A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (5 page)

A COMMERCIAL FOR
a local car dealership woke me up at 11:30
P.M
. Someone was shouting:
No one can beat our prices, so come on down!
I’d put my alarm radio under my pillow so my parents wouldn’t hear it when it went off.

The hall and bathroom lights weren’t on, which meant that my parents had turned them off and gone to bed already. Their room was across the hall from Marjorie’s room and their door was shut. Past those rooms and at the other end of the hall was the sunroom and a streetlight dotted its bay window.

The hallway floor was cold on my bare feet, so I walked on my heels and with my toes bent up backward. I didn’t bother to bring the Scarry book with me. Marjorie’s door was slightly ajar and low-volume ambient music and soft light spilled out of her room. I didn’t knock. I gently pushed her great door open.

She said, “Shut it behind you, quietly.”

I did, and I twisted the knob with the care of a safecracker.

Only her dim night lamp was on, spotlighting Marjorie’s bed. I still had to squint and blink until my eyes adjusted.

“Quick, tell me do you think my room is the same as it was last time or has it been rearranged?”

I looked around carefully. By “carefully” I mean that I didn’t stare because I was afraid of staring too long, of seeing too much, of seeing the poster formation with all the overlapping body parts and the mouth and its teeth in the middle.

I said, “It’s the same.”

“Maybe it is the same. I don’t know. Maybe the room changed when you left. Maybe yesterday my rug and bed were on the ceiling. Maybe my room changed and changed and kept on changing, and then the room changed back right before you came in. Maybe your room is like mine and changes all the time too, but only in secret so you don’t notice.”

“Stop it. I’m going back to my room if you keep talking like this.”

Marjorie sat on her bed with an open book in her lap. She was still dressed in her sweats, and her chin was still stained red with spaghetti sauce. Her hair was dark, greasy, and heavy, weighing down her head.

She said, “Come on, I’m just teasing. Come sit next to me, Merry. I have your new story.”

I dutifully sat next to my sister and said, “I didn’t like your letter, you know.” I imagined Marjorie sneaking into my room and pinching my nose shut while I slept, and it scared me. Then I imagined doing the same right back to her, and it was thrilling. “You can’t sneak into my room anymore, or I’ll tell Mom. I’ll show her the note.” I felt brave saying such things, and my bravery puffed up my chest as it lightened my head.

“Sorry. I don’t know if I can promise you anything like that.” Marjorie
turned her head abruptly from side to side, as though she was listening for the sounds of my parents walking out of their room and into the hallway.

“That’s not fair.”

“I know. But I have your new story.” She opened the book on her lap. It was my book, of course, the one she stole from my room:
All Around the World
. She flipped to a page with a cartoon New York City. The buildings were brick red and sea blue, and they crowded the page, elbowing and wrestling one another for precious space. The streets and sidewalks, and the people on the streets and sidewalks, were scribbled over with green ropey lines. She must’ve used the same green crayon with which she wrote my note.

She said, “New York City is the biggest city in the world, right? When the growing things”—Marjorie paused and ran her hands over the green lines she’d drawn in my book—“started growing there, it meant they could grow anywhere. They took over Central Park, poking through the cement paths and soaking up the park’s ponds and fountains. The stuff just came shooting up, crowding out the grass and trees, and the flower boxes in apartment windowsills, and then filled the streets. When people tried cutting the growing things down, they grew back faster. People didn’t know how or why they grew. There was no soil under the streets, you know, in the sewers, but they still grew. The vines and shoots broke through windows and buildings, and some people climbed the growing things so they could break into apartments and steal food, money, and HD TVs, but it quickly got too crowded for people, for everything, and the buildings crumbled and fell. They grew fast there, like a foot an hour, just like everywhere else.” She kept on talking about how in the suburbs the growing things swallowed up everyone’s pretty lawns and gardens and their driveways and sidewalks. And in the country and the farms, the growing
things overran the corn, wheat, soy, and all the other crops. They couldn’t stop the growing things so people poured and sprayed millions of gallons of weed killer, which didn’t work. People quickly grew desperate and dumped bottles of Liquid-Plumr, lye, and bleach. None of it worked on the stuff and all the chemicals and poisons leached into the groundwater and poisoned everything else.

I was tracing the green loops on the New York City page, my head filling with those snaking vines and thorns and leaves, when I noticed that Marjorie had stopped talking and was now staring at me.

“There’s more. Ask me something.”

I knew what she wanted me to ask so I did. “What about us? How do we beat the growing things?”

