Ghosts

The locals called us things so dumb. Stick-on, they said, when we walked past. They made gestures to represent sticking us on. The gestures involved their hands. They involved their hips moving around. Sometimes they tried to touch our arms. Sometimes, depending on how they looked, we let them almost touch us.

The one we liked worked at the haunted house. He never tried to talk to us. He barely looked at us. One night we said, Can we go in. Not that we even wanted to. We were mostly just fucking around. But he said to go in any time. He would let us in for free, he said. This made us laugh. As if we couldn’t afford it, we said. As if our fathers didn’t own the whole shore.

My mother and I, at the end of the summer, drank on the terrace in the early evenings. It was our thing we did, drinking and looking at the sky. Some evenings, we listened to loons. Some, we sat in silence. And on one of the evenings, the one I remember more than the others, my mother made one of her jokes. Her jokes weren’t proper jokes. They were more like jabs directed at people she didn’t like. Like the person she was maddest at at the time. She was maddest, that evening, at my father. So her joke was directed, I remember, at him.

The sound of loons was a sound you couldn’t compare to anything else. Though many each summer tried. Many compared the loon sound to a train sound, which it was not. Many compared the loon sound to a human sound, which it also was not. My father said the loon sound was much like the sound of a woman screaming. But when, I thought, had he heard a woman scream like that. And where had he heard that woman scream.

One night, we told the guy to let us in for free. We thought we were being clever with our joke. But the guy didn’t get it, or he didn’t care. He said, Go in, so we went. It was darker inside than we thought it would be. And colder than we thought it would be. And there were sounds inside. Like howling wolves. Like a storm that sounded nothing like a storm. We held each other’s hands at first. Then we touched the things we weren’t supposed to touch as we walked past. Like spiderwebs. And body parts. Then the doors opened up to outside. And we were standing there at the rides again, like was that supposed to scare us.

The woman was leaning into my father. She was drinking champagne and leaning in a way that made her look like a doll. This was at a party at the boathouse. The girl and I were standing around being bored. We’d taken the girl’s mother’s pills. We were waiting for something to happen. Like for the pills to kick in. Like for this woman leaning into my father to fall.

I couldn’t remember my mother’s joke if I tried. I only remember that it was mean. And that I had to fake a kind of laugh. And that my mother was laughing harder than I was. And it could have meant something, had anyone seen the two of us laughing like that. But then my mother stopped laughing and leaned toward me. She wasn’t one to get that close. But she leaned even closer, her face right in front of my face. She was looking at something near my mouth. Then I felt her fingers on me. I said, Get away. And she said, What’s that. She said, Is that a crease.

There was a day I went to the rides alone. The locals called out their shit. Like, Shake that ass. Like, Bring that ass over here. Their hands held on to shapes that were mine. They forced themselves right through them. Like forcing themselves through dreams of me. Or forcing themselves through my ghost. The guy let me walk through the haunted house before it opened for the night. With the lights on, it looked even more fucked up. Like a fucked-up person’s home. Some kids had written words on the walls. There was trash on the floors. But you could imagine someone living there. The worst of the local guys. There was a corner behind a curtain. A chain inside a metal bucket. The guy said I could stand in the corner. I could do whatever I wanted. Rattle the chain. Jump out at kids.

My father was whispering into the woman’s ear. He was holding on to her arm. The woman was younger than my father. She was wearing a skirt that I, if I cared about dressing up, might have worn. Now she was looking at me and waving. Now she clapped her hands to call to me. But I wasn’t a dog you could call like that. I said, I’m not your fucking dog. And the girl and I laughed.

Had my mother been there, she might have laughed too. But had my mother been there, the woman wouldn’t have been standing with my father. She would have been looking at him, as she often did, from across the room. She would have been talking loudly, to make him look, to make my mother look. So had my mother been there, instead of sitting alone on the terrace, the night might have gone a different way. Had my mother been there, beside my father, imagine.

Under the harshest light I knew, the light in a washroom at the boathouse, I often looked in the mirror. I looked at the different colors in my eyes. I looked as the veins in my temple throbbed and wondered if they were supposed to. But I never saw, under that harshest light, anything even vaguely resembling a crease. I swatted at my mother’s hand. She leaned back in her chair. She said, Do you think you won’t get old. She said, Do you think you can just freeze time.

You can tell yourself you have control. You can fool yourself for a second. For a fraction of that second. It’s some night you feel everlasting. You and your friends are superhuman. Even your dreams that night are of running barefoot through grass.

I stood behind the curtain, holding the chain. When kids walked past, I didn’t breathe. It was all about the timing. I wanted to make them feel they were almost to the end. That they were almost to the doors that opened to the rides. And I could have let them get to the doors, get on with the rest of the night. It was good enough just to stand there. To be alone all night in the dark. But I crashed the chain to the bucket. The crash was louder than you would think. And the kids screamed every time. They screamed like you can’t even fucking believe.

The woman was clapping her hands to call me over. I wanted to get on my knees. I wanted to crawl to her like a dog might. Even bark at her, I was that fucked up. The girl just would have loved it. We would have joked about it for years. But before I could get on the floor, the woman was walking away. Because my father was walking away. The girl said, Where are they going. She said, Are they going to fuck. Then she was laughing again. So this was something now. So I, without knowing I would be, now, was walking.

