The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 19

Cody watched his father, and waited for Elle to come back from talking to the funeral director. He was aware of people trickling into the chapel. A quick glance told him it was some of the old ladies who had been his mother's friends. He could hear their heavy footfalls as they heaved down the centre aisle. His mother had not seemed to know any thin old ladies.

He glanced over his shoulder at them. The organist of the Lutheran church headed the procession, followed by some of the members of the quilt ministry. There were three of them. His mother had stopped attending church three years before. None of the Magnusens knew why, and Cody and Elle hadn't been going since their teens. It became an issue only when she died, and the siblings weren't sure if they should ask Pastor Nylund if they could hold her funeral there. Elle had decided that it would cause less of a stir if they kept everything at the funeral home, but invited Pastor Nylund to preside. He had told them that unfortunately he was booked that day.

And also on the next date they tried.

"Kenneth, Cody," the church organist said in a wilted, sad voice. Cody couldn't remember her name. "We're all so sorry for your loss." The other three women looked sad.

Kenneth Magnusen said in a loud voice, "Let's turn up the heat. Mom is cold."

The organist blanched. Cody and Elle had had a long discussion about bringing their father. His dementia had stolen his sense of decorum; it wasn't so much that they were embarra.s.sed for themselves, but for the man he once had been. He was so unpredictable. But what would people have said if Lucile's widower had not attended her funeral?

Cody cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said to the organist.

The ladies looked from him to the coffin, faces drawn, then took their seats.

"Those flowers look terrible. They should get their money back," one of the women whispered in a loud voice. The others shushed her.

The chapel was tasteful, nothing fussy, and the coffin was closed, as Cody and Elle had requested. Who would have thought that someone who had frozen to death would look so . . . They had decided that painting her up wasn't appropriate and even though Mr Paulson, the funeral director, had a.s.sured them that the make-up would make her look more natural, they had stood firm.

More ladies came into the chapel, and a few men. There were about a dozen, more than he had expected. Cody knew that most of them hadn't seen his mother around much of late. Her hips had been bothering her. She said the winter had seeped into them, making them ache. They got brittle. She was afraid of falling. She sat in a recliner nearly all day, holding the remote, telling Cody and Elle to bring things to her, take things away. She'd given up on ordering their father around.

"You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you, Kenneth?" she would snap at him.

"Beg pardon?" he would say. At least, at first. A few months ago. Before the dementia really took hold.

She would sit in the recliner except for when she put on her old work boots and a heavy jacket, and went outside in the dead of night. Neither Cody nor Elle could figure out what she did out there. The chicken eggs were gathered by daylight, and there were no longer any cows to check on. She didn't even take a flashlight.

It was icy in the chapel, and redolent of roses. Gooseb.u.mps ran up and down Cody's arms. His new b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt and black sports jacket smelled like the plastic bag from the department store. Cody found himself remembering walking into the Lazy Daisy Flower Shop on the night of the prom to pick up Tiffany's corsage. That was nearly twenty years ago. Tiffany had sent the little wreath of white and yellow flowers from Montreal, where she lived now with her husband and two children.

Tiffany had never told him why she'd broken up with him. Later she had emailed him: You didn't even try to stop me.

"Dad," Elle said. She had come back from the office, and she was standing beside her father, who was sitting at the very end of the inner aisle section of the pew. "Can you scoot over, please?"

Their father didn't respond. Elle waited another couple of seconds, then huffed and walked the length of the pew, unhooking the golden cord at the far end. She sidestepped and sat down next to Cody.

"Graveside is all set," she said. She had a funny look on her face. "Mr Paulson told me the weirdest story." She lowered her voice. "There was a funeral here yesterday. The widow came in before the service to see her husband in his coffin. To see if he looked natural and all." She hesitated.

Cody nodded, waiting.

"The woman said he looked great. She started to leave. Then she turned back around and looked down at her dead husband. She said, 'This is for twenty-seven years.' And she slapped his cheek as hard as she could."

Cody's lips parted. "Her dead husband? She slapped her dead husband?"

Elle nodded. "Right there in the viewing room." She pulled out a tissue, and clutched it in her hand.

"That's so weird," Cody said. Then he looked at his father, to see what he made of that. His father didn't react.

Elle didn't use her tissue. She didn't cry during the service. None of the Magnusens did. They would never cry in public. There was some sniffling in the other pews. Cody wondered what the old ladies were thinking I miss my husband; life is so fleeting; she was such a dear woman. What does she look like?

After the funeral, Cody's father turned to him. His blue eyes were dry and his eyebrows were very thin and completely white.

"She slapped me," he said.

Cody flushed. He looked over at Elle, who had not heard.

"OK, Dad," he said.

"Hard." He nodded slowly. Then he lifted a trembling hand and laid it against Cody's left cheek. "Right there."

"What is he saying?" Elle asked.

"I think Dad should skip the graveside," Cody said. "I'll take him home and I'll get everything ready for the reception."

Elle considered. She was probably wondering what people would think if the deceased's widower didn't come to the cemetery.

"He's old, and there's snow everywhere," Cody said.

