Unquiet Ghosts

by Glenn Meade

  You learn a lot when you lose someone you love. You learn even more when you lose your entire family. I learned that to come through the trials my husband had come through in Iraq, to get past losing friends and comrades in battle, he must have had incredible strength and fortitude.

  And I had neither.

  I crumbled.

  Haunted by absence, I used to visit the cemetery at all hours of the day and night, lying down on the ground beside the graves. I would stretch myself out on the cold earth and feel it seep into my bones as it must have seeped into theirs, wherever they lay. For such a long time, my heart felt as brittle as charcoal, my soul as gouged as the earth covering the fresh graves of this burial ground.

  Twice I actually thought I saw Jack in the woods behind our house, where he used to stroll and play with our children. I ran out, calling his name, following the mystery figure deep into the woods, but there was no one there.

  People who knew me then must have thought I was crazy. And for a time I was. My doctor recommended antianxiety medication. I rejected the prescription. I wanted to feel the pain. It was all I had, all that allowed me to recall the happiness of my past life.

  And now, though my dreams still reclaimed me briefly, especially on anniversaries, they came less often. I miss you, Jack. I miss you, Amy and Sean.

  I would always miss them.

  Standing there, lost in the limbo between the present and the past, I heard a noise behind me and turned. I never imagined who would be standing there, not for a second, and it sent a shock through me like a bolt of lightning . . .

  4

  * * *

  The past

  Every cause has an effect; there’s always a backstory. I learned that cliché my first year in college, when I took a course in fiction writing. And it’s true, because when I look back on what happened at my wedding, I can see with hindsight all the signs that triggered my mother’s fury, as clearly as if they were ablaze in neon.

  She was in a bitter mood all week—I remember that—and stoked the fires of her resentment by sipping vodka from a hip flask during the wedding ceremony. To make matters worse, when we adjourned to the hotel reception, my mother made a drunken pass at the handsome pastor who had conducted our service. Unfazed by his mortified rejection, she hit on the band’s cute young guitarist, grabbing his arm and urging him to dance.

  “Come on, pretty boy. Let’s see those feet burn the floor. I want to see flames, honey.”

  The horrified youth brushed her away as if she were a vampire trying to locate a neck vein. “Get the heck off me, you crazy old woman.”

  I don’t know what may have hurt my mom more, “crazy” or “old.” She sure wasn’t old at fifty-four, although her love of alcohol had added a decade to her face. But I realize now that my mother was desperate for some kind of diversion that day, needed distraction from the drunken rage that consumed her and maybe her awareness of the cruel sin she was about to commit.

  I remember my bridesmaid Courtney, my best friend, squeezing my arm when she witnessed my horrified reaction to my mother’s flirting with the pastor and guitarist. Courtney was a man’s woman, down-to-earth, vivacious, big into nails and hair. We called her Crazy C, because Courtney had a wild side, was forever up to mischief, partying, getting into trouble. But she always tried to ease my embarrassment by making light of my mother’s drunken recklessness. “Hey, sweetie, look on the bright side. No matter what, you never can fault Martha Beth’s excellent taste in good-looking guys.”

  Courtney, who fell in love with my brother, Kyle, and desperately wanted to marry him; the same Courtney I was to catch in flagrante delicto, locked in a passionate embrace with my father, their clothes half off on a warm summer night, as fireflies danced and sparked along the lakeshore where I found them, kissing like love-hungry teenagers. It was the only time I ever felt disappointed by my father.

  But that was another story, way down the tracks, a bizarre strand in the tapestry of our family’s unending theater.

  * * *

  Courtney and I had been friends since preschool. She was another base brat. Her father was an officer serving with CID, the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, and he investigated crimes committed within the military’s branches. It was a career Courtney would follow when she became a CID officer herself, even though I’d never thought I’d see her don a military uniform in a zillion years. I guess DNA’s thread is stronger than we think.

