Breathless (17 page)

When his third wife died a few years ago, Effie moved to Miami. He used to send postcards of himself taken at the beach with his arm around a hot twenty something in a bikini. It was easy to imagine him convincing them to take the picture; he was sweet and ornery and nothing at all like the Ghost. More than once, after a visit with him, Will and I would remark on how impossible it seemed that someone as uptight as the Ghost could have a dad as cool as Effie.

“We have to leave right away,” my mom says. I just sit there, my head down, feeling the panic as it spreads throughout my body. Mazzie watches both of us with a kind of detached, fascinated pity. “I’m sorry, honey, but you should get your things together. The funeral is tomorrow and your father is very upset and I’d like to get back.”

“Come with me,” I say, suddenly, to Mazzie.

She drops the tennis ball. “What? No.”

“Mom, please, can she come? Mazzie is my best friend.”

My mom is hesitant. I’ve never brought anybody home with me before. I’ve barely mentioned Mazzie to my parents. “I didn’t even know you were roommates,” she says. “I was just telling Mazzie I always thought your roommate was someone named Madeline.”

“I told her it was a mix-up,” Mazzie explains to me. “I was just telling her that Madeline never showed up.”

“Maybe you’d want to bring your boyfriend?” my mom says.

All I can think about is getting my mother out of my dorm before anyone else sees her. If Drew knew what was happening right now, I know he’d want to come with me. But I have to get out of here before he has a chance to see my mom, or hear about what’s going on—otherwise he might find out about Will, and then everything would be over.

“Please, Mom,” I say. I give Mazzie a pleading look. I can’t stand the idea of going home without her.

• • •

Mazzie and I barely say a word the whole way back to Hills-burg. I know she’s imagining what Will might be like—she’s never even seen a picture of him—and I keep my head against the window, my eyes closed, trying not to think about how the weekend will go.

Both of my parents are only children. With Effie gone—my mom tells me he had an aneurysm that killed him instantly, as he lay on the beach—it’s only the four of us now: my mom and the Ghost, Will and me. Even though I rarely saw my grandpa, knowing that he’s gone makes me terrified in a way that goes beyond my
feelings
about Effie. I
feel
like my family is connected now by a series of quickly disintegrating threads. I
feel
like it would take almost nothing for the whole thing to fall apart.

Mazzie and I take our things up to my room. “Where’s Dad?” I ask my mom.

“He’s at the funeral home. He’ll be home later tonight.” She smiles at Mazzie. “Well, it’s wonderful to meet Katie’s best friend, although the circumstances are pretty unfortunate.”

“Where’s Will?” I ask.

“He’s in his room. Probably sleeping.” Her gaze flickers to Mazzie. “He’s very, very upset. You can imagine.”

I nod.

“This is incredibly difficult for him. He’s . . . sedated. I know you and Will loved your grandpa very much.” My mom takes a deep breath, opens the fridge, and uncorks a bottle of white wine. “You should let your brother rest, Katie. He needs to rest.”

“How’s Dad?”

My mom takes her time pouring a very full glass of wine. She takes a long sip before answering, “You know your father had a very difficult childhood. Your grandpa was not always the way he was when you knew him.”

We don’t see the Ghost or Will until just before the funeral the next day. Right away it’s obvious that the Ghost is annoyed my mom let me bring Mazzie home with me. She and I are eating a late breakfast in the dining room, sharing a stack of pancakes, when we hear my parents arguing in the library.

Their voices never rise above heated whispers. “Who the hell is this girl? What the hell were you thinking?”

“She says she’s her best friend. I didn’t want her to go through this alone—”

“Her whole damn
family
is here. This is my father’s funeral we’re talking about.” There is a long pause. “We should have just called her. We didn’t need to bring her home for this.”

“William, I cannot let my own daughter miss—”

“What?” I can see the Ghost’s expression in my mind: arms crossed, tall condescension, the same attitude of angry contempt that he always takes any time my grandpa comes up. “My father wouldn’t have cared, you know. Maybe Katie thinks so—and maybe you do, too—but that’s only because he practically duped women for a living.”

“Can you believe this shit?” It’s Will, standing behind us. We’ve been listening so closely to my parents, we didn’t hear him approach.

