Chapter Nine #2
When Lina had some time alone in the quiet hour before dinner, she found she did not want to rush down and see Ren yet. Her stomach had not entirely settled, though it felt better after accepting the English muffin sandwich, and the thought of facing him (a ghost! a real ghost!) only roiled it up again.
As Lina looked out her window, she saw Marla drive up. Lina darted downstairs and popped through the door to the garage. “Can I help with the bags?”
“Thanks, kid.” Marla nudged the car door shut with her hip.
Lina took a heavy paper bag of office supplies from her. “I talked to Ren. Or should I say ‘Sean’.”
Marla clamped her mouth shut into a flat line and glared at the wall. “That turkey,” she said, but her next look at Lina was kind. “So he told you?”
“Yes. The summary, at least.”
“All right. Grab that other bag. Let’s get out of this garage.”
They settled again into the armchairs in Marla and Alan’s sitting room. “My grandma was the housemother here, you know, when those two kids died,” Marla said. “Shook her up pretty bad. Still, nothing else happened for a while—no ghosts or anything. Then one night a year later, she walked out into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and there’s her dead houseboy Sean, standing right in front of her.
“She about fainted, of course. But he didn’t look dead. He told her not to worry, said he wasn’t sure how he got here but he just wanted to talk. Turned out he’d been wandering around the world as a ghost that whole year, and finally got up the nerve to come back and visit the house. Soon as he stepped onto the property, he realized he could feel stuff, smell stuff, be visible again, all that. But he couldn’t do it anywhere else. Just here.
“Pretty soon he’s crying his heart out at the kitchen table, because he can’t go back to his family, and everyone thinks he’s dead. Well, he is dead, of course, but he’s stuck here. My grandma was a softie. She took pity on him and told him to come talk to her if he got lonely, even though he scared the daylights out of her. He just had to stay out of sight of the sorority girls, see, because a lot of them would recognize him. It was five or six years before he could come work here and not run into anyone who knew him from before.”
Lina’s chest ached at the thought of the austere, quiet Ren crying his heart out. But who wouldn’t have wept in his situation? “Those were the stories your grandma told you, growing up?” she said. “You must have lost a lot of sleep as a child.”
Marla laughed and slapped the arm of the chair. “Nah, I was twenty-five. Me and Alan, couple of newlyweds with a big idea, went to talk to my ma about moving into this house with Grandma, and starting up an old folks’ home. Figured we’d get a great place to live and a business to run, and take care of Grandma in the bargain, since she was getting old, and someone had to. Well, my ma, she knew the story about this place, she just hadn’t told us kids. All I knew was the house always gave her the creeps. She hated visiting here. So she said, ‘All right, but you get your grandmother to tell you about that houseboy first. You want to live there, you ought to know about the ghosts.’ I thought, the houseboy, the ghosts? What do they have to do with each other? Went to talk to Grandma, and I found out.”
Lina attempted a smile. “Were you as freaked out as I am?”
“You kidding? I thought it was the neatest thing I’d ever seen. She took us outside and had him step over the property line so I could see for myself. Did he do that for you?”
Lina nodded, dropping her gaze to her lap.
“I made him do it about ten more times,” Marla said. “Thought it was just great. Me and Ren, we were buddies from that day on. Alan, now, he took a couple years to get used to Ren. Wasn’t sure what to make of him. But now, you’ve seen ’em, they get along fine.”
“Then it is possible to get used to it.”
“Ren’s the easy part to get used to. It’s the other one who’s spooky.”
Just that phrase, the other one , lifted the hairs on Lina’s arms. “When did she first act up?” she asked, remembering not to name Julia aloud.
“Couple weeks after Ren showed up. It was like he woke her up, coming back here. He was the first one she went after. Then she started bothering other people too.”
“People who made friends with him,” Lina guessed.
“Mostly, yeah. She hasn’t given me and Alan much trouble, probably ’cause I don’t have designs on Ren. But girls who get cozy with him…” Marla shook her head. “They’ve never stuck around long. Man, I feel sorry for that kid. The girls, too, but mostly him.”
“Have there been a lot of girls?”
