Ghosts of the Missing

by Kathleen Donohoe

  Ciaran invited her in, curious, even as he recalled his father’s bitter complaints about this lot. Ghouls with their hands out, Jamie Riordan called them.

  Una settled herself at their kitchen table and he made tea, his eye on the clock. She had to be done in an hour and a half, before his mother got home.

  “I don’t have any money,” Ciaran told her as he set the mug down in front of her.

  She’d never take money, she told him. Neither had her grandmother.

  Three nights in a row, a week earlier, Una had dreamed about a rowan tree. Three times—that was how she knew she wouldn’t be free of the dream until she passed on the message.

  Ciaran tried to keep his face impassive, as he thought his father would.

  The numbers five and two, which might mean May and February, or someone fifty-two years old.

  Ciaran thought: If we’re adding, it might mean seven. If we’re subtracting, it could be three.

  Una was speaking so softly that he had to lean in to hear her. He sensed she’d rather be anywhere else, as if she’d choose the dentist, even, over his kitchen. Her hesitation was what made him listen.

  The tree she saw was a flying rowan—that is, a rowan tree that’s growing out of another tree. Rowan trees are powerful to begin with, but a flying rowan is more so, because its roots have never touched the ground.

  There was a room with a slanted ceiling and two narrow beds. The windows were small and high up on the wall.

  Ciaran had tensed at this. He had spent too much time trying not to think about hidden rooms in basements.

  Una had told her mother about this dream, and it was she who connected it to Jamie Riordan from over in Ballyineen, that one who had a child in America with a woman not his wife. Nobody should talk about sins being punished. He was surely suffering enough without being told he’d brought it on himself. You wouldn’t like to think of that sort of God. But in any case, the girl’s name was Rowan and she’d gone missing.

  “Is she dead?” Ciaran interrupted.

  Una lifted her shoulders. If she knew, she would tell him.

  It was easy to believe that ghosts can tell where their bones lie, and if it was murder, who did it. But they often can’t. And the missing who are still alive can’t say where they are.

  “Ghosts are not alive,” Ciaran said. “A missing person who isn’t dead won’t show up as a ghost, unless I’m not understanding what a ghost is.”

  Una sipped her tea, her blue eyes on his over the top of her mug.

  Her grandmother had told stories about ships that foundered in storms, with all hands lost. The widows dreamed of their husbands and were comforted to know they were at peace. And then the men returned alive. It happened as well with parents who had lost touch with their emigrant children. Years passed without a word, and they believed there must have been an accident or an illness, because they saw the children appear like lightning in a dark room. A shadow behind the door takes form. A voice calling, clear as a bell. And then a letter arrives: Forgive me. It’s been so long.

  Ciaran asked Una, dryly, why she supposed that was.

  Una chose to ignore his sarcasm. Instead, she answered: Ghosts of the dead are sometimes not aware they’ve died, but those they left behind remember. Ghosts of the missing, though, are lost in both worlds. It’s a question, still, which one they belong to.

  “A question, unless you’re psychic,” Ciaran said.

  “I wish,” Una answered sadly.

  When she was done, Ciaran put out his hand for her to shake, and she smiled and accepted. He led her to the door. Having said what she’d come to say, Una walked more lightly. She pulled the elastic holding her bun. He wondered if she’d worn her hair that way to try to make herself look older and more serious. With her hair loose, he lowered his estimate of her age.

  “I wrote down what she said, but none of it meant anything,” Ciaran said to me. “She could have gotten Rowan’s name from the newspaper. A girl is named for a kind of tree, of course you’re going to say you saw a vision of that fucking tree.”

  Then, a couple of years ago, Ciaran continued, he’d come home from a night of drinking and instead of going to bed, he’d gone online. He’d begun gathering notes for the book, and had written most of a publishing proposal, but that was as far as he’d gotten. He searched for the names of a few missing children whose cases he’d thought he might like to include.

