{"id":2574,"date":"2014-09-21T17:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=2574"},"modified":"2014-09-21T18:29:15","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T18:29:15","slug":"the-visitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=2574","title":{"rendered":"The Visitation — Blair Hurley"},"content":{"rendered":"

She’s a grandmother with no grandchildren; both she and her sister Viv have become the
\nchildless grandmothers of the town. That’s how she thinks of herself these days, and then
\nwonders, with a small dismay, how did this happen?<\/p>\n

Some Sundays after the local church lets out a gaggle of neighbor children come to visit
\nEvie and her older sister Viv. She always has to have ginger snaps and lemonade stocked and
\nready for the occasion, as though every Sunday is Halloween. A well-meaning Sunday school
\nteacher stands behind this gang as they congregate in the living room and put their dirty sneakers
\non the rug, and Evie is supposed to be delighted with the whole affair, just smile and tap her cane
\nand rock back and forth, addled and beaming. On these days she knows she doesn’t miss having
\ngrandchildren much. Other people’s, anyway, she can take or leave.<\/p>\n

Viv always loves the visitors, though. She strides into the room waving a silk scarf like an
\nold starlet, settles down in the only comfortable chair and begins to tell her stories. She can
\nalways talk; there is always something more to say, or the same thing to say over. There are the
\nstories of when they were both children in the plains of Kansas and had to wear bandannas over
\ntheir noses and mouths to school, to protect against the dust storms. The dark tornado cellar
\nthey had to hustle into at a moment’s notice. Evie remembers that too, the darkness, her
\nmother’s hand clutching her around the waist, the roaring outside, desolate as a ghost trying to
\nget in. But it’s Viv who wants to tell. She talks about their father and the teams of mules he
\ndrove all his life, so that when they finally moved to New York and rode in a car he said,<\/p>\n

“Whoah, whoah,” when he hit the brakes. The little children laugh at this. Their small sticky cough-syrup hands grip their sneakers, rolling on the floor.<\/p>\n

If the teacher brings her older class of pre-teens, Viv tells them about when they moved
\nto the big city and she led a glamorous life acting in off-broadway plays. How she’d almost been
\ndiscovered, if she hadn’t left the show’s after-party that night to have a drink with her future
\nhusband. Everyone smiles. The school teacher, a young woman with a large hat brim hiding her
\nface, clasps her hands to her chest.<\/p>\n

Through the stories Evie nods and smiles. Backs up her sister even as the tales get taller
\nthrough the years. Now it isn’t some unknown playwright who liked her, it was Orson Welles and
\nhe wanted her for Citizen Kane. Well, let her talk. Evie holds a small knowing smile tucked into
\nher mouth like a nut she’s saving for winter.<\/p>\n

After these sessions the Sunday school teacher shoos the children away and stays behind
\nto help tidy the kitchen. Evie sits at the table and lets her work, enjoying the way she moves
\nswiftly about the kitchen, the clean easy jerk of her arms on the garbage bag. So easy.<\/p>\n

She carries it outside in two light bounds. Evie hasn’t run in years, can’t remember what it feels like to bounce off one foot onto the other. “The children sure do love your stories,” the teacher says, coming back in.<\/p>\n

Viv is in the powder room, so Evie speaks honestly, just this once. “Not really. They’re
\nbored to tears. But it gives my sister someone to tell her stories to.”
\nThis seems to surprise the teacher. A blush creeps into her cheeks. “I’m sure the children
\n–”<\/p>\n

“Oh, come along.” Evie has never been a patient person when she can help it. She
\nremembers waiting for her daughter to be born. And in the end, waiting for her to leave again.<\/p>\n

Both seemed interminable in their own ways. “Of course they’re bored with us. They should be.
\nThey’ve got better things to do than humor a pair of old biddies.”<\/p>\n

The school teacher half smiles under her hat.
\n*
\nThey’d bought the house only half a decade ago, when they finally decided they couldn’t
\nlive in the city anymore. Now Evie thinks they went too far in the other direction; aside from a
\nfew neighbors on their street, the fields and woods around are deep and unbroken.<\/p>\n

Town is only a few streets clustered a mile or so down the road; most days it is too far for her to walk. They should have seen this coming, but somehow they didn’t believe in their own old age. No husband, no children are around to scold, to warn; their own parents died young. The house itself is old and cave dark and has to be lit with floor lamps scattered freely through the rooms.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Evie and Viv can’t be bothered going around turning on all the lights and so they
\nfumble in the dark with their canes like the blind, bumping into old remembered objects (father’s
\nmodel ship, mother’s china dogs). They bump into each other, and snap and growl like stranger
\ndogs. They’ve always fought, as long as either can remember; over small and large things, over
\nburnt toast and career goals, over why won’t you get married, over leave me alone.
\nThen they’re quiet, as the evening light knits the shadows together, and they can think
\nabout the people who are gone, the growing holes, the way they stretch and fill the inner space of
\ntheir bodies.<\/p>\n

