LOUISE'S GHOST
BY
KELLY LINK
 
Two women and a small child meet in a restaurant. The restaurant is nice-there are windows everywhere. The women have been here before. It’s all that light that makes the food taste so good. The small child-a girl dressed all in green, hairy green sweater, green T-shirt, green corduroys, and dirty sneakers with green-black laces-sniffs. She’s a small child but she has a big nose. She might be smelling the food that people are eating. She might be smelling the warm light that lies on top of everything.
None of her greens match except of course they are all green.
“Louise,” one woman says to the other.
“Louise,” the other woman says.
They kiss.
The maitre d’ comes up to them. He says to the first woman, “Louise, how nice to see you. And look at Anna! You’re so big. Last time I saw you, you were so small. This small.” He holds his index finger and his thumb together as if pinching salt. He looks at the other woman.
Louise says, “This is my friend, Louise. My best friend. Since Girl Scout camp. Louise.”
The maitre d’ smiles. “Yes, Louise. Of course. How could I forget?”
•
Louise sits across from Louise. Anna sits between them. She has a notebook full of green paper and a green crayon. She’s drawing something, only it’s difficult to see what, exactly. Maybe it’s a house.
Louise says, “Sorry about you-know-who. Teacher’s day. The sitter canceled at the last minute. And I had such a lot to tell you, too! About you know, number eight. Oh boy, I think I’m in love. Well, not in love.”
She is sitting opposite a window, and all that rich soft light falls on her. She looks creamy with happiness, as if she’s carved out of butter. The light loves Louise, the other Louise thinks. Of course it loves Louise. Who doesn’t?
•
This is one thing about Louise. She doesn’t like to sleep alone. She says that her bed is too big. There’s too much space. She needs someone to roll up against, or she just rolls around all night. Some mornings she wakes up on the floor. Mostly she wakes up with other people.
When Anna was younger, she slept in the same bed as Louise. But now she has her own room, her own bed. Her walls are painted green. Her sheets are green. Green sheets of paper with green drawings are hung up on the wall. There’s a green teddy bear on the green bed and a green duck. She has a green light in a green shade. Louise has been in that room. She helped Louise paint it. She wore sunglasses while she painted. This passion for greenness, Louise thinks, this longing for everything to be a variation on a theme, it might be hereditary.
This is the second thing about Louise. Louise likes cellists. For about four years, she has been sleeping with a cellist. Not the same cellist. Different cellists. Not all at once, of course. Consecutive cellists. Number eight is Louise’s newest cellist. Numbers one through seven were cellists as well, although Anna’s father was not. That was before the cellists. BC. In any case, according to Louise, cellists generally have low sperm counts.
Louise meets Louise for lunch every week. They go to nice restaurants. Louise knows all the maitre d’s. Louise tells Louise about the cellists. Cellists are mysterious. Louise hasn’t figured them out yet. It’s something about the way they sit, with their legs open and their arms curled around, all hunched over their cellos. She says they look solid but inviting. Like a door. It opens and you walk in.
Doors are sexy. Wood is sexy, and bows strung with real hair. Also cellos don’t have spit valves. Louise says that spit valves aren’t sexy.
Louise is in public relations. She’s a fund-raiser for the symphony-she’s good at what she does. It’s hard to say no to Louise. She takes rich people out to dinner. She knows what kinds of wine they like to drink. She plans charity auctions and masquerades. She brings sponsors to the symphony to sit on stage and watch rehearsals. She takes the cellists home afterwards.
Louise looks a little bit like a cello herself. She’s brown and curvy and tall. She has a long neck and her shiny hair stays pinned up during the day. Louise thinks that the cellists must take it down at night-Louise’s hair-slowly, happily, gently.
At camp Louise used to brush Louise’s hair.
Louise isn’t perfect. Louise would never claim that her friend was perfect. Louise is a bit bowlegged and she has tiny little feet. She wears long, tight silky skirts. Never pants, never anything floral. She has a way of turning her head to look at you, very slowly. It doesn’t matter that she’s bowlegged.
The cellists want to sleep with Louise because she wants them to. The cellists don’t fall in love with her, because Louise doesn’t want them to fall in love with her. Louise always gets what she wants.
Louise doesn’t know what she wants. Louise doesn’t want to want things.
Louise and Louise have been friends since Girl Scout camp. How old were they? Too young to be away from home for so long. They were so small that some of their teeth weren’t there yet. They were so young they wet the bed out of homesickness. Loneliness. Louise slept in the bunk bed above Louise. Girl Scout camp smelled like pee. Summer camp is how Louise knows Louise is bowlegged. At summer camp they wore each other’s clothes.
Here is something else about Louise, a secret. Louise is the only one who knows. Not even the cellists know. Not even Anna.
Louise is tone-deaf. Louise likes to watch Louise at concerts. She has this way of looking at the musicians. Her eyes get wide and she doesn’t blink. There’s this smile on her face as if she’s being introduced to someone whose name she didn’t quite catch. Louise thinks that’s really why Louise ends up sleeping with them, with the cellists. It’s because she doesn’t know what else they’re good for. Louise hates for things to go to waste.
•
A woman comes to their table to take their order. Louise orders the grilled chicken and a house salad and Louise orders salmon with lemon butter. The woman asks Anna what she would like. Anna looks at her mother.
Louise says, “She’ll eat anything as long as it’s green. Broccoli is good. Peas, lima beans, iceberg lettuce. Lime sherbet. Bread rolls. Mashed potatoes.”
The woman looks down at Anna. “I’ll see what we can do,” she says.
Anna says, “Potatoes aren’t green.”
Louise says, “Wait and see.”
Louise says, “If I had a kid-”
Louise says, “But you don’t have a kid.” She doesn’t say this meanly. Louise is never mean, although sometimes she is not kind.
Louise and Anna glare at each other. They’ve never liked each other. They are polite in front of Louise. It is humiliating, Louise thinks, to hate someone so much younger. The child of a friend. I should feel sorry for her instead. She doesn’t have a father. And soon enough, she’ll grow up. Breasts. Zits. Boys. She’ll see old pictures of herself and be embarrassed. She’s short and she dresses like a Keebler elf. She can’t even read yet!
Louise says, “In any case, it’s easier than the last thing. When she only ate dog food.”
Anna says, “When I was a dog-”
Louise says, hating herself, “You were never a dog.”
Anna says, “How do you know?”
Louise says, “I was there when you were born. When your mother was pregnant. I’ve known you since you were this big.” She pinches her fingers together, the way the maitre d’ pinched his, only harder.
Anna says, “It was before that. When I was a dog.”
Louise says, “Stop fighting, you two. Louise, when Anna was a dog, that was when you were away. In Paris. Remember?”
“Right,” Louise says. “When Anna was a dog, I was in Paris.”
Louise is a travel agent. She organizes package tours for senior citizens. Trips for old women. To Las Vegas, Rome, Belize, cruises to the Caribbean. She travels frequently herself and stays in three-star hotels. She tries to imagine herself as an old woman. What she would want.
