A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (19 page)

He said, “Okay, why don’t we start with you guys talking a little about what you’re watching?”

We all looked around, at a loss as what to say. Mom said, “This is silly.”

Dad flashed angry, and was quick to chide her. “Come on. We can do this. Is acting like a family so hard to do?”

Mom was more than ready to respond in kind. “Right. Kids, gather ’round Daddy so we can all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya.’”

I quickly back-rolled off the arm of the couch, slapping my feet hard as I landed. I shouted, “Dad! Dad! Rating! You said you’d rate my landings.” I hoped I’d been loud enough to drown out the start of another fight.

Dad gave me a thumbs-up and said, “Woo,” but his enthusiasm for my performance was lacking.

Before they could start back in on each other, I pointed at the TV and said, “Maybe they’ll finally find Bigfoot this time.”

Marjorie said, “This isn’t the Bigfoot show, monkey.”

We were pleased and shocked that Marjorie was casually interacting with us. Barry made that camera-rolling motion with his hands, desperately wanting one of us to respond, to goose the conversation forward.

Dad said, “Right. It’s . . . um . . . called
Survivorman
.”

I said, “Yeah, I know. But he’s way deep in the woods all by himself. That’s where Bigfoot lives, so maybe he’ll see one.”

“Pfft. I don’t think so, sweetie.” Dad was badly overacting. He had that fake smile on his face, the one that looked painful to wear.

I said, “I bet he heard one but didn’t know it was a Bigfoot making that noise because he’s not an expert.” I punctuated with a one-handed cartwheel.

Dad said, “Of course he’s an expert.”

“No, he’s not a Bigfoot expert.” I looked to Barry and then Ken, looking for some sign of approval; that we were doing and talking about the right things in the right ways.

There was a lull, and Barry said, “What do you think, Sarah? Is this guy a Bigfoot expert?”

Mom said, “What? Oh, sorry,” then put her phone down on the end table and crossed her arms. “He’s not a Bigfoot expert. He’s just, um, what, survivorman?”

I said, “Sounds like a superhero name. He needs a cape.”

Mom gave me a sad smile, like she’d just remembered that I was there and had been there for a long time. She said, “No capes!” like the character from one of my favorite movies,
The Incredibles
.

At the same time, Marjorie said, “A cape he made out of moss and twigs,” but she mumbled. It wasn’t a weird, creepy, she’s-possessed mumble, but her previously normal, I’m-barely-interested-in-what-you’re-talking-about mumble. I heard her and understood her. Mom did too because she laughed.

Marjorie added, “And tight superhero underwear made from squirrel pelts.”

Mom said, “It’s where he puts his nuts.”

I screamed, “Mom!” and everyone but Dad laughed.

The room went quiet again. Barry and Ken whispered to each other some more and consulted the notes again. I leaned on the arm of the couch like it was a pommel horse, and went up and down on my tiptoes. We watched survivorman build a shelter and set deadfall traps for small animals.

I said, “Ew, is he really going to squish animal heads with those rocks? I don’t want to see that. Change it.”

Marjorie turned, closed one eye, and peered at me through her pinching fingers. “I can squish your head.” She pinched her thumb and pointer together and said, “Squish, squish, squish . . .”

I screamed a fake-death moan and fell backward onto the couch, kicking my feet until I rolled over and landed face-up in Dad’s lap.

He said, “Come on!” and pushed me off his lap, onto the couch. “You just hit me in the—” He looked at the cameras and didn’t finish his sentence.

Marjorie said, “You hit him in the squirrel pelt.” She giggled, and so did I. And so did Mom.

Ken suggested that we put on one of our DVDs, something that we’d all like to watch. Something funny that we could talk about. I shouted, “
Incredibles
,” but Marjorie said no. Mom went over to the media cabinet
and picked through the small library of films. She suggested other titles and with each title one of us would say no. There was no consensus.

“Forget it, then. John, just find something we all can watch.”

I said, “
SpongeBob
.”

“No . . .”

