It was his birthday, and he had no idea how to fill it.
He felt the pull of the house in Cabbagetown, but he didn’t dare go back. He could go to the park though, he decided, the park he’d played in as a child, and sit on a bench for a while. It was a lovely autumn day—he might as well make the most of it.
He parked in front of the Toronto Necropolis. He got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, studying with interest the Gothic architecture of the chapel, and then cast his eye over the cemetery that stretched beyond it. Both had loomed prominently in his imagination as a child. Now, Harold could see that the cemetery, though large, was not limitless. As a child, it had seemed to him that the city of the dead had stretched on forever, far more vast than the familiar neighbourhood streets that housed the living.
This cemetery, with its softly rolling lawns and trees and gravestones and statuary—which Harold now remembered as it had mostly figured in his childhood imagination, in the dark, shrouded in fingers of mist—had been a focal point for the local kids, a place to play hide-and-seek after dark, to take dares, to tell ghost stories; a popular make-out spot for teenagers. But for Harold, who’d already had some of the people interred there inside his home, it was a terrifying place, and he’d been unable to set foot inside it.
He turned away and walked slowly to the park across the street. He chose a green, slatted bench beneath a tall oak tree and sat down, letting his mind and body go slack. He was sitting there, his hands resting on his thighs, his mind a perfect blank, when from somewhere beside him, his mother said, “Harold, dear. I want to talk to you.”
Harold jerked stiffly on his bench, but he didn’t get up and run.
“Okay,” Harold agreed, reluctantly. His eyes swept the vicinity nervously for passersby; he didn’t want anyone to see him talking to somebody who wasn’t there—what if they called the police? Harold still didn’t want to hear what his mother had to say; he only wanted to get her to get rid of all the spirits. He just wanted to be left alone.
“I’ve been watching you, Harold, and I’m concerned.”
“Watching me!” His whispered hiss sounded surly. He didn’t like the idea of being spied on, especially by his mother, or anybody dead for that matter.
“Keeping an eye on your progress.”
“My progress? Mom! Can’t you just get them all to leave?” His voice sounded desperate. “You know I don’t like having them around. You’ve always known! Can’t you please get rid of them?”
“Not really.”
“Why not? You’re there. It’s not like I’ve ever asked for much!”
“Because that’s not what’s important. Just forget about them, they’re mostly harmless. That’s not what you should be focusing on. Harold, you might think you can get through this life by hiding, or running away, but you have—”
Harold got up and ran clumsily to his car.
• • •
AUDREY, ICING THE birthday cake in the kitchen, could hear Harold rattling around in the basement. It wasn’t as good as having him at work, but it was better than watching him sit catatonically in his La-Z-Boy, and hearing him down there, puttering around like he used to, made her feel cautiously optimistic. Maybe he would be merely eccentric—she could handle that. That might even be interesting, she thought, looking on the bright side.
She added little flourishes to the cake and wondered what he was up to. She hoped he wasn’t—she threw down her knife and stuck her head down the door to the basement.
“Harold?” she called. He didn’t seem to have heard her.
She trotted down the stairs and peeked into the furnace room. The single bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling revealed all.
Still, she said, “What are you doing!”
Harold, startled at her obvious disapproval, was speechless.
“I left that there for the boys to clean up,” she said crossly.
Harold, looking for something to do, had ventured to the basement and discovered the remains of the bench the boys had attempted, lying just as they’d left it. He’d slowly removed all the nails, sawed off the damaged end, smoothed it with a bit of sanding, and been left with a perfectly good board. He’d put away all the tools, swept up the sawdust, and was hauling out his old milk crates full of record albums from the corner when Audrey had shown up.
“I’m trying to get them to clean up after themselves,” she said, exasperated. “It was one of their chores.”
“Oh,” Harold said, contrite.
Audrey sighed. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“I thought if I just rested this board on a couple of overturned milk crates, I’d have a bench,” Harold told her. “For the backyard.” Harold couldn’t bear to waste anything.
Audrey stood there blinking at him. What could she say? She wanted to say that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard or that’s going to look terrible. But she didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, even for something as ridiculous as this. So she nodded slowly and said, “Oh.” She went back upstairs, dispirited, thinking maybe she could put some big planters in front of the milk crates, or plant vines against them—something pretty, like clematis.
Later, Harold put on a jacket, hauled everything outside, found the perfect spot, and sat on his new makeshift bench in the backyard for a long time. Audrey, preparing his birthday dinner, looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw him there, staring at his shoes.
She kept an anxious eye on him, just in case he keeled over.
• • •
AFTER HIS FATHER had dropped him off, John had gone in the front entrance to the secondary school, down the long corridor, and out the back exit without being stopped by anybody. He’d barely cleared the building when he had his cell phone out and was calling Nicole. He started for the subway station.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi. Where are you?”
“I’m just going to the subway. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Good. I’ll meet you outside the station. And John—I’m bringing someone.”
John stopped walking abruptly. “Who?” The only reason they got together was to fool around.
“You’ll see.”
