From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  “Of course, her mother contested it. Took it to court. You should have seen her in that courtroom. The most decent, respectable country girl you’ve ever seen. Just an innocent hick who’d made the mistake of moving to the big city and had done the best she could. No talk about Satan or demons. Just how much she loved and missed her little girl. And how she’d maybe been a little overprotective after her husband passed away, but she’d learned her lesson. She was going to take her girl back to Maine and give her the home life she deserved.

  “And me? Well, I was a drunk-power-mad-cop-child-abductor. Using the power of the State to break up a home and steal myself a daughter. They got George up on the stand and, of course, he cracked. Picture of guilt, telling everybody how I’d coerced him into falsifying reports. Even Dennehy, my partner, they got him by the balls and he caved. I was fucked after that. The painted windows, the little girl sleeping in her own shit, none of that mattered because I’d lied on a fucking official document. I was lucky just to lose the case, just to lose my job. I was lucky they didn’t send me to jail.

  “They took her away. Gave her back to her mother. I didn’t even get to say good-bye. Not that I wanted to. What the hell could I have said to the kid? ‘Sorry. I tried. Make the best of it….’”

  She chewed on one of those broken nails for a moment.

  “I started my serious drinking then. Of course, I tried to find her, but her mom left town, and the court sealed the records. I finally talked my brother into taking a look at them, and he brought me the mother’s home address. Some hick town in the middle of buttfuck Maine. She’d gone there after the trial. I went up there—just missed them, actually. I tracked them all over New England, always missing them. Then the trail went cold. I felt pretty useless. I wasn’t even a good enough cop to keep up with an inbred yokel.

  “I locked myself in an Econo Lodge and tried to drink myself to death, tried not to think about what every day of Jellica’s miserable life must be like. But drinking yourself to death, that isn’t as easy as it sounds. One day I got in my car and just drove. No highways, no route, no plan. When I reached a corner I’d turn or I wouldn’t; it didn’t matter, so long as I kept moving. Ended up in Rockland, saw the ferry, took it, ended up here. Here, I couldn’t go any further. Not unless I drove into the ocean. So, I stayed. And here I am.”

  She turned to me with a sad smile. “Aren’t you sorry you asked?”

  “No. No. That’s a terrible story, Kathleen, but you know it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

  “Sure, it is. If I’d been smarter I’d have found a way to get her out of there. But I was just like Donny Beirko; I let them get me mad. And I guess she died because of that.”

  She shifted toward me in her chair. “So, you see why the idea of her haunting me…it would just be too much, wouldn’t it? The thought of her hanging around, forever, reproaching me. Wondering why I’m not playing with her. I couldn’t live with that.”

  “Jesus, Kathleen. Why have you been taking all this on alone? Where’s your family?”

  “Well, they were sympathetic and all at first, but after a while I think they thought I was over-reacting. Big sin in my family.”

  I got up and moved over to her. “You ought to give them another chance. You should see them. Patch things up. Don’t put it off. Things can happen. I know. You should do it now. I mean, it’s Christmas, after all.”

  She laughed a little and touched my face. “Yeah, it’s Christmas. You’re a sweet guy, you know that?”

  I think I blushed.

  “Okay, your turn,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked, sitting on the broad arm of her chair.

  “Tell me your saddest story.”

  I brushed the hair from her face. “I already have.”

  “Okay, tell me your second saddest.”

  I breathed a laugh. “I don’t want to.”

  “Come on, you can’t leave me out on my own like this. I told you mine, now you tell me yours.”

  “I guess that would be fair.”

  “Right.”

  I sat up straight, inhaling the night air.

  “Okay, I used to think I could see ghosts. Then one day, I couldn’t anymore.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Back when I used to think I could see them…well, most of the time I used to fight it and sometimes maybe I’d play with the idea to try to impress people. But I never really tried to see them. I never tried to make it happen, you know? So, I never saw one when I wanted to…. That’s it.”

  She nodded quietly. “When did you want to?”