Mazzie stares. I can’t blame her. Will looks almost the same as he did the last time I saw him: far too thin, teeth yellow and more crooked than ever. But today he wears a suit and tie, instead of his usual jeans and white undershirt. Thank God, his arms are covered. The suit is at least two sizes too big for him. And Will’s head is shaved, which he hasn’t done in years. With no hair, he looks more gaunt than I remember, his head oddly shaped, a thick black tattoo of a lightning bolt jutting down the middle of his skull, all the way from the top of his forehead down to where his neck meets his shirt.

He’s obviously on heavy meds. He gazes at Mazzie, rocking back and forth ever so slightly in his shoes, like he’s on a boat.

“Listen to them in there,” he continues, his voice a low monotone. “The Ghost is glad he’s dead, you know.”

“Will,” I say, “no he isn’t.” Every few moments, I have a flicker of imagination, when I picture what it would be like if Drew were here with me instead of Mazzie. Just thinking about it makes it hard for me to breathe.

“Sure he is. Effie was cool. And you know the Ghost, man. He can’t stand anything that ain’t square as a dictionary.” Even though he’s been gazing at her for a while, Will suddenly straightens up, as though he’s noticing Mazzie for the first time. “Katie? Who the hell is this chick?”

“This is my roommate, Mazzie.”

He stares at her. She stares back, uncertain. Her expression is familiar, and I realize it’s the same look she gets when she wakes up from her nightmares. She’s afraid.

My immediate family, plus Mazzie, are the only people at Effie’s funeral. It is a brief, closed-casket ceremony. Effie wasn’t religious, so we don’t have to go to a church or anything before the cemetery. Mazzie sits uncomfortably beside me while I lean my head on my mom’s shoulder and cry for the first time since I learned my grandpa died. Will sits beside my father. Both of them stare straight ahead, glaring into the distance.

Mazzie and I are in my basement later that evening, quizzing each other on vocabulary words for English class. We hear heavy footsteps upstairs in the living room, two pairs, and I know it’s my dad and Will, pacing around each other. My mother’s walk is soft, almost soundless.

Will starts shouting. “How can you be so cold, man? You don’t know how to love anything, do you? You’re like an android! You aren’t his son. You aren’t part of him. He didn’t love you. How could he? You’re a monster. See your horns? See them? They sprouted from your brain, your tail came right from your ass, you’re transforming into the devil right before everyone’s eyes!”

“Shh.” I put down the card for “nonplussed.” I reach across the table to grab Mazzie’s arm.

“Will, I want you to calm down now. Sit down. Your grandfather was complicated. My relationship with him was complicated. I want you to take some deep breaths, now—”

“I don’t care what you want! I’m not doing what you want—that’s what you want me to do! You think I’m stupid, right? You think you can tell me to calm down and I’ll just do what I’m told? Go look in the mirror. Look at your horns, growing out of your skull.”

It’s like silent, invisible lightning, electricity crackling through the air. I can’t hear as much as I can
feel
my father losing his temper. It’s a mistake to lose control in front of Will. My dad, more than anyone, should know that by now. But I guess everyone has their limits, and the Ghost did bury his father just a few hours earlier.

“Will, your grandfather was a philanderer. I barely knew him until I was nineteen years old. He left my mother alone with a young son and didn’t come back until she was very ill. I was very angry with him. But he is my father, and I loved him. Look at me, son. Please look at me. Take one deep breath. Just one deep breath.”

A stillness seems to fall over the house then. For several moments we don’t hear anything else. And then we hear footsteps—the Ghost’s I think—stepping delicately upstairs, and I let out my breath, hoping that the trouble has passed. Mazzie defines “nonplussed,” then “archetype,” then “colloquial.”

When it’s my turn, I can’t come up with the definition for “archaic,” even though I’ve seen the word a million times before. I have felt this calm before in our house. Where are my parents? What is my brother doing?

