YOU ARE SUCH A ONE

by By Nancy Springer

Nancy Springer reports that her fiftieth published book, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline: An Enola Holmes Mystery, should be on the shelves by the time this issue hits the stands. Her latest story concerns a woman who does not, under most circumstances, like to make a fuss.

You could not be a more middle-aged middle-class middle-American menopausal woman. You know this because you are driving alone and dutifully to the funeral of a family member whom you never met, and you are counting your hot flashes to pass the time. (Twelve so far.) You know how middle-everything you are because you had trouble getting time off, and you have worked at the same bank for twenty-three years, and you are still a teller while a guy who trained along with you is now the vice-president, yet you process millions of dollars with your tastefully manicured hands and never sneak one for yourself. You have been married even longer, and you have never cheated at that job either, and know you never will, just as you know that when you sleep tonight you will dream—and even your dream is predictable. Nearly every night for years and years you have dreamed the exact same vivid dream, a night sweat of the mind, a hallucinatory hot flash to be disregarded like your other symptoms; nobody wants to hear about it.

The cell phone on the passenger seat next to you remains silent as you drive. During personal heat wave du jour number thirteen, a broiler, torrid enough to make you yearn to shred your navy blue suit, you see your exit and get off the interstate. You have planned ahead, made yourself a motel reservation, but several miles later you start to worry; was that perhaps the wrong exit? You are driving down the middle of a rudimentary road, a country lane in Nebraska, where you have never in your life been before.

You would swear a court deposition to that fact.

Yet, rounding a curve, you flash not hot but sweaty cold, for before you manifests the intimately, impossibly familiar.

The house.

You slam on the brakes.

You stare through your trifocals.

It is the house from the dream.

Your dream. Your repetitive nightly dream. Always the same, always eidetically clear, the dream in which you enter this house.

Not what one would usually consider a dream house. A modest dwelling—yet unmistakable. You recognize it in the holistic, coded-into-your-DNA way you would recognize your mother’s face if she were alive, yet you would have just as much difficulty describing it. Except for disjunctive details. The gazebo. The sundial, the birdbath, the celadon-green gazing ball. Circular things. Over the front door, a stained-glass rose window. Somewhere inside, you know, is a spiral staircase. Every night in your dream you walk up the trapezoidal steps, wearing a soft gown that petals you as if you were a lily, barefoot—

A horn toots briefly, politely. Behind you, a local in a pickup is waiting for you to get out of the middle of the road.

You pull over in front of the house to let him pass, and thus decide that you are going to stop for just a few minutes, see whether anyone is home, ask questions. You get out of your car, telling yourself that there must be an explanation, that perhaps your parents brought you here when you were two or three, that you are having a déjà vu experience beyond conscious memory—but what would your parents have been doing here? In this state of Nebraska and confusion?

Although you don’t like to call attention to yourself—no, it’s more than reticence; admit the truth: you are irrationally afraid—although feeling spooked, you walk toward the house. In the navy blue business suit that absolutely does not petal you like any flower, you stride across the lawn before you lose your nerve. The place is neither landscaped nor unkempt. Bushes, inert and taupe now in winter, stand at random distances from one another, ovoid or globular. Husks of last fall’s chrysanthemums flank the front door. You look for a doorbell; there is none. You knock. Solid wood, the door barely acknowledges. You knock again, harder, then hear footsteps within.

The door is opened by a rather short, unremarkable man, dark of hair and skin, perhaps Latino. Ordinary—and you cannot admit even to yourself how relieved you are to see just an ordinary man—except that when he sees you, the generous russet and olive tints of his face fade like old shingles to gray.

“Please excuse me for intruding,” you say, concerned by his reaction and trying to put him at ease, for you are the sort of person who is always thinking of others, “but I wonder if you would tell me something about this house. Is it yours?”

The man swallows twice before answering, “No, señora. I am the, how you say, the caretaker.”

“Really?” You are surprised, for the residence seems middle-class, like you, not upscale enough for the sort of people who would have servants. “Do the owners live here only in the summer, then?”

“The owners live here not at all.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because the gringos, they call it, how you say, haunted. But to my people—”

Involuntarily you echo, “Haunted?”

“Yes, señora.”

“But—but what do you mean, haunted?”

“You should know, señora. You are the ghost.”

* * * *

Only yesterday you were joking with one of the other tellers about being invisible. Short, graying, and perhaps potty-trained a bit too early, you had stood unnoticed at a lunch counter while half a dozen other people rushed in front of you and were served. This sort of thing has been happening to you for years. Asked why you do not speak up, you say you don’t like to make a fuss.

