The Ghost and the Goth

17 Alona

It took me forty-five minutes, twelve cars, and one tow truck to get home, using a convoluted system of sliding into one vehicle and riding until they veered off my desired course. Then I’d jump out — or better yet, wait until they reached a red light — and try to find another car going in the right direction.

There had to be a better way for spirits to travel, but I was not going to be around to find it. The strange pressure I’d felt in Killian’s hospital room was only getting stronger.

I walked the last three blocks home, watching grown-ups pull into their driveways after a long day of work, kids playing one last game of tag before being called into dinner. Summer, my favorite time of year, was coming. Mornings to sleep in late and still get out of the house before my mother was awake. The whole day free to do whatever and go wherever I wanted. The ability to spend almost every night over at Misty’s house without anyone suspecting it was because, more than anything, I didn’t want to go home.

When I looked at my house, I saw it differently. I don’t remember much from the first twelve or thirteen years of relative happiness, mostly because now it felt like everything had just been building toward these last few years of misery.

That’s where my mother knelt on the driveway and begged my father not to leave. There’s where he drove over the then-carefully sculpted flower beds, nearly taking out a concrete birdbath, to keep from hitting her, not that it stopped him from leaving. That boarded-up window on the second story, that’s right next to the shower where she “slipped” on wet tile, fell, and broke the window, slicing open her arm. When I found her, the shower was bone dry. Mother, however, was not. She reeked more of alcohol than blood, and considering the massive amounts of the latter on the floor, that was really saying something. And the garage door … don’t even get me started on that. How hard is it to remember to look behind you to make sure the door’s open before you start to back the car out?

Just walking up to the house, I could feel a familiar tension making my jaw ache and my shoulders tight. She’d never hit me, no matter how drunk she’d gotten. Oh, no, not Cheryl Dare. Instead, she’d just suffocated me with her neediness. Cherie was a victim of an adulterous and inattentive husband. None of this was her fault.

The saddest and most pathetic part of all of it is she did it all for my dad. Like, if she showed him how vulnerable and messed up she was without him, he’d have to come back. Where is the logic in that? I’d have pretended that I didn’t need him, that I’d never needed him. Actually, it wouldn’t have been pretending. I would never let anyone turn me upside down and inside out the way she let my dad.

That was the problem with my mother. She was beautiful, and she didn’t know how to be anything else. Not like me, she was nothing like me. I got her looks, but Dad’s brains. When he chose it, he could be a very cold and calculating son of a bitch. The only thing my dad did, whenever word of Mom’s problems and escapades eventually reached him (some of the neighbors were still friends with him and the new wife), was call me.

Everyone wanted to know what I was doing that day, the day I died. What made me cross the street without looking? What took me from college-bound cheerleader to black-and-white memorial material for the yearbook?

God, I wish it was something cool. Interesting, at the very least. The truth is, it was just another day.

My cell phone rang right before I slammed my gym locker shut. If my dad had waited another couple seconds to call, or if I’d ignored the ringing, my life would have changed dramatically. He was scheduled to meet with my mom at Eickleberg and Feinstein’s at 7:30 a.m., before he went to work. They were discussing changes to alimony, child support, and how to handle my college tuition. It had already been decided, mostly by my father, that I would be attending school within easy driving distance, obviously. Someone had to stick around and keep tabs on my mother. Hence, my graduation present, the Eos.

Anyway, it was now 7:00, and my father wanted to know, could I please go make sure she was up and on her way?

I could have explained I was already at school. Details are so not my dad’s thing, so he probably didn’t remember my schedule or, more specifically, that I’d signed up for zero-hour gym. But I didn’t bother. I knew he wouldn’t call the house or go over there, just as I knew that my mother was probably at home waiting for him to do just that. If she missed this meeting, Gigi, the new wife, wouldn’t hesitate to pressure my dad to scale back his payments to us even further. She wanted kids. He said they couldn’t afford it.

