Homing (11 page)

“Fucks shit up?” Leah repeated. “You've gotta be kidding.”

“No,” Charlotte said, her face a model of sincerity. “Really. Like, do you think he uses his ghostly status to check out naked chicks or steal money or eat cake?”

Leah rubbed her hand across her face, hard. “No, I don't think he checks out naked chicks or steals money or eats cake. Charlotte, he's a frigging ghost, first of all. No corporeal body, you dig? What would he do with money, or cake, for that matter? Or naked chicks? And second of all, you never met Nathan, but he was ridiculously law abiding. Steal cake, for godsake.”

“I would steal cake,” Charlotte said.

“Yes,” Leah said. “Yes, Charlotte, I imagine you would steal cake. Nathan, however —”

Charlotte looked right into Leah's eyes, raised her eyebrows. Leah sighed.

“Okay, yes, he does fuck some shit up. He moves my keys. He took my iron and kept it till I ran out of clothes I could wear without ironing, waited till I bought a new one, then gave the old one back. He occasionally takes photos of nothing with my camera. Like photos of light, or of the cat a split second after he's left the room, or of, I don't know, dust motes, or who knows, other ghosts. One day he moved around all my plants, I don't know why. No reason, I'm sure.”

Charlotte chewed her straw. “Does it bother you,” she asked.

“A little,” Leah said. “A little bit I wish he'd leave me alone, a little bit I feel honoured that he chose me to harass.” She smiled a half smile, looked over her shoulder. “But mostly I just worry about him. Mostly, I just wish he'd figure himself out and move on, you know?”

“So,” Charlotte said. “What're you gonna do?”

“Well,” Leah said, straightening up in her chair, “I'm going to try telling Nathan his story.”

“How much do you figure he needs to know?” Charlotte asked.

“Dunno,” Leah said. “Right now, I'm thinking he needs to hear the whole thing, from the time he kind of stopped living in the world, to
the time he stopped, well, living.”

“Whoa,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah,” Leah agreed. They sat in silence and worked on their drinks.

“So how do you do that?”

“Not sure,” Leah said. “I guess I just kind of have to start. He's not crazy about direct contact, you know? He's kind of sketchy, never looks right at me, that kind of thing, so I think I have to just, I don't know, kind of talk out loud to him around the house. I mean, I already talk to Neil all the time, so hey, why not talk to the ghost of my brother, as well, you know?”

“No,” Charlotte said, “I don't. But it sounds like as good a plan as any. Want another drink?”

“Yeah, oh yeah,” Leah said. She looked over her shoulder and signalled to Nelson. And noticed that Nathan was gone.

But that wasn't the night he went for good. He took off now and again, and Leah wasn't sure why, or where he went. It was possible, she imagined, that she just lost her ability to see him once in awhile, but she had never been able to work out a pattern, why he was visible to her one minute and not the next. It had never worried her much when he'd disappeared in the past, but the night he took off for good was different. She'd known it that night, known he hadn't just gone for a stroll.

She sighed as she sat there in front of the computer. That night had definitely been different, and she'd wished, time and again since then that she could simply delete all that had gone on. The way she'd talked to Nathan and the chill she'd felt the next morning when she realised he was gone for good. She put her head down on the desk and tried to picture him at the library, receiving her latest missive. She imagined him unfolding the dog, smoothing out the creases, reading the words written there in thick pencil, understanding them as another link in his chain.

* * *

The morning rush of walkers and buses had mostly cleared out, and Nathan emerged from the bushes. He felt prickly, strange, maybe from
being so confined all night. He thought he'd take a stroll through the library, get out of the damp for awhile. Though it hadn't bothered him much in recent days, he thought perhaps it was now the cause of his unease. He took the steps carefully, protecting his sore body, and waited till a woman in a puffy ski jacket opened the library door, then scooched in after her. He forgot all about the birds as he wandered the stacks, his long fingers tracing the spines of hardcover books wrapped in clear plastic. He loved the crackly sound they made, the surprise of soft pages, the detritus of other readers. A stray hair, a bit of orange pith, a grease stain from some long-ago eaten snack, pages turned down to mark a place forever. He looked at the titles and the authors' names as he trailed his finger along each shelf. A person could read a book every day their whole life and still never really make a dent, he thought.

