THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston Read online

  Sam sat in a pew near the entrance and took a worn hymnal from the seat and glanced through it. He closed his eyes. The singing of the choir could’ve been a hundred years old, he thought; any minute one of the deacons whose marble busts gazed from the back wall might come walking down the aisle with a silver collections plate. He thought of his job and of an awkward date he’d had a few days before and he tried to stop thinking, to only listen. The song ended and the choir members started talking to each other. He opened his eyes and got up to leave, he had life and supper and a subway ride packed with people just like him to deal with and that was it.

  He pushed the heavy door open and put on his hat and joined the foot traffic to the subway stop. There was another old graveyard to pass and he stared into it and in the back corners, in the dim light from nearby windows, he imagined he saw them, the dead, standing in groups, walking slowly around, as if their time and his were the same, their jobs and his, their worries and his. How many years gone and how many left? How many nights wasted and how many left?

  Morbid, morbid, morbid, he told himself, lowering his head and walking quickly. At the subway stop he bit a nail as he rode the escalator down. A train came soon and he managed to get a seat near the front. Now that was special, a little bonus, being able to sit for a few minutes on the way home.

  The fluorescent subway car shook and rattled. Half-awake, nominally upright, Sam peered out the window at cars, trees, pedestrians: shadows all. Next to him a man in a suit read a newspaper. A woman standing over him read a paperback. She had black hair and blue eyes and Sam wanted to say “hi” or offer her his seat. The train slowed for a stop; she put her paperback away and left the car. Sam thought of supper, of what was in his fridge, maybe he should just pick something up. What was his least boring option? Equal. Equi-boring. Beans and bread, cheese and rice, whatever. He did want to go see his grandmother, so maybe he could eat there, at his father’s house. The train approached his stop and he said “excuse me” to the man in the aisle seat next to him, who had fallen asleep. His stop was on a busy street, cars went by fast.

  The wind picked up and Sam hunched through it. He gathered his mail from a table in the front hall of his building. His shoes scraped with a grainy sound on the stairs. His briefcase, given to him by his father when he’d started his job years ago, felt heavy, though there wasn’t much in it. He dropped it just inside the door of his apartment and put the mail on the coffee table. There was a couch, a TV, a small stereo. In another room there was a bed and above the bed a poster, a black and white photo of a woman on a crowded street in Italy. Sam turned on the TV and sifted the mail. He checked his watch and sighed. He watched TV for a while and then swore weakly and went into his bedroom and changed out of his suit and in a moment was back out on the street, hurrying to his car.

  He drove quickly listening to people talk about basketball on the radio. His father’s house had a long dirt driveway and Sam pulled around to the back. He parked and as he approached the kitchen door he could see his father in the living room, eased back in a recliner, watching TV. The living room had a thick rug, a long sofa, and a fire going in the fireplace. As Sam entered the kitchen he heard his stepmother singing as she did the dishes.

  “Hey, Robin,” he said.

  “Oh, hi, Sam,” she said, not quite managing a smile.

  Sam leaned into the living room. “Hey, Dad,” he said.

  “Hey, Sammy,” his father, a soft man with a pale-red face, said. “You missed a great supper. But there’s probably some leftovers. Grab a plate.”

  “Great,” Sam said.

  “How was your day?” Robin asked, passing him on her way into the living room, not waiting for his answer.

  “Fine,” he said anyway.

  He opened the fridge and stared at the shelves of sauces and meats, bottled water and juices and soda and white wine. Meat on the bone, meat sliced, meat ground up, he thought.

  In the living room, Robin stood in front of the TV and looked at her husband. She was nearing fifty, tall with a pointed face; her hair was brown with a few gray strands.

  “Hi, Hon,” her husband said, smiling at her. His dark eyes reflected the jerky movement of the TV light as he took a sip from the glass containing the last of his supper wine. His hair was mostly gray now, his belly round and taut against his shirt.

  Sam came in from the kitchen. “Did your mother eat yet?” he asked Robin.

