The 7th Ghost Story Read online

Because it was the beginning of a bright and golden day, she put on a pale yellow jumper with a crisp white blouse. She would meet Cousin Kelly, she decided, in the park across the boulevard from the apartment building. Last Sunday had been a gray and sunless day, expiring interminably to the tearful sound of persistent rain, and Cousin Kelly had come to the apartment, right up to her room where she now was, and they had listened to some music on her phonograph and had talked about what had happened during the week and had played a long and delightful game of Monopoly, which she had won. It had been a good day, that part of it in the afternoon when Cousin Kelly was here, but it had not been as good by half as this one would be on the bright green grass of the park under the warm sun. They would sit on a bench and walk along the path under the trees and laugh with delight at their distorted reflections in the pool of clear water around the fountain. Cousin Kelly was actually old, over twenty, but he didn’t look or act old, and he was more fun to be with than anyone else in all the world.

  It was odd that Mother didn’t like him. After all, he was really Mother’s cousin, the son of her father’s sister. Of course, lots of people didn’t necessarily like their cousins, because there was no law saying you had to or anything, but Teresa couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like Cousin Kelly, cousin or not. But Mother didn’t. Neither did Father. Teresa could tell from the way their eyes went blank whenever she, Teresa, happened to mention seeing Cousin Kelly, and from the way, immediately after the mentioning, they deliberately tried to change the subject. Cousin Kelly knew, too. He knew, but he never talked about it. Maybe something had happened once in the family. Maybe something dreadful had happened to change everything from the way everything had been, and to make enemies of people who should have been friends.

  Teresa didn’t care. At first she had, but not any longer. Whatever the trouble, she liked Cousin Kelly better than anyone else. She loved Cousin Kelly. She wished and wished that he could come to live with them in the apartment. She loved him far more, to tell the truth, than she loved Mother and Father. In fact, she didn’t love Mother and Father at all, although she didn’t, on the contrary, hate them, either. She was merely indifferent to them. In the beginning it had made her feel guilty and unhappy, the secret knowledge of her indifference, but now it was just something that she lived with every day and hardly ever thought about.

  Dressed in her pale yellow jumper and white blouse, she went out of the room and onto a gallery that ran along the wall above the deep pit of the living room. She descended the stairs at one end of the gallery and turned back from there through a dining room to the kitchen, where Hannah was. Hannah came in every day from nine to six to cook and clean. Sometimes, when Mother and Father entertained, she stayed later. She was fat and jolly and ages old, and Teresa liked her.

  “Good-morning, missy,” Hannah said. “You’re mighty prettied up this morning, I must say.”

  “This afternoon,” said Teresa, “I’m going to the park to meet a friend.”

  “That’s nice. Meanwhile, what would you like for breakfast?”

  “A poached egg, please, with two strips of bacon. And one slice of toast.”

  “Simple enough. You just sit down there and keep Hannah company while she’s fixing it.”

  Teresa sat at the kitchen table and watched while Hannah broke the egg in the funny little poaching pan and put two strips of bacon on the grill. The bacon began to sizzle, and the water began to boil in the little pan under the cup the egg was in. Teresa liked to sit in the kitchen and watch Hannah cook her breakfast. Hannah always said it kept her company, and it was true, although they talked very little while Hannah worked, or not at all. That was one of the nice things about Hannah. You could sit with her and say nothing and still feel comfortably that you were keeping company. It was different with Mother. When you sat with Mother and said nothing for a long time, you always felt uneasily that something should be said, and after a while you tried to say it, and it always came out wrong and awkward, and then you wished you hadn’t tried.

  Teresa ate her egg and bacon and toast at the kitchen table, and then, leaving Hannah to her work, went back into the living room and wondered how she could spend the time, which was almost forever, until it was afternoon. She thought about going down in the elevator and outside to talk to the doorman and stroll up and down the sidewalk, but she didn’t want to do that because there was the day out there, warm and golden and waiting, and she wanted to enter it for the first time, fresh and exciting with nothing worn off, when she went out to meet Cousin Kelly. So, saving the day for a special hour, she looked at magazines in the living room until it was after eleven and she could go up to see Mother, who was now probably awake.