Most of these women’s husbands are in care or dead or living with younger women. The old women sleep two to a room. They like hotels with buffet lunches and saunas, clean pillows that smell good, chocolates on the pillows, firm mattresses. Louise can see herself wanting these things. Sometimes Louise imagines being old, waking up in the mornings, in unfamiliar countries, strange weather, foreign beds. Louise asleep in the bed beside her.
Last night Louise woke up. It was three in the morning. There was a man lying on the floor beside the bed. He was naked. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes open, his mouth open, nothing coming out. He was bald. He had no eyelashes, no hair on his arms or legs. He was large, not fat but solid. Yes, he was solid. It was hard to tell how old he was. It was dark, but Louise doesn’t think he was circumcised. “What are you doing here?” she said loudly.
The man wasn’t there anymore. She turned on the lights. She looked under the bed. She found him in her bathroom, above the bathtub, flattened up against the ceiling, staring down, his hands and feet pressed along the ceiling, his penis drooping down, apparently the only part of him that obeyed the laws of gravity. He seemed smaller now. Deflated. She wasn’t frightened. She was angry.
“What are you doing?” she said. He didn’t answer. Fine, she thought. She went to the kitchen to get a broom. When she came back, he was gone. She looked under the bed again, but he was really gone this time. She looked in every room, checked to make sure that the front door was locked. It was.
Her arms creeped. She was freezing. She filled up her hot water bottle and got in bed. She left the light on and fell asleep sitting up. When she woke up in the morning, it might have been a dream, except she was holding the broom.
•
The woman brings their food. Anna gets a little dish of peas, Brussels sprouts, and collard greens. Mashed potatoes and bread. The plate is green. Louise takes a vial of green food coloring out of her purse. She adds three drops to the mashed potatoes. “Stir it,” she tells Anna.
Anna stirs the mashed potatoes until they are a waxy green. Louise mixes more green food coloring into a pat of butter and spreads it on the dinner roll.
“When I was a dog,” Anna says, “I lived in a house with a swimming pool. And there was a tree in the living room. It grew right through the ceiling. I slept in the tree. But I wasn’t allowed to swim in the pool. I was too hairy.”
“I have a ghost,” Louise says. She wasn’t sure that she was going to say this. But if Anna can reminisce about her former life as a dog, then surely she, Louise, is allowed to mention her ghost. “I think it’s a ghost. It was in my bedroom.”
Anna says, “When I was a dog I bit ghosts.”
Louise says, “Anna, be quiet for a minute. Eat your green food before it gets cold. Louise, what do you mean? I thought you had ladybugs.”
“That was a while ago,” Louise says. Last month she woke up because people were whispering in the corners of her room. Dead leaves were crawling on her face. The walls of her bedroom were alive. They heaved and dripped red. “What?” she said, and a ladybug walked into her mouth, bitter like soap. The floor crackled when she walked on it, like red cellophane. She opened up her windows. She swept ladybugs out with her broom. She vacuumed them up. More flew in the windows, down the chimney. She moved out for three days. When she came back, the ladybugs were gone-mostly gone-she still finds them tucked into her shoes, in the folds of her underwear, in her cereal bowls and her wineglasses, and between the pages of her books.
Before that it was moths. Before the moths, a possum. It shat on her bed and hissed at her when she cornered it in the pantry. She called an animal shelter and a man wearing a denim jacket and heavy gloves came and shot it with a tranquilizer dart. The possum sneezed and shut its eyes. The man picked it up by the tail. He posed like that for a moment. Maybe she was supposed to take a picture. Man with possum. She sniffed. He wasn’t married. All she smelled was possum.
“How did it get in here?” Louise said.
“How long have you been living here?” the man asked. Boxes of Louise’s dishes and books were still stacked up against the walls of the rooms downstairs. She still hadn’t put the legs on her mother’s dining room table. It lay flat on its back on the floor, amputated.
“Two months,” Louise said.
“Well, he’s probably been living here longer than that,” the man from the shelter said. He cradled the possum like a baby. “In the walls or the attic. Maybe in the chimney. Santa claws. Huh.” He laughed at his own joke. “Get it?”
“Get that thing out of my house,” Louise said.
“Your house!” the man said. He held out the possum to her, as if she might want to reconsider. “You know what he thought? He thought this was his house.”
“It’s my house now,” Louise said.
•
Louise says, “A ghost? Louise, it is someone you know? Is your mother okay?”
“My mother?” Louise says. “It wasn’t my mother. It was a naked man. I’d never seen him before in my life.”
“How naked?” Anna says. “A little naked or a lot?”
“None of your beeswax,” Louise says.
“Was it green?” Anna says.
“Maybe it was someone that you went out with in high school,” Louise says. “An old lover. Maybe he just killed himself, or was in a horrible car accident. Was he covered in blood? Did he say anything? Maybe he wants to warn you about something.”
“He didn’t say anything,” Louise says. “And then he vanished. First he got smaller and then he vanished.”
Louise shivers and then so does Louise. For the first time she feels frightened. The ghost of a naked man was levitating in her bathtub. He could be anywhere. Maybe while she was sleeping, he was floating above her bed. Right above her nose, watching her sleep. She’ll have to sleep with the broom from now on.
“Maybe he won’t come back,” Louise says, and Louise nods. What if he does? Who can she call? The rude man with the heavy gloves?
The woman comes to their table again. “Any dessert?” she wants to know. “Coffee?”
“If you had a ghost,” Louise says, “how would you get rid of it?”
Louise kicks Louise under the table.
The woman thinks for a minute. “I’d go see a psychiatrist,” she says. “Get some kind of prescription. Coffee?”
But Anna has to go to her tumble class. She’s learning how to stand on her head. How to fall down and not be hurt. Louise gets the woman to put the leftover mashed green potatoes in a container, and she wraps up the dinner rolls in a napkin and bundles them into her purse along with a few packets of sugar.
They walk out of the restaurant together, Louise first. Behind her, Anna whispers something to Louise. “Louise?” Louise says.
“What?” Louise says, turning back.
“You need to walk behind me,” Anna says. “You can’t be first.”
“Come back and talk to me,” Louise says, patting the air. “Say thank you, Anna.”
Anna doesn’t say anything. She walks before them, slowly, so that they have to walk slowly as well.
“So what should I do?” Louise says.
“About the ghost? I don’t know. Is he cute? Maybe he’ll creep in bed with you. Maybe he’s your demon lover.”
“Oh, please,” Louise says. “Yuck.”
Louise says, “Sorry. You should call your mother.”
“When I had the problem with the ladybugs,” Louise says, “she said they would go away if I sang them that nursery rhyme. ‘ Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.’”
“Well,” Louise says, “they did go away, didn’t they?”
“Not until I went away first,” Louise says.
“Maybe it’s someone who used to live in the house before you moved in. Maybe he’s buried under the floor of your bedroom or in the wall or something.”
“Just like the possum,” Louise says. “Maybe it’s Santa Claus.”
