When we get back to Amanda’s parents’ house, the sun is already setting. Amanda opens the backyard gate and leads the way to the guesthouse. She unlocks it, shivering.
“It got cold!” she complains, smacking me. “Whose idea was it to jump in that lake, anyway?” She reaches across the wall to fiddle with the thermostat, and the heat clicks on.
I pull off my shirt and offer it to her.
“Don’t try to get all sexy with me,” she says, trying to cover up her smile by narrowing her eyes.
“I don’t have to try,” I tell her.
“Is that so."
“It’s true and you know it.”
She turns her back to me and starts walking down the hall to the bedroom, pulling off and dropping a garment with every step.
I start to walk faster behind her until I’m chasing her. She looks over her shoulder and shrieks, but she’s in the bedroom now, and I jump on top of her, pulling her down onto the bed.
“We should go eat,” she interrupts, looking over at the little blue clock on the dresser. “It’s almost eight.”
“All right.”
She re-traces her steps back down the hallway, getting dressed again. “Sorry,” she says to me.
I shrug. “We’re here for your family; it’s okay.”
“There’ll be time after dinner.”
“Thank God.”
She laughs. “I wish I’d had time to pack, or something,” she says, looking around her. “I don’t have any sweaters or anything.” She opens a linen closet. “Nothing in here.”
“Maybe you can borrow something from your mom.”
She closes the closet door and turns back to look at me. “Please.”
I hold up my hands. “Only a suggestion.”
In the main house, Amanda’s mom has made a hearty autumn spaghetti, with lots of peppers and cheese.
“This is perfect,” Amanda tells her, bringing some plates to the table, which is warmed by several ceramic serving dishes of spaghetti and vegetables. “It got chilly out there.”
A big wooden bowl of salad sits in the center of the table. The kitchen smells warm. Little touches, like the yellow patterned potholders and the glow of the overhead lamp, seem to keep out the coldness that fell over our breakfast that morning.
Amanda’s father walks in and uncovers the dishes on the table. Steam rises from them, clouding around him in an eerily prophetic way. I wonder suddenly if I’m seeing what’s actually there, or if I’m seeing beyond it....I’ve never wondered that before.
Marian and Amanda bring silverware to the table and we all sit down. The steam is gone, as quickly as it appeared. There are several minutes of silence as everyone eats, taking in the warmth of the meal against the bitter cold outside.
“What did you two get up to today?” Marian asks us.
“We ended up going to the lake,” Amanda says. “John jumped off that tree branch with the rope on it.”
Marian laughs. “Oh, you two are still young,” she says, “and there’s the proof. My goodness, how high is that branch anyhow?”
Amanda shakes her head. “A couple stories.”
“Well, I trust you had fun doing that,” Amanda’s father comments.
“I didn’t swing from the branch,” she tells him, “I just jumped off the bank.”
“That water must have been pretty cold,” Marian says. She looks at Amanda and glances her over. “And you probably didn’t bring a sweater or anything!” she admonishes her daughter. She bounces up from the table and bustles down the hallway. We hear a closet door opening, then Marian returns armed with mounds of pink fluffiness.
Amanda shoots me a pained look and I wink at her before her mother can see.
“Here, dear,” she says, dropping the thick fabric on an empty chair. “Take your pick.”
“Well it’s pretty warm in here,” Amanda tells her, adopting a careful, diplomatic tone. “And it’s a short walk back to the guest house. Maybe tomorrow John and I can walk around downtown and I’ll just pick up a few things.”
“Oh, you don’t want to drag him around to shop for clothes!”
“I don’t mind,” I say, finally taking pity on Amanda and jumping in. “And what did you two do today?”
“Oh, well, we puttered around the house for a bit; Mark went out and trimmed the lawn, and then we both actually took a nap. You know, we have to get up early tomorrow for the hospital.”
“I’m starting to feel better,” Amanda’s father tells her, seeming to sense her concern. “Chemo isn’t exactly a vitamin, but it’s treatment. It’s a step.”
More cold words. But the chill dissipates faster this time.
“How long are these treatments going to go on?” Amanda asks.
Amanda’s father starts to answer, and Marian leans towards me. “Come on, dear,” she says quietly. “Let’s get dessert ready. Amanda hasn’t talked about this with her father yet.”
It’s funny, the way people work sometimes. Here’s this chatty, bubbly, almost scatter-brained woman who I assumed hadn’t even let herself think about her husband’s condition, let alone consider the impact it’s having on her family--here she is having more insight about Amanda than Amanda has about herself.
I follow her into the kitchen, which is really just an alcove several steps away from the table. Beneath the noise of Marian opening the freezer and the clattering of the bowls she tells me to get from the cabinets, I can hear the low rumble of voices at the table: mostly Amanda’s father, explaining the medication, the side effects, and, with every quiet detail, chipping away at Amanda’s composure.
“Pie a’ la mode!” Marian announces, leading me back over to the table armed with pie and a cake server. “Just the night for it, too. Who wants coffee?” She glances around at us a little desperately.
