Ghost Story

were egg rolls and chicken livers wrapped in bacon. He burned his fingers transferring them to a tray, and his mother crept up behind him and kissed the nape of his neck. 'Peter, you're so sweet.' Without having had a drink, she acted drunk. 'Now, what do we have to do? Are the martinis ready? Then when you come back with the tray, come back in for the pitcher and put it on another tray with the glasses, will you? Your father'll help. Now. What do I have to do? Oh-mash up capers and anchovies to put in the pot. You look just lovely, Peter, I'm so glad you put on a tie.'

The bell rang again: more familiar voices. Harlan Bautz, the dentist, and Lou Price, who looked like the villain of a gangster movie. Their wives, brassy and meek respectively.

He was passing the first tray around when the Venutis arrived. Sonny Venuti popped an egg roll in her mouth, said 'Warmth!' and kissed him on the cheek. She looked pop-eyed and haggard. Ed Venuti, his father's partner, said, 'Looking forward to Cornell, son?' and breathed gin in his face.

'Yes, sir.'

But he was not listening. 'God bless the Martoonerville Trolley,' he said as his father put a filled glass in his hand.

When he offered the tray to Harlan Bautz, the dentist slapped his back and said, 'Bet you can't wait to get to Cornell, hey, boy?'

'Yes, sir.' He fled back into the kitchen.

His mother was spooning a greenish mixture into a steaming casserole. 'Who just came?'

He told her.

'Just finish adding this goop and then put it back in the oven,' she said, handing him the bowl. 'I have to get out and say hello. Oh, I feel so festive tonight.'

She left, and he was alone in the kitchen. He dropped the rest of the thick green substance into the casserole and twirled a spoon around in it. When he was putting it back into the oven, his father appeared and said, 'Where's the drinks tray? I shouldn't have made so many martinis, we got a crowd of whiskey drinkers. Oh, I'll just take out the pitcher and use the other glasses in the dining room. Hey, the joint's jumping already, Pete. You ought to talk to that writer, he's an interesting fella, guess he writes chillers-I remember Edward telling me something about it. Interesting, no? I knew you'd have a good time if you spent some time with our friends. You are, aren't you?'

'What?' Peter closed the oven door.

'Having a good time.'

'Sure.'

'Okay. Get out there and talk to people.' He shook his head as if in wonderment. 'Boy. Your mother's all wound up. She's having a great time. Nice to see her like this again.'

'Yes,' Peter said, and drifted out to the living room, carrying a tray of canapes his mother had left behind.

There she was, 'all wound up,' as his father had said: almost as if literally wound up, talking rapidly through a cloud of exhaled smoke, darting from Sonny Venuti to pick up a bowl of black olives and offer them to Harlan Bautz.

'They say if this keeps up Milburn could be cut off entirely,' Stella Hawthorne said, her voice lower and more listenable to than his mother's and Mrs. Venuti's. Perhaps for that reason, it stopped all conversation. 'We only have that one snowplow, and the county's plow will be kept busy on the highway.'

Lou Price, on the couch beside Sonny Venuti, said, 'And look who's driving our plow. The council should never have let Omar Norris's wife talk them into it. Most of the time Omar's too boiled to see where he's going.'

'Now, oh, Lou, now, that's the only work Omar Norris does all year round-and he came by here twice today!' His mother defended Omar Norris overbrightly: Peter saw her looking at the door, and knew that her febrile high spirits were caused by someone who had not arrived yet.

'He must be sleeping out in the boxcars these days,' Lou Price said. 'In boxcars or in his garage, if his wife lets him get that close. You want a guy like that running a two-ton snowplow past your car? He could run the damn thing on his breath.'

The doorbell rang, and his mother nearly dropped her drink.

'I'll get it,' Peter said, and went to the door.

It was Sears James. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his face was worn and so white his cheeks looked almost blue. Then he said, 'Hello, Peter,' and looked normal again, taking off his hat and apologizing for being late.

For twenty minutes Peter took canapes around on trays, refilled drinks and evaded conversation. (Sonny Venuti, grabbing his cheek with two fingers: 'I bet you can't wait to get away from this awful town and start chasing college girls, right, Pete?') Whenever he looked at his mother, she was in the middle of a sentence, her eyes darting to the front door. Lou Price was loudly explaining something about soybean futures to Harlan Bautz; Mrs. Bautz was boring Stella Hawthorne with advice about redecoration. ('I'd say, go rosewood.') Ed Venuti, Ricky Hawthorne and his father were talking off in a corner about the disappearance of Jim Hardie. Peter returned to the sterile peacefulness of the kitchen, loosened his tie and cradled his head on a counter spattered with green. Five minutes later the telephone rang. 'No, don't bother, Walt, I'll get it,' he heard his mother cry in the living room.

The kitchen extension stopped ringing a few seconds' later. She was on the phone in the television room. Peter looked at the white telephone on the kitchen wall. Maybe it was not what he thought; maybe it was Jim Hardie to say hey don't worry, man, I'm in the Apple… he had to know. Even if it was what he thought. He picked up the receiver: he would listen only for a second.

The voice was Lewis Benedikt's, and his heart folded.

'… can't come, no, Christina,' Lewis was saying. 'I just can't. My drive is six feet deep in snow.'

'Someone's on the line,' his mother said.

'Don't be paranoid,' Lewis said. 'Besides, Christina, it would be a waste of time for me to come out. You know.'

'Pete? Is that you? Are you listening?'

Peter held his breath; did not hang up.

'Oh, Peter's not listening. Why would he?'

'Damn you, are you there?' His mother's voice: sharp as the buzz of a hornet.

'Christina, I'm sorry. We're still friends. Go back to your party and have a great time.'

'You can be such a shallow creep,' his mother said, and slammed down the phone. A second later, in shock, Peter also put down his receiver.

He stood on wobbly legs, almost certain of the meaning of what he had overheard. He blindly turned to the kitchen window. Footsteps. The door behind him opened and closed. Behind his own blank reflection-as drained as when he had looked into an empty room on Montgomery Street-was his mother's, her face an angry blur. 'Did you get an earful, spy?' Then there was another reflection between them-it was like that for a moment, another pale blur sliding between his face and his mother's. It shifted closer, and Peter was looking at a small face not in reflection, but directly outside the window: an imploring, twisted childish face. The boy was begging him to come out. 'Tell me, you little spy,' his mother ordered.

Peter screamed; and jammed his fist in his mouth to stop the noise. He closed his eyes.

Then his mother's arms were around him and her voice was going, muttering apologies, the tears now not latent but warm on his neck. He could hear, above the noise his mother was making, the voice of Sears James declaiming: 'Yes, Don came here to take possession of his house, but also to help us out with a little problem-a research problem.' Then a muffled voice that might have been Sonny Venuti's. Sears replied, 'We want him to look into the background of that Moore girl, the actress who disappeared.' More muffled voices: mild surprise, mild doubt, mild curiosity. He took his fist out of his mouth.

'It's okay, mom,' he said.

'Peter, I'm so sorry.'

'I won't tell.'

'It's not-Peter, it wasn't what you think. You can't let it upset you.'

'I thought maybe it was Jim Hardie calling,' he said.

The doorbell rang.

She loosened her grip on his neck. 'Poor darling, with a crummy runaway friend and a psycho mother like me.' She kissed the back of his head. 'And I cried all over your clean shirt.'