  Back in our base brat schooldays, even the razor-wire confines of a military compound could not contain our free spirits. My father liked to joke that if we were ever imprisoned, we’d be leading the escape committee.

  High school was where it all happened for Courtney and me. She liked to party, thought nothing of stealing her parents’ car and taking us dancing or to drink beer by the lake. With Courtney, I felt the thrill of being a gangster’s moll. Once, when my folks went away to a weekend party, we held a party of our own in my parents’ house, and it exemplified Courtney’s chutzpah.

  She organized more than forty friends, everything right down to the jars of plump maraschino cherries and the little colorful umbrellas for the weird cocktails she liked to make. And added to the mix was carefully chosen slow music for when Courtney turned the lights down.

  Every boy I knew lusted after Courtney, but she only had the hots for my brother, Kyle, and he felt the same way about her. Sometimes I’d hear them singing together on the back porch, Kyle strumming a guitar my dad gave him one Christmas, and he and Courtney would usually attempt a duet, some country-and-western hit or an old Joni Mitchell or Bruce Springsteen song. If they couldn’t reach the high notes, they’d always end up laughing their way through the song.

  They laughed a lot in each other’s company. They seemed good for each other. And Kyle may have been shy, but when Courtney was around, he became a prankster.

  Once, when a carnival came to town, complete with a giant Ferris wheel and bumper cars, Kyle and Courtney drove to a hardware store and bought a six-inch threaded screw bolt. The Casey brothers ran the carnival—twitchy, hairy-backed men in grubby vests who carried oily tan leather tool bags on their hips. They chain-smoked like expectant fathers as they prowled around their ancient, creaking rides with watchful eyes, as if half expecting an imminent disaster to match the Hindenburg.

  When Kyle and Courtney stepped off the Ferris wheel after a couple of rides, Kyle held up the screw bolt: “Excuse me, sir, but I found this.”

  The older Casey studied the bolt with the kind of bug-eyed horror reserved for a soldier who has just mistakenly pulled a grenade pin. Then he stared up at the Ferris wheel and screamed, “Stop the ride! Stop the darn thing now! Everyone off! Get ’em off, ya hear me? Off, for the love of God!”

  Kyle and Courtney scuttled away to watch from behind a wall, bent double in laughter as the Casey brothers scrambled all over the big wheel, checking every nut and bolt.

  * * *

  Most girls wouldn’t be overly fond of their brothers making out with their best friends. It didn’t bother me. Courtney was loyal, never really drank too much, never smoked weed, and didn’t put herself around—although she probably did pretty much everything else.

  On the back porch on the day of our planned party, Courtney puffed on one of her daddy’s best Panama cigars, coughed, and blew out smoke, offering me her best advice. “When I stick on a slow one, just remember to ignore that dumb warning the base chaplain gave us, OK?”

  “Which warning was that?”

  Courtney mimicked the pastor’s Southern twang. “ ‘Just you young ladies be cautious, y’all hear? When you’re dancing slow with a boy, always remember to leave enough room between the two of you for Jesus.’ ” She giggled. “As far as I’m concerned, Jesus can sit this one out.”

  In case my parents came home early—a possibility if my mother wasn’t being served hard liquor—we
posted lookouts at the windows. A little before midnight, just when things were in full swing and Courtney had mixed another bowl of punch—one of her weirdly blended cocktails, complete with cherries skewered by tiny fancy umbrellas—someone saw the flash of headlights come up the drive and shouted, “Hey, it’s them!”

  Courtney and I screamed, “Red alert! Hide!” at the tops of our lungs, and the music died as herds of suddenly stone-cold-sober teens trampled all over one another in their rush to hide, as if a pack of marauding zombies were about to invade the house.

  When my parents strode in, they were accompanied by my mother’s boozing buddies: Courtney’s parents, Captain and Mrs. Vicky Adams. It seemed the party hadn’t been up to scratch, and my tipsy mother had decided they should all beat it back to our place for some “proper” drinks.