* * *

Henry paid the cabbie with the last of his cash, and struggled to the door with his groceries. He wiggled the key in the lock and finally got the door open — he would have to talk to James about that, he thought. Or you could try to fix it yourself, said a voice in his head and so astonished was he that he turned to see where it had come from. All these voices all of a sudden! Maybe he was finally freaking out. But no, on sober reflection, he recognised the voice as his father's, and quickly dismissed it. He didn't have time to fuck around with the lock. He had songs to write. And groceries to put away. And clothes in the washing machine, he remembered. He ferried the groceries to the kitchen and got them mostly put away, the perishables, anyhow, the dry goods it didn't matter as much, he'd get to them later. He took the basement stairs two at a time, moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer, and put in his second load. Here he was, getting things done. Tina could go fuck herself, and so could his dad, for that matter, and just for good measure. He was making a change, he thought. For once and for all, making a change.

It felt good to make a decision. He pushed the start button on the dryer, remembered fabric softener at the last minute, opened the door, threw a sheet in, and started the mechanism again. Happy, with the smell of Bounce on his fingertips, he vaulted back up the stairs to the
kitchen. He fixed himself a bowl of organic yogurt topped with granola and a sliced banana, poured a huge glass of juice and ate standing up, looking out the window at the backyard. He swore he could feel health returning to every cell with each bite he took. He swore he could feel the hydration expanding his brain with every sip of juice. He swore he was making a change for once and for all, for good. Committing to himself. He was going to run every morning. And every evening. Sure, why not? He was going to eat right, three times a day, maybe more if the running made him really hungry. He was going to quit smoking, as soon as he was done the pack still crumpled in the pocket of his leather jacket. And most of all, he was going to get upstairs and write the hell out of those songs. He downed the rest of the juice and headed purposefully up to James's music room.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. Maybe he should take a shower. He was kind of sweaty from the run and the shopping, and he reeked of smoke from his night in the bars. He caught his reflection in the mirror. Also, he was wearing fucking sweatpants. Thank god Tina had been too involved in her soy ice cream to notice him at the grocery store. It galled him to think of her pitying him because of his attire. She would think the sweatpants were an admission of failure, of a basic inability to carry on in society. But some people, he thought, his colour rising, some people actually take care of themselves! Some people run to the store for exercise. Well, fuck her. She hadn't seen him, and anyhow, it didn't matter. But he didn't think he'd be able to write in sweatpants. He had to admit; they did feel like giving up. If only it were warmer, he could wear shorts to run in. Maybe James had some of those high-tech spandex running tights. Though those left nothing to the imagination, at least they looked like the kind of pants a person who cared about himself might wear running.

Henry stripped off the offending garments as he moved down the hall to James and Emily's room. He rifled through the dresser drawers, but James didn't have any fancy running duds at all. And all of Henry's clothes were in the wash. He felt very strongly, however, that he simply could not write if he was dressed like a bum. It just didn't go with his new approach to his life and work. He rifled through James's dresser again, this time looking for serious writing clothes. He found a pair of sharp black pants, the kind of pants that
really should be worn with underwear. Well, fine, Henry thought. The wash would soon be done, and in the meantime, he could take a shower. He opened the closet and pawed through the clothes neatly hung in there till he found a crisply ironed purple shirt.

“Excellent,” he said aloud. He padded to the bathroom naked and ran water for his shower. It came out freezing cold, and refused to get any warmer. Fucking hot water tank, he thought, twisting the tap off. I'll have to wait for it to fill. He padded back to the bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed. He dug through the pockets of his jacket, which he scooped off the floor and replaced on the chair by the bed, for his cigarettes. He opened the pack. Four left. He might as well smoke them while he waited for the water tank to fill up again. Get them over with. Make the shower the start of his new way of doing things. Out with the old and smoky, in with the new and healthy, he thought, striking a match. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, leaned his back against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest.

