying in some strange hitch-of-his-breath way.
I tried to pry his hands from his face. “Miles, tell me,” I said. “I want to hear. I want to know how it happened.”
I don’t know how long we sat there with me pleading for him to tell me. It could’ve been hours. The wind picked up and the steady droning sound of the bees working their way through the field ceased.
Twilight eased its way across my vision and I hovered with Miles in the flower-besotted darkness. Hovered, like an insect above the tassel of the bloom, ready to risk everything for just a bit of sweetness.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured.
I pulled away and looked. Broad daylight again, sunlight dappling the foxglove and making a blaze of his windshield.
“You, too?” he asked.
I nodded. I reached out and ran a lingering hand down his jawline. He was so strong. I could tell he saw things differently now. Like I did. I saw the deadness in him.
“Car accident right here. The ditch isn’t that bad, except for that rock.” He pointed it out. Then he pointed at his head.
I caressed his thick, dark hair. It had been covered in blood that day, and his skull had been a complex medley of pieces, but now he was handsome and whole again.
“Now I get it,” he said. “How everyone’s been treating me. Or not treating me, I guess I should say.”
“I know,” I said. “I kept finding ways to explain it, but it was so awful to be ignored like that.”
“What …” He snorted, and gave me an apologetic smile. “There’s no easy way to say this. What happened to you?”
“I had a rare syndrome that made me faint. I lost consciousness during a swim meet and drowned. All along, I thought I had done something bad, something that made us move here.” I paused. “I guess I did. I died.”
We sat there for a long time. Or maybe it was a short time, in the grand scheme of things.
“Gillian was with me when it happened,” he said. “She wasn’t hurt badly. But that’s why I haven’t been able to break it off with her. She doesn’t listen …”
“… because she can’t,” I said.
“Right. And I could’ve proceeded anyway, except she was the one who was there. She held my hand when I died. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to remember, I still felt some sense of gratefulness to her for that. And … well, guilt for putting her through it.”
I felt no jealousy. If death was a wide field of lonesome blankness, I couldn’t begrudge him anything he felt for her. He leaned over and arranged my hair for me, tucking it behind my shoulders to fall free. He was inexpressibly tender, his eyes intent on mine the whole time. His fingertips barely touched my skin. I could hardly breathe.
The emotions were so intense that I buried my face in his neck. I took a few deep breaths against the warmth of his throat, feeling his chest pressed against mine, and then lifted my head.
“Is everyone like us?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I remembered a poem I’d studied last year in English class. It was by Emily Dickinson, and about someone who was riding around in a carriage not realizing they were dead. Kind of like Miles in his car. Exactly like it, actually.
The poem ends:
Since then ’tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
I got it now. The eternity. It happened to me on a moment-by-moment basis.
I was never going to be real, ever again. I was a ghost, a shadow. Someone who could reach through the living only with ineffective fingers. Someone who would talk to loved ones and never get an answer.
“We can worry about our own … status … later,” I said. “I still need to deal with Madame Arnaud. I know for sure she’s real now. I’m not crazy, just …” My voice trailed off.
“I can understand why you thought you were crazy,” said Miles.
His hand was warm, to me anyway. I rubbed my fingers over the bones of his knuckles. He lifted our joined hands to hold my jaw and give me one sweet, quiet kiss.
I could have cried.
I straightened up. “We’ve got to get back to the manor,” I said. “My mom’s already lost one daughter. I can’t let her lose the other.”
But still we sat.
We drifted in our heads as a beehive was crafted, cell by cell, against the underside of Miles’s rock, then decayed after generations of bees left for some more wholesome environment.
“You’re right,” said Miles with a new edge of decisiveness. He turned the key in the ignition. I was amazed at his aliveness. “And who knows, maybe saving your sister is the thing we need to do to graduate, as it were. On to the next realm.”
I sat up straighter, reveling in how good it felt to again have a desire, a wish, something to do with myself other than ponder the sad and static fact of my own death.
I could be useful. I could help from where I was. The big sister reaching out a vaporous hand to help her infant sister.
“Let’s go,” I said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daily functioning at the manor appears to have stopped
abruptly sometime in the mid-1850s, as the town tax records
show no income from servant wages starting in July 1856. A
study of the Grenshire Argus microfilms from this period
indicate no untoward or calamitous event to explain the shift.
—From Trudy Bilkington’s sociology senior thesis,
2008, University of York
We forced ourselves to return to the manor.
It was insane.
A madhouse. Bedlam. So much commotion I hadn’t been aware of before.
“What is all this?” asked Miles.
Each of the hundreds of windows glowed. The large bay windows outlined in lead, the tiny windows that lit the cramped back stairways servants traveled, the full-moon-shaped windows that made a heads-up coin out of the person who looked out them … all lit. The attic windows with gables above them, the gallery of windows that turned a hallway into an ocean liner, even probably the window Eleanor Darrow had scratched her agonized message into … all blazed through the darkness.