•
Louise’s mother lives in a retirement community two states away. Louise cleaned out her mother’s basement and garage, put her mother’s furniture in storage, sold her mother’s house. Her mother wanted this. She gave Louise the money from the sale of the house so that Louise could buy her own house. But she won’t come visit Louise in her new house. She won’t let Louise send her on a package vacation. Sometimes she pretends not to recognize Louise when Louise calls. Or maybe she really doesn’t recognize her. Maybe this is why Louise’s clients travel. Settle down in one place and you get lazy. You don’t bother to remember things like taking baths, or your daughter’s name.
When you travel, everything’s always new. If you don’t speak the language, it isn’t a big deal. Nobody expects you to understand everything they say. You can wear the same clothes every day and the other travelers will be impressed with your careful packing. When you wake up and you’re not sure where you are. There’s a perfectly good reason for that.
“Hello, Mom,” Louise says when her mother picks up the phone.
“Who is this?” her mother says.
“Louise,” Louise says.
“Oh yes,” her mother says. “Louise, how nice to speak to you.”
There is an awkward pause and then her mother says, “If you’re calling because it’s your birthday, I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“It isn’t my birthday,” Louise says. “Mom, remember the ladybugs?”
“Oh yes,” her mother says. “You sent pictures. They were lovely.”
“I have a ghost,” Louise says, “and I was hoping that you would know how to get rid of it.”
“A ghost!” her mother says. “It isn’t your father, is it?”
“No!” Louise says. “This ghost doesn’t have any clothes on, Mom. It’s naked and I saw it for a minute and then it disappeared and then I saw it again in my bathtub. Well, sort of.”
“Are you sure it’s a ghost?” her mother says.
“Yes, positive.” Louise says.
“And it isn’t your father?”
“No, it’s not Dad. It doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen before.”
Her mother says, “Lucy-you don’t know her-Mrs. Peterson’s husband died two nights ago. Is it a short fat man with an ugly moustache? Dark complected?”
“It isn’t Mr. Peterson,” Louise says.
“Have you asked what it wants?”
“Mom, I don’t care what it wants,” Louise says. “I just want it to go away.”
“Well,” her mother says, “try hot water and salt. Scrub all the floors. You should polish them with lemon oil afterwards so they don’t get streaky. Wash the windows, too. Wash all the bed linens and beat all the rugs. And put the sheets back on the bed inside out. And turn all your clothes on the hangers inside out. Clean the bathroom.”
“Inside out,” Louise says.
“Inside out,” her mother says. “Confuses them.”
“I think it’s pretty confused already. About clothes, anyway. Are you sure this works?”
“Positive,” her mother says. “We’re always having supernatural infestations around here. Sometimes it gets hard to tell who’s alive and who’s dead. If cleaning the house doesn’t work, try hanging garlic up on strings. Ghosts hate garlic. Or they like it. It’s either one or the other, love it, hate it. So what else is happening? When are you coming to visit?”
“I had lunch today with Louise,” Louise says.
“Aren’t you too old to have an imaginary friend?” her mother says.
“Mom, you know Louise. Remember? Girl Scouts? College? She has the little girl, Anna? Louise?”
“Of course I remember Louise,” her mother says. “My own daughter. You’re a very rude person.” She hangs up.
Salt, Louise thinks. Salt and hot water. She should write these things down. Maybe she could send her mother a tape recorder. She sits down on the kitchen floor and cries. That’s one kind of salt water. Then she scrubs floors, beats rugs, washes her sheets and her blankets. She washes her clothes and hangs them back up, inside out. While she works, the ghost lies half under the bed, feet and genitalia pointed at her accusingly. She scrubs around it. Him. It.
She is being squeamish, Louise thinks. Afraid to touch it. And that makes her angry, so she picks up her broom. Pokes at the fleshy thighs, and the ghost hisses under the bed like an angry cat. She jumps back and then it isn’t there anymore. But she sleeps on the living room sofa. She keeps all the lights on in all the rooms of the house.
•
“Well?” Louise says.
“It isn’t gone,” Louise says. She’s just come home from work. “I just don’t know where it is. Maybe it’s up in the attic. It might be standing behind me, for all I know, while I’m talking to you on the phone and every time I turn around, it vanishes. Jumps back in the mirror or wherever it is that it goes. You may hear me scream. By the time you get here, it will be too late.”
“Sweetie,” Louise says, “I’m sure it can’t hurt you.”
“It hissed at me,” Louise says.
“Did it just hiss, or did you do something first?” Louise says. “Kettles hiss. It just means the water’s boiling.”
“What about snakes?” Louise says. “I’m thinking it’s more like a snake than a pot of tea.”
“You could ask a priest to exorcise it. If you were Catholic. Or you could go to the library. They might have a book. Exorcism for Dummies. Can you come to the symphony tonight? I have extra tickets.”
“You’ve always got extra tickets,” Louise says.
“Yes, but it will be good for you,” Louise says. “Besides, I haven’t seen you for two days.”
“Can’t do it tonight,” Louise says. “What about tomorrow night?”
“Well, okay,” Louise says. “Have you tried reading the Bible to it?”
“What part of the Bible would I read?”
“How about the begetting part? That’s official sounding,” Louise says.
“What if it thinks I’m flirting? The guy at the gas station today said I should spit on the floor when I see it and say, ‘In the name of God, what do you want?’”
“Have you tried that?”
“I don’t know about spitting on the floor,” Louise says. “I just cleaned it. What if it wants something gross, like my eyes? What if it wants me to kill someone?”
“Well,” Louise says, “that would depend on who it wanted you to kill.”
•
Louise goes to dinner with her married lover. After dinner, they will go to a motel and fuck. Then he’ll take a shower and go home, and she’ll spend the night at the motel. This is a Louise -style economy. It makes Louise feel slightly more virtuous. The ghost will have the house to himself.
Louise doesn’t talk to Louise about her lover. He belongs to her, and to his wife, of course. There isn’t enough left over to share. She met him at work. Before him she had another lover, another married man. She would like to believe that this is a charming quirk, like being bowlegged or sleeping with cellists. But perhaps it’s a character defect instead, like being tone-deaf or refusing to eat food that isn’t green.
Here is what Louise would tell Louise, if she told her. I’m just borrowing him-I don’t want him to leave his wife. I’m glad he’s married. Let someone else take care of him. It’s the way he smells-the way married men smell. I can smell when a happily married man comes into a room, and they can smell me, too, I think. So can the wives-that’s why he has to take a shower when he leaves me.
But Louise doesn’t tell Louise about her lovers. She doesn’t want to sound as if she’s competing with the cellists.
“What are you thinking about?” her lover says. The wine has made his teeth red.
It’s the guiltiness that cracks them wide open. The guilt makes them taste so sweet, Louise thinks. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she says.
Her lover laughs. “Of course not.”
If he were her husband, they would sleep in the same bed every night. And if she woke up and saw the ghost, she would wake up her husband. They would both see the ghost. They would share responsibility. It would be a piece of their marriage, part of the things they don’t have (can’t have) now, like breakfast or ski vacations or fights about toothpaste. Or maybe he would blame her. If she tells him now that she saw a naked man in her bedroom, he might say that it’s her fault.