  Sure enough, she was. Mother was sitting up in bed, braced against the headboard, and in one hand was a saucer, and in the other, momentarily stopped halfway between the saucer and her mouth, was a cup of coffee, which had been served by Hannah and from which Mother had just taken a sip. A second bed near Mother’s was rumpled and empty. This bed was Father’s, of course, and it was apparent that Father had risen early and gone away somewhere, probably downtown to his office. Father did not usually go to his office on Saturdays, but once in a while he went when he had an appointment that promised to be profitable, and you could always tell by Father’s humor when he got home if things had gone well or not. If things had gone well, he was expansive and tolerant. If things had gone ill, he was cross and critical and could hardly wait for five o’clock, when he allowed himself his first cocktail of the day.

  Mother’s cup rattled in her saucer, and she spoke to Teresa with a cheerfulness that was forced and bright and artificial. Mother, in fact, looked as if she needed a cocktail already, although it was not yet noon; or perhaps she only needed a little longer to recover from those she had had the night before. The flesh was smudged beneath her eyes, and her face, cleaned of makeup, looked drawn and tired and older than it was.

  “Good morning, darling.” Mother said. “Have you been up long?

  “Oh, yes,” Teresa said. “It’s almost noon.”

  “That late? Did Hannah give you your breakfast?”

  “Yes. I had an egg and two strips of bacon.”

  Mother reacted as if the words were painful to her. Her mouth turned down, becoming for a moment really ugly, and she set her cup and saucer carefully aside on the table between her bed and Father’s.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing much. I looked at some magazines.” Teresa hesitated, feeling within her the sudden singing exhilaration of her anticipation. “This afternoon I would like to go across to the park. May I, please?”

  “I think it would be all right if you are careful crossing the boulevard. Why do you want to go to the park?”

  “I’m going to meet Cousin Kelly there.”

  There it was again, that strange blankness in Mother’s eyes, the curious cold hardening of her face.

  “I hope you are not going to be difficult, Teresa,” Mother said.

  The remark seemed so irrational, so utterly unrelated to anything that had been said or to any intention that Teresa had, that it was quite hopeless to try to respond to it. Teresa in her hopelessness was silent, and after a moment Mother’s shoulders moved slightly in a gesture that was not big enough to be a shrug.

  “Well, you have a nice time in the park, darling, and be sure you have your lunch before you go.”

  This was clearly a dismissal, and Teresa, relieved, went downstairs and out to the kitchen to keep Hannah company. At one o’clock, Hannah gave her lunch, tomato soup and crackers spread with soft cheese and a green salad and milk. After she had eaten her lunch it was almost one-thirty, and Teresa returned to the living room and sat down on the edge of a chair and deliberately waited and waited while her anticipation of the afternoon grew and grew and became so intense that it could no longer be borne, and then, at last, she left the apartm
ent and went downstairs and out into the golden, sunbathed street. At the curb she paused and looked left for traffic, and then she ran across to a medial strip that divided the boulevard, there pausing again and this time looking right. Safely all the way across, she entered the park, passing between stone pillars, and followed a concrete walk as far as a green wooden bench within sight of the fountain, which tossed into the air a glittering shower that fell, the upward force of the fountain spent, back into the surrounding pool with a sound of summer rain. Sitting there on the bench, watching the fountain, she waited.

  Waiting, she tried to remember where and when she had first seen Cousin Kelly, and she couldn’t. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t for the life of her. He had just suddenly come into her life, that was all, and her life, which had been lonely, was filled thereafter with love requited and promises kept. It did not matter where and when he had come. It only mattered that he had come somewhere and sometime, and that he was, having approached quietly in the midst of her pondering, there at this instant.