She knows this is going down a new road on which age has routed them; another few
\nsteps and they’ll be crazy, once and for all. And this young teacher, the one who sees them
\nregularly — she’ll probably be the one to report them to the county. Evie’s up nights thinking
\nabout it sometimes. Viv comes back into the kitchen. “I hope the children enjoyed themselves.” A little
\nshimmy of her hips. “They’re always welcome.”<\/p>\n

“I’ll remember that,” says the Sunday school teacher. She gets up to go. Viv watches, a
\ndesperation that Evie knows growing in her eyes. “Won’t you stay a while? Have a late lunch
\nwith us?”<\/p>\n

“I’d better be going.”<\/p>\n

Viv sits heavily at the kitchen table and lets her scarf fall into her lap. She takes to the
\ngrandmother role like every other role she’s played: with delight, with drama, with a little too
\nmuch hamminess. On Sundays she wears the special dresses she never let the moths get. She
\ntints her white hair with bluing the way their own grandmother did. She wears too much
\nmakeup, too much perfume. For years she has bragged how wearing sunscreen every day of her
\nlife has prevented her skin from sagging, but Evie can’t see much difference between the two of
\nthem. Viv’s lips are too thin; her skin is translucent, and doesn’t match the shock of blush. Her
\nskin, brittle and cracked like crumpled paper.<\/p>\n

Either way, this is Viv’s latest role: grandmother. The sweating pitcher of juice, the
\nwarmed plate of cookies, are always waiting and ready.
\nMaybe today she is thinking about what the house will feel like when it is just them again.<\/p>\n

She sits up straighter. “You know, Evie can talk to ghosts.”
\nEvie says, “Viv!” sharply, but her sister’s eyes are bright, unrepentant.
\nThe Sunday school teacher turns. Evie expects her to frown, to disapprove. She’s from
\nthe church, after all. Don’t those fire-and-brimstone types think ghosts are all witchcraft and
\ndevil-worship? But the teacher is leaning forward. “How do you talk to them?” she asks.<\/p>\n

“I–”<\/p>\n

“In her sleep,” Viv prompts. “When she sleeps, dead people come and tell her things.”<\/p>\n

“Viv, enough.” Evie pushes back from the table with an angry snort. Humiliated enough
\nfor one day. Her sister has never shared this before with strangers and it feels like betrayal. “She
\nmakes me sound crazy. I just dream about people sometimes the way we all do.”<\/p>\n

“That’s not what you told me,” Viv insists.<\/p>\n

The teacher is quiet. “Is it someone you know?”<\/p>\n

“Well — yes.”<\/p>\n

She taps a finger to her chin. “If they ask you a question, don’t answer it,” she says.<\/p>\n

“Ask them one back. Ghosts can be tricky. They can try to fool you. You have to fool them.”<\/p>\n

Evie laughs. It’s funny, a joke; the teacher is humoring her, poor doddering old fool. But
\nthe laugh peters out at the table. Something dark and non-reflective is in the teacher’s eyes,
\nsomething she can’t laugh at.<\/p>\n

And Viv is right. They aren’t dreams at all. She’s sure of it.
\n*
\nAt night when they have turned off the late show and the woods are black in the window
\nand Evie is reminded how very far out they are, and Viv has retired to her own room, Evie’s
\ndaughter comes and sits on the end of the bed. That is her customary spot. She never comes
\ncloser, as if they have just had a fight and she’s waiting to see if they’re made up. And Evie never
\ncomes closer, either, because she is afraid of scaring her away.<\/p>\n

“How are you?” Evie always asks. Her daughter looks young and strong again, her long
\nbrown hair full and glossy in the dark, her cheeks filled out. Not sunken and wasted the way she
\nwas in the last months of her life.<\/p>\n

“I’m all right,” her daughter says. “I’m all right. It’s difficult, you know. But I’m
\nlearning.”<\/p>\n

The only sounds in the darkness are crickets and Viv’s soft whistling snore.<\/p>\n

This time her daughter is restless. “Do you remember when you said goodbye to me?”
\nher daughter asks. “Why did you say that? I was so frightened and that only made it worse.”<\/p>\n

Evie suddenly remembers the school teacher’s warning. Ghosts could pull you in. “What
\nare you learning?” she counters. “What do you have to learn?”<\/p>\n

“Will you come with me, and tell me why you frightened me?” her daughter asks.<\/p>\n

