Ghosts of the Missing Page 9

  “My brother didn’t go,” she said.

  “But—”

  “He has poor eyesight. But he sees things very clearly. He says I’m impulsive, but since I act like I’m sure about things, it makes people assume I’m right.”

  “Okay,” Darragh said.

  “I’ve caught you trespassing and I’ve invited you into my house. Now I’m thinking about offering you a job.”

  “You can check my pockets. I didn’t steal anything.”

  “I don’t need to check,” Jorie said. “You found my card in the book?”

  Darragh nodded.

  “I’ve been to town a few times since then. Not one person has hinted that they know my second name. You didn’t tell anyone. Don’t tell me you have no one to tell. If you’d wanted to, you’d have picked somebody.”

  “I never thought of it.” Darragh shrugged.

  “Would you accept a job?”

  “Yeah,” Darragh said.

  “Without knowing what it is?”

  “Shoveling your driveway? Chopping firewood?” he asked.

  “Yes, and also yard work. I plan to restore the gardens,” she said. “Now, you’ll never ask outright, but you’d like to know exactly who I am.”

  Darragh nearly said it was up to her what she wanted him to know, but instead he nodded.

  “Cassius Moye was my grandfather’s first cousin,” she began.

  She first saw the house when she was eleven years old, when she and her family were on their way home from a weekend trip to Degare Mountain, where they’d stayed in one of the resort cottages nearby. On an impulse, her mother asked the driver to take them by Moye House.

  From the car, they stared at the estate that should have gone to Jorie’s grandfather Augustus, but instead Cassius left it to the friends who’d published his book.

  In the library, Jorie found a copy of The Lost Girl and Other Stories. Within a week, she’d read it twice. She studied Cassius’s picture. Villains were supposed to be ugly, but she was fascinated to see that Cassius was quite handsome and that there were traces of her own features in the shape of his dark eyes and his chin. Later, Jorie read his letters and his journal.

  Cassius wrote of how he’d wanted nothing but to get away from home when he was a child but now couldn’t fathom living in any city. He was glad to offer other writers the chance to experience the kind of peace he’d been born into.

  When Jorie bought Moye House with her inheritance from her father, her mother was pleased. But then she found out that Jorie intended to establish Moye House as a writers’ retreat, to revitalize and formalize what Cassius had begun. To create it, she’d have to pull in sizable donations, and she had to do it while her looks still held. Because once she’d drifted into middle age, every action would be seen as a grab for a husband.

  She could wait until she was elderly. Spinsterhood, a tragedy for a woman past thirty, became a choice again after sixty. An old, rich woman would be considered eccentric, and indulged accordingly. She had seen it again and again in her parents’ circle.

  But Jorie did not want to wait. If the man existed who was selfless enough to follow her to Culleton, then it was her bad luck and his that they had never met. She would settle there alone.

  Darragh listened to her story without comment, and his silence continued after she’d finished. Jorie sat, her hands folded lightly. He didn’t understand why she’d want to lock herself into Culleton when surely she had her pick of a hundred cities to live in, and it made him wonder if there was something about his hometown that he was blind to. He’d always planned to leave. The Marines would have been his way out, but seeing what war had done to his brother, he’d let that idea go and nothing else had risen to take its place. Except Jorie. Maybe she, and Moye House, were it. Maybe he was meant to help her build something right in Culleton.

  In September of 1953, Jorie welcomed the first group of residents to the Moye House Writers’ Colony. The program was administered by a board of directors, who read the required applications and then invited the writers who were selected to come for a six-week stay. Each got his or her own room. Quiet hours were from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Only the evening meal was communal.

  She returned to A History of Culleton, New York, checking the book out with her new library card. Whereas before, she had only skimmed it, now she read the whole thing. The story of a ghost-sighting in the woods intrigued her.

  One morning in early October, Darragh found her waiting to talk to him about it.