  “She’s fine,” she said. “Oh, I forgot my wine. Would you get it for me, Sam?”

  Sam retrieved the wine glass from the center island in the kitchen and carried it to her, careful to hold it by the stem.

  “Thank you,” she said, holding the glass up to the light. “This wine has great legs,” she said, looking at her husband.

  “Yes, honey,” Gerry said, smiling at her.

  “Has your mother eaten yet?” Sam asked again.

  “She didn’t want to eat,” Robin answered, looking at the television.

  Sam nodded. “Maybe I’ll try her again,” he said, quietly, going back to the kitchen.

  Gerry pulled himself out of the deep chair and followed his son.

  “Hey, Sam,” Gerry said, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “So, how was it today?” Gerry asked, leaning back against the sink. He had taken his tie off and a bit of gray hair showed at his throat.

  “Fine,” Sam said.

  “Fine, fine,” Gerry said. He was touching the collar of his shirt, smoothing it down, touching it again, nodding.

  “I think I’ll take a plate up to Mrs. Atlee,” Sam said.

  “Oh, sure. We had a very nice roast of lamb. There should be plenty left, please help yourself.”

  It’s not for me, I hate lamb, Sam wanted to say.

  Gerry went back to the living room and the TV sound resumed.

  Sam made a plate and looked at the sun design in the blue tile floor—all Italian or something, Robin was so proud of it. He wrapped silverware in a paper napkin, took the plate and glass of juice and started up the back stairway. He thought of a late evening like this one, his father folding a newspaper and arguing with his mother in that wide living room with the sofas and chairs so clean and unscuffed that you couldn’t really sit in them, all the wood and the silver picture frames polished and shining even in dim light so you didn’t want to touch anything. He remembered his father, soft clean fingers smudged at the tips with ink from the newspaper, slowly standing up, tucking the paper under his arm, and walking upstairs, Sam’s mother still yelling at him.

  The stairway to Mrs. Atlee’s room was narrow and dark. He had to stop on the second floor landing to turn on a light. Around the last corner the light was gone but he could see a thin stripe of white coming from under her door. He smelled the lamb and potatoes. He knocked gently, but knew from the light being on that she was probably awake.

  “Yes,” a quiet voice answered.

  “Hello, Mrs. Atlee,” Sam said, entering. There was a bureau, a door to the bathroom, and on the far side of the room under an arched window an iron radiator at the foot of a narrow bed. A lamp on the bedside table cast a small light, and an armchair held three or four books.

  “Yes, hello,” Mrs. Atlee said, her white-haired head thrusting from beneath a comforter on the bed, her hair stiff from lying back against a pillow all day. Her eyes were shiny dark. She had a narrow face with purplish fatigue bags under her eyes and bloodless lips. Her voice was deep and flat as if no oxygen flowed through her nose. She coughed and coughed.

  Sam stood still. He held his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat.

  “My God,” Mrs. Atlee said. She stretched out her bony arm and felt around on the bedside table. Sam stepped forward to help but she located a small tin of lozenges and extracted one.

  “Are you ok?” Sam asked.

  “Of course not,” she said, her voice, with little air behind it, like a corrosive chemical bubbling through a bad head cold. “When you ta
ste blood, that’s a bad sign,” she said.

  Sam put the supper plate on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the armchair. He unfolded the napkin and placed it on the comforter.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, moving the books to the floor.

  “I don’t know,” she said, grimacing.

  Sam cut a piece of lamb and pricked it gently on the tines of the fork.

  Mrs. Atlee scowled at him as he raised the fork to her mouth, but at the last instant opened her jaws and accepted the bite. She chewed with a slack jaw and eventually swallowed.

  “I’m old,” she said. “Old, old, old. And I still hate lamb.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry,” Sam said.

  “You wouldn’t know. But my daughter might.”

  “Umm, there are potatoes, too,” Sam said.