Dad changed the channel to hockey and everyone groaned, so he flipped it back to
Survivorman
.

Marjorie started to get up.

Dad asked, “Where are you going?”

“Um, my room? Is that okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Are you—Are you okay?”

Marjorie didn’t answer.

I asked, “If she’s going to her room can I watch
The Incredibles
? Ken, you can watch it with me.”

Barry walked into the room, holding his hands out like a cop directing traffic. “You guys are doing great, here. Marjorie, if you’re feeling okay, can you please just give us a few more minutes together, okay? It’d be a huge help.”

Her lips moved but no words came out. I had no idea what she would do. So I was most surprised when she silently acquiesced and sat on the floor.

Barry said, “All right.” He clapped his hands once. “How about you guys talk a little bit about tomorrow?”

Mom asked, “What do you want us to say?”

“Whatever you want. Are you guys nervous, afraid, excited, relieved? Tomorrow is why we’re all doing this, right? Do you guys have anything you want to say to one another or to the cameras, to anybody watching? Just give us something, anything.”

Ken gently grabbed Barry’s arm, told him to relax, and pulled him back into the foyer.

Mom said, “Okay, okay. Here’s what I think: Fuck you, Barry. Did I say that clear enough? Do you need me to repeat it for the mics?” Her face flushed a bright red, lips pulled back over gritted teeth in a snarl’s snarl.

Barry said, “No need. I think we got that one, thank you.”

Dad sat with his head in his hands, all slumped forward, like someone had pulled his plug. He said, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow is God’s day. It always is.” When he picked up his head his eyes were closed. He whispered a prayer under his breath.

Mom said, “Well, I sure hope tomorrow is Marjorie’s day. God can have the rest of them.”

Marjorie stood up, shut the TV off, and walked over to Mom and sat on her lap. Marjorie was the same height as Mom and fit over her perfectly, like she was drawn on top of Mom with tracing paper. Mom put her arms around Marjorie’s waist.

Marjorie said, “I want to tell you guys what it feels like when—when I’m not me. Can I tell you guys about it?”

Mom said, “Yes, of course you can.”

Marjorie was quiet and I didn’t think she was going to tell us anything, but then she started in. “Last night I got up in the middle of the night to go pee. Then I opened the little window next to the sink because all of a sudden I felt like I was burning up, that I was a thousand degrees, and I crawled up onto the windowsill. It took a really long time to get up there and squeeze my body into the frame. I almost fell out. I tried to scream for help but I couldn’t move my mouth and I couldn’t breathe and everything in me just started leaking away, running down, like my volume button being turned down slowly. I knew I was dying, that that was what dying felt like, and the worst part was that the terrible horrible dying feeling was going to last forever. I’d never fully run out so the feeling would never stop. And that’s it. I crawled out of the window and went
back to my room, put on my headphones, and got in bed, but that dying feeling was still with me.”

“That sounds just awful, Marjorie,” Mom said, her voice stuck in quicksand.

Marjorie said, “Look, I need to ask you guys a favor. Will you be in the room with me tomorrow when it all happens? I want you to be there.” She sounded scared and like she might start crying. It was quiet enough in the room that I could hear the hum of the cameras.

Mom said, “Of course we’ll be there. Your father and I love you and we’ll always be there for you.”

Dad mumbled something about God loving her too.

She said, “Thank you. But Merry has to be there too.”

Dad said, “I don’t know if that’s for the best. Your mom and I were talking about sending her to Auntie Erin’s for the night, right Sarah?”

That was the first I’d heard of the Auntie Erin plan.

Marjorie said, “No, you can’t do that. That won’t work. If Merry isn’t there—” She paused and repeated herself. “If Merry isn’t there, someone will get hurt. Hurt bad. And that person will feel what I felt last night and feel it forever and ever and ever.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that someone in the room, could be anyone, I don’t know who, but I know, I just know the exorcism won’t work and then someone will get hurt bad. Unless Merry is there.”

Dad stood up and took two steps toward Marjorie so that he loomed over her like a great tree. “Is this the demon talking?”

