On Monday, the daily documentary featured the irrigation system of the Netherlands, but neither my father-in-law nor I was ready to come back from the tropical paradises of the South Pacific. We sat there in gloomy silence for a few minutes, politely studying placid canals and bobbing fields of tulips, but neither of us could muster any enthusiasm for the subject. I clicked off the set just as he was beginning to fade out. “I’ll go to the library,” I said to the dimming apparition. “Perhaps I can borrow a video of the Pacific Islands-or at least a travel guide.”
Stephen occasionally sent me to the library to research something for him, but I had never actually checked anything out for my own use. I suppose Mrs. Nagata, the librarian, was a bit surprised to see me walk past Architecture and into the Travel section. Or perhaps she was surprised to see me in jeans with my hair in a ponytail. In my haste I had not bothered to change into the costume I thought of as Suburban Respectable. Half an hour later, I had managed to find two coffee-table books on the Pacific Islands, a video documentary about Tahiti, and the old Disney film of Treasure Island that I remembered from childhood. As an afterthought I picked up a guidebook to Polynesia as well.
When I entered the house again I could hear the strains of “Bali H’ai” being played on a honky-tonk piano. I wondered if that was a hint. Surely Bali H’ai would be featured in one of the books I had selected. Where was it, anyhow? And had my father-in-law been there before? I tried to remember his stories about World War II, but exotic islands did not play a part in any tale that I recalled. “He’s simply getting into the spirit of the thing,” I said. Realizing my pun I laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?”
Stephen was home. I nearly dropped the books. He was lounging on the sofa watching the sports network. “The air conditioning was broken at the office, so I came home,” he told me without taking his eyes off the flickering screen. “I was surprised to find you gone. I thought you moped around here all day.”
“I went to the library,” I mumbled.
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows in that maddening way of his. “Whatever for? I didn’t send you.”
I felt like a child caught playing hooky. “I just went,” I said.
I edged closer to the screen, careful not to block his view, and held out my armload of books and videos. “I just thought I’d do some reading.”
A commercial came on just then, and he turned his attention to me, or rather to the materials from the library. He flipped through the stack of books, inspected the videos, and set them down on the sofa beside him. “The South Pacific,” he said, sounding amused.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“If you like heat and insects.”
“I thought we might go there some day.”
Stephen turned back to the television. “Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti. He was a painter.”
“Yes.”
“Went to Tahiti, got leprosy there, and died,” said Stephen, with evident satisfaction that Gauguin’s lapse of judgment had been so amply rewarded. Before I could reply, the commercial ended, and Stephen went back to the game, dismissing the subject of Polynesia from his thoughts entirely.
I left the room, unnoticed by Stephen, who was absorbed in the television and completely oblivious to my existence. Before I left, though, I took the pile of books, which he had discarded on the sofa beside him.
I was sitting on the bed, leafing through color pictures of beaches at sunset and lush island waterfalls, when my father-in-law materialized beside me and began peering at the pages with a look similar to Stephen’s television face. Once when I turned a page too quickly, he reached for the book, and then drew back, as if he suddenly remembered that he could no longer hold objects for himself.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I sighed. “I wish I could see it for real.”
The ghost nodded sadly. He tried to touch the page, but his fingers became transparent and passed through the photo.
“Just go!” I said. “Do it! I’m tied here. Stephen refuses to go anywhere. I’m too depressed to go to the mall, much less to another country. But you! You’re not a prisoner. I wish I were a ghost. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t be haunting a tract house in Iowa. I’d do whatever I wanted. I’d be free! I’d go to Tahiti-or Easter Island-or wherever I wanted!”
The ghost shook his head, and immediately I felt sorry for my outburst. Apparently there were rules to the afterlife, and I had no idea what his limitations were. I shouldn’t have reproached him for things I don’t understand, I thought.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wish we weren’t trapped here.” My eyes filled with tears. One of them plopped onto the waterfall picture and slid down the rocks, as if to join the cascading image.
I looked up to see my father-in-law’s ghost smiling and shaking his head. He looked very much like Stephen for just that instant: his expression was the one Stephen always has when I’ve said something foolish. I thought over what I had said. I wish we weren’t trapped here.
Why was I trapped here?
I had grandmother’s legacy in the savings account. It had grown to nearly twelve thousand dollars, because in my depression I couldn’t be bothered to go out and actually buy anything. I had a suitcase, and enough summer clothes to see me through a few months in the tropics. And-most important-I had no emotional ties to keep me in Woodland Hills. I felt that I had already been haunting Stephen for the last few years of our married life. It was time I left. And when I went, his memory would never haunt me.
I opened the closet and reached for the canvas suitcase on the top shelf. As I was pulling it down, I heard a thump at the back of the closet, and I stood on tiptoe to see what had been knocked over. It was a large bronze vase. I had to stand on a chair to reach it. When I pulled it out of a tangle of coat hangers, I saw the brass plate on the front bearing a name and two dates. My father-in-law!
I left the suitcase on the floor, and ran downstairs. “Stephen!” I said. “Did you know that your father’s ashes are in the bedroom closet?”
“Shhh! They’re kicking the extra point.”
I waited an eternity for a commercial and asked again, keeping my voice casual.
“Dad? Sure. I took them after the funeral. I thought it would upset Mother too much to leave them on the mantel where she’d have to see them all the time. I figured I’d wait for the anniversary of his death-next month, isn’t it?-and then scatter him under the rose bushes out back. Bone meal. Great compost, huh?”
“Great,” I murmured.
As I fled back upstairs I heard him call out, “Thanks for reminding me!”
It took me twenty minutes to clean out the fireplace in the den, and another half hour to pack. Ten minutes to locate my passport and the passbook to my savings account. Five minutes to transfer the contents of the urn to a plastic cosmetics bag in my suitcase and replace them with the fireplace ashes. I didn’t think I’d need my coat, but I put it on anyway, as a gesture of finality. My father-in-law was wearing his.
We stood for a moment in the foyer, staring at the back of Stephen’s head, haloed in the light of the television. I picked up my suitcase, and flung open the door. “I’m going out!” I called.
“Yeah-okay,” said Stephen.
“I may be some time.”
FOGGY MOUNTAIN BREAKDOWN
THAT AFTERNOON THE Haskell girls came by collecting money for a funeral wreath. Davy gave them a nickel and ten pennies from the baking powder can in the pantry. Mama would probably have given them a quarter, since Dad was working a couple of days a week at the railroad shop now, but she was visiting over at the Kesslers, talking about the accident. All the mothers in the community would be talking about the tragedy, with their eyes red from crying, because, as the preacher said, death is always a pang of sorrow no matter who is taken, but sooner or later, every one of them would say, “It might have been my boy.” It wasn’t one of their boys, though; it was Junior Mullins. Fifteen cents was enough for Junior Mullins, Davy thought.