You Don't Put Me Out

“You don’t put me out,” she smiles to me, fussing over a pillow. “It’s good to have someone to talk to.”

There’s a lot she wants to ask me. I know it’s frustrating for her because there’s not much I can say. I’m in the dark myself. I’m waiting. It’s frustrating for me, too. I say, in all sincerity, “I’m lucky to have you for a friend. I don’t know what I’d be doing with my days otherwise.”

“Oh, you’d find someone,” she says. “You’re a lovely person, Brian.”

“Was,” I joke.

“Are,” she insists. We met some months ago at her husband’s graveside. It wasn’t far from mine. Maybe it’s morbid, hanging around your own grave, but I honestly couldn’t think of anything else to do. Marjene gave me that.

Am I haunting her? Does it count for haunting if you’re invited into a home? I need to be here. It’s funny; I can still smell, but it seems entirely tied to memory. It’s like memory gives me permission to smell, or something. From her kitchen comes the aroma of the treats she’s made for the bridge club, due this afternoon. I usually drift once they arrive. It’s not that I’m unwelcome, but it’s awkward. A generational thing that would still be an issue even if I were still alive. I was a curiosity for a while but they’ve long since stopped asking me to relay messages to their dearly departed. Unless they’re ghosts, like me, I have no more access to them than they do. And if they are ghosts, well, hell, they can tell them themselves.

Marjene pours me tea, even though I can’t drink it. I can hold it, and really, it’s all about ceremony and hospitality. She pours me civility, which I must let grow cold. “I hope it’s not the expensive stuff,” I joke. I raise the cup to lips that no longer drink; I don’t tilt it, though, as it would spill. But it’s a form that must be observed.

Katelyn got used to me immediately. She can stare at me for hours, and will occasionally make a sound or gesture to draw my attention. I can pet her, scratch her head and chin; I’ve learned again to do that much. She purrs, unperturbed, but perhaps fascinated instead, by how different I am from the other people she knows. Pets and kids are like that; it’s the adults who make things awkward. Sometimes I think it’s because they’re so acutely aware that I am the future for them. At least potentially so.

“She used to dote on Evan, too,” Marjene says. “I think she prefers men. Don’t you, you little harlot? Hmm, Katie?” she teases Katelyn, who, hearing her name, is broken from her trance and turns her head to offer her reply.

I sigh over the cup I will never taste. I dare to ask, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like, if he’d passed on, but stayed?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes I imagine it would be awkward and unmanageable. But most of the time, I imagine it’s just something we’d have gotten used to. You do a lot of that, growing old together. You’ll—” She was about to assure me that I’d find that out for myself as I grew older. But, of course, I won’t. “I imagine it’s the same for everyone,” she recovers.

Content for a moment, she sips. But I’ve opened the door, and a cloud passes over her features. “I wish I could have said to him the things I should have. Good and bad. But mostly good.” Her eyes flick up to meet my gaze. “But that’s just it. I think we’re bound to say those things if we have the chance, when someone’s about to leave us.” She sets the cup back in the saucer in her lap. “But with someone like you... well, you’re going to leave, one day, but... who knows when? It might be tomorrow, it might be years. So in a way, it’s just the same. If Evan were sitting here with me now, would I have to courage to say those things? Or would they seem silly and girlish, even now?”

There’s a pause in which we mull over our own musings. I’m the first to break it. “My mother couldn’t face me,” I say. “At the funeral, you know, I was at the back. Bad taste to be at your own funeral, they said, but hey, it’s my funeral. I wanted to talk to them but my dad said it was over, and I shouldn’t put them through it all a second time. He asked me to just leave them in peace. Can you believe that?”

“I’m sorry,” Marjene whispers.

“Of course, he said the same thing even before the overdose.” There are no drugs in my head anymore, and no head to hold them. “Things are clearer now,” I say as much to myself as to her. She tries to smile for me, so I joke, “Really, it’s a great way to rehabilitate yourself. Cheap, too.”

“Oh, Brian,” she says.

“It’s alright,” I tell her. I try to comfort her; I lean forward, holding my tea, and I remind her, “You know, it didn’t hurt at all. I just woke up and... well, it was over. The paramedics just packed up their gear.” Strange. Strange strange strange. Even now.

She gazes out the living room window of her tiny house into the street paved by men returning from the war. Young then. Gone now. She says, “Joyce is bringing tripe. I wish you could taste it. It’s heavenly. She tells us every chance she gets that the recipe’s been in her family for years. She always says it’s how she got Charlie to marry her and bring her back over here. I imagine she threw something else into the bargain, based on her wedding photos,” she winks, pantomiming a belly heavy with life. “England,” she says. “I always used to tell Evan I wanted to see England before I died. And we just never...”

I nod. There was a lot of ‘just never...’ in my life, too.

“Of course, maybe even that’s not an impediment,” she says. “Not necessarily.”

“Well,” I say, “you can’t really count on being a ghost. You should go, now, while you definitely can.”

“I’m tired, though, Brian. I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

The doorbell rings.

“Oh, that’ll be Betty,” she says, rising. “She’s always the first.” Walking to the front hall, she pauses at the archway. “Promise me something, Brian.”

“What?”

“If it happens to me... like it did for you... and if you’re still here when it does... promise me we’ll go, Brian. You and I.”

I smile. “Stow away on the QE II?”

“Watch the stars go by at night on the deck. I wouldn’t mind the cold then. Would I?”

The doorbell rings again. “No, Marjene. You won’t.”

“It’s a date,” she says. She turns, and she lets Betty Andolini in.

Chatter from the hallway. Mrs. Andolini comes into the living room. I rise. “Hello, Brian! Oh, please, don’t get up, dear.”

“Hello, Mrs. Andolini. It’s nice to see you.”

“Oh, you too. It’s a wonderful day out there. Early spring.”

I don’t want to be rude, but at the same time, Marjene has a right to her friends, and they to her. “I’ll get out of your hair,” I tell them.

“Please don’t go on my account,” Mrs. Andolini pleads.

“It’s no trouble; I know you two have to talk strategy. And I’ve been monopolizing Marjene all morning.”

“Are you sure, dear?” Mrs. Andolini says. “I know bridge isn’t for everyone, but I don’t want you to think you have to leave. You’ve been so good to Marjene.”

I don’t know what to say to that. She’s been my anchor, when the lightest breeze would be more than enough to set me adrift in an empty world. Had I still a throat, there would be a lump in it. So I joke, “I’ll probably just sneak into the movies.”

They both laugh. “Nothing scary, now, you won’t be able to sleep tonight,” Mrs. Andolini teases.

Marjene rises, following me. “Will you visit tomorrow?” she asks, knowing already that I will.

“I’ll see you then. Have a wonderful time, both of you, and say hello to Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Klein for me.”

We stand at the door, Marjene and me. “Really, Brian. You don’t have to go.”

I pause. “You don’t put me out,” I smile to her, and of my own accord, I leave.