"Why did you do it?" I asked the ghost. He was just standing there in my new apartment.
I did not need this. My husband committed suicide five years before, and I was still getting over that. He'd died because he couldn't live with himself after that kid died.
It's a bitch being empathic, having ESP, being psychic, whatever the nuts call it. I know when Ortiz is going to get a hit, I know if a friend of mine who lives five thousand miles away is in need, I know if I'm going to get sick from the flu. I can tell your fortune without tarot cards, thanks. I knew when the Towers were going to be hit.
I heard them, all of them: they were screaming in the end.
So now, here I am in this new apartment, and there's a ghost. I don't mind them; they're a fact of life. This one just bothers me because he's a suicide.
I'm considering calling my real estate agent to tell her there's a leak or something.
So I took a deep breath. "Come on, you know you can tell me." If I help them, well they - go. Or something.
"You believed in me."
That was the last thing I'd have suspected. "Frank?" He looked different. Maybe they all do, on the other side.
"You believed in me. I failed."
Now I understood. "No, Frank, you didn't," I said. I wanted to take him in my arms like I had so many times, to hold him close. We used to be each other's therapy. I, the special ed teacher, he the pediatric oncologist. "You did all you could - and more." Hollow words. I used to be more eloquent than that.
He stuck around while I set up my new place. I didn't need much, just a couple bookcases, a bed, and a desk. When Frank died I gave away all the stuff that was mutually ours. Too many memories. I felt like I was a kid again, just out of college, living in a house with three other women. I stuck a TV dinner in the microwave.
"I failed," the sad voice told me, hovering over me as I pondered overcooked chicken and beans.
"Cut it out, Frank; the hollow-eyed stare isn't going to creep me out and you know it!" He was definitely more annoying dead.
"I failed."
He kept that up all night, and I had an awful time sleeping. Was I more bitter now? Had I just become one more angry widow, crying "why me" to the night? I thought of the day I came home early, because it was his birthday, and I found the stove on, pasta boiling over.
Shocks coming from the bathroom. . .
He was long dead. All that remained of him was a note saying "I'm sorry."
But now, there was this.
Why now?
I tossed and turned all night and went to my job at the supermarket cranky - well, crankier than usual. I'd been a cash register worker there since Frank died. Couldn't go back to teaching kids; what if one of them ended up like that kid he'd lost track of?
"You look like crap, Hannah."
My co-worker, Jan. She usually did bagging for me. We were a good team. "Thanks."
He was waiting for me when I got home. I tossed the remote at him. "Give me a break, Frank! What is this, 'Intervention from the other side'?"
He just looked at me sadly. As always.
I went outside, to the park. To get away from him.
The sun was just starting to go down, and the birds were making their usual racket as they fought over sleeping rights. Frank and I used to come out to our porch and watch the birds at this hour, see the sunset.
"Hi."
A little kid.
"Hi," I said, hoping he would go away.
"You from here?"
"Yes," I said. "Why?"
The kid shrugged. "I just don't see you 'round here, is all."
"Your mom okay with you talking to me?"
"Oh, sure. She's over there -" he said, pointing. "She said you were lonely, and to come say hi."
It was a lady in a wheelchair, and she smiled at me. I got up and came over to her.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Frank's girlfriend. Or, well, I was - back in highschool."
"You weren't at the funeral."
She laughed. "Well, I had a bit of a time organizing travel. And you?"
"I'm his wife."
"No, I mean really, who are you?"
Suddenly, I knew what she meant. Who was I? For sixteen years, I'd been 'Frank's wife.' At office parties, on double dates, on my tax return.
Before I met him, I'd been starting my work as a special ed teacher. I'd wanted to join the Peace Corps, had even applied. I'd started a painting course and wasn't doing so badly. I used to dream about having kids someday. Then I met him, and most of that had to go away. I still loved my job teaching, but there was no time for the rest.
The woman - her name was Phoebe, she said - laughed again. "So you don't know, do you?"
"No."
We spent a long time in the park that evening, talking, and after that many more such evenings. I met Phoebe's husband Derek, a photographer, who insisted I should have been a model and who could cook the most amazing dishes. Todd, their boy, insisted I play Risk with him. Phoebe worked part-time for a greeting card company.
I felt all right with them, and lonely when I went home. There was Frank's ghost, and that didn't help. "Your place is so sparse!" Phoebe said the first time she saw it, and within a week she'd bought me a giant ficus and insisted I come to the pet store and pick out a fish. "Better..." And then Todd's drawings started going up on my fridge, and I babysat for them twice a week.
It was mid-September when I got the bug. There was something on the news about kids in East India needing medical care and not getting it, and I thought suddenly back to my old days of wanting to join the Peace Corps. "I think it's a great idea," Phoebe said when I told her.
I'm actually kind of excited. I got my malaria shot last week, and it still stings.
It reminds me I'm alive.