It began with a cough. It came from the next room, formerly their daughter’s but now the “guest” room, though they rarely had guests.
Frank had been dreaming. Some weekend mornings he allowed himself to fall back to sleep, and that’s when he did his dreaming. But the cough had reawakened him. He lay very still. Seconds passed. Then he heard it again. Muffled by the wall but definitely a cough, a hacking cough.
He quietly turned onto his side. It was morning twilight, and his wife, Claire, was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
“My bat,” he whispered. “Is my baseball bat still under the bed?”
“No,” she whispered back without turning her head. “I put it in the basement years ago.”
He grimaced. “What am I going to use then?”
Her eyes flicked this way and that. “The lamp,” she finally said. “The base is heavy.”
He reached to unplug his lamp.
“No,” Claire whispered. “The one on my side. I’ll get it.”
She reached down beside the bed and pulled the plug from the outlet. She positioned the lamp base between her legs and eased the shade off.
The cough sounded again.
“Wait,” she said. “I know that cough. That’s my mother’s cough.”
“Your mother?”
It sounded again. “It’s her,” she said. “She’s had that cough for twenty years.”
A minute later they tip-toed down the hallway, wincing at every creak in the floor. Frank carried the lamp, shade off but light bulb still in. The door was open a crack, and Claire pushed it enough for them to both see in. Claire’s mother was sitting up in bed, reading a Daphne du Maurier novel by the light of a side table lamp.
She smiled at them. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did my cough wake you?” She spoke in her raspy smoker-for-fifty-years voice.
“Mom!” Claire said. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I know I said I would sleep downstairs if I couldn’t control this cough better, but this fit just now came on and the cough drops haven’t kicked in yet.”
They both stared at her. “Mom!” Claire said again. “What are you doing here? When did you get here?”
“Honey, I’ve been here all night. I’m sorry about the coughing. It’ll pass soon.”
Frank pulled on Claire’s shoulder to draw her back. She started toward their bedroom, but he caught her arm and shook his head. “Downstairs,” he said brusquely.
As soon as they got to the kitchen, he threw up his hands. “What the hell is going on!”
Claire stared into space, not answering.
“When did your mother get here? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She broke from her trance. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know she was coming.”
They locked eyes until Frank decided she wasn’t lying.
“What’s she doing here? How did we not hear her come in?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know.”
“Well, how long is she staying?”
“How would I know!” she shot back. “I didn’t know she was coming!”
More disconcerting than finding Nancy in the guest bedroom was discovering evidence that she had been living with them for weeks, if not months. They found food of a kind they never bought: yogurts and juices in the refrigerator, cereals and packaged hot chocolate mixes in the cupboard. There was a bathtub grab bar in the downstairs bathroom that hadn’t been there before. Frank followed Claire to the door of the den, where they stopped and peered in as if into someplace they’d never been before. They stepped in and went toward the window, where a card table had been set up, displaying a half-assembled jigsaw puzzle. The box lid showed a painting of an extended family sitting at a long holiday dinner table laden with food. Frank picked up the lid and looked from it to the puzzle to Claire. “It’s a thousand pieces,” he said, as the meaning of that sank in.
He pulled Claire over to the loveseat.
“Okay, let’s establish the facts here . . .”
Claire sat with hands clenched between her thighs.
“Claire?”
“This is freaking me out.”
“Yeah, it’s freaking me out too. So let’s talk it out. Let’s do . . . ,” the cliche fit, “a reality check.”
She gave a quick nod.
“So, neither of us knew your mother was here. Right?”
“No! . . . I mean . . . no.”
He padded the air with his hands. “And neither of us knew she was going to be here. Right?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“Okay. And we both agree that it looks like she’s been here awhile; only neither of us remembers her being here.”
She nodded weakly. “Is it a dream?” she said, with a touch of hope.
“You’re the one with the vivid dreams,” Frank said. “You tell me.”
She looked down and shook her head. “It’s not a dream.” . . . Then she looked up and, with defeat in her voice, said, “Maybe we’re dead.”
“What?”
“Maybe we’re in some kind of heaven. Or maybe it’s purgatory.”
“Or hell,” he said.
“That’s not nice,” she scolded.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just never figured we’d be sharing quarters with your mother in the afterlife.”
Claire put her hands over her ears and began rocking. “This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening . . .”
