{"id":4265,"date":"2019-03-27T03:31:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.incirliseviye.com\/?p=4265"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:31:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:31:07","slug":"rubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=4265","title":{"rendered":"Rubble"},"content":{"rendered":"

The night before the house across the street was demolished, my mother claimed to see the ghost of a small boy up on its roof. He was sitting on the ruins of the chimney, she said, and it looked as though he were reading a book. Then he vanished. But the most important detail about the encounter was this: The boy had waved at my mother. She was sure of it. This was so important, she said, because it suggested some sort of cognizance on the ghost child\u2019s part \u2014 he\u2019d reacted to her. There were those who argued that ghosts were nothing more than imprints of consciousness stamped into time \u2014 a spiritual residue left behind by a life, ridged as a recording \u2014 and that these imprints were not necessarily indicative of some ever-after awareness or freewill on the ghost\u2019s part. But the boy on the roof had waved<\/em>. Did I see the distinction? my mother wanted to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure,\u201d I said. \u201cHe reacted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrecisely,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She poured me another half glass of champagne. I was only 12, but tonight she wanted to celebrate. To clink glasses with her son. That abandoned house across Lewiston Street was finally coming down. This was a testament to our persistence, she said. It was a great victory. For as long as I could remember she\u2019d fought to have that place leveled, going to town meetings, handing out little pamphlets I\u2019d helped her design on the computer, etc. The place was an eyesore, she said. And it was dangerous \u2014 the rusted nails, the broken glass. Tomorrow morning, all thanks to her and me, the bulldozers would rip it apart. She had won.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t seen her like this in months. Earlier that evening we\u2019d shared a pizza from Elvio\u2019s \u2014 a rare splurge since she\u2019d quit her job at the bank. She\u2019d made a chocolate cake from scratch. In blue icing she sketched the outline of a house, the word RUBBLE<\/em> written above the roof. For some reason she couldn\u2019t stop laughing. She kept touching her face with her hands, as though she expected to find the nose and lips and cheeks of someone else. At one point she put on a record and picked up a potted bamboo plant, thrashing at the fronds with her hand as she pretended to strum along on guitar with Stevie Ray Vaughn. I kept waiting for the familiar gloominess to start gnawing at her again. But it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an idea,\u201d she said to me now. The two of us were sitting on the kitchen counter, our bare feet thumping the cabinets below, the last crumbles of the cake between us as we picked and prodded with our forks. I took a sip of champagne. I didn\u2019t really understand how alcohol worked, and I was wondering what exactly I should be feeling. \u201cHow about we go over to that house and check things out?\u201d my mother said at last. I asked her what she meant. \u201cYou know,\u201d she said. \u201cLook for the ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, break-in?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

She nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s illegal,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

She chimed my champagne glass with her fork. \u201cSo\u2019s this, Mr. Capone. Find a flashlight, will you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Going to that abandoned house was about the last thing I wanted to do. For one, I was scared \u2014 not of the ghost, really, but of neighbors, police, etc. \u2014 and two, it just seemed stupid. But my mother was in a rare mood, and I wanted to prolong this mood as long as possible. It might not swing back around for quite some time. I hopped off the counter and went in search of the big Coleman lantern. I wasn\u2019t sure I believed in ghosts, but I was sure my mother believed, and for her sake I hoped they were real.<\/p>\n

This was the summer she began peering into the spirit world \u2014 her phrase. It was also the summer my father ran off to Boca Raton with the wife of one of his co-workers at the paper mill. For good, this time, though at first I didn\u2019t believe it; leaving was something my father did, sure, but coming back was something he did, too.<\/p>\n

In my mother\u2019s mind, my father\u2019s departure and her own newfound connection with the spirit world were linked. \u201cHe had this terrible, brutish aura about him, your father,\u201d she told me once, \u201cand I think it must have interfered with my own innate abilities. Like light pollution blotting out the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his absence, my mother began encountering apparitions everywhere \u2014 the supermarket, the gas station, etc. \u2014 and eventually she left her teller job at Outlook Savings in order to devote herself more fully to her gift. For days on end she holed herself up in her bedroom, conducting s\u00e9ances, the rich scent of burning sage seeping beneath the closed door. Sometimes she sat cross-legged on the floor with a pen poised over a notebook as she waited for an entity to guide her via automatic writing. I live on the singed rim of dreams,<\/em> she\u2019d written on one such occasion, over and over again \u2014 filling many pages with her huge, jagged scrawl \u2014 and in the weeks that followed I\u2019d often catch her mouthing these words as she struggled to decipher what they might mean.<\/p>\n

I found the lantern in the hall closet. The batteries were still good.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus,\u201d my mother said. \u201cYou could guide a ship to port with that thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t kidding. The lantern had the illumination thing down pat. It was the lantern my father used when he took me hornpout fishing over at Pearl Lake. Those spring nights he and I\u2019d catch 12, 13, 16 fish. He\u2019d clean them right there in the shine of the lantern. First he\u2019d cut off the whiskers. Then the heads. Then he\u2019d run his blade along the soft, slick-brown bellies, pinching out the intestines like slimy fuses and shaking the fish bloodless beneath the water. Back at home he\u2019d rub the meat with salt and pepper and a little bit of cornmeal and say, \u201cAnd the crowd goes wild!\u201d as he dropped the filets into a skillet practically screaming with hot oil. That lantern made a mockery of the dark, and reeling those hornpout in, one after the other after the other, my father would howl, \u201cSwim toward the light!\u201d And the fish listened.<\/p>\n

