The Ghostwriter

by Alessandra Torre

  “Mommy doesn’t dislike JayJay,” Simon feels the need to interject, standing in the doorway, a kitchen towel in hand, his eyes stabbing me with little warnings that he should know I’ll ignore. “She just gets frustrated by her sometimes.”

  “No,” I say, rolling the phone over in my hand, “I don’t like her. You were right the first time, Bethany.”

  “Helena…” Simon warns, leaning against the door’s frame.

  I squat before Bethany. “Sometimes people act a certain way that doesn’t match the person that they are inside. There are two different things at play with all of us, at every moment in our life. There is the way we act versus the person that we are inside. The person that we are grows and develops at your age, Bethany. Right now, you are a clean slate. Your personality is growing and building with every interaction, with every decision you make. You may act stubborn, or ill-mannered in one instance, but that doesn’t mean that you are stubborn or rude here.” I place my hand on her chest, my palm firm against the soft cotton of her t-shirt, “or here.” I move up my hand to her silky head, still damp from her bath. “Some people are just having a misfire of judgment or control. But other people are letting you see a bit of the rotten person inside. Their cruel or stupid behavior is a gift of sorts, because it lets you see the real person that they are beneath.”

  “So how do you know?” Her forehead scrunches, and she lifts her hands in the exaggerated gesture of a child. “If it’s who they really are?” Her voice stumbles over the words, and I watch her carefully wet her lips before finishing the question.

  “You watch everyone, very carefully.” I remove my hand from her chest. “You observe and you remember. JayJay’s shown me, for thirty years, the type of person that she is inside.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I’m going to let you figure that out yourself, from watching her.” I lean forward and lower my voice in excitement. “It’s like a game.” She nods, and I can see her brain filing away the information, adding another ‘to-do’ mark to her list. My daughter loves lists. And information. And tasks. She is very much like myself, though she and Simon don’t realize it. “But more important than watching her is watching yourself.” I look into her eyes, making sure that she is listening, her dark pupils fully focused saucers of intelligence. “You need to analyze your thoughts and motivations, Bethany. You need to think through your actions and pick up on the darker thoughts in your head. You can become anything,” I say to her. “Make sure that you don’t become selfish, unimaginative and dumb.”

  “Jesus Christ, Helena.” Simon pushes off the doorframe, and I see the disgust on his face in the moment before he turns away.

  I don’t care. Life is too short to not speak the truth.

  “Coming back?” The voice startles me, and I look up at Mark, who smiles down at me. “I gotta tell you, abs are all over that big screen right now.”

  “Ha.” I look down at the page, one begged from the ticket counter, my writing finished a good ten minutes ago. “I just wanted to write a scene.” I scoot back a little, pressing my shoulder blades against the wall, the bones of my butt aching against the hallway’s thin carpet floor.

  “You finished?” He crouches before me, and there’s a patched rip on the right knee of his jeans.

  “Yes.” I fold the page in half and hand it, and the pen, to him. “Hold onto it for me?”

  “Certainly,” he drawls and, if he had a hat on, he’d tip it. I roll my eyes, then take the hand he extends, letting him pull me to my feet.

  I stand, and watch him carefully tuck the page into a front pocket of his shirt, the pen disappearing into another pocket, and follow him quietly back into the theater, greeted by the sound of laughter, a scene in full effect.

  A small part of me misses life. The activity. The sounds. The energy of a crowd and their reactions. The friendly wave of Kate as she moves her feet and I squeeze by. The wink of Mark as he offers me illegal cubes of Snickers.

  I shouldn’t be here. I don’t deserve any of this.

  “You don’t have to walk me up.” I stop, halfway around the hood of the truck, and glare at him.

  “Just let an old man use his Southern charms.” He shuts the door and gestures for the steps. “After you.”

  I sigh, and he smiles. “You’re a battering ram, you know that?”

  “Best compliment I’ve gotten all evening.”

  I take the first step and he supports my arm, an annoyance that is, unfortunately, needed as I work my way up the four steps to the porch. When did they get so steep? When did I get so old? “You’ve got the new stuff I wrote?” I ask.