  They lingered a little while in my father’s study, with its Irish and American flags crossed like swords on one wall. My parents showed the Adamses photographs of their anniversary trip to Ireland—kissing the Blarney Stone, posing on the Cliffs of Moher and castle ramparts high above emerald-green fields, raising whiskies in an Irish bar, my mom with a grin on her the width of her face and a pint of Guinness in one hand and astride a donkey. And my mother’s favorite memento of her Ireland visit: a six-inch bronze cast of a legendary Celtic bird sitting on the branch of a thorn tree.

  But it turned out my mother also wanted to show Mrs. Adams our remodeled bathrooms. “Wait until you see the new baths and showers, Vicky!”

  When my mother stepped into the main bathroom, a cigarette dangling between her lips with a long ash at its end, and pulled back the shower curtain, she found Courtney standing there with Kyle, both clutching huge mud-colored cocktails.

  For a second or two came a stunned silence. My mother broke it, the instant her cigarette ash fell off. “What in the name of—”

  “Hey, Mom. Welcome to the party.” Kyle giggled, his face flushed crimson red as usual whenever he really got embarrassed. The cocktail probably didn’t help, either, but soon Kyle’s expression changed, and he looked as if his privates had just been caught in a mangle or he’d been found naked with an au pair.

  Mrs. Adams wisely two-stepped it backward out the bathroom door. She was more than happy to let my mom deal with it.

  “Mom!” Courtney called pleadingly after her mother, but Mrs. Adams departed with a tipsy, carefree wave to her daughter. “Your problem, honey.”

  Courtney tried a brazen smile on my mom. “Hey, Mrs. K. You’re looking terrific. Did you have a good night?” She offered my mother a boozy, wide-eyed, blue-mascara stare.

  “Kyle, get out and wait outside.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Do it!”

  Kyle slinked out. You didn’t argue with my mom when she was in her cups, unless you totally had a death wish. My mother snatched the glass from Courtney’s hand, sipped the contents, and made a face. “What kind of crap is in here?”

  “Soda.”

  “And what?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “And?”

  “Vodka. A little crème de menthe.”

  “With a cherry?”

  “I figured I needed the vitamin C.”

  “It looks like something they’d mix in an asylum.” My mother turned and raged at me, giving her best Bette Davis impression. “Get Courtney out of here and any other sissy little losers you’ve got stashed in the house, or I’m going to find your father’s gun and start shooting.”

  Every high school kid I knew thought my mother was crazy, and they didn’t need to hear gunfire for proof. Which is why dozens of kids came scrambling out of their hiding places and raced out the front and back doors, like rats deserting a sinking ship.

  My mother drained the glass and tossed it into the washbasin, where it shattered to pieces. “And y’all don’t come back in this house until you learn how to mix a proper cocktail, ya hear?”

  5

  * * *

  My father’s blue Ford Taurus pulled up near the cemetery gates. I saw him climb out with a little difficulty, a difficulty he’d never admit to, his prosthetic foot dragging as he moved past the caretaker. For a man who had faced death all his life, my father had a deep dislike of graveyards. I put it down to the fact that he’d probably seen enough death in his career. He rarely, if ever, came here.

  “’Morning, Colonel.”

  “’Morning, George.” My father gave the caretaker a mock salute. People still addressed my father by his military title, although he’d been retired now for years.

  As he came toward me, I saw a brown-wrapped parcel under his right arm. It looked heavy.

  Despite his false limb, Dad walked erect. Or at least he tried to. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with the onset of Parkinson’s disease. It hadn’t progressed yet to a point where it was a serious problem, but he still suffered with the symptoms on occasion—tremor of the hands, jaw, and face, slowness and stiffness of movement that sometimes seemed to affect his balance. And now and then his memory got sluggish. Medication helped, and being a soldier, having all that Celtic blood in his veins, he fought it, as he had fought everything in his life.