Elle inclined her head, coming to a decision. "You're right," she said. "Take him home. People will understand."

"I'll get out the potato salad and the cold cuts," Cody said.

"We should have had warm food." Elle put her tissue, still unused, into her purse.

Exhaust fumes from the family Subaru flew out of the car ghost-like. Ghosts of escape, protection. These ghosts clung to the car. Cody's father had forgotten that he used to be the one who drove. Cody and Elle had waited until it was time to renew Kenneth's licence, and then quietly destroyed the form. Their father had always obeyed all laws. He would no sooner have driven without a licence than murder someone. Their mother had asked about it for a while, narrowing her eyes at Cody and Elle, making comments about how strange it was that she had called the DVS several times and had been a.s.sured that a duplicate form had been sent. Then another duplicate form. Also, that they could renew it online.

Rather than confront the issue head on, Cody and Elle just let each conversation drop. They made a point of driving Lucile everywhere she needed to go. At first, they submitted to an orgy of errands. Church, the beauty parlour, the grocery store, the shop for quilting supplies. Three months into the new regime, she stopped asking after the licence renewal and began encouraging their father to stay home "to get his rest". He never asked about his licence, not once. Maybe he knew that he had forgotten how to drive. Or maybe he had forgotten that he'd ever known how.

There were quilts on the walls of the living room, abstract shapes in forest green, hunter green, tree-bark brown, and shades of grey and charcoal on ash black on burned black. Elle had thrown out Lucile's lap quilt. There were so many food stains on it.

At the reception in their small home, the ladies from the quilt ministry admired Lucile's fine work. Cody's father kept wandering over to the thermostat and pus.h.i.+ng it higher. "Mom's cold," he kept saying. He would glance over at the recliner like a dog that has lost its owner and is keeping vigil for her return. Of course Cody's mother would not have stirred from the chair to turn up the thermostat herself. She would have told one of them to do it.

With the fire in the fireplace and the heater blazing away, perspiration beaded on everyone's foreheads. Cody a.s.sumed that the funeral reception guests became uncomfortably hot, and that was why no one stayed long. That was fine with Cody. He was exhausted from monitoring his father. Cody had been afraid he would do something like take off all his clothes or dip his finger in the punch. But Kenneth had wandered back and forth from the thermostat to the fireplace, fretting and half-broiling everyone.

"No one ate anything," Elle said, but the truth was that no one had stayed long enough to put a dent in the food. Elle had bought too much, and the church ladies brought covered dishes. People did things like that in the Midwest.

Cody and Elle saved everything they could, refrigerating the cheese logs and dip five seconds after the last guest had shut the front door. The sooner they got the cold food colder, the longer it would last. They froze the ca.s.seroles. Elle said they would have sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until the cold cuts were gone.

That done, the dishes washed, Kenneth, Elle, and Cody went into the living room to watch the news on TV. Brother and sister traded looks when their father sat in Lucile's recliner. It creeped Cody out. On the sofa, Elle distractedly went through the contents of her purse. She threw her unused tissue in the fire.

No one really watched the news. No one spoke. Cody was thirty-seven. He had gone to college, then came home to help his father work the farm. But two years in, his parents figured out how to apply for subsidies for not planting any more of this, then that, and that; and as the dairy cows died, they were not replaced. Soon, there was no farm. There was fallow land and subsidy money. His parents owned their house and they drew social security. He could have left, but by then, they had begun to develop health issues. He found that caring for them took up most of his time.

Elle, who was older than Cody by three years, was the one who had left. She'd been a librarian in a high school in Milwaukee. Then the economy had taken its toll, and she had come home while she job-hunted. Six months stretched into a year, and then into five. Cody thought Elle was relieved that she'd been forced by circ.u.mstances to retreat. She said that high-school students were messy and rude. Cody thought there was a failed romance somewhere in there, too. He didn't know, though. They never talked about it. Now she did copyediting online. She was always on her computer, with her door shut.

Ghosts of happier times did not linger in the house. They realized they were in the wrong place, and faded away.

A death in the family could have been messy, but Elle made all the arrangements. Cody's task was to watch their father. Their father didn't have a task.

They went to bed. Cody was sweating, wrapped in his sheets like a shroud. Their mother had been found frozen. The morgue had been refrigerated. He hadn't asked if there had been a procedure to defrost her but there must have been. Was it important to do it in some special way? How long did it take? It must have worked; otherwise the funeral director wouldn't have been so eager to make up her face.

It bordered on sick, this train of thought. But he couldn't stop thinking about it. He wondered what was happening in the graveyard. If the flowers on top of her grave were freezing. If below the piles of snow, inside the coffin, things were happening to her body. He found a symmetry he beneath his pile of quilts; she beneath the ground. If she'd died just five years ago, they would have had to wait until spring to bury her. But the funeral parlour had invested in the equipment to cut through the frozen ground. People who didn't live anywhere near the parlour were getting buried in the local graveyard.

Lucile's clothes had not been returned. The old jeans with the stretch waistband, a large black-and-red flannel s.h.i.+rt, her sheepherder's jacket, were gone. The funeral home had given them back her big boots. Elle had put them in a white plastic trash bag, then into the trash.