Marjorie closed the book and turned off a reading lamp clipped to her headboard. It was so dark it was like nothing was there in the room with us. Only the nothing was actually something because it filled my eyes and lungs and it sat on my shoulders.

Marjorie pushed my head down onto her lap. Her legs smelled like sweat, and she petted my head roughly and ran her fingers through my hair, catching strands in her mood ring and yanking them out.

She said, “Toward the end of it all, there were two girls left, living in a small house on the top of a mountain. The house looked just like the cardboard house in your room. The girls’ names were Marjorie and Merry. They alone lived with their father. Their mother had disappeared when she went to the grocery store weeks before when the growing things first attacked their town.

“They hadn’t enough food anymore and their father wasn’t right. He spent most days locked in a room by himself. Poor Marjorie wasn’t right either. She was sick. Malnourished. Dehydrated. She heard whispering voices that told her terrible things. She tried to stay in bed and sleep until
everything was okay, but it didn’t work. Only brave little Merry was still herself.

“On the last day, their father left the house to go find food. He told Merry not to open the front door no matter what and to stay out of the basement. Hours passed and Merry didn’t know what to do because Marjorie was coughing and moaning and speaking gibberish. She needed food, water, something. Merry went down into the basement to look for some secret stash of food that they’d forgotten. Instead she found tips of the growing things poking out of the basement’s dirt floor. She watched them grow and grow, and as they grew, they pushed up a large shape out of the dirt, and it hung off the growing things like a broken puppet. It was the body of their mother. Merry knew the horrible truth then, that their father had poisoned their mother and buried her in the basement, and that he’d been slowly poisoning Marjorie as well. It was the only explanation for Marjorie’s sickness. Their wicked father had done it and Merry would be next.

“Merry ran out of the basement and upstairs to Marjorie and crawled in bed next to her. The growing things then began to break through the kitchen floor and into the rest of the house, turning everything green. That little cardboard house on the mountain creaked and groaned under the strain of the growing things that tore through the floors and walls and ceilings. But then there was a great knocking on their front door.”

Marjorie paused and knocked lightly but insistently on my head. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough so it sounded like she was knocking inside my head.

“Merry tried to ignore the pounding on the door. Instead, she asked Marjorie two questions: ‘What do we do if it isn’t Dad outside the door? What do we do if it is?’”

I sat up and rolled out of Marjorie’s lap and onto the floor, landing on
my knees. My crash landing was loud and my teeth smashed together. I stood up, wobbly, tears stinging my eyes.

I was going to shout
you are a horrible sister and I hate you!

But then Marjorie said, “I’m not well, Merry. I don’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry,” and her voice cracked and she curtained her face with her hands.

I said, “It’s okay. But you’ll get better, right? Then we’ll tell normal stories, like we used to. It’ll be fun.”

“No. You have to remember that story about the two sisters. You have to remember all my stories because there are—there are all these ghosts filling my head and I’m just trying to get them out, but you have to remember the story about the two sisters especially. Okay? You have to. Please say, ‘Okay.’”

Marjorie was just a shadow on her bed. She could’ve been a pile of blankets, twisted and discarded. I couldn’t see her eyes or her spaghetti-sauce-stained chin.

When I didn’t answer her, she screamed as though she were being attacked; so loud it lifted my feet off the floor and pushed me backward.

“Say, ‘Okay,’ Merry! Say it!”

I didn’t. And I ran out of her room.

I WANTED TO
be a soccer player just like Marjorie, only an even better one. She had a good leg; Dad-speak meaning that she could kick the ball hard and far. But I had two good legs. I was shifty and fast and could already dribble past players older than me. Marjorie was a sweeper for her freshman team, which sounded so cool. I really didn’t understand what that position was, other than it meant she was the special or most important defender. I didn’t want to be a sweeper though. I wanted to score goals, and I pouted if the coach put me on defense.

We were early to practice and Mom said to wait in the car with her until the coach showed up. With my robin’s-egg-blue soccer ball in my lap, I kept vigilant watch for coach’s orange shirt. Mom rolled down the window halfway and lit up a cigarette. Smoking wasn’t allowed near the field.

“How come Dad isn’t bringing me to practice?” I knew the question
would irritate Mom, but I was mad because she’d tied my hair back and I wanted to leave it loose. I always liked how my hair trailed behind me when I ran, like the tail of a kite.

“What, you don’t want me here? Jeez, that’s nice.”

“No. I want you here. Just asking.”

“He’s going with Marjorie to her appointment.”

“Don’t you usually do that?”

“Yes. But the last one didn’t go so well. The doctor thought it was a good idea if maybe we switched things up.”

