Homing (20 page)

“I doubt it,” Leah said. She felt sick. “He was pretty methodical. Had everything sewn up and taken care of.”

“Could he be feeling guilty?” Charlotte asked.

Leah pulled both lips in over her teeth, her mouth a thin line.

“Guilty about leaving everyone?” Charlotte prodded.

“Maybe,” Leah said, her voice small. “It wouldn't be totally out of character.” But something told her it wasn't Nathan's guilt that was keeping him here.

“I think you'd better find that book,” Charlotte said. “And read the rest of it.”

“Yeah,” Leah said.

Leah leapt out of the bed as if it was filling with water, and pulled on dirty jeans and a turtleneck from the floor. She flew down the stairs, almost tripping over Neil in her haste.

In the living room, she scrabbled under the chair Charlotte had sat in during the power-out. In the dim under-chair light, through the haze of cat-hair tufts, she saw the book. She pulled it out, its green cover dulled by dust and neglect. She rubbed it on her jeans and flipped through it hastily, till she found the section she was looking for.

Why do ghosts stay on earth? she read. Sometimes, ghosts don't know they are ghosts. Perhaps their death was sudden or unexpected. The afterlife can be tremendously confusing, and if the quietus came in the form of a speeding bus, a violent murder, an avalanche or hurricane, for instance, the spirit may have no idea that he or she is dead. They may have no idea what to do, how to behave, where to go. And so they continue to hang around. They often stay very near the place where their death occurred.

Ghosts will also stay earthbound if they feel they have unfinished business. This may include family matters or financial issues they did not have a chance to clear up before their death. They will stay on earth as long as they need to in order to square things away to their satisfaction. They will occasionally, if the task is complicated, attempt to enlist human help. This sometimes makes the task take longer to complete, as the ghost is only able to communicate in metaphors. For reasons that are not yet clear to spectral realm researchers, spirits eschew direct contact.

The third reason spirits may decide not to go on is human guilt. The spirit may itself feel guilty, may feel it has left loved ones in the lurch. In this case, spirits will stay on earth and attempt to look after the family left behind. By the same token, if it is a loved one who cannot let go of the deceased, the spirit will wait, sometimes for years, until their loved ones are ready to let go.

Leah's head snapped up. Recognition coursed through her like an electrical current. It was her. It was because of her. She paged clumsily through the book to the section she had read not quite enough of in the first place.

How can I get rid of my ghost?
She devoured the words. She'd read it before — she thought she'd read the pertinent parts. She'd been following its advice all this time. But clearly, she'd missed something.

There are many ways to help a spirit find its way to the light
, Pietropaulo had written.
In the case of a spirit who does not know he or she has passed, you will have to actually tell the spirit his or her story — in eff ect, you will have to break to them the news of their passing. This will be no easy task — remember, spirits do not respond to direct contact! You will have to find an indirect way to communicate. You may perhaps choose to tell the ghost's story to someone nearby — that may be enough to help your spirit move along.

If you do not know the spirit and do not wish to have further contact with
it, simply hold up your hands in front of your face and say, firmly but kindly, NO. This will not likely help the spirit move on to the light, but it will help it move on, perhaps to find someone who can escort it to the next world.

Leah had stopped reading there. It was stuff she already knew, she'd felt. That information about how to get a ghost to stop visiting you, the holding up the hands. Everyone knew that. So she hadn't pushed on any further in the book. She shook her head, impatient with her own impatience. Tears were starting to burn at the back of her eyes, but she willed them away. No time for that now. She had to figure out what she'd been doing wrong, and set it right. If Nathan was still here because of her, she had to make amends.

If you are the reason a ghost is hanging around, the chapter continued, if you suspect your ghost may be feeling guilty about leaving you, or if you are having trouble letting go of your loved one, you must find a way to prove to the ghost that you are alright, and then he or she will be able to move toward the light.

