The Poor and the Haunted Read online

  The emergency room nurse also noted the bite marks on his neck. Jill didn’t have an explanation and wasn’t about to tell the nurse what she saw Jessica do. She just shrugged her shoulders. How could one account for bite marks on the neck of a man who was clearly in the midst of a breakdown?

  Given how close he was to death, the nurse did not press the matter. There were more important issues at hand.

  Jimmy was diagnosed with severe dehydration and heatstroke. He was given immediate fluids, and his body was immersed in a specialized cooling tub before being transported to his room. One emergency room doctor told Jill if they had arrived a few minutes later, her husband might not have survived.

  “You know, it’s a miracle your car alarms went nuts,” the ER doctor said.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Jill asked. She didn’t know life as a real adult without Jimmy and didn’t want to start knowing that life now. Or ever.

  “He’ll be here for a bit, but I think he’s going to be okay. He should wake up soon,” the doctor said. He went to exit the room, turning back once more to speak to Jill. “You know, your husband is a lucky man.”

  Jill offered Jonathan and Jessica the chance to go home. She could call Zach’s mom, she said, and both could stay over at Zach’s house before coming back to the hospital the next morning.

  Neither of Jimmy Lansford’s children was going anywhere. They made that clear to Jill. They all slept together in the small hospital room: Jill in a chair, Jonathan stretched out on the floor, Jessica curled up next to her dad, careful to avoid bumping the arm with IV tubes in it.

  Though Jimmy was not technically in a coma, he still wasn’t awake. The doctors assured Jill her husband could wake at any moment, so they all waited, getting little sleep—but getting little sleep together.

  Around seven that morning, three knocks on their room door woke Jill from a nightmare.

  She stood in an alley, looking into a backyard overgrown with weeds and tall grass. In the yard was a vehicle, though from her angle, she couldn’t tell what the vehicle was, but it had the outline of an old sports car. There were no lights on in the street, and the alley she stood in was pitch black. Everything around her was lit only by the moon and weak light coming from a window in the back of the house she faced. The only sounds were a squeak as the vehicle moved side to side, and the relentless bark of a dog somewhere in the distance.

  She was shaken up even after she woke and was glad to have Dr. Peter Gallagher, their family physician, bring her back to the real world.

  “Jill, can I see you for a bit?” Dr. Gallagher asked, placing his hand on her shoulder as he entered the room. The doctor could tell she was jumpy, and who could blame her?

  “Sure, sure,” Jill said. She slipped her shoes on, looking at her children and her husband. Everyone who mattered most to her slept just feet away from a machine that showed the exact moment a human being leaves this world. She was glad to get a break.

  Dr. Gallagher waited for her outside.

  “Can we go get coffee?” he asked

  “I could use it,” she said, and followed him down the sterile blue-and-white hallway until they reached a waiting room with coffee and stale donuts. He poured her a cup, and the two sat opposite each other in the hospital’s cheap, uncomfortable chairs. There were Kleenex boxes everywhere, and a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus observed their conversation from his spot on the wall.

  Dr. Gallagher took a deep breath.

  “Jill, what do you know about Jimmy’s childhood?”

  She couldn’t see what Jimmy’s childhood had to do with heatstroke.

  “A little bit, but he doesn’t talk about it. Hardly ever. I know his father committed suicide, and his mother died from liver failure. That happened while we were married. And—”

  “I’m going to get right to the point—I apologize for being so abrupt, it’s just—”

  “No, go ahead. Please,” Jill said.

  “How familiar are you with survivor’s guilt?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Once upon a time, survivor’s guilt was its own diagnosis. Now it’s lumped under PTSD, but it’s a specific kind of PTSD. A few years ago, Jimmy came in complaining of stomach pain. Remember?”

  Jill remembered. Three years ago she would occasionally find Jimmy doubled over their toilet, clutching his stomach. It was so frequent—with no visible output, so to speak—that she asked him to visit Gallagher.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Did he tell you what the diagnosis was?”

  “Some sort of ulcer, I think. He was pushing himself too hard at work.”

  Gallagher knew Jimmy and Jill well. Jimmy Lansford wasn’t the type to just jump out of a second-story window and see if he could run himself to death in what, to Dr. Gallagher’s knowledge, would be the second-oddest way to commit suicide he had ever heard of, the first being the way Jimmy’s father took his own life. Gallagher never heard of anyone committing suicide like that.

  “We couldn’t find anything wrong with Jimmy. Physically.”

  Jimmy had told Jill he had a mild ulcer. Nothing to worry about, really. Just a gentle reminder that health is not solely defined by miles run; that’s all the doctor had to say. According to Jimmy.

  “What? No ulcer?” Jill asked.

  “Nope. No ulcer. No tumor. Nothing, as far as we can tell. I referred him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Gera. I shouldn’t be sharing this with you, because Jimmy didn’t sign an authorization form, but as his family physician I have access to his records. When the hospital informed me Jimmy had been admitted, I thought it would be good for us to talk.”

  She hadn’t expected to have a conversation about her husband’s childhood as he lay recovering from heatstroke.

