She’d always come running.
I take the shard, pinch it tight between thumb and forefinger. Drag the edge along my arm. Blood wells up.
“Amy?”
I cut deeper. Blood drips onto the dirty pages of the useless book.
“Amy? I need you.”
Damnable silence. Always silence.
Crouchedat their graves. Talking until I realize I’m only speaking to fill the silence, and I stop. I touch the marble. Cold. Always cold, even now with the late winter sun beating down.
No flowers. I took them away as soon as they started to wither. Dead flowers by a grave seems wrong. Left and forgotten. Nothing here should be forgotten.
I bring new mementos every week. Something small. Something meaningful. A franc from our honeymoon. A seashell from our last vacation. A button from Clara’s first communion dress. A cat’s-eye marble from Amy’s childhood collection. Indestructible. As memories should be.
I come here twice a week to talk to them. I know they won’t hear me, but I hope others will. Other ghosts. I can see them flitting past the graves. Wandering, endlessly wandering, looking for someone to take their message to the world beyond.
That someone used to be me. I couldn’t set foot in a cemetery without being besieged by the dead. Now they give me wide berth. They know I come with a plea of my own. Find my wife. Find my daughter. Tell them I need to see them. Need to speak to them.
I want something from the ghosts, so they’ll have nothing to do with me. I sit here and I talk to my wife and child, and I pray my words will thaw the hearts of those shades. I pray one will finally approach and say “I’ll do this.” They don’t. They keep their distance and they wander in silence. Always silence.
Thedoorbell rings. I hear it through the garage walls. Someone on the front porch. Someone come to call. I ignore it and keep working on the car.
Three months, and it’s almost finished. The windshield replaced. The engine repaired. The dents pulled out.
There’s one thing I can’t fix. The blood on the passenger’s seat. No longer red. Faded to rust brown. But still blood. Undeniably blood.
The insurance company didn’t want me to have the car. Too badly damaged, they said. We’ve paid you, now let us dispose of it. I’d pulled out my contract and showed them the clause where I could buy back the wreck for a few hundred dollars. At least let us remove the seat, they said. No one needs to see that. But I do.
“Hello!” a voice calls.
I stay crouched by the front of the car, replacing the cracked headlight. The door opens.
“Hello?”
It isn’t anyone I know. I can tell by the voice. I consider staying where I am, but that’s childish. I stand and wipe my hands on my jeans.
“Can I help you?”
It’s a portly man, smiling that desperate, too-hearty smile of the salesman. I let him talk. I have no idea what he’s saying, what he’s selling. Just words, fluttering past.
“I’m not interested,” I say.
He sizes me up. I wonder how I look to him. Unshaven. Bleary-eyed. Worn blue jeans. Grease-stained T-shirt. A drunk? An addict? Can’t hold a job? Explains why I’d be home in the middle of the day. Still, it’s a decent house, and he’s desperate.
He sidles around the front of the vehicle.
“Nice car,” he says.
It isn’t. Even before the accident, it was a serviceable car, nothing more. Amy had wanted something newer.
Not fancier,she said.Just safer, you know. For Clara.
I hear BMWs are safe,I said.You’re a lawyer’s wife now, not a law student’s.You need a BMW.
She laughed at that. Said I could buy her one when I made partner. I played along, but secretly made phone calls, visited dealers, planned to buy her a BMW or a Mercedes, whichever would make her feel safer. It was to be a Christmas gift.
