She came over to the window and looked down at the street. I live on the twelfth floor of one of Cedar Hill’s nicer apartment buildings, and the windows in my bedroom and living room all offer a good view of the downtown area.
I pointed. “See that old brick building down the street? With those stone steps?”
“Gargoyle Castle!” she shouted, giggling.
“Wha-huh?”
“Gargoyle Castle, you freakazoid. It’s got those stone gargoyles up near the top, see? So I always called it Gargoyle—”
“—I follow the line of reasoning, thanks so much—and stop calling me ‘freakazoid,’ it’s rude and gets old in a hurry.”
She smiled. “Says you.”
The truth was, I’d forgotten about the gargoyles that squat over the stone archway of what used to be the Building and Loan, so for a moment, I was seeing it through her eyes, and it was, as she might put it, way cool. But the feeling passed. It always did.
“Okay,” I said. “Look down at the steps of Gargoyle Castle and tell me what you see.”
She leaned closer to the window, concentrating for all she was worth, and then said: “That guy sitting there with that tin cup? Is he what you wanted me to see?”
“Yes. His name was Leonard but he liked being called ‘Lenny’. Lenny fought in Vietnam, did two tours of duty. That cup—which is steel, by the way, not tin—belonged to him. It was part of his C-rations kit. You know what C-rations are?”
“Yeah. I saw this movie one time, with my mom, on TV, about these soldiers in World War Two. Lee Marvin was in it—Mom always watched Lee Marvin movies. She thought he was a hottie. I always thought he looked like someone who was mean but wished he wasn’t. Anyway, they had those C-ration kits in the movie that they ate from.” She seemed so very proud that she was able to answer my question, so I made sure to look suitably impressed.
I nodded toward Lenny. “He carried that cup inside a pocket of his vest. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a pretty big dent in the side. That’s because it deflected a bullet that would have blown his hip to pieces and probably crippled him. He never went anywhere without that cup afterward. He called it his bad luck shield.”
“His what?”
“His good luck charm.”
“Ahhhh….” She looked down at Lenny once again. “So when you guys opened Lenny’s box, he chose his cup, his good luck charm, right?”
“Not exactly. The cup was the first thing Lenny saw, and he was…he was really happy to see it again, so he just grabbed it without thinking.”
She gave a soft but genuine gasp. “It wasn’t the thing he was supposed to pick?”
“No, and because he grabbed the wrong thing without thinking, he’s stuck here. He hangs out on those steps…always. And he always will. Maybe not those same steps, but he’ll always be waiting around…somewhere.”
“Because he can’t take it back?”
I nodded. “Because he can’t take it back.”
“That’s so sad. Does he have anyone to talk to?”
“I talk to him almost every day. Sometimes other people like him come by.”
“Really?”
“You’d be surprised how many people like you and Lenny wander the streets around here, Missy.”
“And you see all of them?”
“Oh, no, not even close. When Lenny’s got a visitor whose…I mean, I can only see and talk with those whose belongings…wait a second—look.” Sure enough, Lenny, ever the social butterfly, was chatting away.
“Hey,” said Missy. “Who’s that pretty lady he’s talking to? Oh, wow…isn’t her hair beautiful? She looks like she’s going to the Oscars or something fancy like that.” She looked at me. “Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
“I have no idea. I can’t see her.”
“But she’s right there!”
“I don’t doubt it, Missy, honestly, I don’t. But the thing is, whoever she is, I wasn’t the one who took care of her personal effects.”
“Her what?”
“Her things. I wasn’t the one who picked up the box of her stuff.”
“`Kay…so how come I can see her?”
“Because the dead can all see each other.”
“Huh.” She stared for a moment longer, and then her face brightened. “So it’s kinda like a secret club? That’s so cool. Hey, can we go around today and see how many I can spot but you can’t? It’ll be like a game you play in a long car trip, ‘Bury the Cow’ or ‘I Spy.’”
“We can do whatever you want, Missy. Speaking of—” I dropped the curtains back into place. “—are you sure you want to go to your own funeral?”