  “Jill, your husband has perhaps the worst case of survivor’s guilt I’ve ever seen. At least, with any patient I’ve ever treated. He was diagnosed with PTSD, but he refused treatment. He was quite honest with the psychiatrist, and said he was scared to take any sort of medication. Too many addiction issues in his family.”

  Jill reached for the tissue box.

  “You said,” Gallagher leafed through several sheets attached to the clipboard in his hands, “Jimmy has been acting strange for the last few weeks.”

  “Yes, but…” But what? She’d worried over him ever since getting the strange text about being safe in Cedar Rapids.

  “Episodes of PTSD can be triggered by specific events. Is there anything that could trigger Jimmy? Sneaking out of your window and running for hours on a hundred-plus day is not…it’s not healthy behavior.”

  “I…I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that when he and his sister were twelve and fifteen…I mean, that’s how old they were when his father committed suicide. Jessica turned twelve just the other week.”

  “What does Jimmy say about his childhood?”

  “Nothing. Or, not much. I know it was hard. I know they were poor. I know some old fireman looked after him and Kelly,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Like I said, he almost never talks about it.”

  Jill finished her coffee, looked at the empty cup in her hands, then back up at Gallagher. “I know there’s bad stuff back there. In Oklahoma. And I wish he would talk about it with me, but he won’t. I just didn’t know if I should push it. Or, you know, if that would make it worse.”

  “You should try and get him to talk about it with somebody,” Gallagher said. “Because let me tell you something, as a medical professional. The human body can survive incredible trauma. You hear stories about people whose parachute doesn’t open, and sometimes they walk away. The mind…isn’t the same. It won’t survive wi
thout a parachute.”

  Gallagher finished his coffee and stood to leave. Jill stood with him, shaking his hand.

  “I’ll check back on Jimmy and the rest of you later,” Gallagher said. “Be well. Please get him some help. Your husband is a good man. A good dad. Tell him, when he wakes up, his kids deserve to have him around a while longer.”

  They shook hands, and Jill walked down the hall, her shoes echoing through the corridor. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead, knowing nothing good came from an accidental glance into someone else’s hospital room. A few feet away from Jimmy’s door, she heard Jessica.

  “Dad, you should have seen it. You were almost DEAD. And the car alarms kept going off and Mom and Johnny—”

  Jill’s heart lifted. Though she couldn’t hear Jimmy, she could hear Jessica filling him in on how they found him on the garage floor. Jill wondered if her daughter would remember biting Jimmy’s neck. She hoped not. Something Jill didn’t understand happened in her garage, and she was willing to leave it a mystery.

  “Jonathan. Your brother’s name is Jonathan,” Jill said, correcting Jessica from the doorway.

  Jill didn’t care if her daughter called her brother Johnny or Jonathan, but she knew using Jonathan’s full name was important to her husband. She stood just inside the room, looking at the man she built her life with. He looked tired and small, though his eyes looked less vacant than they had in weeks. Jimmy looked up at his wife and smiled, though moving his lips still took effort.

  I love you, he mouthed.

  I love you too, she mouthed back, moving toward his bed and the pile of people on it.

  Jimmy would remain hospitalized for another twenty-four hours, his family never leaving his side. He began consuming solid foods later that day. Throughout his entire stay, he never experienced a single instance of floating outside of his body, never saw a smudge in any mirror. He never snarled at any of the nurses or doctors who treated him. He watched TV and rested and played checkers with Jonathan.

  Jimmy was no less horrified by hospitals than the average person, but his time at McCain General was some of the best he’d had in a long time.

  ***

  After checking out, a car full of Lansfords pulled out of the parking lot and made its way toward I-17. As they passed Happy Valley Storage, Jessica spoke up.

  “Hey dad?” she asked.

  It was her way of asking permission to ask a question. He was sure she would ask if he was crazy. If she did, he would answer his daughter honestly. He would tell Jessica he didn’t know. Maybe. Maybe he was crazy.

  “Can you tell me about Aunt Kelly?”

  Jimmy looked in the rearview mirror.

  Jessica smiled at her father and wrinkled her nose.

  Jimmy spun around, looking his daughter in the eyes.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked, far too aggressively.

  Jill placed her hand on her husband’s forearm. Though all of Jimmy’s childhood was a sensitive subject, his sister was the topic everyone knew to approach with the most caution. It was like sticking your finger in someone’s open wound. That is, if your fingernail was especially sharp and the wound especially raw.

  “Because I just…I don’t know,” Jessica said, looking out her window. “These last few weeks I’ve thought about her. A lot.”

  Jimmy looked at the houses they passed. When he was a kid in Oklahoma, a neighborhood like this might as well be Mars, and not because North Phoenix looks like Mars—if Mars were colonized by Red Robin franchisees.

  Jimmy knew, after nearly dying right in front of his family, that he could no longer keep his past to himself. He took a deep breath and began to tell a story. It was the story of a boy and a girl, siblings born three years apart, just like Jonathan and Jessica.

  These siblings grew up in a world and a home very different from the one Jonathan and Jessica knew. Their names were Jimmy and Kelly, and they lived in all sorts of places: Apartments. Cars. Tents. More apartments. A farmhouse on a dairy with an old barn. A rundown house in a rundown town in Oklahoma.

