A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (8 page)

“M.”

“Mom and Dad don’t listen to it. I know I haven’t heard it anywhere. Like I said, and just like the stories, I woke up one morning and it was just sitting there in my head.”

“Y.”

“It sounds so sad, doesn’t it? Like a song about the saddest day ever.”

“S.”

“But when I hum it, it tickles something behind my throat, and it feels sort of good.”

“V?”

“Not
V.
Sometimes it’s good to be sad, Merry. Don’t forget that.”

Marjorie didn’t repeat the letter I’d missed, but moved on to a new one. The new letter had two slow vertical lines that walked up and then down the length of my back, and one hard diagonal slash to connect them.

“N.”

“Yes. It’s weird, but I even know the lyrics too.”

“
D.
Sing it.” I only asked her to sing the words because I knew she wanted me to ask. I didn’t really want to hear the words. I was afraid that if she sang it, it’d be about a sister stealing another sister’s tongue.

“I don’t feel like singing the lyrics. I like humming it.”

“A.”

“I like keeping the words to myself.”

“Y.”

“You wouldn’t like the lyrics, anyway.” She stopped drawing on my
back. “So I’ll just keep humming it. Maybe, I’ll hum it to you in your sleep.”

“Marjorie!”

She laughed and tickled my armpits. I didn’t laugh; I gave her a quick, high-pitched whine and a snort. “Stop!”

“Stay there. Don’t move.” She hummed the song as she stood up on the loveseat. I bounced around the cushion as she shifted and adjusted her balance. She swayed over my head like the branches of a willow tree in a storm. I felt the weight of the song; its minor key squeezing the air out of my chest.

Marjorie jumped off, flying above my head. I ducked and rolled back into the loveseat cushions as her shadow passed over me. She landed loudly, and her knees buckled, pitching her almost straight into a window.

Somewhere down below us my father shouted, “What the hell was that?”

Marjorie said, “My dismount needs work. Practice makes perfect, right?” She pinched my belly, and then ran out of the room and into her bedroom with me yelling, “Stop it!” after her.

Marjorie still hummed the song in her room. I sat, listening, and then I hummed along with that simple but heartbreaking melody. I dangled a foot in one of the sunroom’s fading sunbeams. I wondered if I would still be able to hum the song when I didn’t have a tongue. I decided that I would.

ON OUR TV
show, the following is presented as a dramatic reenactment and as the penultimate piece of evidence regarding Marjorie being possessed by an evil spirit. The reenactment is a raw and undeniably effective set piece full of disorienting jump cuts, an ominous if not over-the-top voice-over narrative, and what I have to assume were some low-level CGI special effects along with digitally altered/enhanced sound.

In the scene, the Barrett-family actors lounge in the living room, watching
Finding Bigfoot
. Everyone in the room happily watches some pseudoscientist bellow his Bigfoot call into a night-vision-enhanced forest. Actor-Mom (plain, dash of freckles, very pretty, even for TV) and Actor-Dad (too heavy and too old to be our dad, and his beard was as patchy as a summer-burnt lawn) sit next to each other on the couch, each wearing button-down shirts and wrinkle-free pants. Both Barrett children actors are on the floor, lying on their stomachs, cheeks in fists, feet
dangling in the air, heels knocking into each other. This twenty-first-century Rockwell scene of quaint familial tranquility quickly devolves when Actor-Dad asks, “So how did school go today?” The ensuing tornado is not to be contained to the living room, but instead cuts a swath through the house, until everything finally culminates and crashes in Marjorie’s bedroom.

It just didn’t happen that way. But, I must admit that I was once obsessed with the show
Finding Bigfoot
and would insist that everyone in the family watch the show with me. I’d also have playful arguments all the time with Dad about the existence or nonexistence of Bigfoot. I was the believer and he was not. The unspoken ground rule of our ongoing debate was that neither of us was ever going to change our minds. I was fervent in my belief that the mythical beast was real and I would practically spit on any suggestions to the contrary. While I know he enjoyed the give-and-take, Dad remained coolly rational and scientific in his approach to our arguments. Using the Socratic method of Sasquatch debunking, he’d ask me questions, thinking I’d eventually hit upon the truth. His go-to question—particularly when I’d filibustered my way through previous questions about population density or evolution or ecosystem sustainability—was why had no one ever found the body of a dead Bigfoot? Well, of course it was because they buried their dead and buried them in secret, sacred places. Duh, Dad.