“Why did you have to go?” Evie asks. “It was going to be the two of us. Always. Now
\nI’m stuck with Viv.”<\/p>\n

Her daughter smiles in an absent-minded way. It always seems like she’s only half there,
\nlike she is waiting for a train and her mind is already on the journey.<\/p>\n

“Are you all right now? Do you hurt anymore?” Evie asks her urgently, sensing she is
\nabout to go.<\/p>\n

Her daughter doesn’t answer. Just half-smiles. Her head tilted, the long curtain of hair
\nfalling into shadow. Like a young girl again. Beautiful. Then she gets up and walks away. Evie
\nremains awake for a long time afterward, listening for her.
\n*
\n“It’s not ghosts,” she tells Viv in the morning. “It’s a ghost. It’s only the one. You make
\nme sound batty.”<\/p>\n

“Obviously just the one. She’s your one.” Viv is uninterested in the details. They are
\ncleaning the house the way they always do on Monday. With Viv’s bad knees and Evie’s bad hip
\nit is a slow process. It ends up taking most of the week, and then they are around the bend to
\nMonday again. Still, they prefer it to letting a stranger try to clean. Only they know how to
\nnavigate the knickknacks and cluttered furniture, the forest of standing lamps. Look how many
\nuseless things you acquire in your life, Evie thinks, passing the duster through the vases jammed
\non a dresser. It’s not even the things you buy yourself; it’s the things your parents leave you, and
\nthe things that their parents left them. It gets to be a burden, the weight of all these things. She
\nimagines the house, burning to the ground. A tragedy, of course. But to be left with nothing — to
\nbe only you again, not all the things, all the people you were supposed to carry with you — the
\nthought sweeps her up and she’s lost, thinking about it, until Viv yells at her to keep sweeping.<\/p>\n

“If someone came to talk to me, it would be George,” says Viv, swinging her broom like a
\ndance partner. “I wonder why he doesn’t come to me. I talk to him, sometimes, but he never
\nanswers.”<\/p>\n

“It’s been a long time.” Viv married George after a three-week courtship in 1944. Then
\nGeorge was killed in action in the Philippines. Viv was a young and beautiful widow. She really
\nwas as beautiful as she likes to claim. Everyone expected her to marry again; it was only a matter
\nof time. The cars of young boys were always parked outside her chic little apartment when Evie
\ncame to visit.<\/p>\n

But she never did. She continued to live there alone, carrying a series of tiny dogs in
\npurses out every day, for decades. She became a fixture at the local coffee shops and playhouses,
\nwith her bouffant hair, sunglasses, her little leopard-spotted coats. The New York Times wrote a
\ntownie story about her. Eventually, when Evie’s daughter died in her fifties, the two of them
\nbought the country house together.<\/p>\n

“I say, ‘George, it’s about time we reconciled. Who are you going to shack up with in
\nheaven if not me?'” Viv is saying, raising dust with short, vicious strokes of her broom.<\/p>\n

“‘You’ll never forgive him for going off and dying,” says Evie. “He knows it. That’s why
\nhe stays away.”<\/p>\n

Viv pauses and her eyes narrow like when she’s about to say something mean. “And you
\nand June? You’ll never forgive her, will you.”<\/p>\n

Evie is silent. The name of her daughter is enough to still something in her, to quiet her
\ndeep down. She has always found it hard to speak. When she was young she didn’t talk until she
\nwas four; her parents feared she was simple. But it was always better to listen, to let others tell
\ntheir stories. Particularly talking about herself. Best to keep that quiet. Finally she says, “I don’t
\nknow.”
\n*
\nShe remembers playing with tarot decks with her sister when they were girls. Always fighting over them, the way they fought over everything. This way. No, this way. It’s my turn to play the card. No, mine. You dummy.<\/p>\n

Once their father brought them a bag of smooth, polished multi-colored stones and a
\nlittle manual that he had bought in Chinatown. This is how they talk to spirits in the Orient, he
\ntold them. Very ancient, powerful magic. He was always bringing them things he considered
\nexotic: South American masks and dried puffer fish, engraved chopsticks.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was that strangeness that made them seem special. The Chinese characters that
\nfilled the little booklet seemed like spell-speech. They shook the bag and tossed the stones with
\ngreat seriousness. This was going to tell them their future, or help them speak to the other world
\nthey had always suspected lay beneath theirs.<\/p>\n

The stones fell and rolled across the little sitting room. Now they checked the booklet.
\nOne is special and one is not, the book told them. The red stone and the black stone.
\nEach time, one is speaking, the other is silent.<\/p>\n