“I’d love some coffee,” I say, taking the pie from her and setting down the bowls.
“Everyone should have some, on a night like this,” Marian decides. She goes back to the alcove. In the silence she leaves behind, I can hear the wind picking up around the house.
“It might rain,” Amanda’s father comments, glancing out the window. “There should be an umbrella in the hall closet, Amanda. Take it with you when you cross back over to the guest house.”
“All right.” She clears her throat and stands up to cut the pie. If I look hard, I can see her hand shaking a little.
“Apple pie,” her father continues in a purposefully calm tone. “Nothing says fall like apple pie on a rainy night.”
Marian returns and sets two cups of coffee down, then whisks back to the kitchen to wait for the coffee maker to catch up.
Amanda, having distracted herself as long as she could with the pie, starts in on the ice cream, slowly scooping it into each bowl. Then she sits down again. She glances at me, and I see something of her mother’s expression on her face.
Talk, she’s telling me. Anything.
“I hear you’ve been in this house a long time,” I say to her father.
“That’s right. Amanda grew up here, but it became pretty lived-in even before she was born. Many many years ago, we lived on the coast.”
“I always wonder what makes people leave the beach for the small town life.”
He laughs. “Money, mostly. A young couple in their first tiny apartment is one thing. A family in a cramped, run down space, which is really what it was, it quite another.”
“That was a quaint little place, Mark,” Marian admonishes him, coming back with the other two coffee cups and setting them down on the table.
“Quaint is a real estate word for closet-sized,” he pronounces, then pointedly takes a bite of his pie. “Come on, you three, the ice cream has a small window of time before it turns from appropriately melted to an unappetizing foamy mess.”
Amanda laughs. “Dad’s always picky with the ice cream,” she tells me.
“When I was little I never ate anything melted,” he says. “Remember, Marian, when Amanda was four, I thought she was going to grow up to be as picky as I was.”
“God forbid,” Marian says, shaking her head.
After the dishes are loaded into the dishwasher, Amanda and I say good night to her parents and make the now well-worn trek back to the guest house. The umbrella is large, the older kind with the hook on the handle. The raindrops pelt against it tirelessly, sounding almost angry. We run across the path, splashing in unavoidable puddles that have filled up around it.
Inside, Amanda falls asleep quickly, apparently unaffected by the caffeine. For some reason, the coffee keeps me more awake than it has in the past. I sit up and look out the window. I remember Amanda mentioning that her parents had more acreage than they could ever use. Our bedroom window faces it: maybe a half square mile of forest. The outer layer is thin, and I can see into the trees easily up to a point. Most of the branches are weak, curved, thin. But beyond them lies a solid blackness, impenetrable. The longer I gaze into it, trying to see something, anything, in that blackness, the more it looks like a passage to another world. The clouded hallway...
I shiver, and Amanda stirs next to me. I don’t want to leave her, but the blackness is looking back at me now, and I don’t have a choice.
I push the covers down off my knees and get up. I fold them back up over Amanda, having the strange feeling that I won’t return.
But that’s crazy.
I pull my jeans back on and add my jacket. The collar turns up at first, like it always does, and I fold it back down. I feel like I’m underwater, and once familiar, incidental things are happening slowly. They’re suddenly magnified, like a dream.
I take Amanda’s keys from the dresser and go down the hallway, half-expecting to see any manner of spirits, ghouls... but there’s nothing except the quiet coziness of the country decor, dimmed in the blues of the night, but ordinary.
Outside is different.
I lock the door behind me and walk around the side of the house to the forest. The wind and rain pick up in both power and volume. I duck my head down against the weather and keep walking.
Around the corner, the blackness is waiting for me. I can hear something beneath the gales and downpour...but what? A soft sound, like a humming.
I follow the sound, into the trees, past the half-formed branches and into the blackness. The humming grows louder, as though whatever is doing it is happy that I came.
I reach the middle of the forest. I don’t know how I’m sure of that, but I am.
A soft glow appears ahead of me, and I approach it. A little girl sits on the ground, which is covered with carpet-like moss. She’s maybe seven, dressed in a blue Sunday picnic kind of outfit. Straw hat, little Mary Janes. Blonde hair.
She’s arranging some pebbles on the ground in front of her, into a circle around a little mushroom springing out of the ground. For a second, it seems she’s unaware of my presence, but then she looks up at me and smiles. It is a smile that has not yet known loss.
“Look!” she says, “a fairy ring!”
Then the image of her shifts and jumps as though someone is moving the projector and she’s just a recording, a small strip of film. She changes slightly, or is another girl entirely? Yes, I know this one, I’ve seen her before.
She, too, sits on the ground. Older than the first girl, but not by much. She looks at the fairy ring, then adds a ring of larger stones around it. Several scenes flash before me, and she’s older each time, until she disappears abruptly.\
Patricia’s sister.
There is a cracking sound, and the tree next to me splits down the middle. The air crackles with electricity, lighting up the entire clearing in a brief flash.
I can see them all around me suddenly, these shadows of people who haven’t been here in so long.
The ghosts have finally come.