Chapter 7
Sawyer
Grime sheds from my skin, pooling and then disappearing down the drain. I spent the rest of yesterday cleaning the studio, making minimal progress on the formidable job. Turns out five years of dirt takes more than one night to clean.
It’s not like I was busy, though. My hopes of watching TV with Kennedy or having dinner while she sat nearby remained only that—hopes.
Determined, I finished the job today. I washed sheets, stocked the bathroom with soap, and bought a plunger from Target.
I even hung a shower curtain. With everything else prepared, I returned to the exhausting fight to exorcise the studio’s dust. I wish I’d found it cathartic or meditative or some shit like that.
I didn’t. It was hard. Not physically or logistically—after helping Kennedy with our remodel, I’m fairly handy.
No, it was hard emotionally. I haven’t done work on the house since Kennedy was really here, when she played her favorite music from her phone instead of just running it through my head.
It’s why I’ve avoided patching and painting the remaining unfinished pieces of the house. I know it’ll hurt.
But I’m doing this for her, I remind myself. To save her from fading to nothing.
When I shut off the water, I see lights outside my front window. Morgan’s car is pulling up to the curb. I dry my hands, noticing how pale the cold water makes them.
“This is what you want, right?” I ask quietly.
The faintest hum of “A Sunday Kind of Love” enters my head. I smile and then hurry outside to help.
Morgan is hauling a worn suitcase from her car. She spent one more night in her place last night while I prepared the studio. I’m guessing she left work tonight, picked up her packed things, then headed here to move in. She shuts the trunk and starts walking toward my gnarled yard.
Pausing outside my door, I observe my new guest for a moment.
Morgan is short, dresses in laid-back, effortlessly cool staples, and has extraordinary long, wavy brown hair.
What I notice most, though, isn’t these superficialities.
She has an energy to her—half restless, half eager.
Nothing seems to slow her down or dim her vigor.
It’s reflected in her laissez-faire attitude on haunting. Most people would have gone catatonic or jittery if they genuinely experienced the supernatural. Not Morgan. Instead, she seems to…crack jokes with her ghost and ask his opinion on her—their—living conditions. It’s unusual. Impressive, even.
Watching her wrestle her luggage up the path, I take a deep breath. Even though I spent two days preparing the studio for her, it’s only now hitting me that someone is going to be living here.
“I can help grab the rest from your car,” I call.
Morgan instantly startles, dropping the handle of her suitcase. “Dude!” Her eyes land on me. “You cannot sneak up on people in this yard.” She bends down to pick up her suitcase.
“Sorry.” I wince. “I figured you didn’t spook easily, given your…circumstances.”
“My circumstances? You mean the ghost of a himbo I live with? That’s nothing compared to a strange man with a murder yard,” she replies flippantly.
“And no, this is everything. I just have a few plants in the car but, no offense, only I handle them. All the plants under your care are super fucking dead.”
I stop in the middle of my, yes, super fucking dead lawn. “Wait. That’s…everything? You’re moving in here for an indefinite amount of time with one suitcase?”
Morgan doesn’t stop walking. Her voice carries over her shoulder. “I don’t have a lot of stuff. Never really believed in acquiring things that I’ll just throw out one day. Besides, it makes moves like right now easier.”
I don’t even know where to begin with that statement. I suppose it’s no surprise that the woman who is eager to get rid of her ghost ex considers physical possessions to be only future garbage.
I can’t relate. I’ve bought and made many pieces of pottery that have gone on to sit collecting dust in the closet.
“Do you move a lot, then?” I ask as I catch up to her on the back patio, my feet crunching over the fallen bougainvillea petals.
Morgan shrugs one shoulder. “Every couple years or so. We moved a lot when I was growing up, and it sort of stuck. I was in Arizona last, but I needed a break from the heat.”
My eyes trail to her earrings—the ones I noticed earlier. The outline of the state of Arizona. Perhaps she’s not as unsentimental as she pretends to be.
“A little ironic, don’t you think?” I ask. “A gardener who doesn’t put down roots?”
Morgan flashes me a grin. “My plants travel with me just fine.” Reaching into the pocket of her overalls, she pulls out the key I gave her earlier.
She unlocks the door and seems surprised by how little resistance it gives her.
I don’t bother telling her I spent an hour today sanding down the warped part of the door under the lock.
“Do you need anything from the house? I set you up with some basic supplies, but if you need plates or silverware, I could bring some over,” I offer, eyeing her regular-sized suitcase doubtfully.
“I’m good,” Morgan replies cheerfully. “I brought my plate.” She walks farther into the room, shivering slightly.
“Your…plate? Singular?”
“I only need the one. Zach doesn’t eat,” she says, laughing at her own joke.
I can’t help it. I gape at her. I haven’t had someone living come over to my house in years, and still I could never only have one plate.
Not only because a good plate is a piece of art in itself, but because it’s just inconvenient.
Does she never cook? Does she not get satisfaction from adding a clean plate to a stack in the cupboard?
Morgan watches me, clearly amused. “I suppose that’s vaguely horrifying to someone who makes pottery. You probably have a lot of plates.”
“Cups and bowls, too,” I add, puffing my chest up like I’m bragging.
She grins. Her smile is bright, her teeth just a tiny bit crooked on the top. The room seems a little warmer suddenly. Like whatever the opposite of haunting is, Morgan is doing it.
“It’s good to know if Zach smashes my beloved plate, you’ll have me covered.” She lays her suitcase flat on the original hardwood. When she speaks, it’s seemingly to the empty room. “Well, buddy? Want to help me unpack?”