“What happened?”

Mom sighed, and instead of her expertly blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth and through the open window, it spilled out and fogged the car. “Honey, nothing happened, really. It was just Dad’s turn to go with her.”

She was lying. It was obvious, almost comically so. Her hiding whatever it was she was hiding from me gave me license to imagine all manner of doctor’s office horrors. Not that I knew what kind of doctor Mom was talking about. Not that I knew there were different kinds of doctors. To the second-grader me, a doctor was simply a doctor; someone who made sick people well. I did, however, know enough to worry about Marjorie having cancer or some horrible disease with a name I couldn’t pronounce. I’ll never have kids but if I were suddenly and inexplicably cursed to be a mother, I solemnly swear to answer any questions my child might have, tell my child everything, and to not withhold even one single nasty detail.

Fishing for information that wouldn’t be forthcoming, I played the only card I had. “Mom, she’s been acting really weird lately.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

I wanted to cry that I even said anything. This was beyond tattling. This was betrayal of my sister, who, apparently, was terribly, terribly ill.
But it didn’t matter and I couldn’t keep any of it in anymore, so I opened my mouth and let it all spill out. I told Mom about Marjorie sneaking into my room at night, taking my book, the molasses flood story, the note, the growing things, and how she said she had ghosts in her head. I embellished the growing-things story, telling her that Marjorie said they would start growing here at the soccer field while I had practice and that they would swallow all of us up.

Mom rubbed her forehead with one hand and then put the cigarette in her mouth with the other. “Thank you for telling me this, Merry. Please, tell me everything she does if it seems . . . I don’t know . . . seems weird. Okay? It’s going to help us. Going to help her.” She shook her head and exhaled more smoke. “Marjorie shouldn’t be scaring you like that.”

“I’m not scared, Mom.”

Mom opened up the center console and pulled out a red book that was about the size of her hand. There was a pen neatly tucked away inside and she quickly jotted down some notes.

“Oooh, can I have one of those?” I reached for the red notebook and Mom yanked it away from me.

“Merry, you don’t just grab! How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Sorry.”

“Look. Sorry, I yelled. But you can’t have this notebook. Dr. Hamilton wants me to keep a record of what’s happening at home.” She must’ve seen something break and crumble in my face because Mom rested a hand on my shoulder and said, “And I hope you don’t think that any of what’s happening with Marjorie is in any way your fault.”

I didn’t think any of it was my fault, but now that she’d said it, I was panicked. I grabbed fistfuls of Mom’s collar and pulled myself up out my seat, closer to her. I was going to tell her that Marjorie wasn’t being all
that bad, that I had exaggerated her tall tales, that I kind of liked them and wanted to hear more of them and maybe even make up some of my own. Instead, I said, “Please, please, please don’t tell Marjorie I told you anything. You can’t.”

“I won’t, sweetie. I promise.” Her promise wasn’t a real one. It was simply the dot at the end of her sentence.

I sat back down, still desperate to know what was really going on. “Well, I’m worried about Marjorie, even if you’re not.”

Mom smiled and stubbed out her cigarette. “Oh, of course, I’m worried, Merry. I’m very worried. But Marjorie is getting help and we’ll get through this. I promise. In the meantime, be sure to be extra nice to your sister. Extra understanding. She’s—She’s very confused right now, about things. Does that make sense?”

It didn’t make sense. But I nodded my head yes so fast I just about shook out of my hair braids and elastics.

We didn’t say anything else until the coach pulled into the parking lot in his little red car. It looked like something Goldbug would hide in.

“There he is. Okay, have fun and listen to your coach.”

“Mom, I can’t go until you give me coaching advice like Dad does.”

“What does he usually say?”

“Kick through the ball. Head up. And he says that you can’t coach speed.”

Mom laughed. “What does that even mean?”

“It means I’m fast and you can’t coach me? I don’t know!” I laughed too, but it was forced and manic.

“Okay. Go. Have a good practice, sweetie.”

Mom kissed my forehead and stayed in the car. I jogged out onto the field and to a gaggle of my teammates. Olivia, our tallest and blondest player, pointed at me, held her nose, and said, “Pew, Merry smells like
smoke.” Coach told her to be nice. During our one-on-one drills I kicked Olivia just above the protective barrier of her shin guard. She fell to the turf, screaming and clutching her leg.

The rest of my teammates yelled my name, begging for me to pass them the ball. I wouldn’t. I dribbled the ball past the moaning and writhing Olivia as fast as I could because you couldn’t coach speed.