  “After the accident, after my…family died, when they were all on display there at the funeral home. God, that was a bad idea. I don’t know how we let Walter talk us into that. Walter was the funeral director. He talked us into a lot of things. So, they were all laid out there, and the cousins and uncles were there staring at them. We didn’t like the cousins and the uncles. Mom and Dad hadn’t liked the cousins and the uncles. George hadn’t liked them. But, you know, it’s a funeral, so people have to come. Other than them, it was just me and Charlotte. Just me and Charlotte.

  “So, I shut my eyes and said, ‘All right. This is it. This is why God gave me this stupid, pain-in-the-ass gift. For this moment. So I can see them again. So I can joke with them and laugh with them. And say good-bye. Or, fuck that, fuck saying good-bye. So I can keep them with me forever.’

  “So I tried. And I tried. I went up and looked at their faces. I called out for them in my mind. I slipped off into an empty—what do you call them—‘show room’ and meditated and concentrated and prayed…and nothing happened. Nobody came to me. Not George. Not Dad. Not even Mom. Nothing. I was all alone. Charlotte found me a couple of hours later, crying. But she didn’t know why I was crying, not really. She didn’t know how foolish I was.

  “Maybe Mom had been right. Maybe the whole medium thing had just been a way of getting attention. Maybe that’s why I never believed in it myself. But that one time I did believe…. And that’s my saddest story.”

  She took my hand. “It’s pretty sad.”

  “Not as sad as yours. I didn’t want to top you,” I laughed. “Oh, and also, the funeral director knocked up Charlotte. But she had Maggie, so that part’s not really sad.”

  She laughed. “And you never saw any—what is it you call them—spooks again? Not until you were on the boat with me?”

  “No, that’s not exactly right. I saw one just before I left DC. To be honest, I think that’s why I came here. Running away from it. And there was one on the road, too. Maybe they were leading me here. But if they brought me to meet you, I guess they’re not all bad.”

  She leaned her face toward me. I leaned toward her. I couldn’t tell you who was leading; it was like the Ouija board; we moved as one. We kissed. A sweet kiss, filled with friendship and sympathy and tenderness. Not at all like a first kiss. Like we’d been kissing for a long time and had decided we liked it.

  She smiled then, not sadly, but broadly, her teeth gleaming in the starlight. “You know how long it’s been since I kissed anybody?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. We kissed again.

  SEVENTEEN

  Fade out on the kiss.

  Fade in on the tender aftermath; both of us fully clothed, but tastefully mussed. Her body stretched out on the bed; me sitting by her side, my feet on the floor.

  That’s the Old Hollywood way of telling the story, and I’m still enough your uncle to want to leave it at that.

  No worries, no depression, no demons came rushing in on me in the aftermath. We drifted off to sleep together. Innocent. Baptized. The single most perfect moment of my life.

  Then the nightmare came.

  There are all kinds of nightmares, of course. There are the surreal ones that terrify you even as you know they are illusions; all you can do with those is wait to wake up. Then there are the dreadfully real ones where you have no idea you’re dreami
ng; when you wake up from those, you’re still terrified until the slow, happy understanding comes that it was all a dream. Then there are the nightmares that come when you are already awake. There’s no escape from those at all.

  I was nestled against the white slope of Kathleen’s throat, breathing in the scent of her hair. I didn’t know the time or how long I’d been sleeping. I didn’t care. Didn’t care if morning ever came, just so long as I could keep breathing her in, listening to the drumbeat of her heart.

  I felt the fear before I heard the sounds. A rapid, inexplicable quickening of my pulse and a tightening of my gut. There was a crash from down the hall, the sound of laughter and the tramping of feet. I jumped from the bed, and only then did I notice that it wasn’t my bed. Or rather, it was my bed and it was another bed. An old bed made of wooden slats and covered with a down comforter. A bed that I’d made with my own two hands although I’d never seen it before.

