by Leah Thomas
“I don’t know why you’re here, but that’s enough!”
“Your mother loves books,” I blurted.
He blinked. “She was a teacher! Anyone could guess that. Now, please—”
“She loves science fiction and fantasy books, especially ones with maps in them. She also likes raspberry Slurpees, and she hums ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ to herself when she’s in a good mood. Her favorite color is turquoise, and she hates jazz!”
“Most people hate jazz,” Seiji added, like it was helpful.
“I don’t know how you know this,” Gary murmured hoarsely, “and I don’t care. Go find some other family to harass.”
I cut in front of him again. “When you were seven years old, you hit another kid and called her a bitch. Trish was disappointed in you, because she raised you better.”
He stared at me. “Go.”
Upset as she was, Patricia cleared her throat and readjusted her glasses. “Tell him he used to go everywhere with a Sesame Street plushie of the Count, but he called him Toothy.”
I repeated these words. Gary looked shaken but still mostly furious.
“What, you’re pretending she’s here? Fine. Why not. Not like I have a daughter to grieve. If my dead mother is here, ask her this: What instrument did I play in elementary school?”
Patricia listened, then answered, and I recounted what she’d said for Gary: “You didn’t play any. You threw a tantrum when she tried to sign you up for piano. And when you were supposed to practice the recorder, you hid it behind your hamper until the night of the concert, and she had to wash the cobwebs off it.”
He blinked. “Ask her what I liked to put on my pizza.”
“Canned corn,” I said, but stopped myself from calling him a weirdo.
“I don’t believe in crap like this,” he said, slumping. “But I don’t have the energy to argue with you. So tell me, why would my dead mother come here?”
“To see you,” I said. “And to say goodbye to your daughter.”
He rubbed his eyes. “She’s a bit late for that.” He looked at us with bloodshot eyes. “My daughter died an hour ago.”
I looked at Patricia. She drew herself up tall, her expression unreadable, more skull than face.
“Is she still here?” The tremors had left her, leaving cold determination in their wake. “Can I see her? Can I see my granddaughter?”
“I can’t ask that,” I whispered. “It’s morbid.”
Her eyes flashed and she looked furious with me for the first time ever. “The receptionist told us the room number. I can go check for myself.”
I could not tell her not to. I could only watch her walk past them all, watch the way the walls bent around her, as if every one of her exhales might tug the building down around her.
“Sorry for your loss,” I managed.
“Just go.”
In the elevator without Patricia, I began to sob like an idiot.
Seiji said, “He was probably lying.”
“What?”
“Why would the whole family be sitting in the lobby if she was already gone? They were waiting for something.”
“Waiting for what?”
He closed his eyes, revisiting some memory. “They were waiting for the end.”
Seiji’s hand was cold and rough and real in mine.
HALLMARK
We sat downstairs in the ER waiting room, accompanied by a terrible Hallmark Christmas movie about some entrepreneur who remembered the charm of her hometown and fell face-first into a boring hetero romance. Seiji seemed absorbed in the film. He looked incredibly awkward, squeezed between the narrow arms of the functional furniture.
Sometime after seven, he got up, said the word “tea,” and reappeared with two cardboard cups in his hands. As he passed one to me, he said, “The little girl’s alive, but not for long. The whole family’s here because they’re pulling life support tonight. They’re just waiting on a few more people to say goodbye.”
“You got all that from the cafeteria?”
“People tell me things,” Seiji said. “I’m not sure why.”
“Because you seem honest.”
“Or I seem like a brick wall.” He sat on the coffee table across from me. “She won’t be okay. Your friend.”
I frowned at him. “You don’t know that. She’s been through a lot.”
He shook his head. “She won’t be okay.”
“You’re being mean.”
“Time passes. Eventually not being okay becomes okay. But she won’t be okay at first.”
I thought of Sarah, asking if I was okay, but never saying it was okay not to be.