“Every couple years, seems like. Most times, it’s just a flirtation, and then we tell them the house arrest story or some other excuse, and they take off. Sometimes we haven’t even had to tell them. They just get mad at how shifty he is, and leave.” Marla stretched out her legs and kicked one foot on top of the other. “But a few stick around anyway, even when they learn the truth. Still, they always leave too. How can you build a future on that, you know?”
“Right.” Lina’s voice was soft.
“Some people who find out, they just run out of here in a panic. Last time someone did that, back in the eighties, screaming bloody murder, we decided not to risk it anymore. That’s when we came up with the house arrest story. ‘Don’t let me do this ever again,’ Ren said to me. ‘Stop them before they get close.’ Well, he changes his mind every time a pretty lady walks in, of course.” Marla glanced at Lina. “I think at heart he’s never stopped being twenty-two.”
Lina breathed in small puffs, her gaze tottering across the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do.”
“If he told you, he must like you. Couldn’t hurt to be his friend, if you think you can stand it.”
“But what if—she—acts up even more? She’s already targeted me and Mrs. B.”
“Well, remember this.” Marla sat forward. “You’re alive. She’s dead. You’re the stronger one.”
“Ren’s dead too. That’s a lot to absorb.”
“He’s not really dead, not when he’s here. He’s a living, breathing, real boy. Except he doesn’t eat or sleep. Other than that, he’s every bit as alive as you and me.”
“Doesn’t eat? But he did. He had chocolate with me.” Lina closed her mouth before disclosing what happened after the chocolate.
“Did he? Then he must really like you.” Marla chuckled. “See, food’s like anything else—he can’t carry it across the property line with him, even if he’s swallowed it. So…”
Lina thought about it for a moment. “So partially digested food just… falls to the ground?”
“Uh-huh. Well, chewed. Not digested exactly. The fluids and stuff go away too. Still, kind of off-putting. He’d rather not deal with it.”
Even to a nurse, this was a new one. Lina nodded. “Huh. Weird.”
“That’s why he goes through so much gum. Gets some new tastes without having to swallow anything. And sleeping, he says, is just a waste of time. He can step off the property and come back all recharged, no matter what’s wrong with him.”
“So if he gets tired or hungry…”
“He ducks outside the lines for a second. Gets more done than most of us that way.”
Lina sat up. Fascination started to push aside fear. “Does his hair grow? Does he shave?”
“Same deal. If he stayed here for days, without leaving, it would grow. But for a clean shave and the haircut he died in, he just hops outside and comes back.”
“Incredible. Amazing.”
“Yeah. You can see why he doesn’t want people to know. Tabloids, scientists, paranormal junkies—everyone and their dog would be beating down this door to get a look.”
Lina nodded. “I’ll try to be respectful. I won’t make him do tricks.”
“He doesn’t mind a few people knowing. In fact, he likes it. It’s not often he gets to tell someone.” Marla shook her head again. “God, it must get lonely.”
Lina strengthened herself with another deep breath. “Then I’ll stay.”
“Good!” Marla beamed. “You’ll get used to it. Honest, you will.”
* * *
Alone in her room, Lina got out the articles from the library, sat crosslegged on the floor, and reread each one. Now when she looked at that headline, Houseboy Killed at Sorority , she felt the cold horror of knowing the victim. It was the same way she had felt in high school one summer when a classmate was killed in a car crash, and she had only found out about it by picking up the newspaper on her mother’s front porch. It also brought back tremors of how she had felt when signing her statement regarding Mr. Ambaum’s death at the hospital.
Sean Reynolds had been studying math at the university. He thought maybe he would be a teacher. He had played high school baseball and was a good student. His funeral was held Tuesday, April 14, 1936, in Port Townsend, the town where he had grown up. He left behind his parents, and a sister who was twelve years old when her big brother died.
The words of the newsprint swam in her vision. She threw the articles aside, letting them scatter over the carpet, and pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes.
The boy I love is dead , she thought. The sentence carried the kind of pathos that could only make her cry on a day when she felt particularly weak. For it was stupid, so stupid, to mourn his death when he was downstairs right this minute setting tables for dinner.