“No. It’s me talking.”

“How do you know this will happen?”

“Like I’ve said before, I just know these things. All these ideas and images I get, they’re born in my head.”

Dad rubbed hard at his face, like he was trying to take it off. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “I wish Father Wanderly was here. He’s told me, repeatedly, that I can’t trust what she says because the demon will lie.” Then he looked down at Marjorie. “I’m sorry, honey, but I don’t know what to believe.”

Marjorie said, “Father Wanderly and Barry and the rest of them wanted Merry in the room last time, right? So what’s the difference? I’m sure they’ll want her in there again, anyway. Makes for good TV, yeah?”

Dad said, “That’s not why they wanted Merry there.”

Marjorie laughed. “Oh, so they
did
want her there? I was just guessing at that. Why’d they want her there, huh? Just for Merry’s love and support, right?” Marjorie struggled out of Mom’s hug and off her lap. She walked behind Mom’s chair, draped herself in the lacey, white window curtain, then spun around, cocooning herself. It was like the night she was in the blanket in the cardboard house, except I could still see her face’s outline, if not her features, through the curtain.

Dad said, “Marjorie, don’t do that. Get out of there.”

Mom didn’t move. She stayed seated and when she talked, it was like she was talking to the middle of the room. “I know we’ve already talked with Father Wanderly and Barry about tomorrow, but I really don’t care what they say or what they want anymore. I don’t want Merry there for the actual exorcism. I don’t want her to see what you have to go through. I don’t want her to see what you’ve been made to go through. I don’t want her to see you like that, Marjorie. I worry about what this is doing to Merry as much as I worry about what it’s doing to you.”

Marjorie, still wrapped in the curtain, said, “This is going to help me, Mom, and it will help our family. You’ll see. But only if Merry is there. If she isn’t, I will not cooperate. I will not go where you’ll want me to go and I will not do what you want me to do. I will cover my ears and my eyes
when Father Wanderly reads his rite. I will take all my clothes off so you can’t film me. If that doesn’t work, I’ll destroy the cameras. Things will get bad for everyone.”

“Marjorie—” Dad was getting louder.

Marjorie leaned up against the wall next to the window. “If you tie me to a bed I will yell and scream and swear and say such blasphemous things over everything Father Wanderly says so the audio footage will be essentially useless. And then someone will get hurt.”

Dad started roughly unwrapping Marjorie from the curtain, yelling at the foul demon that was inside her. Mom started yelling too, telling him to stop it, that he was hurting her, and she grabbed his arm and tried to yank him away. He growled at her and ripped his arm out of her grasp. Mom fought harder and hit and scratched at his arms. Barry and Ken went over and tried to break it all up.

I remember it all happening, as cliché as it sounds, in slow motion. My life as a piece of videotape to be slowed down and coolly dissected. Or maybe it’s like my memory is a computer with a processing speed too slow for all of the information, and the only way to keep from crashing, to parse any of it, is to artificially slow everything down.

The four yelling adults pushed and pulled one another, and in the middle of it all, the curtain swirled and danced around Marjorie like oxygen-drunk flames. She smiled, showing her teeth through the thin lace curtain before it was pulled away from her face and ripped off the window frame entirely.

She yelled, “Listen to me! I don’t know if I can, but I’m trying to save you all too. Merry will help me!”

I’d been saying the whole time that I wanted to be there for the exorcism, but no one was listening to me. I finally reached my breaking point and started crying and screaming for everyone to stop. And then I was
just screaming as loudly and as high-pitched as I could, and I couldn’t stop.

The adults finally heard me and stopped what they were doing. I was crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Mom screamed at me to stop and told me that I was okay, and Dad was crying too and saying he was sorry. Marjorie sat down on the floor, expressionless, picked up a corner of the curtain and put it into her mouth. Barry and Ken retreated off-camera, back into the foyer.

