Notes from Ghost Town (10 page)

I clear my throat, knock lightly on the open door. She raises her long twig of a neck. “Olivia,” she calls—commands, more like, her voice deep, sharp as her nose. “How are you.” It’s not a question. “Come in. Come in. Sit down. Would you mind shutting the door behind you? I’d absolutely appreciate it.” She shuffles some files on her desk, moves a pen from behind her ear to a square penholder on her desk, which feels miles wide between us.

“I’m sorry I just showed up,” I start, throat swollen with a ferocious kind of anticipation. “But I called—”

“Yes. I know. Things have been absolutely crazy around here. I feel awful, Olivia, I really do; glad you came by.” She peers at the slim gold watch on her wrist. “We don’t have a lot of time—I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes. But we’ll make it work, yes?” She nods, answering her own question. “Yes.”

My thighs feel sticky against the leather chair even though it’s arctic-cold. My stomach is burning, a fire climbing up my torso and throat, out my mouth. “I wanted to ask you some questions about—”

“—about your mother. Yes.” She nods her head, vigorously, like she already knows exactly what I’m going to say. “About her upcoming hearing, I assume? You want to know how things will proceed? What’s going to happen next? Well, Olivia, I don’t want to get your hopes up. I’ll say that right off the bat.” The paintings on her wall seem to shake as she says it. I blink, wait for it to go away. “Are you thirsty? Would you like some water? I can buzz Jeanette.”

“No. I’m fine,” I say, louder than I intended.
Another early schizo-symptom: inability to control the volume of one’s voice
. I think I remember reading that on Wikipedia. “I don’t want any water. I just want to know if you’re—you’re completely sure.” I inhale deep. “Do you have any doubts at all? I mean—are you completely sure?”

Carol shifts in her chair, interlaces her fingers on top her desk. “I’m going to tell you again, Olivia, because holding on to false hope really isn’t serving you,” she says after a moment. “There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that your mother killed Lucas Stern. The circumstantial evidence was tremendous. She had the kid’s DNA under her fingernails, for one. But I am also quite certain that her
reasons
for doing so weren’t malicious. She was under duress, suffering a particularly potent schizophrenic episode—we have solid medical testimonial to back that up. We even have brain scans. That’s the silver lining we’re working with here.”

“But, then, why has she just been
sitting
there for ten months?”

“Ten months was the absolute soonest I could get the sentencing hearing, Olivia,” Carol says. “I know you know that. As it is, we’re lucky to have gotten a date less than a year after the arraignment.”

There’s a fire between my ears. A sharp, hot light. Suddenly, all I want to do is fight back. “Couldn’t his DNA have ended up on her after he was dead? If she just handled the body for some reason, by accident … and …” I pause, starting to lose steam, gripping at the chair’s studded edges.

She purses her lips. “That’s true, Olivia, and it certainly might have been
possible
that your mom didn’t do it—that she handled the boy’s body postmortem,” Carol Kohl says, in a voice too low and firm for her delicate songbird face, “except for one small thing.”

“What?”

“She confessed.”

I stare at her in disbelief, feeling all the blood drain from my face. I spent so much time distracting myself from the details of mom’s hearing and Stern’s death, drifting through a haze of pot smoke and drunken hook-ups, that this detail somehow escaped me. “Confessed?”

“She understood what she’d done. She understood that her sentence would be more forgiving if she took responsibility.”

“But doesn’t she deserve to stand up for herself, at least? She’s my
mom
; she must have some reason, some explanation?”

“I arranged for your mother to have two separate medical evaluations.
Both
determined that she was unfit for trial.” Carol frowns at me, pity thick in her eyes. “Our only hope here is to plead insanity. At least this way, she’ll be placed in a psychiatric facility, where she can be treated. Cared for.”

The room seems to swirl around me, like I’ve just closed my eyes after having too much to drink. “And that’s just that? That makes it over?”

“Yes,” she says, in a slightly gentler voice. “That makes it over.” She looks at her watch, frowns. “Four-fifteen,” she says. “Can I walk you out?”

I don’t let her. I walk alone down the long corridor of Carol’s office, feeling stupid, shrunken, and cold. How could I let my head—the stupid, ghost-inventions of my head—light a new flame of hope in me?