  In each of these places Jimmy and Kelly protected each other. Sometimes, when they were little, Jimmy would sneak into the kitchen of wherever they lived and find food for Kelly. When their father was angry—hitting angry—Jimmy would hide his sister under a sink or bed until the anger passed. When they grew up, or at least became teenagers, Jimmy still made sure his sister felt safe and protected.

  But the story wasn’t just about a big brother saving his little sister. Far from it. The little sister saved her big brother, too. Once—and this was a story only he, Aunt Kelly, and an old cop friend named Carlisle knew—the little sister jumped on their father and bit a chunk out of his neck, which saved the brother from a closed-fisted beating.

  Jimmy did not see the look that passed between Jill and Jonathan as he told the story of the neck-bite.

  Their father and mother were so mean the boy thought they must be possessed by the devil, but one time the sister explained how the devil would never possess their parents. The devil wouldn’t want to eat Spam and steal cable TV. That made Jimmy laugh back when he heard it, and it made Jill, Johnathan, and Jessica laugh, too—even though this was a sad story, and they knew it shouldn’t be funny.

  Jimmy liked watching his family laugh at his sad stories. Sometimes you protected people with your teeth, and sometimes you protected people by making them laugh. Dark jokes are the best way to fight monsters. Kelly taught him that.

  Their time together wasn’t all sad, though.

  Their Aunt Kelly loved music, Jimmy told them. She loved cool ’80s bands. She really, really loved Cyndi Lauper. Her favorite was a song called “Time after Time.”

  At this point in the story, Jessica interjected, saying, “I know that song! I LOVE that song!”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, “your Aunt Kelly loved it too. Sometimes, when Diane and Ronnie—sorry, my parents—were screaming at each other, she would sing it so I could fall asleep.”

  Aunt Kelly was cool, Jimmy told them. And a little wild. Once, his friend Brian bought packages of Roman Candles, and Kelly had the idea to have a duel with the fireworks. (At this point in the story, it was Jill’s turn to interject and tell Jessica and Jonathan to never, ever have a Roman Candle duel.) During the duel, Kelly shot Brian in the side of the stomach, and though the flaming ball burned through Brian’s shirt and left a slight scorch mark on his ribcage, all Brian could say the next day to Jimmy was, “Man, your sister is awesome.”

  And she was awesome.

  “Sometime,” he said, “I will tell you a story about my friend Carlisle. He was the cop. He was Aunt Kelly’s friend, too.”

  He told them about the way he and Kelly used to watch Friends, and how—like little kids—they pretended to be Ross and Monica, living together in a big city. He told them about race days, how Kelly would wake up early and make him eggs so he could get some protein before he ran; how she always clogged the toilet with her huge poops and how funny she thought that was, just like Jessica.

  What he couldn’t tell his family, no matter how many words he used and how many stories he told, was how Kelly was his person before they were his people. When you grew up like he and Kelly did, it didn’t matter how many races you won or how many times you were elected to student council. Jimmy and Kelly couldn’t let people into their home. When Diane Lansford’s front door closed, the nightmare they lived became its own world. No one—no friends, no girlfriends, no boyfriends—could be let inside that world.

  Jimmy couldn’t tell his family, not in a way they would understand, how any light in Diane’s home was created by the love between him and Kelly, like the spark of two sticks struck against eac
h other at the very bottom of the deepest cave—and how dark that cave became when half the flame left Oklahoma for Arizona.

  “But Dad, that was what you guys did together. What was she like back then?” Jessica asked.

  “What do you mean, what was she like?”

  “I mean, if you had to describe her. What was her personality like?”

  Jimmy felt his throat catch. His eyes grew prickly and warm.

  “She was like you, Jessica. Tough. Funny. A little crazy.”

  His daughter rolled her eyes.

  “Not good enough, Dad. I mean it. What was she like?”

  Jimmy steadied his voice. Outside his window the beige of their neighborhood came into view. He thought of the night he taught his sister to drive, and the way homes like his own still made him think of skeletons.

  “You know pizza? Like, good pizza? The kind we get from Mellow Mushroom?”

  Everyone in the car nodded their head.

  “And you know how pizza tastes at school? Like, even if it’s bad pizza, it always tastes good at a school pizza party? Because it’s out of context?”

  Again, they all nodded. Jessica knew what context meant and was proud of herself for knowing such a big word.

  “Well my sister was the best Mellow Mushroom pizza you’ve ever tasted. Extra cheese. All the meats. No mushrooms. Nothing gross.”

  Jessica smiled. She hated mushrooms.

  “Your Aunt Kelly was the best possible pizza in the worst possible classroom. That’s what she was like.”

  Though he had given Jill and the kids more details than he ever had about his sister, he would end this story the same way he ended every story about Aunt Kelly: by telling his family how sorry and sad he was that they never got to meet her, how much he missed her, and how much she would have loved all three of them—especially her niece and nephew. How they would have been her family too. He faced Jessica and told her how much she reminded him of her aunt.