Through each window we could see frenetic motion, servants dashing from room to room, opening curtains, closing them. The darkening grounds were busy, too, with men carrying bundles from unseen carriages into the house, and the gardeners hoeing, pruning, planting. Everywhere children of all ages nipped at their heels, racing in circles, laughing … or solemnly stared out the windows at us, disturbed.
Wanting to make sure Tabby was all right, I motioned for Miles to follow me into the modern apartment. Upon entering, I quickly realized it hadn’t always been modern, for there were servants and children here, too. We watched incredible activity: children running. Jumping off furniture. Girls in their petticoats, spinning in a circle to hear the fabric swish against their hips. Boys in their short pants and sturdy leather shoes. They played marbles, rolling the gaseous atmospheres of glass planets across the floor. They played statues, trying and failing to remain motionless.<
br />
They bounced a red ball back and forth, in the timeless pattern of childhood, the dull thud of the bounce produced for centuries. Pretended to waltz, half graceful, half clumsy, curling their hands around their partner, the air. Chased each other, dove under furniture, charming, oblivious. And all of them, despite their feverish activity, despite all the noise they could generate—all of them paper-thin and not quite there.
I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t realize that every single one of those children had been as precious to their family as Tabby was to mine. I looked at Miles sadly and bit my lip.
Adding to the teeming noise, servants stepped around the children, muttering to themselves.
“Ahhh,” one moaned as she bustled past me with a pail full of coal. “We should tell, we should get help.”
“We never lifted a finger,” said another, who was carrying folded linens so high they nearly blocked her face. “We are damned for all eternity. The children!”
“The children!”
Every voice was whispering about the infants of the household, and with a clench of fear in my stomach, I understood why. The servants saw what was happening with Madame Arnaud, but were powerless to stop her. Guilty, shamed ghosts. Damned for all time.
They wrung their rotten hands, they hid their faces in their aprons. They bumped into each other in a haze of distress, wailing their repetitive wails.
The dire chorus was horrible, and we walked past them through the living room and down the hallway. As we passed the kitchen, I saw something extraordinary. Something … perfect.
My mom.
It was fairly quiet in there; in Madame Arnaud’s day it must’ve been a chamber few had access to, the original kitchen being located down a level. Compared to the odd children who flickered through, casting amazed glances at the grandeur they still saw, Mom was a beacon of solidity. Her skin glowed with warmth, vitality … next to her, the others looked like sheets coming out of a printer whose ink cartridge was running out.
As she washed dishes in the sink, lightly humming to herself, she was so majestically beautiful I could have wept. Her gentle eyes focused on her task, and her graceful fingers moved the sponge around the lip of glasses and into their depths, carefully settling the glasses into the rinse water on the other side.
With my new knowledge, my mom was riveting, a show I could watch forever. I grabbed at Miles’s hand: Could he see how spellbinding she was? He squeezed back, but I didn’t bother to look at him. My eyes were all for her.
She worked on a pot next, scrubbing so hard the muscles in her forearm flexed. She was strong, she was good.
She was the person I loved more than anyone else on earth.
It had taken death for me to realize that.
I loved Steven and my real dad, and I loved Tabby. Bethany was my closest friend. But in the midst of all my teenaged angst and my rejection of Mom as someone who didn’t “get” me, she was always the one I loved the most.
And now she’d never look me in the eye again.
This hit me almost harder than knowing I was dead.
Mom had cheered me on for everything I’d ever done. I could remember her sitting on the floor helping me build towers with wooden blocks, laughing her head off when I pushed them over. She took me to playgrounds and hovered nearby, making sure I was safe as I climbed the structures and hurtled down slides. As I got older, she would hug me from behind as I sat at the kitchen table doing my homework, just a silent, wordless way of her saying she loved me.
They say memory is a collage some artist of the cerebrum creates. I was experiencing it now, brief glimpses of her scolding me; of her pretending to collapse in the snow from some lame snowball I’d thrown; of her letting me use lipstick for the first time, watching in the mirror with an amused grin.
She was holding out a broom for me to sweep up the shards of something I’d broken; she was dancing to a CD of Busy Dick I’d brought home, her eyes widening with shock at the lyrics; she was on the sofa, sick herself for once, while I brought her ginger ale and crackers.
She was angry, she was sad, she was euphoric—and through it all, her eyes glowed with love for me. She loved me so much, her eyes had developed particular wrinkles from the smiles she’d given me ever since I was a baby.
I stepped closer, releasing Miles’s hand, and stood next to her at the sink. I couldn’t tell what she was humming. I sank sideways, waiting for her solid warmth to support me, to prop me up. But I nearly fell.
“We should look for Tabby,” Miles reminded me.