  He pats his shirt pocket. “Right here. I’ll work on it tonight.”

  “Give me an hour or so.” I come to a stop before the front door. I never locked it behind me. In my mad sprint to Mark’s car, I just pulled it tight. Anyone could have come in, be waiting for me behind the door, knife poised, ready to slash at my throat or rape me. I consider inviting Mark inside, then discard the thought.

  “Give you an hour or so for what?” He watches me turn the knob and frowns.

  “Before you start writing. I have another scene I want to write. I’ll do it right now and send it over to you.”

  “It’s late. Send it tomorrow morning.”

  “No.” I shake my head, tonight’s encounter with my mother still raw and fresh, a dozen memories pushing to the surface and begging for attention. I need to get them down on paper while my skin still bristles from her contact. “I’m itching to write.” I try to smile, to ease some of the worry from his eyes. “I need to.” Maybe putting some of the past on paper will expel it from my body, like bloodletting, the words a thousand leeches that will suck the impurities out and heal a little of my pain.

  Though, in that analogy, if this is bloodletting… The Night It Happened will be a slaughter fest.

  “Helena?”

  I snap my eyes to his, and his face is wary, his stance protective.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nod, pushing the door open and stepping inside, swiveling to the front and swinging the door almost closed. “Goodnight, Mark. I’ll email over the new stuff soon.”

  He wants to say something, I can see his jaw flexing, forehead squishing, mind churning. But he doesn’t. He nods, steps back, and I close the door, flipping the deadbolt latch and lifting my head, listening to the empty house. In the air, there is the faint smell of ash and smoke. I remember my fire, and glance toward the hearth, a few embers still glowing red among the charred logs. I am turning away when I stop, my vision sluggish in its alert of my brain.

  “Helena.” My mother pushes off the couch and stands. “I was hoping that we could speak.” Her voice wobbles and I have never, not even at the funeral, heard her cry.

  “Mother.” I don’t have the energy for this. It’s already been too long of a day for me, the hours too far since my last pain pill, my exhaustion at war with the pain. “Please go home.”

  She comes closer, and at this distance, I can’t hide. Her gaze travels critically over my face, and I wait for clarity, for the aha moment of understanding, but it isn’t there. She isn’t surprised, because she already knew, probably discovered it in her last three hours of snooping. I curse the unlocked door and drop the bag with my pajamas on the floor.

  “What are these for?” She holds out a bottle of pills, and it’s the Phenergan, the one I left beside the couch.

  I take it from her, my eyes dropping to the label. “Anti-nausea.”

  She sighs. “I know what Phenergan is for, Helena. Why do you have so much medicine? Why do you look so terrible?”

  If I walk outside, will Mark still be here? Was her car in the cul-de-sac and I somehow missed it? I step backward and feel myself sway.

  Her arm closes around my forearm, and I am half-pushed, half-guided toward the couch. I sink into it, almo
st knocking over the water bottle when I reach for it. She sits next to me, silently, and watches me shake out a pill.

  One pill. Ten minutes, then I’ll be nodding off. No more Mother. No more conversation. No more pain.

  “There’s some medicine on the kitchen counter.” I take the pill and settle back into the couch. “The Vicodin. I need two.”

  I expect her to argue, to force me to answer her question first, but she only stands, and walks to the kitchen. I watch the embers of the fire glow through half-closed eyes, and try to envision her waiting three hours for me. A long time to be alone in this house. A long time for a woman who liked to open drawers, root around in emotions, and pry into lives. She wouldn’t have wasted time. She would have tried Bethany’s door, found it locked. Seen the empty rooms, my sterile bedroom. Would she have wondered why the media room was locked? Would she have entered my office, sat at my desk, and criticized my life?

  She blocks my view of the fire, her hand outstretched, two large white pills in her palm. “Here.”

