by Tim McGregor
“MOM!”
The sidedoor creaked open and a woman stepped out, shielding her eyes against the sun. Her hair was a deep brown, in contrast to the boy’s fairness, and she was young. Younger even, Billie guessed, than herself. “Josh, honey? Who are you talking to?”
She smiled when she saw Billie standing there. “Hi,” she said. “You looking for somebody?”
Billie shifted her weight to the other leg, feeling suddenly like a trespasser. “No. I was just looking at the house.”
“She didn’t come for lunch,” said the boy.
“You live here?” Billie asked. Stupid question. Of course the woman lived here.
“Yeah,” the woman said, taking her son’s hand. “Been here about six years now. No, seven.”
Billie waved her hand. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to see the house. I lived here when I was a kid.”
“Really?” The woman brightened at the thought. “I’m sure its worse for wear from when you were here.”
“No. The place looks great. Better than I remember.” She took a step back toward the road. She didn’t want to leave but it seemed silly to impose on these people. They seemed nice. “Anyway. I’ll get outta your hair.”
“What’s your name?”
“Billie.”
The woman lifted the boy up and planted him on her hip and then held out her hand. “I’m Amanda. Come inside. I was just going to feed him a snack.”
“No bananas,” the boy said.
Bracing herself for an onslaught of memories, Billie followed the woman through the side door into the kitchen but her expectations deflated quickly. Nothing looked familiar, no flood of hazy images came rushing at her. It was a different house now, with nothing to show that she had ever been here, let alone spent the first eight years of her life within it.
She had left no impact on the place. Neither had her mother.
Amanda set the boy down onto a chair at the kitchen table. “Where you from?”
“Hamilton,” Billie said. She smiled at the boy as he reached for a plate of crackers and cubed cheese. “How old are you, Josh?”
The boy crammed the cheese into his mouth, oblivious to anything but the food. Amanda set three glasses of water down and pushed one toward Billie. “He’s four and a half. And still forgetful of his manners.” She ruffled the boy’s hair. “Slow down, honey. Don’t put too many in your mouth.”
Billie’s hopes for a wash of warm memories about her childhood home withered away. The kitchen had been redone recently, reconfigured as far as she could recall. The refrigerator had been on the other side of the sink, hadn’t it? The update looked nice but seemed unfinished, like the contractor had left before the last coat of paint was done or the final hardware put on the cupboards.
“The place looks really great,” Billie said. “Did you do the renovations?”
“My husband and I.” Amanda nodded at the cupboards. “There’s still the finishing to do. God knows if that will ever happen. Hey, do you want some coffee?”
“Don’t make it on my account.”
“I was just going to make some.” Amanda rose and then nodded at her son. “Just watch he doesn’t cram everything into his mouth.”
As the woman busied herself at the counter and the boy littered the table with crumbs, Billie took a breath to calm herself and opened herself up to the house. It was becoming easier, this slight shift in feeling where she tuned up her radar, probing for something that was hidden from the everyday world. The house felt quiet, her senses falling flat on an ordinary abode. Then a trickle of something, like an electrical charge raising the fine hair on her arm.
There was something here. But was it her mother’s spirit? Billie couldn’t keep her heart from lifting at the notion. The presence she felt was dim and far away but it was warm. Unlike most of the clammy dead she came across, this presence was inviting and protective. Loving.
“So when did you live here?” Amanda slid back into her chair. “How old were you?”
“We lived here until I was eight. Just me and my mom.”
“Is it weird? Seeing your old home?”
Billie paused on the thought. “I thought I’d remember it better but I don’t.”
Amanda swept the table before her son, scooping up the crumbs. “Memory’s a funny thing.”
“So you and your husband bought the place a few years ago?”
“Yeah. We started fixing it up, room by room. We couldn’t afford to do it all in one go.” Amanda smiled at her boy. “Then Josh here came along and all our plans went out the window.”
“Was the house in rough shape when you bought it?”
“It was a disaster. Trashed by renters, then it sat empty for years. The mold alone was something awful.” Amanda smiled, brightening again. “But, it was cheap. And Mark promised we would make it our own.”
Billie wrapped her fingers around the water glass, feeling its chill. She debated asking what was tipping off the end of her tongue. “Do you know the history of the place?”
“The neighbour up the street told us a woman had died here years ago. That explained why it had sat on the market for years.”
“Doesn’t that creep you out?”
“Nah,” Amanda shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to move the moment I found out but we stuck with it. It doesn’t belong to the past, whatever it was. It’s our home now.” She held her palm up to her son. “And we love it. Right, buddy?”
Josh smacked her a high-five, knocking over his glass in the process. Water rolled across the table. Amanda dove for the dishcloth to mop it up before it dribbled into her son’s lap but she was too late. Soaked, the boy giggled.
Billie moved the glasses out of the way for the woman to mop up, wondering if she should tell Amanda that it was her mother who had died in this house. Why bother? Why trouble this sweet family with that now? The young mother had it right, the house belonged to them, not the past.
“Time for some dry clothes, mister.” Amanda moved the boy to the floor and patted his behind. “I’m gonna change him. Go have a look around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Please.” Amanda led Josh away by the hand. “Make yourself at home.”