“Yep. I wanna see Mom again…and I wanna see if mean old Eric feels bad now about what he did to me with the water bug. That was so disgusting.” She gave an overly-theatrical shudder. When that got no reaction from me, she repeated it, only this time throwing one arm up, the back of her hand pressed against her forehead. “Oh, suh,” she said in a not-bad imitation of a Southern Belle, “I do believe I ham about to fa-haint.”
“‘Ham’ is right,” I said, trying to stop my (according to her) constipated smile. “That’s some fierce overacting, mah de-ah.”
She flung herself against my dresser, one hand still plastered to her forehead, the other now pushing forward to fend off the eee-vell Yankee. “You must leave me my honor, suh! You must show some decency!”
I applauded, and she took a broad, grandiose bow.
“I was gonna be an actress on the soaps.”
“You’re certainly pretty enough. I’ll bet you would have been great.”
“Me too.” No sadness, no regret, just a simple statement of fact. Most of the people I deal with usually crack at a moment of epiphany like
(Me too)
this, their bitterness, anger, fear, and grief reducing them for a time to a crumpled handful of spoiled human material whose potential they now knew would never be realized. I’d been listening to it for nearly three years now, this cumulative symphony of human misery, hurt, loneliness, terror, rage, despair, all of it in search of an outlet, something to give it purpose, an endless sonata of sorrow and hopelessness composed by those whose existence has ground to a halt in a series of sputtering little agonies, leaving them with nowhere to go, nothing to hold onto, and no one to speak with except some stranger whose job it is to gather the detritus left behind by the odd ones, the damaged and devastated ones, the ruined ones, the old, the alone, and the forgotten.
Yeah, I’m a real party monster, a walking chuckle-fest. Just ask my wife. Maybe she’ll answer you…if there’s anything left of her.
Melissa was the youngest I’d dealt with, and she still had all the pent-up, eager, impatient energy of a child. It was probably that very impatience that caused her to show up so soon after her death; when I retrieved the discarded box of her personal effects from beside the hospice dumpster, her body still lay inside her room waiting to be picked up by the funeral home. I put the box in the trunk of my car, drove home, and found her sitting in the middle of my living room when I walked through the door.
“Hey,” she said softly to me now (as she did then). Something in her voice warned me she was about to ask a question I didn’t want to answer.
“We need to start getting ready—well, I need to, anyway.” I started toward the bathroom and was mere inches from a clean getaway when Missy asked:
“How did Rebecca die?”
And there it was.
But I was ready. Snapping my fingers as if I’d just remembered something, I made a sharp right turn into the hallway and called back, “I almost forgot—I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?”
She was in the living room before I was, her sudden presence startling the hell out of me.
“Ah, damn—Missy! I asked you to please not do that anymore.” Three years, and it still unnerves me, the way they can pop in and out of a room whenever they want.
“I’m sorry,” she said
. “I just got all excited when you said—”
“It’s all right. Now…
“Close your eyes.”
Find me the kid who can resist those three words. Missy did as I asked, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. If I listened hard enough, I bet I could have heard her ethereal molecules going, Oh, goody, goody, goody….
I pulled the wrapped package from its hiding place behind the television and held it out to her. This was as much an experiment as it was an evasive tactic. “Okay…open them!”
She did, her eyes growing almost absurdly wide as she jumped up and down, practically squealing, “Oh, goody! A present!”
And took it from my hands.
So I was right: if it’s an action they performed without thinking when alive, they could continue to do so after death.
I’d expected her to make quick, ferocious work of the wrapping paper as would any child thrilled over a present, but instead she looked it over, studying it. “This is real nice paper. You did a great job wrapping it. The ribbon’s beautiful.” She studied it a little more, a jeweler determining the carat-value of a diamond, then held it up by her ear and gave it a little shake. “Hmmm…I wonder what it is.”
