Gianaclis Caldwell

GHOST THERAPY

by Gianaclis Caldwell

Part I.
Who Wants to Live Forever?

“The most important thing is to live a fabulous life. As long as it’s fabulous, I don’t care how long it is.”

Farrokh Bulsara / Freddie Mercury, Fabulous Performer

Arrival Date November 24, 1991

Chapter 1. These are the Days of Our Lives

The Eternals:

Betwixt

and Beyond

the Before

We watch

we wait.

You

will

Become us.

We are

already

You.

.

In the now of the linear, in a quaint bungalow on a small lot, just hours before her daughter’s heart stops beating, a woman stands before a small medicine cabinet. Her ringless hands cup the lip of the pale countertop. She pulls slow breaths through pursed lips. A razor edge of pain lodges between her eyes, slicing her expression into sharp angles. She sees her reaction in the silver rectangle of the mirror, and her thoughts dive to a small dot on the timeline of her life. She can see it moving, almost imperceptibly, like a jet in the night sky, and can’t help but wonder if she were still in the business, still trying to earn a living on her beauty and purported talent, just how different her face would now look? And how much would it have cost? And, if she had the money now, would she get just a little work done?

From the front room of the compact, depression era bungalow she shares with her 17-year-old daughter, a door slams, rattles the single pane of glass over the tub. Lelia. Beth pivots toward the retort, her instincts begging her to run after her daughter, do her best to change the girl’s mind, or even just beg for caution, for common sense, for skepticism. And to call home later. And to—and to—. As the woman turns, the sleeve of her sweatshirt catches on a pottery vase at the edge of the counter, sends it crashing to the floor. Her body twists away before her brain can intercede, and a stab of white-hot pain ricochets down her leg.

“Goddamnit.” Beth’s voice is tight, her frustration twinned by pain and seeing the scattered seafoam-green shards on the tiled floor. She’d had found the little art piece at The Tustin Flea just last month; certain it was a vintage Brayton Laguna work nestling incognito among a collection of worthless bric-a-brac spread on a vendor’s card table. Turning it over that sunny Sunday afternoon, she’d found the underside coated and blackened by years of dust and grease. Rather than scrub it clean when she got home and reveal the existence, or lack, of proof, Beth let the vase’s provenance languish. Sometimes an unopened gift held the most value. Now, staring at the ruin on the floor, she tells herself the vase was a fake, a knock-off, a worthless thing.

#

Before Lelia hurricanes out of the house, she spends an hour getting ready for the party she doesn’t want to attend. She’d come home eager for a quiet afternoon in her small room and time to work on her art project. Even though, thanks to the virus, her senior class, all the classes in the state for that matter, won’t return after spring break, Lelia is determined to blow on the spark of imagination the art assignment had ignited. The art assignment, a cross-pollination project with the literature department: take a favorite novel, reinvent and recreate it as a basic graphic novel. It wasn’t like they had to actually publish it, just mock-up a few of the major scenes, see if they could capture the essence of the story and characters. The book inspiring Lelia’s idea lay on her bed, its pages ruffled and well-thumbed. Her mom thought the book, a gift from Grammy Angie for Lelia’s 17th birthday, was morbid. A book about death, on the surface of it, but Lelia had loved Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. Sure, she still thinks, it’s kind of candy-sweet-basic at times, the way the dead girl, Liz, is all mopey and reactionary, but the story is still lit as fuck.

Teeth clamped over her lip and studies the walls of her room. She’s tacked and taped the pages of her project, filling every free space and then some, of her tiny room that, although the realtor swore the place had been repainted and recarpeted, still faintly smells like a wet dog. If her mom saw what Lelia was doing to the newly painted plaster, she’d be hundo-P pissed. But Lelia doesn’t give a shit about the stupid walls. Looking at the project sends tingles of electricity clear to her fingertips, like she’s developing a super-power; in other words, totally worth the drama.

The sheets of paper show her blocked out scenes, the story arc, the main character’s arc, the dark climax. She’s calling it You Only Live Once. YOLO, for short. The very first sketches, the dark twist of the images, the text, had grabbed at something lurking within her, like a fist had reached in and wrapped around some kind of true, hidden self. Once she’d begun, she hadn’t wanted to stop. It didn’t hurt that her art teacher, Mx. Jaunit Juarez, was about the only educator who seemed to see Lelia, squeezed that fist, holding her tighter. She felt anchored. Solid. So on this day, this last day of school before a break that was to go on for who knew how long, she’d come home eager to just eat and get to work. Her goals did not include getting shit-faced at Natalia’s parent-free, basement, skittles party.

But here she is, storming out of their bungalow, her whole idea of what her evening was going to look like a shattered mess. All because of her mother.

