John Irving - Until I Find You

He headed off for his appointment with Dr. García—his first in two months—feeling like a new man.

“But you haven’t really made a decision about where you want to live, Jack,” Dr. García pointed out. “Aren’t you pulling the rug out from under your feet, so to speak?”

But if Jack couldn’t make up his mind about his life, he had at least decided to make something happen.

“Is it the house itself that let Lucy come inside?” Dr. García asked him. “Is it because of your mother’s lies to you, or your missing father, that you are an unanchored ship—in danger of drifting wherever the wind or the currents, or the next sexual encounter, will take you?”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“Think about Claudia,” Dr. García said. “If you want to make something meaningful happen—if you really want to live differently—think about finding a woman like that. Think about committing yourself to a relationship; it doesn’t even have to last four years. Think about being with a woman you could live with for one year! Start small, but start something. ”

“You asked me not to mistake you for a dating service,” Jack reminded her.

“I’m recommending that you stop dating, Jack. I’m suggesting that, if you tried to live with someone, you would have to live a lot differently. You don’t need a new house. You need to find someone you can live with,” Dr. García said.

“Someone like Claudia? She wanted children, Dr. García.”

“I don’t mean someone like Claudia in that respect, but a relationship like that—one that has a chance of lasting, Jack.”

“Claudia is probably very fat now,” he told Dr. García. “She had an epic battle with her weight ahead of her.”

“I don’t necessarily mean someone like Claudia in that respect, either, Jack.”

“Claudia wanted children so badly—she’s probably a grandmother now!” he said to Dr. García.

“You never could count, Jack,” she told him.

Jack didn’t blame Dr. García. He would take full responsibility for what happened. But the very idea of Claudia—the reason she was recently on his mind—surely came from the Claudia conversation in his therapy session with Dr. García. Jack was thinking about her—that’s all he would say in his own defense—when he drove back home to Santa Monica from a dinner party one warm night that summer.

Jack was remembering the first time Claudia let him borrow her Volvo—the incredible feeling of independence that comes from being young and alone and driving a car.

He pulled into his driveway on Entrada—his headlights illuminating the arrestingly beautiful, incontestably Slavic-looking young woman who sat on her battered but familiar suitcase on Jack’s absurdly small lawn. She sat so serenely still, as if she were placidly posing for a photograph beside the FOR SALE sign, that for a moment Jack forgot what was for sale. He thought she was for sale, before he remembered he was selling his house—and that thought would come back to haunt him, because she was more for sale than Jack could possibly have imagined.

He knew who she was—Claudia, or her ghost. It was a wonder he didn’t lose control of the Audi and drive over her—either killing Claudia on the spot, or killing her ghost again. But how can it be Claudia? Jack was thinking. The young woman on his lawn was as young as Claudia had been when he’d known her, or younger. (Besides, Claudia had always looked older than she was, and she had the habit of lying about her age.)

“God damn you, Jack,” Claudia had said. “After I die, I’m going to haunt you—I promise you I will—I might even haunt you before I die.”

Since Claudia had promised that she would haunt him, wasn’t it forgivable that Jack assumed the apparition sitting beside his FOR SALE sign was Claudia’s ghost ? A ghost doesn’t usually travel with a suitcase, but maybe Heaven or Hell had kicked her out—or her mission to haunt Jack had required her to have several changes of clothes. After all, Claudia was (or had been) an actress—and she’d loved the theater, more than Jack had. In the case of Claudia’s ghost, the suitcase could have been a prop.

Jack somehow managed to get out of the Audi and walk up to her, although his legs had turned to stone. He knew that driving away, or running away, wasn’t an option—you can’t get away from a ghost. But he left the Audi’s headlights on. When approaching a ghost, you at least want to see her clearly. Who wants to walk up to a ghost in the dark?

“Claudia?” Jack said, his voice trembling.

“Oh, Jack, it’s been too long,” she said. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen you!”

She was the same old Claudia, only younger. The same stage presence, the same projection of her voice—as if, even one-on-one, she was making sure that those poor souls in the worst seats in the uppermost balcony could hear her perfectly.

“But you’re so young, ” he said.

“I died young, Jack.”

“ How young, Claudia? You look even younger than you were ! How is that possible?”

“Death becomes me, I guess,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me inside? I’ve been dying to see you, Jack. I’ve been sitting on this freakin’ lawn for an eternity. ”

The word freakin’ was new, and not at all like Claudia. But who knew where she’d been—and, among the dead, with whom? She held out her hands and Jack helped her to her feet. He was surprised that he could feel her not-inconsiderable weight. Who would have guessed that ghosts weighed anything at all? But from the look of her—even in Heaven, or that other place—Claudia still had to watch her weight.

She was still self-conscious about her hips, too. She wore the same type of long, full skirt that she’d always liked to wear—even in the summer. She was as heavy-breasted as Jack remembered her; in fact, given what people who believed in ghosts were generally inclined to believe, she was disarmingly full-figured for a spirit.

Jack ran to the car and turned off the Audi’s headlights, half expecting Claudia’s ghost to disappear. But she waited for him, smiling; she let him carry her old leather suitcase inside. She went straight to Jack’s bedroom, as if they were still a couple and she’d been living with him all these years—even though Claudia had never been in that house. He waited in shock while she used his bathroom. (The things ghosts had to do!)

Jack was deeply conflicted. He both believed her and suspected her. She had the same creamy-smooth skin, the same prominent jaw and cheekbones—a face made for close-ups, he’d always said. Claudia should have been in the movies, despite the problem with her weight; she had a face that was wasted in the theater, Jack had always told her.

When Claudia’s ghost emerged from the bathroom, she came up to Jack and nuzzled his neck. “I’ve even missed your smell,” she said.

“Ghosts have a sense of smell?” he asked.

Jack held her by the shoulders, at arm’s length, and looked into her eyes; they were the same yellowish brown they’d always been, like polished wood, like a lioness’s eyes. But there was something about her that wasn’t quite the same; the resemblance was striking but inexact. It wasn’t only that she seemed too young to be the Claudia he’d known—even if she’d died the day after they parted company, even if death (as the ghost had said) did become her.

“A thought occurs to me, Claudia,” he said. Holding her, even at arm’s length, Jack could feel her body’s heat. And all this time, he’d thought that ghosts (if you could feel them at all) would feel cold. “Since my mother died, I’ve been wondering about this,” he told her. “If ghosts get to keep the tattoos they had in life—I mean in the hereafter.”