  I sit up, and it feels strange when I touch her hand, when my fingers scrape over her palm. I think of the scene I was going to write, the one for Mark, and sigh. Now, my brain will be mush. Nausea pill mush. I put the pills on my tongue and tilt back the water bottle, the chalky taste registering for a moment before the water flushes it down. “Cancer.” I say it quietly, but she hears me, her body lowering onto the couch beside me, her hands coming together on her lap.

  “I figured it was something serious. Is it breast? Your grandmother had breast cancer, when she was—”

  “No. Brain.”

  “Oh.” She looks down at her hands. “I’m so sorry, Helena.” I’m so sorry, Helena. She said the same words at the funeral. Then, they caused me to break, my hands to whip out, words screamed in the quiet of a thousand onlookers. Now, with the words uttered for a completely different reason, I search for sadness in her voice.

  Is there some? Is that faint wobble from before catching on the end of my name?

  It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if she will miss me when I’m gone. I died four years ago, and she’s had four years to recover from that. I’m so sorry, Helena.

  “I’m not.” I settle back in the couch, pulling at the blanket, covering my body. “Why are you still here, Mother?” It can’t be about that reporter. There must be something else.

  “Why do you hate me so much, Helena?”

  I groan. She came here, staked out in my home, listened to my diagnosis, yet she wants her own pity party, one that starts with an accusatory question and ends with a clinical diagnosis, one where I am to blame, and she is the victim.

  “I only had Bethany’s best interests at heart. That day, I—”

  “This isn’t about that day,” I interrupt, and the tone in my voice shuts down the topic. “Our problems were about you undermining my parenting and siding with Simon.” I force my jaw to relax, my breath to flow, my hands to unclench from the blanket.

  “Okay.” She sighs. “Okay. Talking about this is good. Just tell me how you feel.”

  I turn my head. “Why? So you can forgive yourself? So, after I’m gone, you can feel closure?” I shouldn’t have told her about the cancer. I can’t afford her to park herself in my life and pick the last bits of energy and peace from my bones. “A dying woman should be afforded one wish.” I lift my chin and eye her as squarely as I can. “I want you to leave me alone. Go back to wherever you’ve been for four years. Reinvent history and paint it however you want. You were the perfect grandmother, Simon was the perfect father. I was the terrible beast you both kept Bethany safe from.”

  “Helena, I—”

  “I. Want. You. To. Leave.”

  “I was wrong in how I raised you.” She stands, and I pray for her to turn, to exit, to not open up that pinched mouth and say another word. “I should have been different with you. I know that. Parents should adapt to fit their children. You were different from me, and I failed to adapt. I’m sorry for that.”

  It’s not an apology. It’s a point. It’s a monologue, where the parent in this example is me, and the child is Bethany. She wants me to accept her apology, to agree with her, so that she can then whip around and spear me with the same logic.

  I turn my head to the side, pull at the pillow, getting it into position and then lowering myself onto my side. “Goodnight, Mother.”

  In the dim light, I see her silhouette move in front of the fire. She bends over, and when she straightens, she’s holding a stack of papers. I close my eyes and think through the content I was reviewing before the movie. Bethany’s third year of life. Simon’s overspending. The tension in our marriage. The love letter in his pocket.

  “I read this.” Her voice has lost some of its self-righteousness.

  “Good for you.”

  “You’re writing about us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe it’s cathartic.”

  “You plan to publish this?”

  I tilt my head and look at her. “Are you worried it will be bad for business?”

  She shakes her head tightly, and her earrings make a rustling sound. “I retired a few years ago. When… well. You know.”

  Oh yes. I know.

  “I want you to be happy, Helena. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Happy. I can’t think of the last time I was happy. Riding on the back of that four-wheeler, I’d felt a burst of something. Finishing a novel always filled me with a strong sense of accomplishment. In the movie tonight, there’d been a moment when I hadn’t been able to stop myself and had laughed. But happy? Happiness wasn’t possible anymore. Happiness left when Bethany did.

  I think of my daughter. I wasn’t the perfect mother. In some ways, I failed her as often as this woman failed me. In other ways, I failed her a million times worse. I roll over, curling away from her and onto my side, my back to the fire.