The red stone fell in front of Evie, the black closer to Viv. But they couldn’t tell which
\nstone was special, which was speaking. The manual wouldn’t say. “It’s the black one,” said Viv,
\nand Evie agreed. Viv was the speaker, after all. She loved to sing and perform.
\nBut though she didn’t say anything, Evie still secretly thought, What if it’s the red?
\n*
\nOn Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Evie sweeps. Back and forth across the porch the way her
\nmother, her grandmother used to drift across the old Kansas porch like a ceaseless tide.<\/p>\n

This is the realm of grandmothers, of mothers; this is what we do, she says to herself. From the porch she can watch the road, see three tidy little neighbor houses tucked into the trees. When a wind blows the treetops ruffle like a hand moving through hair. Sometimes in the woods behind the house she can see deer moving, flickering through the dense summer green. There’s a neighbor
\nwho moves through the forest, collecting wild mint and sage. She sees him swinging a machete sometimes to get through the thick ground cover. To her it’s all just green: she can’t name a
\nsingle tree or flower. All a mystery. She says to herself, to June, Why did I come here? What are you learning?<\/p>\n

In the city, though, she knew her way. She loved being a city woman. She and June were
\nout every day walking the streets, whether they had somewhere to go or not. After her work
\nclerking at a law office and after June was out of school they would find themselves at a flea
\nmarket touching the squares of silk, the dusty frames of old paintings. Smelling the hot garbage
\nsmell of New York, the sweet-sour cloy of other bodies pressing against them in the subway. The
\npainful roar of the train cars, the smell of street stand curry. She loved it all. She sucked it in
\ngreedily. June, too, in her quiet, solemn way, breathing in the ugly spice of the city. When she
\nwas very young, they’d hold hands, and share a secret signal, stroking each other’s palms with a
\nfinger.<\/p>\n

Viv sits on the porch, watching Evie sweep and telling her stories. The time that I skinnydipped
\nin Bethesda fountain. The time George and I went for a carriage ride and the horse ran
\naway with us. The time I saw Betty Davis coming out of the Plaza. Have I told you about the
\ntime I–? “Yes, I remember,” says Evie. “That was quite a time.”
\nViv laughs, slaps her knee thin and bony as a wrought-iron railing. “Oh, we were wild
\nthen!”<\/p>\n

“Lift your feet, so I can sweep under you,” says Evie.<\/p>\n

Viv narrows her eyes. “You were always so dreamy. Always your head up in the clouds.<\/p>\n

Even now you’re far away, aren’t you.”<\/p>\n

Evie pauses in her sweeping. But she doesn’t have time to answer; someone is coming up
\nthe walk, and it’s too early for the mailman. Viv’s eyes are better and she figures it out first.<\/p>\n

“Well look who it is!” she cries. The Sunday school teacher is climbing the steps, pulling her long
\nskirts up.<\/p>\n

“What brings you here?” Viv asks. Evie is quiet, but feels a strange quickening of her
\nbreath. The Sunday School teacher raises her straw hat; underneath her hair is long and loose,
\nnot in its usual bun. Suddenly she is young, younger than Evie has ever realized.<\/p>\n

“I just came to return this to you, and apologize,” she says. She is holding a small ceramic
\nhorse that belonged to Evie’s daughter. “Henry seems to have slipped it into his pocket during
\nour last visit.”<\/p>\n

“Goodness.” Evie straightens, leans the broom against a wall. “I hadn’t even missed it.”<\/p>\n

She takes the little horse, turning it over and over in her hands.<\/p>\n

“Greedy little thief !” exclaims Viv from her chair. “I hope he’s getting punished.”<\/p>\n

“Yes, certainly. I’m very sorry about that.” The teacher looks to the sky, as if waiting for
\nGod to add his approval, a roll of thunder perhaps. But the sky is blue and untroubled. “I was
\nwondering also — if you were still having ghost trouble, Evie.”<\/p>\n

She looks behind her; Viv is grinning, getting ready to laugh. “It’s nothing. Just bad
\ndreams. When you get old, you get them.”<\/p>\n

Her sister gets up, snatches the little horse from her hands. “Give me that. I know where
\nit goes.”
\nWhen she enters the house, the school teacher presses Evie’s hands in her own. Her eyes
\nare once again strangely dark; Evie can’t see herself in them. “Come to our meeting,” she says.<\/p>\n

“It’s tonight. We want to see you there.” And, lowering her voice, “Come and be free of your
\nburdens. You need to lighten the load.” She is pressing a card into Evie’s palm.<\/p>\n