“I’m not sure it works that way for ghosts,” I told him.
“Ghosts are people, right?”
On the screen, the lonely entrepreneur danced at a holiday ball and finally kissed the handsome small-town lumberjack. “Did you say goodbye to your parents, Seiji?”
“I said goodbye to my mother, but she was comatose. I don’t think she could hear me. I didn’t say goodbye to Dad, because he left without a word. He didn’t even take his stuff with him. He never called or anything.”
I bit my tongue and tried to shake the image of his father’s dangling feet from my mind. “So how—I mean, what made you realize he was gone?”
“Oh. He left a note for Aunt Lavonne, telling her to take the truck and business.”
If he’d really left a note behind, Aunt Lavonne hadn’t shared the biggest part of it. There were many reasons why she might have lied to Seiji about his father’s death, especially so soon after his mother’s. I knew she was religious, and I knew she was facing the reality of having to raise a grieving kid alone. Maybe she feared the truth.
I knew I did. If I bit my tongue much harder, would it bleed?
“When I see Dad again, I might punch him,” Seiji pondered. “Or I might hug him very tightly.”
It was weird and shameful to admit, because my father was a monster, but I said, “I feel that way about my dad, too.”
Seiji nodded, wide-eyed and serious. “We’re twins, you and me.”
MOBIL
Nine o’clock came and went. Patricia did not reappear. Then ten, and eleven.
Without warning, Patricia stood between us, distorting the TV screen.
I stood up and hugged the air around her. She accepted the gesture wordlessly. Her mind seemed far, far away, filled with forests again.
“Let’s go home,” Patricia said. “I’m tired.”
To my right, a couple were whispering to each other, reacting to my outburst.
“What are you looking at?” Seiji asked them. “My friend is grieving.”
The couple coughed and looked away.
“Seiji, you’re so embarrassing,” I muttered, which was unfair, because I really wanted to hug him, too.
Seiji led the way to the exit. Patricia walked silently beside me. I wished I could catch her if need be, and I wished Sarah was there to do it if I couldn’t.
Patricia didn’t stumble. She stood steady on her faint feet, but her calm perturbed me. She was usually so scattered and enthused. Her solemnity was heartrending.
The snow had not stopped falling. A solid seven inches coated the sidewalk and lawn, boding ill for our long drive home.
“Oh wow. It’s a whiteout.”
“I’ll drive carefully,” Seiji said.
———
Careful as he was, the snow had its own agenda. We traversed the frosted freeway at a snail’s pace, and even that felt reckless. Because the silence was uncomfortable, I switched on the radio. Old Christmas classics were playing, and soon we were treated to a jolly pop revision of “Winter Wonderland,” complete with runs and saxophone that nobody asked for.
“There’s nothing wonderful about winter,” Patricia said. “God, will I ever see the end of winter? Do you think anyone in my poor family will ever think of winter as a wonderland again?”
“Patricia—”
“No. Le
t me be furious. I died in the snow and rotted in a ditch for months, and then I found myself haunting those woods for years, and do you know, winter never stopped coming. And it never stopped being fucking awful. Every year, I watched the snow bury me, and I couldn’t even suffocate to death, not a second time. And whenever the winter returned, so did my murderer.”
Seiji couldn’t hear her, but I wondered if he felt the temperature rising. A pickup truck passed us at breakneck speed; Seiji skidded slightly, clutching the wheel tighter. Outside, I couldn’t see the road signs through the white.
“I might have to pull over,” Seiji admitted. “Next gas station we see.”
“Winter is heinous,” Patricia muttered. “They thought my granddaughter wanted a white Christmas. But maybe she didn’t. She was too young to say what she wanted.”
“Patricia . . .” I began, but what could be said?
Seiji slowed the truck to a toddling crawl. “It might be more dangerous if we wait on the shoulder. I can’t even see the exit ramps.”
Sweat beaded on my brow and the windows grew foggy. In the rearview I saw only steam. Patricia was a livid haze.