  He had entered Moye House through the kitchen door, the old servants’ entrance, shortly after nine o’clock. Darragh had learned to arrive when the residents were most likely to be at their desks. Later in the morning, he had a good chance of running into two or three seeking out more coffee, or taking a head-clearing walk on the grounds. The writers did a lot of head-clearing. Jorie said they were supposed to. For many, it was the reason they’d come here.

  He found Jorie in her study, seated at her desk.

  “We’re going to have a reading and talk about ‘The Lost Girl’ on the twenty-seventh,” she said before he could even greet her. “Like in the old days. I didn’t realize there used to be a town holiday built around it.” Her tone was slightly accusatory.

  “A town holiday?” He sat down on the couch.

  “Quicken Day. I think it should be brought back again.”

  “Oh, that. What for?” he asked, amused by her interest.

  “Tradition!”

  Darragh thought she might be happy if they got rid of electric lights and cars and could all live the way long-dead Moyes had.

  “I read about the girls and the ghost in the woods. Can you tell me what really went on? Or what people say at least? What did they see?”

  “They didn’t see anything,” Darragh said. “They heard footsteps, I think.”

  Jorie pursed her lips. “Who told you about it?”

  “My grandmother. My mother,” Darragh said. “It’s just a story that gets told around here, like Santa Claus.”

  “The two girls were never named, even in the old newspaper articles—”

  Darragh laughed. “They’re no girls now. I was in school with one of their daughters. Kids gave her a hard time. Called her mother crazy. Called her crazy. They say—” He stopped.

  “What do they say, Darragh?”

  Darragh frowned. “That the family’s cursed. Girls live but the sons die. As kids, I mean. Not off fighting wars.”

  “Children did die a lot more frequently, once upon a time,” Jorie said.

  “But it was never girls.” Darragh rubbed the back of his neck, trying to remember. “They say that’s why Bevin only had one, Cecilia. To stop the curse. Cecilia’s dad moved out when she was something like ten or eleven.”

  “Can you talk to this Cecilia? Ask her if she thinks her family is cursed.”

  “What does Cecilia Burke have to do with Quicken Day?” he asked.

  Jorie tapped her fingers. “I want to write about it, for the paper. People have to be reminded of what Quicken Day was. A little town pride, some mystery. You’ll go and see Miss Burke? She might close the door in my face, but my guess is she won’t do that to you.”

  The success of the first celebration ensured there would be a second, and the second established Quicken Day firmly on the town’s calendar.

  Jorie’s article did indeed revive interest. Her mention of the ghost-sighting in the woods included a quote from the daughter of Bevin Burke. Her mother, Cecilia stated, still did not waver in her account of that night. It was neither prank nor hysteria. She’d told the truth in 1911.

  There was a parade in Culleton, though instead of teenage girls it was the younger children who wore homemade costumes and marched through town. Afterward, families drove out to Moye House for a party in the garden, with pumpkin carving and bobbing for apples and a ribbon for best costume. In bad weather, the party moved to the basement of St. Maren’s Church. The bars in town were filled by afternoon and re
mained so late into the night.

  On the morning after the second Quicken Day, Darragh went to see Jorie, though he was not scheduled to work that day. He paused in the parlor where they’d first spoken, and where writers now gathered for drinks after supper. Jorie joined them, not every night but often enough to elicit suspense.

  The room’s wooden floors had been sanded and were now polished regularly. The mismatched chairs were gone. The mantel held two small vases of flowers cut from the garden. Because it was October, there were marigolds and chrysanthemums.

  Darragh left the parlor and, after hesitating slightly, went up the main stairs. On the second floor, typewriters clacked behind closed doors.

  He assumed Jorie was in her study, which he privately called the bluebell room, for the bluebells painted on the wall between the windows. Jorie’s door was open, but he knocked anyway. She was at her desk, reading a book, which she closed without marking her place when she saw him.

  “You’re leaving Culleton?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “You buttoned your shirt cuffs. You’ve also ironed your shirt, or someone did it for you. I suppose this was bound to happen.”

