From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  You could always tell when I was depressed, Maggie. I guess a lot of kids are supposed to be good at that; ultrasensitive to the moods of adults, the way dogs and cats are supposed to predict earthquakes and hurricanes. But unlike most kids in my experience, you usually wanted to make things better instead of worse. This time, sensing my funk, you stopped dancing in the driveway, led me inside, and sat me in front of the TV.

  Well, despite your good intentions, being an object of pity from a four-and-a-half-year-old only made me feel worse. I watched the antics of a cartoon superhero as his powers failed him at the worst possible time and saw only myself. A pathetic fallacy for cartoons.

  The live electrical wire that had been dancing around in my head last night was back; the thoughts whipping at me again.

  It was all true. The spooks were real.

  This thing I’d been evading my whole life was back. It had made an end run around me and was staring me in the face.

  And Maggie, sweet Maggie, it had come to include you too. Why did you seem to handle it so much better than I did? To take it in stride. “You know the way they are,” you’d said, so casually. Was it because you were smarter than me or more ignorant?

  You caught me looking at you instead of the TV and turned it off. “Sorry I made your girlfriend mad at you,” you said.

  “Is that what you think?” I hugged you. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  I banished thoughts of myself and worked to cheer you up. That’s the great gift child-rearing gives a person. The constant reminder that you are not the center of the universe, whatever your self-pity may tell you.

  So, I dug out the board game and sat at the table, steaming cups of Fifth Sun Cocoa at our elbows, trying to save our little men from sinking.

  There was a knock at the door.

  It was still broad daylight, so you wouldn’t think that would have startled me. That it did was partly on account of my mood and partly on account of the fact that this was the island. People didn’t tend to knock around here. It was considered rude to make somebody get up and answer the door. If you knew a person well, you just opened their door, announced yourself, and walked on in. If you didn’t know them well, what were you going to their house for, anyway? Knocking was a thing only someone from away would do.

  I yelled “Come in,” since getting up and going to the door was also a mainland formality. My heart beat a little faster, but I controlled it. I knew it couldn’t be Kathleen.

  It was Kathleen.

  The first thing she did when she came in was go over to talk to you. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Maggie. Did I scare you?”

  “No.” You’d never admit to being scared. “Want me to draw you a different picture?”

  Kathleen laughed. “Maybe later. Can I talk to your uncle for a minute?”

  You frowned. “We’re kinda playin’.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.” It had been a long time since I’d been fought over.

  We went out onto the porch. The sun was starting to set. There were the usual spectacular explosions of color over Brown’s Head Island that any special effects artist in Hollywood would give his left arm for. God just dashed these off in His spare time.

  Kathleen didn’t say anything for the first few moments. I didn’t know if she was going to start screaming at me or grab me and kiss me. Not much chance for the latter, given the situation, but a man can’t help but hope.

  “This is no good,” she said, finally.

  No kissing, I thought.

  “I came here to be alone,” she went on, “and now you’ve got me thinking I’m not. And even if it’s not true, even if it’s just crazy, it’s in my head now. I couldn’t shake it all last night. I’m not alone in the house anymore.”

  Well, the way I was feeling now, I wasn’t sure any of us was alone ever, anywhere. But I didn’t think that was what she wanted to hear. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was running away when I came here, I won’t deny it. If she’s been with me all the time, that would be…” she gave a mirthless laugh. “…that would be very funny.”

  I was pretty sure it wasn’t the sort of laugh I was supposed to join in with, but I felt the need to say something. I remembered Neil’s wisdom earlier in the day. “It might not be a scary thing, Kathleen. I mean, she might not mean any harm.”

  She looked at me with an expression I can only call horrified pity. “Jesus, is that what you think I’m worried about?”

  “I don’t know.” You could write a book about what I don’t know. “What are you afraid of?”

  Her expression hardened. I realized I’d asked a much more difficult question than I’d meant to. But she didn’t storm off. She just took a long time to start talking.