“Thank you, but I’ve had enough religion for one lifetime.” She can imagine the sad
\nconglomeration of characters that turn up for Friday night Bible study.
\nBut the woman winks at her. Turns, waves, and walks on down the road.
\nEvie turns the card in her hand. It is not for Bible study. The society for Ghosts, Phantoms,
\nand Otherworldly Phenomena, it reads in old-timey curling script. Support, outreach, communication.
\n*
\nAt night the darkness blossoms and the crickets lean in close. Night in the country is a
\nwarm heavy blanket on her skin. When she goes walking sometimes in the evening, she can feel
\nthe trees long after she can’t see them anymore, like they have become pillars in her mind,
\nmemories she no longer has.<\/p>\n

She remembers running through the trees with her daughter, when they were both young.
\nThat was when they used to get a summer house in upstate New York, not much different from
\nthis one. Then the lightning bugs lit their way but only for a time, and then they ran, panting
\nand stumbling in the dark, laughing and chasing. She never knew what her daughter was
\nchasing, only knew she had to stay with her, had to follow her through the trees. She could hear
\nher shouts ahead. She was young then and her body still felt like a fresh rubber band, still warm
\nand loose and under her control. She ran and laughed and chased she-didn’t-know-what and felt
\nquite certain that the two of them would get there, would find it, very soon.<\/p>\n

Viv is in a bad mood tonight. She can tell Evie has been getting more attention from the
\nschool teacher. Never in their lives could she abide that. She won’t help with dinner, snaps that
\nthe chicken is too dry, complains about her aching knees. As Evie rubs them she watches with
\nher narrowed-eye gaze. “You’re hoping I kick off pretty soon, aren’t you,” she says finally.<\/p>\n

“That’s crazy.”<\/p>\n

“You can be honest with me. We’re sisters, after all.”<\/p>\n

“I am being honest.”<\/p>\n

“I held you as a baby, you know that? I’m tired of you forgetting. I took care of you.”<\/p>\n

“I haven’t forgotten.” But inside her, annoyance is churning her stomach, turning it in
\nslow flops.<\/p>\n

Viv won’t break her stare. “It’s something. Something you’re feeling. What is it?”<\/p>\n

“What’s what?”<\/p>\n

“I know you. And tonight you’re different. You’re excited about something.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe I am.” And she tells Viv there is a contemporary poetry reading at the library
\ntonight. Nothing special. She knows Viv hates any poetry newer than Wordsworth (“Too
\nabstract! Too post-modern!”). But it seems to satisfy Viv. She nods. “One of these days I’ll
\ncrack open that T.S. Eliot and try again.” Her voice is gentle now, and Evie rubs her knee more
\nslowly. Viv puts a hand on her sister’s, to stop her. “That’s good. You are kind.”<\/p>\n

Evie stops. For a while they sit together and watch the sky lose its light, slowly. This is the
\ntime of quiet for both of them. Then Viv says something Evie has never heard before.<\/p>\n

“You know, when George died,” she says, “I tried to kill myself.”<\/p>\n

“What?”<\/p>\n

“You heard me. I went to the drugstore and got one of those half-gallon jugs of aspirin.
\nBut it was so difficult. I swallowed and swallowed but there were too many pills. By the time I
\nwas halfway through they started coming up again. I lay on my bathroom floor for a long time
\nand I waited, but nothing happened. I was just sick. I thought when I was strong enough to get
\nup I’d go get something stiffer at the drugstore and this time I’d do it. But you came to the door,<\/p>\n

Ev.”<\/p>\n

Evie is silent; she holds still, stunned to hear a story she hasn’t before.
\n“I don’t know if you remember, but you had come to take me out to lunch. I could see
\nyou on the stoop from my bathroom window. I got up and washed my face, locked away the
\nmess in the bathroom and went out. I remember we had watercress on our sandwiches that day.
\nYou told me how sorry you were about George. We laughed about his big ears. Then I went
\nhome and threw the pills away.”<\/p>\n

Viv holds her sister’s hand. There is no more to the story.<\/p>\n

By nine that night she has a ride into town from a neighbor. I can walk back, she tells the
\nneighbor. And in truth, riding along the straight country road, watching it rear up to meet the
\nheadlights, she feels like she could walk for miles. This spiritualist meeting, this seance or
\nwhatever it is, is ridiculous. She knows it is. But the Sunday school teacher reminds Evie of her
\ndaughter and this is the first time she’s gone out sans-Viv in years. She’s perched on the edge of
\nthe car seat the whole way, hands clutching her purse, eyes on the road, waiting for the little town
\nto emerge with its haloes of streetlight.<\/p>\n

In the basement of the rec center, where the alcoholics usually meet, the school teacher
\ngreets her with a smile. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she says. “Come in, come in.” She ushers<\/p>\n