I stared at Mom’s profile, her mind busy. What was she thinking about? She had found some comfort doing this mundane task. Her mind was not on me. This was one of the rare moments she had discovered, in which she was free of sadness.
Those moments would be occurring more frequently as the months and years went by.
“Mom, don’t forget me!” I cried, and she reacted not a stitch.
“Phoebe, don’t,” said Miles softly.
Mom drained the sink, the water gurgling loudly as it circled around and disappeared. She rinsed her hands of soap and took a clean dishcloth from a drawer by the stove. She moved unerringly, without thought. Wow. We’d been here long enough … they’d been here long enough … that it was second nature to grab a dish towel from a previously unknown drawer. This was becoming home to her.
And it had nothing to do with me.
“Let’s go,” urged Miles. “We need to make sure Tabby’s okay.”
“I can’t leave,” I whispered.
“You have to,” insisted Miles. “Remember what you said. If Madame Arnaud takes Tabby, then your mom will have suffered two deaths.”
I whirled around and looked at him. So cruel, such cruel words! But the kindness on his face reminded me that he was only parroting back what I had said.
One by one, Mom replaced the glasses and dishes in the cupboards, and pulled open a drawer to lay the silverware in their separate compartments. A lock of hair fell out of her too-short ponytail. She was still young for someone with a teenaged daughter. Correction: for someone who’d lost a teenaged daughter.
I let Miles wrap an arm around my waist and pull me away from that most beautiful of sights, my gorgeous mom washing the counters. We went down the hall.
Tabby was in her crib as Steven sat in the armchair nearby, reading by the dim light of a lamp. It was one of those nights when she’d been fussy, maybe fighting off a cold—she just needed someone to sit in the room with her while she slept. I’d done it myself several times. It wasn’t so bad, reading, listening to her light snore, and saying, “It’s okay, I’m here; go back to sleep” when she’d periodically wake up.
So Miles and I relaxed. Madame Arnaud would never dare come to take Tabby while Steven kept vigil. Miles and I sat on the floor, talking. I twitched every time Steven turned a page.
“So how does Madame Arnaud see me?” I asked. “I’m a ghost to her.”
“I don’t know,” said Miles. “I guess she’s sensitive. A psychic or something.”
“What are we going to do? We can’t communicate with the living or even touch them.”
“There has to be something, and we’ll figure it out,” said Miles firmly.
I had a funny thought. We’d tried for so long to retrieve Eleanor Darrow’s diary to show it to my parents; maybe it was time to retrieve Eleanor herself.
The next morning, Miles and I stayed close to my family. I knew he probably wanted to go home (or whatever verb now replaced go for us, to describe the way we simply were somewhere else instantly, the way you are in dreams). He doubtless wanted to see his mom and dad now that he knew the truth and everything had changed. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been dead, or where he went when he wasn’t with me, other than driving and re-driving that one stretch of road. Maybe he even wanted a moment with Gillian again, to try to find the closure she just couldn’t give him.
But he stayed with me as I watched my family with a degree of fascination I
’d never felt when I was alive. Every nuance of expression on Mom’s face now left me slack-jawed with wonder and loss. As she walked from the counter to the table with milk for Tabby, I examined her with the same avid interest a lover would … the sway of her hips, the slight movement of her hair, the almost inaudible sigh she made as she sat.
The same with Steven. Although our stepdad-stepchild relationship had been a little troubled, suddenly I loved every stubbled inch of his face, the pale gray of his eyes, even the smears on his glasses that needed cleaning. I felt a bit of a draw back to my real dad, but couldn’t bear to leave Mom.
And I felt a strong connection to Tabby. The sister I’d been exasperated with in life, who grabbed all my mom’s attention right when I entered the tough years of puberty and needed her most … I wished I could go back in time and be nicer to her. I had smiled and sung and carried her … but lots of times I’d ignored her fussing as I sat inches away texting Bethany or Richard.
“I wish I could save you,” I whispered.
“Don’t start crying again,” warned Miles. “Let’s go find Eleanor like you suggested.” He stood by Steven, who was eating his toast standing up, waiting for the coffeemaker to finish filling the carafe.
Before I’d realized I was dead, I would sit down at the breakfast table with them and somehow not notice that food never appeared for me—and neither did I want it. But now even sitting was a concept for the living. I just was.
“If we can do something, why has Madame Arnaud lived for hundreds of years?” I asked, as a way of delaying leaving. Tabby was here; she was safe. We could just stay and watch Mom. “All these servants walking around blaming themselves for not acting when they were alive—don’t you think they’d have done anything they could afterward?”
Miles chewed on his lower lip. “The people who served in the last few centuries lived in a very different England. No access to education, and a lot of access to a class system that ensured they felt inferior. Perhaps they thought they were too powerless to even try.”
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