I hug myself hard as I move back to the elevator. Jeanette’s turned the other way, phone pressed to her ear, which means, thankfully, I don’t have to worry about speaking with her. I want to go home, huddle beneath my covers in the dark. There’s just no point anymore. Nothing to fight for. How did my mother become officially, legally insane? So insane she can’t even
appear
in a courtroom, before a judge and jury, and stand trial?

None of it makes sense. And yet, every step I take echoes the same stubborn conclusion:
She confessed
. And as I wait for the elevator, watching the floor numbers
ding as it rises to collect me, they, too, ding the same bleak truth:
you’re crazy, too
.

You’re crazy. You’re crazy
.

The doors whoosh open.

Ted Oakley steps out of the elevator.

He looks startled. “Olivia—so you
did
come to see Carol—I didn’t expect to see you.” He steps out and pats me quickly on the back, briefcase gripped hard in one hand like it’s full of something very heavy.

“Yeah.” I blink a few times. “She told me—”

He cuts me off. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m running late.” He glances at his wrist. “Stop by the house again soon!” He speeds down the hallway, and I take his place in the elevator, feeling weirdly off-kilter. I had forgotten Carol was Ted Oakley’s lawyer, too. But of course, he was the one who found Carol after Mom’s first lawyer punked mid-hearing.

I pass Ted’s sleek BMW in the parking lot and walk slowly to my eyesore junker, parked just feet away. I turn my key in the car door, opening it and sliding into the hell-hot seat. I turn the key in the ignition, blasting the radio so it obscures the whine of tree frogs. My throat still feels like there’s a rock lodged in it.

I flip through radio stations as I pull out of the parking lot; burn past the top-forty, alt rock, and then freeze when I hear it—
sun so hot, I froze to death, Susannah, don’t you cry
. Suddenly, Stern’s face is all I can see, his face across the dunes, those words off his tongue.

I can hear him … swear I can hear him, like he’s right here.

Oh! Susannah, don’t you cry for me, I come from Alabama with a banjo on my kneeee
. The funny Southern accent he’d do. I hear it. Like it’s right here. Like he’s singing right beside me.

Then I realize: he
is
singing right beside me.

I jump, and nearly swerve into the other lane. “Jesus! Stern … Jesus.” I straighten the wheel, focus on keeping the car on the road.

“‘I froze to death, Susannah, don’t you cry, don’t you cry for me.’” His hair is wilder than I’ve ever seen it.

“Stop singing. Just stop, please.” I punch the music off. “It’s over, Stern. Okay? My mother confessed. Miriam Tithe killed you. She’s a certifiable lunatic. It’s over.” I feel the cold radiating from his skin beside me.

“Listen, Liver,” he says, “ghosts don’t just appear for no reason, right?”

I glance quickly over at him—his eyes glow, so intense. It’s hard to look away. “You’re here because I conjured you. It’s called denial. Delusion.” My voice breaks a little and I clear my throat.

“You know that’s not true,” he says softly. “Even if that’s easier for you to believe right now. I’m here. I’m telling you the truth. Look at me, Liver.”

I tighten my hands on the wheel. He sighs. “You were always stubborn. Weren’t you?”

“I am
not
stubborn. I’m very open-minded. God—how
dare
you ghost your way into my life just as I’m starting to try and deal with all of this shit and then tell
me
I’m stubborn?”

He laughs. “Ghost my way in. That’s pretty funny.” He leans over and nudges me and I swerve a little.

“You’re gonna get me killed!” I press on the gas a little harder, focusing on the road ahead. Suddenly, I’m not sad anymore, just furious.

He’s still sitting there beside me in the car, humming the tune to “Oh! Susannah” under his breath. “Didn’t I recently
save your life
?”

I’d almost forgotten about the feeling of his arms around me—the strength of him hauling me out of the waves as I coughed up water. “Maybe you shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Careful what you wish for. Death is no picnic, Liver. At least I don’t think so. I think my point of comparison is fading pretty fast; hard to remember what life was even like….”

“Also not a picnic,” I respond. “Trust me.” It would be so easy: a quick swerve to the left. I’ve thought about it before. But something always stops me—some burning desire to live. I feel it pulse in me now, even as the other side—the Gray Space—creeps from the sidelines to tempt me.

We’re silent a few moments. Then Stern clears his throat. “Does the name Elvira Madigan mean anything to you?”

“Elvira Madigan?” I rub my forehead. A dull pain is blooming between my eyes. “No. Why?”