“Neither do I,” Louise says. “But if you did believe in ghosts. Because you saw one. What would you do? How would you get rid of it?”
Her lover thinks for a minute. “I wouldn’t get rid of it,” he says. “I’d charge admission. I’d become famous. I’d be on Oprah . They would make a movie. Everyone wants to see a ghost.”
“But what if there’s a problem?” Louise says. “Such as. What if the ghost is naked?”
Her lover says, “Well, that would be a problem. Unless you were the ghost. Then I would want you to be naked all the time.”
•
But Louise can’t fall asleep in the motel room. Her lover has gone home to his home which isn’t haunted, to his wife who doesn’t know about Louise. Louise is as unreal to her as a ghost. Louise lies awake and thinks about her ghost. The dark is not dark, she thinks, and there is something in the motel room with her. Something her lover has left behind. Something touches her face. There’s something bitter in her mouth. In the room next door someone is walking up and down. A baby is crying somewhere, or a cat.
She gets dressed and drives home. She needs to know if the ghost is still there or if her mother’s recipe worked. She wishes she’d tried to take a picture.
She looks all over the house. She takes her clothes off the hangers in the closet and hangs them back right-side out. The ghost isn’t anywhere. She can’t find him. She even sticks her face up the chimney.
She finds the ghost curled up in her underwear drawer. He lies facedown, hands open and loose. He’s naked and downy all over like a baby monkey.
Louise spits on the floor, feeling relieved. “In God’s name,” she says, “what do you want?”
The ghost doesn’t say anything. He lies there, small and hairy and forlorn, facedown in her underwear. Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants any more than she does. “Clothes?” Louise says. “Do you want me to get you some clothes? It would be easier if you stayed the same size.”
The ghost doesn’t say anything. “Well,” Louise says. “You think about it. Let me know.” She closes the drawer.
•
Anna is in her green bed. The green light is on. Louise and the baby-sitter sit in the living room while Louise and Anna talk. “When I was a dog,” Anna says, “I ate roses and raw meat and borscht. I wore silk dresses.”
“When you were a dog,” Louise hears Louise say, “you had big silky ears and four big feet and a long silky tail and you wore a collar made out of silk and a silk dress with a hole cut in it for your tail.”
“A green dress,” Anna says. “I could see in the dark.”
“Good night, my green girl,” Louise says, “good night, good night.”
Louise comes into the living room. “Doesn’t Louise look beautiful,” she says, leaning against Louise’s chair and looking in the mirror. “The two of us. Louise and Louise and Louise and Louise. All four of us.”
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” the baby-sitter says, “who is the fairest Louise of all?” Patrick the baby-sitter doesn’t let Louise pay him. He takes symphony tickets instead. He plays classical guitar and composes music himself. Louise and Louise would like to hear his compositions, but he’s too shy to play for them. He brings his guitar sometimes, to play for Anna. He’s teaching her the simple chords.
“How is your ghost?” Louise says. “Louise has a ghost,” she tells Patrick.
“Smaller,” Louise says. “Hairier.” Louise doesn’t really like Patrick. He’s in love with Louise for one thing. It embarrasses Louise, the hopeless way he looks at Louise. He probably writes love songs for her. He’s friendly with Anna. As if that will get him anywhere.
“You tried garlic?” Louise says. “Spitting? Holy water? The library?”
“Yes,” Louise says, lying.
“How about country music?” Patrick says. “Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams?”
“Country music?” Louise says. “Is that like holy water?”
“I read something about it,” Patrick says. “In New Scientist, or Guitar magazine, or maybe it was Martha Stewart Living. It was something about the pitch, the frequencies. Yodeling is supposed to be effective. Makes sense when you think about it.”
“I was thinking about summer camp,” Louise says to Louise. “Remember how the counselors used to tell us ghost stories?”
“Yeah,” Louise says. “They did that thing with the flashlight. You made me go to the bathroom with you in the middle of the night. You were afraid to go by yourself.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Louise says. “You were afraid.”
•
At the symphony, Louise watches the cellists and Louise watches Louise. The cellists watch the conductor and every now and then they look past him, over at Louise. Louise can feel them staring at Louise. Music goes everywhere, like light and, like light, music loves Louise. Louise doesn’t know how she knows this-she can just feel the music, wrapping itself around Louise, insinuating itself into her beautiful ears, between her lips, collecting in her hair and in the little scoop between her legs. And what good does it do Louise, Louise thinks? The cellists might as well be playing jackhammers and spoons.
Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Louise may be tone-deaf, but she’s explained to Louise that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like music. She feels it in her bones and back behind her jaw. It scratches itches. It’s like a crossword puzzle. Louise is trying to figure it out, and right next to her, Louise is trying to figure out Louise.
The music stops and starts and stops again. Louise and Louise clap at the intermission and then the lights come up and Louise says, “I’ve been thinking a lot. About something. I want another baby.”
“What do you mean?” Louise says, stunned. “You mean like Anna?”
“I don’t know,” Louise says. “Just another one. You should have a baby, too. We could go to Lamaze classes together. You could name yours Louise after me and I could name mine Louise after you. Wouldn’t that be funny?”
“Anna would be jealous,” Louise says.
“I think it would make me happy,” Louise says. “I was so happy when Anna was a baby. Everything just tasted good, even the air. I even liked being pregnant.”
Louise says, “Aren’t you happy now?”
Louise says, “Of course I’m happy. But don’t you know what I mean? Being happy like that?”
“Kind of,” Louise says. “Like when we were kids. You mean like Girl Scout camp.”
“Yeah,” Louise says. “Like that. You would have to get rid of your ghost first. I don’t think ghosts are very hygienic. I could introduce you to a very nice man. A cellist. Maybe not the highest sperm count, but very nice.”
“Which number is he?” Louise says.
“I don’t want to prejudice you,” Louise says. “You haven’t met him. I’m not sure you should think of him as a number. I’ll point him out. Oh, and number eight, too. You have to meet my beautiful boy, number eight. We have to go out to lunch so I can tell you about him. He’s smitten. I’ve smited him.”
Louise goes to the bathroom and Louise stays in her seat. She thinks of her ghost. Why can’t she have a ghost and a baby? Why is she always supposed to give up something? Why can’t other people share?
Why does Louise want to have another baby anyway? What if this new baby hates Louise as much as Anna does? What if it used to be a dog? What if her own baby hates Louise?
When the musicians are back on stage, Louise leans over and whispers to Louise, “There he is. The one with big hands, over on the right.”
It isn’t clear to Louise which cellist Louise means. They all have big hands. And which cellist is she supposed to be looking for? The nice cellist she shouldn’t be thinking of as a number? Number eight? She takes a closer look. All of the cellists are handsome from where Louise is sitting. How fragile they look, she thinks, in their serious black clothes, letting the music run down their strings like that and pour through their open fingers. It’s careless of them. You have to hold on to things.