We wait. A breeze outside sways the open door.
Morgan sighs. “Didn’t think so.” She unzips her suitcase and starts pulling things out.
I step back, not wanting to intrude. I only just met this woman yesterday. We’re not exactly friends. I’m not exactly her landlord. We’re…I don’t know. But I don’t know her well enough to hover, even if I am fascinated by what she might have deemed worthy to travel with her.
“Have a good night. Come by sometime tomorrow and we can discuss yard plans,” I say, holding the knob, ready to close the door behind me.
Morgan holds her hand up, waving while she continues to rummage.
I leave her to it and return to my dark and much colder house. I turn on the lights, chasing the shadows away as much as I can. Suddenly, I feel just how large this house is. I was never meant to live here alone. When Kennedy leaves, how much worse will it feel? I can’t contemplate the question.
It’s nearly nine. I’m not in the mood to read.
I’ve done so much physical labor today that I know I’ll sleep as soon as I lie down.
Might as well surrender now. I drag myself up my creaky stairs and head for our—my—bedroom.
The en suite bathroom was the first big renovation Kennedy did.
We tiled the floor together. I worked on the mosaic while Kennedy watched from the arched doorway.
I push the memory from my head and reach for my toothbrush.
As soon as I have toothpaste all over my teeth, music suddenly blares through the small window overlooking the back patio. The Killers, I think, though I can’t fully hear the melody. How very appropriate for Morgan.
I cool my instant irritation. I haven’t had to live with a roommate since college. I didn’t like it then. Kennedy and I moved in together shortly after we started dating, and I never looked back.
But honestly, I haven’t lived with anyone in five years. Ghosts are one thing, but living people are a lot more…present. I’d like to knock on Morgan’s door and ask her to turn it down. It’s her first night, though. I don’t want her to back out of our deal.
I also don’t need her to know I’m a loser who goes to sleep at nine p.m. I’m already the grieving haunted dude with a creepy yard. I need to hold on to the shreds of dignity I have left.
I’ve survived worse than a night of falling asleep fitfully to 2000s hits. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. Sleeping in an old haunted house has trained me for this.
I spit and rinse. Suddenly, the music gets louder.
I close my eyes. No, wait, it’s not just louder.
I can make out the lyrics now, too. “Smile Like You Mean It.” I look out the window and find the studio door is open and a dark figure is crossing the flagstone to my back door. This is no shadowy apparition.
I speed down my steps to meet her. Of course she’s realized she needs something. A cup or a towel. No one can really live out of one suitcase.
When I open my door, I’m ready to gloat. Until Morgan holds up a small ceramic mug in the shape of a dragon’s head.
I recognize it instantly. I made it. Years and years ago.
“Sorry,” Morgan begins. “Zach stole this. He hid it in my luggage. I think he must have found it in the studio? I’m afraid he’ll break it, so it might be better if you take it inside your house.
Sometimes, he gets obsessed with things, and I really don’t need his latest prank fixation to feature something I’m guessing you made. ”
I reach out for the dark green mug. The front is sharpened into a dragon’s nose.
The back features wings that I carefully sculpted and applied.
I haven’t seen it in—I don’t know how long.
I made it before I started focusing on the vases and pottery I sold to hotel decorators for a living.
“I did, yeah,” I tell her. “A lifetime ago. I didn’t know I still had it. I don’t even know where he found it.”
Morgan surrenders the dragon carefully. “Zach is good at turning up crap. Not that this is crap,” she says, rushing to clarify.
“It’s actually very cool. I just mean he finds old forgotten stuff a lot.
My roommate had this envelope of Polaroids she took with an ex and—you know what?
I’m not going to tell that story, but suffice to say, Zach found what she never wanted found again. ”
I thumb the indentations I made for eyes, remembering the smell of fresh glaze, the paint I applied with a fine brush.
It had been a random experiment, a challenge for myself to make something outside my comfort zone.
Holding this relic from my past brings back memories I forgot I had.
How can Morgan live with so few possessions?
How many pieces of her own life are out of her sight and therefore entirely forgotten? Gone forever, now.
Maybe that’s the point, I realize sadly.
“Thanks,” I tell Morgan. “If he finds it again, or something else, it’s okay. I’m not afraid of mugs breaking. It happens.”
Morgan’s gaze moves from the dragon to me. I have the sense she’s seeing far more than I intended. “You said you don’t do pottery anymore. Get bored?” she asks, her voice gentle but inquisitive.
I know what she’s really asking. I decide to spare her having to come right out with it. “I haven’t been able to since Kennedy died. I need to make her an urn, but I…can’t. It’s blocked me, I guess.”
Her eyes, brown, soften in the moonlight. “Well, if you ever want to make anything less painful than the final resting place for your deceased fiancée, this dragon mug is cool as hell. You could try a unicorn next.”
I’m instantly grateful she didn’t linger on my wounds, didn’t give me meaningless sympathy or empty aphorisms about how it’ll get better one day. She acknowledged it without making it the focus. It lets me push it to the side, too.
“Would you make room for a unicorn mug in your single suitcase if I did make one?” I ask, the tide of grief that always rises when I think of Kennedy’s urn subsiding just a little.
“Maybe,” she replies with a half smile. “There’s some toothpaste on your chin. I’ll turn the music down.” She waves and walks back to the studio, where, sure enough, the Killers are silenced.
I reach for my chin, rubbing toothpaste away self-consciously. When I return inside carrying a relic from my former life, I suddenly wish it weren’t so quiet.