This is true. You are a very civilized person. So why, now, are you barking like a chimpanzee, “What? What did you say?”

Humbly the Latino man attempts to explain. “I have many times myself seen you on the escalera, señora. You are the ghost who—”

Why, now, are you interrupting? Shouting? “I am not a ghost!”

“Pardon, señora—”

“I am not a ghost!” Your fists curl, your head lowers, your chin juts, you step toward him. Yet, because you know your middle name is Meek, you are surprised when he yelps, says something prayerful in Spanish, and retreats, shutting the door. You hear the click as he locks it.

You now learn what it means to be “beside oneself.” Who is this woman pounding on the white door with both fists, shouting “Open up! I am not finished with you! I am not a ghost!” Beside yourself, you discover that you know how to curse. Beside yourself, you learn that shouting feeds upon cursing as you stamp back to your car, yelling, “I am not a ghost! God damn it all to hell! I am not a ghost!” Beside yourself, you spray gravel as you rev out of there.

In a few moments you reduce speed, cease shouting, and begin instead to weep. You now know that you are not, after all, going to your great-uncle whatsisface’s funeral, but you have no idea why you are crying.

* * * *

In the nearest town you find a cheap motel where you book a room, paying with cash. You do not bother to cancel your reservation at the other motel and save the money that will otherwise be charged to your credit card. Any such practical considerations seem to have flown out of a circular stained-glass window. Lying atop a linty chenille bedspread, you eye your cell phone, which remains silent. Your husband has not called. You will not call him. Many times he has made it clear that he does not want to hear about your “damn stupid dream.” He will not care whether you are a ghost or not.

You turn the cell phone off and let it drop to the floor.

You now stare at the ceiling. Cheap tiles. Square. No circles anywhere.

Menopausal heat comes and goes. You are a geyser that spouts sweat at irregular intervals; you are no longer keeping track of the eruptions.

In your cavernous gut, hunger crawls. But not the sort that food would satisfy. So you just lie where dust mites roam. For a long time. As day turns to dark.

And as you slowly, slowly go to sleep, making the transition so gradually that you become mindful of what you are doing.

Therefore, things are subtly different. This time, even though the dream is, as always, ineffably right—the starry night in which you can see without any other light, your lily-petal gown so soft, flowing to your bare feet that feel no cold, that stand upon the compass-rose tiled floor of the gazebo, where you always begin—even though this is perfection, you feel muted resentment, because you should not be a ghost. Why are you haunting? Yet as if you have no control of your own body—or no, not body, for you are floating, incorporeal, and you sullenly love your freedom from glands and heat and weight—as if you have no control over your being, you glide into the nightly ritual. Issuing forth from the encirclement of the gazebo, you circle the house, caressing the gazing globe the color of a luna moth, the birdbath, the sundial, and—

And it is winter; you are tired of winter; you want wild green grass and the heady fragrance of springtime blossoms. Since you are asleep and this is just a dream, why can’t you have them? It’s about time you had something you want. You touch a sere, bulbous bush, and it bursts into yellow bloom; forsythia. There. Under your feet, lawn like emerald fire springs up, and puffball mushrooms; you stand at the center of a ring of them fit for pixies to dance in.

The white puffballs are a gift; you would never have thought of them. But a gift from what? Or from whom? Bemused, you continue your rounds, wafting into the house through the rose of stained glass.

Inside, things are not professionally decorated but not a dump either, just tidy and boring except for the circular pedestal table with antique doily, which—as always—attracts you down to ground level, as if it were put there for that reason. This time, however, as you stand admiring the detail of the doily, an area rug springs up beneath your feet, its lilac-and-daffodil yang/yin circle quite at variance with the otherwise staid furnishings.

As is the stairway, its open spiral an unusual feature in a middle-class house like this. Drifting over there, you wonder what’s upstairs. Even though you have climbed the spiral in a thousand dreams or more, you do not remember what you find at the top. The difference this time is that you know you are dreaming, so you know that you should know, and your own blankness annoys you. The mystery at the top of the spiral is, after all, the hub of the matter, and why did you not realize this before?

You begin to climb. You could simply waft up there the way you wafted through the rose window, but you enjoy the novelty of ascending the stairway without effort, unlabored by the mass of your own body, as if each bleached wooden riser were a springboard. With one hand clinging to the central pillar you swing, ascending, with your long weightless gown fluttering; you are white ribbon unwinding, unwinding up a maypole to—where? At the top of the stairs, you can see now, is a closed door, quite a curious and fascinating wooden door, painted shrimp pink, its arched top carved with a circular motif. Distracted like a child from play, you hurry the rest of the way. The carving on the door is rather like the doily on the pedestal table, radial symmetry at its most intricate and beautiful, but unreadable.