There are six cellists on stage. Perhaps Louise has slept with all of them. Louise thinks, if I went to bed with them, with any of them, I would recognize the way they tasted, the things they liked, and the ways they liked them. I would know which number they were. But they wouldn’t know me.
•
The ghost is bigger again. He’s prickly all over. He bristles with hair. The hair is reddish brown and sharp-looking. Louise doesn’t think it would be a good idea to touch the ghost now. All night he moves back and forth in front of her bed, sliding on his belly like a snake. His fingers dig into the floorboards and he pushes himself forward with his toes. His mouth stays open as if he’s eating air.
Louise goes to the kitchen. She opens a can of beans, a can of pears, hearts of palm. She puts the different things on a plate and places the plate in front of the ghost. He moves around it. Maybe he’s like Anna-picky. Louise doesn’t know what he wants. Louise refuses to sleep in the living room again. It’s her bedroom after all. She lies awake and listens to the ghost press himself against her clean floor, moving backwards and forwards before the foot of the bed all night long.
In the morning the ghost is in the closet, upside down against the wall. Enough, she thinks, and she goes to the mall and buys a stack of CDs. Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Lyle Lovett. She asks the clerk if he can recommend anything with yodeling on it, but he’s young and not very helpful.
“Never mind,” she says. “I’ll just take these.”
While he’s running her credit card, she says, “Wait. Have you ever seen a ghost?”
“None of your business, lady,” he says. “But if I had, I’d make it show me where it buried its treasure. And then I’d dig up the treasure and I’d be rich and then I wouldn’t be selling you this stupid country shit. Unless the treasure had a curse on it.”
“What if there wasn’t any treasure?” Louise says.
“Then I’d stick the ghost in a bottle and sell it to a museum,” the kid says. “A real live ghost. That’s got to be worth something. I’d buy a hog and ride it to California. I’d go make my own music, and there wouldn’t be any fucking yodeling.”
•
The ghost seems to like Patsy Cline. It isn’t that he says anything. But he doesn’t disappear. He comes out of the closet. He lies on the floor so that Louise has to walk around him. He’s thicker now, more solid. Maybe he was a Patsy Cline fan when he was alive. The hair stands up all over his body, and it moves gently, as if a breeze is blowing through it.
They both like Johnny Cash. Louise is pleased-they have something in common now.
“I’m on to Jackson,” Louise sings. “You big-talkin’ man.”
•
The phone rings in the middle of the night. Louise sits straight up in bed. “What?” she says. “Did you say something?” Is she in a hotel room? She orients herself quickly. The ghost is under the bed again, one hand sticking out as if flagging down a bedroom taxi. Louise picks up the phone.
“Number eight just told me the strangest thing,” Louise says. “Did you try the country music?”
“Yes,” Louise says. “But it didn’t work. I think he liked it.”
“That’s a relief,” Louise says. “What are you doing on Friday?”
“Working,” Louise says. “And then I don’t know. I was going to rent a video or something. Want to come over and see the ghost?”
“I’d like to bring over a few people,” Louise says. “After rehearsal. The cellists want to see the ghost, too. They want to play for it, actually. It’s kind of complicated. Maybe you could fix dinner. Spaghetti’s fine. Maybe some salad, some garlic bread. I’ll bring wine.”
“How many cellists?” Louise says.
“Eight,” Louise says. “And Patrick’s busy. I might have to bring Anna. It could be educational. Is the ghost still naked?”
“Yes,” Louise says. “But it’s okay. He got furry. You can tell her he’s a dog. So what’s going to happen?”
“That depends on the ghost,” Louise says. “If he likes the cellists, he might leave with one of them. You know, go into one of the cellos. Apparently it’s very good for the music. And it’s good for the ghost, too. Sort of like those little fish that live on the big fishes. Remoras. Number eight is explaining it to me. He said that haunted instruments aren’t just instruments. It’s like they have a soul. The musician doesn’t play the instrument anymore. He or she plays the ghost.”
“I don’t know if he’d fit,” Louise says. “He’s largish. At least part of the time.”
Louise says, “Apparently cellos are a lot bigger on the inside than they look on the outside. Besides, it’s not like you’re using him for anything.”
“I guess not,” Louise says.
“If word gets out, you’ll have musicians knocking on your door day and night, night and day,” Louise says. “Trying to steal him. Don’t tell anyone.”
•
Gloria and Mary come to see Louise at work. They leave with a group in a week for Greece. They’re going to all the islands. They’ve been working with Louise to organize the hotels, the tours, the passports, and the buses. They’re fond of Louise. They tell her about their sons, show her pictures. They think she should get married and have a baby.
Louise says, “Have either of you ever seen a ghost?”
Gloria shakes her head. Mary says, “Oh, honey, all the time when I was growing up. It runs in families sometimes, ghosts and stuff like that. Not as much now, of course. My eyesight isn’t so good now.”
“What do you do with them?” Louise says.
“Not much,” Mary says. “You can’t eat them and you can’t talk to most of them and they aren’t worth much.”
“I played with a Ouija board once,” Gloria says. “With some other girls. We asked it who we would marry, and it told us some names. I forget. I don’t recall that it was accurate. Then we got scared. We asked it who we were talking to, and it spelled out Z-E-U-S. Then it was just a bunch of letters. Gibberish.”
“What about music?” Louise says.
“I like music,” Gloria says. “It makes me cry sometimes when I hear a pretty song. I saw Frank Sinatra sing once. He wasn’t so special.”
“It will bother a ghost,” Mary says. “Some kinds of music will stir it up. Some kinds of music will lay a ghost. We used to catch ghosts in my brother’s fiddle. Like fishing, or catching fireflies in a jar. But my mother always said to leave them be.”
“I have a ghost,” Louise confesses.
“Would you ask it something?” Gloria says. “Ask it what it’s like being dead. I like to know about a place before I get there. I don’t mind going someplace new, but I like to know what it’s going to be like. I like to have some idea.”
•
Louise asks the ghost but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t remember what it was like to be alive. Maybe he’s forgotten the language. He just lies on the bedroom floor, flat on his back, legs open, looking up at her like she’s something special. Or maybe he’s thinking of England.
•
Louise makes spaghetti. Louise is on the phone talking to caterers. “So you don’t think we have enough champagne,” she says. “I know it’s a gala, but I don’t want them falling over. Just happy. Happy signs checks. Falling over doesn’t do me any good. How much more do you think we need?”
Anna sits on the kitchen floor and watches Louise cutting up tomatoes. “You’ll have to make me something green,” she says.
“Why don’t you just eat your crayon?” Louise says. “Your mother isn’t going to have time to make you green food when she has another baby. You’ll have to eat plain food like everybody else, or else eat grass like cows do.”
“I’ll make my own green food,” Anna says.
“You’re going to have a little brother or a little sister,” Louise says. “You’ll have to behave. You’ll have to be responsible. You’ll have to share your room and your toys-not just the regular ones, the green ones, too.”
