Ghosts and Other Lovers Read online

  My sister Jean is three years older than me. As children we shared a room and had the same bedtime. I can remember her complaints about being treated like a baby — like me — and put to bed while it was still light. A docile child myself, I would sleep whenever I was told, but Jean, grumbling and protesting, kept me awake as long as she could, for company. She talked to me, and she told me stories. She loved making up stories; she loved things that had not happened. She pulled me along to explore the land of What-if: what if we moved to a different house, or what if we came home from school one day and there was no one here? What if all the grown-ups disappeared? What if people came from another planet and took us away in their flying saucer? When I was very young, it’s true, she confused me with her questions and her stories, so that sometimes I lost track of what was real and what only imagined. She made me want a life that didn’t exist; she made me cry for the loss of things I’d never known.

  One summer night when I was five and Jean was eight, as I remember, she was particularly restless. Outside, it was still as light as day, a fact the thin curtains drawn across the windows couldn’t disguise. I lay there in my little bed, twin to hers, patiently waiting for Jean to begin one of her stories, when all at once my sister sat bolt upright.

  “It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s not time for bed; it’s not. Everybody else is still out. I’ll bet you the Kellermans are still playing Fox-and-Hounds. Let’s go out.”

  “We’re in our pajamas,” I said.

  “So? In China people wear their pajamas all the time; that’s the only kind of clothes they have. Anyway, you’ve been out in your pajamas before.”

  “They won’t let us.”

  “They won’t know,” she said. “We’re going to escape.” She suddenly leaped up and onto my bed. I squealed, pulling in my legs to protect my stomach, but Jean had no intention of tickling me. She’d only come onto my bed to open the window. I watched, thrilled and baffled. Warm air and the scent of freshly cut grass slipped into the room.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I told you. Escape. I’m going exploring. Do you want to come, or are you going to stay here like a baby and sleep?”

  Jean and I lived with our parents in a three-bedroom, one-story house in Beverly Oaks, a suburban subdivision of Houston. It was a desirable, middle-class neighborhood, which had been built soon after the war. The houses — all single-family dwellings! — had attached two-car garages and well-kept lawns and gardens. I had lived there all my life, apart from three days in a downtown hospital when I was born. I knew nothing else. But Jean had spent her first two and a half years in a mysterious place called “the country” on the farm where our grandmother had lived. Grandmother had died, and the farm had been sold, before I was born. I envied Jean that other life I could never know, and I believed she explored the tame suburban streets around us in search of some secret way back to the country. I thought she might find it, too, and I wanted to be with her when she did.

  Perched on the windowsill, Jean looked at me, still snug in my bed. She said, “Maybe you’d better not come. It could be dangerous. If somebody saw us — if you weren’t careful enough — if you didn’t run fast enough—”

  I sat up. “I will!”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, please!” I said. My sleepiness, my fears, my doubts were forgotten; all in the world I wanted was to follow my big sister. Whatever she wanted, I wanted, too.

  “You’ll have to do exactly what I say.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “All right, then. Come on. And keep quiet.”

  Out the window and onto the grass, cool on my bare feet. Jean gripped my shoulder and her voice buzzed in my ear: “Through the Mishners’. If they see us, act normal. Don’t rush, but don’t stop. Just wave at them and keep on walking.”

  The Mishners didn’t have a fence, so walking through their back yard was the quickest way to get to the alley: it was a shortcut we often took, but with the risk of being captured, for they were an elderly couple always on the lookout for someone, anyone, to interrupt their boredom.

  But that evening, fortunately, they were not in sight, and we passed through in safety.

  I watched Jean admiringly as I struggled to keep up with her. She was the great explorer, alert to everything, sniffing the air and looking around at familiar fences, gardens, and backs of houses we passed.

  When we emerged from the alley onto Warburton Drive, Jean turned left without hesitation. This way would lead us to the bigger houses, the more expensive part of the subdivision. There were a couple of houses over there with swimming pools, and one was known as “the house with the bomb shelter.” Jean had told me stories, too, and I remembered one about a fabulous playhouse, full of wonderful toys, built by a wealthy couple for grandchildren who visited them only once a year. If we could find it, we could play there undisturbed.

  I grabbed Jean’s arm. “Are we going to look for the playhouse?”

  “What playhouse? What are you talking about? Don’t you know where we are?”

  Her tone of voice informed me that we were in the middle of an adventure. I shook my head meekly. “I forgot.”

  “We’re in China. We’ve just crossed the Gobi Desert. Everyone else on the expedition died — we’re the only survivors. Now we’re looking for the Forbidden City. No Westerners have ever been allowed to enter it and live, so we shall be the first — unless they catch us—”

  At that moment, rounding a bend in the road, three boys on bicycles came into view.

  “The Royal Guards!” said Jean. “If they see us, we’re dead! We have to split up — you go that way — meet me at the river later if you manage to lose them!”

  She was off. I felt panic at being left alone and would have disobeyed her orders and followed, but she could run so much faster than me that she was already out of sight. Meanwhile, the enemy was gaining on me. I turned and ran toward the nearest house, ducking behind a bush for shelter. My heart thudded painfully as I watched the boys cycle past — for a moment I had forgotten that they were only children and believed they would kill me, as Jean had said. When they had gone, I emerged. Now what?