I stood in front of my mother and said I didn’t think I would get old. I did, in fact, plan to freeze time. So that I will stay young, I said. And so you, I said, will stay old.

The loons didn’t sound like a woman screaming. I should have said to my father, You don’t even know. You’ve never heard a woman scream, I should have said. That’s a different sound, the sound we make. That’s a totally different sound, I should have said. Listen to this, I should have said. Listen to this awful sound we make.

Before the rides closed, some guys came through. They were drunk and loud and came through the way we’d come through that night like what the fuck is this place. They were pounding on the walls and kicking at the walls. And was I scared of them. I was sad for them. I was sad for so many guys. I was sad for the rich guys. Sad for the locals. Sad, at times, for my father. Because they would never get what they wanted. Or they would get what they wanted, but still want more. Then still want even more.

So I decided not to crash the chain. It was the first time I would just let something go. And the guys would leave. And the rides would close. I would walk to the boathouse. I would find the girl. I would tell her how I spent the night. I would make her die in every way. Or I would keep it to myself.

I followed my father and the woman through the boathouse. I followed them into a sitting room. Then they went into a washroom and closed the door. The sitting room had a nautical theme. Much of the shore was nautically themed. Much of our lives was normalized in this way. It made us feel like a club for normal people. I sat on a nautical couch. I knew I didn’t have to stay there. I didn’t have to do anything. My father was in a washroom with a woman. My mother was drinking herself to sleep. And God, I mean where was he. I mean all I can say is the rules had changed and no one was in charge. But someone was going to pay. And someone was going to hell. And I could end the story, here, if I wanted, with this revelation.

The sun was setting, and my mother said, Move. She wanted to see the sunset, she said. I was blocking it with my head, she said. So I blocked it more. I watched my shadow move across my mother’s face.

You can lie and say you’re in control. Then the awful truth rushes in. You’re not at all everlasting. You’ll never be superhuman. You can’t stop things. You can’t freeze time. You’re in every way like everyone else. Like everything else. You’ll end.

The guys didn’t leave right away. They kept kicking at the walls. They were saying the drunkest shit. Then one of them pushed at the curtain. Then another one was pushing. I could feel each push and hard. I mean my body was right fucking there. So now was I scared. I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought, just open the curtain. Before they hurt you, I thought. Or kill you, I thought. So I opened it. And they jumped for a second. But then they were laughing. Then they were moving toward me.

I mean they were guys, and I was this. I mean I didn’t think I would win. I mean guys fucked the air when I walked past. And what is the word for fucking the thing standing in for a thing.

I don’t remember getting up from the sitting room couch. But there I was standing at the washroom door. There I was pushing open the door. The washroom, too, had a nautical theme. Even the sink was nautical. Even the soaps were shell-shaped, even the dish they were in. I saw them before they saw me. I saw the way they were standing. I saw the changing shape of the space between them. And the light changing in that space. The woman tilting like a doll. The woman’s hand on my father’s shirt. The woman’s shirt in the sink.

And as I fell to the washroom floor, it was like everything around me stopped. Then everything was moving again. Was that time freezing, I wonder now. The split second of nothing before pain. Then I felt my father’s arms as if through clouds. I felt his shirt against my face. I heard the woman laughing way too hard. I saw her putting on her shirt. Someone’s had too much champagne, she said. But I hadn’t had champagne. I had taken the girl’s mother’s pill. And the pill had made me powerful. I was powerful and standing now. So I pushed her into that shell-shaped sink. So I felt how soft her shirt was. I could feel her body through the shirt. Just another girl’s body. Like my own warm body. So I stayed on her body. I kept my hands on her body. And fuck her body. Fuck the heat of her body. Fuck the look on her face. The look on my father’s.

After the sunset, my mother fell asleep on the terrace. There was one star low in the sky. It was sitting on top of my mother’s head. It was sitting there like a crown or something. Like the top of a crown. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. It was only sad, the star eventually disappearing.

There was a night I stood in the washroom. I stretched open my mouth as wide as I could. I twisted and untwisted the skin around it. And I saw, under that harsh light, that yes there was a very thin crease that would no doubt become—my mother knew this from watching her own face cave—deep and irreversible.

The guys were trying to scare me. But I knew they weren’t going to kill me. I mean I was the one holding a chain. And I felt like something as I lifted it up. I don’t know what I felt like. Like a guy perhaps. Or a ghost perhaps. And I felt it more as I shook the chain. And I felt it more as I swung it. And my fucking face. I could feel how crazy I’d become. So who was scared now. So who now was running fast through the dark like little girls.

At some point, the lights came on. The wolves shut down. The storm shut down. The guy came in to get me. We stood out front and smoked. Some girls walked shoeless on the dirt. A woman picked up trash with a stick. The rides froze in place all around us.

The sound of loons wasn’t the sound, I should have said, of anything but the sound of loons.

The sound of loons wasn’t a thing, I should have said, that you’ll ever in your life understand.

The sound of a woman screaming, I should have said. I should have screamed.

The locals tried to touch our legs. And what if we let them touch us. What if we bent over for them. What if we shook our asses the way they asked us so many times to shake our asses.

Would they have lifted us up. Would they have stuck us on. Would they have gotten off. Would we have gotten off.

Because we weren’t their fucking girls you know. We would never be their fucking girls. We were dreams of girls. We were ghosts of girls. We were dogs.