  Then, on impulse, he Googled Moye House. On its website he clicked Gallery. Thumbnail photos, three rows of three. Without quite knowing why, since it wasn’t any particular interest of his, he clicked on the one that was a black-and-white sketch of the house. Moye House: A History.

  It brought up a slide show, and he moved through it quickly, until the photo captioned “Servants’ Quarters” filled the screen.

  Ciaran shut his eyes, and I realized what he’d seen: the servants’ quarters where Helen Dunleavy had lived with three other Irish women.

  It did indeed look much as Ciaran’s psychic had described it, though surely skeptics could produce a list of reasons why it meant nothing.

  The air in the room shifted as it went from two souls to three. Rowan, beside the desk and her own aged likeness.

  I turned away from her. “Is that why you came to stay here?”

  “The answers are here,” he said.

  “Rowan isn’t hidden away in our attic,” I said.

  She tipped her head back. Her hair brushed the wall behind her. I still can’t make the bells ring, she said. I would like to.

  Ciaran opened his eyes, as though he heard her.

  “You were her friend,” he said.

  I folded my arms. Behind me, Rowan did the same.

  “You were her friend,” Ciaran said again. “You’d have helped her.”

  “Helped her hide, you mean,” I said. “If someone was hurting her.”

  “David,” Ciaran said. “Leo.”

  Ah, Rowan said. Imagine that.

  Yes, imagine Rowan living clandestinely in Moye House, moving from room to room ahead of any footfalls. Me, carrying food and clothes and books up the servants’ stairs. Nobody would have asked where I was going or what I was doing. Nobody watched me closely when my health was stable. Imagine Rowan sleeping all day and emerging at night to play in the gardens.

  Rowan smiled. That would have been nice.

  “I want to go up and look,” Ciaran said. “But if she isn’t there, if she was never there, then she’s probably dead.”

  I could have reminded him that had she lived past 1995, she’d be long gone from her hiding place.

  Paris, Rowan said. Italy. Ireland. Australia. New York. California.

  “She was never here,” I said softly. “Not after that day.”

  Not alive. I didn’t say it out loud, but I sensed he read the thought, because he leaned forward.

  “I’m tired,” Ciaran said.

  “I’ll go.”

  I was almost to the door when I remembered the anthology and went back for it. Book in hand, I left, closing the door behind me.

  I knew about the ghosts of the dead versus the ghosts of the missing. The latter remain closer to the living, invested in the promise of discovery, the art of being found. Like us, the not-lost, the living, they want to know how it ends.

  16

  Adair

  April 1995

  When I’d first started school at St. Maren’s Elementary, Michan would ask each day if there were any problems, and I’d shake my head, not speaking of the whispers that rose in my wake.

  A different version of myself might have won them over. A funny or charming girl might have made them forget. But I didn’t know how to be an inspiration, so I wished instead for invisibility.

  I would have eaten lunch alone at the end of the table, using a book as a shield, if it were not for Rowan. We were not in the same class, but it was a small school and there was only one lunch period.

  “I can’t believe you’re in here too,” s
he said on my first day, like an inmate pleased to finally have company in prison.

  The school uniform was a white blouse and navy-blue plaid jumper and blue knee socks. I didn’t mind wearing it, but Rowan hated it.

  Rowan transferred to St. Maren’s in the third grade. Her mother had decided she needed more discipline. St. Maren’s went straight through to eighth grade, and Rowan had been close to convincing her mother to let her return to the public school for middle school, but then Evelyn had married David, who believed it wasn’t a good idea. Finish St. Maren’s, he’d said, and for high school, we’ll see.

  I was an outsider because of something that had happened to me before I was born, and Rowan was alone because of who she was. Odd. Prickly. Stubborn.

  Sometimes I imagined another life.

  In this other version of the universe, Rowan and I were in the same school, and I could see my friends and me rolling our eyes when Rowan walked by, making fun of her clothes, her hair, her mismatched barrettes, her glasses, the core of loneliness evident to any child, though he or she might have been unable to name it.