  “I don’t believe…hell, I don’t know what I don’t believe. I used to believe in God, but that was when I was a little girl.”

  She braced herself. “Okay, if you see her…if you can really see her…that means she’s dead, doesn’t it? I mean, you couldn’t be seeing a telepathic image of her alive, but—Jesus, I can’t believe I’m asking this like there’s going to be an answer that means anything.”

  “No, it’s good to ask. And the answer, I think, though I don’t know, the answer, I think, is she must be…not alive….”

  She nodded once and looked up at the sky. “I don’t know what happens after someone dies. I’ve seen people die and I’ve always thought, well, at least it’s over for them. The pain. Whatever they’re trapped in. They can rest now. Sometimes I even hope my mother was right and they go and sit on a cloud and play a harp. But one thing I do know. They’re not supposed to be still hanging around here. Hanging around me. If that happens, then something is seriously wrong.”

  She stopped, and I knew it was time for me to say something. The blank look on my face must have been eloquent.

  “Haven’t you thought about all this?” she asked.

  “Of course, I have. But I don’t really know the answer to the question you asked me. I mean—even if it’s true that we saw this—that Maggie and I saw this girl, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she’s a…ghost.” I knew I was acting like a drug addict in full denial, but I just couldn’t accept it. “Maybe we were somehow catching images from your mind. You know, like you said, like telepathy. Or reading traces of her left in the atmosphere or something…maybe she is alive.” I was babbling and I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop.

  “How long have you been seeing these things?” she asked me.

  “Fifteen years.”

  “And this is as far as you’ve gotten? You’ve never even tried to figure out what they are?”

  “Of course, I’ve tried!” I was surprised by my own anger. “Jesus, whaddayathink? I’ve been to psychiatrists, and they give me whatever the drug of the day happens to be. I’ve been to priests, and they just get embarrassed and tell me to go back to the psychiatrists. I’ve been to spiritualists, and they tell me to come back and please bring my checkbook next time.

  “The only thing I know is…it doesn’t make sense. I am not a conduit to the Hereafter. I’m just me. Nothing special. The third kid in the family. The dumb one. Charlotte was the pretty one. George was the smart one. And I was the one who sat in front of the TV and watched stupid movies while my mother said, ‘Well, two out of three ain’t bad.’” I shut up, mouth gaping, horrified by my own outburst. This was no way to impress a girl.

  She touched my arm with embarrassed pity. “I didn’t think about how hard this is for you. I should go.”

  “No.” Not wanting her to leave was the only thing I was sure of in this whole mess. The afternoon cold cut through me, but I resisted the temptation to go inside or grab a blanket off a deck chair or do anything that might break the mood of communication between us. “You said you were running away. I was, too. But whatever we’re running from, it looks like it’s following us. Maybe it’s time to face it.”

  She nodded. “Do you have any way of controlling these…images?�
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  “God, no. They control me.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this. I felt like I was standing up at some freakish AA meeting, declaring to the group, “My name is Samuel and I am a Medium.”

  “And you never met anybody who believed you? Anybody who could teach you how to handle this?”

  “No, you see, there’s a Catch-22 here, isn’t there? If they’re honest and sane, they tell me I’m crazy. If they’re nuts or frauds, then they say they believe me.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ve dealt with Gypsies and con artists, too. But every now and then I’ve met one that made me wonder. Let’s just say all this is true, all this is real. You and your niece can’t be the only two people who see these things.”

  This made sense. Like I said, I wasn’t that special. Maybe you were; not me.

  I racked my brain to think of one normal, well-balanced person I’d ever talked to or even heard of who had experienced what we experienced. I only came up with one thin straw to grasp at.

  Suddenly, there was a banging sound and a piping voice behind us. “You promised you’d play with me!”

  Kathleen gasped, going white. We turned to see you at the screen door, the mesh still vibrating from you slamming it aside. Kathleen relaxed, laughing nervously. Who had she thought you were?

