Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

Your ghost only has the power you give it, says Dr. Jane. She doesn’t believe that any more than I do—she’s the one who had to invest in all new office furniture—but she probably thinks that’s a good therapist–y thing to say. Goddamn positive thinking. She’s the only one but me who’s ever seen my ghost in action and the only one I’ve told since I was a kid.

You’re doing so well, Dr. Jane says. You’ve gotten a promotion at work. You’re in a position of authority over people. You’ve been getting better comedy bookings, at bigger venues. You’ve got a boyfriend whom you adore. You’ve been rebuilding your relationship with your mother. Just think how much better your life is than when you were first coming to see me.

I don’t know, I say. I don’t know if any of that is true.

That’s how it sounds to me, from the outside looking in. It sounds like you’re being a successful grown–up, which is pretty much never fun for anybody, says Dr. Jane. And your ghost? Your ghost was really useful when you were a teenager trying to break out of a bad situation, but now she’s just in your way.

I glance up at my ghost, who is looking at my therapist’s hand puppets on the shelf, apparently not listening to any of this. I can never tell how much language she understands—like, does everything just sound garbled and weird to her? I’ve asked her yes–or–no questions, point blank, and she never nodded or shook her head or anything.

I don’t feel like my ghost is helpful or unhelpful, I say. I feel like she’s waiting. I feel like, every time I fail at something, she gets stronger. Every setback, I see her more clearly. Like, she’s getting power from my screw–ups. Or like I’m getting closer to turning into her.

Maybe—and here, Dr. Jane looks nervous, because she’s afraid the ghost will start trashing her office again—maybe it’s partly just in your mind. Maybe you just think the ghost is getting closer and more solid. I can’t see what you see, so I can’t tell for myself.

I don’t know. I have a strong sense that my ghost is feeding off my self–destruction. I need a new toolkit.

There’s no new toolkit. Dr. Jane scrunches her big brow. There’s just the coping mechanisms I already taught you. Don’t try to figure out what your ghost’s agenda is, or what your ghost wants. Try to figure out what you really want. What do you actually care about?

Pffft. As if I could possibly know that.

5. Arrowheads

At the karaoke bar, I foolishly put myself down for a Shakira song—some people say I look like Shakira, but nobody ever says I sound like her. And my ghost is at one of the spit–catching tables up front, nursing a margarita. Wearing a dress with a million ruffles.

The screen with the lyrics might as well be Swahili writing, beamed into the void. Raj is up front dancing, cheering me on and clapping, but all I can see is the ghost’s face, which isn’t even looking at me at all. (She’s never looking at me whenever I look right at her, I realize for the first time.) She stares at Raj, like she remembers loving him, way back when. Sadness, resignation, on her face. Like she remembers this time, when her life was almost good.

I topple forward off the stage and fall on my knees on the grungy floor, at my ghost’s feet. I can’t breathe, much less sing. The crowd is still not sure if I’m doing a dramatic dance move or having a medical situation. I can’t even hear the music with my ears pounding. Raj comes to me and asks if I’m okay, and I say, Like you care. The song is over. I go home.

My ghost stands between me and the whiteboard in a meeting at work. I’m sitting and watching Marcia talk about the drop–dead deadline for the Remixr launch, but I can’t even read the words she’s pointing to. My ghost keeps shaking her head in syncopation with Marcia’s droning. Today my ghost is wearing a bikini, revealing a tattoo on her stomach that I cannot read at any cost to my eyesight.

I hate her so much. She’s going to fuck up everything for me, one way or the other. She’s fucking smug, is what she is. She’s already lived all this shit and she’s over it, and she won’t let me just live it for myself.

Marcia is asking me a question. I stare past my ghost, and say something about security audits that I think is probably relevant to what she was talking about the last time I paid attention. Security is for version 2.0, Marcia says. We need to launch this thing.

Raj and I are at the mall, shopping for a wedding present for Mom, and we’re on the escalator behind three kids who are reading an internet tutorial on how to shoplift. Raj is excited: This mall has three different shops for just socks, socks are the best! Did you know that in the 1970s nobody wore socks? It caused this thing called stagflation, what would happen if you actually blew up a stag party? Raj runs off the escalator, and nearly gets away from me. My ghost is right there at my elbow, though.

My ghost sits near my bed at night, watching Raj sleep. My ghost watches Raj perform at the comedy showcase—his big break!—and laughs without making a sound. When I sit in the toilet stall, eavesdropping as Marcia and Sandra from Accounting wash their hands and whisper about the upcoming Rationalization, my ghost is out there next to them, also washing her hands in ghost water.

It’s like arrowheads are embedded in my back, on either side of my neck, so that even raising my head or lifting my arms causes excruciating pain. I chewed through too many mouthguards, until I gave up on guarding my mouth. I feel like a bomb that’s lost its detonator, like I will just go critical forever, without ever getting to explode.

At dinner, my ghost sits in Raj’s lap as he tries to talk to me about our relationship.

6. Wedding

Hey, Raj says. I know this is a weird thing for you. Your mom, turning into a lesbian cougar. I wanna tell you that I’m here, and I get it, and I’m on your team.

Raj is touching my hand, leaning over, talking in my ear. We’re right up front at the wedding, surrounded by young queer people in incredible fashions. I always thought a tux was a tux, but it turns out that tuxedos have personalities. The sound of Raj’s voice is making me feel grounded, like I have a core after all. And what he’s saying makes a certain amount of sense. This is a weird thing for me, after so many years of defining myself in opposition to my parents. It’s like I don’t know who I am.

I don’t even see my ghost anywhere. I don’t, like, scan the entire room looking for her—I just take the win. Maybe she’s hanging back and letting me have this day to myself. Or maybe, I’ve been working on having a more positive attitude, and that makes it harder for her to intrude her ass in there. I try to set up a virtuous circle, where I feel more centered, which means I don’t see the ghost, and that in turn helps me be even more centered. It could work, right?

I ought to recognize how cool this is, I tell Raj. All of this. Getting to be true to yourself, and make your own family, and throw the stupid rules out the window. I don’t want to wait until I’m my mom’s age before I let myself open up my heart.

Raj squeezes my thumb like he gets it, and he feels that way too, and this feels like the start of a whole conversation that we’ll have to have later.

But then the ceremony starts, and everyone is whooping with joy and the officiant, who has a U–shaped beard and no mustache or hair, pronounces my mom and Cassie wife and wife. My mother looks like some whole other person, unrecognizable even as the butch dyke I had just started getting used to. She’s wearing makeup, and a puffy white dress with a black bow on the front that looks like a bow tie. My mom holds Cassie with all her considerable arm strength, and then she beckons me to get in there. My mother poses, sandwiched between two women in their mid–twenties, and Mom looks more alive than I can remember. She whispers in my ear that I’m beautiful and she’s so proud of me, which feels like something I ought to be telling her instead.