He pulled her hands away and hugged her. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
While Claire washed her hair in the downstairs bathtub, Frank stood guard outside in the kitchen. While he took a bird bath, she did the same. Neither wanted to go back upstairs, so they sat at the kitchen island in their pajamas. Eventually Claire made coffee; Frank scrolled through his phone. Occasionally one of them looked up the stairs. At 8:10 they heard a door above creak open, followed by the sound of padded feet shuffling across the hallway. A minute later came the flush of the toilet, then the sound of the shower.
A half hour later Nancy came slowly down the stairs, supporting herself with a hand on the wall. She was a small woman, but walked heavily, landing on each step with a thud. They rose and stepped to the side as she approached and opened the cupboard to bring down a small plate and coffee cup. At the stove she shook the tea kettle and turned on the burner. She opened another cupboard and brought down a jar of instant coffee. From the refrigerator she took out a package of iced rolls, removed one to the plate, licking her fingers after, tied the package back up with a twist tie, and returned it to the refrigerator. With each action, she made quiet moaning sounds, “Ohhh, ohhh,” as if she were cold. When she noticed them staring, she half laughed, “Whaa-utt?”
She set herself up with a tray in the den and then lowered herself with some difficulty into the upholstered chair.
“Honey,” she called. “I forgot my milk. Could you bring me a small glass, please? The skim.”
Claire shrugged at Frank as if to say, What else can I do? and went to the fridge.
They’d made it a habit on Saturday mornings to walk the six blocks downtown to the post office where they had a mail slot. It turned out there was mail for Nancy too. Frank wanted to know how long Nancy had been getting mail at their house, but couldn’t think of how to ask. Claire steered them in a wide circle back to the house. They knew what each was thinking: Maybe she won’t be there when we get back.
But she was. Slumped in the chair, watching TV in a half-hearted way but also laughing sometimes, ending in a fit of coughing. They watched her from the kitchen. Once she looked up, grinned. “Whaa-utt?”
The rest of the day they moved warily about the house, mostly staying together. Occasionally Nancy asked Claire to bring her something — the bag of cough drops, a book from “my” room upstairs.
At dinner time, Claire asked Frank to set the table in the dining room.
“Three places, please,” she said. Then gave a little shrug. “We have to feed her.”
At dinner, Nancy talked as she always had about relatives that Claire barely knew and Frank had only heard of. Once, Claire rebuked her mother for speaking negatively about a cousin and they got into a little fight. But then just minutes later, they were laughing together at a story Nancy told about Claire and her sisters misbehaving at a department store. The children would stand beside a mannequin and imitate its pose, frozen in position until they broke up laughing at each other.
At bedtime, Nancy asked Claire to stop by her room. When Frank asked, “Are you okay with that?” Claire reassured him.
A week later they woke to the sound of two voices coming through the wall. They rushed down the hallway and Claire pushed open the door, where they found her father and mother sitting up in bed.
“Hey,” Bill scowled. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
Bill turned out to be useful to have around. He would tackle about anything, except electricity, which he’d once gotten zapped with. When the kitchen sink clogged, he turned off the water, unscrewed the PVC pipes, and cleared them out. One of the windows in the guest bedroom was propped open with a stick of wood; so he removed the sash and replaced the cords. They did sometimes have to remind him to not smoke in the house. When Frank returned home from work, Bill would be sitting on the top front step, wearing a white T-shirt and old blue jeans. Keeping elbows on knees, he’d lift a cigarette to his mouth with two fingers, occasionally flicking the ash into the top of a beer can at his side.
“How was work?” he’d ask.
“Fine,” Frank would reply. “How have things been here?”
“Same old, same old,” said Bill.
One afternoon a few weeks later, Frank went to the small bedroom he used as an office. He found a new cot on one side of the room and Claire’s older sister Teri on the other side, sitting in front of an unfamiliar desk and computer.
“Mornin’,” she said briskly. “Need somethin’?”
“No, nothing.” He backed out the door and went in search of his own desk and computer.
That night in bed Frank asked irritably, “Why is it only your family showing up?”
“I don’t know,” Claire said. “Maybe they need us more.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t seem fair,” he said.
But then Frank’s own parents appeared, separately, a few weeks later. First his mother, then, three days later, his father. They had taken over the attic, which had been converted to living space a few years earlier but was used mostly for storage. They were sleeping on a full mattress laid out on a futon frame that Frank had never seen. He was surprised, but not surprised.
