Help for the Haunted(74)

Still, my father and I tried. In the evenings, we sat with Rose at the kitchen table—my mother’s chair with her book of wallpaper swatches on top nothing short of a ghost among us—pretending the meal tasted as good as one she would have made from her recipes. To his credit, my father worked hard at keeping the conversation alive. Most often, that meant asking me about school, since my sister had become difficult to talk to. One night, as she was cutting into her sauceless chicken breast, my father took a stab at it anyway. “Rose?” he said. And when she kept cutting, not answering, he tried again, “Rose?”

My sister looked up. “What can I do for you?”

“What can you—” He put down his fork, rubbed his temples. “You can make an effort at some conversation over dinner—that’s what you can do. Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?”

Rose slipped a piece of chicken between her lips and chewed. “I do, actually.”

“Okay, then. Go ahead.”

“Well,” she said with her mouth full. “I was just wondering when Mom is going to rise from the dead?”

“Rise from the— Rose, your mother is not dead. She’s ill.”

“If that’s the case, then maybe we should take her to a doctor. Or do we not believe in doctors anymore around here? Are we hoping that Jesus will magically—”

“For your information, we did take her to a doctor.”

“When?” I asked.

“The other day. You girls were at school. Dr. Zeller gave her a thorough exam.”

“And?” Rose and I both said.

“And he wasn’t sure what to make of her symptoms. The random waves of nausea. The extreme fatigue. All that and yet no fever whatsoever. Could be any number of things, he told us. But most likely a bacterial infection.”

“Now that sounds official,” Rose said. “Old Doc Z could be a regular on St. Elsewhere.”

“Saint what?” I asked.

“I’ve said it before, Sylvie; it might do you good to watch crap TV once in a while. Otherwise, you’ll end up not knowing anything about the real world, just like—”

“When do you watch that sort of TV?” my father asked.

“I don’t,” Rose told him. “I only wish I could. But you never know, St. Elsewhere might poison my pure mind and heart, and put me at risk of falling prey to—”

“Don’t,” my father said, raising his voice. “We talked about your behavior and that mouth of yours.”

We were all quiet then. I couldn’t help but think of the murky water I imagined in the basement. I pictured the house sinking, the kitchen slanting, the table and chairs sliding across the floor, dishes crashing, as that icy water rose up and swallowed us alive.

“So when will Mom be better?” I asked.

“Soon,” my father told me. “Very soon.”

Rose put down her knife, giving up on dinner. Under her breath, she muttered, “Should have handed the doll over to that waitress.”

“Waitress?” my father said.

“Never mind,” she told him.

“If you’re going to say something, follow through. Now what waitress?”

“She means the one from the truck stop,” I offered, in hopes of easing the tension between them. “That place near Harrisburg.”

My father squinted, remembering. “But we didn’t eat there. So how did you girls come to talk to any waitress?”

“She was in the bathroom. And she recognized you and Mom from TV,” I said.

This bit of news caused my father to sit up straighter. “Oh, she did, did she?”

“You’d think the lady had never laid eyes on a doll before,” Rose said.

“Or at least not one in a bathroom in the middle of the night,” I added. “Not to mention the fingerprints on its neck and the bracelet around its—”

“Did your mother put Penny down?” Our father was sitting up straight still, paying careful attention. “And this waitress—did she notice those details about the doll?”

“Yes and yes,” I answered.

“She couldn’t get enough of the thing,” Rose told him. “That’s why we should have given it to her. If you ask me, it’s got some weird germs that are making Mom sick. Didn’t you tell us it belonged to some kid with a disease who died?”

“I did. But it’s not Penny’s germs that are infecting your mother.”

“Well, what is it then?”

My father pushed back his chair and stood from the table without taking his plate to the sink. It was Rose’s turn to clear and wash the dishes. If it had been mine, he would have helped, but he never bothered when it came to her. “All this talk made me realize there’s a project I need to work on,” he told us, before pulling the basement door open and descending the stairs.

The next afternoon, I stepped off the bus and walked down the lane only to hear Rose and my father shouting inside the house. At first, I figured it was more of their usual bickering. As I got closer, though, I began to make out words, more barbed and menacing than I’d heard them use before.

“I warned you in Florida! I told you that was strike one! Now it’s strike two! One more, Rose, and I promise you’ll be out!”