  “I’m happy.” The lie spreads as smoothly as butter. “And I forgive you.”

  It isn’t a lie for her. The lie is for Bethany, a deposit into the bank of karma, an offering to the gods, an understanding that—if I ever had a last moment with Bethany, I’d need her forgiveness, I’d need her acceptance, I’d need her love.

  “Goodbye, Mother.” I don’t tell her that I love her. I can’t.

  I wait, listening to the crackle of the fire, and stiffen when her hand brushes over my shoulder, her mouth lowering to my head, a stiff kiss deposited there.

  “Goodbye, Helena. Sleep tight.”

  I don’t move, and when the front door creaks open, I close my eyes. When it pulls tightly shut, I let out my breath and throw off the blanket.

  I take my time on the stairs, moving carefully to the hall, and unlock Bethany’s bedroom door. I lower myself to the floor and crawl onto the sleeping bag, my eyes on her desk, on the crude artwork pinned to the wall above it. A family, four bodies together, a giant heart encircling us all.

  She had wanted it. Happiness. Togetherness.

  But putting things on paper don’t make them so.

  Simon hunches over the steering wheel, his knuckles white, jaw clenched. A dinner at my mother’s, ruined. All because Oscar Wilde had anal sex.

  “I can’t believe you talked to her about keeping Bethany.” I slump against the seat. A family should be a fortress. We should stand together, fight together, protect each other. Instead they’ve been scheming—comparing notes on my parenting, bringing up all my little mistakes, and making their own decisions about what’s best for my daughter.

  “I can’t believe you talked to Bethany about that.”

  THAT. As if it was unspeakable. “The trials were a major part of his life. It’s an important lesson to teach her. You expected me to teach her about Oscar Wilde and not—“

  “She’s a CHILD!” He screams the word l
oud enough that I stop. “She shouldn’t know the details of anal sex!”

  “I didn’t go into great detail,” I point out. “I simply answered her questions.” Of which she had had a lot. I don’t blame her, the appeal of the act confuses me too.

  “I don’t want to talk about any of it now.” Liar. He doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Bethany. “We can discuss her care closer to school starting.”

  “No. I feel like Bethany should be included in this.” I twist in the seat, and look back at her.

  “Included in what?” Bethany pipes in, setting down her block with interest.

  “Nothing.” Simon reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing it tightly in warning.

  I yank it away, my wrist twisting painfully in the action. “We’re discussing you staying with JayJay during the day when Daddy starts teaching this fall.” Teaching. A strong word for the fluffy crap of fourth-grade curriculum.

  “Why?” Her favorite word.

  “Yes, why Simon?” I raise my eyebrows at him and the car shakes as he passes a car unnecessarily closely, the jerk back into our lane done with spite. “Why do you think Bethany would be better with Janice than with me?” In another scenario, I might not have cared if Bethany spent her days with my mother. Mother should have approached me from the stance of offering to help. Instead, she and Simon had come at me offensively, citing Bethany’s well-being as the reason she shouldn’t stay with me.

  “You’re busy with writing and we aren’t discussing this now.” He looks up, into the rearview mirror. “Bethany, go back to your toy.”

  “I’m not busy with writing, I’ll be fine.” I clap my hands and smile at my daughter. “Good! Glad we settled that.”

  She smiles at me, an automatic movement, but I see the look in her eyes. The hesitation. I think, in that moment, she sees my fear.

  Simon doesn’t. He only sees an escalation of The Problem.

  Me.

  “I feel like we’re jumping a bit.” Mark flips over a fresh page and draws a line, his pen sketching out a familiar shape. An outline. A year ago, it would have filled my heart with joy. Now, I close my eyes. “You and Simon meet.” He adds the items to the page. “You marry. You get pregnant. You have Bethany. You go away for treatment. You come back. You have two seemingly happy years that we buzz through—with the obvious exception being the letter you found.” He looks up at me. “And now you’re focusing on her at four years old.”