The Ghost in Love (23 page)

A little girl sitting directly across the table put down her paper cup and let out a long loud burp. No one paid attention to the sound. Neither did today's Danielle, because even now she burped out loud when she was alone, especially while drinking soda.

She recognized their clothes, she recognized their hairdos. She remembered the purses they carried, the dolls in their laps, the titles of the books they were reading, a yellow pencil with a fat funny white clown eraser on the tip. A cheap brown Walkman with black headphones that she had owned a few years ago and played Chely Wright tapes on over and over again because the music perfectly fit the heartbreak she was experiencing at that time.

She saw a woman in a black silk bathrobe, her head wrapped in thick white bandages like some kind of macabre cocoon. The bandages covered her eyes and nose right down to the nostrils. This bandaged woman ate very slowly, carefully raising the fork to her mouth. Danielle had bought that black bathrobe at a Victoria's Secret store to impress her boyfriend right before her accident. It was one of the most expensive pieces of clothing she had ever owned. It was stolen from her hospital room right before she was released. A very small girl stood next to the mysterious-looking robed woman, staring with her mouth open in wonder at this chewing mummy in black.

Danielle continued eating her delicious meal in the warm drizzle while sliding her eyes back and forth across the different versions of herself. She grew calmer. She listened attentively to the others' conversations. Someone told the great old joke about the gynecologist and the eggplant. She loved that joke but had forgotten it many years ago. When they said the punch line now, it was exactly the way she had when she used to tell it. Nearby yet another Danielle described how her boyfriend needed a new car and was thinking seriously
about buying a Subaru. That was the car she was in when the plane crashed nearby. She listened, watched, and ate.

Soon, too soon, she began hearing things she did not want to hear. Lies, stories she knew were untrue but she had told anyway, excuses she'd made up for her bad decisions, bad behavior, and bad moods. She was surrounded by various versions of herself at different times in her life. Most of these women and children were flawed, insecure, undistinguished, and not particularly brave. Almost all of them dreamt that life would pick them out of the crowd and place a crown on their heads. But in their hearts they knew that wouldn't happen because they didn't deserve it. Nothing was special about Danielle Voyles, no matter what age she was. This child, this teen, this woman, lied and postured, preened and pretended to be someone she wasn't, on many occasions just so that those who knew her, whether they were schoolyard or church pals, prospective boyfriends, or work colleagues, would find her prettier, smarter, funnier, more everything than she actually was.

Her whole life she had wanted to be more than she was in just about every way. But she did not have the smarts, the looks, or the resources to achieve it. Danielle Voyles was not nearly as interesting as the picture of herself she tried to sell to the world. Try as she might, lie as she did, she was only moderately successful at both her ruse and her attempts to improve.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit down here?”

She looked up and saw herself. More than any of the others at the picnic, this woman was her mirror image in every respect: clothes, hair, shoes, everything.

“Yes, of course.” She slid over on the bench, forcing the girl in blue to slide over too. The second Danielle, this identical twin, this
clone, had a plate full of the same food she had been handed minutes before but which was now almost gone with the help of the girl.

“What's it like?”

“Excuse me?”

“What's the future like?”

Danielle looked at her twin and assumed she was joking. “What's it
like
? Aren't we the same person? Aren't we the exact same age? We're dressed alike. We look alike . . .”

“Yes, but there's a ten-minute difference between us.”

“Ten minutes?”

“I'm ten minutes younger than you. Look at my plate: it's full. Look at yours: empty. I'm just beginning the meal you've already finished.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No. Look around here. Every one of us is you, obviously: you at different times in your life. I just happen to be the closest in age. And all I'm asking you is what is our future like?”

“That's ridiculous! I'm right here; this is the future: this picnic table, me talking to you. Do I look different? Does
anything
about me look different? We're exactly the same. What could I possibly know that you don't?”

The other Danielle looked at her as if she were the dimmest person on the planet and said, “You are six thousand seconds older than me. Do you realize how many thoughts and ideas and decisions and questions have gone through your head in those six thousand seconds? We're different. Believe me, we're different.

“You're the future of every single one of us here.” She pointed and pointed and pointed to each table. All of the Danielles were looking at Danielle now. “You know what happens to us. Wherever we are in life right now, you know what happens next.
That's
what makes you different.”

She pointed to the bandaged woman, who was also turned their way, her hands crossed in front of her on the wet table. “See her? All she does is worry about what her face will look like when they take the bandages off. Will her sight be all right? Will her hearing? She hasn't told anyone yet, but sometimes she has trouble hearing. Will that continue or will it get worse?”

Next she pointed to the little girl in blue. “And what about her? Will she go on stealing things now? Is the cat out of the bag and her real self finally set free? Or was taking that Carmex only a onetime thing? She wants to ask you if she's eternally damned now in God's eyes.”

Danielle looked at the girl whose small face was now scrunched up with worry. The girl nodded at her: what the other woman had said was true.

A middle-twenties her stood up and asked, “I think I'm pregnant. But I'm afraid to buy one of those home pregnancy tests from the drugstore. I'm too afraid to find out.”

Danielle remembered. At twenty-two she'd met a sexy redhaired guy in a club who was the greatest lover she had ever known. They made love all the time, everywhere. She had never reveled in sex so much in her life. Although she took the birth control pill, there were three traumatic weeks when she was increasingly convinced she was pregnant. The constant worrying in that time shrank her world down to the size of a pebble.

Looking at her now, Danielle shook her head and said loudly, “You're not pregnant. You don't have to worry. It's just that your period is really, really late.”

The other's face lit up. She clapped her hands together very fast like a child.

“Almost all of us have questions. If you wanted to, you could go around and answer them.”

