Winter Loon(33)

“Bull and Thomas hide girlie magazines in here,” Jolene said. “Don’t touch the pink stuff. There’s glass in it and it’ll make your hand itch.”

We crawled over the baseboard and into the darkness. The click and light came at once. Jolene held a flashlight up to her chin, which exposed the beams and roofing nails and cotton candy insulation. Her nostrils were lit like a torch.

“You scared?”

“No,” I said, trying to sound convincing. My clammy palm landed on an open page of a dog-eared magazine. I peeled it away, leaving a moist print on a naked boob. The woman in the picture, bone thin with dark hair and long bangs, reminded me so much of my mother, I had to take another look. She would sometimes come home late at night and strip down to her underwear about the second she walked through the door, like she’d rolled in something awful and had to get the whole works into the wash. Then she’d slip into a flimsy T-shirt and hug me close to her, the way a kid might hug a teddy bear.

Jolene slapped the magazine closed. “Would you forget about that, please? Here,” she said, handing me the flashlight. “Hold this.”

I tried to imagine what she might have for me. I knew what Kathryn would do in that darkness and will admit to wanting it from Jolene—to see her ribs and navel, her breasts that were smaller than Kathryn’s. I wanted her hands on me, linked around my neck, gripping me. But I also wanted out of there, to be in the open, no walls, and no more darkness. I thought about Mona downstairs in the kitchen, the little kids running around, clueless to what might go down in the closet above them. I thought of saying to Jolene, You know, we don’t have to do anything. We can hold hands or drive around or talk or something. I held the flashlight and my breath still. She dragged a box along the floor, removed the lid, and lifted out a wooden board and a small pegged paddle.

“It’s a Ouija board. You can use it to talk to dead people. I found it in the neighbor’s trash and brought it here. I know it’s silly. I mean, spirits don’t live in a game board, but I think we should try anyhow,” Jolene said. “I can’t do it myself. You need two people.” She hesitated and knotted her lips. “I think we should try to talk to our moms.”

“What, like a séance?” I asked. I was glad to be sitting, since the whole of me grew weak and limp. I’d seen what happens to the dead. I easily conjured my ghostly mother, watered down and fed upon, dog-paddling to the surface in the stifling closet air, and Jolene’s, too, drugged and dangling from the darkness overhead, her feet grazing our backs. And because I’d never seen even a photograph of her, I could only picture Jolene there, her face blank, neck broken. I shook my head, too quickly I imagine. I tried to sum up all my feelings, my regret for crawling in there in the first place, my wish for something from Jolene I couldn’t name, my fear that you can’t open up a portal to the dead without getting more than you bargained for.



WE SETTLED OURSELVES CROSS-LEGGED, FLASHLIGHT propped against a hunk of insulation so that a beam of light lit the board between us and little else. The wooden paddle—called a planchette, Jolene told me—was oblong, almost heart shaped, with a round hole at the tip. The words “Mystifying Oracle” were painted on it in the black lettering of a snake-oil salesman. “Put your fingers on it, lightly, like this,” Jolene said. I obeyed. The board itself had the alphabet in two rows of letters in arcs. The words “Yes” and “No” were in opposite corners, and the word “Goodbye” was at the bottom, as if all that was left unsaid could be answered that way. “So I think we should just ask questions. You want to start?”

“Jolene, I—”

“I’ll go. It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not—”

“Shhh. It’s okay.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, like she was channeling some mystic in a movie. “Is there a ghost in this closet?” Jolene asked in a spooky, melodic voice. Nothing happened.

“I said, is there a ghost here?”

The paddle glided across the board, our fingers along for the ride.

Yes, the board said.

“Are you Wes’s mom? What’s your mom’s name again?”

I barely wanted to say it. “Valerie.”

The paddle swung around and landed right back where it started. Jolene looked at me and flared her eyes and clenched her teeth so the tendons in her neck stuck out. A lump lodged in my throat.

“Valerie, is my mom with you? Is Trudy with you?” Another yes from the wooden board.

“They’re both here . . .” Jolene whispered.

“I don’t think I like this.”

“Go on. Ask.”

Where would I start? Are you still cold? Are you in heaven? Why did you leave me? Where is my father? Is he dead with you? Were you trying to break the ice? Did you try to pull me in with you? And Gip and that knife under your bed? I was frozen. I pulled my fingers from the planchette like it was smoldering coal.

“Don’t, Wes.” Jolene’s voice was quiet and pleading. “Don’t break it.”

I let my eyes rest on hers as my fingers touched back down. She blinked hard, then asked the ghost her question. “Why did you do it?”

I wanted to come up with a short answer, one that I could guide the paddle toward, that would give this girl the peace she wanted. I couldn’t think of a thing. The planchette didn’t move. She repeated the question, and when there was still no answer, she shouted it. I had to counter the pressure she put on the paddle with pressure of my own, like the teeter-totter in the park. I did not want her to fly off, to crash down. “Do you hate me? Is that why?” Jolene’s voice was quiet again, and I could feel the tension rest on my fingertips as they glided along the board to the corner. No.