Well, at least it’s fairer now, he thought.
His mother helped with the cooking, which was much appreciated, as there were a lot more mouths to feed, and his father helped with the garden — weeding, pruning tomato plants, harvesting. They arrived a few weeks before the beans came on and the tomatoes ripened, and when it was time, they spent days over a steaming stock pot and a pressure canner, canning nearly two dozen quarts of each.
When he wasn’t in the garden, his father watched baseball on TV. Or he sat in a lawn chair on the back patio and listened to games on a transistor radio that Frank remembered him taking along when he went fishing at night on the river bank. He retaught Frank how to play cribbage, and they would play after dinner.
His mother filled their unused photo albums and went for long, brisk walks. Sometimes Frank went with her.
More of a surprise was the appearance of Lloyd and Loree, an elderly couple who had lived next door to their rental house twenty-five years earlier. The den had been turned into a bedroom with two single beds. Opposite them, a TV sat atop an ancient dresser of faded green, and to the side of each bed were matching tan recliners with worn arm covers. Lloyd spoke loudly in his Kentucky-boyhood accent, as if others were partially deaf like he was, while Loree was quiet except when answering a question from Lloyd, who addressed her as “Honey.”
Frank wondered aloud if they should contact a building contractor about putting on an addition.
Meals were lively affairs. Teri and Nancy and Claire did most of the talking. They argued at times, but a lot of the conversation was about the past. Large bowls of food were passed around. Frank asked Claire, “Are they giving you any money for food?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know if I should ask them.”
“Well,” Frank said, “We haven’t been charging them rent. The least they could do is chip in for food. Maybe some for utilities.”
“The thing is,” said Claire. “I don’t even know if they have money. I mean, what if they’re ghosts?”
“Ghosts don’t eat that much,” Frank said.
They had added the leaf to the dining room table, but there still wasn’t room at it for everybody. Frank and Claire sat together at a card table in one corner of the room, like the youngest children at a holiday dinner.
Nancy sometimes complained about no longer being able to watch TV in the den, and pointed out that Lloyd and Loree weren’t even family. Yet, she was also kind to them, spending hours in their room talking with them, asking about their families. Nancy’s raspy, cackling laugh and Lloyd’s booming “Honey” questions could be heard through the den door.
The last arrival was Frank’s childhood dog, Stacy, who showed up one day along with her food and water bowls by the back door.
“She’s a nice dog,” said Claire. “Is she a dachshund?”
“Part dachshund, part beagle,” Frank said. “And she’s been dead for forty years.”
“Well, she is a nice dog,” Claire said.
They no longer went out. Not to the movies or out to eat. Didn’t travel anywhere. Frank could no longer remember going to work. It felt like he was always at the house. Ever since his mother-in-law had arrived, time had moved differently, as if it were a book with pages missing, or like a sentence with ellipses.
Late one evening, Frank was reading in the living room. His father came in wearing his faded blue robe, which hung loosely on him, and sat in the floral upholstered club chair on the other side of the lamp table.
After a few minutes he said, “How are you, son?”
Frank put down his book. "Okay, I guess. Why do you ask?"
“You seem a little distracted lately. Something troubling you?”
Frank hesitated at confiding in someone whose presence he couldn’t explain.
Finally, he said, “Sometimes this doesn’t seem like my life. I hadn’t imagined it . . . being like this.”
His father nodded and then shook his head. “Nobody does.”
Things came to a head on Easter Sunday. The cooked ham waited on the stove, tented in aluminum foil, and Frank and Claire and Teri and Frank’s mother had spent most of the morning making the other dishes: mashed potatoes, a green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with a brown sugar topping, dinner rolls. Claire had made pies the day before: apple and key lime.
They had put the card table at one end of the dining table so they could all sit together. Bill was at the head, with Nancy to his right. Frank and Claire sat across from each other at the card table at the other end, and Stacy lay on the floor next to Frank’s chair. The table was so crowded with plates and bowls that the white tablecloth with the red border could hardly be seen.
Halfway through the meal Frank looked down the length of the table. There was a loud chatter that he had no part in, as if he were invisible. A tension began seizing his body. It tightened until . . .
“Stop!”