Cody peeled back layers of quilts. He was so hot he felt a little ill. The Magnusens paid for their oil at the beginning of winter. With the heat up this high, they were going to have to buy a refill. Cody got up to turn it down, and heard his father talking behind the closed door of the master bedroom.

Cody pressed his ear to the door.

"OK," Kenneth was saying. "I'm coming."

Then Cody heard the whine of the mattress springs, his father shuffling through the room. Cody glanced down. There was no sliver of light beneath the transom. His father was moving through the darkness, alone.

"Dad?" Cody called.

There was no answer, just more shuffling.

Cody knocked softly. "Dad?"

Nothing.

Cody turned the k.n.o.b and pushed the door open. Moonlight spilled into the room, s.h.i.+ning on his father's hair as he stood in front of the bedroom window.

His mother's ghost was staring through the gla.s.s. Her skin was mottled blue, grey, brown. Her blue eyes were bloodshot and shone like mirrors as she glared at Cody's father.

Kenneth's hand was on the window latch, preparing to open it.

"OK," Kenneth said. "OK, OK."

"Oh, G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d, Dad," Cody whispered. His heart stuttered as he stood on the threshold. Then as he took a step forward the ghost disappeared. There was only moonlight on the snow, and beyond that, the heavy wooden fence.

"Cody?" Sounding uncertain, Kenneth lowered his hand from the latch.

"Dad," Cody said, rus.h.i.+ng into the room. Trying not to look at the window; unable to do anything but look at the window.

I didn't see that, he told himself.

"She's so cold," Kenneth fretted.

Cody didn't know what to do. It had to have been a waking dream. A trick of the light. A guilty conscience.

"Come to bed, Dad. You had a bad dream."

Cody glanced uneasily around the room. It was chillier than the rest of the house. He could almost see his breath.

"What's going on?" his father asked. He looked around as if he had just woken up, blinking his rheumy, icy eyes.

"You were dreaming." Shaking, Cody stood beside him. His father blinked several times, glancing at the window, then down at his hands, then back at the window.

Cody didn't remember the last time he'd touched his father, or the last time his father had touched him. He couldn't remember a handshake. He lightly brushed his father's arm, surprised by how thin it was.

Cody hadn't seen her face there. It had been a trick of the light. A bad dream of his own. His heart pounded. His hands shook.

"Now climb into bed, Dad," Cody said. Cody's back was to the window. He could almost feel someone looking at him.

Her, looking at him.

"I'm so cold," Kenneth said sadly. "I'm cold to my bones and I'll never be warm again."

"Here, get under the quilt." Cody peeled back the bedclothes. For one heart-stopping moment he thought he saw a leg; then he realized it was his mother's "body pillow", purchased to help her with her hip aches.

He glanced back at the window. All he saw was the moon on the snow, the fence, and some trees. More times than he could count, he had gone outside in the early dawn, trying to find his mother's footprints so he could figure out what she was doing at night in the frigid darkness. He had tried to talk to Elle about it. She had pursed her lips and said, "She's just as crazy as he is."

Now, as his father stiffly sat on the edge of the bed, Cody realized that he couldn't leave him in this room, unattended, when his mother's face might reappear in the window.

It wasn't there. I imagined it.

But still, he couldn't. And he wouldn't stay in this room himself.

"Dad, let's go watch TV," he said, because he didn't know what else to do. "We've got all those great leftovers."

He flicked on the light so that his father wouldn't be tempted to lie down. The window absorbed the reflection, so that Cody couldn't see anything in it except the painting of birds on the wall above the bed. He'd turned on the light so that he could fool his father into forgetting that he had been planning to go back to bed. It worked; Kenneth shuffled barefooted down the hall. Usually the floor in winter would be too cold to walk on barefoot, but the thermostat was up so high that it was like walking on freshly turned summer earth.

Cody headed for the kitchen. But his father went into the living room and sat in the recliner. Cody opened the refrigerator and recoiled from the chill. Everything in there was rotting, slowly.

"What's going on?" Elle asked, belting her robe and yawning as she came into the kitchen. She looked younger without her make-up.

"Dad had a bad dream," he said, avoiding her gaze.

"I guess that's to be expected," she replied. She reached out a hand towards the refrigerator and he saw that it was shaking. Like his.

Tell her, he thought. But it was too complicated, and he didn't want to upset Elle. He hadn't really seen his mother.

"Cody," she said, and sat down at the kitchen table. She looked down at her hands. Then she said, "I'm going back to bed."

Tell her. But he never told her anything.

"Good night," he said.

He pulled out a ca.s.serole, then put it back and shut the refrigerator door. He glanced at the blank kitchen windows. What if his mother's ghost went to Elle's window next? He hurried down the hallway to his sister's door and knocked softly on it.

"Come in," she said.

The dark blue drapes were pulled across her window. He tried not to imagine his mother's mottled face, her s.h.i.+ny eyes, on the other side the gla.s.s.

I didn't see her.

Elle looked at him. Then her gaze slid down to the floor. "Cody," she said again.

He took a deep breath. "Did you see her?" he asked.