Evie into a dim room with coffee and creamer on a side table, chairs in a circle. And people are
\nfidgeting — people she doesn’t know, but they must be locals. Their clothes, their knotty hands
\nlook that way. Two old men with overalls. A woman with a floral skirt and matching headscarf.<\/p>\n

A young man with bad acne and a nervous, shifting gaze. More adults, not counting her
\nneighbors, than she’s seen in a long time. More old people, especially.<\/p>\n

The school teacher rings a small bell. “The Society of those haunted by otherworldly
\nphenomena is now in session. We have a new member today. Let’s all welcome Evie.”<\/p>\n

“Hi, Evie,” goes the chorus.<\/p>\n

“Now let’s show Evie how these meetings are typically run,” says the teacher. Her voice
\nhas risen to an instinctive teacherly register: kindly but firm. “Albert, why don’t you begin.”<\/p>\n

One of the men in overalls stands up. “Hi, my name is Albert. I’ve been haunted by my
\nbrother ever since he died in a car accident seven years ago.”<\/p>\n

Evie waits for someone to laugh, to shift in his chair. But they are all rapt, all friends here.<\/p>\n

Albert goes on. “I saw him off the night he died. Knew he was drunk but laughed it off.<\/p>\n

Sandy, you’re liable to go right off the road I said. We were both laughing. Drove off and that’s exactly what he did. And now he won’t shut up about it.”<\/p>\n

Now a little ripple of laughter fills the room. “He blames me,” says Albert. “When I’m
\ndriving alone at night, he sits in the passenger seat and asks why I didn’t stop him. I tell him, you
\nand me are both idiots. Would you have stopped me if the shoe was on the other foot? But he’s
\nstill mad. He tries to get me to run off the road. Tries to take me with him.”<\/p>\n

He sits, and a woman squeezes his shoulder. “Thank you, Albert,” says the teacher.<\/p>\n

“Let’s hear from someone else.”<\/p>\n

So they go: one by one, telling their stories. A woman who lost her friend. Now the
\nfriend looks in the kitchen window while she’s cooking. The boy who lost his father. They still
\nplay catch sometimes in the evenings. The storyteller is not always responsible for the death, and
\nthe visitor is not always hostile. But always they are there. Always they want something. They
\npull, they plead, they question. They will not leave.<\/p>\n

Finally Evie can’t be silent anymore. She bursts out, “These aren’t — ghosts. Not real
\nghosts. These are psychological problems. We just — we’re dreaming it up. We can’t let the
\nperson go, so our minds don’t.”
\nShe’s expecting angry stares. Frantic denials. But the circle around her is calm. “You can
\ncall it whatever you like,” says the Sunday school teacher. “You can think of it as all in your head
\nor just a dream. It doesn’t make one lick of difference. It doesn’t change the way the dead speak
\nto us. The way they’ll never let us alone. They want us to join them.”<\/p>\n

“So go on,” says someone in the circle. “Your turn. What’s your story?”<\/p>\n

She wants to laugh, or maybe just walk out of the room. But the calm acceptance of the
\ncircle has melted her somehow. Maybe just once she will speak. “No story, really. Nothing
\nspecial. Just my daughter, and cancer. My only daughter.”<\/p>\n

But now the story has begun; now for the first time in years she is telling it to someone
\nother than Viv. “Everyone thought my sister would be the one to get in trouble. But I was the
\none who went to a man’s apartment one night when I was lonely, and I came home pregnant. It
\nwas me. And it was just me and my daughter for a long time. All our lives. She was my child.<\/p>\n

And I couldn’t keep her safe. I couldn’t keep her from feeling pain.<\/p>\n

“Now she comes and we talk and it’s almost like everything is normal again, like we’re old
\nfriends as we always have been. But sometimes she wants me to go with her. I try to change the
\nsubject. But always she wants to know why she had to leave, and why I had to say goodbye. And
\nI don’t know. She’s the ghost. Shouldn’t she know why?”<\/p>\n

She sits. She’s trembling all over; her heart can’t seem to find a rhythm. Next to her, a
\nwoman rubs her shoulder. A man pats her hair. “They won’t let us alone,” the school teacher
\nsays softly. “And they might never leave us alone. You must be prepared for that. You must be
\nready to say goodbye, again and again, for the rest of your life.”<\/p>\n

The haunted people speak, in tandem, in pieces. We can’t live this way. We have to fight
\nthem. We can’t let them run our lives.
\nThe meeting adjourns with rueful laughter, pats on the back, keep fighting-the-good-fight
\nsmiles. One day at a time. Then coffee, mini-frosted doughnuts, and applejack in paper cups.
\nThis is not alcoholics anonymous, after all.<\/p>\n

