Ghost Wife : Part 4

Skylight Confessions
by Alice Hoffman

(Page 4 of 12)

When Arlyn woke all she heard was the silence. It was a while before she realized he was truly gone. She looked through the empty rooms, then sat on the porch, thinking maybe he'd gone to the coffee shop to fetch them breakfast, or to the florist for a dozen roses. No sight of him. No sound. At noon she walked down to the harbor, where Charlotte Pell in the ticket office was quick to recall the man Arlyn described. He had taken the nine-thirty ferry to Bridgeport. He'd been in such a hurry, he hadn't even waited for his change.

It took two weeks for Arlyn to think the situation through. Another woman might have cried, but Arlyn had cried enough to last a lifetime during her father's illness. She believed a bargain was a bargain and that things happened for a reason. She was a planner and a doer, just as John Moody had suspected from the size of her feet. She found out where he lived by calling the Yale housing office and saying she was a shipping service ordered to deliver a basket of fruit. It was not a lie exactly; she planned to bring pears with her. John had said she tasted like pears, and she imagined just the mention of that fruit was now meaningful to them both.

Arlyn was not a liar by nature, but she was a dreamer. She believed there was an ending to all stories, a right and proper last page. Her walk back from the ferry ticket office was not the ending. Not yet.

It took two weeks to settle matters. She cleaned out the attic and the basement, selling odds and ends at a yard sale, then put the house on the market in order to pay off her father's outstanding medical bills. In the end she had very little: a thousand dollars and so few belongings she could pack them into a single suitcase. Her neighbors threw her a good-bye party at the coffee shop across from the ferry terminal. Those same neighbors who had imagined she had no prospects were happy to drink to Arlyn's new life. She was a good girl, after all, and everyone deserved a chance, even Arlie. Over a lunch of oysters and macaroni and cheese and egg-salad sandwiches the neighbors all wished her luck. Exactly where she was going, no one asked. That was the way the future worked. People often disappeared right into it and all anyone could do was hope for the best.

ARLYN TOOK THE FERRY TO BRIDGEPORT, THEN THE TRAIN to New Haven. She felt sure of herself at the start of her travels, anxious by the time she reached the university. When she got out of the taxi, she went behind some rhododendrons and vomited twice, then quickly put a mint in her mouth so that her kiss would be fresh. There was nothing to go back to, really, so being nervous wasn't an option.

John Moody was studying for exams. He had the feeling Arlyn might track him down and he'd had the jitters long before his roommate Nathaniel came to tell him he had a red-haired visitor. Ever since John had returned from Long Island he'd been dreaming. That in itself was a bad sign. He couldn't get rid of his nightmares; therefore, he refused to allow himself to sleep. He was flat-out exhausted; if he wasn't careful he'd ruin his grade-point average. His dreams were filled with disasters, wrong turns, and mistakes. Now one had come knocking at his door.

"Tell her I'm not here," he said to Nathaniel.

"You tell her. She's waiting in the hall."

John closed his books and went downstairs, and there she was, shockingly real, flesh and blood, nervous, freckled, carrying a basket of fruit.

"John," she said.

He took her arm and led her away. They stood in the hallway, near the mailboxes. "Look, I've got exams. I don't know if you understand how difficult my courses are."

"But I'm here. I took the ferry."

John thought she really wasn't very bright. And she had a suitcase with her. John picked up the suitcase and signaled to Arlyn. She followed him outside, around to the rear of the dormitory, so no one would see. The fact that she wasn't angry with him made him feel he was the one who actually had a right to profess some injury. If you looked at the situation from a certain point of view, he was the wronged party. Who the hell did she think she was, appearing this way? Screwing up his study hour?

"I haven't got time for this," John said, as though speaking to a cat that had strayed into the yard. "Go home, Arlyn. You have no business being here."

"We're supposed to be together." Arlyn tilted her face up. She had such a serious expression. She hadn't yet turned eighteen. There was hope all over her; she smelled of it.

"Oh, really? How did you come up with that one?"

In the shadows of the rhododendrons John could barely see how freckled her skin was. She was so young, after all, and it was flattering that she'd come after him this way. She'd chased him down, hadn't she? She had that lovelorn look on her face. He couldn't remember ever having seen such certainty.

"Only until tomorrow," he said. "Then you have to go home."

She picked up the suitcase and followed him back inside. She didn't tell him she had sold her father's house and everything in it. She didn't announce that all of her belongings had been packed into that one suitcase. All right, John didn't seem as happy about their future together as Arlyn had thought he'd be, not yet. But he wasn't the sort to be rushed into anything.

Once in his room, he did let her sit in the easy chair and watch while he studied. She understood he needed quiet; she even went out to get him some supper, a corned-beef sandwich and some hot, black coffee. When he was through with his books, she was there for him in bed, so sweet, so much like a dream. He gave in to it one last time. A good-bye to her, that's what it was. The sex was even hotter; he was in a fever, he was acting like a man in love. But as soon as he fell asleep there were those nightmares again, houses falling down, broken windows, streets that never ended, women who held on and refused to let go. Nothing good could come of this. John got out of bed and quickly dressed, though it was dark, hours before his classes. He didn't care whether or not his socks matched. The basket of fruit on his desk smelled overripe, rotten. He left a note on his desk - Gone to take exam. Have a good trip home.

Copyright © 2007 by Alice Hoffman

About the Author

Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then was a Mirrellees Fellowship at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing.