The Ghost House
I
It was Monday and my wife wasyelling and the kids were in the car in the driveway. She called me a faggot and slammed the front door on my toe. The big one. The toenail ripped back and blood flowed on to the door rug.The rug had fishes on it. It was her mother’s. I let it run on to the rug. I watched her walk to the car with that skinny ass. She slammed the door and yelled at the kids and then drove off to Ben. Ben is rich and good lookingand has a big one. She told me, and then she called me a faggot. Last year after the kids had beenswimming in the pool and I had been drinking beer then rum andCoke I walked up to our bedroom. My wife was asleep in the guest house and the kids were in the pool. I looked through her dresses in her closetand took out my favorite. I took the clip-ons from the box beneath on my side of the bed and fixed my self up. I looked at myself in the long mirror like usual and my legs looked good that day. Just when I was getting to the lipstick she walked in.
“What the hell Harry?”
I sat the lipstick on the dresser and sat down. That is when she started with the faggot talk and when she started doing Ben. I am not a faggot, nor am I too fond of women. I like to dress like them. I like the way my legs look and I like the way my package looks in a good thong and I don’t mind the string in theback.
I stood there. My heart pumping blood out of my toe and the fishes were red and Ben was probably making dinner for my kids.
II
3days later
I awoke with a serious headache. I was missing an earring, and my blouse was covered in vomit. I struggled to remember the previous night. I had been drunk since the day my wife ripped my toenail off. I got myself to together enough to get out of bed and hug the wall to the bathroom. I put my lips to the faucet and drank the cool water. I looked in the mirrorand that’s when I saw the blood.I felt myself, but the only pain was my in my head. Looking in the mirror I heard a noise from the bedroom. I thought maybe being drunk, I had brought a woman home, but then I looked in the mirror. My mouth covered in lipstick and I wore only one earring. I was in my favorite skirt. A cute low cut black one with sequins that hugged my ass, and a nice thick belt that wrapped around my waist.
“Harry” the man yelled from the bedroom.
I stared into the sink, dizzy, nauseous thinking of having sexwith a man, having sex with anyone. I hadn’t had sex in six years. I wiped my mouth and stuck my head out of the bathroom door. He sat in the white rocker in the corner next to the tall ottoman. The chair squeaked. He was perfectly dressed. He had a full head of black parted slick hair and a nicely starched white collar, and a perfectly tied tie and the bathroom light reflected off his shoes as he rocked.
“Harry. Are you ok?” he asked me.
I walked over and sat down on the bed.
“Did we have sex?” I asked.
The man laughed.
“Do you not remember last night?”
I rubbed my head and my toe was throbbing.
“No, and look man I don’t know what we did but I’m not gay. I mean look everyday I drink and Iput on these dresses and its the only thing that makes me feel anything anymore. My wife is off fucking some attorney and he has a big one and my kids likehim, they say he cooks these elaborate meals and big deserts and I sit here looking at my ass while my kids fall in love with the god damn cupcake king.”
I couldn’t stop rubbing my toe.
“Well…” the man said. “We discussed this matter at length last night and I told you who I was and you were quite frightened. I guess I didn’t realize the severity of your alcoholism.”
“Alright man, but I really do think it is best that you just leave and we call last night a mistake and that’s that” I said standing with my head focused on the carpet trying to make it the bathroom. I made it to the toilet and sat down on the side of the tub and held my hair back.He came to the door and looked in.
“Maybe you will take this better sober than drunk, but I am afraid you might not be so happy with some of the decisions you made last night” the man said standing in the door.
“Oh man, come on. I told you I don’t want to know anything else.” I started to yell gripping my hair in my hands. “It was a goddamn mistake! I told you I am not a queer and I think it’s best if you leave!” He walked over to the tub and sat down beside me and my head was throbbing.
“Do you know how you got thisblood on your blouse?” he asked feeling the silk between his fingers. I sighed and rested my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. “No” I said speaking through my fingers.
“It’s your wife’s blood.”
I rubbed my eyes and sighed. The hangover was too much. I couldn’t think.
“Harry.” He put his hand on my knee and his left hand guided my chin up to his and we made eye contact for the first time.
