Same Costume — Part 2 of 4
A 4-minute read.
Two ghosts on a porch on Fenner Street. Same pillowcase, same height. One of them knew Dana’s name. She took the one that wasn’t wearing the bracelet, because a bracelet is a thing anybody can slide off a wrist, and she wanted the kid, not the plastic.
She got them to the sidewalk without running.
Running would have made it a thing. Running would have told the street, and the street was full of people she had to see at pickup on Monday. So she walked, fast, one hand around a small wrist, and she did not look back at 27 until they were past the hedge.
The porch light at 27 went out.
Not a flicker. Not a bulb. It went out the way a light goes out when someone inside puts their hand on the switch, and the cauldron sat there in the dark with its sign still readable, TAKE 2 PLEASE, and the storm door did not open.
“Ow,” the ghost said. “You’re squeezing.”
She loosened her hand. She did not let go.
“We’re going home.”
“We’re not done.”
“We’re done.”
They went down Fenner with the flashers of a crawling minivan sliding over them. At the corner Sam pulled the pillowcase off the head because the mouth hole had gone crooked, and it was Sam’s face, hair stuck flat with static, mouth open in the specific unhappy way Dana had been looking at since the delivery room.
She felt her ribs come down.
“Can we do Barrow Street?”
“Next year.”
At home she put the chain on. She had never once put the chain on.
7:52 by the microwave.
Sam dumped the bag on the living room rug, which was the whole point of the night, and Dana sat on the arm of the couch and watched candy come out of a pillowcase.
There was too much of it.
She had counted. Not on purpose — she’d counted the way you count a kid’s houses, four at Pellerin’s, two at 15, the Reese’s
always gave the full-size, the Burkharts did pretzels. Eleven houses. Maybe thirty pieces. She’d stood at the mailbox and watched every hand go into every bowl.
There was easily twice that on the rug.
Butterfingers. Smarties. A roll of Necco wafers, which she had not seen in a store in a decade. Three of the toothbrushes.
“Where’d you get all this?”
Sam was sorting. Chocolate here, fruit here, garbage here.
“Houses,” Sam said.
“Which houses?”
“All of them.”
Dana picked up a Necco roll. The wrapper was soft, the paper gone furry the way paper gets when it’s been in a drawer.
She got up and went to the front window to pull the curtain.
There was a ghost in the yard.
It stood on the grass between the maple and the walk, in the dead spot the streetlight didn’t reach. Same white. Same two holes. Arms down. It was not doing anything. It was the stillness of a kid who has been told to wait in one place and takes it seriously.
Dana put her hand flat on the glass and then took it off, because it left a print.
“Sam. Stay right there.”
“I am right here.”
She got her phone off the counter. Her thumb was not steady. She opened the thread with Beth from two doors up, the one that was mostly sign-up sheets and a photo of somebody’s lost cat.
Dana: Is Ellis out tonight?
Dana: Weird question. Sorry.
The three dots came up right away. Beth was always on her phone. That was the one thing Dana had ever felt superior about and she was grateful for it now.
Beth: We stayed in. He’s got the ear thing again.
Beth: We didn’t see you. We thought you stayed in.
Dana read it twice.
Dana: We were out at 6:40. We did your side.
Beth: Our light was off, hon. We’ve been on the couch since 5.
Dana went back to the window.
The yard was empty.
Not walking-away empty. Empty like nothing had been standing there, grass flat, the maple shadow doing what maple shadows do. She looked at the dead spot until her eyes made shapes in it, which is what eyes do.
She pulled the curtain. Then she went around the first floor and pulled all of them, and she checked the back slider and the side door off the laundry, and both were locked, and she checked them again on the way back because checking once is not a thing that stays checked.
Sam was still on the rug. The sorting had gotten serious. There were four piles now, and one of them was just the Neccos.
“Mom. Can I have one.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
Sam took three. Dana let it go.
She sat down on the floor with her back against the couch so she could see the front door, and she put her phone facedown on her knee, and she breathed.
The furnace clicked on. The dishwasher, which she’d started before they left, hit the part of its cycle where it knocked. Ordinary house. Ordinary sounds. She made herself name each one.
Upstairs, somebody walked across the hall.
Small steps. Heel first, the way kids walk when they’re not being careful. From the landing toward the bathroom, four or five of them, over the loose board outside Sam’s room that she had been asking about since they moved in.
The sound stopped above her head.
Dana did not move.
On the rug, three feet in front of her, Sam unwrapped a Smartie and said, “That’s not me.”
Part 3 next Sunday on this Page and Facebook. Free Preview of THE OVERLOOK WIFE
