Ghosts (2012)

3 MATTHEW SHAER GHOSTS Winner of the 2012 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Jane Hamilton T he old man will die in the river room. This is decided before they arrive, by a primly efficient nurse named Anna, who has been hired at great expense from the hospice center in Bristol. She greets them in the driveway, coffee cup in hand. Her face is bright, scrubbed clean. From the backseat, David listens as she explains to his mother the parameters of the illness—the erythropoietin deficiency, the renal failure, the vascular dementia , the probable onset of tubercular meningitis. Phrases designed to obscure the nearness of human decay, David thinks, to maximize the distance between them, the blithely living, and his grandfather, the almost dead. His mother nods, jiggles the stick shift. She has already lost one parent and knows, more or less, what to expect. David and his sister are the last ones into the house. They stand for a moment at the mouth of the barn. The night is immense . To the east, the sky is smudged by a yellow glow. David searches his memory for the name of the closest neighbor. Erskine . Tebbits. Deutsch. He remembers a splintered and sagging porch, a wreath of hay and cranberry. “Are you ready?” Lucy asks. Unlike David, who prepared fastidiously for the trip, matching wool socks with lined jeans and a heavy canvas shirt, Lucy is dressed loosely, carelessly. Their mother’s barn jacket hangs off her thin shoulders, and her T-shirt, bright pink, bears the crest of a punk band from Somerville, where Lucy is taking classes. At twenty, three years older than David, his sister is becoming even more of a child. “Absolutely not,” David answers. “Are you?” Inside the kitchen, the nurse, Anna, is making tea. The house has not changed. The books on the shelves are the same, the black and crouched woodstove the same, the chipped ceramic mugs. Pete stands slowly and, stretching both front paws out in front of him, totters stiffly in their direction. colorado review 4 “Oh, buddy,” David says. “What happened to you?” “Lyme disease,” Anna says. “Your grandfather thinks he was bitten by a tick out in the back pasture.” “He couldn’t check him for ticks?” David’s mother says. “He doesn’t move so well either. You’ll see.” There would be piss and shit and blood, Lucy had predicted, on the drive from Boston. She grabbed her nose, and fixing David with a pleased smile, wondered if he might be asked to wipe the ass crack. “Someone is going to have to do it,” she added. “I’m the oldest grandkid. You’re the youngest. I’m just saying, so you can be prepared.” But now, standing in the kitchen, duffel bag still slung over one shoulder, her mouth is thin and suspicious. She has run out of jokes. David finds himself wishing for the presence of his father, who possessed the ability to find the light in any situation—who would, if he were here in Maine and not in Indiana , draw Lucy and David into a tight embrace and remind them that the old guy had lived a pretty good life, all things considered. Who would kiss his mother on her forehead. Who would puncture the unbearable heaviness that has settled over the house. “He just woke up,” Anna says. “Before you came. Do you want to say hi?” Through the door of the river room, David can see his grandfather’s bare feet, horned and blue. The cuff of a pair of corduroys. “We should all go,” his mother says. “I don’t want to go,” Lucy says. David does not want to go either, but he wants very badly to be brave. “I’ll go,” he says. His mother nods. “Is there anything we need to know?” she asks. “Christ, Mom,” Lucy says. “He’s not going to bite.” “No,” Anna says. “Just that I’ve been reading to him. He might like that, before he goes back to sleep.” David examines his mother. She looks small and hard, like a water-worn pebble. “Why don’t we go upstairs?” Anna...