  You held the helmet of my explorer in the palm of your hand.

  “Yeah. Okay. But just one game. Then Kathleen and I have to go visit somebody.” I turned to Kathleen. “Mind if we finish the game?”

  Kathleen smiled, breathing cold smoke. “No. It’s important to keep promises.”

  THIRTEEN

  I can’t remember the last time I played a board game.” Kathleen laughed as she fiddled with the car radio. A hopeless effort; you could only get two stations on the island, and they both came in on the same wavelength. She had joined us in a fast game of Quicksand, which had turned into three games after Charlotte and Neil rolled in, laughing, arms full of tiny lights, eyes bright with suggestive and knowing looks directed at me and Kathleen. It had been a long time since that kitchen had been filled with so much chatter and so much hilarity. I liked it. Now, we were on our way to Joe’s house, just the two of us.

  “Board games are a Kehoe family tradition,” I was telling her. “My folks and my brother and my sister, that was how we spent our nights every summer. Sitting at that kitchen table. Playing everything. Parcheesi, Sorry, Life, Mouse Trap, bridge, Trivial Pursuit, Careers, poker, Canasta, you name it. Man, they were cutthroat games. We’d get so caught up, we’d look at the clock and all of a sudden it was two in the morning.”

  I laughed as I told her about the way Dad used to hold his playing cards close to his chest, like W.C. Fields; how Mom used to half-forget-the-rules/half-cheat her way to victory; how Charlotte always deliberately let somebody else win if she was ahead; how George used to pout when he lost and gloat when he won; how I used to beg for another game even after everyone else was dead tired and dragging up to bed. She laughed along with me, saying she’d always dreamed of having a family like that and wondering if she could join in the next time we all played.

  Well, that brought things to a grinding halt. Much as I hated to tell the tale yet again, here it came. Dead. Dead. Dead. And yes, it was awful.

  “But,” she said (I could tell she wished she hadn’t brought it up), “at least you had that. It must be wonderful to come from a close family.”

  Well, it wasn’t all perfect, I told her. We used to fight like hell.

  “Physically?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, a little surprised. “But real verbal battles. I mean, screaming and yelling. Throwing things, occasionally. Never at anybody, but still.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, God. Well, Mom was always riding me for not making anything of myself and not getting better grades and just sitting around, watching trashy movies and all. And what else? Well, everybody always hated Charlotte’s boyfriends, so that was at least one guaranteed blowup every summer. Then George went all conservative after college, so all you had to do was bring up politics or the environment and blood would flow. Metaphorical blood, I mean. No, it wasn’t all roses.”

  “But that’s because you were close. You should try being in a family where everybody just stares at each other and doesn’t say a word all night.”

  “There were times when that might have been a relief.”

  “Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a second.” She didn’t say it in a solemn way. Actually, she was quite cheerful again, bopping along with the radio, which was simultaneously picking up a John Anderson country tune and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” But saying them happily only made her words sound more heartfelt.

  Joe’s house was a slip of a thing, a narrow, two-story sliver of wood, gone all fish-scale gray from the sea air. There must have been another half a house attached to it at one time, because it sure didn’t look like someone would build a place that thin on purpose. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney, and there was one light on in the living room. I remembered how I’d left them the night of the ice boat party and was suddenly unsure of our reception.

  Shara opened the door. She had on short jeans and a white tank top that didn’t cover her bellybutton and its little sunburst tattoo. Billie Holiday was singing “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” on the stereo. Some things never stop being cool.

  She smiled, no hard feelings, evidently, and let us in. Joe was bent over at the woodstove, shoving in a couple of pieces of wood. He stood up when he heard us, clapping his hands together in a hearty gesture that couldn’t distract us from the fact that he was buck naked and sporting a squat purple erection.