By now I was ready to tear the paper off the damned thing, but then just as quickly realized she’d not only reaffirmed one of my theories, but also just shown me what an extraordinary little girl she was. Had been. She knew, at age eight she knew that a surprise equaled a mystery, and any good mystery was to be savored as much as solved. I froze at the sight of her smile; I had never seen such a radiant smile before…or if I had, was too full of myself to
(You don’t have any friends except for that lady who’s asleep in the other room and she’s never awake so for all I know, she hates your guts…)
notice it. It was the kind of smile that told you she’d just been let in on this Big Secret, something so wonderful and great and full of happy promises that nothing would ever seem bad or sorrowful to her again; and standing there in my living room, nailed to the spot by the sight of her smile, her joy, her ability to savor the wonder and anticipation, my defenses taken by surprise, dumbstruck by the sudden rush of emotions, I fell a little bit in love with her.
Don’t misunderstand, there was nothing even remotely sexual about it, nothing physical or lustful or perverted; I fell in love with her the same way some people fall in love with a piece of music, or a certain time of day or season of the year—twilight in autumn—or even an idea. It was the kind of startling, forceful, promise-of-salvation love a person experiences maybe two or three times in their life, should they be graced with a long one. My breath caught in my throat and my arms would not move. I refused to blink. Everything I’d once believed to be good and pure and redeeming of life stood less than two feet away from me, in the form an eight-year-old girl who would never know her first kiss, her first dance, or the first time she held a boy’s hand; for her there would be no late-night study sessions cramming for the big exam, no prom, no graduation parties; no first job, first paycheck, first promotion; none of that for Messy Missy. For her there was only this moment, this breath, in this place, with this wonderful mystery wrapped in shabby-looking paper I’d grabbed from a discount bin at the last minute before getting in the checkout line.
“Are you okay?” she said, taking a step toward me.
I blinked, wiped at my eyes, exhaled, and took a step back. “Uh, um…yes, yes. I’m fine. I guess my mind just wandered off for a moment.” I flashed my best Constipated Smile. “Well, go ahead—open it.”
“Okay.” Even then she didn’t rip the paper to shreds; she carefully unwrapped it—a corner here, a corner there—until the paper was loose enough for her to reach in and pull out the gift, which she did with her eyes closed.
“Oh, this is gonna be good, isn’t it?”
“For the love of God—open your eyes and find out!”
“Geez, don’t bust a vein.” She opened her eyes, saw what it was, and then squealed loudly, jumping up and down while simultaneously twirling. “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie!”
“You said you never got to see it, right?”
“No, but I’m gonna watch it while you take your shower!” She stopped her twirling and held the DVD against her chest as if she expected some stinking pirate to come sailing out of nowhere and be a-relievin’ her of her treasure a-fore makin’ ‘er walk the plank, yar. “Oh, no—wait! Wait! Hang on! You know what would be great? Oh, this’ll be way cool! Listen—we could make popcorn tonight and watch it then. Mom and me, we had this special recipe for buttered popcorn, I could make it for us. You’ll love my popcorn, you will, you will, I swear you will!”
I pointed at the television. “But I thought you wanted to watch it now.”
“Well, duh, I do, but SpongeBob, he’s more fun to watch with someone else, not just all by yourself. We could—oh, hey! Hang on! We could maybe see if Rebecca feels like watching it with us—we could even invite Lenny and his new girlfriend.” She gasped, eyes growing even wider. “We could have a party! Oh, rock out! Let’s do that, okay? Let’s have a party tonight. A SpongeBob/Missy’s Funeral party!”
“You want to have a party to watch SpongeBob and celebrate your funeral?”
She turned into a human Bobblehead figure. On way too much sugar. “It’ll be so awesome!”
“And you called me ‘weird.’”
“Oh, this is, like, one of the awesomest presents ever! You rock! Thank you so much!”
