Later

2

So yeah, I see dead people. As far as I can remember, I always have. But it’s not like in that movie with Bruce Willis. It can be interesting, it can be scary sometimes (the Central Park dude), it can be a pain in the ass, but mostly it just is. Like being left-handed, or being able to play classical music when you’re like three years old, or getting early-onset Alzheimer’s, which is what happened to Uncle Harry when he was only forty-two. At age six, forty-two seemed old to me, but even then I understood it’s young to wind up not knowing who you are. Or what the names of things are—for some reason that’s what always scared me the most when we went to see Uncle Harry. His thoughts didn’t drown in blood from a busted brain vessel, but they drowned, just the same.

Mom and me trucked on down to 3C, and Mom let us in. Which took some time, because there are three locks on the door. She said that’s the price you pay for living in style. We had a six-room apartment with a view of the avenue. Mom called it the Palace on Park. We had a cleaning woman who came in twice a week. Mom had a Range Rover in the parking garage on Second Avenue, and sometimes we went up to Uncle Harry’s place in Speonk. Thanks to Regis Thomas and a few other writers (but mostly good old Regis), we were living high on the hog. It didn’t last, a depressing development I will discuss all too soon. Looking back on it, I sometimes think my life was like a Dickens novel, only with swearing.

Mom tossed her manuscript bag and purse on the sofa and sat down. The sofa made a farting noise that usually made us laugh, but not that day. “Jesus-fuck,” Mom said, then raised a hand in a stop gesture. “You—”

“I didn’t hear it, nope,” I said.

“Good. I need to have an electric shock collar or something that buzzes every time I swear around you. That’d teach me.” She stuck out her lower lip and blew back her bangs. “I’ve got another two hundred pages of Regis’s latest to read—”

“What’s this one called?” I asked, knowing the title would have of Roanoke in it. They always did.

“Ghost Maiden of Roanoke,” she said. “It’s one of his better ones, lots of se… lots of kissing and hugging.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“Sorry, kiddo, but the ladies love those pounding hearts and torrid thighs.” She looked at the bag with Ghost Maiden of Roanoke inside, secured with the usual six or eight rubber bands, one of which always snapped and made Mom give out some of her best swears. Many of which I still use. “Now I feel like I don’t want to do anything but have a glass of wine. Maybe the whole bottle. Mona Burkett was a prize pain the ass, he might actually be better off without her, but right now he’s gutted. I hope to God he’s got relatives, because I don’t relish the idea of being Comforter in Chief.”

“She loved him, too,” I said.

Mom gave me a strange look. “Yeah? You think?”

“I know. She said something mean about my turkey, but then she cried and kissed him on the cheek.”

“You imagined that, James,” she said, but half-heartedly. She knew better by then, I’m sure she did, but grownups have a tough time believing, and I’ll tell you why. When they find out as kids that Santa Claus is a fake and Goldilocks isn’t a real girl and the Easter Bunny is bullshit—just three examples, I could give more—it makes a complex and they stop believing anything they can’t see for themselves.

“Nope, didn’t imagine it. She said I’d never be Rembrandt. Who is that?”

“An artist,” she said, and blew her bangs back again. I don’t know why she didn’t just cut them or wear her hair a different way. Which she could, because she was really pretty.

“When we go down there to eat, don’t you dare say anything to Mr. Burkett about what you think you saw.”

“I won’t,” I said, “but she was right. My turkey sucks.” I felt bad about that.

I guess it showed, because she held out her arms. “Come here, kiddo.”

I came and hugged her.

“Your turkey is beautiful. It’s the most beautiful turkey I ever saw. I’m going to put it up on the refrigerator and it will stay there forever.”

I hugged as tight as I could and put my face in the hollow of her shoulder so I could smell her perfume. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Jamie, a million bunches. Now go play or watch TV. I need to roll some calls before ordering the Chinese.”

“Okay.” I started for my room, then stopped. “She put her rings on the top shelf of the hall closet, behind some scrap-books.”

My mother stared at me with her mouth open. “Why would she do that?”

“I asked her and she said she didn’t know. She said by then her thoughts were drownding in blood.”

“Oh my God,” Mom whispered, and put her hand to her neck.

“You should figure out a way to tell him when we have the Chinese. Then he won’t worry about it. Can I have General Tso’s?”

“Yes,” she said. “And brown rice, not white.”

“Right right right,” I said, and went to play with my Legos. I was making a robot.