* * *
She hardly looked at him when he was near her dinner table that evening. But when he was across the room she couldn’t stop staring at him. It had become quite ridiculous by the end of the meal, and she felt she owed him an apology.
As he took away their dessert plates she turned to face him. The other people at her table were talking and weren’t likely to hear her. “Would you like to walk in the garden tonight?” she asked.
His chest lifted as if he had drawn a long-awaited breath. He responded in his usual polite tones, “That sounds nice.”
“Seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock.” He inclined his head to her and whisked away the dishes.
She walked Mrs. B back upstairs, and at her door the old lady asked, “Do I get to know what’s happening at seven o’clock?”
Lina smiled and dealt Mrs. B a light punch on the arm. “Didn’t know you were listening. Shame on you.”
“I’m going blind, Lina, not deaf.”
* * *
Ren’s shirt glowed with the ultraviolet tint that attaches itself to white items in the dusk hour. They walked the concrete path side by side.
“So, what’s new?” Lina asked.
“Oh, nothing much. Told a nice girl about me today. She took it pretty well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”
Lina smiled at an azalea bush. “For what?”
“Mostly I’m hoping she won’t be scared off.”
“Well, I hear she called you out here for a stroll. Imagine that’s a good sign.”
“Wonder if she wanted to say anything in particular?”
Although it was tempting out there in the fragrant twilight, Lina did not say, “I think I love you.” She was too shy, too terrified of the implications; and anyway, such a statement needed to be slept on before being spoken.
So she watched her brown shoes as she walked, and shrugged one shoulder. “I talked to Marla.”
“Oh?”
“She gave me some of the history. I’d like to learn more.”
“Such as?”
“Tell me about the house in the old days.”
“Sorority life?” he said. “Ah, that was a challenge.”
“I can imagine. Pretty girls everywhere.”
“Relentless, curious girls, who weren’t supposed to ‘fraternize’ with the houseboys but did anyway.”
They reached the wooden table with the umbrella. Lina swiveled to sit on it. “So you were forbidden fruit.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You were afraid of losing your job,” she added, remembering Mrs. Clairmont’s story, “when you were seeing Ju—her.”
“Would have been grounds for dismissal. Made it romantic at the time, sneaking around and breaking rules. Now it just seems stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid. The rules were.” She didn’t dare add that Julia was a little stupid as well—drugging her date, for God’s sake.
He looked at the high wall of the house with its bright windows. “The irony is, I met girls later who I would have died for.”
“But not that one?”
He stooped and picked up a pebble. “Not that one.” He enunciated the words clearly. He pitched the stone against the house. It bounced off the bricks and rustled in a bush.
“Well. I’m glad there were better ones eventually.” Not that she was glad, exactly. She was in fact wildly jealous.
“In a way,” Ren said, “I was happiest when Marla and Alan arrived to turn it into a retirement home. I thought, finally, I’d get to be around people my own age. My real age, I mean.”
“Ninety…”
“Ninety-one in November.”
Lina supposed he’d heard all the jokes about how great he looked. She kept her mouth shut, imagining they were in poor taste anyway.
“But as it turned out,” Ren went on, “I couldn’t really talk to those folks about growing up in the twenties, or living through the Depression. I could let them talk about it, but I couldn’t say, ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ I’ve always had to pretend to be twenty-two, whatever that meant for the time I was living in.”
“So during Vietnam you had to pretend you were dodging the draft?”
He crouched and picked peeling paint off a container of roses. “Invented a heart condition for myself. Same one I used during World War II.”
“But nobody actually has any paperwork on you, do they?”
“You mean, would I really have been drafted? No. ‘Ren Schultz’ is unregistered with Social Security, doesn’t have a driver’s license or a birth certificate, and doesn’t pay a dime in taxes.” He paused. “Come to think of it, maybe I am a criminal.”
Lina smiled and slid back farther on the table. “So how many girls lived here in the sorority days?”
“Capacity was thirty.” He abandoned the rose container and sat beside her. “And the house was at capacity most years, till the mid-sixties.”
“Thirty? Wow.” To Lina, the house felt crowded enough at sixteen residents.