  “I am twenty-five.” Darragh sat by the window, on the small couch Jorie had bought on one of their Sunday outings to antique shops and estate sales up and down the river. A fainting couch, it was called. Jorie had said she doubted women were actually passing out from tight corsets. They were pretending, if only for a few minutes of peace.

  “Twenty-five,” Jorie answered. “I always thought aging wouldn’t bother me, but now I see that I didn’t think it would happen. You’re leaving with Cecilia?”

  Darragh had always been shy about Cecilia around Jorie, as if he were betraying her somehow. They’d met only a few times. Jorie made Cecilia as nervous as a school principal.

  He nodded.

  “I suppose you’re getting married? I’m not an expert on marriage, but, I don’t know, wait a little longer. Sow some wild oats, Darragh.”

  “We want to get out of here. Start over. Ceel won’t leave without us being married. Said she won’t do that to her parents.”

  “And how do they feel about this?”

  “Her father’d feel better if I had a job lined up, but I’m not too worried,” Darragh said. “Cecilia’s mother’s the one. She doesn’t want Ceel to marry anyone. Thinks she shouldn’t have children. The family line ends with her.”

  “Oh, the supposed curse.” Jorie sighed. “Cecilia doesn’t believe it?”

  “Hell, no. She wants ten kids. She hated being an only child.” Darragh grinned. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Ten children is about eight too many, but that’s just my opinion.”

  “Maybe six too many. I like kids,” Darragh said. Then he hesitated.

  Jorie could usually guess when he had something to say and simply waited for him to get it out. If he didn’t open his mouth for half an hour, they’d still be sitting in the same places at the end of it.

  “Her mother, though,” he finally said. “It makes me wonder. If Bevin did really hear something in those woods, maybe she does know things we don’t. “Also—” He put his head in his hands for a second. “Maybe I’m the one who’s crazy.”

  “Why?” Jorie didn’t sound worried, only curious.

  “I dreamed I was with my grandmother and we were walking down the road to the house where I grew up. Back then, there was space between the neighbors. There wasn’t even a sidewalk. My grandmother wasn’t just telling me not to get married. She was telling me not to marry Cecilia. Because of her family. I can’t remember the exact words she said, but you know how, in a dream, you know things?”

  Jorie crossed the room. She squeezed his shoulder. When he reached for her hand, she neatly stepped away.

  “Darragh McCrohan, you’re too smart to believe in curses,” Jorie said.

  “I guess it’s normal to have doubts—”

  “You’re not having doubts,” Jorie said. “Your instincts are telling you it’s a mistake. Don’t do it. Go, if you have to, but go by yourself. See some of the world.”

  Darragh looked up. He had trouble holding Cecilia’s face in his mind when he was with Jorie. Ceel faded, the way the picture did at the end of a movie. He suspected she knew it, and this was one of the reasons she wanted to leave Culleton.

  “I can’t do that to her,” he finally said.

  Jorie returned to her desk. “Well. You know you can come back anytime you like. As long as the residency is up and running, you’ll have a job here.”

  “We’ll visit,” Darragh said.

  “Come on Quicken Days,” Jorie said.

  Darragh promised he would, and then he left, this time by the back staircase.

  By the late 1950s, the holiday had become a blend of St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween, drawing crowds from neighboring towns. Vendors who sold Irish products, like clothes, jewelry and books, set up tables in the yard of St. Maren’s Elementary School, or in the gym, depending on the weather. A postparade gathering was still held on the grounds of Moye House.

  The date for Quicken Day was moved to the Saturday before Halloween. Purists had long argued that this defeated the purpose of celebrating the story, with its specific opening date of October 27, but the practical argument won. A weekend would draw far more people from outside Culleton.

  For decades, Quicken Day remained a point of town pride, a draw for foliage tourists and families from nearby towns looking for a weekend activity. It became the official start of the holiday season, which then began in earnest the Friday after Thanksgiving, when the town Christmas tree was lit. The ghost story was told and retold, and it lent a sense of mystery to the occasion—and also the notion that something eerie might yet happen.