My mother took another slug of champagne. \u201cReady?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cWe\u2019re really doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be exciting. Don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExciting,\u201d I said. For years she\u2019d instructed me to keep away from that house. Now here she was with an open invitation for a grand tour in search of some ghost child she\u2019d seen enthroned on the chimney. I put on my sneakers and followed her outside.<\/p>\n

It was almost midnight, and up and down the block the houses were mostly dark save for the pulsing blue light of televisions in windows. I kept the lantern off. I was having visions of my mother being handcuffed \u2014 me too, for that matter. The reality of what we were about to do shot adrenaline through me like some wild voltage. Crickets trilled. In the Peterson\u2019s lawn, a forgotten sprinkler spit water in a stuttering hiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to promise me something,\u201d my mother said as we crossed Lewiston Street. \u201cPromise me you\u2019ll remember nights like this. I mean, when I\u2019m old and senile and slurping butterscotch pudding in some nursing home. I was fun too, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

I promised I\u2019d remember, though I did not know how it was possible to forget. She raked her fingers through my hair and squeezed a handful. \u201cMy boy,\u201d she said. It was a clear, cool August night, the stars thrown against the black sky like pulverized crystal, the moon so sharp I could see its shadowed craters from a quarter-million miles away. In two weeks, I\u2019d start eighth grade. In two years, my mother would marry a kind, loose-faced chiropractor and stop seeing ghosts altogether. In two decades, I\u2019d be a computer engineer in Raleigh with two ex-wives and three kids, and my mother would be dead. But none of this existed as we waded through the tall, brittle grass growing up around the derelict brick ranch, both of us dazed with too much chocolate and cheap champagne.<\/p>\n

The rest of our lives were wound around our hearts like a secret thread.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis way,\u201d she whispered, leading me to the back of the house. She moved with the confidence of an actor following a well-written script. The backdoor opened without issue, and suddenly a strange thought floated to the surface of my mind: She\u2019s been here before<\/em>. I had no proof, but I felt sure of it.<\/p>\n

Inside, she said, \u201cHow about a little light?\u201d I shut the door. The lantern revealed the dark, bombed-out remnants of a hallway. The walls were leprous with rot, the spongy floor cobbled with glass and splintered wood and crushed Budweiser cans. The air smelled of mildew and trapped heat. Following my mother from the hall into what must have been the living room, it occurred to me that people once lived here. Real people. This place had contained lives. And my mother and I were the last lives it would ever contain.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello?\u201d she called out into the empty house, her echo chasing itself through the rooms. It was so quiet I could hear the patter of moths as they hurled their powdery selves against the lantern. In the light, their shadows were projected against the ruined walls like monstrous animations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel a \u2014 presence<\/em>,\u201d my mother said. She kneeled. She ran her fingers over the rubble-strewn floor, as if searching for a pulse. She paced about the room. Knocked on the plywood-boarded windows. I held the lantern up high. Walking through the woods around Pearl Lake, my father used to jog ahead of me with the lantern. He\u2019d turn it off and hide. I was never scared, because I knew he was somewhere close, watching. I\u2019d listen for his breath. For the jangle of the tackle box. But he was always very quiet. And then the lantern would come on again. So bright I couldn\u2019t see him through the glare. Except I knew this for sure: He was there, standing behind the light.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeel that?\u201d my mother asked. \u201cThat boy\u2019s here somewhere.\u201d She bit her lower lip. The gloominess was creeping back in. I could see it. It came quick. She looked wrung out. Tired and unsure of herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel it, too,\u201d I said. I turned off the lantern. The light collapsed into one curl of orange filament, then went out, and the abruptness of the absolute dark made my mother gasp. \u201cI feel it, too,\u201d I said again.<\/p>\n

She called out to the ghost. She said she knew he was here. She told him not to be scared. To show himself. To give us some sign of acknowledgement. I held my breath. \u201cPlease,\u201d I said. I shivered in the heat. \u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d I said. It would be such an incredible story, I thought, if the ghost boy appeared before us now. Neither of us would ever forget it.<\/p>\n

The boy did not come.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go home,\u201d my mother whispered.<\/p>\n

But I wasn\u2019t ready. This mood she was in was something I wasn\u2019t about to relinquish. She\u2019s been here before<\/em>, I thought again, and I imagined her shuffling through these bare, moldering rooms, holding a fistful of flaming herbs up against the dark, stepping through vanishing portals of sweet, sweet smoke.<\/p>\n

I live on the singed rim of dreams<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cDid you hear that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I could not see her, but her earrings tinkled as she shook her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t hear a thing,\u201d she said softly.<\/p>\n

\u201cShhh<\/em>,\u201d I said. \u201cListen.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered what my father would have said had he seen us now: me and my mother standing in the total blackness of a condemned house in the middle of the night. Then, carefully and quietly, I reached to the floor and grabbed a handful of debris \u2014 twisted screws, crumbs of glass, chunks of disintegrating sheetrock \u2014 and pitched it all in the direction of the hall from which we\u2019d just come. It clattered loudly in the dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus,\u201d my mother said. \u201cI heard it. Oh, God. I heard it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I turned on the lantern.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollow me,\u201d I said, and I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The night before the house across the street was demolished, my mother claimed to see the ghost of a small boy up on its roof. He was sitting on the ruins of the chimney, she said, and it looked as though he were reading a book. Then he vanished. But the most important detail about … <\/p>\n

Read more “Rubble”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}