“I’m not sure.” His deep-dark eyes crinkle as he thinks. “The name just came back to me. One of those random memory-bursts. But it’s fuzzy. A lot of things are just fuzzy. It might be important.”

“Great. Another ‘important’ thing
I’ve
got to look into because you’re too fucking dead to do
anything
but show up and make me feel like I’m totally
insane
.” I thud my hand against the wheel. I haven’t realized until now how angry I am with him. I guess I’ve been angry at him for a long time—for leaving, for being the whole sucking center of this mess. It feels good to yell at him.

But when I look over, triumphant, he’s staring at me, eyes suddenly wide, afraid. His whole body is shaking, vibrating, vibrating so quickly.

“What’s—what’s happening?” Dread works its way through my chest. “I didn’t mean that. Stern, I’m sorry.” But it’s too late.

He’s gone.

Again.

“Stern,” I speak his name out loud, into the buzzing silence of the car. Nothing. Immediately, my anger is replaced with regret and shame. I almost hope he’ll come back, so he knows how badly I want to believe in him.

A
s soon as I come home, I plant myself in front of my MacBook. I can’t get Stern’s face out of my mind. I was terrible to him, angry and cruel.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I type
Elvira Madigan
into the search bar. Apparently she was a Danish circus performer who made a suicide pact with her boyfriend. A European director made a movie based on her life. What does a long-dead Danish circus performer have to do with my mom, or Stern’s murder?

Still—it
has
to mean something; my brain couldn’t have just
invented
the name. Could it?

I close out my fruitless search, and click my way to my news feed. Three friends from art school’s stories pop up immediately.

Roz Patel: is stoned, dude. Way stoned
. Typical.

Mimi Barker: David Lynch Night part deux with Sammy baby
. David Lynch Night part eighty would be more like it. Mimi Barker has nothing but David Lynch nights, as far as I know.

Rita Timmerman: Got accepted into senior independent studio with Mr. Moses!!!

I stare at the update for a long time. I would have been in that class this year—or so my teachers led me to believe, before everything went to shit. Independent studio—the competitive senior art class that accepts only twelve students yearly.

While I’m torturing myself, I might as well take it one step further and look through every inch of Stern’s old photo album—heart shriveling to the size of a walnut, breath high and tight in my throat the whole time.

My phone buzzes, persistent, in the pocket of my cutoffs:
Raina
. I hesitate. I want, badly, to talk to someone, to talk to my best girl friend in the world, but a part of me I can’t hammer out also resents her: for hanging out with her cool new swim team friends; for having a normal life; for being able to go to Stern’s unveiling.

But I pick up at the last second. I need a human voice. I need
her
. “Hi.” My voice comes out exhausted.

“Babygirl. What are you doing right now?”

“I’m at home.” I click off-line quickly, like she can see what I’m doing. “Where are you? It sounds really windy.”

“I’m on my way to Parker’s house. We’re partying tonight. Rich-kid style.”

“I’m actually in the middle of something, Rain—”

“Sorry, Liv. But it’s already done. You don’t even want to know what I had to do to get you on the guest list. So,
now you have to show. Get dressed for fancy town and get your skinny ass over here!”

“Guest list? What kind of party has a guest list? Raina?”

Silence. She’s hung up. I bang down my phone, frustrated, and it buzzes almost immediately with a text from Raina.

You
know
you need to get out of the house … I’ll meet you in front of P’s house in fifteen. Please don’t crap out tonight. Please. P.S. Hot trust-funders everywhere. For a limited time only
.

I sigh, staring for one more second at my now-blank computer screen. The Elvira Madigan search has turned up nothing of value anyway. I drag myself to my closet, dig my favorite dress out of the closet—dark, satiny blue that looks coal black to me now, a deep V-cut that shows just a little bit of cleavage. At the very least, a party will help take my mind off of Elvira Madigan. And art school. And Mom. And Stern.

“It’s open bar, so just take what you want when you want it,” Parker Rosen tells us, gesturing with a champagne flute. His other hand is seemingly molded to the lower back of some Playboy bunny wannabe in a silky bikini top and short skirt. Parker’s rich, tubby, and super pretentious. He likes to wear golfing-style polos and carry on conversations about tax cuts for the wealthy despite
the fact that he’s not even old enough to vote yet, nor has ever (to my knowledge) held a job.