No one seemed to have heard him.
He said it louder, with pleading: “Stop!” Claire’s expression changed from contentment to alarm.
“I need to say something.” The chatter stopped and the family members and old neighbors paused, still holding food on their forks or spoons, and turned toward him.
“I . . .” — he wasn’t sure now what to say. All those faces staring at him. His father- and mother-in-law. His sister-in-law. Their old neighbors. His own parents. Even Stacy was looking up at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he started. “You don’t . . . you don’t belong here, any of you. I want my house back. . . . I want my life back. . . .” He finished weakly, “You’re going to have to leave. Now.”
No one said anything. Claire was looking down. The others smiled politely at him, as if trying to understand what he was saying.
Then Lloyd started laughing in his Kentucky-boyhood accent. Not just laughing. Guffawing. His head was thrown back. His mouth open, ear to ear. His eyes practically closed.
Then the others started laughing, and Frank was drowned in it . . .
After the laughter faded, his father spoke from beside him.
“Son.”
Frank stared at his plate; he had the feeling he was about to be scolded.
Finally he looked up. “Yeah, Dad?”
“Could you pass the potatoes this way?”
He pleaded to his father with his eyes. Please don’t do this. You can’t be real. You can’t really want the potatoes.
But his father’s graying blue eyes held his like a mirror.
He looked to Claire across from him. Her eyebrows lifted. What he understood her to be saying was, Can we just do this? Can we just accept that this is our life?
He took a deep breath.
Then he passed the potatoes.
The first to leave was the last to have arrived — his childhood dog. One day after getting home from work, he realized that Stacy had not come to the door to greet him. So he asked Bill, who was sitting on the porch reading a newspaper, if he had seen her. “Stacy who?” his father-in-law asked.
He found Claire in the basement changing out the laundry. There was so much washing since the others had arrived.
He told her about Stacy.
She paused in hanging up a pair of Lloyd’s overalls on the clothesline. “Ohh,” she said somberly. Then, “Maybe she’ll come back.” But he could tell she didn’t believe it.
Lloyd and Loree went next. There was no warning, no goodbye. Their beds, the dresser, the matching tan recliners — gone too. Nancy quickly set herself up in the den again, tray in front of her.
Next was his sister-in-law. That freed up the small bedroom.
After his father disappeared, he knew it was only a matter of time before his mother would be gone too. So he spent more time with her. They took walks, played cards. Often they just talked, remembering their life as a family when he was growing up, or he asked her what she remembered of her childhood. She told him about her grandpa’s big dog, named Jim, who followed her everywhere. About the tin cup that hung on a hook by the outdoor pump at her grandparents’ house. About the stomachaches she and the other kids got from eating green apples from the grandparents’ small orchard while waiting for Sunday dinner. He recorded these things in a notebook.
Then one day she didn’t come downstairs in the morning. He put the deck of cards back in a den drawer. He took the leaf out of the dining room table.
Bill went next, and then, though it seemed to take longer, Nancy. He woke up one morning to find Claire awake and sitting up in bed, her eyes red and weepy.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Don’t you hear?” she said.
He listened. He didn’t hear anything. Then he understood that what he heard was absence.
The next morning — it was a Saturday and time had become whole again — he came downstairs and found Claire leaning on the island counter, looking pensive.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
She turned and smiled. “The house seems so . . . empty,” she said.
“It does,” he agreed.
“I can still feel them here,” she said. “But it’s getting fainter. I’m worried that someday it will feel like they were never here.”
“It won’t,” Frank said, and he believed it.
“It was nice having them here,” she said. “Wasn’t it?”
“It was,” he said. “It was a pain in the ass, but it was nice too. It was nice to have the extra time with them.” He smiled sweetly at her.
Then he had a thought and held up a hand. “Be right back.” He disappeared down the steps leading from the kitchen to the basement, then after a minute reappeared.
“I was looking to see if the canned tomatoes and green beans were still on the shelves,” he said.
“And are they?” Claire said, her face pinched with doubt.
He gave it two beats, then said, “They are.”
Her face relaxed. “Maybe we’ll have some green beans for supper tonight,” she said.
“That’d be good,” he said. And then, “What do you say we go somewhere next weekend? Maybe up north. It feels like we haven’t been out of the house for forever.”
“Let’s do that,” she said.
- for my mother and father -