I don’t remember us being in the living room that night watching
Finding Bigfoot
, nor do I remember the incident happening there. However, I could be misremembering. Maybe how our TV show presented the living room scene was, save a few dramatic embellishments, how it actually happened. The writers and producers contractually consulted Mom and Dad, and consulted them extensively. Maybe the show relied on Marjorie and whatever it was she told them during their numerous
interviews. To my recollection, no one asked me about that night. It’s possible that night was such a traumatic experience that I’ve blocked it, or have somehow conflated the general unreality of our show with what actually happened.

What I remember is us eating dinner at the kitchen table, sitting at our four points on the compass. We were contemplative and quiet; unsure of what was happening, unsure of what to do, even after it ended.

I’ll always remember the four of us sitting around the kitchen table, placed like dolls at an imaginary tea party.

THE BARRETT WOMEN WORDLESSLY AGREED
that we weren’t waiting for Dad and started eating our pasta. Yes, pasta again, for the third night in a row. I’d complained when I’d found Mom boiling water in the big pea-green pot. She’d told me that we could no longer afford to be picky at dinner. I’d walked out of the kitchen, slumped and groaning about how I’d turn into Spaghetti Girl if I ate any more of it. I’d wiggled my arms around bonelessly as a brief demonstration of the not-so-awesome powers of Spaghetti Girl.

Our small kitchen table didn’t seem as small because our table setting was so depressingly Spartan. No colander in the middle overflowing with tentacles of extra spaghetti. No glass bowl of red sauce. No cutting board with sliced chunks of garlic bread. No side bowls with sparkling green and red salads. Not that I would’ve eaten a full salad. My little wooden bowl would’ve held only little wheels of carefully peeled cucumbers and maybe a few baby carrots.

What was on the table: four plates of spaghetti, serving sizes modest, and four glasses of water. I’d asked for milk, but Mom had said, simply, “Drink water, and quit bellyaching.”

Dad sat at the table with his head bowed, eyes closed, and with his hands folded, those thick fingers wound tightly in between each other so that it looked like there were more fingers than there should’ve been. I counted the knuckles on each of his hands twice to make sure that there weren’t extras.

Dad prayed over his food for an uncomfortably long time. He was so focused and earnest that I felt pressured into joining him, even as I worried that I didn’t know how to pray or to whom to pray. The other morning, while driving me to school, he’d described praying as a conversation in your head with God. Happy that he was even talking to me as he’d been borderline unresponsive since the night in Marjorie’s room, I’d asked who God really was besides some big, bearded old guy up in the clouds. Dad had started by saying God was love, which had sounded nice, but then he’d fumbled around a convoluted explanation involving Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I’d made a joke about my head getting too crowded with all those people to talk to instead of telling him that I didn’t want to hear any more about it. Dad had made me feel terribly anxious in a way that I couldn’t describe right then, partially because I couldn’t be trusted to not tell Mom about his preaching and proselytizing without her permission. Just like I had told on Marjorie. I’d become so very tired of other people’s secrets and stories. Dad had laughed at my too-crowded joke, and he’d said to just give it a try sometime, that it’d make me feel better.

I gently placed my fork down and folded my hands like Dad. Before I could say anything to the people in my head, I caught Marjorie watching me from the inside of her hooded sweatshirt. She smirked and shook her head no. I quickly picked my fork back up and imagined Bigfoot crashing through the woods behind our house and into the kitchen, destroying everything.

Mom refused to look at Dad while he prayed. She held one hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes as though there were a glare.

Eventually, he picked up his head and crossed himself; touching his forehead, chest, then each shoulder. He did it so fast, like he’d been practicing all his life. Dad smiled and looked at each of us. He gave me an extra wink. I wasn’t good at winking so I blew him a kiss in return.

Marjorie made a retching sound. No one asked if she was okay, which meant something. Then she said, “Sorry. Wrong pipe.”

“Please take your hood off at the dinner table.”

Marjorie complied. The removal of her hood was a shocking revelation. Her skin was gray, the color of the mushrooms that grew around the snaking tangle of tree roots out back. The circles under her eyes were dark and deep. Her black hair was a dead octopus leaking and sliding off her scalp. Whiteheads dotted her chin and the sides of her nose.

Dad said, “So how was school today?”

“Oh you know, Dad. The usual. I was voted class president, captain of the soccer team, most hottest chick ever—”

Mom cut in with, “Marjorie isn’t feeling well. They sent her home because she got sick in the cafeteria.”

“What, again? Poor kid. Do you feel good enough to eat? Why are you eating this stuff now? Sarah, don’t force her to eat if she’s having stomach problems.” Dad’s hands were folded again, this time in front of his plate.

“I’m not forcing her,
John
. She said she felt better. Right?”

“Hunky and dory.”