  Yet in the world as it was, I became Rowan’s friend.

  One Monday after lunch, Rowan and I noticed the girls laughing and looking over at us. Keeping as we did to the edge of the schoolyard, we heard only the inflection of syllables and the laughter that followed, but not words.

  The chilly morning had become a warm afternoon, typical for early April. We’d taken off our jackets, and they lay on the ground like two puddles, one red, one blue. As Rowan and I talked about television shows, what mean thing the stepfather had done, Moye House gossip (two of the writers were having an affair and everybody knew), I kept up an uneasy surveillance, sensing that whatever was going on had to do with me. We knew the girls by name, and we knew who their moms and dads were and how many brothers and sisters each one had, in the casual intimacy of classmates. But when we saw them together, they were a single entity that moved in tandem the way a spider moved, all its legs at once.

  As they began sidling toward us, I gauged the distance to the nearest exit as Rowan pushed herself away from the fence. When they stopped, one of the girls, Gracelynn, stepped forward, slapped my shoulder and darted away, laughing. I put a reflexive hand to the place she’d hit, though it hadn’t hurt. Rowan and I looked at each other and exchanged a silent question and answer.

  What was that about?

  I don’t know.

  We soon found out. The previous weekend, at a slumber party that neither Rowan nor I had been invited to, there was pizza and a chocolate cake, and after the parents went to sleep, three strawberry wine coolers, split among the six girls. And a game was invented, Truth or Adair. A question is asked. Choose: tell the truth or touch Adair McCrohan.

  Over the course of the week, Truth proved the popular choice, though some followed Gracelynn’s lead and picked Adair. Of them, a few merely jabbed me with a finger, others only pretended to do it.

  Then the boys began to play.

  They wouldn’t have joined for ordinary risks, like climbing to the top of the jungle gym and leaping off or darting across the street as a car closed in. But I added a unique danger. Or at least the sense of it. Probably none of them believed they’d contract HIV from a touch, and not because of the letter that had gone home to parents that supplied the proper wording to explain HIV to children. And it wasn’t because the posters in the nurse’s office had done their job. I have AIDS. Give me a hug! said a stick figure with a red triangle for a dress, her mouth downturned. No, for them, contracting a disease was as unthinkable as their house burning down.

  They say if a boy hits you, it means he likes you. But these boys didn’t think of me as a girl, and they didn’t consider it hitting. There were shoves, slaps on the shoulder, the daring pinch. Above the waist, from behind and through my shirt. Some days nothing happened, and others, three or four times, I heard the rush of approaching footsteps and crossed my arms over my chest.

  I did not consider telling a teacher or my uncle, and Rowan never suggested it either. Rowan did not believe in tattling. She did believe in revenge.

  On Holy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper, St. Maren’s had a half day. The whole class was in a genial mood, looking forward to the long Easter weekend, and I had not been bothered once. Rowan and I had left the building and were crossing the schoolyard together.

  It was Rowan’s quick turn that made me look behind her, even as I kept walking. Because of this, I was off-balance when Brian Kelly, at a full run, slammed me right between the shoulder blades. My palms and bare knees hit the concrete. Rowan cursed.

  On the ground, I was more disoriented than in pain, confused by the sight of the concrete with its mix of small pebbles, gray and white and pale blue.

  “Shit, are you—” Brian started to say, but then Rowan wheeled around and he backed up with his hands in the air.

  “Hey, it was an accident.” He walked away. The boys who’d been watching were also backpedaling, fast.

  Rowan put a hand under my elbow and pulled me up. Flecks of blood stood out on one knee.

  “Do you want me to go get a Band-Aid?” I heard someone ask.

  Molly Kelly, Brian’s sister.

  “Don’t bother,” Rowan said. “Just tell your brother he’s going to be very sorry.”

  I nearly laughed at how serious she sounded. But Molly only nodded, as though she relayed threats to Brian every day. She left, joining her friends, who began whispering when she reached them.