Mom picked me up and rushed me into the bathroom and sat me on the toilet with my head down. She soaked a face cloth in cold water and put it on the back of my neck. Somewhere out in the living room Dad prayed, saying the words so fast and without any pauses for ends of sentences, ends of anything, I couldn’t hear any individual words. It all just flowed together with the cold water dripping down the back of my neck.

ON THE MORNING
of the exorcism, I stayed home from school. I hadn’t known that was going to happen. No one had told me I wasn’t going. No one asked if I wanted to stay home. No one woke me up in time to go even if I’d wanted to.

When I woke up it was after nine o’clock. I was nervous at first, like I’d done something wrong. Mom was still asleep in bed next to me. She didn’t stir as I quietly crawled out of bed, dressed in sweatpants and a sweat shirt, and sneaked away.

Marjorie was asleep in her room, on her side, facing away from the doorway. I peeked in across the hall and Dad wasn’t in his bedroom. I went into the sunroom, peeled back the black cloth covering the windows so I could see out front. His car was gone.

I went downstairs to eat breakfast and found Ken sitting at the kitchen table by himself with coffee, a laptop, and his notebook.

He said, “Good morning, Merry.”

“Hi.”

“Need any help? Want me to make you something?”

“No.” I acted like I was mad at him though I wasn’t really sure why I’d be mad at him. I made cereal, spilling some of the milk in the process, but I cleaned it up myself. I sat across from Ken and crunched away on the fruity O’s.

“Staying home from school today?”

“Yes. It’s the big day, you know.”

“I know it is. You be careful, okay?”

“Will you be here tomorrow? After?”

“I’m not sure. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On how today goes. I’m not really sure what the plan is. Barry is meeting with the production company and network reps as we speak. I’m going to guess that we’ll be here tomorrow, but you never know. Maybe we’ll leave tomorrow but then come back in a few weeks to do some follow-up interviews and stuff.”

“But you’re the writer, right? You can write yourself into staying a few more days.”

Ken said, “I wish writers had that power.”

I finished breakfast and poured myself a glass of orange juice. I drank, watching Ken read something on his laptop and make notes. I said, “I’m going outside to play soccer.” I didn’t ask him if he wanted to come too. He didn’t ask if I wanted him to join me.

He packed up his stuff while I tied my sneakers. He said, “It’s really cold out. I don’t think that sweatshirt will be warm enough.”

I shrugged and went outside with my ball anyway.

He was right. It was freezing out. My ball instantly became a hard
rock that wasn’t fun to kick. Plus, the leaves were damp and frosted, and they stuck to my ball. Mom and Dad still hadn’t raked the leaves out back yet. Mom had said they were too busy. Dad had said it looked cinematic and made for dramatic autumn-in-New-England-type shots. We’d all rolled our eyes at him when he said that, even the cameraperson filming us.

I didn’t want to go back inside and admit to Ken he was right that it was too cold out. I stayed outside, cutting paths through the leaves until my cheeks were chapped and my toes were wet, unfeeling nubs jammed into my sneakers.

While I was playing soccer in my own self-imposed gulag, there was a chorus of voices, steadily increasing in volume, coming from out front. I was sure it was the protesters, who had become so ubiquitous that they were like wallpaper you didn’t notice until you actively decided to stare at it and follow the pattern. I was bored with ice-soccer so I decided to go out front and stare at that wallpaper.

Dad must’ve just pulled into the driveway, because his car was askew, still running, and his driver’s-side door was open. He yelled and pointed at the protesters. Two policemen stood in front of him and appeared to be physically holding Dad back.

Beached in the street in front of our house was an idling, white minibus. A new group of protesters ringed the vehicle. They were off-set and separate from the usual crowd who were clearly unhappy with this new group. The new group’s signs were brightly colored in fluorescent yellows and greens, looking, ironically enough, like peace-and-love tie-dye shirts on poster boards. But the text was thick and ugly and black. The signs read:
GOD HATES FAGS. YOU’RE GOING TO HELL. GOD HATES FAG CATHOLIC PRIESTS. GOD HATES YOU. GOD HATES MARJORIE BARRETT
.