“Which ones don't? Are there any ‘me's' here who
don't
have questions?”

Her twin smiled and nodded approval. “Good question. Yeah, the ones who like where they are in life.”

“But why can't
you
answer them? You're only ten minutes younger than me. You know what happens to every one of them.”

The other answered fast, as if she'd been anticipating that question. “Who you are now is different from who you were ten minutes ago. You might know something I don't. Or maybe you figured something out that still confuses me.”

Danielle looked again at the young woman who'd thought she was pregnant. She was talking to a neighbor now, laughing and lively in her relief. Danielle knew that soon Mr. Sexy would dump her in a sudden cruel way. She wouldn't be able to decide what hurt more, his rejection or the fact they would never have sex again. Six months after it was over, she would receive a text message on her cell phone from him suggesting (his word) she take an AIDS test because he had just tested positive for HIV. At the end of a ghastly weekend alone and terrified, she would take the test and find out that she was not infected.

Should she tell her that now? Walk over to this ebullient, relieved young woman and say, Wait, the ordeal is not over yet? Not by a mile: This guy you're with now will soon change the way you look at and interact with men forever. After him they'll never be the same to you again. He'll create a hunger in you that won't be satisfied by anyone else. In the end he'll smash your heart with a hammer and later scare you right down into the marrow of your soul. It will make you hate men, hate sex, hate yourself—

“Well? Are you going to answer their questions?”

“I don't know. I haven't decided yet.”

In the end she did it. But cautiously, leaving out certain things with
every question she answered. Editing, shaping, and censoring, she would listen to a question and then try to remember what her state of mind was at that age. Could they handle this information about their future? Was it all right to tell them this or that? She divulged what she thought would help them to know but nothing more. When their questions had bad or painful answers, she would steer her response as diplomatically as possible in a different direction.

The girl who thought she was pregnant asked if her present boyfriend was “the one.” Danielle said no, but that was okay because she would discover several things about him she didn't like. If she were to marry him, she would regret it later. Danielle suggested the girl enjoy the wonderful sex they had together and just accept the guy for what he was for as long as things worked between them. No more and no less.

She told the bandaged woman she would recover fully. When the bandages were removed, she
would
have a scar on her head from the accident, but not such a bad one and nothing more. Her hearing would return completely. And although it was difficult to believe, something good would result from this terrifying experience: she would learn to value and savor life more than she ever had before.

But Danielle did not tell the wounded woman about the hideous nightmares and acute anxiety attacks she would have for months after returning home from the hospital after the accident. Nor did she tell her about the paranoia that would seize her sometimes when she left the apartment or rode in a car. Nor did she describe the feeling of impending doom that hung over hours of her day much too often and kept her home in her safe little apartment where things were familiar and the treacherous world out there was a few walls away.

She spent a long time going from table to table answering their questions, soothing their fears, assuaging egos. The drizzle kept coming and so did their questions. What Danielle found most interesting
about the experience was that not one of them asked about the long run, the big picture, or years from now. Every Danielle wanted only to know about something going on this moment in their lives or, at the very most, next week or month. None of the children asked, When I grow up will I . . . None of the older ones asked, In a year . . . For all of them, life was right now.

“My turn.”

Tired out, she was finally alone, eating a piece of pecan pie with a white plastic fork. Her twin sat down nearby and said it again: “My turn.”

Danielle slid pie into her mouth and chewed. Biting down hard on a fragment of pecan shell, she squinted one eye almost closed. Fishing around in her mouth with her fingers, she found the guilty shell and placed it on the edge of her paper plate. “
You
have a question?”

“Yes, I do.”

Amused, Danielle cut off another slice. As she was about to put it in her mouth, she said, “Go ahead.”

“Why didn't you ask them any questions?”

“Huh?” Taken completely by surprise, her mouth stopped moving and she stared at her twin. Was this a trick question, or did the other woman expect an answer? “Why
would
I ask them questions? They're my past. What good would their answers do me now? The past is past.”

“Don't you want to remember who you were? Or what it was like back then? Don't you want to remember details you forgot? It's your life: Don't you think it could help you now?” The twin's voice grew louder and sharper as she spoke. Her last sentence wasn't a question but a demand.

This wasn't interesting to Danielle, and she went back to her dessert. It had almost been interesting because the initial question
was so odd. But now she felt her twin was splitting hairs, and that didn't interest her.

“Whatever.”

“That's not an answer.”

“Whatever.”

In response, the twin swiped her hand across the table. Danielle's pie plate flew off and hit the ground some distance away.

“Hey!”

“Wake up. You are just
not getting it
. Look around, dummy. Your whole life is here in front of you. But not
once
have you shown any curiosity about it. You answered their questions but didn't ask any—not one. How can you be so uninterested in your own history?”

Stung, Danielle shot back, “What am I supposed to ask, huh? What am I supposed to ask her?” With a flip of her wrist, she pointed randomly at the teenager still sitting alone on a bench reading a book.

Walking over to the reader, the twin asked if she would join them for a minute. Closing the book with a dramatic sigh, the girl said, “All right.” When the three of them were together, the twin asked the girl several trivial questions about herself. She answered, but it was obvious she just wanted to get back to her book and be left alone.

“And what was the worst dream that you ever had? Do you remember?”

The girl perked up at the question. She spoke as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough. “Yes, completely. I had a dream when I was little that was so gross that I still remember it. I dreamt I was in a car crash. Well, not really a car
crash
, because what happened was, we were driving down this road when suddenly a plane, like, crashed in a field right next to us. All these things came flying off it at us and one hit me in the head. It was like we were under attack. I got really messed up.”