Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story

by Glover, Sarah M.

  Emily’s mind exploded with questions. She grabbed at the first one. “How can you be here? I thought you’d be stuck in the house? Isn’t that what happens with, I mean…beings such as yourself?”

  “Ghosts, Emily, always use the proper word, no matter how uncomfortable. You’re a writer for goodness sakes. I can be here because I was here in the past. Nicholas and I often came to this spot to picnic. Thank goodness this city is littered with historical remnants. It’d severely cramp my social season otherwise.”

  “Wait, you, did you say Nicholas?” No it couldn’t be. “My God, you’re, you’re really real? I thought they were just characters in a book.”

  “That’s what Dashiell would like you to think. He tended to base his characters on his friends, including us, as if that would fool anyone who knew anything. I was always a bit insulted, though. Nicholas worked for his money, and I rarely, if ever, drank, but after that book was published everyone thought we lived with martini glasses plastered to our hands. And don’t even get me started about dogs. People never called us Nick and Nora until after that dreadful book, not to mention the movie. Nicholas just laughed the whole thing off. He adored calling me Nora just to get a rise out of me.”

  “But why can’t—why aren’t you two together?”

  “That, my dear, is the million dollar question. One we almost found the answer to, but unfortunately Nicholas decided to drive that car of his too fast and here we are.”

  “I’m so sorry, it must be awful. Being separated, I mean.” Emily wasn’t sure how the whole being dead thing fared, but she felt it best not to delve into it at present.

  “Awful? Well, I wouldn’t be that melodramatic, but yes, I miss the man terribly. I became quite fond of him, you know. No one can foxtrot like Mr. Chamberlain.”

  “Chamberlain? Nicholas and Noreen Chamberlain?”

  “Much better than Charles.”

  “When did you, um, die?”

  “July 1st, 1935. Our Death Day. This year I suppose I’ll have my party at the Columbarium where my ashes are housed. It’s easier for the older guests, and there’s plenty of room for dancing. Of course, Nicholas will have to have his at the Flood Mansion, as always.” She sighed; a part of her seemed to disappear with it.

  “Do you know why you can’t be together?”

  “We have no clue where his body is. That seems to be part of the problem. I think we need to be laid to rest together. Once we’re laid in the earth, well, then I’m hoping—” She broke off and tried not to look at Emily.

  Suddenly Emily was struck with an idea. “I—I could help—look through some records, there’s the Internet now, you can find just about anything on it…A body might be a slight problem—but I could try. If nothing else, I need to repay you for the loan of the dress.”

  Nora paused and stared at Emily, her eyes narrowed, silver in the fog. She took a step toward her and then paused. “I believe you need to help yourself before you can help me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She hesitated again, as though she were being kept from saying any more. “We’ll talk again soon. Now go home. It’s where you belong.”

  “But Nora, I can’t—I just can’t…”

  “Did you take no prisoners like I told you to?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did he kiss you?”

  “Well yes, but—”

  “Yesbuts live in the woods, Emily. And you live in a house, not the woods, and so does that brilliant young man. Life is to be lived, not to be avoided.” Her tone altered, it became more urgent, troubled even; her gaze traveled out across the lake, her eyes darkening in concern. She spoke quickly now, her attention focused on some unseen threat. “Live, Emily, live while you can. I have to go. Time is running out. If you can help me, you need to find him. Quickly. Time…is…running…out.”

  Like her words, she dissolved into the fog. Nothing but the silent columns remained.

  A black tremor swept through Emily at the warning. She had just spoken with the ghost of Nora Chamberlain, the real-life woman, not some imaginary character from a book, and she seemed in trouble, some untold trouble. No, no, it couldn’t be. She must have been hallucinating. Lord, how long did the effects of absinthe last? Yet Nora’s ominous words echoed in the stillness of the lake. Time is running out. Find him.

