Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Scott Joplin tunes. I polish to the rhythm of a ragtime piano, and I wonder what he is trying to tell me. It has been a week now, and I find myself talking aloud to the ghost as I work. I still call him the ghost. He had a first name in life, of course, but I never used it. I called him Ummm, the way one does with in-laws. I still think of him as Ummm, and I make an occasional remark to him while I vacuum the dust bunnies under the bed and dust the tops of the bookshelves, because who knows where a ghost goes when he’s not in sight. It took a couple of days to get the house back into decent order, and then I began to wonder what else I could do. He was still there; he must be in need of something. Or perhaps he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

The next time I cleaned the living room, I considered turning to ESPN, on the off chance that a horse race might be broadcast. He always did love a good horse race. But I decided that I have to watch enough sports as it is during football season with Stephen around. I certainly wasn’t going to defer to the wishes of a dead man. Something else, then.

I switched to the Discovery Channel, and we watched a nice program about castles in the Alps. He seemed to enjoy the travel documentary much more than he had the news channel. He floated just behind the sofa and watched the screen intently. After a few minutes I put down my dust cloth and joined him, and we marveled at the splendors of Neunschwanstein and Linderhof for nearly a quarter of an hour, until at the end of a long commercial I looked over and found that I was alone. Over-decorated castles can fascinate one for just so long, I decided, but I had thoroughly enjoyed the tour, thinking how horrified Stephen would be by the glorification of nineteenth-century crimes against architecture. Still, his father had seemed to enjoy it. I felt I was on the right track.

After that I kept the television tuned to travel documentaries for as much of the day as I could. I noticed that my father-in-law’s ghost had no particular fascination with Europe, and only a fleeting interest in Africa and the Middle East. I was about to give up the project and try the Shopping Network when the programmers turned their attention to Polynesia. For the ghostly viewer, the Pacific Islands were another matter altogether.

A program on Hawaii brought him closer to the television than he had ventured before, and he actually sat through two commercials before fading away. A few days later, when Samoa was featured, he hovered just above the sofa cushions and gazed enraptured at the palm trees and outriggers with a smile that no longer looked vague. Easter Island was the clincher. Not only did he watch the program in its entirety, he even stayed through the credits, apparently reading the names of the crew and filmmakers as they rolled up the screen.

I had watched all these programs as well, and quite enjoyed the imaginary holidays they provided. Still, after hours of looking at the shining sands and turquoise sea of the South Pacific, my own living room looked dingy and worn. This did not inspire me to further cleaning efforts, however. My reaction was more along the lines of, “What’s the use?” No matter what I did to our sensible tweed sofa and the fashionable cherry colonial reproduction tables, it would still be dankest, brownest, latest autumn within these walls, and I was beginning to long for summer.

“It’s a pity that we are dead and stuck here,” I remarked aloud to the visitor. Something in his smile made me realize what I’d said. “I mean that you’re dead,” I amended.

On Monday, the daily documentary featured the irrigation system of the Netherlands, but neither my father-in- law nor I was ready to come back from the tropical paradises of the South Pacific. We sat there in gloomy silence for a few minutes, politely studying placid canals and bobbing fields of tulips, but neither of us could muster any enthusiasm for the subject. I clicked off the set just as he was beginning to fade out. “I’ll go to the library,” I said to the dimming apparition. “Perhaps I can borrow a video of the Pacific Islands-or at least a travel guide.”

Stephen occasionally sent me to the library to research something for him, but I had never actually checked anything out for my own use. I suppose Mrs. Nagata, the librarian, was a bit surprised to see me walk past Architecture and into the Travel section. Or perhaps she was surprised to see me in jeans with my hair in a ponytail. In my haste I had not bothered to change into the costume I thought of as Suburban Respectable. Half an hour later, I had managed to find two coffee-table books on the Pacific Islands, a video documentary about Tahiti, and the old Disney film of Treasure Island that I remembered from childhood. As an afterthought I picked up a guidebook to Polynesia as well.

When I entered the house again I could hear the strains of “Bali H’ai” being played on a honky-tonk piano. I wondered if that was a hint. Surely Bali H’ai would be featured in one of the books I had selected. Where was it, anyhow? And had my father-in-law been there before? I tried to remember his stories about World War II, but exotic islands did not play a part in any tale that I recalled. “He’s simply getting into the spirit of the thing,” I said. Realizing my pun I laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?”

Stephen was home. I nearly dropped the books. He was lounging on the sofa watching the sports network. “The air conditioning was broken at the office, so I came home,” he told me without taking his eyes off the flickering screen. “I was surprised to find you gone. I thought you moped around here all day.”

“I went to the library,” I mumbled.

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows in that maddening way of his. “Whatever for? I didn’t send you.”

I felt like a child caught playing hooky. “I just went,” I said.

I edged closer to the screen, careful not to block his view, and held out my armload of books and videos. “I just thought I’d do some reading.”

A commercial came on just then, and he turned his attention to me, or rather to the materials from the library. He flipped through the stack of books, inspected the videos, and set them down on the sofa beside him. “The South Pacific,” he said, sounding amused.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“If you like heat and insects.”

“I thought we might go there some day.”

Stephen turned back to the television. “Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti. He was a painter.”

“Yes.”

“Went to Tahiti, got leprosy there, and died,” said Stephen, with evident satisfaction that Gauguin’s lapse of judgment had been so amply rewarded. Before I could reply, the commercial ended, and Stephen went back to the game, dismissing the subject of Polynesia from his thoughts entirely.

I left the room, unnoticed by Stephen, who was absorbed in the television and completely oblivious to my existence. Before I left, though, I took the pile of books, which he had discarded on the sofa beside him.

I was sitting on the bed, leafing through color pictures of beaches at sunset and lush island waterfalls, when my father-in-law materialized beside me and began peering at the pages with a look similar to Stephen’s television face. Once when I turned a page too quickly, he reached for the book, and then drew back, as if he suddenly remembered that he could no longer hold objects for himself.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I sighed. “I wish I could see it for real.”

The ghost nodded sadly. He tried to touch the page, but his fingers became transparent and passed through the photo.

“Just go!” I said. “Do it! I’m tied here. Stephen refuses to go anywhere. I’m too depressed to go to the mall, much less to another country. But you! You’re not a prisoner. I wish I were a ghost. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t be haunting a tract house in Iowa. I’d do whatever I wanted. I’d be free! I’d go to Tahiti-or Easter Island-or wherever I wanted!”

The ghost shook his head, and immediately I felt sorry for my outburst. Apparently there were rules to the afterlife, and I had no idea what his limitations were. I shouldn’t have reproached him for things I don’t understand, I thought.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wish we weren’t trapped here.” My eyes filled with tears. One of them plopped onto the waterfall picture and slid down the rocks, as if to join the cascading image.

I looked up to see my father-in-law’s ghost smiling and shaking his head. He looked very much like Stephen for just that instant: his expression was the one Stephen always has when I’ve said something foolish. I thought over what I had said. I wish we weren’t trapped here.

Why was I trapped here?

I had grandmother’s legacy in the savings account. It had grown to nearly twelve thousand dollars, because in my depression I couldn’t be bothered to go out and actually buy anything. I had a suitcase, and enough summer clothes to see me through a few months in the tropics. And-most important-I had no emotional ties to keep me in Woodland Hills. I felt that I had already been haunting Stephen for the last few years of our married life. It was time I left. And when I went, his memory would never haunt me.

I opened the closet and reached for the canvas suitcase on the top shelf. As I was pulling it down, I heard a