  Oh, I can’t explain what I saw. Or rather, I can explain what I saw, but not the way I saw it. It was as if I was seeing two worlds at the same time. Before me there were two beds occupying the same space. One was mine with beautiful Kathleen slumbering in it. But the other was mine as well. I could see both beds completely as if I had two sets of eyes to see with and two minds to receive their images.

  The moon gleamed off Kathleen’s ivory skin in Sam Kehoe’s bed. And in that other bed, with her—or next to her—or top of her—or simultaneous with her—were two other figures. Two girls. A baby and a blond girl of your age, Maggie.

  The noise from the hall was getting louder. Raucous, mocking, full of masculine threat. Crashing. Breaking. The sounds were familiar even though I’d never heard them before. I could feel the fear they brought with them. I could sense the danger even though I had no information about what I was hearing.

  I turned back to the children. The older girl’s eyes flew open wide and she spoke to me. “Mother?” she said.

  I gathered my children from the bed without disturbing Kathleen in her other world. Cradling the baby in my arms, I moved to the trapdoor I somehow knew I would find in the floor by the corner. We would hide in the cellar, I thought, like we did the last time. Everything would be fine.

  I felt around on the floor with growing alarm. Where was the handle? Where was the latch? It seemed impossible but the trapdoor was gone.

  “Sweet Jesus, don’t desert us,” I whispered. The sounds in the house were louder. Footsteps pounded down the hall.

  I moved to the window and slid it open. Should I wake Kathleen and take her with us? I wondered. There wasn’t time. I pushed Mary out into the grass and, clutching the baby to my breast, I climbed out. As I dropped to the ground my head jerked back with a wrenching jolt, and I thought one of the men had reached out and caught me by the hair. But it was only an old loose nail on the windowsill. Mary reached back and tore my hair free. Sweet girl. We lay on the wet grass together, out of breath, the baby just starting to whimper. Dear God, I thought, don’t let her start crying.

  If we could make it to the woods, then we could hide, then we’d be safe. But as I looked around, I felt my heart sink in my chest; there were no woods. Where there had been a forest of pine yesterday, there was only open pasture. It was impossible, but it was true. I gathered my babies to me, and we crept around the walls of my house, keeping in the shadows, trying to block out the sounds of laughter and destruction, of the crashing and tearing and breaking of things I held dear but couldn’t name.

  We found the cellar door and I slowly lifted it, letting Mary squeeze her way in first. She used all her child’s strength to hold it open for me as I rolled in, baby under my arm, and dropped down the stone steps. We slunk into the corner, hiding in the wet dark earth like animals in a den.

  They were above us now. Feet tramping bare inches from our heads. Light flared through the wide chinks in the floorboards, streaming down on us. Light from a lamp. From many lamps. There was the sound of breaking glass, and now the light was brighter, bright as daylight and bringing with it a withering heat and the rending sound of flames.

  The doors of the house flew open, and the men streamed outside. I was filled with a blind hatred for them as I watched their legs dancing past the chink in the cellar door, and I asked myself for the hundredth time how my husband could ever have joined his fortune with men like that.

  The sorrow, the anger, the pain filled me up with an unbearable pressure. The baby squirmed in my arms, and Mary looked at me with panic all over her pink face. Keep them safe. I had to keep them safe. The baby whimpered again; then the first full-lunged cry escaped from her dry, cracked lips, and I was filled with blind terror. Fear like I’d never experienced in my life paralyzed me. The baby cried on—a piercing, seabird’s scream. So loud. Louder than the drunken laughter of the men. Louder than the flames in the burning house over my head.

  I tried to hush the child, to cradle her, to quiet her. I whispered her favorite lullaby into her tiny ear, the old Irish words drowned out by the fire and the laughter and the howling. “Shoolah roon…” I covered her purple face with my hand and prayed for deliverance.

  Then the fear grew too big for my body and left me. It spread out from me and filled the dark cellar. It sank into the earth floor like rainwater and was gone.