  Meet me at the river, she had said, but where was the river? Like the rest of the territory, rivers were defined according to a map that only Jean could read. A river might be a swift rush of water in the gutter (but the day was dry), or a dip in a lawn, or even a street we would have to pretend to swim across. I decided to start walking in the direction I had seen Jean run and hope that she would come back and find me.

  I traveled as Jean would have wanted, as if she were watching me, moving cautiously to avoid being seen, ducking behind bushes and cars, favoring alleys over streets. Gradually I left the familiar landscape behind. The houses were bigger here; the trees shading them were older and larger than those on my street. Golden lights shone from windows. The air was blue with the deepening dusk, and I began to feel afraid. I kept walking, because I didn’t know what else to do, but I wondered if every step was taking me farther from Jean and safety and home.

  Then I came to a high, brick wall. This was unusual. In my neighborhood there were plenty of wooden and chain-link fences, but I had never seen such a high, brick wall. Jean would have wanted to know what was hidden behind it; she would have climbed over it, I thought.

  My heart beat harder. Was Jean nearby? Had she been here before me? Was she already on the other side?

  I called her name, but the redbrick surface before me seemed to swallow the sound of my voice, and I knew she wouldn’t hear. I flung myself at the wall then, fingers scrabbling at the rough surface. But there was nothing to hold, and so I kept falling back. I jumped straight up, but that was worse than useless. The wall was much too high. I didn’t think even my father could have seen over the top of it. And yet, somehow, I had become convinced that Jean was on the other side of the wall. I probably had to believe that because the idea that I might be lost in a strange place at night without m
y sister was far too frightening.

  “Jean,” I said, whispering, since I knew shouting wouldn’t be any better, and I began to walk beside the wall, trailing my fingers along the rough surface. At the end of the alley the wall curved away and I followed it across the grass, right up to the side of an imposing, two-story, redbrick house. I ran past the front of the house to the other side, and there was the wall again.

  And there, in the wall, a door.

  The door was very small, made of wood, painted a glossy black. It was an absurdly small door, but at the time the unlikeliness of it did not strike me. The door was smaller even than I was: almost doll-sized rather than child-sized. I crouched down and — there was no handle — pushed it open. It swung slowly inward.

  All I could see at first was green grass, the trunks of a few trees, and a flowering bush. I moved forward, on hands and knees, determined to see more. I was a small child, but the doorway was very narrow, and it seemed for a moment that I might stick halfway. But, stubbornly determined, I put my head down and pushed, scraping my shoulders and wriggling my hips, determined and indifferent to discomfort.

  And then I was through. I was in the garden, and I had done it all by myself! Wouldn’t Jean be proud of me when she knew!

  I had to find her. She must be here. Maybe she had found a playhouse or some other wonderful treasure that the high wall had been built to conceal. I ran across the velvety lawn, between spreading oaks and glossy-leaved magnolias, aware of the big house which dominated the garden, although I did not look at it directly. I felt giddy with excitement. I felt as if I was in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek, but I couldn’t remember if I were hider or seeker. Years later, trying to remember details, I couldn’t recall anything specific that I might not have seen in a dozen other gardens. Just grass and trees and leaves and flowers, greens and darker greens glowing slightly in the twilight. And yet the air, warm on my bare skin, was charged with significance. The lengthening shadows promised mysteries within. The evening held its breath: something was about to happen.

  She saw me first. She saw a child with tangled brown hair and dirty feet, wearing pink pajamas and running in wide circles on the velvety lawn, through the gathering dusk.

  The child felt her unexpected presence and froze, like a wild animal, and turned her head, and stared.

  There were two of them, a man and a woman. They were standing very close to each other, but not touching. Not yet. He was looking at her. She was looking at me.

  We stared at each other as if we knew each other, and yet as if we had never seen each other before. There was something about her that was like my mother — like my mother disguised as someone else. I knew her and yet I didn’t. I waited for her to say my name and tell me who she was.

  But instead of moving toward me, she half turned to look at the man beside her, and she reached for his hand. Then they were gazing into each other’s eyes, a unit which excluded me, and I was suddenly terrified.

  *

  I suppose I ran away then. I don’t remember what happened next, or how I got home. I must have told Jean about my adventure because we spent the rest of that summer searching in vain for a high brick wall and the garden behind it. We never found it. Jean lost patience, or belief. Her interests led her in other directions. But even though I stopped talking about it, I never forgot. I was sure I would find the walled garden again someday.

  I was thirteen, I think, when Jean — who was in high school by then, and dating boys — bought a hair-coloring kit and streaked my hair blonde. I can’t remember exactly why: whether I had wheedled, or she had decided it was time her little sister emerged from the cocoon of childhood into a brightly colored adolescence. At any rate, it brought us together. We were happily intimate, perched on stools in the tiny, warm, brightly lit room, inhaling the acrid fumes from my hair while Jean worked with her pencils and brushes and pots and sticks of makeup to redefine my face. We weren’t using the mirror that covered the whole wall behind the sink; instead, we gazed solemnly and intently into each other’s faces. Every now and then Jean would draw back to look at the effects of her work, and my heart would lift when she nodded with satisfaction. I imagined that she was going to make me over in her own image. At last, I was going to be like Jean — I would be grown up!