John flashed his Metropass and skipped down the wide, shallow steps of the subway station to the westbound platform. The subway was relatively empty just before the lunch hour. He transferred at Yonge and headed north, thinking about his dad. He’d seemed fine this morning. John hadn’t seen any sign of his dad being a nut case and he would have noticed—he’d been watching for it. He’d never seen his dad talk to himself or get confused, although he had seemed kind of out of it when he got back from the police station. Dylan had told him what their mom had said about the flailing arms. John was inclined to think his mom was making a mountain out of a molehill, which she’d been known to do.
He leaned back in his seat, stretched his long legs out across the aisle, and wondered what Nicole was up to. He started to fantasize about the afternoon. Nicole was bringing a friend—the possibilities were endless.
“Hey,” Nicole said, meeting him outside the subway station. She stood on her tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck, and gave him a big, wet kiss. He kissed her back enthusiastically. He could have kissed her forever, but she pulled away and looked over her shoulder at someone in the background.
John hadn’t anticipated that Nicole would bring a male friend. Nicole pulled his hand, tried to drag him toward the preppy-looking boy standing off by himself.
“What’s this all about, Nicole?” John said, balking.
“He’s a friend. I thought maybe you could help him out.”
John was annoyed. “Help him out how?”
“Just talk to him,” she said, cajoling. “Then I’ll get rid of him.”
The three of them walked silently to the ravine. John was wondering what the hell this was all about and trying to pick up any sexual vibe between the new guy and Nicole. He drew a blank on both.
They came t
o a secluded spot and Nicole got to the point. “Derek needs some money,” she said.
Why would Nicole think he would give Derek money? Nicole was the one with all the money anyway. “So?” John said, churlishly. “That’s not my problem.”
“Don’t be like that,” Nicole said. She looked from one to the other. “I told him you might have some ideas.”
“About what?” He felt stupid, so he tried to cover it up with a cool shrug of his shoulders and a fairly hostile look at Derek.
“Just a minute,” Nicole said to the other boy, and pulled John aside. She pushed her body up against his and started kissing him. She put his hands inside her sweater and onto her naked breasts—she was braless. He was putty in her hands.
“Just talk to him,” she whispered, as he touched her nipples. “About that credit card thing.”
He finally got it.
“And then you’ll get rid of him?”
“I promise,” she said, slipping her fingers inside his pants for good measure.
• • •
HAROLD LIKED HIS bench. He could sit there all day. He did sit there most of the afternoon. At first he was worried that his mother would find him, but gradually he relaxed. Fortunately it was a perfect fall day—crisp and sunny. A little chilly if you sat still for too long, but he had his jacket on. It would probably be better if there was something to lean against though, Harold realized. As it was, he sat there round-shouldered; it was a bit tiring. But this bench held meaning for him— it was something his sons had tried to do for him. He felt a little emotional about it—the effort they’d made, the thought they’d put into it.
He liked their backyard. It was all fenced in, and there were trees—a big maple, a spruce, an ornamental cherry—that made it feel like a private enclosure. Why didn’t he spend time back here anymore? Well, he decided, now that he had his spiffy new bench, he would.
Every once in a while a fat, fluffed-up squirrel would bounce across the uncut grass near Harold’s feet, as if Harold were invisible, or scurry along the top of the fence and leap wildly into a tree. Harold found himself envying the squirrel, which seemed both purposeful and carefree. The squirrel looked happy. The squirrel was living in the moment, something Harold had never been very good at. The squirrel didn’t sit around listlessly wondering what the point of it all was. More importantly, the squirrel wasn’t troubled by the thought of his soul living forever, didn’t ask itself whether that was a good thing or a terrifying thing.
In his weakness, his human cowardice, Harold slumped on his bench and wished that he was a squirrel. Harold was no Hamlet, but he did ask himself: If he couldn’t end it all, if to be human was to go on and on forever, what hope was there?
He suddenly understood why he panicked when he saw Tom in his coffin—and why he was so angry at his mother. It wasn’t death he feared, but eternal life! Thanks to his mother, he knew it wouldn’t be over when it was over—it was never over. There was no escape from the meaningless he felt.
Harold saw Audrey’s worried face peeking through the kitchen window, checking on him again, and wondered bleakly whether humans were tied to other particular souls forever too, and if so, whether that was a good thing, or a terrifying thing.
• • •
JOHN TOLD DEREK everything he knew about identity theft, which wasn’t much, but it was enough to get the other boy at least started in a life of crime. Because Nicole was standing right beside him, John couldn’t say that he hardly knew anything about it, that this was just what had happened to his dad. No. He had to pretend that he regularly rifled through people’s blue boxes looking for credit card applications, that he kept a post office box, and that he had a cool source of illicit income.
But John was in love, and his love wasn’t rational. It was pleasure-seeking and needy and altogether absorbing. Nicole was the best thing that had ever happened to him! So when Nicole pressured him to help Derek, he felt he had no choice.
John didn’t ask why Derek needed the money—he didn’t want to know.
