*****
The next time we saw Danny, Vicky had just given birth to our little girl. For the second time in my life, Robin Elaine McNeill was brought into the world. Vicky’s parents and a handful of friends were also there. John was at his apartment and in poor health, but he assured me on the phone he wasn’t ready to go yet, and he fully expected to meet his granddaughter in a more timely fashion than when he met Sean. I promised I would make that happen.
“As soon as Vicky feels like making the drive, we’ll come up for a visit.”
“That sounds fine,” he said.
I felt something like homesickness after we hung up. There were a lot of years that needed mending and we were on our way, but I felt like he wasn’t so much making up with me as he was trying not to screw things up with them—Sean and Robin. On some level that was good enough, but on another—on the level where I was still a twelve year old boy who had just lost his sister and needed a kind, guiding hand instead of a harsh, painful one…on that level, I was a little jealous.
I stayed in the room with Vicky and the baby. Sean stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Rutledge that night and Danny slept in a hotel. The neighbors went home. It was peaceful. I remember thinking about the quiet and about how fragile Robin seemed. How tiny. How new. We stayed in the hospital for a few days, not like it is now, where newborns are practically fast food shot through a drive-through window. Danny went home almost immediately, but the grandparents stayed on. “To help,” they said.
“I’ve changed diapers before. We do have another child,” I told mom.
“Well I know that, but that last diaper you put on her looked a little tight. Don’t want to strangle the poor thing.”
I let her have her way about the diaper, the way I dressed Sean for the day, and the temperature of the bottle of breast milk for the midnight feedings. Robin was never happy with the bottle and normally fussed until mommy woke up, but still, I tried. After three days, the grandparents were gone back to the old house on US 49 and things got into a routine that we could all live with.
There was something about holding my little girl that kept my sister on my mind. It could’ve been the name, but I thought it was something deeper than that. Whenever I touched my daughter Robin, I saw my sister Robin. There was a family resemblance except my baby had almost coal-black hair.
Vicky caught me off in space one late evening while I was rocking the baby. “You need to support her head, honey,” she said. I looked down and Robin was asleep, but her neck was wrenched in a direction that surely would’ve left an adult paralyzed. I quickly and gently adjusted her, and she startled and made a sweet noise before once again dozing off.
“Sorry,” I said to Robin and to my wife.
“You tired?” Vicky asked.
“A little. She just makes me think about my sister,” I said.
“Aw.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You miss her. Even now.”
“Of course,” I said. “I still feel like it was my fault.”
“Honey, we talked about this. I know how you feel but it wasn’t your fault she was hit by that car,” she said and I remembered our conversation about everything that had happened in 1981. It gave me comfort knowing she knew, that I could talk to her about it, but there was this other feeling that went along with that comfort, a feeling that stalked after it like a shadow.
You gotta fuckin’ swear. All of you. You gotta swear, not a word. Not even to each other. We never talk about this again.
I thought back to that night after it was all over—or after it had just begun—when Sean swore us all to secrecy. Pinky swears and blood-brother promises were something kids did, but they have a statute of limitations, don’t they?
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said.
I shook my head. I really didn’t. It wasn’t going to help my paranoia because I had told her, and because she was carrying Robin in her womb at the time. Talking about it would not relieve the feeling that some of that curse might have oozed off of me and crawled in through her nose or in her ears as I uttered the words…that somehow it might have gone for my child through the umbilical cord, the most trusting thing on the planet. When she took Robin from me, I shuddered.
Vicky laid the baby in her crib. She checked on Sean who was also sleeping. It wasn’t often both children slept at the same time, but it seemed like a cosmic gift that night. She sat next to me and pulled her legs up, snuggling tight to my side.
“Silly, isn’t it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“You don’t?”
“I mean the idea of a curse is silly, or that somehow you kids were responsible for three tragic deaths, but the coincidence is terrifying, isn’t it? And the fact that you’ve been carrying this around for all these years. That kind of thing can have an effect on you, Todd. It can take on a life of its own.”
“I guess.”
“Do you still have Robin’s drawings?”
I sat forward, preparing to stand.
“Yeah. They’re in our closet. I can go get them,” I said.
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t want to see them tonight. We have a moment alone here, I’d like to spend it with you…not with all that awful history.”
I nodded and settled back into my seat with Vicky under my arm. We didn’t talk for a long time. I rubbed her shoulder and ran my fingers through her hair. When she spoke again, it sounded calm, but calculated.
“Have you seen any other ghosts?”
“Robin and Sean in the window when Matt died…and Robin that day on the street. The day Sean…”
“Yes, but have you seen any others?”
I thought about it. The image of Granny McNeill’s dead face popped into my head, but that wasn’t a ghost. Not really. Were ghosts really just memories that we could see in the real world—other people’s memories that anyone could see if they were really looking?
Where’s my juice, boy?
“No.”
“I’ve never seen a ghost. I wonder why that is?” she asked.
“I don’t know. In my limited experience, I think you may have to go looking for them to see them. At least the first time.”
She nodded and we sat silently for a while. When Vicky began to squirm, I knew more questions were coming.
“Do you believe the curse is real? I mean, do you think Matt died because of what that girl, the ghost…”
“Nataliya.”
“Right. Do you think Matt died because of what she said?”
I pretended to think about it for her benefit. The truth was, I’d thought about it daily since Matt died. I’d worried for my brother and I’d wondered what it eats meant every single day since he gave me the translation. That scared me more than any of the others.
“I don’t know, Vick. Like you said, it’s silly, but it’s hard to ignore the facts.”
“Uh huh. Is there anything you can do? I mean, what can you do?” she said.
I thought about it. I’d never considered there might be something I could do. Could a priest bless this away or wash it away with holy water? Could I say enough Hail Mary’s or rub a wall in Jerusalem to cure this, or was it something else entirely? I thought maybe I could go back to that place and talk to Nataliya again. Maybe I could explain myself. I could take a Russian translator with me for the language barrier. That brought an internal laugh, but I didn’t like the joke.
“I don’t know. Maybe I could pray or apologize or have the house exorcised, but maybe it’s just in my mind,” I said.
But the house is gone, turned into part of a subdivision.
It was possible, I supposed, to think one’s self into fulfilling a vague prophecy. If Robin’s death was just a coincidence, Sean’s was something entirely different. His suffering was real, and it wasn’t a stretch to see his suicide coming if we’d paid attention. But Matt died in a car fire. Orange, it licks. A subliminal suggestion that caused him to wreck his car wa
s possible, but the accident report said it wasn’t his fault, and how would he have ensured the fire? If he had simply been killed in a wreck, that eerie connection wouldn’t have worked. Orange, it licks. Flames lick. They are orange. That one was tough to overlook.
“I just don’t know, Vick.”
“What does it mean, white and light it burns the night? Or it eats? That’s just creepy. It eats,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
She shuddered as we sat together on the couch and we were silent again. Within minutes, she had dozed off. I didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep. My mind was back on thoughts of the dead and each time I closed my eyes and let the darkness slip in I heard the same thing.
Here lies the body of Robin McNeill, she passed away at the age of six. A car took her life on the old mill road and when she was found, she was light as a feather…stiff as a board.
Then I saw Nataliya’s face, grimacing that smile and floating above us while she spat out words in Russian. My body lurched as I woke.
“Wha- you okay?” Vicky asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just trying to fall asleep and I jerked. Sorry.”
“’S okay,” she said.
She adjusted herself on my chest and tried to sleep again, but Robin was crying in the crib and it was feeding time.
Artwork by Trish Malone.