  When she was done, Jean took hold of my shoulders and turned me toward the mirror.

  “There,” she said. “The girl becomes a woman. What do you think?”

  The face in the mirror did look like a woman’s, and I knew I’d seen that woman before. I stared at eyes larger and more blue, higher cheekbones, a narrower nose, a complexion without freckles, and saw a familiar stranger. I remembered the woman in the garden, and suddenly, finally, I understood. I knew. That woman, of course, was me.

  Was the garden real? That wasn’t the question. The garden would be real. I had been privileged to see it, to glimpse my own future, to see myself standing with the man I would love.

  I was, of course, very interested in love at that age. I longed for it, for that knowledge that would make me adult. I imagined true love striking once and lasting forever, leading to marriage and eternal bliss. The boys I knew were impossible; as for the men I did desire — actors and pop stars — impossible to imagine them wanting me. All I could do was hope that when I grew up it would be different. And now I knew it would be. I had seen the man I was going to love, the man who would love me. It was going to happen. I only had to wait.

  The memory of the man in the garden, and the hope he represented, kept me going through the next few, dreadful years. The agonies of high school and dating — or not dating. The miseries of being unchosen. I wasn’t popular like my big sister. I wasn’t clever, or talented at anything in particular, and although boys did occasionally ask me out, I never had anyone in love with me; I never had a particular, devoted boyfriend the way Jean, so effortlessly, always did.

  But I would have my man in the garden, someday. I was alone now, but it wouldn’t always be so. I had seen the future. That made me special. That kept me going.

  *

  I met Paul in my first year of college. He was a boy in one of my classes, whom I noticed from the first day. Something about him attracted me, and when I made an excuse to talk to him afterward, about the lecture, he seemed nice: serious and a little shy. Then one day, perhaps two weeks into the semester, I was walking across the quad on my way to the library when I quite unexpectedly caught sight of him. He was standing on the grass talking to someone I didn’t know. I saw Paul for the first time at a distance, in three-quarters profile. And the way he looked — tall and fair — and the way he stood, bending his neck, stooping slightly to look at the girl beside him, went straight to my heart; a stab of recognition indistinguishable from desire. I knew him. I had always known him. I wanted him.

  We were soon dating, and after a few weeks we became lovers. When we spent our first night together I told Paul that he was the man in the garden. He was enchanted. I suppose it made him feel special, maybe for the first time. And he believed me. I became his fantasy as he was mine, and he fell utterly in love with me.

  It was first love for both of us, and I don’t think that either of us doubted for an instant of those first two months that our love would last forever. Even so, the prospect of Christmas break was devastating. We were still too young — and poor — to consider there might be alternatives to spending the vacation apart, with our parents, at opposite ends of the country. But after seeing each other every day and spending every night together, the prospect of a whole month apart was bleak and rather frightening. I could hardly remember what I had done, what I had thought about before I met Paul. I told him I would write to him every day. He promised to phone as often as he could.

  Although I expected to miss Paul unbearably, I couldn’t help being excited about going home again. I had missed my parents, and Jean, and I wanted to trade experiences with my old school friends. Above all, I longed to talk to Jean about Paul. I wondered w
hat she would say. At last I had a boyfriend, the way she had for so many years. It made me feel that I had done the impossible and caught up to her: we were equals at last. But I needed her acknowledgment before I could entirely believe it.

  Jean’s boyfriend for the past two years had been a law student named Bill, and because Jean was now in her last year of college I more than half expected her to announce their engagement that Christmas. Instead, when I asked about Bill, she told me she was no longer seeing him. She was brisk: it was over, he was forgotten. She didn’t want my pity, which was a relief. She was my grown-up big sister, who knew so much more than I did, and if she had wanted my comfort I wouldn’t have known how to give it. Or maybe that’s an excuse for selfishness. I was too full of my new discovery to spare a thought for anything else. I didn’t want to talk about Jean’s life; I wanted to tell her about Paul.

  She was interested and seemed happy for me. She was such a sympathetic, understanding listener that I told her more than I had intended. I told her why I knew this was true love, once and forever. I explained how I had recognized Paul as the man I was meant to be with.

  At first, she didn’t remember our long-ago search for the walled garden, but I persisted with details until I saw it connect, saw the flare of memory in her eyes.

  She said: “But that wasn’t real — not a real wall, not a real garden—”

  I shook my head. “Not real in the usual sense. It wasn’t just another house in the neighborhood — it wasn’t something we could find and see and visit — not then. But it was — or will be — a real place. What I saw was in the future; somehow or other I traveled in time and glimpsed my own future when I was a kid. Maybe it was a dream, but it was real.”

  Jean had a very odd look on her face. I didn’t know what it meant, but it made me uneasy. And she kept shaking her head. “It wasn’t a dream. And it certainly wasn’t real.”

  “What do you mean? I’m not making this up.”

  “No, I know you’re not.”