If Harpo wandered for long enough, he always ended up right back in this exact spot, the clearing outside the lodge. He loved it, looking at the lodgehouse from the outside at night, watching how the joint glowed warmly against the dark of the forest. He stopped and watched it and held tight to his notebook. So far, he hadn’t written any notes. But he did have script ideas. He had the beginning of the movie and the end—the crying girl to start, and the Marx Brothers and friends all falling out of a steamer trunk as the credits rolled. Now he just needed some scenes for in between. Maybe he should start with a story. Stories were doable. Stories were things he knew how to think about. Maybe he didn’t have time to think about them right now though. He had other things to worry about too. He had an appointment tonight, didn’t he? He was supposed to see a ghost.
He heard a sound and finally saw the dark figure he was looking for, William, peeking in the lodgehouse windows. He was moving, doing something. Harpo couldn’t see what, could just make out a glint and shine, another bucket maybe?
“Mr. MacMarx!” said William.
“That’s Exapno Mapcase to you.”
William clapped him on the shoulder, pulled him into a hug, then let him go. Then Harpo was standing on his own again, only colder now. Abruptly, he remembered Blima’s description of the ghost in the room of doors. You couldn’t feel them. She’d explained it. They were like smoke.
“Why do you only come out at night?” he asked.
“It’s so I can see in and they can’t see out.”
“Oh.” Harpo took a deep breath of sodden, smoke-laden air. He remembered the first time they’d met, when William was asking how he was. He’d patted him on the back then too. “Why don’t you want them to see you?” he whispered. But he didn’t want the truth. He wanted to believe there were ghosts here. He wanted to believe he might see his parents again.
“There’s no law saying you need to be friends with your neighbours,” said William. “And most of their neighbours are terrible. They paint, throw stones, break windows. I try to fix it all before the family sees, but it happens often now, so, you know, I miss some.”
“They don’t like Jews around here,” breathed Harpo.
“I wish I was their family. They would be forced to love me and my wife, and maybe my daughter and her husband too. I have a granddaughter the older girl’s age, a tiny bit older. Her name is Mackie. They should be friends. If we were Jews, I’d have a reason to knock on the door. I’d know how to do it.”
“I think Blima could use a friend.” Harpo touched William’s shoulder. It was solid. His coat felt soft.
“Well.” William turned and clapped him on the back again, and Harpo pitched forward a step, then two. “It looks like everyone’s gone to bed. I brought my tools. What say we get to work?”
“Well, this isn’t the end of the world.” They were sitting in the room of doors, and William was emptying his tool box piece by piece, quietly laying instruments on a threadbare towel whose fuzzy ends caught the lamplight and twinkled. “When you said a hole in the wall, I pictured something much worse than this.”
Harpo touched each of the tools. They were all hard and cold and very physically present. He arranged them in order of length. He couldn’t think of how else to help.
“Well, let’s get to work then,” said William.
“Okay,” said Harpo. William had said this wasn’t the end of the world, and he was right. That he wasn’t a ghost didn’t mean that ghosts didn’t exist, or that other dead people wouldn’t come back again.
William picked up a saw, his hand streaked with green again.
“What’s that?” asked Harpo.
But William just pointed to one of the tools. “I think I need a bigger saw.”
“Sawing didn’t work the last time,” Harpo whispered. “That’s how we got into this mess.”
“After we’re done here, we have to see if there’s anything else I can help with. You can tell me if anything else is broken. I’ve done this an awful lot. When Sam was building the extensions, I used to check on them, fix things up, come by in the night. I poured a proper foundation for him. Not proper. Just a bit better, I mean. I added braces, straightened a few things, added insulation to the walls. At first, I felt sorry. The stones. The taunts. But then I watched them. He’s a good man, Sam. He loves his family. You can tell.”
Then William chose a funny flattened out instrument, and waved to Harpo, beckoned for him to follow. Harpo scooted on his bottom, all the way over to where William was sawing at the wall.
“Do you need something?” asked Harpo.
“Yes.” And William reached down and put his free hand on Harpo’s bowed head. Harpo looked up. It had been so long since he’d felt such comfort. Not since Frenchie. Then William started sanding the bottom of the hole with his other hand. All night, William worked like that. Minnie might have said that Harpo was feeling sorry for himself, but Minnie would have been wrong. Harpo was feeling sorry for William. It must be hard to work with only one hand. And this, too, was what Harpo wanted. He wanted a family, and he wanted to be a father just like this, just like William.