Virginia Blare didn’t come back to the Sleep Center for her analysis until the end of last week. I didn’t know what took so long for her to come back, but it apparently involved having tubes down her throat and claw marks down her face, at least according to Rex. Just before Rex left for the weekend and the two of us were watching her get checked in with Marcel, I pointed out to him that Virginia didn’t have any claw marks on her face. Rex said that’s what proves their were claw marks, since the hospital wouldn’t let her come until her self-mutilation had healed.
About a half hour after Virginia was in the private room, Marcel came and found me. He told me Virginia refused to even try to fall asleep unless I went into the room with her and stayed a while. I told Marcel that Rex didn’t clean the bathrooms all day, so I was going to have to spend time on that. Marcel told me that this took precedence, even after I told him that she believed in ghosts. “I believe in ghosts,” Marcel told me. He told me a story about how he spent some time on an oil rig, and how all the workers knew about the ghost that haunted the outer deck, a man who was once killed by an explosion. “So one night I was on duty and looked up, and there was this man with burned clothing standing in front of me. He told me I needed to get out of there, that there was going to be an explosion. So I ran down to the sleeping quarters and woke some guys up, and told them there was going to be an explosion. Once they figured out the ghost had told me, they realized nothing was going to happen. Don’t get me wrong—they knew the ghost was real. It just so happens that the ghost always cries wolf about explosions. Apparently that’s what happens to you when you get blown up in an explosion that no one warned you about: your ghost just warns everyone in sight about explosions. Eventually, he’ll be right.” I told Marcel that maybe that’s what caused the explosion in the Gulf Coast—the ghost kept warning people every night, so they didn’t pay any attention when he warned them right before an actual explosion. And Marcel said, “Maybe Cyrus. After all, I saw him in the gulf.” My god, it’s a good thing you’re so handsome, Marcel.
When I went into Virginia Blare’s private room she was lying on the bed with her eyes open. She asked me to sit down and tell her about the ghosts that I see. I told her ghosts aren’t real, but she said the reason she wanted me in the room with her was that I clearly see ghosts. I said, “No offense, but you just came from a mental institution, and possibly just had some tubes removed.” She laughed at that, but since she was in a track suit again, her laughter didn’t come off well. It was like the kind of laugh a friend’s great-aunt would make when she was coming on to you. She was convinced I saw ghosts, and I tried to convince her that ghosts aren’t something to see. “You know why I can’t sleep?" she said. "It’s not because I see ghosts. It’s because I can’t see ghosts. My husband used to come see me. Now he doesn’t. I told them at the hospital I can’t sleep, that I’m going crazy because I’m not seeing things. Did you know when you don’t sleep you hallucinate? So I stopped seeing ghosts and started hallucinating.” I told her I once had a friend named Hank who couldn’t sleep, and he died. And maybe she’d die and then she could find out once and for all if there were ghosts. Though I suppose if there aren’t ghosts she’ll never know because then she’s dead and gone. So even if I dug her up and shouted into her rotting bones, “See? I was right!” she’ll never get proved wrong. That's just the way things go sometimes.
Virginia Blare said that I probably lived in an old house that once belonged to someone else in the family. She said it was probably that relative that I was seeing all the time. She was really insistent on this, and I told her that I lived in my mother’s old house. “You’re so unhappy,” she said, “I bet she was mean to you.”
Once, in high school, I was invited to a party by some of the popular kids. Boyce and Sammy weren’t invited, and they told me to watch out, that maybe it was a trap, like the time when I brought my swim trunks to what turned out to be a hazardous material recycling day at the landfill. I didn’t listen, so I went to the back room of this café where there was a meeting for a young communists group. Turns out there was no party except the Party. I actually stayed for the meeting, and after about a half hour the whole philosophy started to make sense to me. Maybe it was because people were willing to make eye contact with me, or didn’t exclude me from a circle made of folding chairs, but everything started to fit together. Once I left the meeting and met up with Sammy and Boyce at a Dairy Queen, the whole communist idea fell apart. But while I was there, it kind of made sense. I couldn’t help it. And even though I don’t believe in ghosts, when Virginia Blare told me that, I felt like I was in that meeting with friendly communists again.
Virginia told me that I “shined” like there was a mean ghost around me, and if I couldn’t see it, it sure could see me. I told her maybe I wasn’t unhappy because there was a mean ghost, but because a nice ghost wouldn’t visit me instead. That I was unhappy because this was a world where there was more motivation for mean ghosts to bother me than kind ghosts to console me. She thought about that for a second, but then got really mad and said, “Who are you, Jesus H. Christ? I told you. It’s a mean ghost. Now hold still so I can sleep.”
Virginia Blare said having me in the room was the next best thing to her husband visiting me. She went right to sleep. Marcel came in and told me thanks, and then gave me some advice. He said for what it’s worth, maybe if my mother was haunting me I should just move. And if I wanted a nice ghost, I should go where nice ghosts live. I tried to explain to him that ghosts don’t exist, since now that Virginia Blare was asleep I remembered it was a silly thing to believe.
I had the rest of the weekend off, and I did a lot of sitting around the house being very quiet. I’d be lying if I wasn’t listening for my mother on some level. I tried to concentrate to see if I could hear her voice, and then started walking a certain direction with my eyes closed to see if she would lead me. I forgot I left the basement door open and walked right down them, crumbling down the steps more than falling down them. At the bottom of the steps, clutching my knee, I realized that if my mother were leading me, she would have led me down steps with my eyes closed, so the entire test was inconclusive. Still, I couldn’t help staying very quiet. And I tried to hear so many voices, but in the end all I could hear were bird songs, and those were always going around my head.
At first I was angry I had paid attention to what Virginia Blare had said. Then I got more calm about it all. After all—no one could prove ghosts didn’t exist. Rachel used to say that she knows her mother loves her, but she couldn’t prove it. That example was lost on me, but it made me think that maybe it was the same kind of thing with ghosts. Then on Sunday night I got a phone call from Rex. Feeling vulnerable, I nearly confessed to Rex everything that happened to me that weekend. I began with, “Rex, I know we’ve had differences, but I want to say—” But he said, “Shut up, stupid, and let me talk.” Then he told me that Virginia Blare had hanged herself with bed sheets in her hospital room that afternoon. Then he said, "Burn!" but I wasn't sure what he was referring to. Did he know I wavered in my beliefs because of her? Or was he making a theological claim that Virginia was now in a supernatural furnace with Hitler and Sisyphus? Or did he simply put his hand on something hot? Hard to say, because he hung up right after.
When I told Sammy and Boyce all this they both pointed out that Virginia Blare’s suicide and the truthfulness of her story about a ghost are unrelated to each other. Maybe. But I bet if she had given me financial advice instead of talking about the supernatural, they wouldn’t want me to make any investments for a while.
But then I thought about what Marcel had said. And even though I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m pretty sure he solved all my problems. And I said as much to Sammy and Boyce—that everything was fixed—that I wasn't going to have to worry about being left behind anymore.
