The ghost in the bedroom, for one. Obviously the ghost had come for Caleb. But was it really a ghost? Had the apparition truly existed? Contradictions in terms... likely her own subconscious mind had conjured up the woman, creating her out of some inner knowledge that Caleb was going to be taken away. She’d know more one way or the other if someone else had either seen or not seen the woman, but only she had been awake to witness the appearances.
The ghost had not walked on the past two nights. More accurately, Roberta had not seen it. But she couldn’t swear it hadn’t put in an appearance, because she herself had been so sedated she could have slept through a nuclear attack. The morning of Caleb’s death David had put in a quick call to Gintzler, who immediately phoned in a prescription to the drugstore. Roberta, numbed out on Valium, had made it through the days and slept as if comatose through the nights.
No Valium today. They were putting her son in the ground. If there was something to feel, she wanted to feel it.
But if the ghost came back tonight—
Worry about it when it happens, she told herself. They were approaching the cemetery. She was going to have a lot to get through in the next little while. She would just have to take it as it came, and when it was bedtime she could worry about the woman in the shawl.
The ceremony at the graveside was a brief one, with a short formal service. The minister read about ashes to ashes and dust to dust and the resurrection and the life and a lot of familiar phrases. Throughout it Ariel tried to decide whether to close her eyes when they lowered the coffin. She wound up watching the whole thing.
Erskine had come to the cemetery. That surprised her. And the man from the Funeral Game, he had turned up, too, standing off to one side at the rear.
Mrs. Tashman had not come. Evidently just turning up at the funeral was enough for most people, but some liked to sign on for the whole routine.
Her grandmother was buried here somewhere, and other relatives of Roberta’s. Probably Roberta and David would wind up here sometime, buried along with Caleb.
And would the same thing happen to her? She couldn’t be buried with her real parents, not if she didn’t know who they were. Maybe she could be buried at sea. Or they could cremate her and scatter the ashes from an airplane, like that movie star they were talking about on television.
She didn’t like thinking about death. But what else could you think about at a funeral?
The limousine returned them to the funeral parlor. Then they were in their own car and David was driving back to the city. At one point she thought they were going to drive past the house where they used to live, but they didn’t.
It was a little creepy, being in the old neighborhood. She hadn’t wanted to move downtown, but now she liked the new house so much better.
No one spoke while David drove. He parked finally on the street directly behind Roberta’s Datsun. Houses were close together on this block, with no driveways or garages, but the house was large enough so that you could easily park both cars at the curb in front of it.
Ariel opened the back door and got out. She stood on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb while David emerged from behind the wheel and walked around the back of the car to open the door for Roberta. She seemed reluctant to get out at first. Then she took his hand and let him help her out, and the two of them stood side by side, looking up at the towering red brick house with its ornamental black ironwork.
David put his arm around Roberta and she leaned against him. Ariel felt funny watching them. While they stood there, supporting each other, she scampered up the walk and mounted the steps to the front door.
Three
The night of the funeral Ariel was afraid to go to sleep. She knew it was crazy, but what she couldn’t get out of her mind was the idea that if she actually did fall asleep she would be dead by morning. Just like Caleb.
And of course it was crazy, because she was too old for crib death, which certainly sounded as though it was limited to kids too young to sleep in a regular bed. And, since she hadn’t heard anything about an outbreak of Bed Death reaching epidemic proportions in downtown Charleston, it stood to reason that she had nothing to worry about.
Knowing this wasn’t terribly helpful. She went to her room after dinner, reading for a couple of hours, and then she got into pajamas and went downstairs to say goodnight to David and Roberta. David picked her up and set her on his lap and put her to work running a pipe cleaner through one of his pipes. That had been a real treat for her some years back, and evidently David hadn’t figured out that she was a little old to go bananas at the opportunity to clean the tobacco spit out of a pipestem. But she did it, and pretended as much enthusiasm as possible.
David kissed her and told her to have pleasant dreams. Roberta, sitting in the kitchen with coffee and a cigarette, told her to sleep well. Ariel went upstairs with no intention of either sleeping or dreaming. She didn’t care whether it made sense or not. She was going to stay awake until morning.
But it was boring just sitting there. After a long time, when she was sure both of them were sleeping, she picked up her tin flute and played it as softly as she possibly could, piping the notes tentatively. She had barely begun playing when she heard Roberta’s footsteps in the hall. She put the flute down and managed to be in bed when the door opened.
“You’re awake,” Roberta said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I don’t want you playing that thing.”
“I didn’t think anybody could hear.”
“I don’t want to listen to that tonight. It’s a matter of respect, Ariel. For Caleb.”
“All right.”
“And try to get some sleep.”
“I will.”
Alone in her room she tried to figure out how playing the flute showed a lack of respect for her dead baby brother. I don’t want you playing that thing. I don’t want to listen to that tonight. Fair enough, she thought, but why drag Caleb into it? He’d liked her flute music when he was alive and it certainly wasn’t going to disturb him now. Either he was six feet deep in the suburban cemetery or he was up in Heaven with God and the angels, whichever way you wanted to figure it, and either way her flute wasn’t going to put him off his feed.
Anyway, she’d been sort of playing for Caleb. And then Roberta told her to show respect by stopping.
She made a stab at reading, picking up first one of her Oi books, then a young adult novel by Sandra Scoppettone. Both were favorites, but tonight it seemed to her that she had outgrown the first without having yet grown into the second. She put the books away and retrieved the flute, sitting cross-legged on the bed with the mouthpiece to her lips and her eyes closed. She fingered the notes without blowing across the mouthpiece. In this way she was able to hear the music in her head while the flute remained silent.
Eventually she put the flute back on her desk. After a while she turned off her light. She felt a chill and got under the covers. It was all right to close her eyes, she decided, so long as she didn’t let herself fall asleep. For practice she closed them and lay still, counting her breaths, then snapping open her eyes and sitting up in bed on the fiftieth breath.
Perfectly safe, she told herself. That would get her through the night, little stretches of rest with her eyes closed. As long as she never stayed that way past fifty breaths she couldn’t possibly fall asleep, and if she didn’t fall asleep she wouldn’t die in her sleep. Not that she really believed in that possibility anyway, but why take chances?