Tania James - Aerogrammes - and Other Stories

“Good. Great. Only …” Gina hesitated. “What if it doesn’t work out?”

Barb paused to administer a disapproving look. “Financially, divorce is an unwise decision. Both parties lose everything.” She explained how Gina would forfeit all the assets she had gained through the marriage, how Gina’s ex would have to depart the world all over again. “Thus far, I’ve had an excellent track record, so I prefer to work with people who share my outlook on the bonds of marriage.”

Gina nodded in solemn agreement.

Prior to their first date, Gina found on her doorstep a bowl of blushing peonies, with a note that said: Looking forward! HT . Somehow he had learned of her affection for peonies. As the days went by, her living room brimmed with a lush, leafy smell.

On a cloudless Saturday, she met Hank at the Tolliver House. When he opened the door, she stuttered her hello; he was so handsome. “Gina,” he said, stepping aside to let her in, smiling as if he’d known her forever.

Hank toured her through every room. She opened the mottled burl doors of an antique Austrian armoire and leaned into the sweet stale smell. She cooled her palms against the marbled Jacuzzi across from a dressing table, where fruit-scented bath balls sat in a basket like a clutch of colored eggs.

“You don’t have to show me everything,” she said. “If it bores you.”

“Bored?” He stroked the faded brass hinges on the bedroom door, each hinge engraved with a delicate fleur-de-lis. “I don’t think I can get bored, not this time around. Everything feels new.”

Gina found it hard not to stare at him. In a matter of minutes, he had capsized all her movie-fed notions of ghosts — the tattered clothes, the corroding flesh, the tortured soul. He looked polished, debonair, in loose slacks belted high around the waist, a polo shirt, and wingtip shoes that made no sound.

Finally he took her up the winding staircase of the alabaster tower. One great round window opened onto a park, where golf carts went whizzing across the green dips and swells, around the weeping willows, shivering their tresses. Hank had put on a Patsy Cline record, and Patsy’s longing voice seemed to push faintly through the floor: Oh, the wayward wind is a restless wind / A restless wind that yearns to wander …

“Barb said you were married once,” he said.

“I was. His name was Jeremy.” She rushed through the rest. “He was riding his bicycle. There was a car. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.”

Grimacing, Hank removed a handkerchief from his pocket. For an alarming moment, Gina thought he was going to weep. Instead, he sneezed.

“Sorry,” he said, after honking into his handkerchief. “About your husband.”

She appreciated his insensitivity, how he didn’t follow up with an oozy apology. Death was just another detail.

“Jeremy used handkerchiefs, too,” she said, so quietly that Hank seemed not to have heard. He was looking down at the sidewalk, where a woman was tugging at her Labrador’s leash. The dog was whimpering and wagging its tail. The woman flung a suspicious look up at Hank before scooping the dog into her arms and hurrying away.

Hank emptied a sigh at the glass. “People,” he muttered.

“Do you know Jeremy? That was my husband’s name. Jeremy.”

Gina was about to add that Jeremy’s eyes were blue at certain times and gray at others, but Hank said gently, “It doesn’t work that way.”

Gina nodded at her shoes, feeling stupid.

Gina’s parents refused to travel up from Florida for the wedding. “You want to marry a ghost, then marry a ghost,” her mother said over the phone. “Call me when you find your head.”

“Mom, did you even read the article I sent you?”

Her mother gave an unconvincing grunt.

It was the same article that had first piqued Gina’s interest in ghost marriage, and she’d even highlighted certain lines for her mother’s edification: “In nineteenth-century China, it was perfectly acceptable for a young woman to marry a dead man, an arrangement called a ‘ghost marriage,’ which enabled families to consolidate their wealth and power and allowed enterprising young women to pursue their ambitions without the interference of a living husband or children.” According to the article, the practice of ghost marriage was being revived in several parts of the United States. The statistics for the success of ghost marriages were quite high, and most women polled described themselves as “very satisfied” with their unions.

She sent the same article to her sister, Ami, who had manufactured an excuse so as not to attend the wedding. Apparently, she had volunteered long ago to chaperone her daughter’s third-grade field trip to Shakertown, and she just couldn’t leave the teachers hanging.

Gina supposed that Ami had a right to be annoyed. Ami’s wedding had been carefully designed by their mother, and not one decision — from the choice of groom to the choice of boutonniere — had been settled without the opinions of Gina and her mother, followed by a nod from her father.

“Yeah, I read the article,” said Ami, when Gina called. “But it’s not like all these ghost marriages work out. What about that crazy woman with the diaries?”

“Mary,” Gina said quietly. “Mary” was the sole counterexample, a woman who had fallen in love with her ghost husband “Mike.” If only I could get closer to him , she had confided in her diary. She became obsessed with the idea of touching him, and it seemed to her that if humans could touch humans, then surely ghosts could touch ghosts. She shot herself in a Kroger parking lot.

“See?” Ami said. “They don’t all have happy endings.”

“But there’s never a happy ending,” Gina said.

Ami ignored the remark. “I don’t know, Gina. I still think you could’ve held out a little longer. You never even tried Soulmates.com. Even I did Soulmates.com.”

And on and on they went in circles of accusation and defense, like strands of hair swirling a drain, like sisters.

Hank and Gina married at the courthouse with Barb as their witness, as well as Lucille, Hank’s former cleaning lady. Throughout the ceremony, Lucille stared at Hank in a dreamy daze, as if witness to a miracle. Afterward, they all stood outside the courthouse, glowing, and even Barb produced a close-lipped smile. “Thank you,” Lucille whispered in Gina’s ear, with a clenching hug. “Thank you for bringing him back to us. Call me when you need a cleaning.”

Lucille then made the mistake of trying to hug Hank. No one had told her that Hank couldn’t be hugged; one could just as easily plant a kiss on a breeze. In her attempt, Lucille lost her balance and fell forward onto the sidewalk. Hank and Gina helped her to her feet, while a shaken Lucille brushed the gravel from her knees. “He can touch,” Barb lectured, arms folded, “but he can’t be touched.”

After the wedding, Gina and Hank entered a period of sweet, cyclical domesticity. Sundays were Gina’s favorite day, when she would bake muffins or biscuits while Hank sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Though he couldn’t eat, he loved the smell of baked goods. (“The Bundt cake was my favorite part of your Bio Video,” he told her.) Whether or not her cakes and muffins turned out, Hank was happy so long as the air was laced with butter and burnt sugar.

While the batter rose in the oven, Gina listened to Hank tell of the city as he had once known it. In high school, he lived around the corner from the Hilltop Theater, in the East End of town. The Hilltop was where he took his girlfriend on dates. He also liked hanging around Benny’s Billiards, where he’d shoot pool or play cards or work the pinball machines until his mother called and had Benny send him home for dinner. There was no point in lying to Mrs. Tolliver about where he’d been; she knew by the traces of oil on his shoe soles, the same oil that Benny used to wax his floors.