Getting Thin: A Ghost Story

Chapter Two

Chapter 2

The sun is really up now. It's rosy and pink and it falls through the leaves on the trees in bright, perfect shafts, as if I have found myself in a painting where the world is symmetrical and no-one ever dies on a bright, beautiful summer day. The rope creaks over my head, a reminder that this is no dream at all, and there is no perfection here, only pain and ruin. The ATV that weights the other end of that creaking rope sits like a large, obedient dog. Nearby I hear the water of Grendel's narrow, shallow river licking at its muddy banks. I glance up and my fingers instantly seize into fists, reminding me of what I'm holding. I look down at it, feeling a little dazed and surprised. I turn the wooden handle of the splintered bat over and over wondering at its existence. It seems impossible that it began the morning whole and undamaged. I don't think I'm in shock, just unsure of which way to turn now that it is finally finished.

An image of Uncle Sonny blooms in my mind, in full color and as sharp and rich as though I'd only seen him yesterday. He always had his hair cropped neatly, close to his scalp, and it was always the same silvery, brownish gray as mine. I remember how he used to hold me during Christmas or Thanksgiving, his hair gleaming in the light of Mom's special candles, the ones Grandpa brought her from Italy. Grandpop Joe only went on vacation that one time, on the insistence of Grandma Betty. As the story goes, he came back with four boxes of these handmade, hand-painted taper candles for my Mother and a promise that he'd never leave home again. Mom only ever lit the candles at Christmas, letting them burn down until they guttered out in their own wax. Grandpop Joe had told her not to save them in some box in the attic until the world ended. So Mom started a tradition. On January first, she put the candles into her solid silver candlestick holders, the ones Grandma Betty gave her on her wedding day, the ones that Mom's grandma had passed down to Grandma Betty after immigrating with them from Scotland - the only wealth there ever was in the history of my family. All year long they stayed on our antique buffet, beautiful and rare, vibrant with their blues and reds and gilded in gleaming gold, all the brighter against the deep, rich, dark mahogany of the buffet. Then, on Christmas, just before the food was served, she would light them and let them burn to nothing. Uncle Sonny would sit there at the table, talking and picking at pies, cakes, and leftover turkey, holding me with his free arm, calling me his darling Evie. I don't remember a time when this wasn't the routine of my childhood; by the time I was too old and too big to sit on anyone's lap, Uncle Sonny was gone and Mom had put the remaining candles in a cedar chest in the attic. I wonder what he'd say if he could see me now. Probably not much.

I try to picture Roxy again so I don't have to think about him. Roxy is better, more pure, and less ruined than either me or my uncle, even now. It isn't hard to turn my mind to her; she is always with me, even if she is just some shade I've created in my head. Sometimes I think I can still hear her voice, that it is no memory at all, but the real thing. If I close my eyes, I can still hear her calling my name, a soft, whispering cadence drifting through a window left partly open overnight, half in hope that she would see it and not think I'd avoided her on purpose.

"Eva. Hey, Eva! You sleeping over there?"

I rolled over, blinking in the shadowy half-light of six A.M. I wasn't sure if I'd been woken by something real or just a dream. "Whozat?" I mumbled into my pillow, shivering and yanking my blankets higher around my neck; it really was still too cold to sleep with the window open.

"Eva, c'mon, wake up."

Her second call made me sit up, suddenly intensely aware that I wasn't dreaming. I scrambled to the window, trying to keep the covers around my shoulders as I did so. I didn't know anything about having friends, but Roxy made me want to figure it out for the first time in my life. Overnight I'd gone from terrified of her company to wanting nothing else. She was standing in her own window, hair slicked back in a long tail that swung over her slim shoulders in a perfectly straight curtain, the white streaks gleaming in abrupt contrast. I blinked at her, trying to get something sensible through the sleep heavy fog over my brain. "What's going on?" I asked and rubbed at my eyes. "Do you know what time it is?"