  He stood a step away on the concrete walk and smiled down at her. His hair was thick and pale blond; he never wore a hat, winter or summer, and the sunlight touched the hair and turned it to silver. His eyes were blue, brimming with grave and secret laughter, and below one of the eyes, running down at an angle across his cheek, was the lingering trace of an old scar. “Hello, Tess,” he said.

  He was the only one who called her that. Hannah called her missy or Teresa, and Mother called her Teresa or darling, and Father called her Teresa or child, but Cousin Kelly always called her by the warm diminutive, and it was something special between them, another secret shared. Rising, she held out a hand, and he took it and kept it in his.

  “Hello, Cousin Kelly. I’ve been waiting: for you.”

  “Am I late?”

  “Oh, no. I was early.”

  “I’m flattered. Shall we walk over to the fountain?”

  “I’d like that. And then perhaps we can walk under the trees.”

  So they went over to the fountain and laughed at their distorted reflections in the pool, and Cousin Kelly told her about the foolish Grecian boy who had fallen in love with himself when looking at his reflection in another pool long ago. She had heard the story before, but it seemed new and much more exciting the way Cousin Kelly told it. Afterward they began walking on the grass beneath the trees, trying to identify each tree by the size and shape of its leaves, and they held hands all the while. There was only one tiny blemish on the nearly perfect afternoon.

  That was when they met Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter lived in the apartment building on the fourth floor, and she was walking her poodle in the park on a leash. Teresa and Cousin Kelly had come across the grass, and Mrs. Carter was strolling along the walk, pausing now and again to let the poodle sniff at things and do his duty, and they all just happened to reach a certain point from different directions at the same time. Teresa spoke politely to Mrs. Carter, who pulled up the poodle and stopped to exchange a few words with Teresa, and this was all right except that Mrs. Carter paid absolutely no attention to Cousin Kelly, although he was standing there holding Teresa by the hand all the while. For all the recognition Mrs. Carter gave him, Cousin Kelly might as well have been somewhere else, and Teresa thought it was very rude of Mrs. Carter. Afterward she told Cousin Kelly how rude she thought Mrs. Carter had been, but Cousin Kelly only laughed and said it didn’t matter, and actually, considering all the rest of the wonderful afternoon, it didn’t.

  Eventually they came back to the bench from which they had started. They sat down together to rest and talk, and Teresa was beginning to feel sad because it was getting late, almost five o’clock, and soon she would have to leave.

  “Will I see you tomorrow?” Teresa asked.

  “If you wish.”

  “Where shall I meet your”

  “If it’s another nice day, we can meet here. Otherwise, wait for me in your room, like last Sunday, and I’ll slip up.”

  It had gotten a little cooler, and the shadows of everything lay longer to the east on the grass, and Teresa’s sense of sadness was growing stronger.

  “It’s so long from Sunday to Saturday,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

  “I wish you could come and live with me all the time.”

  “Do you. Tess? So do I.”

  “Why don’t Mother and Father like you?”

  “It’s an old story, but never mind. You could make them like me if you tried.”

  “How could I?”

  Fie reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out a sealed white envelope with something in it. His voice was light, and the grave laughter was in his eyes.

  “By putting some of this in something they drink,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a love potion.”

  “You mean like in fairy stories?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that was only make-believe.”

  “Oh, no. There is more truth than you imagine in fairy stories. When your mother and father drink something with some of this powder in it, they will immediately like me, just as you do, and then they will ask me to come and stay with you all the time.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Try it and see.”

  He extended the envelope, and she took it and put it in the pocket of her yellow jumper.

  “I will,” she said.

  Then it was time to go. Father would surely be home from the office, and Mother would be getting cross and anxious, and pretty soon, if Teresa didn’t hurry, would be sending Hannah across the boulevard to fetch her. Parting from Cousin Kelly was not so hard on Saturdays as it was on Sundays, anyhow, because the time between parting and meeting was so much shorter. So, saying good-bye, she hurried off down the walk toward the stone gate. Once she stopped and turned and waved, and Cousin Kelly, waiting and watching by the bench, waved back, then turned and went away himself in the opposite direction.