“That wasn’t even all the members. They had sixty, seventy, eighty girls some years. They just couldn’t all live here. The live-outs had dorm rooms or apartments. It’s still that way in the Greek houses.”
“Do the houseboys still live on the property? That seems kind of…” Lina wasn’t sure of the best word, but Ren understood.
“Risky? Yeah. These days, they usually don’t. Some girl would constantly be down there, or he’d be sleeping upstairs with her—even though guys usually aren’t allowed on the upper floors.”
“You couldn’t go upstairs?”
“Oh, God, no. Strictly forbidden. Rules were tight. The girls weren’t even allowed to wear jeans on campus till sometime in the sixties. Would’ve gotten called up in front of the Standards Committee for it.”
Lina laughed, not just at the quaintness of the old rules, but at the fact that he knew so much about the internal runnings of sororities. Then she remembered why he knew about it, and stopped laughing. “So…how did you avoid all the inquisitive girls, if this was before the house arrest story?”
“I used the rules when I could. Said I was going to get in trouble. Rose— Marla’s grandma—backed me up if I needed it. But sometimes…” He chuckled. “Sometimes I let them get me.”
Lina echoed the chuckle, turning it rueful. She envied those girls so much it ached. Though the thought scared her, she yearned to know what it was like to be a ghost’s lover—this ghost’s, anyway. She couldn’t tell yet which side of the teetering scales would win: the side determined to find out, or the side that had learned from past hurts and wanted to run away.
Above all, she felt sorry for him, and also for those girls, now grown up, who must have had some extremely strange memories of a particular college romance. “I don’t blame any of you,” she said. “I understand the temptation, on both sides.”
He smiled, aware of the compliment. “Better to have loved and lost, and all that.”
“I hope it’s true. I’ve lost often enough.”
“Oh, back to this, are we?” He turned to her with a grin. “Listen. This Brent guy’s an idiot if he was willing to give you up. So don’t you dare call yourself a loser over it one more time, or I—well, I’ve been told I’m absolutely wicked when it comes to tickling people. You’ve been warned.”
She laughed, looking down at her feet, swinging them under the table. “Well, thank you.” She risked another glance at him. He too had his head bowed, and his gaze fixed on his shoes. Sliding over and kissing him would be the daring, romantic thing to do right now, letting him know she didn’t mind embracing a ghost, if he was interested—which he probably was, to judge from that remark. But…she did mind, didn’t she? Her natural aversion to death still held her at bay. She needed to know more first, needed time to accept it. She cleared her throat and tried out a new topic. “What happened in the sixties to make the sorority close?”
He started telling the tale, which, to her relief, had nothing to do with ghosts. Rather, the Greek system in general experienced a plummet in popularity in the latter half of the sixties, and many sororities nationwide had to close chapters. Some houses, like this one, never recovered.
This led Ren and Lina into a discussion of Rose Helman, Marla’s grandmother. It was nine o’clock when they finally went back inside so Lina could take up the night watch, and Ren could give the kitchen a scrub-down.
They stood at the foot of the back staircase, their point of separation.
“So, Miss Lina. Now that you’ve called me out, what do you think? Willing to stick around?”
Lina rested her hand on the railing and eased up onto the first step, balancing there at his height. “Yes. I’m willing.”
“Good.” He leaned his arm on the wall, watching her. She thought he was going to say more, but he only smiled.
“Well…” She went up another step, backward, and parted her lips to say goodnight. Then, for some reason, the scales tipped. She stepped back down, put her arms around his neck, and drew him into a hug.
He caught her close and held her. She felt his sigh against the nape of her neck.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said.
“Thank you for believing me.”
She squeezed him tighter. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
She turned and dashed up the stairs, two at a time, her feet feeling light as air.
Mrs. B looked up with an open-mouthed smile of expectation when Lina entered to help her into bed. “How did it go?” she asked.
“It went fine. Ready for bed?” Lina slipped a hand beneath Mrs. B’s arm.
“Yes, I’m ready, thank you. Did you get a kiss, at least?”
“No, I did not get a kiss. Nothing happened.”
“Spring is young yet,” said Mrs. B. “And so are the two of you.”
Lina helped Mrs. B out of her sweater. “Oh, we aren’t that young.”