You try the door. It is locked. Which is not fair, because this is your room, you know with sudden ontological certainty. Don’t the idiots realize that’s the whole reason you keep coming here, to get into your room? How dare they try to—

Wait a minute. They can’t keep you out. There’s a carved circle on the door. You can waft right through, the way you flew into the house through the rose window. You’re a ghost.

No. No, you’re not a ghost. Not.

Suddenly furious, like a cop on TV you kick the door, meaning to break it down. Your bare foot feels no pain from the impact, for there is none. Instead, your impetus carries you halfway through the door. Your foot comes down inside. Your head stops approximately in the middle of the carved circle.

You are looking at your room.

Yes, it is your room.

Square.

Bare.

Windowless.

Colorless.

Unpainted, uncarpeted.

Small.

Low.

Empty.

* * * *

Driving past the house the next day, you see a forsythia bush in full bloom, although winter reigns all around. You see a patch of emerald-green grass wearing its own white pearl necklace. You see the Latino caretaker standing in the front yard peering at these manifestations. And for the first time since you woke up weeping in the night, you begin to sense that you need not despair.

You begin to feel inklings of possibility.

You feel a heat in you, but it is not just another hot flash; it is white fire kindling at your core, so that the fountain can burst forth.

But this is daytime, and daytime is rife with doubt. Can you—will you truly do it? Any of it? Things you never knew you had within you?

As never before, you long for night, for sleep.

* * * *

A few days later, driving past the house, you see that a cupola has sprouted, as round and sudden as a mushroom, from its roof.

Smiling, you drive in as if you own the place—which in effect you do—and park in front. The caretaker, when he opens the door, bursts into a torrent of distraught Spanish and tries to shut you out, but anticipating this move, you have, in time-honored style, inserted your foot, protectively clad in a hiking boot that goes with your new blue jeans and colorful nylon jacket. Gesturing with palms down, you gaze at the man with the expression of benevolent and competent concern that has served you well from behind the teller’s window. You are a nice person. A civilized person. It is a shame for anyone to shout at you. The caretaker’s spate falters, and you address him with great sincerity, “I believe we can help each other. Did I understand you to say that your people know all about ghosts?”

His passion wheels like a condor on a changing wind. “Sí! Sí, señora, in my lifetime I alone, four ghosts I have met. Mi tia, sister of my father...”

Some time later, inside, seated on the beige sofa and drinking an execrable South American brand of powdered instant coffee, you have learned that his aunt after dying at four in the morning had gone to sit on the beds of all the neighbors in her village, unwilling to leave. He is from Chile, where people live all their lives in the one village so poor. Here in the Estados Unidos he is rich, he has the automobile, he sends money home to his sisters. His grandmother after death had come back as a cold miasma terrorizing her family until all the babies were christened. Here in the Estados Unidos he lives in the house very nice and his employers are good to him; he does not know what to tell them about the new room upstairs. His mother, who died in childbirth, came back every night to pull the hair of his father sleeping.

“But I am alive,” you point out after a while. “How can I be a ghost?”

“How do I know that you are alive, señora?”

“You are sitting here talking with me.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

You explain to him about the sleeping, the dreams, the coincidence that led to your finding the house.

“It was no, how you say, coincidence, señora. Your great-uncle now dead, he led you here.”

“But I didn’t even know him. I was just going to his funeral because I thought I ought to.”

“He led you here, maybe, same reason. Family is family.”

“But I am not a ghost!” Seeing his face stiffen, quickly you soften your tone. “I do not want to be a ghost. Do you think your mother wanted to be a ghost?”

“No, señora, of course not. The ghosts, they, how you say, haunt, because they are unhappy.”

“Oh,” you say rather weakly, because once again it is too true, although you have seldom acknowledged your unhappiness; discontentment, like larceny or adultery, you have allowed no mental compass.

“Why, señora, have you caused the circle room upstairs, with the bed in it?”

You do not tell him how the empty shoebox of a room made you wake up to find yourself in a cheap motel bed weeping, or attempt to explain the white fire fountain that ensued within your chest, the manifestations you yourself do not fully understand. Instead, you say, “When I sleep somewhere else, in my dream I come here and haunt this house, is that not true?”