  Without another breath, she jumped to her feet. Find him, find him, find him echoed with each footfall as she began to run. Find Andrew. She had to find Andrew. By the time she reached the end of her street, her lungs burned in her chest from the force with which she had pushed her body. She was drenched in sweat, her hair wild. She took two more strides to reach the chain link gate near the playground, and she hung onto that for dear life.

  Gulping in mouthfuls of air, she stared at the sidewalk. What would she do or say to him when she walked through the front door? How would she even start? Eventually, her breathing returned to normal, and she knew she couldn’t postpone the inevitable anymore. Better now than never. They’d think she was a lunatic soon enough. That’s when she noticed the figure on the swings.

  He rocked back and forth with his head bowed low while his sneakers scuffed the sand beneath him like a little boy, or as if he was in deep thought. He wore running shorts and a thick zippered jacket, dark-brown hair windblown from what looked like a long run in the foggy morning air. His hands twisted the chains of the swing this way and that, clinking echoes through the empty playground.

  Andrew.

  Emily’s heart lodged in her throat. What should she do? Find him. Find him. Yet she caught herself. Which him? Nick or Andrew?

  With a deep breath, she made a decision and swung open the gate. Hearing the scrape of metal, his head rose and Emily halted. She could see the pulse in his neck—he had been running as well. He watched her approach. She took a few more steps and stopped, unable to go on. Then silently, without taking his eyes from hers, he held out his hand, fingers splayed open. She stared at it—his lovely long fingers—a musician’s hand. The meaning was clear: come to me.

  She stretched open her palm and met him, pressing her hand to his. He closed his eyes. The lines of their palms, so much the same, joined together. He kept his fingers open, though, his hand shaking slightly, from his run, no doubt. His eyes finally lifted. She took the swing next to him, never once removing her hand.

  “How many fingers?” he asked, their hands still pressed together. The odd question made her take notice.

  “Ten,” she said.

  “Funny, I only see five.” He curled his slender fingers between hers. His hand was cool, inviting. “Ah, now there are ten. How’s your head?”

  She grimaced slightly and pulled her jacket around her with her free hand.

  “About last night,” he began. “I did something and…you need to tell me…I’m asking you…shall I stop?”

  His words rambled through her mind before they slowly dawned on her. She nodded, pressing her lips together, not breathing. “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “On you.”

  “I would like very much not to stop.”

  He pulled her swing closer. His breath warmed her face, and his lips brushed over hers, tentatively, but with a sureness that made her head spin.

  “Emily.”

  She felt him seize her, hoisting her up into his lap and enclosing her shoulders in his arms. She shivered in response, and he opened his jacket wider, letting her slip in and drop her head onto his shoulder.

  “Shall I stop?” He began to swing. His hands held her close as if she would fly away. She could feel his sweaty skin under her—feel his fingers firm against the naked skin of her shoulder blades. “Shall I stop?”

  They were pitching so high now, the swing unable to go any higher. His lips pressed deeper into her skin. “Shall I stop?” he whispered.

  She couldn’t tell him no.

  It was only when they heard the patter of small feet and the laughter of toddlers that they pulle
d apart.

  Andrew swept Emily off the swing and carried her in his arms to the top of the slide where he pulled her into a plastic tree house. She was laughing so hard as he tried to squeeze his lanky body into a space meant for people half his height.

  “Come here,” he smiled mischievously. She scuttled over but bashed her head. “Ow.” She fell forward and landed on him, her legs straddling his lap.

  “That’s better,” he whispered, and his mouth found hers. He kissed her, and she tried to pull away to gasp a breath.

  “No,” he commanded, his lips trailing down her neck to her shoulder. “You’re salty,” he whispered against her collarbone.

  “I’m sorry, I was running.”

  “No, I enjoy it. I haven’t eaten breakfast. My date, you see, didn’t show up.”

  She tried to respond, but his hands were slipping their way up the bare skin of her sides. She fell into him madly without knowing what she was doing, and when she threw her head back it smashed against the plastic walls.

  “Owwww!” His hand was immediately there, and she felt his chest vibrate with laughter.