“I’m not going to have a sister,” Anna says. “I’m going to have a dog.”
“You know how it works, right?” Louise says, pushing the drippy tomatoes into the saucepan. “A man and a woman fall in love and they kiss and then the woman has a baby. First she gets fat and then she goes to the hospital. She comes home with a baby.”
“You’re lying,” Anna says. “The man and the woman go to the pound. They pick out a dog. They bring the dog home and they feed it baby food. And then one day all the dog’s hair falls out and it’s pink. And it learns how to talk, and it has to wear clothes. And they give it a new name, not a dog name. They give it a baby name and it has to give the dog name back.”
“Whatever,” Louise says. “I’m going to have a baby, too. And it will have the same name as your mother and the same name as me. Louise. Louise will be the name of your mother’s baby, too. The only person named Anna will be you.”
“My dog name was Louise,” Anna says. “But you’re not allowed to call me that.”
Louise comes in the kitchen. “So much for the caterers,” she says. “So where is it?”
“Where’s what?” Louise says.
“The you-know-what,” Louise says, “you know.”
“I haven’t seen it today,” Louise says. “Maybe this won’t work. Maybe it would rather live here.” All day long she’s had the radio turned on, tuned to the country station. Maybe the ghost will take the hint and hide out somewhere until everyone leaves.
The cellists arrive. Seven men and a woman. Louise doesn’t bother to remember their names. The woman is tall and thin. She has long arms and a long nose. She eats three plates of spaghetti. The cellists talk to each other. They don’t talk about the ghost. They talk about music. They complain about acoustics. They tell Louise that her spaghetti is delicious. Louise just smiles. She stares at the woman cellist, sees Louise watching her. Louise shrugs, nods. She holds up five fingers.
Louise and the cellists seem comfortable. They tease each other. They tell stories. Do they know? Do they talk about Louise? Do they brag? Compare notes? How could they know Louise better than Louise knows her? Suddenly Louise feels as if this isn’t her house after all. It belongs to Louise and the cellists. It’s their ghost, not hers. They live here. After dinner they’ll stay and she’ll leave.
Number five is the one who likes foreign films, Louise remembers. The one with the goldfish. Louise said number five had a great sense of humor.
Louise gets up and goes to the kitchen to get more wine, leaving Louise alone with the cellists. The one sitting next to Louise says, “You have the prettiest eyes. Have I seen you in the audience sometimes?”
“It’s possible,” Louise says.
“Louise talks about you all the time,” the cellist says. He’s young, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Louise wonders if he’s the one with the big hands. He has pretty eyes, too. She tells him that.
“Louise doesn’t know everything about me,” she says, flirting.
Anna is hiding under the table. She growls and pretends to bite the cellists. The cellists know Anna. They’re used to her. They probably think she’s cute. They pass her bits of broccoli, lettuce.
The living room is full of cellos in black cases the cellists brought in, like sarcophaguses on little wheels. Sarcophabuses. Dead baby carriages. After dinner the cellists take their chairs into the living room. They take out their cellos and tune them. Anna insinuates herself between cellos, hanging on the backs of chairs. The house is full of sound.
Louise and Louise sit on chairs in the hall and look in. They can’t talk. It’s too loud. Louise reaches into her purse, pulls out a packet of earplugs. She gives two to Anna, two to Louise, keeps two for herself. Louise puts her earplugs in. Now the cellists sound as if they are underground, down in some underground lake, or in a cave. Louise fidgets.
The cellists play for almost an hour. When they take a break Louise feels tender, as if the cellists have been throwing things at her. Tiny lumps of sound. She almost expects to see bruises on her arms.
The cellists go outside to smoke cigarettes. Louise takes Louise aside. “You should tell me now if there isn’t a ghost,” she says. “I’ll tell them to go home. I promise I won’t be angry.”
“There is a ghost,” Louise says. “Really.” But she doesn’t try to sound too convincing. What she doesn’t tell Louise is that she’s stuck a Walkman in her closet. She’s got the Patsy Cline CD on repeat with the volume turned way down.
Louise says, “So he was talking to you during dinner. What do you think?”
“Who?” Louise says. “Him? He was pretty nice.”
Louise sighs. “Yeah. I think he’s pretty nice, too.”
The cellists come back inside. The young cellist with the glasses and the big hands looks over at both of them and smiles a big blissed smile. Maybe it wasn’t cigarettes that they were smoking.
Anna has fallen asleep inside a cello case, like a fat green pea in a coffin.
Louise tries to imagine the cellists without their clothes. She tries to picture them naked and fucking Louise. No, fucking Louise, fucking her instead. Which one is number four? The one with the beard? Number four, she remembers, likes Louise to sit on top and bounce up and down. She does all the work while he waves his hand. He conducts her. Louise thinks it’s funny.
Louise pictures all of the cellists, naked and in the same bed. She’s in the bed. The one with the beard first. Lie on your back, she tells him. Close your eyes. Don’t move. I’m in charge. I’m conducting this affair. The one with the skinny legs and the poochy stomach. The young one with curly black hair, bent over his cello as if he might fall in. Who was flirting with her. Do this, she tells a cellist. Do this, she tells another one. She can’t figure out what to do with the woman. Number five. She can’t even figure out how to take off number five’s clothes. Number five sits on the edge of the bed, hands tucked under her buttocks. She’s still in her bra and underwear.
Louise thinks about the underwear for a minute. It has little flowers on it. Periwinkles. Number five waits for Louise to tell her what to do. But Louise is having a hard enough time figuring out where everyone else goes. A mouth has fastened itself on her breast. Someone is tugging at her hair. She is holding on to someone’s penis with both hands, someone else’s penis is rubbing against her cunt. There are penises everywhere. Wait your turn, Louise thinks. Be patient.
Number five has pulled a cello out of her underwear. She’s playing a sad little tune on it. It’s distracting. It’s not sexy at all. Another cellist stands up on the bed, jumps up and down. Soon they’re all doing it. The bed creaks and groans, and the woman plays faster and faster on her fiddle. Stop it, Louise thinks, you’ll wake the ghost.
“Shit!” Louise says-she’s yanked Louise’s earplug out, drops it in Louise’s lap. “There he is under your chair. Look. Louise, you really do have a ghost.”
The cellists don’t look. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. They are fucking their cellos with their fingers, stroking music out, promising the ghost yodels and Patsy Cline and funeral marches and whole cities of music and music to eat and music to drink and music to put on and wear like clothes. It isn’t music Louise has ever heard before. It sounds like a lullaby, and then it sounds like a pack of wolves, and then it sounds like a slaughterhouse, and then it sounds like a motel room and a married man saying I love you and the shower is running at the same time. It makes her teeth ache and her heart rattle.
It sounds like the color green. Anna wakes up. She’s sitting in the cello case, hands over her ears.
This is too loud, Louise thinks. The neighbors will complain. She bends over and sees the ghost, small and unobjectionable as a lapdog, lying under her chair. Oh, my poor baby, she thinks. Don’t be fooled. Don’t fall for the song. They don’t mean it.
