Chapter IV
IV
Just as Persephone had the power to usher in the spring, to breathe new life into roots still and dormant, so might her descendants have powers of their own.
The power to paint, perhaps. The power to make beautiful music.
The power to see ghosts. The power to command them, the power to banish them …
That night I didn’t sleep. I lay in my bed for endless hours, hearing phantom knocks above me; when I closed my eyes I saw Evelyn banging on the closet door, her knuckles split open, blood running down her arms, dripping onto her socks, the carpet.
Evelyn always wore wool socks. Her feet were always cold.
What had I done. What had I done. What had I done to her.
I dragged myself into the shower at five in the morning, leaving the water on cold, feeling absolutely nothing even as goose bumps rose up on my arms, covering every inch of my skin, making me itchy.
What had I done. What had I done.
What had I done to Henry.
I had meant to get him to leave, to send him away, but something had happened that I hadn’t anticipated; my words weren’t just words, they were a command, something Henry wouldn’t have been able to disobey.
Did I have control over him? Over them? Over all of the ghosts?
Did I have power?
Because that’s what it had felt like.
I had said those words—go away—and he had vanished. He had blinked out of existence.
I had banished him.
Had I banished him?
I was in the kitchen by five forty-five, my hair wet and dripping, my lips numb, why were my lips numb?
Dad was already there, making a pot of coffee in his flannel pajamas and an old ratty T-shirt he’d managed to save, so far, from my sisters. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me.
“Crack of dawn, there, daughter,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Everything okay?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Literally not a single thing.”
“Can I offer you the first cup of coffee? A deep and meaningful hug? A penny for your thoughts?”
“One and two, please,” I said, walking into his arms. He smelled like coffee beans, and he kissed the top of my head. I wanted to disappear, in that moment. I wanted to disappear like Henry had. I wanted to wink out of existence altogether.
By the time Evelyn and I set out for school I was so tired I was hallucinating; I couldn’t tell if there were real ghosts outside or imaginary ones, hordes of them, an army of the undead.
I kept blinking, trying to clear my vision, as if my eyes were the problem and not my sleep exhaustion, my guilt, my guilt.
Somehow through my blinking, somewhere halfway across the park, I realized Evelyn had stopped walking; when I turned around to look at her, she was bright red and glaring at me, her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flaring.
“What?” I said.
It was the wrong thing to say, I quickly realized.
“Oh, like you don’t fucking know what,” she hissed, her mouth barely open, the words forcing their way through clenched teeth, bared lips.
Evelyn didn’t swear easily, and it was more powerful when she did, it was sharper, it made my heart speed up. I would just pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about, I would just lie, it was fine, it would be fine. “Is this about Vermont?”
“You know this is not about Vermont,” she said.
“Can you give me a hint here, Evie? Because I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“WHERE IS HE?” she screamed—and her scream was so sudden, so unexpected, that I actually jumped backward, landing awkwardly on my ankle, catching myself before I fell. A man walking his very large standard poodle shot us both a dirty look and quickened his pace.
I couldn’t do this, I was terrible at lying, I was drowning in my guilt, but then I remembered Henry, his face rising in my memory unbidden, the way he looked when he told me I had found some gumption, and the guilt was replaced by anger, and resolve (I had done the right thing I had done the right thing), and I swallowed and steeled myself against Evelyn.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, but can you stop screaming, please?”
She closed her eyes. Her hands were balled into fists so tight I could see her knuckles turning white.
“I swear to god, if you did something…”
“If I did something? If I did what? You’re not making any sense and I’m going to be late a-fucking-gain!”
“You didn’t care so much about missing school when you went to Vermont WITHOUT ME!”
“SO THIS IS ABOUT VERMONT?”
“NO IT’S NOT ABOUT VERMONT, I DON’T CARE ABOUT VERMONT.”
Evelyn’s face was so red I wouldn’t have been surprised if she burst into flames.
But she didn’t burst into flames.
She burst into tears.
And she collapsed on the ground, her legs buckling, her body plummeting like a stone.
I ran to her, kneeling in front of her, cradling her face in my hands.
“Evelyn, Evie, Evie, what’s wrong? What’s happening? Please tell me what’s going on.”
I felt like a monster.
I was a monster.
If she knew …
Never in a million, billion years would she have forgiven me.
“He’s gone,” she said. She was rocking back and forth, her whole body quivering. “He’s gone. He won’t answer me. He won’t come. He won’t appear.”