Of course he resented Nicole for bringing this on him, but he forgave her easily. A young man in love could forgive almost anything.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harold was wearing his smart new striped bathrobe—alternating light and dark blues, with a smaller band of red in between—and sitting in his La-Z-Boy chair, his head back and his feet up. Earlier, they’d gorged on Audrey’s homemade lasagna and Harold’s birthday cake, and when Harold had opened his present from Audrey, she’d thought he’d seemed pleased with it.
It was getting late, but Harold didn’t seem in any hurry to go upstairs, and Audrey stayed up with him, reading a magazine. The boys had gone out.
Audrey looked up from her magazine at Harold. The bathrobe looked good on him. She’d chosen carefully—the bright stripes put some colour in his cheeks and made him appear more energetic than his old bathrobe had. She’d already stuffed the old, ratty one in the garbage and thrown the birthday wrapping paper in the recycle bin.
Audrey liked this time of night, when everything was tidied up and prepared for the next day. Her work was done. It was peaceful with the boys out of the house and Harold in his chair.
It was perfectly quiet—sepulchral—when the Royal Doulton figurine on the coffee table—the little shepherd girl—sailed through the air and hit the brick fireplace, shattering into a hundred pieces.
Harold launched out of his La-Z-Boy.
Audrey screamed and pivoted, wide-eyed, to the fireplace.
An eerie, absolute silence returned. “What was that?” Audrey said.
Take a wild guess, Harold wanted to say. But he said, “Now do you believe me?” Even though he was rattled, he wasn’t as rattled as she was; he’d seen this sort of thing before. And he couldn’t deny there was a certain peevish satisfaction in being shown to be right. He enjoyed the horrified look on Audrey’s face more than he’d enjoyed anything for a long time.
Next, the glass candy dish on the mantelpiece flung itself off the edge like a hell-bent lemming off a cliff, smashing itself to smithereens against the tiles in front of the fireplace. The hard, stale candies rolled around on the tiles with a little clicking sound.
“Who’s there?” Harold shouted. He didn’t expect an answer, but felt like he should say something.
There was a scraping sound from the shelves behind them, china against wood. Alarmed, Audrey turned toward the sound.
“Not the Lladró!” Audrey shouted, standing up.
The scraping sound stopped, all was still. It was a standoff. “Take the other one,” Audrey said, meaning the cheap, garage-sale china boy with dog.
Nothing happened for at least ten seconds, but it seemed like much longer. Then the cheap china boy with dog hurtled against the fireplace and exploded, and a few seconds later they heard the door to the basement slam shut.
Audrey collapsed back onto the couch. She started to shake. She felt the same way she’d felt the time she almost hit a pedestrian who’d jumped out on to the road—she recognized the feeling of reaction that set in afterwards.
Harold stood over her. He saw that she was shaking. He was worried that she was going into shock. Charitably, he took off his new bathrobe and arranged it over her shoulders, standing beside her in his boxer shorts.
Audrey looked up and said, “Better close the curtains.”
Harold closed the curtains and then they both wondered what to do next. Neither one of them wanted to believe what had just happened.
“We have to sweep up that broken glass,” Audrey said eventually. But she didn’t want to go into the kitchen to get the broom and dustpan because that was where the door to the basement was. Harold nodded but he didn’t want to go into the kitchen either.
It crossed Audrey’s mind that she might have a hard time getting the laundry done.
“So—was that your mother?” she finally asked.
“I don’t think so,” Harold said. “She doesn’t throw things.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well—are these things dangerous?”
“I don’t know.”
Audrey turned on him, “You’re supposed to be the bloody expert on this aren’t you?”
Harold looked blankly at her. He didn’t know what to say. The pleasant I told you so feeling had fled and now he was just panicky. He said, “I’ve never known them to be dangerous, exactly.” He didn’t tell her that his mother had seemed to know how to handle them, up to a point, anyway, whereas he didn’t have a clue.
“We have to get this cleaned up before the boys get home,” Audrey said, not moving.
Finally, she took his hand and together they went into the kitchen, got the broom and dustpan out of the broom closet, and cleaned up the mess in the living room.
“We’re going to have to get on top of this,” Audrey said, affecting a confidence she didn’t feel.
Harold nodded and looked at her, impressed. At least now he didn’t feel so alone.
They lay wide awake together most of the night, clasped in each other’s arms.
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING Audrey was so exhausted the boys took one look at her and went straight to the toaster and made their own breakfasts. Harold went off to work, grateful for the distraction. Audrey had another cup of coffee and thought about the pile of laundry waiting for her in the basement. Wondered what else was waiting for her down there. She’d never have a better excuse for not doing the laundry.
Eventually she persuaded herself that it made no sense to avoid the basement. These things could be anywhere—they could float through walls, so she was no better off sitting here at the kitchen table than she was downstairs in the laundry room.
She counted her blessings. At least Harold wasn’t crazy—she no longer anticipated terribly sad years of deterioration from Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Not that this wasn’t a problem.
She’d put in the wash, she decided, and then do some research. She’d Google poltergeists. Somebody, somewhere, must have some ideas on how to get rid of them. Maybe she could get a Ouija board and talk to them herself.