But something is happening to the ghost. He shivers and twists and gapes. He comes out from under the chair. He leaves all his fur behind, under the chair in a neat little pile. He drags himself along the floor with his strong beautiful hands, scissoring with his legs along the floor like a swimmer. He’s planning to change, to leave her and go away. Louise pulls out her other earplug. She’s going to give them to the ghost. “Stay here,” she says out loud, “stay here with me and the real Patsy Cline. Don’t go.” She can’t hear herself speak. The cellos roar like lions in cages and licks of fire. Louise opens her mouth to say it louder, but the ghost is going. Fine, okay, go comb your hair. See if I care.
Louise and Louise and Anna watch as the ghost climbs into a cello. He pulls himself up, shakes the air off like drops of water. He gets smaller. He gets fainter. He melts into the cello like spilled milk. All the other cellists pause. The cellist who has caught Louise’s ghost plays a scale. “Well,” he says. It doesn’t sound any different to Louise but all the other cellists sigh.
It’s the bearded cellist who’s caught the ghost. He holds on to his cello as if it might grow legs and run away if he let go. He looks like he’s discovered America. He plays something else. Something old-fashioned, Louise thinks, a pretty old-fashioned tune, and she wants to cry. She puts her earplugs back in again. The cellist looks up at Louise as he plays and he smiles. You owe me, she thinks.
But it’s the youngest cellist, the one who thinks Louise has pretty eyes, who stays. Louise isn’t sure how this happens. She isn’t sure that she has the right cellist. She isn’t sure that the ghost went into the right cello. But the cellists pack up their cellos and they thank her and they drive away, leaving the dishes piled in the sink for Louise to wash.
The youngest cellist is still sitting in her living room. “I thought I had it,” he says. “I thought for sure I could play that ghost.”
“I’m leaving,” Louise says. But she doesn’t leave.
“Good night,” Louise says.
“Do you want a ride?” Louise says to the cellist.
He says, “I thought I might hang around. See if there’s another ghost in here. If that’s okay with Louise.”
Louise shrugs. “Good night,” she says to Louise.
“Well,” Louise says, “good night.” She picks up Anna, who has fallen asleep on the couch. Anna was not impressed with the ghost. He wasn’t a dog and he wasn’t green.
“Good night,” the cellist says, and the door slams shut behind Louise and Anna.
Louise inhales. He’s not married, it isn’t that smell. But it reminds her of something.
“What’s your name?” she says, but before he can answer her, she puts her earplugs back in again. They fuck in the closet and then in the bathtub and then he lies down on the bedroom floor and Louise sits on top of him. To exorcise the ghost, she thinks. Hotter in a chilly sprout.
The cellist’s mouth moves when he comes. It looks like he’s saying, “Louise, Louise,” but she gives him the benefit of the doubt. He might be saying her name.
She nods encouragingly. “That’s right,” she says. “Louise.”
The cellist falls asleep on the floor. Louise throws a blanket over him. She watches him breathe. It’s been a while since she’s watched a man sleep. She takes a shower and she does the dishes. She puts the chairs in the living room away. She gets an envelope and she picks up a handful of the ghost’s hair. She puts it in the envelope and she sweeps the rest away. She takes her earplugs out but she doesn’t throw them away.
In the morning, the cellist makes her pancakes. He sits down at the table and she stands up. She walks over and sniffs his neck. She recognizes that smell now. He smells like Louise. Burnt sugar and orange juice and talcum powder. She realizes that she’s made a horrible mistake.
•
Louise is furious. Louise didn’t know Louise knew how to be angry. Louise hangs up when Louise calls. Louise drives over to Louise’s house and no one comes to the door. But Louise can see Anna looking out the window.
Louise writes a letter to Louise. “I’m so sorry,” she writes. “I should have known. Why didn’t you tell me? He doesn’t love me. He was just drunk. Maybe he got confused. Please, please forgive me. You don’t have to forgive me immediately. Tell me what I should do.”
At the bottom she writes, “P.S. I’m not pregnant.”
•
Three weeks later, Louise is walking a group of symphony patrons across the stage. They’ve all just eaten lunch. They drank wine. She is pointing out architectural details, rows of expensive spotlights. She is standing with her back to the theater. She is talking, she points up, she takes a step back into air. She falls off the stage.
A man-a lawyer-calls Louise at work. At first she thinks it must be her mother who has fallen. The lawyer explains. Louise is the one who is dead. She broke her neck.
While Louise is busy understanding this, the lawyer, Mr. Bostick, says something else. Louise is Anna’s guardian now.
“Wait, wait,” Louise says. “What do you mean? Louise is in the hospital? I have to take care of Anna for a while?”
No, Mr. Bostick says. Louise is dead.
“In the event of her death, Louise wanted you to adopt her daughter, Anna Geary. I had assumed that my client Louise Geary had discussed this with you. She has no living family. Louise told me that you were her family.”
“But I slept with her cellist,” Louise said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize which number he was. I didn’t know his name. I still don’t. Louise is so angry with me.”
But Louise isn’t angry with Louise anymore. Or maybe now she will always be angry with Louise.
Louise picks Anna up at school. Anna is sitting on a chair in the school office. She doesn’t look up when Louise opens the door. Louise goes and stands in front of her. She looks down at Anna and thinks, This is all that’s left of Louise. This is all I’ve got now. A little girl who only likes things that are green, who used to be a dog. “Come on, Anna,” Louise says. “You’re going to come live with me.”
•
Louise and Anna live together for a week. At work, Louise avoids her married lover. She doesn’t know how to explain things. First a ghost and now a little girl. That’s the end of the motel rooms.
Louise and Anna go to Louise’s funeral and throw dirt at Louise’s coffin. Anna throws her dirt hard, like she’s aiming for something. Louise holds on to her handful too tightly. When she lets go, there’s dirt under her fingernails. She sticks a finger in her mouth.
All the cellists are there. They look amputated without their cellos, smaller, childlike. Anna, in her funereal green, looks older than they do. She holds Louise’s hand grudgingly. Louise has promised that Anna can have a dog. No more motels for sure. She’ll have to buy a bigger house, Louise thinks, with a yard. She’ll sell her house and Louise’s house and put the money in a trust for Anna. She did this for her mother-this is what you have to do for family.
While the minister is still speaking, number eight lies down on the ground beside the grave. The cellists on either side each take an arm and pull him back up again. Louise sees that his nose is running. He doesn’t look at her, and he doesn’t wipe his nose, either. When the two cellists walk him away, there’s grave dirt on the seat of his pants.
Patrick is there. His eyes are red. He waves his fingers at Anna, but he stays where he is. Loss is contagious-he’s keeping a safe distance.
The woman cellist, number five, comes up to Louise after the funeral. She embraces Louise, Anna. She tells them that a special memorial concert has been arranged. Funds will be raised. One of the smaller concert halls will be named the Louise Geary Memorial Hall. Louise agrees that Louise would have been pleased. She and Anna leave before the other cellists can tell them how sorry they are, how much they will miss Louise.