  9

  Adair

  2010

  Several days after I told Emily my status, I went to the ER at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope. They admitted me, and I was in the hospital for three days with pneumonia (regular pneumonia, not pneumocystis), which Michan spent by my bedside.

  At one point, I woke up to see him reading. He looked up from his book.

  “You don’t have to manufacture a crisis to come home,” he said.

  “I didn’t manufacture anything,” I said, pushing a hand through my unwashed hair, which felt like it was full of sand. “I just took a treatment holiday.”

  Treatment holiday: a break from the medication regimen. A benign term for something proven unsafe, like “cigarette break” (lung cancer) or “sunbathing” (melanoma).

  I should not have used that term. It betrayed my comfort at being in the hospital, where I could freely speak medical jargon, my first language. The doctors and nurses were not afraid of me. I was their business.

  Michan slammed his book shut. “You can’t. You cannot. You know that. Enough with the bullshit.”

  All told, I’d been a bad long-term survivor for almost a year, since I moved into Sarah’s, first adhering poorly to the drug protocol and then stopping altogether. This wasn’t like drinking Coke instead of orange juice with breakfast. It’s hard to explain how you can simply avoid doing the thing that will keep you healthy. My hand reaching for the drawer where I kept the meds, and then drifting away like a meandering bird.

  The day before I checked out, the doctor gave me the long version of Michan’s admonishment: “HIV is highly mutable. You have to take your meds every day, within a two-hour window, or you could find yourself with drug-resistant HIV. And that could be a huge problem. I know I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already heard. You are old enough to remember the way it was.”

  Before 1996, she meant. HAART—highly active antiretroviral therapy, the cocktail of drugs that kept the virus from replicating. When I adhered, HIV was nearly undetectable in my blood. This meant I was barely contagious, or possibly not at all. My next few counts would be critical.

  Michan drove me to Moye House
on Saturday afternoon, and I slept most of the way, waking only when the car slowed to turn into the parking lot. I got out of the car and the scent of damp grass hit me, a verdancy I was no longer used to, since I only ever came back at Christmas, when Culleton was either gray with cold or dressed in snow.

  I leaned against the car for a moment as Michan slammed his door.

  “Can you make the walk?” he asked.

  “If I can’t, what will you do, carry me?”

  “I would run up to the house for a pillow and blanket and make sure you’re comfortable sleeping in the car.”

  I laughed.

  “Or I would drive you to the front door, which I should have thought to do.” Michan held up the car keys, but I shook my head. I’d walk.

  That night, I went to bed at 9 p.m. and didn’t wake up until Sunday morning. My alarm woke me at 8 a.m. to take my pill, which I did, chastened, hoping shame as a motivator would last until something else emerged. Then I went back to sleep for another two hours. When I woke, the room was so bright that the light hurt my eyes because I had not drawn the curtains.

  Moye House was quiet. There were no residents from mid-August to the last week in September. The fall residency was now timed to avoid the first two weeks of school. For parents, taking four or six weeks to focus on their writing was difficult enough. A late-September start date helped ease the guilt.

  My room looked like a resident’s room, cleared out after a stay. I had not left much behind when I went off to college. But even when I was a kid, it had the look of a guest room, with its heavy mahogany furniture and queen-size bed that was so high, Michan had to buy a portable step so I could climb into it. Neither Jorie nor Michan ever mentioned redecorating it for a child, and I never thought to ask.

  I got out of bed and went to sit at the vanity. Jorie had kept it in her bedroom, and when she died, it came to me. It was a beautiful piece made of cherrywood that was likely worth a good bit of money. The oval mirror rested on hinged supports carved to look like vines. The mirror was tipped toward the ceiling. I’d never liked to catch accidental glances of myself, so there was that, but a writer, a resident from long ago, once told me quite seriously that mirrors were magnets for ghosts. Even as a grown-up in daylight, I was uneasy.