Whatever her childhood home had been, it was gone now. Amanda and her husband had done so much renovating that the house was foreign to her. There was a twinge of memory as she climbed the squeaky stairs and another at the first sight of the second floor hallway but it was vague and fleeting. Nothing to hold onto.
Her old bedroom held no shards of remembrance. It was a little boy’s room now. One wall was painted blue and decorated with stars and spaceships. The bedspread mottled with Transformers or some other robot thing. She could barely remember what her old room looked like.
The door to her mother’s old bedroom was ajar. She pushed it open all the way, hoping for a flash of recognition or a sense of her mother’s spirit. A desperate longing for her mother to be there, sitting on the bed. Waiting for her.
There was no one in the room. Amanda had made the master bedroom completely her own, uncluttered and tastefully done. Billie perched on the corner of the bed and didn’t move.
It was confusing. There was still a nagging sense that someone, if not her mother, was here in the house. Was it possible that she simply didn’t recognize her mom’s presence after all this time?
Her mouth was dry. She swallowed. “Mom?”
The zing of cicadas in the yard filtered in through the open window.
“It’s me,” she whispered. “I wanted to see you. If you’re here.”
Billie let her shoulders droop. There was nothing here for her. Not any memories and not her mother’s spirit. She couldn’t even laugh at the cruelty of it. That the one ghost she wanted desperately to see was not here. And if she wasn’t here at the site where something so terrible had happened, then her mother wasn’t anywhere.
In heaven or in hell? Did either exist or was it just a fairy tale told t
o ease the dying and console the grieving?
Padding downstairs, she wanted to thank Amanda for her hospitality and leave quickly. There was no point in lingering.
The man in the kitchen startled her. He stood at the sink, looking out through the kitchen window. Watching Amanda and Josh in the backyard.
“Oh hi,” she said. “You must be Mark.”
The man jumped back as if he’d seen a ghost. Which was funny, Billie realized, because he was the one who was departed.
Her thoughts jumped to Amanda and the little boy outside. This was why the kitchen renovations remained unfinished. Mark had died. His was the presence she had felt within the house.
He backed up, a look of confusion washing over his face. “You can see me?” he said.
Billie nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shrugged, as if to say ‘that’s life’. His gaze went back to the window.
“You’re watching over them,” she guessed.
“What else can I do?”
“Can I ask you something?” She waited until he looked at her again. “Have you ever seen anyone else here? Anyone like you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Okay.” She crossed to the back door and then stopped. “I am sorry. You have a really beautiful family.”
“Yeah. They’re pretty great, huh?”
Amanda was unravelling the garden hose while Josh ran with a big Transformer in his hands. Billie stepped onto the grass. “I should go. Thanks for letting me see the place, Amanda. It meant a lot.”
“No problem.” Amanda set the hose down. “I hope you found what you were looking for.”
“I did. Thanks.”
Amanda smiled at her and Billie feared she was going to burst into tears. This woman, who had to be younger than she was, had lost her husband and the father of her little boy. How she managed to stand up, let alone smile and be kind to an absolute stranger was beyond Billie’s reckoning.
Unprompted, Amanda leaned in for a quick hug. “Wait a minute. I think I have something of yours. Hang on.”
Billie couldn’t think of anything of hers that would have been left behind as she watched Amanda run back into the house. The woman appeared a minute later and placed something in Billie’s palm.
“Mark found it in the duct work. It must have fallen through the grate.”
Billie looked into her palm. It was a locket, pewter inlaid with turquoise. The chain slithered through her fingers. The jolt of recall was immediate and precise. She remembered this with acute callback.
“Maybe it belonged to you,” Amanda said hopefully. “Or someone in your family.”
“It was my mother’s,” Billie choked. “Is there anything inside?”
“Open it.”
Billie worked the clasp apart with her thumbnail and opened it like an oyster. No tiny pictures. “It’s empty.”
“Look again.” Amanda raised the open locket in Billie’s hand. “See it?”
It was hard to see at first. A strand of very fine hair, coiled up inside the bowl of one half of the locket.
“Looks like baby hair to me,” Amanda said. “Yours?”
Billie felt her mouth fall. “Do you think?”
“Who else’s would it be?” Amanda gave Billie’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m glad we could return it to you.”
She thanked Amanda again and again and waved goodbye to Josh. Walking back to the road, she caught a glimpse of the husband at the window and she climbed into the car and drove away. Once she was out of sight of the old house, she pulled quickly before the tears blurring her eyes caused her to run right off the road.
35
THE HOUSE ON Ravenscliffe Avenue was big and old, built to ostentatious tastes in the last century. Gantry spat onto the azalea tree as he came up the wide steps and rang the doorbell. A heavy gong chimed twice inside the house. Shaking out a cigarette, he patted down his pockets for a moment before his face soured.
“Oh come on. Where is it?”
He must have left it at the bar so he waited there with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, cursing whoever it was who had lifted his lighter. He was about to ring again when the door opened and girl in her teens looked up at him. She took a cautious step back, her nose curling. “Yes?”