  In the apartment. Mother and Father were sitting together in the living room. It was immediately apparent to Teresa from Father’s expression that his day had not gone well, and the atmosphere in the living room was oppressive, but there was, fortunately, imminent hope of relief, for it was time for cocktails. Teresa said hello politely to Father, who grunted, and Mother looked as she invariably did when she was about to be moderately severe about something.

  “Where have you been all this time, Teresa?” Mother asked.

  “I told you where I was going. Mother. I went to the park. You gave me permission.”

  “I didn’t give you permission to stay indefinitely.”

  “I’m sorry. It was such a nice afternoon, and I was with Cousin Kelly.”

  Father looked up angrily and slapped the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand.

  “Cousin Kelly again! However did the child get started on this thing? When did she ever even hear of Kelly?”

  Mother must have heard Father’s outburst, but she gave no sign of it. Her expression had changed suddenly to the cold and stony one which warned that she had at last had all of something that she could stand, and had determined to resolve a problem, no matter how unpleasant the resolving might be. Her voice, as if in compensation, was softly fraught with dreadful reasonableness.

  “You did not see Cousin Kelly,” she said. “You did not see Cousin Kelly this afternoon or any other afternoon, because Cousin Kelly is dead. He was dead and buried, Teresa, before you were born.” Teresa heard the words, of course, but they had no higher meaning. They did not prick her intelligence or elicit an emotional reaction. How could Cousin Kelly be dead when she had just parted from him in the park?

  “I saw him this afternoon,” she said, “and I’ll sec him again tomorrow. I see him every Saturday and Sunday.”

  “The child has a mo
rbid imagination, that’s all,” Father said. “She needs professional attention. Tell me, Teresa, what docs Cousin Kelly look like? Describe him for me.”

  “He is about as tall as you,” Teresa said, “but much thinner. He has very light hair that looks silver in the sun, and he has blue eyes that laugh. On one cheek he has a scar that sometimes you can hardly see.”

  Father looked stunned for a moment, and Mother caught her breath with a sharp gasp.

  “She’s seen a picture somewhere,” Father said. “She’s surely seen a picture.”

  “This must stop!” Mother’s voice still held that dreadful reasonableness, her face the expression of grim decision. “Listen to me, Teresa. Cousin Kelly is dead. He is dead because I killed him. It was an accident, a tragic accident, and it happened years ago. We had taken an outing in the country, Kelly and I and our parents. We had gone to a place high on a bluff above a river. Kelly and I had quarreled. I was furious with him. I wanted to be alone, and I walked away from the others to the edge of the bluff, but Kelly followed. He came up beside me and took me by the arm and started to say something. I turned and jerked my arm free. I don’t know what happened exactly. I must have pushed him without thinking or meaning to.” Mother’s voice was silent, the horror of that remote moment invoked again by the telling, and then it went on quietly and quickly, as if to be done as soon as could be. “He was standing at the edge of the bluff, and he fell over. He was killed. He was dead when my father and my uncle reached him. They always blamed me, my aunt and uncle—Kelly’s mother and father. They still do. They thought I pushed him deliberately in a fit of anger. But it was an accident. That’s all it was, Teresa. It was a terrible accident, and Cousin Kelly is dead.”

  Teresa turned and walked away to the far end of the living room. Turning again, she looked back at Mother and Father.

  “Cousin Kelly is alive,” she said, “and he is coming soon to live with us here.”

  She went on into the dining room, passing from view. Ahead of her, beyond the louvered swinging door to the kitchen, she heard Hannah at work. She pushed through the door and saw that Hannah had deserted her cleaning paraphernalia long enough to prepare cocktails. The silver shaker was on a tray on the cabinet, and beside the shaker were two fragile, long-stemmed glasses. Hannah looked hurried and harassed. It was after five, and she was obviously anxious to be away by six.