* * *

Johnny Parker woke up feeling like shit. He reached for the glass of water on his nightstand, but it was empty. He smacked his lips together, thought, what the hell, rolled over and went right back to sleep.

* * *

There was a kid in the library Nathan felt sorry for. He saw the kid hanging around a lot, gangly in a big parka. He seemed like a nice, polite kid, and he was around even when the weather was really, really bad, so probably, Nathan thought, the kid was genuinely homeless. The bird trusted him, too. Nathan often saw the bird go right to the kid in the parka. He'd take the plump body in his hands, remove the little coloured paper animal from its leg, then hide it away in the bushes with the others. Nathan didn't know why the kid did this — he never seemed to care much about them, or even look at them again. And if he knew that Nathan was spending time hanging out with the paper menagerie, he didn't seem to mind. He was gentle with the bird, too, though he wasn't affectionate toward it. For affection, the bird came to Nathan. Once the kid had removed the origami shape,
hidden it and moved on his way, the bird would hop-fly to Nathan and just hang out with him for a bit. Nathan came to think of the bird as his because of this.

And he became fond of the kid in the parka, too. He thought he'd like to help the kid, but frankly, Nathan wasn't really sure how to do that. He was pretty sure he'd had an idea at one point, but that notion, like so many other notions, was just a figment now, just a tingle on the tip of Nathan's tongue. The kid was skulking around the stacks in his giant parka, and the library ladies clearly didn't like it. On the weekends, or at night, the kid could hang out till the doors closed. The staff at those times could easily have been his friends. Young kids, greasy hair, lots of piercings, and snarling faces. But during the week-days, the library was staffed with upright, uptight ladies with sensible short hair or closely controlled buns, glasses on beaded chains that rested on their shelf-like bosoms, or scraggly chicken legs that poked out from beneath knee length skirts. They were parodies of them-selves, Nathan thought, and they did not like the kid. On any given day they could be guaranteed to follow the kid around the library till they came up with some reason to run him out or till they got tired of following him and ran him out for no reason. This was one of those days.

“Come on, man,” the kid said in his foghorn voice. “It's freezing out there.”

“Too bad,” said the librarian with the grey-red hair. “This isn't a homeless shelter or a high school, it's a library. You're bothering the other patrons, and you're going to have to move along.”

Nathan knew it was unfair. The kid hadn't been doing anything. There were hardly any patrons, besides himself, and the kid wasn't bothering him. But Nathan was pretty sure the library lady wouldn't listen to him. No one at the library ever did. Frankly, the service there was terrible.

The kid moved toward the exit, his big sneakers clomping on the steps. Nathan hurried after him. If he'd finished law school, he thought, he could offer to help the kid. Maybe they could sue the library or at least that mean librarian. But he hadn't finished law school, and though he knew what was happening to the kid was unjust, he was too shy to approach him, too shy to offer his help. He
slid out the door behind the kid and watched dumbly as the kid loped away down Grafton Street. He raised a hand in half salute, but the kid didn't look back, probably didn't even know he was there. Nathan might as well have been invisible.

* * *

Henry lit his third cigarette and wondered if the water tank was full yet. He'd check it after this cigarette, he thought, tilting his head back against the wall and drawing the smoke down into his lungs. He'd get started after this cigarette, for sure.

* * *

Leah leaned back in her desk chair and looked out the window. The sky was relentlessly grey, the light weak and unconvincing. It made her study a gloomy place, this one that once had been cosy. But now it was stuffed with remnants of the past. Clothes she didn't wear anymore but was too lazy to get rid of. Old school papers. Board games she'd forgotten how to play, and ones that hadn't been that interesting to begin with. Nathan's first guitar, its battered face splintered. His Hardy Boys books and her Nancy Drews, sharing shelf space and swapping dust motes. Leah felt hemmed in. The grey sky, the artifacts she never used and rarely really looked at, but somehow couldn't part with. The endless work of making food she didn't feel like eating. The futility of it all, of a grey day in late winter with no end in sight. Maybe this would be the year the end simply didn't come.