“We killed her Harry. It was your first wish, and so we used a rope and we strangled her and Harry I’ve got to say you enjoyed it. You really did. I knew you were crying because you loved her, but I could tell you were enjoying it.”
I thought of myself strangling my wife with a rope, me wearing a dress and earrings and lipstick and drunk and I imagined what the cops would have thought if they would have seen me like that. I knew the man was right. I remembered. I remembered the rain. As he spoke the memories rushed in and the fog lifted into the previous hours as a thin literal fog had lingered in the floodlights shining on the pool and we laid on our sides my wife with her back to my stomach my hands wrapped tightly around the rope and the rope wrapped tightly around herneck I pulled tight and the man in the suit stood behind me in the fog listening staring into therain and then she died. I remembered her body sinking tothe bottom of the pool and the blood and hair on the rope and the light red blood mixed into the water and she sank.
As I sat next to that man I beganto cry, and I sobbed and buried my face into his shoulder and heembraced me and he rubbed his hand along my back.
“Now now there son. It’s going to be ok. No one saw you. I made sure of that. I was watching.” At that moment I remembered his face. I remembered every detail. His picture had hung on the wall of my father’s study throughout my entire childhood. His name was Henry. His hair was the same. He had on the same suit with that perfect tie, and those eyes. That is what I remembered,those eyes. They had stared at me in my father’s study as I sat waiting for my father to finish typing because he said he wouldthrow the ball with me, but he never got around to it and so I stared at those eyes.
I pulled my head from his embrace and looked at him. He was my father’s father. He died at thirty seven of a gunshot. One night he got in his pickup and drove out into a field. My father told me about it one nightwhen he was drunk, and I was just a boy. My father was lying on the couch nodding off drunk his heel resting on the armrest, his foot tapping as if he were keeping time in his sleep.
“You know son.” My father said.
“You know that road I used to take you and your brother downto?”
How could I forget that road? I thought.
“Well that’s where he did it. Theysay he drove out there one nightdrunk.”
III
I sat looking into the man’s eyes.Those same eyes. Images from the previous night flashed in mymind connected with blank slides of white and I saw her sinking to the bottom and the blood and the rope and my dressand my earring.
“It was your wish” he said.
The doorbell rang. Henry looked at me. “It’s Ben” he said.
I scrubbed the lipstick off my face and took the earring off and took off my cloths and wrapped myself in the bathrobe.Going down the stairs I looked at the rug with the fishes and the blood and I thought of her skinny ass. When I got downstairs he had made his way around back near the pool and was knocking on the glass at the back door. I took a deep breath and opened the door. He walked in.
“Where is she?”
I sat down at the kitchen table. I tried to look out the window to the pool but the sun shined too bright through the windows.
“How should I know? Your fucking her aren’t you?” I stood up and walked to the coffee maker and took the coffee from the cabinet.
“She said she was coming over here last night. She said she felt guilty about some things and that she needed to talk to you, and so I let her go. She never came home.”
I poured the water into the coffee maker and it began to hiss. I brushed my hair back and leaned against the counter and looked at him. “Maybe she’s fucking somebody else buddy, but it sure ain’t me. I am a fag.”
He sat down at the table. “Look Harry. I didn’t mean for it to come to this. I didn’t know she was married. Honest. I wouldn’t have done it if I would have known she was married. I followed her the other night. Shesaid she was coming over here to get some of her cloths that she left, and so I tailed her, but she went to a bar and met up with some guy. I sat outside andwaited and a couple hours later they came out drunk together and had sex in his car. And so I acted like nothing happened andI felt I needed to tell you about it.”
I walked over to the window. I held the cup of coffee up to my lips and looked into the pool. It was clean. I sighed and my shoulders fell.
He was still talking.
“She didn’t really say she was coming over here last night. I just didn’t know what else to say.” The doorbell rang.
I walked through the living roomand opened the front door.
“Were just letting you know were here. We should be done inabout an hour or so.”
I said ok and shut the door.
“Who was that?” Ben asked.
“Pool guys” I said.
I stood at the window thinking about my morning looking in to the clean pool.
I grabbed two beers from the fridge and walked outside and Ben I stood looking at the pool.
He bent over and picked it up.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
My face reddened and I shrugged. “Old habits.”
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