And before I could move, she ran forward and gave me a great big hug and the next thing I knew I was
(...crying out but there was no sound no matter how much she tried, and she wondered what had happened to her voice and why wasn’t anybody here she had to go to the bathroom and ohGod, it hurt, it hurt, ithurtithurtithurt so much, and she tried to roll over and press the button so the nurses would come but she couldn’t move her legs and there was sudden liquid fire spreading down the backs of her thighs and she started crying because she’d just soiled her bed again and ohGod it burned so much when her bowels let go and she closed her eyes and tried to think of something funny, something cool, like winter snow and goofy snowmen, but then there were arms, strong arms, helping her up, but she vomited all over herself and the nurse and Mommy, where are you, I hurt, Mommy, I hurt, and now it was me that hurt, I felt all of it, the sickness and pain, the vomiting and pissing and shitting, then she’d get so cold and couldn’t stop shaking and it felt like her teeth were going to smash to smithereens every time they chattered together, but then came the shot and she felt warm, so warm again, with fresh sheets and a new gown and her SpongeBob slippers keeping her feet snug, and she began to fade away for a little while, then awoke to see Mommy sitting beside her bed, holding her hand, telling her that she was being such a strong, brave little girl, that she’d feel better soon and did she want another shot, they could give her another shot now if she wanted, and Missy said yes, please, and could I have some pudding, too, I like pudding a lot, I promise not to spill any….)
on my hands and knees on the floor, my body still wracked with the physical agony of her last few hours, but it would fade, I knew it would, this is why I always made it a point to never touch any of them, or to let them touch me; there were always remnants, some strong, some weaker, but none of them coming close to what had just chewed through me.
“Omigod!” shouted Missy, dropping to her hands and knees beside me. “Omigod, I’m…I’m so sorry! I am. Please don’t be mad. Is there anything I can do? Do you need me to get you—?” She reached out.
“Don’t…don’t touch me, please? It’ll happen again.” I turned my head toward her and tried to smile but it hurt too much. “It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the hug, okay? It was really sweet. But…you…you can’t…I can’t….” I couldn’t finish, and so lay stomach-down on the floor.
Missy leaned down and whispered, “Is it okay if I stay with you?”
“…sure, hon, whatever you want…”
/> “Then I’ll be right here.”
“…okay...”
“Hey, Neal?” It was the first time she’d called me by name.
“…what is it…?”
“I’m sorry that Rebecca killed herself.”
The other reason I try to avoid touching or being touched by them: they always pick up on some remnant within me.
“…so’m I…” Christ, why wasn’t the pain fading yet?
“Do you know why she did it?”
I shook my head, which—considering the threat of the migraine on top of the rest of it—was perhaps not the best course of action. “…don’t know, Missy…I really don’t…” I said, lying.
“Shh, there-there. You rest, okay? I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
“…don’t know why she did it…there’s…so much I don’t know….”
The pain became a wave of cold nausea, and I passed out beneath its force.
* * *
Here is what I do know:
They come to me as they were at the moment of their deaths, that is the only thing on which there has never been any variation; they retain their five senses (if they had all of them while still alive); until Missy, the usual period between death and turning up in my life was between ten days and one month (it was exactly twenty-three days after her suicide that Rebecca showed up in the guest room, where I’d found her body), but there are at least a dozen who have yet to show up, even after three years; most of them don’t like to talk too much the first few days, Missy and Lenny being the exceptions there; and—again, excluding Missy and Rebecca—all of them died alone and forgotten, some in the hospital, some in the nursing home, some in the hospice, no one coming forward to claim either their bodies or the boxes containing their personal effects.
Here is what I have learned:
Death is not instantaneous. The cells go down one by one, and it takes a while before everything’s finished. If a person wanted to, they could snatch a bunch of cells hours after somebody’s checked out and grow them in cultures. Death is a fundamental function; its mechanisms operate with the same attention to detail, the same conditions for the advantage of organisms, and the same genetic information for guidance through the stages that most people equate with the physical act of living. So I asked myself, if it’s such an intricate, integrated physiological process—at least in the primary, local stages—then how do you explain the permanent vanishing of consciousness? What happens to it? Does it just screech to a halt, become lost in humus, what? Nature doesn’t work like that. It tends to find perpetual uses for its more elaborate systems, and that gave me an idea: maybe human consciousness is somehow severed at the filaments of its attachments and then absorbed back into the membrane of its origin. I think that’s all they are by the time they come to me—the severed consciousness of a single cell that hasn’t died but is instead vanishing totally into its own progeny.
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