As Lelia leaves the bungalow, she hip-checks the front door, shutting with a satisfying bang, and walks down the poorly lit, short path to the old chain link fence surrounding the house. The fence is a remnant from the previous owner, an old lady whom Lelia is sure died in the place. She’s equally certain at least one Chihuahua with an under-bite is interred beneath a bougainvillea. Now, the short, weed-woven fence, gothic in the dimming light of the spring evening, makes her laugh. The irony. They’d moved from one kind of gated home to an entirely different one. She lifts the catch and pushes through the gate, which she could easily step her long legs over, if she had a mind, hesitates, then and gives it too a clanging slam.

She jumps when a gravelly voice calls from behind the shrubs of the bungalow next to theirs, “Hey there, honey!” Her feet want to keep moving, now that she’s set on the stupid party, but she forces them to a stop.

“Hi… Miz… Hey,” Lelia says, picking through her scrambled memory for a name. The two old ladies who live next door, and were no doubt friends of whoever owned the place before Lelia and her mom, often puttered in their tiny yard, fussing and clucking over their prized assortment of gaudy flowers, what Lelia now knows to be bearded irises. The utter riot of showy, pastel blossoms crowding the old ladies’ yard makes Lelia picture their house as wearing a giant, frilly crocheted toilet paper cover, which would be so fitting, she thinks, and tucks the idea away in her mind.

“You off to have some fun, I hope.” The smooth-voiced one calls out, a pair of shears in her pink-gloved hand, an old straw hat low on her head, silvery wisps poofing out in a halo, backlit by their blazing porch light.

Her wife, the pack-a-day voiced one, head pops up. “That’s right, honey, have some fun while you’re young!” She cackles a laugh that, despite the urgency in Lelia’s feet, brings a smile to her cheeks. Gardening at dusk; the old gals are kind of adorable, like characters from a book. Married for decades, or at least as-good-as, Lelia is certain. How would their life look as a graphic novel, she wonders: Two women in love from back in the day, one Black, one as close to white as any pale-skinned person could be, living in a giant crocheted house and raising flowers.

“Umm, thanks. Uh, you guys have fun too!” Lelia pats the small ziplock nestled deep in her jeans’ pocket. The contents were supposed to be the ticket to fun. But her hand touching the vague shape of the tablets she’d sneaked from her mom’s supply sends a twinge of doubt into Lelia’s belly. She stops again, considers going back inside the bungalow. Could she sneak past her mom and just pretend she was gone?

“Oh, we will, dear, we always do,” the smooth voiced one says. Then, both at the same time, “Go on now, have fun while you’re young!”

Her stomach still churning, Lelia tucks a strand of her shoe-polish-black dyed hair behind her ears, and heads to her first, and last, skittles party.

#

Inside the bungalow, Beth nudges the shattered bits of pottery aside with her foot and stares again into the mirror. They told her she’d “never be the same”, back when she got out of orthopedic rehab — what has it been, already a full year ago? They said the injuries would likely “bother her for life”. But it had seemed such a trite line, a thing they told everyone, just to cover themselves. But there it is, electricity shooting down her leg like a mild taser. Without thinking, she fingers open the medicine cabinet and stares at the translucent orange bottle of generic Vicodin. With a squeeze of will, Beth closes the cabinet with a soft click, as if the quietness, the stealth of her movements, might erase the reality of the craving.

Later, she will wonder if she’d just picked up the bottle, would she have noticed how many of the tablets were missing? Would she have been able to stop the tragedy that had just been set in motion? But Beth puts her hands on her lower back, massages along the vertebral ridge, tries to ignore the twin fat pads riding just above her ass. Through the jersey of her loose top, she could, if she reached to just the right spot, feel the scar from the surgery that allowed her to again walk without aid. But her fingers know just where to work the muscles to around it. How to dance slightly to the side, avoiding the reminder of her stupid mistake.

#

A melancholy, which has nothing to do with the broken pottery, robes around Beth as she makes her way from the bathroom to the kitchen. With Lelia gone, the house takes on a hollow feeling, a sense of pointlessness. Beth passes a clutter of books and notebooks spread across the old-trunk -turned coffee table and tells herself she should be grateful for the solitude, for the peaceful hours she can now spend doing her nursing schoolwork, rather than being distracted by Lelia banging about in her room, playing music, or rummaging around in the back room trying to find the source of the sound Beth is certain is just a branch rubbing the siding. In the kitchen, Beth opens the refrigerator, looking for something to take her mind off the pain in her back. She doesn’t ask herself how she’ll ever accomplish the physicality of being a nurse—given the weakened state of her spine. One thing at a time. One day at a time is what they taught you in the other kind of rehab: you have to focus on the linear.

