Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

We need a Ouija board.

The next day Lee bought a Ouija board. For months they held hands and tried to make the pointer move. Nothing happened. They attended séances and consulted mediums. Nothing happened. Loretta would lock herself in a closet and read for hours.

One night they spread molasses on the Ouija board. Loretta had read that sweet sticky food helped to attract spirits. Lee had to fight to keep from laughing. They held hands before the board. Nothing happened.

That night, Loretta lay curled in his arms, as always. Her teeth were clicking. A sound like abacus beads knocked together.

The following morning her black skin glowed.

I saw Phil last night.

What?

He came to me in a dream.

Oh.

He said something to me, but I couldn’t understand it. His voice was all muffled.

Didn’t God, the Overlord of all the dimensions, teach him how to talk? She had gone just too far.

She looked at him. I don’t need your sarcasm.

Who’s being sarcastic?

His voice sounded like a growl, she said. Like it had to come up from his belly.

What are you telling me, that God put the man’s mouth in his belly?

It had a lot of pain.

Lee didn’t say anything.

That night, Loretta’s teeth made the same sounds. In the morning her skin was radiant.

Lee, Phil’s going to teach me how to talk to spirits.

Wonderful.

Now, don’t be that way.

What? Carry on your dialogue with the dead.

Now—

He can’t talk himself. How is he going to teach you to talk with the dead?

She just looked at him.

How can you understand what he says?

Don’t ask stupid questions.

I’m not asking stupid questions.

You’re just jealous.

Fire moved over Lee’s skin. Why should I be?

Don’t play games.

You’re the one who’s playing games. He left for work.

He returned that evening to an apartment smelling of gasoline and burned rubber. The smell led him to the bedroom. He heard Loretta moaning. Lee opened the door. He saw Loretta with her legs spread and a man between them. A strange-looking black man. With long red hair that hung to his shoulders. Standing up, he was probably as tall as Lee. But skinny. So skinny that his bones showed beneath his yellow skin. His back glistened with sweat.

Get your dead ass off my wife, Lee said.

Phil — who else could it have been? — stopped pumping Loretta. Turned his head and looked Lee in the face. He was beautiful. You aren’t speaking to just anybody, you know, he said, in a voice so deep that it might have come out of a cannon. A tear brightened his eye. He evaporated, steam on a mirror.

Lee saw Loretta’s black eyes. She pulled the bedsheet over her face. Lee fled the house. Found a room in a motel, and there he remained.

Only in that room did it dawn on Lee that he had seen a ghost. He didn’t fear it. The ghost’s existence contradicted the world as he knew it. But this wasn’t the important thing. He had other fears, and he had anger too. He didn’t understand what the ghost saw in Loretta. He was beautiful. She was ugly. That’s all there was to it. And he loved her enough to return from the dead. And Lee loved her too.

A week later, he ret urned home. Loretta was sitting in the kitchen with a glass of tea. Lee looked at her shadow, quivering on the wall.

I swear on my mother’s grave that I love you. How could you do this to me?

Loretta poked at a lemon slice. I had to know if he was all right.

What?

I felt so bad. I had to know if he was all right.

Lee felt her reaching out for him. What do you mean? He lifted his eyes to meet hers.

I just felt so bad inside.

Loneliness washed over Lee, burning his body. He took what she said with a glad heart, even if she didn’t love him. Without her, life would run out of him.

I just felt so bad.

Lee didn’t say anything. Her words were concrete. He could weigh them in his hands.

Come here.

This he did.

About a month later, Loretta discovered that she was pregnant. She began to want ice cream for every meal. A month later, she bought a ten-pound bag of candy. Lee attributed this strange diet to maternal craving. The next month, she purchased a bag of balloons, filled them, and taped them everywhere in the apartment. Next, she filled their bedroom with stuffed animals. Once, Lee tried to kiss her, and she moved away, giggling. And when he tried to stroke her breasts, she replied, Unh. That’s nasty. You mannish. Each month brought a new element. In the ninth month, Lee caught her jumping rope with her full belly. As it was, on her skinny frame her belly was so large that Lee wondered why she never fell forward. And here she was, skipping rope. Lee spent more than an hour chasing her through the apartment. Catch me if you can, she said. He cornered her. Eased her into a chair.

The day she entered the hospital to deliver their child, she entered a world he didn’t belong to.

Lee moved to another city. The business and the buildings — he bought more — were really making money now. Money in his hand — as common as day and night. He bought a house. Hired a servant to care for Samantha (raised by one servant or another until she was thirteen — each year bringing a new slab of fat and a new servant to tend it — when Lee felt she was old enough to care for herself). Loretta’s death left a hole inside Lee that he didn’t know how to fill. He read her books, attended séances, consulted mediums, worked the molasses-sticky Ouija board. Loretta never returned to him. Never visited him in dreams. He had to suffer alone with a fat ugly daughter who never asked about her mother. It was only when Samantha ran away from home that he decided to cut loose from the past. He still loved Loretta. But maybe he could grow to love Peanut too.

And there he was, on a shady side street right off Turtle Avenue. This isn’t a real avenue, Lee thought. Days before, driving Peanut home from the Southway Lounge, he had tried to explain this to her.

You know, this isn’t a real avenue. Lee had had both hands on the steering wheel.

What you mean?

Like I said. It’s not a real avenue.

Can’t you spell? The signs say it. Turtle Avenue. A-v-e—

I know. But it’s still not a real avenue. A real avenue is made like a horse shoe.

What are you talkin about?

I’m tryin to explain.

God. Sometimes you talk about the most boringness stuff.

It isn’t boring. Lee didn’t mean to let his anger slip out.

Oh yeah?

Why don’t you let me explain?

I don’t want to hear about no avenue.

Okay. The hot feeling still moved over his skin.

Another night on the avenue, they discussed Boo’s father.

His father always be tryin to come by and see Boo and whatnot.

Why don’t you let him?

Lee could feel her eyes on him. Boy, you is really dense.

Lee laughed.

I told you. I don’t believe in messin wit no butt hole.

Lee didn’t know if she was calling him that or Boo’s father. I see.

He buy Boo clothes and toys and whatnot. Give me money. Bring some food by sometimes.

Well … Lee watched his words, careful not to say the wrong thing. That’s good.

Yeah, but that’s all I let him do. I make Boo go in the bathroom when that butt hole come by.

I see.

A week ago, Lee had first learned of Boo. He had taken Peanut to his office. He leased the fiftieth floor of the Garden Tower, one of the most distinguished office buildings in the city. The Black Widow Exterminating Company at one end of the hall, and Archer Realty, his other company, at the opposite end. His office was the size of a four-room apartment. A glass-and-steel box that projected out from the side of the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble floors. His desk centered on a single rug. As long as a dining table. With an ivory inkstand with a pen, and a telephone on its top. (Lee never used the phone or the pen. Rarely came to the office. A group of lawyers and executives ran the company. For years, Lee had spent most of his time searching for Loretta.)