  “So there are.” Mrs. Atlee smiled. She stared at the red potatoes on her plate, blackened around the edges from roasting. Little blackened red lumps, she thought. Like my insides. Could she have lived that long? Something foolish had been in her mind all day: if every cylinder-cell in her kept firing the right way and looping and all the right cycles were completed at all the right times, why not live forever? But the odds were overwhelming, sooner or later something had to break, or something malignant grow, and so it had in her. And so she’d go. If only it didn’t have to hurt so much—an ache that spread in waves from her back, around her spine, doubling over itself, lumping and splitting and redoubling. All inside her.

  “Do you want some potato?” Sam asked. He was holding the fork near her mouth. She shook her head. “Same,” she said. “Every day will be the same until I die.”

  Sam rested the fork on her plate and tried to smile at her. She was tough, very tough, to have a defiant tone even as her words expressed resignation. She looked at him with bright black eyes and he started to say something, he wasn’t sure what. She waved him away with a small movement of her hand.

  On the bureau a brass clock with Roman numerals ticked. The wind whistled against the window.

  “She was up earlier,” Mrs. Atlee said.

  “Oh? Really?” Sam asked.

  “Really. I guess the old witch from next door couldn’t bring my lunch up, so she did.”

  Sam laughed. “I thought you liked—the old witch.”

  “Yes, well,” Mrs. Atlee murmured. This boy was very nice; he was kind and polite and he didn’t remind her much of anyone at all. Except his father—his father back when Robin had married him and that didn’t count, that was someone from Robin’s life, not from her own. The father. The boy was nice and kind. Sam. The father—damn it all, how exasperating, not remembering—Gerry. The father was better than her own daughter, truth be told. She should remember his name and forget Robin’s.

  “So Robin brought you up some lunch?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, she did. Christ crucified didn’t make such a production.”

  Sam laughed.

  “Well, so,” Mrs. Atlee said, her voice quivering. She looked away from Sam and closed her eyes.

  “You didn’t eat anything,” he said.

  Mrs. Atlee lay back, panting.

  The clock ticked. The window rattled.

  “Would you like me to read something?” Sam asked. He gathered the books in his lap and pulled the armchair closer to the bed. “Which one?” he asked.

  Mrs. Atlee didn’t answer for a while. She stared at the ceiling, hugging panic, wondering if she’d be able to get her breathing level this time.

  “Your alumni magazine,” she said finally. “I like to hear about young people.”

  Sam took the magazine from a drawer in the bedside table and read clearly but softly: Someone working for a bank in Tokyo, someone starting a medical clinic in New York, someone wrote a movie, someone got married. He tried to remember faces.

  The house was clenched against the cold as the wind battered at the windows.

  Gerry blinked slowly and looked at the TV. He realized his wife was talking.

  “At least he helps take care of Mother, that’s something,” she finished.

  “Yes,” Gerry said.

  “I just don’t have time to take care of her all by myself. I will do what I can but it’s not fair to expect me to be a super woman, you know.”

  Robin picked up a paperback from the coffee table.

  “I’ll turn the TV off,” Gerry said.

  “I can read with it on.”

  A fire and running soldiers shimmered on the screen. A low woman’s voice described an attack on a village.

  “This one isn’t as good as his last,” Robin said, holding her paperback at arm’s length to consider the cover. “I mean, there are a few clever twists, and the overall makeup of the private eye character is decent, but the plot has holes.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Gerry intoned, looking at the TV. He had an eight a.m. meeting the next day.

  “Did you ever read his other one?” Robin asked.

  “Hmm?” Gerry looked at his wife, who was staring at him. “No, I don’t think I did.”

  “Why do I bother recommending things,” she said, looking at her book.

  “I just haven’t gotten to it yet,” Gerry said. “You give me so many good ones.”

  “I don’t give you that many.” She didn’t look at him.

  Gerry considered her profile. Even with a weak chin she looked determined. Her lips were set now, compressed; she wouldn’t touch him tonight in bed. Not that he wanted to, either, but just knowing already from the set of her face was annoying.