  “Serves you right. I even made you a pot of tea. My sole contribution, but it took me all morning to boil the water.”

  “With sugar and cream?”

  He nodded. “Seriously, where were you?”

  “I went for a run. I thought that maybe you might have had too much absinthe last night, and I, well, I didn’t know how you felt about things…”

  “Sweet girl.” His lips brushed hers. “Don’t.”

  “Why were you here?” she asked as he began to nibble on her earlobe, causing her to sigh softly.

  “I went to pursue you.”

  Her senses were on fire with the scent of him in this tiny space, sweaty, musky, all sunlight in the woods. He snaked his arms around her neck and kissed her. She tasted him, wanting him to be real. Here, alive, and now—just as Nora had said.

  “Andrew,” she managed to say, the thought of Nora grounding her back in reality and making her aware that if she didn’t do something soon, a second later they would most assuredly be naked and making wild love in a five-by-five yellow plastic house. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to bundle me off to some mental hospital?”

  “They’re nasty places—” his lips drifted to her temple “—and the food is for shit.”

  She laughed in his arms and forced herself to concentrate, not be swept away. “I saw Nora.” His lips didn’t stop. She went on. “The ghost that lives in our house.” She could feel him smile at the word “our.”

  “Yes?”

  Leaving out the details of the hidden passageway and her midnight voyeurism, she told him about her recent experiences with Nora.

  Andrew paused his kissing. He drew back, his face surreal in this small space, unshaven as it was, with eyes that glimmered as his sharp intelligence crept back into them. “What do you suppose it means?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel beholden in a weird way, like I’m supposed to help her. Like I was meant to help her—help them. I just can’t sit by and watch them pine away like that. I know it sounds ridiculous. A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed it, but I believe it now, don’t you?”

  Andrew studied her for a long while. “Perhaps we should scour the house a bit more. There may be something of them left behind. I suppose I should ask Nick about it, as well.”

  “You…you saw Nick? When?”

  “Who do you think supplied the party favors—and the music for that matter?”

  She stared at him in shocked disbelief. “So what does this make us then? The next Nick and Nora, off together to solve the mystery? All we need is a wire-haired terrier and we’re set, although I think it was a schnauzer in the book, right? But I forgot, she really doesn’t care for dogs.” She laughed, only to notice that he hadn’t. Oh Lord, she thought, nothing like plowing into commitment before they even had their first date. She felt herself turn crimson and wanted to melt through the plastic floor.

  “Look at me, Emily.” She refused, swallowing down the knot in her throat. “Emily.” Andrew raised her face to his. “I’m not playing here, just so you know. Rather fond of you, if you haven’t noticed.”

  Still avoiding his gaze, she quipped, “Here I thought you were showing appreciation to your fans.”

  Andrew’s fingers brushed back the hair that had fallen in her face. “Evidently you weren’t listening. You heard what that man told us: you’re my slave, my concubine…my lover.” He drew out each word seductively as his finger brushed along her bottom lip. “My lover. My lover. My—” His last words were smothered by her lips.

  “Your muse,” she sighed, her mouth on his neck, her teeth grazing the corded muscles there. Andrew groaned and clutched her hair in his hand when suddenly he stilled, as if her words had finally registered in his mind.

  His muse. All her hopes and fears were exposed in that one sentence, bounding around those little plastic walls. Her stomach clenched. Logically she knew there was no room in a love affair for three people, and if Andrew still longed for his old girlfriend, she needed to know where she stood before she went on. But emotionally she had laid all her chips on the table and was scared to death.

  “Sorry. Didn’t want to bring up the past,” she blurted out, trying to keep her voice as business-like as possible. “It’s just that, you see, I’m sort of fond of you myself, and I don’t share very well.” Nora’s words resounded in her head. Take no prisoners.