“I’d kill him myself, all over again, if I could.” Patricia’s rage cut through me.
Seiji lost control of the slippery wheel for a split second, but that was enough to yank us toward the shoulder and an unseen pine-filled ditch beyond. Seiji cursed and threw an arm out in front of me, and for a second I thought that I, too, might be haunting a snowbank for the foreseeable future—
But the wheel jerked left, seemingly by itself. With a final squeal and some breathless zigzagging, we were back on track.
The temperature dropped. None of us spoke until we were home again.
———
“Should I come in with you?” Seiji asked.
The snow had stopped falling, but there was plenty of it filling the motel parking lot. Patricia had already phased through the side of the truck without a word.
“No, it’s fine.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for the ride, Seiji.”
“You’re always welcome.”
I paused, hand on the door. “No, it’s a bigger thank-you than that.”
He waited, face placid, but I had finally begun to see ripples in his expression, the movement beneath the calm surface of the water. He was a pond I wouldn’t mind falling into.
“Thanks, not just for the ride, but for believing me, about the ghosts. For helping me, even after how I treated you.”
“You’re helping me, too,” Seiji reasoned. “With my mother’s ghost.”
“No, I’m not,” I choked, unable to speak the truth of what was haunting him even after all this, perhaps because of all this. “I mean. I haven’t yet.”
“But you will.”
I didn’t want to lie to him, but I did. “Yeah. I’ll try.”
Seiji smiled, genuine and warm, and his trust all but cracked my ribs. “It’s nice.”
“What’s nice?” What could possibly be nice?
“I haven’t had a good friend in years,” Seiji pondered, “or maybe ever.”
What would a good friend say to him then? Would a friend tell him that his father was dead? Or would a friend want him to keep smiling like that?
“Yeah, well. There aren’t a lot of queer kids in town.”
“There are probably more than we know, but you’re right. We have to look out for each other.”
I smirked. “The queer squad.”
“The queerkuza,” he said, deadpan.
When he left, I felt colder than ever.
“AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE”
Patricia stood silently in the snow, outside the lobby, shoulders hunched, clothes askew.
“Let’s go in. It’s freezing.”
“No,” she said. “No, I think I’ll spend the night outside.”
“Come on, Patricia,” I reasoned. “Don’t. Come in. I’ll let you read to me.”
“Dani. You should get some rest.”
My heart squeezed shut. “Patricia, you’re scaring me.”
“Am I?” She looked back at me with pity. “Only now?”
Patricia ignored my gasp, and no amount of reaching for her would hold her. She slipped between my fingers as her vacant outline walked into the white night. Patricia dragged her feet toward the trees, losing her shoes, losing her composure as she reached the woods.
At the treeline, she adjusted her ponytail, picked up her feet, and began running.
“Are you going to let her go off like that?” Sarah asked me, as if she’d been beside me the whole time.
“Are you?”
“I saved her the first time,” Sarah said, jaw set. “And supposedly you already let Addy walk off into the woods. Can’t let that happen again, right? It’ll become a habit.”
I stared at her, numb all over. She seemed like a stranger. Had she seen right through me in the one way I never could see through her?
“What are you going to do, Dani?”
Twisted as Sarah’s attitude seemed right then, I knew she was right. I felt, down to my marrow, that if I let Patricia go, she’d be gone for good. She’d end up lying on another path somewhere, erasing herself from the world. And this time, if I let her go, I couldn’t pretend it was fate or her choice. Not when I could have done something.
Not when I wanted her to stay.
I gritted my teeth and started running after her, my busted ankle crying bloody murder as I pushed past pine branches and stumbled over frosted snow that cut like razors. At first I saw the flash of her iridescent scrunchie in the dark between the trunks, but then there was nothing.
I didn’t stop, even as my ankle gave out, even after I fell from the brush onto a snow-buried trail. My foot twisted against a tree root and my face scraped the ice.