  I was myself again, huddled into a ball on the cellar floor, struggling for breath. There was no fear, no child, no baby, no men laughing cruelly outside.

  But I was not alone. She sat across from me in the dirt.

  So young, it surprised me. Younger than me. Twenty or so at most, though her face was worn with care. Her long auburn hair was stuck to her face with tears, but she smiled at me with pure love. The most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. It almost made me weep just to look at her.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Don’t you know?” Her voice was a soft Irish whisper, and when I heard it, I did weep. Because, of course I knew her. I’d known her all my life. She was the spirit of this house. The one who’d protected me and made me feel safe all these years. The one Mrs. Day had tried to help me reach; the one she’d called my friend. The Good Mother. I wasn’t used to crying; I gasped, sucking in the dank air.

  “How come I can see you?” I asked, finally.

  She smiled again. “You always could.”

  I shook my head.

  She leaned toward me—she was totally there, totally real. As if she were a real part of my world. Or I was a part of hers. “Who else d’you see? Do you see my babbies?”

  I heard the yearning in her voice and wanted so much to help her. I looked around. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t. What happened to them?”

  Weary sorrow disfigured her beautiful face. “I don’t remember. They’ve been alone for a long time now.”

  I reached out and took her hand. I could do that. I could feel the warmth of her touch rush up my arm. “I’m sorry,” I said. I looked over her shoulder, into the darkness of the far corner. “I do see a child,” I said, “but she isn’t yours.”

  The woman turned and looked back at Jellica, who was staring sullenly at us.

  “Ah, that one,” she said. “She’s a lost one, Sammy. Watch out for her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She don’t mean to be bad. No one ever taught her any better.”

  I felt her start to slip away and tried to hold her hand as it slipped from my world. “Don’t go.”

  “I won’t. I can’t.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  She reached out to touch my cheek, but by then I couldn’t feel her flesh anymore. “I love you,” she said, and was gone. I cried again, watching them both fade away. Big, lung-bursting sobs. Weeping out every sorrow I’d ever felt and all the sorrows of all the spooks who’d tried to reach me and had been ignored. I wept for my own silly life, which I felt fall to pieces around me. I wept till there wasn’t a drop of water in me or a breath o
f air.

  I heard a sound and opened my eyes, panting like a sick dog. The morning light was streaming down on me, and Kathleen was standing on the cellar stairs, looking down at me with a slack-jawed expression, as if I were a totally gibbering madman. Which was a pretty apt description of my appearance, curled up in the dark corner of the cellar, face muddy with dirt and tears.

  I didn’t want her to see me like this, let me tell you. Of all the pathetic-freak moments of my life, this seemed the purest, the most sideshow of all. A few hours ago I’d been congratulating myself on being normal and here I was, a freak on display.

  I couldn’t think of a word to say to her. I’d been a man for her just hours ago; someone she could touch and hold, someone who could bring her joy and pleasure. Now what was I? I couldn’t stand the thought of her pity; the thought of her kneeling next to me, holding my shivering body and asking what was wrong. It would be too humiliating. Better for her to leave. Better for her to turn tail and run.

  Before I could gesture for her to stay away, she was taking the stairs two at a time, running for daylight.

  EIGHTEEN

  I didn’t go after her. I should have, of course. I wanted to, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even raise my head enough to watch her disappear over the top step. I just lay there in the dirt, not asleep, not awake, but in some in-between place until I found the energy to reach up to the rafters and pull myself to my feet. To stumble, hunched over and twisted, out of the cellar and onto the cool grass of the lawn.

  I blundered into the house and two or three cups of coffee later I was blinking at the rude light of the sun as it reared over the lobster pound. I picked up the phone.

  Kathleen answered on the first ring.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Whatever it is you called to say, whatever it is you want to ask, I can’t.”

  “Kathleen—”

  “I know you’re a wonderful person in a lot of ways but… I’m just not equipped to handle…someone with emotional problems right now. I’m sorry. I know that makes me a terrible person, but there it is. I’m just not strong enough. Bye.”