The fridge door opens to a view of the white paperboard takeout box, and her melancholy fusions to irritation. The limp box slumps on the glass shelf, hemorrhaging trickles of shiny red sauce. The syrupy mess will dry there. The whole fridge will reek. The ice cubes will absorb the taint. Beth’s insides pull tight. Why can’t her daughter just follow a few of the house rules? Is it really that much to ask for Lelia to empty her takeout into one and then put it away? The twist inside Beth expands, demands relief.

Beth takes a deep breath, loosens her white-knuckled grip on the refrigerator handle. Tells herself what her therapist might: how important is the mess, the ice quality, the control, compared to your daughter, to your relationship with her? Beth tries to remember that each person’s triggers sit cocked and ready to fire. Air blows from Beth’s cheeks as she does the work to see beyond the irritation.

Ten deep breaths and several minutes later, she slides the paper carton along with a smear of clotted sauce onto a plate, sits it on the counter, runs a sponge under the faucet, wipes up the mess in the side-by-side, pulls out a plastic container, then holds the box over it, and with a slllplop, transplants the contents into the durable, odor proof container. Her belly twists again, seeing what’s inside. Although it’s certainly no surprise. Fatty, chunky pieces of deep-fried chicken in the glossy sweet-and-sour glaze, wedges of canned pineapple, a couple bits of bell pepper the only green. If her daughter would just make a few healthy choices, Beth is certain it would help Lelia’s mood: we are, as her nutrition textbook seems to confirm, what we eat.

Earlier that afternoon, Beth had been reviewing the most recent chapters of Nutrition Essentials for her spring term finals when Lelia stepped in, letting the door rattle closed behind her. Beth glanced at the white plastic bag with a scrunched up red pagoda swinging from Lelia’s hand. “What’d you get, honey?”

“Why?” Her response like the crack of a whip.

“Just curious.” Beth felt the walls going up. It was an innocent question. Of course, she cared how her daughter ate; nutrition was the foundation of good health.

“Nothing you’d want,” Lelia said, not meeting Beth’s eyes.

“I was just asking.”

Lelia said nothing as she pulled the carton, beginning to darken at the seams, from the bag, and stepped to the fridge, her wide hips blocking the view. Lelia was tall and large-boned. Husky, Beth’s dad would have called her, if he still lived.

Lelia slammed the container down on the top shelf of the fridge. Beth’s molars ground together, she forced her jaw open, her body began to flood with tension. Why couldn’t Lelia have a conversation with her without getting defensive? Beth felt as if almost everything that came from her mouth must ricochet through a fun-house mirror before entering her daughter’s head. Beth felt like an unappreciated lump; sitting on the sofa, hours of homework spread before her—an attempt to make a better future for not just herself, but her daughter too. Before she could think, she said, “If you’re too lazy to put it in the Tupperware, stick the entire container in a ziplock. Okay? Is that too much to ask?”

“It’s not Tupperware, mom, it’s Rubbermaid.” Lelia’s voice was triumphant, snarky. She closed the fridge door, rattling the myriad condiment bottles filling the shelves, and stomped toward her room. “By the way, I’m going to a party tonight.”

Before Beth could rearrange her thoughts, find some kind of equanimity along with an answer that would hold her daughter still for just a moment, Lelia’s bedroom door banged shut. A framed print of Beth’s last movie premieres a lifetime ago hanging on the dining room wall twitched then listed to the side. At least it knew when to surrender.

Now, again in the kitchen, but the house like an empty shell, Beth closes the door on the repackaged left-overs. To one side of the sink sits a bowl of fruit, also untouched. A fat, almost black eggplant takes up most of the bowl. It’s beginning to slump, rotting, she guesses, from the bottom up. She’d meant to cook, to make some baba ghanoush or her own healthy stir fry or something. It’s like everything always needs her and she’s being pulled apart by it.

Sighing, Beth ignores the doomed eggplant, and moves back to the sofa and her studies, her eyes slip to another framed image of herself— no, she thinks, of the other me, when I was El. This image is a magazine cover from the summer of 2003. She’s posed almost the same way that, only two months later, Brooke Shields would on the cover of Vogue: swathed in thin, clinging fabric, standing sideways, staring haughtily at the camera, and very, very pregnant. Only 17 years ago. How could it have gone so quickly? Beth can still feel that moment. That sense of the small miracle growing inside of her, inside her not quite twenty-year-old body. She’d been so young, she and Todd so sure everything would work out. So, she grimaces now, naïve.

Inside the bungalow, that only feels like home when her daughter, even if pissed and bitchy, is here, Beth stares at the framed image and shakes her head. Where, oh where, she wonders, did that tiny miracle go?