  “Blood,” I heard. Rowan started fishing through her book bag, saying, “I don’t know why I’m looking. I know I don’t have any tissues.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, dabbing at my knee with the hem of my skirt.

  “Bet that doesn’t come out,” Rowan said.

  “No one’ll see it.” I liked the idea of carrying around a few hidden drops of dried blood.

  We started walking again.

  Rowan said, “He’s a jerk.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said, but the lump in my throat felt as big as a fist. Again and again, I swallowed.

  “You’re a bad liar,” Rowan said, and she laughed.

  We stood at Rowan’s bedroom window as the May evening grew darker, peeking out of either side of the sheer green curtain. Rowan kept the light off, and she’d barricaded the door by jamming her desk chair beneath the doorknob.

  We didn’t want Brian and his friends to see us, Rowan had said. Ten minutes ago, the four boys had been playing basketball, two on two, but when Joe Reese arrived, they abandoned the game and retreated farther up the driveway. I supposed they felt invisible too, in the shadow of the Kelly house.

  Two of the boys leaned against the wall and the other two against Brian’s mother’s minivan. His father’s car was gone; he was working the night shift at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until the next morning. Brian stood in the center of the boys. He took the two silver cans from Joe’s book bag.

  Joe, Rowan whispered, had an older brother with a fake ID. He’d probably stolen the beers from his brother’s stash.

  Brian didn’t drink in the driveway when his dad was home, Rowan continued. If his mother caught them, she’d probably take the beers, but she wouldn’t tell on them.

  “I have to get home soon,” I said.

  We’d gone to a movie together, and afterward Rowan insisted that I go to her house. She ducked inside (reconnaissance) and came back to report that her mother and David were in the living room with the baby. I tried to protest. Sneaking into Rowan’s house was far riskier than meeting up at the movies. But I didn’t want to be called a coward, so we slipped into the kitchen, through the dining room and up the stairs to Rowan’s room.

  When Rowan didn’t answer, I spoke up. “It’s almost seven thirty.”

  “It’s dark enough. I’m ready,” Rowan said. She pulled off her sweatshirt. Beneath it she wore a white T-shirt, tucked into her jeans. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and combed it wi
th her fingers.

  Rowan dislodged the chair and we left the bedroom quietly, pausing to listen. The bathroom light was on. We heard the water running, filling the tub, and Evelyn’s voice, low and soothing as she talked to the baby.

  Halfway down the stairs, we paused again. The television was on in the living room, but David could be in the kitchen. I stayed behind Rowan as we passed through the dining room. The kitchen was silent. Rowan beckoned me forward. We crossed the expanse of linoleum and she eased open the screen door. Outside, I breathed again. I followed Rowan into the driveway and expected to stop there and say goodbye. Alone, I’d trek back to the theater and call Michan from the pay phone on the corner to come pick me up.

  Instead, Rowan said, “Follow me.”

  She crossed the street and I was right behind her. One of the boys saw us and stopped talking. The others turned to see what had caught his attention and they also fell silent.

  Rowan stopped at the edge of the circle. I hovered behind her. She didn’t look at Brian, her neighbor, but at the boy beside him with the can of Coors. Neil something.

  Can I?

  Neil looked from her to me.

  He said, You. Not her.

  Well, duh.

  Rowan tipped the can to her lips. I waited for her to spit into it. But she finished and, without even a grimace, passed the can to Brian. She did the same thing when the second Coors came to her.

  Rowan and Brian and the boys bantered. I listened with a feeling I did not, then, recognize as jealousy.

  When the second can of beer was finished, Rowan announced that we had to go.

  See you around.

  Hang out, Brian said.

  They could go to the playground. There were always guys there who’d get them more beer.

  Rowan shook her head. Night!

  She turned, tugging on my sleeve. In the safety of Rowan’s driveway, we put our hands over our mouths and laughed.

  I asked her what that was all about.

  Just wait. Rowan said. Go down the driveway. Stand right behind the house.