“Henry?” I asked, lying.
“Is it Henry?” I asked, lying.
“Henry won’t come?” I asked, lying.
“Last night,” she said, still sobbing, still rocking. “This morning. I knocked, and knocked, but he wasn’t there … I didn’t even … The jasmine … I didn’t even smell it. He’s not there. I don’t know where he is.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked, lying.
“Yesterday morning,” she said.
“And how often do you usually see him?” I asked, lying.
“Every day,” she said, and she looked up then, directly into my eyes, an eye contact that made my retinas burn. “I see him every day.”
“Okay, I hear you,” I said. “I hear you, Evie. But you did see him yesterday. You just said you did. So let’s just see what happens tonight, okay? Let’s just see what happens tonight.”
She buried her face in her hands. She rocked forward far enough that she was leaning into me, throwing her whole weight against me. I hardly heard her muffled retort.
“He has to come,” she said. “He has to come.”
“He will,” I said, lying. “He will.”
But he didn’t.
He didn’t come, no matter that Evelyn knocked on the closet door so frequently and so desperately that week that her knuckles really did turn bloody and fresh scabs were constantly breaking open, sending tiny rivulets of blood down her fingers, just like in my vision.
She didn’t yell after that morning in the park.
She got very quiet.
Each night I went up to her bedroom and found her lying on her bed, bandages wrapped around her hands, her lips so chapped they were peeling.
“Maybe there’s some ghost thing we don’t know about,” I said. Her stormy, ocean-blue eyes darted over to me, but she didn’t say anything. I tried to keep my voice light. “Like a convention or something.”
“He’s never gone away for this long. He’s never not answered me when I knocked,” she said, and her voice itself was a ghost, a faint picture of the real thing.
I took her hand in mine and gently unwrapped the bandages. Her poor knuckles took my breath away. I was a terrible sister.
“Let me get you a fresh wrapping,” I said. I kissed her forehead. She gave no indication that she’d either heard me or felt the kiss.
In the bathroom, I found Clara sitting on the edge of the tub and Bernadette sitting on the closed lid of the toilet.
Over the past week, Bernadette had wiggled her way back into her old summer job at the florist down the street.
She wore a green canvas apron now. She smelled like roses.
She’d told Clara and Evelyn about her bipolar diagnosis one night after dinner that week.
Evelyn had hugged her and said all the right things.
Clara had been visibly frightened and had since treated Bernadette with a little more care than was probably needed.
(“She’ll get over it,” Bernadette had told me when I’d asked if it bothered her. “We forget how young she is.”)
I shut the bathroom door.
“What did you do to Henry?” Bernadette asked, her voice quiet so it wouldn’t carry to Evelyn’s bedroom.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my own voice shaky and strange.
“Winnie, knock it off,” Bernie insisted, plowing right through my denial. “We need to know what’s going on.”
“We had a fight,” I said.
“Okay, and?”
“And I asked him to … Or, I insisted he…” I took a breath. I closed my eyes, I opened them. My sisters were staring at me, waiting. “I sent him away. I made him go away.”
“Made him?” Bernie repeated.
“I think … yes. I made him. I think I didn’t know it, but I can … Maybe I can control them. The ghosts. Henry. I made him go away.”
“You banished him?” Clara hissed. “Oh, Evelyn’s going to kill you.”
“Well obviously I’m not planning on her finding out,” I replied.
“I don’t know,” Clara said, shaking her head. “It’s hard to lie to her for too long. She really wears you down.”
“Where did you send him, exactly?” Bernadette said, her voice calm and even, planning.
“Oh. I don’t really know…”
“And for how long?”
“I don’t really know that, either,” I admitted. “It all just happened really quickly. I didn’t really mean to … We had a fight, and I told him … I told him…”
I sat down on the cool tile floor, my legs suddenly shaky.
“What did you tell him?” Bernie pressed.
I covered my hands with my face and said through my closed fingers, “I told him we didn’t want him here anymore.”
“Oh, no,” Clara said. “Winnie, that’s awful.”
“When was this? I wish you had talked to us first.”
“The night we got back from Vermont.” I lifted my head. “I think I just … I don’t know. It all just came out of me. And he can’t do this to her, Bernadette. He can’t do this to her. And I was talking to Aunt Esme and … I don’t know. I thought I was doing the right thing…”
“You took advice from our six-year-old dead aunt?” Bernie said.