  “You just read too much for the average person to keep up,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t give you that many,” she repeated.

  Gerry furrowed his eyebrows.

  Robin glanced at him and saw his frown.

  “Fine,” she said, closing her book and standing up. “I keep house and work all day to do it and yes, I’d like to have the freedom to get an outside job, too, but that might inconvenience Gerald Morgan, God forbid.”

  Her voice stopped and she was leaving the room. He hadn’t answered in time. He called after her but she was climbing the stairs, not quite stomping but steady and hard. Gerry picked up the remote control, turned the TV off, and followed her.

  When Mrs. Atlee fell asleep Sam put the book down and stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the thin figure in the bed, wondering what it must be like to be so sick, so near the end. The wind pressed against the window. He turned out the light and walked slowly down the stairs. Would it be so hard for Robin to bring her mother supper? Sam thought of her face, the bright eyes blinking out of fatigue lines and dark pouches and bloodless skin.

  The kitchen and living room were dark. Sam went to his car, holding his jacket close against the wind. Well, it was gone, his free time; nothing left but a little TV, then bed, then the office all over again.

  There was very little traffic, and he made it home in only a few minutes.

  Chapter Three

  Alice

  The black wind that seemed to have sprung from the ocean just at the shore line where the rotting docks and brothels had once stood and pushed inland like an ancient exhale out the busy modern scars of highway and shopping mall to push against Mrs. Atlee’s window as she listened to her step-grandson read aloud from his alumni bulletin as if he knew nothing of punctuation or of tone swirled wrappings and cigarette butts and papers into tiny cyclones and rushed down side streets over smaller and smaller houses with yards partitioned by dried hedges or an occasional rusting chain-link fence until, at the end of a short road where a railroad embankment created a ditch spattered with trash and rotted bits of machinery, it reached a small house with peeling paint that sat like an old washerwoman accepting one more basket of linen after a day of raw-handed scrubbing.

  Two figures reclined in the living room of this house, dark save for the TV light bouncing on the shaggy carpet, the coffee table with built-in can holders, and the plaid sofa made of shiny fabric thick as rope. Ed Fisher, in a bl
ue button-down shirt open at the throat and shiny black suit trousers, lay with his head tipped back and his feet raised by the mechanism of his reclining chair to a point almost above eye-level. His eyebrows met over his thick nose and his hair was dark; his hands, gradually relaxing as if releasing something too-long clutched, were soft, the fingernails and cuticles chewed, sometimes bleeding. He was almost asleep.

  His wife, Alice, was lying under a blue quilt against one of the arms of the sofa, a pillow behind her head. She had long dark hair and clear eyes in a lined face. She scratched her nose and looked at the TV. She looked over at her husband, who had fallen asleep with the remote control in his hand. She blinked and chewed a nail. She was thinking about trying for the remote but didn’t want to wake Ed. It was pretty much time for bed, anyway. She should check on the kids one last time. Ed Jr. had a little sniffle and might be lying awake. Little Jenny would be asleep, curled on one side. This was a house, that was a husband, those were kids. And if she didn’t get to sleep soon, Alice knew, she wouldn’t have the energy for tomorrow.

  Not bed yet, Alice decided. At best bed meant sleep and sleep meant morning; at worse bed meant Ed would try to make a pass. Even though he was asleep in his chair now and even though he hadn’t tried in a while it could happen. He would get very awake very quickly and grab for her as if he’d been having some grand pornographic dream and just happened to wake near her and if she didn’t want to he’d get angry and not say anything and then take it out on her in a bunch of mean-spirited comments over the next few days. Who had the energy for all that, never mind for sex?

  She stood up, biting her lower lip between her small, clean teeth; her t-shirt with the Red Sox logo on the front was long over her thighs. She was gently sliding the remote control from between Ed’s fingers when she lost her balance and, in trying to stay upright, kneed the coffee table and jerked her hand away too quickly.