I don’t think I knew what the word
fag
meant at the time. I felt queasy because I knew I was seeing something that I wasn’t supposed to see.

The new protesters were mostly men, but there were some women, and one little girl close to my age, cheerily holding up the
YOU’RE GOING TO HELL
sign. I wanted to yell at them, tell them that Marjorie was my sister and that no one hated her. I couldn’t understand why anyone would hate her just because, like Mom said, she wasn’t well.

I wasn’t brave enough to yell at the scary new protesters, and I ran toward the front door.

There was such an explosion of angry shouts from the crowd, I thought they saw me running for the door and were now coming after me. I stumbled up the brick stairs, twisting and landing butt-first on the stoop. I expected to see the new protesters pouring over the lawn toward me with their signs waving, teeth bared, hands outstretched. But everyone was shouting like crazy because of Dad.

Dad worked his way through the ring of new protesters and tore up all the Marjorie signs he could reach. I cheered him on. “Go, Dad!”

The police jogged into the crowd but were still more than a few steps behind Dad. One protester who’d held his sign behind his back in an attempt to protect it said something to Dad. I couldn’t hear him, but I saw his mouth moving and I saw the big
I dare you
smile after.

Dad lost it. He spit in the other man’s face and he started yelling, swearing, and throwing wild punches and kicks. The other man didn’t fight back at all but instead ducked and covered. The circle of protesters quickly cleared and it seemed like everyone had their smartphones out and pointed at the scene. They laughed, cheered, and egged on the very one-sided fight. The policemen finally caught up to Dad and wrapped themselves around his chest and back. Dad was out of control, yelling and thrashing, smashing the back of his head into the policeman’s chest, trying to break free.

I stopped cheering him on and a cry of “Leave my dad alone” died
in my throat. I was scared and I wanted the police to hold him, calm him down, to make him stop.

The two policemen held on and eventually brought him to the ground.

I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything I could do. I opened the front door. Ken ran past me. And I ran past him and up the stairs. Marjorie was awake and sitting on the edge of her bed. I didn’t stop at her door; I kept running down the hallway.

Marjorie shouted behind me, “I told you there’s something really wrong with Dad. Maybe he’s the one who’s possessed, yeah?”

I ran to my room and hid under the covers next to Mom, who was still asleep.

MOM HAD TO GO TO
the police station to bail out Dad. I’d overheard her shouting on the phone, using that phrase. I knew enough to know she meant something other than Dad was in a sinking boat.

I spent the afternoon watching TV with Ken. My usual shows weren’t on, so we were mainly stuck watching cartoons I’d already seen before. We didn’t say much to each other. I asked Ken if the new protesters were still out there. He said yes. Actually, he said, “Yes, those awful people are still out there.” I dozed off and on, listening for Mom’s car, watching the front door. Marjorie was upstairs by herself. I heard her roaming around the second floor, haunting our rooms, opening and shutting doors. I wondered if she’d looked outside, seen the new protesters, and read their signs about her.

Mom and Dad finally got back around 6:00
P.M.
Mom had phoned ahead, telling us they’d be home with dinner, so Marjorie and I were sitting at the kitchen table waiting for them when they arrived. As they walked in the door Marjorie whispered to me, telling me again that Dad was the one who was possessed.

My parents weren’t speaking to each other. They said quick hellos to us. I tried not to look at them directly, although I was reasonably sure that neither of them knew that I’d seen Dad punching the protester. I also didn’t want to look at Dad because I was afraid he’d look different, changed.

Mom carried a large brown bag of Chinese food. They set the table with paper plates and we picked what we wanted to eat out of the white cardboard boxes. Dad said grace. It lasted longer than what had become the usual, and he alternated between near tears and gritted-teeth anger. We politely listened and waited for him to finish. Tony and Jenn and their cameras buzzed into the room like the flies on the wall they’d become.