“Sí, indeed I have seen it many times with my own eyes. So?”

“So if I sleep here, in my very own room, then what is there for me to haunt?”

* * * *

Everything about your room makes you feel exalted: the dome ceiling with circular skylight, the countryside view from your six arched windows, the glass bubbles floating and emanating a firefly glow above your head, the soft round rug with its pattern ever gently shifting like a pastel kaleidoscope, the similarly changeful mandala mosaics on the walls, the flower-shaped pillows on which you will rest your head, the sheer undeniable reality that it is daytime yet you have climbed the spiral staircase and opened the arched door and there is your condign dwelling just as you have shaped it in your dreams.

The caretaker remains at the bottom of what he calls the “ladder,” the stairs. He will approach no nearer. Most reluctantly he has agreed to this experiment. “For one night only,” he repeats for perhaps the fifteenth time, shouting up from his distance, although he knows as well as you do that it will not be for one night only. “You need anything? I am leaving.”

This raises your eyebrows. “Are you frightened?”

“But sí, yes.” He does not deny it the way an American man would. “Are you not?”

“No, not at all! I am very....” With astonishment you realize what you are saying, and how true it is. “I am very happy.”

“Ay caramba!” Complaining to Madre Maria, he goes away.

You truly do not need anything from him; once more you do not require food. The bed, a great water lily, floats on its kaleidoscope carpet pad, and you wish only to recline into its white softness. You do so, lying like a compass pointing five ways, and you gaze, gaze up through the skylight, watching blue and white turn to puce, greige, twilight and night. Unsleeping, you have nevertheless passed into a state in which you know no time. You gaze at the indigo sky, and like your reflection in a dark mirror the moon gazes back at you, a middle-aged moon in all her full-circle glory, wheeling luminous into her waning.

You are such a one. Why, oh why, does the world find you invisible? The world must be sleeping.

You sleep. You do not realize you are asleep until you find yourself outside of a house. A development house, triangles on top of rectangles, taupe, of course. The new houses are all taupe unless they’re tan or beige. And all the others on the street are dark except for their little Malibu lights ranked along their foundation plantings. But in this one, you are surprised to see the living room lights still on at this time of the night. You fumble your keys out of your purse—for some reason you are once again carrying the black purse, wearing the navy-blue suit—and attempt to let yourself in, but the lock does not respond. You step inside anyway, through the hollow-core door, blinking when you see your husband and teenage children sitting in their usual places, fully clothed, yet not watching the TV. They look bewildered and somewhat aggrieved.

“Hi, I’m home,” you say.

They do not hear you or look at you. Shrugging, you go on with your usual routine, your nightly ritual, hanging up your coat, setting your purse on the hallway table, glancing at the mail—junk, bills—then heading for the kitchen. The sink is piled with dishes. You open the dishwasher, find clean dishes still in it, and start putting them away in the cupboards.

You hear your husband talking to the children. “C’mon, guys, think. Where could she be that she’s not using her credit cards?”

“Dead,” says one of the kids.

“That’s stupid,” says the other. “Who would want to kill Mom?” They sound bone-tired and uncommunicative, as if returning from a sleepover.

“It’s a possibility we have to face.” Your husband sounds the same way. “But until they find her or at least her car, I’d rather think she ran away. Where would she go? Did she ever say anything to you?”

“Just about that dumb-head dream of hers.”

Meanwhile, handling the dishes, you notice what satisfying discs they are, what attractive circles in this otherwise angular place. And you like their stylized folk pattern, cornflower blue, but why in the name of the moon goddess must they all be the same? You would like each plate to be lovely and unique, like the mandalas—womandalas?—you have recently created in your dumb-head dream.

Dumb? You’re dreaming now. You can do things.

And with the awareness comes resentment, mixing oddly with your joy as your mind caresses onto each plate its own radial symmetry, its unique primal pattern. As you ensoul each circle of pottery, you load the dishwasher, put detergent in it, slam it closed, and turn it on. No one hears, of course, or pays any attention, and why should they, when this has been going on for years and years?

Yet generally people do notice ghosts. The way slugs notice salt.

It’s obvious, then, that what you have been saying all along is true. You are not a ghost.

“I can’t see what her idiotic dream has to do with anything,” your husband is saying. “Well, I guess we might as well face it, the phone’s not going to ring. Let’s try to get some sleep.”

“Good night,” you call automatically, and you drift into the living room to watch them trudge upstairs, wondering whether they will notice when they get up in the morning that you took care of the dishes for them.