In the evening Louise calls her mother and tells her that Louise is dead.
“Oh, sweetie,” her mother says. “I’m so sorry. She was such a pretty girl. I always liked to hear her laugh.”
“She was angry with me,” Louise says. “Her daughter Anna is staying with me now.”
“What about Anna’s father?” her mother says. “Did you get rid of that ghost? I’m not sure it’s a good idea having a ghost in the same house as a small girl.”
“The ghost is gone,” Louise says.
There is a click on the line. “Someone’s listening in,” her mother says. “Don’t say anything-they might be recording us. Call me back from a different phone.”
Anna has come into the room. She stands behind Louise. She says, “I want to go live with my father.”
“It’s time to go to sleep,” Louise says. She wants to take off her funeral clothes and go to bed. “We can talk about this in the morning.”
Anna brushes her teeth and puts on her green pajamas. She does not want Louise to read to her. She does not want a glass of water. Louise says, “When I was a dog . . .”
Anna says, “You were never a dog-” and pulls the blanket, which is not green, up over her head and will not say anything else.
•
Mr. Bostick knows who Anna’s father is. “He doesn’t know about Anna,” he tells Louise. “His name is George Candle and he lives in Oregon. He’s married and has two kids. He has his own company-something to do with organic produce, I think, or maybe it was construction.”
“I think it would be better for Anna if she were to live with a real parent,” Louise says. “Easier. Someone who knows something about kids. I’m not cut out for this.”
Mr. Bostick agrees to contact Anna’s father. “He may not even admit he knew Louise,” he says. “He may not be okay about this.”
“Tell him she’s a fantastic kid,” Louise says. “Tell him she looks just like Louise.”
•
In the end George Candle comes and collects Anna. Louise arranges his airline tickets and his hotel room. She books two return tickets out to Portland for Anna and her father and makes sure Anna has a window seat. “You’ll like Oregon,” she tells Anna. “It’s green.”
“You think you’re smarter than me,” Anna says. “You think you know all about me. When I was a dog, I was ten times smarter than you. I knew who my friends were because of how they smelled. I know things you don’t.”
But she doesn’t say what they are. Louise doesn’t ask.
George Candle cries when he meets his daughter. He’s almost as hairy as the ghost. Louise can smell his marriage. She wonders what Anna smells.
“I loved your mother very much,” George Candle says to Anna. “She was a very special person. She had a beautiful soul.”
They go to see Louise’s gravestone. The grass on her grave is greener than the other grass. You can see where it’s been tipped in, like a bookplate. Louise briefly fantasizes her own funeral, her own gravestone, her own married lover standing beside her gravestone. She knows he would go straight home after the funeral to take a shower. If he went to the funeral.
The house without Anna is emptier than Louise is used to. Louise didn’t expect to miss Anna. Now she has no best friend, no ghost, no adopted former dog. Her lover is home with his wife, sulking, and now George Candle is flying home to his wife. What will she think of Anna? Maybe Anna will miss Louise just a little.
That night Louise dreams of Louise endlessly falling off the stage. She falls and falls and falls. As Louise falls she slowly comes apart. Little bits of her fly away. She is made up of ladybugs.
Anna comes and sits on Louise’s bed. She is a lot furrier than she was when she lived with Louise. “You’re not a dog,” Louise says.
Anna grins her possum teeth at Louise. She’s holding a piece of okra. “The supernatural world has certain characteristics,” Anna says. “You can recognize it by its color, which is green, and by its texture, which is hirsute. Those are its outside qualities. Inside the supernatural world things get sticky but you never get inside things, Louise. Did you know that George Candle is a werewolf? Look out for hairy men, Louise. Or do I mean married men? The other aspects of the green world include music and smell.”
Anna pulls her pants down and squats. She pees on the bed, a long acrid stream that makes Louise’s eyes water.
Louise wakes up sobbing. “Louise,” Louise whispers. “Please come and lie on my floor. Please come haunt me. I’ll play Patsy Cline for you and comb your hair. Please don’t go away.”
She keeps a vigil for three nights. She plays Patsy Cline. She sits by the phone because maybe Louise could call. Louise has never not called, not for so long. If Louise doesn’t forgive her, then she can come and be an angry ghost. She can make dishes break or make blood come out of the faucets. She can give Louise bad dreams. Louise will be grateful for broken things and blood and bad dreams. All of Louise’s clothes are up on their hangers, hung right-side out. Louise puts little dishes of flowers out, plates with candles and candy. She calls her mother to ask how to make a ghost appear but her mother refuses to tell her. The line may be tapped. Louise will have to come down, she says, and she’ll explain in person.
•
Louise wears the same dress she wore to the funeral. She sits up in the balcony. There are enormous pictures of Louise up on the stage. Influential people go up on the stage and tell funny stories about Louise. Members of the orchestra speak about Louise. Her charm, her beauty, her love of music. Louise looks through her opera glasses at the cellists. There is the young one, number eight, who caused all the trouble. There is the bearded cellist who caught the ghost. She stares through her glasses at his cello. Her ghost runs up and down the neck of his cello, frisky. It coils around the strings, hangs upside-down from a peg.
She examines number five’s face for a long time. Why you? Louise thinks. If she wanted to sleep with a woman, why did she sleep with you? Did you tell her funny jokes? Did you go shopping together for clothes? When you saw her naked, did you see that she was bowlegged? Did you think that she was beautiful?
The cellist next to number five is holding his cello very carefully. He runs his fingers down the strings as if they were tangled and he were combing them. Louise stares through her opera glasses. There is something in his cello. Something small and bleached is looking back at her through the strings. Louise looks at Louise and then she slips back through the f hole, like a fish.
•
They are in the woods. The fire is low. It’s night. All the little girls are in their sleeping bags. They’ve brushed their teeth and spit, they’ve washed their faces with water from the kettle, they’ve zipped up the zippers of their sleeping bags.
A counselor named Charlie is saying, “I am the ghost with the one black eye, I am the ghost with the one black eye.”
Charlie holds her flashlight under her chin. Her eyes are two black holes in her face. Her mouth yawns open, the light shining through her teeth. Her shadow eats up the trunk of the tree she sits under.
During the daytime Charlie teaches horseback riding. She isn’t much older than Louise or Louise. She’s pretty and she lets them ride the horses bareback sometimes. But that’s daytime Charlie. Nighttime Charlie is the one sitting next to the fire. Nighttime Charlie is the one who tells stories.
“Are you afraid?” Louise says.
“No,” Louise says.
They hold hands. They don’t look at each other. They keep their eyes on Charlie.
Louise says, “Are you afraid?”
“No,” Louise says. “Not as long as you’re here.”

 
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From a scan of The Nebula Awards Showcase 2003 edited by Nancy Kress.
 
2001 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novelette
 
“Louise’s Ghost,” Kelly Link (Stranger Things Happen, Small Beer Press)
“Louise’s Ghost” by Kelly Link. Copyright © Kelly Link, 2001.