  “Gordon Kehoe’s son! You’ve got to go see Dr. Hopley this week. He’s giving Viagra to everyone. I’ve had this stinger going since two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Shara nodded in agreement. “He has.”

  We persuaded him to put on a pair of jeans, which couldn’t have been easy, and I told him I wanted him to take us to see Mrs. Day. Of course, that meant I had to tell him all (or all I knew) about Kathleen and Jellica. I felt uncomfortable relating the story in front of Kathleen, even more so since she sat there not saying a word, not even giving out any confirming grunts or nods.

  “Jellica is an interesting name,” Shara said. “Who is she?”

  This was directed at Kathleen; I half expected her to deny any knowledge and ask them to call the men in the white coats to come get me. Instead she spoke quietly. “I don’t want to say anything about this. I don’t want to give out any information that might compromise what Sam might come up with next.”

  Shara clucked her tongue; the metal stud in it made that quite effective. “Don’t you think that kind of skeptical attitude might offend Jellica?”

  Kathleen just smiled. “I need something like proof before I’m going to believe any of this.”

  Joe poured coffee and flipped cigarette ash into a potted plant. “Shara’s right. The child might not like that. How would you feel if I asked you to prove that you existed?” Kathleen didn’t rise to the bait, just smiled again. “I know I exist.”

  “That’s probably how Jellica feels,” Joe said. “She knows she’s real; why don’t you? Maybe that’s why nobody’s been able to ‘prove’ ghosts exist. As soon as you cop that ‘show me’ attitude, they get offended and leave. What do you think?”

  Joe turned to me now. I searched my mind for an actual opinion on the matter, but there didn’t seem to be any at home. When in doubt, I always talk about movies. “Come on. That’s saying spirits of the dead are like Michigan J. Frog in that old Warner Brothers cartoon. Remember? It would sing ‘Hello, my baby’ if the guy was alone, but whenever he asked it to perform in front of people it just sat there and croaked.”

  Shara made a face. “I hate that cartoon. It’s frustrating.”

  “When you think about it, though,” Joe said, “it’s a very profound piece of film. Asking the question, why did that man need other
people to validate his own experience … of, you know, singing frogs?”

  “But he wasn’t trying to validate his experience,” Kathleen said. “He was trying to get rich by selling tickets to a singing frog show.”

  “Well, money is one of the main ways we look for validation in this society,” Shara said.

  “When you think about it, though, how much would you really pay to see a singing frog?” I asked.

  “A fair bit,” Joe said. I believed him.

  Joe started collecting coats from around the house, handing them to us, saying it was time to visit Emily Day.

  “Should we call first?” I asked.

  They all looked at me with puzzled expressions. I’d forgotten; you didn’t call first on the island.

  Emily Day’s house is called the Green House, even though it’s yellow, on account of the fact that a family named Green lived there in the 1880s. People have long memories on the island.

  I don’t know what I expected to notice first on walking into the house of someone who was supposed to set me on the path to spiritual enlightenment, but I don’t think it was the overwhelming smell of pie.

  The atmosphere was heavy with cinnamon, hot sugar, and flour.

  Aroma-wise, I felt totally at ease. If there was anyone on Earth I’d listen to spiritualist bullshit from, it was the person who could create this glorious perfume.

  My ears were less certain. The place rocked with the cacophony of a late-twentieth-century American family. The bleeping and canned music of a Nintendo game. A Home Improvement rerun turned up too loud in another room. Rap music from somebody’s stereo upstairs.

  The Nintendo player greeted us with a grunt as we walked in—without knocking, of course. He looked about fourteen, wearing the obligatory surly expression and South Park T-shirt. The house had a Victorian elegance on the outside, but within, it was like most houses on the island. Remodeled during the worst, paneling-and-orange-shag-carpet period of the seventies, it seemed to pay no respect to its own age and history. Only off-islanders thought of these places as architectural gems. To the natives they were big drafty white elephants, and you just had to make the best of them.