“Patricia!” I cried, trying to pull myself up. “Patricia, please don’t go!”
There was only moonlight on the trail, no sign of her silhouette. I let my face fall onto my arms and sobbed. If there was a murderer in the woods, he could have me.
Silent footsteps approached.
I opened my eyes and saw familiar Adidas trainers, spotted with blood.
“Dani,” Patricia chided softly. “What do you think you’re doing, on a bum leg? God. Sometimes I wish I could suspend you.”
I craned my neck to look up at her; the moon shone through her face. It didn’t catch on her tears, but they glimmered all the same. Every centimeter of her was disheveled.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” I gasped, choking on my tears, “but please, Patricia. Please don’t be not-okay alone.”
She crouched in front of me and shook her head. “Oh, Dani. I admire you, but you are truly a hypocrite. Being not-okay alone—isn’t that your modus operandi?”
“I know,” I told her. “Please don’t be like me.”
She sank onto the snow, becoming smaller. “Do you know why I took so long tonight? After they shut off the machines, after I watched my granddaughter die? I waited until they moved the body to the morgue, until most of the family had left. Do you know why?”
There was nothing I could say; we listened to the creaking trees, the drip of the weakest snow reverting to water in the dark.
“In that hospital—I thought—no, I hoped—I hoped my granddaughter might haunt us.” Patricia shook from head to toe. “Can you believe that? I wished my own desperate, painful half existence on a baby. I hate my inability to turn pages or hold my mourning son, my inability to give you a hug. But the worst part is, despite it all? I still wanted that baby to stay. And when she didn’t, I had the nerve to feel disappointed.”
“Your existence is not pointless,” I whispered. “You told me that. And it really isn’t, Patricia. Not to me.”
“Thanks for saying so,” she said quietly.
“I mean it.
She glanced at me. “You and Sarah—you’re some of the worst students I’ve ever had.” She almost laughed. “You don’t list
en, and you aren’t honest, and god knows you don’t complete your reading assignments.”
“Stick with us, and maybe we’ll get better.” I shivered in the cold, but the panic was fading, and Patricia was not. She looked at the sky.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m done running. Are you?”
“Patricia,” I said, when the cold became too much, the quiet too big, “can I tell you about my dad?”
“Only if you want to, dear.”
“It’s a terrible story,” I warned her. “The absolute worst.”
“I’ve rarely met a story that wasn’t worth hearing,” Patricia said.
I took a deep breath and exhaled the truth.
———
The day was as mundane as any other. It wasn’t like Dad was any drunker or angrier than usual. I got home from school and he was already well into his Jack Daniel’s. Mom was lying on the couch, treating a black eye with a pack of frozen peas. When I came in, she mumbled something about being too tired to make dinner, and not to bother Dad because he was busy.
What he was busy doing was watching TV in the bedroom. But when he called to me, I knew better than to ignore him. As I passed the couch, Mom grabbed my hand and closed her eyes.
She didn’t stop me, and that’s one reason I don’t love her like I used to.
I could hear cartoons blaring through the door, the sound of crunching chips.
“Hey, beautiful,” Dad said when I slid open the door. He was propped up against the pillows in his boxers. The smell of Doritos and alcohol hit my nose. “Come on up here. Ren & Stimpy’s on and there are some chips for you.”
I was nine, and I knew better than to go near him. I knew better, but I still went near because he was my father. As I inched along the opposite side of the bed that filled the bulk of the room, Dad tilted the bag of Doritos my way. I leaned forward to grab one.
He took hold of my arm and dragged me onto the bed beside him. “Come on, watch cartoons with me. Your mother never watches TV with me.”
He didn’t touch me right away. But I knew he would. Ever since I’d gotten a little taller in fourth grade, ever since Mom had bought me a trainer bra. I’d cried my eyes out when she made me get one, because I already felt what I was and what I wasn’t, even if I couldn’t put words to the feeling.