It should have been a simple thing, something I’ve done dozens of times before. Make up an excuse, slip out of school or cheerleading practice or a party to go home, clean up whatever mess my mother had made in the hopes of attracting my father’s attention, and send her back to bed or the hospital or whatever, depending. Then go back to my normal life, pretending nothing was wrong.

But on this day, a cool and beautiful first morning in May, something inside me snapped. She ruins everything.

I hate her. That’s what I was thinking when I stepped off that curb on Henderson. If karma came in bus-size servings, some people would probably say I got what I deserved for thinking that. After all, logically speaking, all of it was as much my father’s fault as it was hers. He was the one who’d cheated and left, the one who used me as a shield against her. But she was the only one with the power to stop it, to pull herself back into something vaguely resembling a parent instead of a giant black hole of neediness. She just refused to do it.

Now, standing outside my house, her house alone as of Monday morning, I felt a familiar surge of resentment. I’d died, and she was still controlling my life, holding me hostage as my “unresolved issue” as Killian liked to put it.

I swallowed back my frustration, lifted my chin, and stepped onto the porch. I would forgive her for being her: flawed, imperfect, human. I could do that, right? Looking down at my feet, now flickering in and out of existence again, I guessed I’d have to.

Just get in, say you’re sorry and you forgive her, and then get out. If I hurried, maybe I could make it back to Killian. I was worried about him trapped in that hospital with no one to help him. Plus, if I was leaving, really leaving for good, I didn’t want to be alone. He’d kissed me. Maybe he would wait with me while it happened. I coached myself across the threshold of the front door into the foyer … and stopped. Something was different.

I turned in a circle, looking into the living room, down the hall to the kitchen, into the now-empty and dusty room that had once been my dad’s study. It took me a second to realize what was wrong. All the blinds were up, the curtains drawn back. The last blaze of light at sunset poured in through naked windows, landing on the polished floor in long rectangles. Never in the last few years had she even allowed me to open the blinds, let alone opened them herself. All-day hangovers were a bitch, one that she usually medicated against. Keeping the house dim was a required precautionary measure. At times, it had been like living with a vodka-saturated vampire.

But now … I turned again in a slow circle, an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach. It was almost like walking into the wrong house.

Then, from the kitchen in back, I heard the familiar clank of bottles, and relaxed.

“I know it’s difficult, but you’re doing the right thing,” said a soothing female voice that drifted out from the kitchen.

That was not my mother. I frowned and walked to the kitchen.

At the table, my mother sat with her back to the doorway, and across from her was a black woman I’d never seen before. Her hair was cropped close to her head, emphasizing the lines of her face and her beautiful dangly hammered-silver earrings. They were too big for my tastes, but she pulled them off. Her skin was gorgeous, though lines by her eyes suggested she was older than she looked, maybe even my mother’s age.

As I watched, she reached over to squeeze my mom’s hand. Balled-up tissues were strewn across the tabletop, scattered between two coffee cups. My mother’s ever-present tumbler was nowhere to be seen. What was this?

I stepped farther in the room and caught the sharp scent of alcohol. Empty vodka bottles, probably the very ones I’d manipulated yesterday, now stood lined up on the counter, like good little soldiers. In the sink, my mother’s emergency backup supplies — gin, tequila, and rum — gurgled out of their tipped-upside-down bottles and down the drain, forming a potent brew. The cabinet under the sink, where she’d hidden her extra stash of bottles, stood open, and I could see nothing in there now but cleaning supplies.

A horrible suspicion formed in the back of my mind, and I turned to face my mother. She looked twenty years older with no makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes. When she picked up her coffee cup, her hand shook so much, the coffee, still steaming, sloshed over the edge. Neither she nor her visitor seemed to notice, or they were ignoring it.

My mother cleared her throat. “I want to thank you for coming over. I wasn’t sure I could …” She gestured weakly in the general direction of the sink.

The other woman smiled, revealing bright white teeth with a tiny gap in the front. “Cherie, that’s what sponsors are for, to help you through.”

