Ghost Story

Sears James coughed into his fist, and everybody immediately looked at him. My God, thought Ricky: he can do that whenever he wants, just effortlessly capture our attention. I wonder why he ever thought he couldn't be a good teacher. And I wonder why I ever thought I could hold my own with him. 'John,' Sears said gently, 'we're all familiar with the facts. All of you were kind enough to go through the cold to come here tonight, and none of us are young men anymore. Let's continue.'

'But Edward didn't die at your house. And that Moore woman, that so-called actress, didn't-'

'Enough of that,' Sears commanded.

'Well, I suppose you remember how we got on this kick,' said Jaffrey.

Sears nodded, and so did Ricky Hawthorne. It had been at the first meeting after Edward Wanderley's odd death. The remaining four had been hesitant-they could not have been more conscious of Edward's absence had an empty chair been placed among them. Their conversation had stuttered and stalled through half a dozen false beginnings. All of them, Ricky had seen, were wondering if they could bear to continue to meet. Ricky knew that none of them could bear not to. And then he had had his inspiration: he had turned to John Jaffrey and said, 'What's the worst thing you've ever done?'

Dr. Jaffrey had surprised him by going pink; and then had set the tone of all their subsequent meetings by saying, 'I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me-the most dreadful thing…' and following it by telling what was in effect a ghost story. It was riveting, surprising, frightening… it took their minds off Edward. They had gone on like that ever since.

'Do you really think it's just coincidence?' asked Jaffrey.

'Don't follow,' Sears grumped.

'You're dissembling, and it's beneath you. I mean that we started on this tack, me first, after Edward…'

His voice trailed off, and Ricky knew that he was caught between died and was killed.

'Went west,' he put in, hoping for lightness of touch. Jaffrey's stony lizardlike eye, darting at him, told him he'd failed. Ricky leaned back in the opulent chair, hoping to vanish into the luxurious background and be no more conspicuous than a water stain on one of Sears's old maps.

'Where did you get that from?' Sears asked, and Ricky remembered. It was what his father had used to say when a client died. 'Old Toby Pfaff went west last night… Mrs. Wintergreen went west this morning. There'll be the devil to pay in probate court.' He shook his head. 'Yes, that's right,' Sears said. 'But I don't know…'

'Exactly,' said Jaffrey. 'I think something pretty damn funny is going on.'

'What do you advise? I take it that you're not just talking for the sake of interrupting the proceedings.'

Ricky smiled over the tops of his joined fingers to show that he took no offense.

'Well, I do have a suggestion.' He was doing his best, Ricky saw, to handle Sears carefully. 'I think we should invite Edward's nephew to come here.'

'And what would be the point of that?'

'Isn't he by way of being an expert in… in this sort of thing?'

'What is 'this sort of thing'?'

Pushed, Jaffrey did not back down. 'Maybe just what's mysterious. I think he could-well, I think he could help us.' Sears was looking impatient, but the doctor did not let him interrupt. 'I think we need help. Or am I the only man here who has trouble getting a decent night's sleep? Am I the only one who has nightmares every night?' He scanned them all with his sunken face. 'Ricky? You're an honest man.'

'You're not the only one, John,' Ricky said.

'No, I suppose not,' said Sears, and Ricky looked at him in surprise. Sears had never indicated before that he too might have awful nights-certainly it never showed on that big smooth reflective face. 'You have his book in mind, I imagine.'

'Well, yes, of course. He must have done research- he must have had some experience.'

'I thought his experience was of mental instability.'

'Like us,' Jaffrey said bravely. 'Edward must have had some reason for willing his nephew his house. I think it was that he wanted Donald to come here, if anything should happen to him. I think he knew that something would happen. And I'll tell you what else I think. I think we ought to tell him about Eva Galli.'

'Tell him an inconclusive story fifty years old? Ridiculous.'

'The reason it's not ridiculous is that it is inconclusive,' the doctor said.

Ricky saw that Lewis was as surprised, even shaken, as he that Jaffrey had brought up the story of Eva Galli. That episode lay, as Sears had said, fifty years in their past; none of them had mentioned it since.

'Do you think you know what happened to her?' the doctor challenged.

'Hey, come on,' Lewis put in. 'Do we really need that? What the hell is the point?'

'The point is trying to find out what really happened to Edward. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.'

Sears nodded, and Ricky thought he could detect in his longtime partner's face a sign of-what? Relief? Of course he would not admit to it; but that it could be seen at all was a revelation to Ricky. 'I'm in a little doubt about the reasoning,' Sears said, 'but if it would make you happy I suppose we could write to Edward's nephew. We have his address in our files, don't we, Ricky?' Hawthorne nodded. 'But to be democratic, I'd like to put it to a vote first. Shall we just verbally agree or disagree and vote like that? What do you say?' He sipped from his glass and looked them over. They all agreed. 'We'll start with you, John.'

'Of course I say yes. Send for him.'

'Lewis?'

Lewis shrugged. 'I don't care one way or the other. Send for him if you want.'

'That's a yes?'

'Okay, it's a yes. But I say don't drag up the Eva Galli business.'

'Ricky?'

Ricky looked at his partner and saw that Sears knew how he was going to vote. 'No. Definitely no. I think it's a mistake.'

'You'd rather have us go on as we have been going on for a year?'

'Change is always change for the worse.'

Sears was amused. 'Spoken like a true lawyer, though I think the sentiment ill becomes a former member of YPSL. But I say yes, and that makes it three to one. It's carried. We'll write to him. Since mine was the deciding vote, I'll handle it.'

'I've just thought of something,' Ricky said. 'It's been a year now. Suppose he wants to sell the house? It's been sitting empty since Edward died.'

'Faw. You're inventing problems. We'll get him here faster if he wants to sell.'

'How can you be sure things won't get worse? Can you be sure?' Sitting as he had at least once a month for more than twenty years in a coveted chair in the best room he knew, Ricky fervently wished that nothing would change-that they would be allowed to continue, and that they would simply tease out their anxieties in bad dreams and stories. Looking at them all in the lowered light as a cold wind battered the trees outside Sears's windows, he wished for nothing more than that: to continue. They were his friends, he was in a way as married to them as a moment ago he had considered he was to Sears, and he gradually became aware that he feared for them. They seemed so terribly vulnerable, sitting there and regarding him quizzically, as if each of the others imagined that nothing could be worse than a few bad dreams and a bi-weekly spook story. They believed in the efficacy of knowledge. But he saw a plane of darkness, cast by a lampshade, cross John Jaffrey's forehead and thought: John is dying already. There is a kind of knowledge they have never confronted, despite the stories they tell; and when that thought came into his well-groomed little head, it was as though whatever was implied in the knowledge he meant was out there somewhere, out in the first signs of winter, out there and gaining on them.

Sears said, 'We've decided, Ricky. It's for the best. We can't just stew in our own juices. Now.' He looked around the circle they made, metaphorically rubbing his hands, and said, 'Now that's settled, who, as Lewis put it, is on the griddle tonight?'

Within Ricky Hawthorne the past suddenly shifted and delivered a moment so fresh and complete that he knew he had his story, although he'd had nothing planned and had thought he would have to pass; but eighteen hours from the year 1945 shone clearly in his mind, and he said, 'Well, I guess it's me.'