Someone puts on music, slow jazz. The society members begin to dance and sway. Evie
\nhas some applejack and finds herself slumped in the arms of Albert, doing a slow cha-cha
\naround the room. “You’re a marvelous dancer,” he tells her.<\/p>\n

“My sister taught me. New York State ballroom finalist 1943,” she says. She remembers
\nwhirling around her sister’s apartment, all the rugs pushed back. Later, she taught June. She
\ntaught her how to lead. In case it’s a party and you want to dance with a girl. There are always
\nmore girls than boys who want to dance. Her clumsy way, of telling her she understood.<\/p>\n

At last it’s late; the society members say goodbye. Albert wants to give her a ride, but it’s
\nout of his way, and she would rather walk. She needs the time to clear her head, to figure out
\nwhat to tell Viv where she’s been.<\/p>\n

“It’s dark out there,” Albert says. “Take my flashlight. Be safe.” Probably because of
\nwhat happened to his brother, she can sense how hard it is for him to say goodbye, to send people
\noff down the road. She takes the flashlight.<\/p>\n

She is not far out of town before she is glad for it. She has forgotten the ink black of
\ncountry nights. Her flashlight casts only a silver moon ahead of her on the road.
\nIt’s still. The quiet goes into her. She can hear the rustle of an owl’s wings as he sweeps
\noverhead. And now he has left. The only sound is her own feet, taking small shuffling
\ngrandmother steps. But she can feel the largeness of the woods beside her. It’s like being in
\nchurch: the inside vast as all knowing.<\/p>\n

There is a sound coming from the woods. It’s voices. People talking, overlapping, an
\nunhurried conversation. Who is talking in the woods at night?<\/p>\n

Evie steps off the road. There is something strange and too familiar about the voice.
\nThen there is a laugh, loose and throaty, and she knows it is her daughter’s laugh. She knows it
\nthe way she knows her own, the way she knows herself. And she is already stepping into the
\nbushes beside the road, pushing her way into the woods.<\/p>\n

The little light of the town behind her is immediately lost, sucked away into the trees.
\nShe stumbles and thrashes through bushes, branches, thorns. They’re everywhere, scratching and
\nclawing, but the voices are getting distant now, moving away, and she pushes on. Her hips are
\nold, she is old, but she can’t think of the pain now. All she can think about is June, her one ghost,
\nand all she is now is a running, fleet-footed creature, they both are, deer flying through the woods,
\none running, the other chasing, and soon, very soon, she will catch her.
\nRunning this way, her breath on fire, she reaches the clearing.<\/p>\n

There is a sudden glare of lamp light, and as she startles just like a deer, a hand comes
\nout, waving her to a stop. It is not her daughter. It is a man in a t-shirt and overalls who looks
\nfamiliar.<\/p>\n

“Who are you?” she asks, and he puts a finger to his lips. In the dark she can only see half
\nhis face.<\/p>\n

“Quiet, please,” he says. “We’re about to begin. This way.”<\/p>\n

Something about his calm, no-nonsense tone inspires obedience. She follows, stumbling
\non roots and stones. They are heading for a clearing, where more bobbing lights can be seen.<\/p>\n

Now she can hear the voices, quiet and conversational. People are gathering here, sitting on tree
\nstumps or soft patches of moss, leaning against trees. They quiet as her guide enters the circle
\nand directs her to a fallen log. The meeting is ready to begin.
\nShe looks around the circle. She doesn’t know any of the people, but they all seem
\nfamiliar. So familiar, like she’s met them once long ago. Or she’s heard them described to her.
\nShe says, realizing, “You’re Albert’s brother.”<\/p>\n

Her overall-ed guide nods, but is distracted. He has business to attend to. “The society of
\notherworldly phenomena is now in session,” he says. “We will now hear stories from anyone who
\nwants to share. Who has been haunted this week?”<\/p>\n

Looking around the circle, Evie sees now that she is surrounded by ghosts. Their bodies
\nonly half reflect the light. Their faces are still and distant. They are really only half there, only a
\nmental suggestion of people. But they are sad, or anxious. They have burdens, the same way the
\nliving do. Across the circle, she sees her daughter slip into a chair. She rises, but June puts a
\nfinger to her lips, urges her to wait. She sits.<\/p>\n

A woman in a floral dress and a country braid stands up. “I’m Rachel, and my friend
\nSuzannah is haunting me,” she says. “She thinks she’s responsible. Or maybe she can’t imagine
\nhaving another friend as close as we were. She’s lonely and she thinks I’m all hers. When she
\ncooks I have to stand nearby and look at her in the window. Like a real ghost. Ooooh!” She
\nmakes a face and the circle laughs. Then Rachel’s half-there face is serious again. “She won’t let
\nme go. I fight to leave and she only holds me tighter. I’m just a concept, a memory. By now I
\nshould have dissolved into the air. I should be gone like a decaying particle. But she won’t let
\nme.”<\/p>\n