No drink in her hand, alcohol bottles emptying into the sink, and … a sponsor?

“Holy shit,” I said. “I die and now you quit drinking?”

A burst of fury, white and pure, exploded soundlessly behind my eyes. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, hatred boiling up into my lungs. “Now you decide to be a grown-up?”

My mother shook her head. “It’s my fault, Angela. The …accident.” Her voice broke and she grabbed for a discarded tissue.

“You’re damn right!” I shouted.

“How?” Angela asked. “Were you driving the bus? Did you force your daughter out into the road?”

“No, but …” She hesitated.

“Might as well have.” I spun away from them and raked my arm through the bottles on the counter, intending to smash them all to the floor. Just one tipped over … and it didn’t even crack. My mother and Angela looked up, but neither of them seemed alarmed or even very startled.

Dammit. I reached out to try again and realized my arm was gone from the elbow down. Not flickering, not faded, but gone. No, no, no.

I stormed to my mother’s side. “What is the matter with you?” I demanded, a fine tremor of rage running through my body. “I was coming here to forgive you. And what, you’ve decided that you wasted enough time, wasted MY LIFE, and now it’s time to pull things back together? Fuck you.”

After that, my disappearing began in earnest. I could feel all that negative energy Killian had gone on about building inside me, dying to be released. In seconds, both arms and legs were gone, and I could feel that cold line, the one that divided “not here” and “here,” creeping up my body.

“I feel like she must hate me,” my mother whispered.

“You’re right!” I yelled, before my mouth could disappear.

“No.” Angela shook her head. “I’m sure, wherever she is, she knows you loved her and she forgives you for the mistakes you made.”

“Shut up, Angela. You don’t know me.” At least, that’s what I would have said, if I could’ve. The room had grown misty and vague. I could no longer see much beyond my mother and Angela, and even they were beginning to blur around the edges. So, this was it. I wouldn’t make it back to Will, then. My eyes burned with tears.

My mother gave a tight smile. “You don’t know Alona.” Her smile faded. “The worst part is, even if she did forgive me, I don’t deserve it.”

I froze, what little was left of me.

“Cherie—” Angela began.

“No, listen. That morning, Monday morning, I was supposed to meet Russ at the lawyer’s office. But I waited, I deliberately did not get up, did not get dressed, because I thought Russ would come. I just wanted to talk …” She broke off into a sob. “I never dreamed he would pull her out of school.”

“Did you tell her you’re sorry?” Angela asked quietly. She shook her head. “It’s too late. She’s—” “It’s never too late.”

She hesitated, then looked down at her hands folded on the table with the tissue clutched in between them. “Alona, my baby …” Her throat worked but no sound emerged. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted everything to be the way it used to be, and I … I messed up. Now, it can’t even be the way it was with just you and me.” Her gaze traveled around the room, and for a second, it landed on me. Her eyes are the same shade of green as mine. It was like staring into some twisted mirror and seeing what I would have looked like in twenty years … under the weight of grief and guilt. “I am so sorry.”

I wanted to keep fighting, keep shouting, but looking at her, something tight inside me eased. My anger just slipped away, like a heavy weight I couldn’t be bothered to hold on to. Through a hazy glow, I saw Angela reach over and give my mother a tight one-armed hug.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said.

Delicious warmth spread across my skin. Huh, maybe Angela was right. It felt like I was floating in the most perfect pool on the most perfect summer day. Something about that … I frowned. It seemed familiar, as if I’d experienced it before or heard someone talking about it….

I looked up slowly, feeling almost drugged with this sudden sense of peace, and noticed the golden hue of the light surrounding me. My happily sluggish brain put the pieces together. This was it, finally! The light had come for me, and it was just as Will had described it. Will!

“Wait.” I forced myself to focus long enough to push the words out. “Wait, I can’t just leave him. He needs …”

The light intensified, absorbing everything, including whatever thought I’d been trying to convey, into a big, white, happy glow of nothingness.