“You don’t look good.”

“Thanks, Dad. I feel so pretty.”

“You know what I mean. You know you’re my beautiful girl.” He’d said it like the small print of a warranty or an indemnification clause.

I said, “Hey!”

“You’re my beautiful girl too, Merry.”

Marjorie groaned. She wrapped a strand of spaghetti around her finger and said, “You’re going to make me puke again.” Under her nails were black with dirt. Had she been digging in the yard? I imagined her out back, planting growing things.

Dad said, “You look pale. Maybe we should let you sleep in tomorrow.”

“I’ll be fine. I don’t want to miss any more schoolwork. They’re threatening to send me to summer school already.” Marjorie rested the back of her hand on her forehead. She was in actress mode. I could tell. A hint of a British accent had slipped into her speech.

I practiced eating my pasta while trying not to use my tongue. I was a planner, a considerer of every contingency.

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll do what we have to do.” As if on cue, we all looked down at our feeble plates, our dinner metaphor for doing what we had to do.

Dad then turned to me and said, “Merry! Tell us how your day was. I’d like to hear about one good thing that happened and one thing that made you laugh.”

Always pleased to have the family spotlight thrust upon me, I said, “Well,” elongating the word by vibrating the tip of my tongue against the back of my front teeth. “We started reading
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
in class. Ronnie made me laugh when he pretended to be Augustus Gloop drinking from the chocolate river. He got down on his hands and knees and acted like he was licking the rug. He shouted, ‘Chocolate, that’s good!’” I demonstrated with my impersonation of Ronnie’s funny German accent. “Mrs. Hulbig didn’t think he was funny, though.”

Mom said, “Hmm, interesting. He’s probably seen that horrible
Johnny Depp version of the movie. That you kids like it and not the original Gene Wilder version is sacrilege.”

“Mom, what’s your problem?” I said, talking and acting like Depp’s version of Wonka: vacant smile, creepy voice full of air and lisp and nothing else.

Dad said, “That’s pretty good. I have to admit, you’re good at doing voices, Merry.”

“I am?”

Both Mom and Marjorie groaned.

“Yes, you’ve always been great at doing impressions and funny little voices.”

I changed my pitch and tone with each word. “I can do voices.”

“Just great. She’ll be doing voices all night now,” Marjorie said.

“I
can
do voices!”

Mom said, “You have no idea what you started, do you?”

I cackled in two or three different styles, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, Mom! I almost forgot. Tomorrow is hat day in school. I need to find a hat! What hat should I wear?”

“I don’t know. We’ll look for a hat after dinner.”

Dad said, “Hey, you can wear my Red Sox hat.”

“Gross, no way!” I instinctively covered my head with my hands. Legend foretold of a hat that was older than Marjorie and had never been washed. The once-white sweatband ringing the inside of his hat was black. The red
B
was all grimy-looking and the bill was sweat-stained and misshapen. Dad used to chase us around with the hat, trying to put it on our heads. We’d run away laughing and screaming. The game had usually ended when I’d whine and complain that he was chasing Marjorie more than he was chasing me. It was true, but to be fair, Marjorie was more fun to chase because she was harder to catch. Even though I was fast, I’d give
up and stop running, drop to the ground, and roll into a ball. Dad would quickly put the hat on my head, but in two seconds he’d be off again, playfully shouting and chasing after Marjorie. Her taunts were always so clever, and if he caught her, she’d get it worse; he’d rub the hat all over her head and face until her repeated
Dad stop it
sounded angry. Sitting at the kitchen table that night, those hat chases seemed like they’d happened eons ago although the last time we’d done it was only a few months prior at a Labor Day barbecue. During that chase Dad had knocked over a small folding table, spilling paper plates and plastic utensils.

Mom said, “We don’t want the school to send her home for lice, John.” It was supposed to be a joke but it had an edge to it.

I said, “I want to wear something funny and cool. Marjorie, could I wear your sparkly baseball hat?”

The three of us looked at Marjorie.

Now I remember thinking that her answer could change everything back to the way it was; Dad could find a job and stop praying all the time and Mom could be happy and call Marjorie
shellfish
again and show us funny videos she found on YouTube, and we all could eat more than just spaghetti at dinner and, most important, Marjorie could be normal again. Everything would be okay if Marjorie would only say yes to me wearing the sparkly sequined baseball hat, the one she’d made in art class a few years ago.

The longer we watched Marjorie and waited for a response, the more the temperature in the room dropped and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

She stopped twisting her spaghetti around her fingers. She opened her mouth, and vomit slowly oozed out onto her spaghetti plate.