“Katie. Are you defective? The word is ‘archaic.’ ”

There is a flurry of light footsteps, my mother pattering across the floor, coming down the stairs so quickly that she slips on her way down, clutching the banister as she slides the last few steps and then stumbles over to us, car keys in her hand. Oh God, I’ve seen this face before—it’s a wonder she isn’t covered in blood already—and she grabs both of us, me by the sleeve, Mazzie by the neck of her shirt, and half hisses, half sobs, “
Go, girls, go, go, go!
” She pushes us in our bare feet toward the back door, pushes us through the backyard as splinters of bark and leaf mulch stick to the soles of our feet, her voice a little louder, saying, “
Hurry, babies, please hurry,
” until we get to the car and Mazzie jumps into the backseat and I get in the front beside my mother and stare up at the back of the house and can’t even scream at what I see.

Will and my dad are in the guest room—the only room in the house with a lock on the door. The lights are on, the shades are up, and in the clear night we can see everything so perfectly: my brother pacing in circles, the Ghost standing in a corner, crying, begging. My brother holds a handgun, which he’s pointing at himself, then at the Ghost, back and forth like he’s not sure whom he wants to hurt more. He’s screaming at my dad. When he lifts both arms, I see there’s a screwdriver in his other hand. He probably used it to pry open the lock on the gun cabinet.

My mother tries to call 911 on her cell phone. She can’t stop shaking or crying, she keeps pressing the wrong numbers, and while Mazzie huddles in the backseat, her body curled into a tiny ball like she wants to disappear, I take the phone from my mom and say, “Mommy, please go, please drive away.” I dial 911 myself. My mother sobs while I’m trying to talk to dispatch, to give them our address, and finally she gets the car into reverse and backs down the driveway too fast with the lights off. We drive around the corner and sit at the first stop sign we come to, and my mother and I punch the dashboard and scream and claw at each other, and I know neither of us has ever felt so scared and helpless, and all the time in the back of my mind I know that we can’t be silent for even a moment, scared to death of what sound might break through the darkness.

Will gives up the loaded gun to the police, who put him in handcuffs so tight that he yelps. As they’re taking him out of the house, I run past him toward my father and put my arms around my daddy and sob into his beating chest while he holds me, then my mother with her arms around both of us, holding on to each other, Will staring as all the neighbors venture onto their porches to watch—four state police cars and two ambulances with lights all ablaze at ten o’clock at night—while Mazzie stays in the backseat of our car, staring at my family, taking it all in.

They don’t take him right away. Once he’s in handcuffs, my parents go to him. They try to speak to him, but he refuses to look at them.

“Katie!” he screams. I’m standing near the car, close to Mazzie, glaring at our neighbors. I want to scream at them to get back inside their shitty houses and just leave us alone. There are dozens of them now, porch lights on, standing on the street with their dumb mouths hanging open like they’re watching a parade.

“Katie, come here,” Will pleads. “Come here, Katie. Please come over here.”

His pupils are big, flashing like an animal’s beneath all the lights, no discernable color to his eyes but black and white and lightning bolts of red. Sweat drips from his face like he’s just run a marathon. “I’ll call you, Katie. Okay? I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

I shake my head. “Don’t you ever call me again.”

“Katie—Katie, no! That’s what they want, Katie.”

“I don’t care.” I’m crying again. I try to hit him and kick him; I want to hit him so hard that I kill him, but the Ghost and my mom and two of the policemen grab me and hold me back as soon as I begin to move. “I wish you would die,” I say. The words come out with spit. “I hope you die in jail.”

“Katie—don’t you understand? That’s what they want, you’re doing just what they want you to do. They sent you away to tear us apart, they want you to stop loving me. Katie it’s me—it’s
me,
Katie. I love you. You’re my sister, Katie. Please, you’re all I’ve got.” He stares at me, breathless. “
Please.
Don’t you understand that someone has to stop him?”

“No.” I shake my head. I struggle in the grip of my parents and the cops. “He’s not doing anything. You’re doing it. You did all of it.” I relax a little bit. “They love us. Everything would have been fine, but you got sick and you ruined everything,” I say. And then I turn to our neighbors and raise my voice and scream, “It’s your fault too! You did this to him too—just leave us alone!”

“Katie,” the Ghost says, still holding me tightly, “shhh. It’s okay, baby. Calm down. Go on inside now.”

But before I go, I turn to look at Will one last time. “Don’t call me. I won’t be there.”

And I turn my back on him. He screams while the police put him in the car and take him away. Our mom can’t look; she goes inside and sits on the love seat in the foyer and puts her head between her knees and her fingers in her ears.