Hungry Ghosts (32 page)
Authors: Susan Dunlap
He hesitated. “After all this is cleaned up, maybeâ”
“No!” Grace said. “You can't wait! Mom's coming back this morning. She'll get home anytime.”
“I'll callâ”
“No! Listen, she's bringing Darcy's dog. As soon as he gets in the door, Duffy will be into everything. You gotta go now!”
J
OHN HAS PULL
, but not enough to convince the CHP to turn loose women who cost the city and state a bundle in money and more in bad publicity. It was an hour before John called back to the CHP here at the scene, and longer till an officer handed me the phone. In a voice tight with fury, John said, “He put the poison in Mike's room!”
Hours later, John, Gary, Grace, and I sat around the kitchen table. I pulled Duffy onto my lap and admitted, “It was the stupidest thing I've ever done, that car chase.”
“Gracie could have been killed,” Mom insisted, standing behind Grace on the other side of the table.
“You're right. I'm sorry.”
“She's not athletic like you, you know.”
“I know.”
“She doesn't think before she rushes in to help. She's not a good driver; she's a terrible driver.”
“I should have thought of that. I'm sorry.”
Mom was patting the shoulder Grace's sling hung from, so she missed Grace's grimace.
“You, Darcy, you I never worry about. Your father, he worried about you. He claimed that worry for his own from the day you were born. He
worried when you took your first step, worried that you hadn't crawled first, worried that you weren't talking, that you were talking too much. So, I never had to worry about you at all.”
There was too much family history in that statement; I'd have to deal with it later. Meanwhile, stew was heating and glasses of Powers had been poured. Grace used her good hand to lift her glass and swallow the Irish and her irritation. She knew better than to defend her own driving here among those she'd exasperated for years.
“You broke half the laws of the road, Darcy,” John insisted. He sat, straddling a chair, his back to the wall, as if felons were going to sneak up behind him from the dining room. “You're lucky you were right about Eamon. Otherwise, they'd have thrown away the key.” He took a swallow of Powers and let his gaze settle back on me. He wasn't finished with me. He shook his head.
But it was Gary who said, “I can't believe you haven't been served with a single summons. The truck driver alone, if he was my clientâ”
“May he only deal with lesser lawyers.”
“You should have called me,” John and Gary said as one. Gary held out a piece of stew meat to Duffy. Duffy ignored him.
“I can't believe that Eamon,” Mom said, returning to the topic that had interspersed all others since she got to Grace in the emergency room. “He sat at this table, ate from our pot!” Ate from her pot of hope and trust and pain the sight of him caused every time he walked in and for a split second she saw Mike, before realizing each time anew that Mike was gone. He spooned up all her pot of kindness and threw it in her face. Now her mouth trembled, and for the first time she was in danger of losing control in a way she never had all these years. We all busied ourselves with our glasses until she could continue. Her voice was still shaky as she said, “And all the time he had planned the whole thing from the first time he saw Mike's picture in the paper.”
Gary made a show of plopping Duffy's rejected meat in his own mouth. “Yeah, Eamon really played us. You gotta give him that; he was good! He let us believe he lured the zendo to his building to please John because Mom wanted Darcy back. Damn! It was all so he could be close enough to keep an eye on Jeffrey and snatch the poison. He got Darcy the stunt job so . . . ?”
“To keep me out of the way. And then, Gary, because he knew the people on the set, knew the location, it was a snap for him to sabotage my stair fall, to keep me out of the way. Plusâ”
“Plus?” Grace said. “He did something else?”
“I don't know exactly what deal he had with Robin Sparto and the crew, but he kept stalling them. Of course they assumed I knew because I was there because of him. That's why they were fuming every time I was on the set.”
I sipped the Powers, took in my brothers and sister and Mom there behind the red Formica table in the yellow and green kitchen, with the familiar aroma of stew hovering between us. I felt rather than thought of all the times we had sat at tables together, our talk so loud Dad would bang his glass when we were young, talk so stilted after Mike disappeared I could hear the slosh when he lifted it to drink. “You know, I thought I was the only one who never stopped looking for Mike.”
They all just looked at me, and I couldn't tell whether it was with surprise or uneasiness. “Was that why you said Tia was a liar, John? Not because of her saying Mike had a Celtic cross tattoo butâ”
“She did say that!”
“Yeah, John, to get your attention,” Gary said.
“âbut because she let people believe you were chasing her into the intersection when she had her accident.”
“Yeah.” John followed his comment by emptying his glass, so he didn't see Gary catch himself just as the âYou' of âYou didn't?' was almost out of
his mouth. I noted Grace's raised eyebrows. I wasn't surprised that was why they had both put themselves way out to help Tia. I just wished John had some idea how much his brother and sister cared about him. I said, “I had no idea about the favors you called in hunting for Mike, John. I never saw the newspaper articles Katy got placed across the country, never knew what you and Gracie did, Gary. I wish I had.
“Or maybe I couldn't have handled knowing all the roads you all took hunting him and all those dead ends.” I almost mentioned Eamon's tease about the Portland airport, but that would have been just another dead end.
There was silence. Then, as one, we lifted our glasses. For an instant I thought someone was going to toast Mike. But we were all just covering the awkwardness.
T
HERE MAY COME
a time when rain raps zendo windows and pale morning sun backlights the Buddha on the altar. People, perhaps in costume, perhaps not, will sit facing the other end of the room, where a card table holds bowls full of rice, oranges, almonds, walnuts, water, and rose petals. Incense will drift and vanish. Zen students from other centers in the city, in Marin County to the north, in Berkeley, will sit quietly on zafus. Maybe Grace or even Gary will be there. Or Mom might come to see what has hooked her youngest daughter. Even John might turn up to sit in a chair next to those new students Leo attracted in jail. With luck John won't know them.
When the zendo door swings open a procession will enter, two robed attendants followed by Leo Garson-roshi, in full robes, banging a heavy walking stick with each step. The children will giggle as the rattles hanging from that stick clatter and the cymbals clang. They will point to the mane of white hairs sprouting from the top. If the time is near Halloween, the zendo will be full of small goblins, witches, and superheroes. Everyoneâpriests, goblins, and their parentsâwill hoot and shout, blow horns and pound drums, to attract the hungry ghosts. The kids will love that.
Leo will say, “We call the hungry ghosts. They have huge bellies and pencil-thin necks. Their hunger is constant, overwhelming. Desperately
they grab for food, but they cannot swallow what they've taken. No way can they sate their hunger. So we offer them small bits of food, food they can swallow. Traditionally, it is said we do this to help the ghosts fill their great needs and let go of their attachment to this realm.”
“Aren't we all hungry ghosts?” someone will whisper a bit too loud. Leo will nod and smile.
We will sit in silence for a bit, and then, slowly, from all over the room, names of those who had died during the year will be called out. Their names will float in from beside us and behind, their friends, lovers, mothers offering all that is left of them to the silence. Their names will vibrate and then be gone.
We will walk to the table that holds the fruit and nuts and rice and make our offerings so the dead are sated and can go on their way. So we can let them go.
My thanks to Vice Abbot Alan Senauke of Berkeley Zen Center, to stunt double Carolyn Day, and to writer Linda Grant and editor Michele Slung. And, as always, to my agent, Dominick Abel.