  He wore immaculately creased slacks, leather loafers, and a brown leather flying jacket. What made him stand out even more was his signature hat, one of those goofy lumberjack ones with ear flaps, tied together with string and with plaid flannel lining. I used to joke that he looked like Goofy in that hat. “Yeah, maybe, but at least my ears are warm.”

  At sixty-seven, he was grayer and more bushy-browed with each year, but he was still a powerhouse of a man, imposing the moment you laid eyes on him. He had that familiar craggy Celtic face, skewed but handsome. The same kind of look that had freaked my mother out when she first visited Ireland, because, she said, whenever she looked over her shoulder, she kept seeing “that darned actor Spencer Tracy.”

  Dad joined me. He took my hand in his big palm, and squeezed. “Those flowers look good. Thought I’d call by before I hit the road. Say a prayer. Kind of chilly out.”

  Yellow roses were my mom’s favorite. My father wore a beige scarf around his neck, his breath fogging in the cold air. He tugged down at his hat flaps, rubbed his hands, and blew air into his fists. “Even colder up north. Snow in parts.”

  “You’d better take care on the roads.”

  “You know me. Like the best of criminals who evade the law, I never do more than sixty.” He winked.

  I managed a smile. “So it should take you about three days to reach Michigan.”

  “Day and a half, tops, with the wind to my back. Should be there by tomorrow noon.”

  For a man who’d jumped out of airplanes in his military career, my father had a strange aversion to flying, and he drove everywhere. His hatred of flying became even more pathological after Jack and my children disappeared. His excuse: “Driving gives me time to think.”

  About what, I wondered? He was retired. Aside from tinkering in his workshop in the back of the barn, hiking, devouring books, some occasional travel, and his lady friend Ruby, what did he need to think about?

  He was always close to Amy and Sean, to Sean in particular. I recall not long after he retired, my dad was lying on the couch in his study, reading yet another book while recovering from a bout of prostatitis, a blanket over his groin. Sean was snuggled up to him.

  “Why do you read so much, Grandpa?”

  “Because reading is good for your brain, son. Keeps you alert.”

  “Any other reason?”

  “Yeah.” I remember Dad picked up a golf ball from a mug on his study desk. “See this golf ball, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, as a man gets older, his prostate enlarges, to about the size of a golf ball. At the same time as his prostate enlarges with age, his brain shrinks. When the two are about equal in size, that’s when a man starts
to take an interest in historical novels. You’ll get that one when you’re older, son.”

  Sean had a bemused look, but Jack cracked up.

  Now my father’s face became more serious as he rubbed my arm. “You doing OK, honey?”

  I wasn’t—visiting the graves always troubled me—but I nodded. “You called Ruby? How is she?”

  “They’ll operate tomorrow. Depending on how it goes, they’ll start chemo. But she’s a tough lady. She’ll hang in there. And come out the other side fighting, you wait and see.”

  “It’ll help, you being there.”

  It seemed a total irony. A year ago my father went online to a seniors dating site and met a woman from Michigan, the first real relationship he’d had since my mother’s death. There had been occasional dates he picked up at the bridge club. The ones he discovered to be serious drinkers he ditched. The wacky ones lasted a little longer, but Dad didn’t tolerate troubled women for long. I guess he’d had enough of it in his marriage.

  But Ruby Alice was just what he needed—sweet, sane, vivacious, a widow with a grown family. Ruby was good for him. Her husband was ex-military. They shared interests—hiking, movies, books, travel. Best of all, she had a sense of humor and was able to handle my father’s occasional Irish moodiness.

  Then, four weeks ago, just when they were talking marriage and she was getting ready to move down south to join my father, Ruby got the crushing news that she had ovarian cancer. I saw the weariness and anguish in my father’s face. As if he’d run a long race and the course wasn’t getting any easier—first his wife, now a prospective wife. But once a fighter, always a fighter. Colonel Frank Kelly wasn’t the kind to ever give up.