Leah slammed the book shut, slinked into her jacket and banged out the door before she could think before she could let her guilt keep her inside one minute longer. She felt flayed, as she ran down the street, book in hand, to be out in the daylight, in the mild busyness of a Sunday morning in the north end of town. Still, she had to get there, had to get to the library in case it wasn't too late. She ran.

* * *

Nathan paced. He sniff ed the air. It was possible something was about to change, but it was also possible that that something was simply the weather. He prayed there'd be no rain. Well, that was diff erent. He never used to pray. But things aren't what they were, he told himself. That much was abundantly clear. He went to stand near Winston Churchill. Folded his arms behind his back and strolled the path. It felt alright. He preferred his arms down, but Winston had a point. He did feel calmer, more leader-ish with his arms tucked away neatly like that. He practised, and he waited.

* * *

Leah ran. She never ran, but she ran now. She panted, her hair flew around her face, she began to sweat all over and her ankles threatened
to crumple at every turn, but still she ran. She thought about running up Citadel Hill, but that would just slow her down, so she ran around it instead, and then, feeling panic pushing her faster than she'd known she could go, she ran down the dip it made in her city, a dip that took her right to the library. She didn't know what too late would be, she only hoped she wouldn't have to find out. She wasn't sure she'd be able to see Nathan or feel him. Didn't matter. She knew what she had to do now, and she would just do it, and not worry about the outcome. If it worked, it worked. If not — “If not, I'll feel guilty forever, which I was going to do anyhow. So no big deal,” she panted.

She cruised down the hill to the library, slowing her pace so she wouldn't be too out of breath when she got there. The library was quiet this morning, thank god, she thought. What she was going to do was weird enough she didn't need an audience. She looked around. It wasn't quite true. She did need an audience, an audience of one, but she didn't see him there. “Shit, goddamn,” she said, catching her breath. Well, whatever. She'd already decided she was going to do it whether she saw him or not, and here she was, so she' d better get started. She sat on the steps, put her hands on her knees. In the absence of strangers to be seeming to tell the story to, she just launched in and told it to herself, out loud, in the hopes that Nathan would overhear and realise.

“Okay, with Nathan, it's like this,” she said. “When he first was sick, I didn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. He was a vegetarian! He never smoked — except for that one pack of Colts, those wine-tips, when he was in first year. But other than that, no, he hated that shit. So it didn't seem reasonable that he could be sick like that. I didn't even believe it when I saw him, like a skeleton in overalls. And he was smiling. It was unreal. Then he got better, and he and Rebecca seemed so happy and I just kind of put it out of my mind. And I only saw him a few times a year, but he always looked good to me, and he said he was fine, and I wanted to believe him and I believed him.

“Then a year went by and he got sick again. And I went home to see him, and he was so thin, with an IV port in his arm, but he pretended it was normal, and I didn't want to spook him, so I pretended too. And he seemed stressed out, but I, oh, it's not that I didn't notice, but I guess I didn't know what to do with it. And Mom and Dad were freaking
out and Rebecca was totally freaking out, and everyone was just so upset, that I got back on a plane and flew home to Halifax just as fast as I could. And then he went under the knife again and it was no good. It was no good, and everyone was crying on the phone, but Dad said he wasn't going to die and I should stay put, so I did.” She swallowed. It was not easy. But it was necessary. And she'd been taking the easy way out for some time now. It wasn't making her happy and it wasn't helping Nathan. She swallowed again. It felt absurd to be talking to no one, but absurdity was becoming commonplace to Leah.

“And you know what? I called all the time that fall, while he was ‘convalescing'. I called all the time, but I never spoke to him and I rarely asked how he was. I just didn't know the words, you know? I spend my time with all these words, but when it came to him, that fall, I didn't have a single one.”

Leah gulped, looked around wildly, still saw no one. She drew a deep breath, went back in.