“Hi kiddo. Run and get your dad for me, yeah?”
The girl squinted at him, then her face fell. “You know you’re, like, bleeding, right?”
“Then you better hurry along before I bleed out all over your stoop, luv. Tell him his uncle Johnny’s here.”
The door closed and Gantry went back to patting his pockets, refusing to believe he was stuck without fire. When the door opened again, a lean man with greying hair looked shocked at what washed up on his doorstep. “Gantry,” the man hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Needed a band-aid.”
“Go to the hospital for Christ’s sakes!”
“Can`t do that, chief. Too much paperwork. You gonna invite me in or let me die here?”
The man waved Gantry forward before stretching his neck out and sweeping the street to see if any of his neighbours had seen the dishevelled man at his door.
Gantry was ushered quickly into the study where he beelined to the massive hearth, rummaging the stone mantel for matches. “Bingo,” he said, finding a box of long stemmed ones. “So how you been, Jimmy? Still playing the ponies?”
The grey-haired man, whose name was Jameson, shut the door behind him. “Have you lost your mind? You don’t come to my house, where my family is.”
“I figured you wouldn’t deny an old mate a favour.” Gantry stuck the match and lit up. His smile widened when he emphasized the word ‘favour’.
Jameson’s face fell by a degree, regret registering hard. He composed himself. “What happened to your head?”
“Took a nasty one. I doctored it up myself but it started bleeding again. You can patch it up for me, yeah?”
“Does this look like an emergency room to you?” Jameson seethed.
“You telling me a surgeon doesn’t have a first-aid kit?” Gantry drifted across the Persian rug to the array of bottles on a walnut sideboard. He plucked out one from the others. “Where’s the glasses?”
“In the cupboard below,” Jameson snarled as he crossed to the massive desk and flung open one of the drawers. He removed a metal kit and placed it on the desk and then turned on the desk lamp. “Sit here. We’ll make this quick.”
Gantry brought two tumblers to the desk and flopped into the leather chair. He winced as the other man stripped away the square of gauze on his forehead. Blood trickled out from a nasty gash under the hairline. “Aren’t you supposed to wash your hands or something?”
“No,” spat Jameson. He dabbed the blood away and tilted Gantry’s head toward the light. “What happened?”
“Perils of the job. Sometimes when you poke at things, they poke back.” During the dust-up with Mockler in the church last night, Gantry felt something else lash out at him. He had looked up in time to see a nasty face and sweeping claw before something ripped the flesh over his left eye.
“I have to stitch this.”
Gantry downed the drink and shook the empty tumbler. “Go ahead. I just need another one of these before you start.”
“Make it a double. I can’t freeze this before I sew it up.”
Knocking back another, Gantry kept the bottle within reach while the doctor cleaned the wound and set about stitching it closed. His knuckles turned white gripping the armrest and his molars nearly cracked from biting down. He cursed the man as a butcher and a veterinarian but remained still until the man said he was finished. Gantry fell back against the chair, his face greasy with sweat.
The doctor wiped his hands on a towel. “There. We’re even, Gantry. No more.”
“Don’t be daft, Jimmy,” Gantry laughed. He prodded the stitching, feeling the prickly ends of the knots.
“I mean it. Consider the debt pa
id. I can’t have you showing up here, extorting me.”
Gantry rose stiffly from the chair and crossed to the mantel for another long-stemmed match. “Jimbo, do I need to remind you of the shite you were swimming in before?”
The man’s face darkened and looked away, busying himself with his kit. “So this is how it plays? You just keep turning the screws on me until I’m done?”
“Relax. This was an usual unusual circumstance. You won’t hear from me until I need you. But when I do, you’ll be doing triage.”
Jameson lowered himself slowly into the leather chair behind the desk. “This threat you mentioned before. It’s still coming?”
“Yeah. Just a question of when. Where’s your phone?” The other man gestured at the telephone on the desk but Gantry shook his head. “I need your mobile.”
Jameson produced his phone and slid it across the desk. “Can’t you use your own?”
“Lost mine.” Gantry took the phone and dug something small out of his pocket and plugged it into the mobile.
Jameson leaned forward, trying to see what the Englishman was doing. “What is that?”
“Masks the number.” Slips of paper fell from his pocket as he dug for one scrap with a phone number and dialled. When the call went unanswered, he thumbed in a simple text message. Where are you? Then he lowered the phone and waited for a response.
“Who are you calling?”
Gantry leaned back. “A girl. I seem to have misplaced her.”
The other man’s brow arched. “Another one? You have a habit of losing women.”
“Don’t get cute, Jameson. You’re too fucking ugly for it.” Gantry looked at the phone in his hand, impatient for a ping back. “She’s a friend. But I don’t know where she scampered to.”
“She ran away? Imagine that.”
Gantry mumbled something then plucked the device from the phone and tossed the mobile back to its owner. He got to his feet. “Don’t suppose you could give me a lift somewhere?”
“Not a chance. Where’s your car?”
“Lost that too.” He crossed to the door. “Screw it. See ya, Jimmy.”
Jameson shot up. “Whoa, not that that way. Use the back door for Christ’s sakes.”