Marjorie’s plate had more color to it than mine but she didn’t eat much. I ate a mound of white rice and chicken fingers with lots of duck sauce. I so associate the tangy-sweet taste of duck sauce with that night that as an adult I avoid eating Chinese food. It’s funny that I can and have watched all the episodes from our show without ever feeling like I’m reliving the trauma, but duck sauce on white rice will send me over the edge and will instantly bring back all the anxiety and fear of exorcism night.

When we finished eating, Mom asked if we wanted our fortune cookies. I tore into mine, breaking it into glasslike shards. The fortune was some life-affirming aphorism I no longer remember. I do remember the “Learn to speak Chinese” lesson printed on the back of the slip of paper though.
Shui
means water. No one else wanted their cookie so I ate a second one, but I made sure to crumple up the fortune without reading it because Marjorie had told me once that getting two fortunes would bring bad luck.

Dad cleared the table and stacked the white cardboard containers of leftovers in the fridge. With his back to us, he announced that Father Wanderly would be arriving soon to perform the exorcism and that we should
get ready. I didn’t know what to do to get ready so I went to the small half bath off the kitchen and washed my sticky hands. When I came out, Mom and Dad were sitting at the table with their heads down. I went over to Marjorie and gave her a hug around the neck, from behind, so if she wanted, she could’ve stood up and carried me around like her backpack.

I whispered directly into her ear, “You’ll do great, Marjorie.”

She said, “You’re going to do great, too, monkey.”

Mom got up and said, “Come on, Marjorie. I’ll go upstairs and wait with you.”

Dad stood too, looking confused, and said, “Oh, okay, yeah, good idea. Merry and I will talk with Father Wanderly when he gets here and then we’ll—” He stopped abruptly, and never finished.

I didn’t want either of them to leave. I wanted her to stay down in the kitchen with me. I said, “No, let’s all stay down here together.” I didn’t let go of her neck.

Marjorie shook her head no, and her hair feather-dusted my face. She said, “I want to go back to my room. I don’t feel very well.”

“Can I go upstairs with them too?”

Dad said, “No. You need to stay down here.” He sat back down. He put his hands on the table, then on his lap, then back on the table. Those big hands didn’t know what to do.

I tightened my grip on Marjorie and said, “I don’t want to.”

Mom looked directly at Dad and shouted, “Merry can come upstairs with us if she wants!”, and Tony the cameraman flinched and bumped a shoulder in the doorway.

“Hey, take it easy. I’m just saying she should stay down here with me. I—I mean
we
didn’t get a chance to fully prep her for tonight, right? Like we wanted.” He paused and then said, “Look,” as though Mom had responded or interrupted him, neither of which happened. “I want to talk
to her again about what’s going to happen and I want Father Wanderly’s help.”

She said, “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“We need to pray.”

“There’ll be plenty of that later. She wants to be with her sister, let her be with her sister.”

“Right, because them being together has worked out so well before.”

“I’ll be there too.”

“This is fucking crazy. We agreed to have another prep meeting this afternoon—”

“Yeah, well, something else happened this afternoon, didn’t it? Maybe we should’ve had another prep meeting in your goddamned holding cell!”

Dad stood up quickly and sent the kitchen chair crashing to the floor. He looked backward and extended a hand to the chair, like he didn’t mean it. He said, “Jenn, Tony, hey, can you leave us alone, please? Seriously, stop taping. Just give us a few seconds.”

I couldn’t see Marjorie’s face. She was still wrapped in my arms. I felt her breathing. It was slow and even. My eyes blurred with tears, and I ducked back down and said, “Stop yelling at each other. I’ll just stay, I’ll just stay down here,” into the back of her head.

Mom shushed me and said, “Oh sure,
now
Mr. Confessional Interview wants to get rid of the cameras.”

I didn’t know where Ken and Barry were or if they were watching. I called out silently to Ken in my head, wanting him to show up and calm Dad down, calm everyone down. The two camerapersons didn’t respond to Dad and they didn’t turn their cameras away either.

Dad said, “Merry and I are staying down here and we’re going to pray and talk about how she can protect herself.” Dad grew louder, more manic, and in my memory, he grew in size too.