  “Look, I understand you’re only here for a while. You’re a musician after all, you live on the road, right? But I don’t want to be a fling, I don’t fling very well, either. I don’t have flingy parts. All I’m asking for is honesty. It’s kind of mandatory for me. So if you’re still in love with someone, that’s okay, I don’t want to take away your memories. But I won’t be a consolation prize. I need to matter. I need us to matter.”

  Andrew didn’t say anything. He just stared at her. He came closer, the energy pouring off of him, burning the air around them like the moment on the stage when he had shouted after her. She felt the danger in him and it thrilled her—as she was sure it thrilled all the women who heard him play, as she was sure it had thrilled his muse. But she needed to know, she needed to hear him say it.

  He cupped her face in his hands. “You matter, Emily, more than you could possibly comprehend. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. I want to be here. I’ve wanted to be here for a long time. A bloody long, long time.” He kissed her, a kiss a soul could drown in, and rested his forehead on hers. She could feel his heart beat against her chest.

  “Me too,” she whispered back.

  It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was the answer she needed. She might not be this muse of Andrew’s, even if the palm reader had told her so, but he did care—she knew that, she could feel that. She had asked Andrew for honesty, which he had given. What more could she expect? They had only just met, and somehow she knew that muse was a once in a lifetime title; perhaps it had just skipped this particular lifetime.

  “Hey, mister,” a tiny voice barked from below. “You gonna be in there all day?”

  Andrew smiled. She dropped her head and laughed softly against his chest. Her emotions were still so raw she didn’t know what to say. Her stomach, however, decided it for her and growled loudly. He chuckled at the sound, his lips pressed in her hair.

  “So, where can a girl get some breakfast around here?” she asked. “I’m starving.”

  “Funny you should mention that. I know this great place, a little rustic, but the music is really first class.” He hugged her to him, brushing his fingers against her cheek one last time.

  11

  * * *

  NO ONE SEEMED TO NOTICE Andrew and Emily’s entrance into the kitchen with the exception of Zoey, who looked up at them from the table with a shrewd smile.

  As Andrew slinked to the sink for a glass of water, he passed Simon silently lording over the stove. The lett
ers on his fingers stood out as he clenched the spatula. He had added a fishing hat to his earlier wardrobe of a faded Che Guevara for Pope T-shirt and camouflage jeans.

  “You’re looking mighty keen, Paulie. Have a nice run, did you now? We were going to send a search party for the both of you.”

  “Bugger off.”

  Margot stood by the stove next to Simon, her arms folded over her starched white shirt as she inspected his progress.

  “It’s all in the wrists,” Simon told her nonchalantly as he flipped a crepe high into the air. “You should really cook them on the bottom of the pan, but it’s quicker this way. Care to have a go?”

  “I don’t cook.”

  Simon ignored her and covered her hand with his, catching a crepe as it flashed in the air before them. She yelped in surprise.

  Simon steadied her. “Nothing to get nervous about. If you drop it, I’ll make more.”

  Her pale lips disappeared as she concentrated on flipping the crepe onto a plate on her own. “So, you really think Plisko has a leg to stand on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a smart girl, you know why. But as my aunt used to say, ‘you need to build a bridge and get over it, love.’ No one’s ever one hundred percent spot-on about anything, or anyone for that matter. That’s the nature of experimentation. You try and you fail, and you try again. It’s definitely the nature of cooking…you’ll want to save that one before it burns.”

  She rescued the crepe, removing it from the pan with a good deal of determination. Simon nodded at her and began to crack eggs. “So. What are you up to this week?”

  “I…I have a papers that need grading, and I’m going out to Berkeley to do some research on the ATA.”

  “The Allen Telescope Array?” Simon asked, whisking the eggs in a bowl and handing it to her.

  “Yes,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation.

  “The one where they’re partnering with SETI?”

  “How did you…how do you…Well, yes. I’m going to be using the telescopes on campus, but I got lucky and pulled the graveyard shift, three a.m. It’s when we’ll have a stellar view of Jupiter. Would you like to see it?” Margot ventured. “I can bring guests.”