She sits, and the ghosts murmur sympathetically. Then there are other stories to tell, ones
\nEvie has heard before: the father whose teenage son still wants to play catch. The mother. Wife.
\nHusband. All of them have been pulled into existence by their loved ones. The people, the
\nliving ones, have got it all wrong. They are the ones doing the haunting. They’re the ones who
\ncan’t let go. The ghosts know they don’t exist, but it’s the living who won’t let them not exist.<\/p>\n

The clearing is full of a great throng of ghosts, all struggling to tell their stories.
\nEvie can’t help herself. She shouts to Albert’s brother, “But don’t you blame him? For
\nwhat happened. That’s why he can’t let you go.”<\/p>\n

Albert’s brother shrugs. “How could I blame him? You think I can blame him?” He
\nholds up his hand to the light. From certain angles it isn’t even there.<\/p>\n

Across the way, her daughter gives her half-smile. She doesn’t have to tell her story
\ntonight. Evie knows it already. She knows she’s the one who can’t, might not ever, let go.<\/p>\n

Eventually the meeting adjourns. The ghosts aren’t big on eating and drinking, but they
\nstill like to dance. When you are tired, when you are carrying a heavy burden, when you are an
\naddict or a victim or haunted by ghosts, there are only two things you can do: either clean, or
\ndance. Someone puts on Billie Holiday and the ghosts begin to rock and sway. She dances with
\nAlbert’s brother. Nearby, with another partner she sees George, George killed in action in the
\nPhilippines, go waltzing by. He nods to her.<\/p>\n

“Can I tell Albert you don’t blame him?” she asks. “That he can let you go?”<\/p>\n

“That depends,” he says.<\/p>\n

“On what?”<\/p>\n

“On whether you see him again.”<\/p>\n

She feels suddenly cold. She raises her hand but can barely see it. Of course, how could
\nshe have been invited to this meeting? Is she dead already? Hit by a car on the dark road,
\nperhaps? Stroke or heart attack from the long walk down the road, from the long lifetime of
\neating pats of butter like candy? Is she only a concept now, an idea in someone else’s head? Is
\nthat the only reason she can still feel and hear and see — because someone is remembering her?<\/p>\n

She looks around her quickly. Dark trees, birch trunks silver under the moon. Sweet smell of
\nsap. Crickets carrying on. All of it is suddenly dear.<\/p>\n

“Aren’t you glad?” she asks Albert’s brother. “Aren’t you glad someone is remembering
\nyou? So you can still be here? Smell the air? Feel clothes on your skin? Scratch an itch?<\/p>\n

Dance?”<\/p>\n

For all his half-gone, distracted look, she’s surprised him. “I never thought about it that
\nway.”<\/p>\n

“And when Albert is gone, you’ll go out like a candle,” she says, matter-of-factly. “So why
\nnot enjoy it?”<\/p>\n

She suddenly wonders why she is here at all. What’s holding on to her, what refuses to let
\nher go. The world, with all its smells and sounds, still pulls her. But also, of course: Viv. In the
\ndark house, even in her deep snoring sleep, Viv is lighting a candle for her. Viv refuses to let her
\ngo. It is just like the night she came home from sleeping with the man she’d never see again; she
\nwent to Viv’s place. And weeks later, when she knew she was pregnant, and that her parents’
\ndoor would never take her again: Viv took her.<\/p>\n

Now, Viv will keep her and her daughter safe. For a little while longer, they’ll cling,
\nholding onto the tendrils of memory in her sister’s brain. And when she dies, it will be all of
\nthem who go, the last remaining pieces of themselves seeping into the air and the earth like dye
\ninto water. But not yet.<\/p>\n

Her daughter is waiting for her across the clearing. “You taught me how to lead. We can
\ndance.” So they do.<\/p>\n

 
\n <\/p>\n

\"nn,Blair Hurley is a graduate of Princeton University, with a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. She recently earned her M.F.A. from NYU\u2019s Program in Fiction. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Descant, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Red Rock Review, The Best Young Writers and Artists in America, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an \u201cEmerging Writers\u201d Fellowship from the Writer\u2019s Room of Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She’s a grandmother with no grandchildren; both she and her sister Viv have become the childless grandmothers of the town. That’s how she thinks of herself these days, and then wonders, with a small dismay, how did this happen? Some Sundays after the local church lets out a gaggle of neighbor children come to visit [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2670,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions\/2670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}