I'll be Damned, Here Comes Your Ghost Again

Another big birthday approaching with dread. As usual these days, she was driving on the highway for week of meetings with a client. And, thankfully, a favorite song came on the radio.

Alone this time, she began absentmindedly singing along.  At some point she heard herself encounter an unpredictable note, and tackle it sweetly. It could have easily gone either way, a bite of charcoal or chocolate. Even she was impressed.

Her destination was a hotel.  These days, she’d have the fanciest suites all to herself, her preferred chain because it offered you cookies and points.  The corporation was good to its traveling consultants.  It was Sunday afternoon and tomorrow, she’d begin work at a new client.  Her business suits slept inside her suitcase like armor.  The internet was either a series of billions of countries, or one giant nation, she couldn’t figure out which.  Regardless, she was a mercenary, going to war for whichever king was richest. She imagined herself a well-educated servant, who knew enough to get herself into castles on a regular basis.

At this moment of her life, she was unremarkable.  Looking into the rearview mirror a few minutes earlier, she saw an older woman who rarely smiled, a woman set to intimidate her peers.  How did she grow into this hard woman who gave withering glances across the boardroom? Now when she attempted flirting glances with herself, it was not only her mouth singing. Her eyes belonged to someone who was clever at a party, a woman you’d want to get to know.

Suddenly struck with dejavu, she spotted a familiar sign. 2 miles to the highway leading to His House.   She had last spoken to Him a year, (or maybe two?) ago.  Near New Years.  He was still on her speed dial.  

She heard his voice as she was approaching the familiar hill, she could continue or divert for him.

“Um, yeah, sure,come over.  Come over,” he coughed.

He sounded not quite enthused.  She diverted, a quick decision which took very little thought at all. Even if he was cold to her, like their last conversation, then she would make excuses for a quick escape.  She decided to pick up ice cream to soften him up. After all, he was a very old man by now. And she didn't want their last conversation to be a bad memory. She refused the possibility of regret for a 10 mile detour.

==

So this is it, she thought.  This is where all that glory gets you.  His once immaculate farmhouse was disheveled, like it had been out all night drinking.  She had to clear a spot on the couch so her pants could make contact with cushion rather than paper.

He seemed even skinnier than usual.  And surprisingly frail, somehow, but it could have been effects of some medication he was on.  Something that made him look, well, drunk.  Like before his AA days.  

He smiled at the ice cream and put it away without serving it.  Instantly, she knew something was seriously wrong.  

“Last I saw in the papers, you were touring with The Group again,”

“Yeah, that was maybe 3 years ago now.  Funny Man went blind you know, and the Chief's diabetes has really taken a turn for the worse."  

“No, I didn’t know!  Wow, that’s too bad.  And what’s wrong with you?"

He was quiet for so long that she began to think she had only imagined asking the question out loud.

“I’m sick.   There’s something wrong with me.” At last, with a certain vagueness that seems to be typical of the senile.  Except he wasn’t senile.  She probed.  Tried to pin him down.  He tried to be slippery.  She got sick of the game quickly and tried to make him get to the point.

“But you ARE dying?”

The words hung there, his sunken eyes avoiding hers.  He tried to play innocent, to change the subject.  She felt bad but kept chasing him down.

“Have you been to a doctor?

“They can’t help. They can’t give me a new body"

“Are you in pain?

“Only ever since the day I was born,"

“Do you have anyone who comes to check on you?"

“I had a cleaning lady coming in 3 times a week, but I forget to pay her so she stopped coming."

Over the next hour or two, a flood of half truths and lies came out, as well as the ice cream from the freezer.He did what he could to put up a fight for his dignity. From the looks of it, he had been preparing to die completely by himself. Only his face betrayed the annoyance at being caught at something which now seemed so self indulgent.

Soon he showed signs of fatigue and she helped him into bed. Pulling over a chair to stay talking to him, she soon heard him only responding in snores. She threw a blanket over her legs to stop the chill and to avoid having to make her goodbyes so quickly.

She was startled awake later that night, hearing keys in the lock.  The “cleaning lady” turned out to be an Unlicensed Visiting Nurse, who had even been coming in on her days off to make sure he was okay, according to her version.  But she was busy, with 4 kids of her own, plus 7 grandbabies that  . . .

She emptied out her wallet to this woman, suspecting he had intentionally lost his checkbook.  Or had stopped paying.  It flashed through her mind that she might be encouraging women like her to come back and seek out more money from big hearted fans like her. But somehow the Farmhouse didn't seem to be an obvious place of opportunism.

The cleaning lady seemed to nod and smile, understanding that this was a one time only occasion of generosity. Even asking to be repaid for groceries past and future. The wallet was empty and even after her own well had run dry, she wanted to give more, if only to keep away the temptation to steal the real valuables. She gave a glance in the direction of the Gold Record in the hallway, but it wasn't where she could see it.

She wouldn't know what to do with it anyways. Anything else of value around? No. . . My god, has he really pawned everything?

She ushered the stranger out the door and did what she could to clean. He lay silently in the former dining room, beeping like the warning sounds of a truck backing up very slowly.

The cleaning lady never came back. And nobody else did either.

Diamonds & Rust by Joan Baez