“Christmas,” she said, staccato. “I went home and cried. I cried at the Santa's Village at the mall with Mom. I cried in church on Christmas Eve. I cried every time I looked at Dad, so finally I learned not to look at him. I dreaded the moment Nathan would arrive. When he did, he was a stick,” she said flatly. “He was a bony old man with big black eyes and giant loops of dirty hair that stuck up all over his head in tufts where the chemo had left it alone. He moved like a board and he talked to his girlfriend like they were both two years old and fighting over a toy in the sandbox. He went to the hospital every second day. Finally, they told him no food. Two days before Christmas. We went crazy. He didn't talk. I couldn't talk to him. He ate a shred of turkey and threw-up violently in the sink. I was there, but I didn't even hold his hand. Too stupid to know how to.”

Leah was crying by now, taking great heaving breaths, but she had to press on.

“February. I went home for Mom's birthday. ‘Doesn't Nathan look good?' I kept saying, ‘I think he looks really good' No one had the heart to tell me I was an idiot, that Nathan was on his way out a bit more every day. And though I noticed that all of us crowded into one corner to eat so that he wouldn't see us, though I noticed that as he sat, he clenched his fists and glared at his lap, I talked to him about
nothing. Or worse, I didn't talk to him at all.”

A figure emerged from behind Winston Churchill. It flickered in and out like a radio with bad reception.

“April,” she practically shouted. “He called to say he'd gone off his chemo for good. It's not helping he told me, and in fact, it's making me sicker. He told me how he might die, that basically his organs would fail. Should I come home, I said. I'm not going to die tomorrow he said, so stay where you are. He was so matter of fact about it. I didn't even ask him how he felt. Instead, we talked about my job.” She looked around, but couldn't see him anymore. She was almost there — she was almost done. At least she knew he'd heard some of it.

“May,” she said, sorrowfully. “He went into the hospital for tests, and instead he got pneumonia. They had to put him in a coma so they could stick tubes down his throat so he could breathe. I came home a day too late. One day earlier, his morphine dose was low enough he could still smile, respond, blink. By the time I got home he was deep inside. His feet were huge, greenish, swollen. His hands, too. He smelled weird. He was hooked up to machines, surrounded by nurses. I sat beside him for hours, holding his hand, the way I never did when he was — the way I never did before. I talked to him then, but not out loud, just in my head, as if he was already dead, as if he could read my mind. The nurses said he could hear me if I talked, but I couldn't talk. I could only think. Stupid thoughts.” She looked down at the ground, her voice barely above a whisper.

“He died in the night. They said Rebecca was with him, and she never said she wasn't, but I've always thought she got there a minute too late. I don't know why. We missed him by ten. His skin was still warm. When I saw the machines turned away, I thought for a moment he must be better. Oh good, I thought. And then quickly, no, not good. We'd been with him a few hours before, just us, me and Mom and Dad. And we were laughing and horsing around in his room, and he was breathing hard, trying to take over from the respirator machine, the way he did that week, whenever there was action in his room, whenever we were all there, talking and laughing and telling stories about him, the way we did. And we were thinking about spending the whole night with him, but then we thought maybe it would tire him out, stress him out to have us there. So we left. We said we'd see him
the next day and we left. And then he was gone. He died.”

Leah flung the tears from her eyes, drew a tremendous breath into her lungs and looked up. Nathan stood there.

“And it was awful,” Leah said slowly. “It was so awful, Nathan. And it still is, every day.”

His skin was warm and brown, his eyes were big and black and they looked at her kindly.

“But this is how it is,” she said quietly. “We have to try to be alright with it.”

He looked directly at her, he looked deep into her eyes for just a moment, her heart jumped in her chest at the sight of him, and then he put one hand up and faded away.

Leah sat for a while on the steps of the library. She'd never said all that out loud before. It felt, not good exactly, but necessary. And that would do for now. She got to her feet. The hip-hop kid was coming down the path.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said, “Do they still do free food here on Sunday afternoons?”

“I think so,” she said. “But not for a few hours yet. You okay?”