Inventory of a Haunted House, No. 1

A woman asks me to stand with her while she looks at the vodka selection at Target. It is as if she appeared out of nowhere. She wasn’t there, then she was. She reminds me of my grandmother—the white hair, the way she leans one elbow on the cart. My grandmother’s name was Sylvia, but most people called her by her nickname: Marge. In my mind, I start to call this woman in the aisle with me Marge. She is not my grandmother, and my grandmother at the same time.

Marge, with her other hand, beckons me to get closer. I very much want to tell her that I miss my grandmother this holiday season and when she died nine years ago no one in my family told me until three months after her funeral. I never got to say goodbye.

“I used to have a real problem with this stuff,” Marge whispers. She wears a white t-shirt with a faded logo on it that I can’t decipher. It looks spherical, pale yellow, pale green. It hangs down to the middle of her thigh. Leggings or tight sweatpants, it’s difficult to tell. Gray is the only thing I know for sure about them. Sylvia would not have dressed this way. Blouses and slacks, as my grandmother called them, or dresses were all she wore in public.

Marge tells me she hasn’t had a drink since 1994. The year I graduated high school. She explains if I stand with her, she’ll “window shop” but not buy any of it. My grandmother didn’t have a drinking problem. Her son, my father, did.

I’m doing more than window shopping. I switch my basket to the hand furthest from her because I don’t want Marge to see the vodka I have in there. Peach and orange blossom flavored. A botanical the commercial had called it. I want it for the taste. I want it so I can relax after work. It’s also my understanding that this is how a lot of alcoholics start out. I’m sure when my father bought cases of beer from the beverage store down the street from our house, he told himself he wanted to relax. Each time he opened the top thick cardboard flaps of the case to grab another brown bottle, I’m sure he didn’t think he drank to escape the ghosts of his past. Or maybe he did. He never spoke to me about them.

My shopping basket feels heavy as we stand there. Maybe Marge saw me put the bottle in my basket. Perhaps she can sense the specter of alcoholism around me like an aura. Maybe that’s why she asked me to stand with her. She could think we’re fighting against the same impulses, haunted by the same things.

I’m in that aisle in Target, and not in Target.

I’m in my grandmother’s house. We are in the kitchen at the round table, we sit in chairs right next to each other. The TV is on behind us. Sylvia whispers to me that she sees ghosts, she whispers she’s a witch. She grips my forearm and shakes it and says, “You’re like me.”

I say nothing.

She smiles and covers her mouth with her hand. I don’t remember what prompted her to say this. I don’t know what she saw or thought she saw in me. I’ll turn out to be like her in other ways. Maybe she could see that.

But we’re not there yet.

I’m back in Target. I’m back in the aisle with Marge. But not fully. My mind swirls as I struggle to stay present. She speaks, but I can’t quit hear her. Her voice muffled. This time, this moment with Marge, who reminds me of my grandmother, Sylvia, will be the last time I’m in this aisle. In a couple weeks from this moment, I will be on medications that I cannot drink while taking. I’m aware of people pushing their carts past our aisle, but they don’t come down it. It’s like the space has been cordoned off for only me and Marge.

“I like this blue one,” she says. Her fingers reach out towards it, each of them creeping out towards the shelf, caressing the air between her and the deep blue colored glass as if she were about to cast a spell. “It’s pretty.”

“It’s a pretty blue,” I say.

“It is.”

I imagine her fingers bumping against the bottle, causing it to clink against the others.

Clink

I’m in Target, but not in Target. I’m in the family room of my split-level childhood home. The door to the garage is slightly open. A chill sneaks out and down the stairs towards me. Clink. Clink. My father grabbing beer bottles out of the case to put in the refrigerator. I don’t see him, but I can see it. I’ve seen it before.

I’m with Marge.

I’m with my grandmother.

I’m with my father.

All three places at one time. Now, I must wonder if this is the start. We’re here.

A month from now, a month from this moment with Marge, I’ll not sleep for five days. I’ll feel cold even when I’m inside, in the heat of the apartment or a restaurant or a movie theater or the coffee shop I manage. Even though it’s winter, I’ll find this odd because I’ve always run hot, like my father. Time will collapse. I’ll feel like I’m in multiple memories at one time. I’ll walk from brunch back to my apartment and cry because I’ll see ghosts in the windows of the houses I pass. And on my left side, only my left side, I’ll feel like someone is standing behind me. It will feel as if the person standing behind me is about to touch my shoulder or whisper in my ear. The anticipation worse than if it actually happened. After a few days of this, I’ll think it’s the ghost of my father.

I’ll lie in bed, cover the left side of my body, including my face, with a blanket and whisper: it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.

Marge and I stand still, in silence. Our focus on that bottle. The beautiful blue bottle. Murmurs of people in other aisles become louder. If she were to put the bottle in her cart, should I intervene? Tell her that she might feel upset about it later. I never said such a thing to my father. Would it be helpful or a violation? It feels like it could be both.

I’m here and I’m not here. I’m in the aisle in Target with Marge.

I’m in the hospital where my father is on life support. His eyes are open, but he cannot communicate. “He can see you,” I am told by the nurse.

This is not a comfort.

Colon cancer has rotted his intestines. He’d been diagnosed years ago and decided his course of treatment would be drinking cases of beer. My sister had gone to his house, seen the cases scattered on the floor. Piles of empty beer bottles strewn around the house.

“How’s grandma doing,” I ask.

My sister crinkles her brow. “She died in October.”

“Like two months ago,” I say. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

“We didn’t want to bother you,” she says and clasps her hands around our father’s.

I don’t protest any further. I don’t know what else to say.

We will take him off life support. He will die in the early morning of New Year’s Day. His career as a ghost will begin.

I’m back in Target with Marge. She thanks me and walks away, pushing her cart with her forearms, leaning into it for support into the crowd of pre-holiday shoppers. I am alone in the aisle now. I try to see Marge, but she is gone, swallowed into the store.

I’m in Target and not in Target.

I’m at the doctor. The presence, the ghost of my father will wait with me in lobby, will follow me down the hall to the exam room, and it will be behind me as I sit on the exam table. When the paper crinkles, my shoulders will slump further as I wonder if it was me or the ghost of my father that did that.

The doctor barely looks at me as he reviews my symptoms out loud. I tell the doctor about the ghost behind me. I look down at his gray sneakers because I don’t want to see the look on his face when I say it. I expect to spend the holidays in the hospital.

He tells me that I need sleep. Sleep will make everything else I’m experiencing go away. He prescribes me a medication to help me sleep. A sleeping pill. It reminds me of the women characters on One Life to Liveor Dynasty, the shows Sylvia and I would watch together, exchange theories about plots, when they would be told to pop a sleeping pill when they felt stressed. They woke up so refreshed. Ready for whatever the writers of the show were going to throw at them next.

The sleeping pill lulls me. I sleep, but I do not dream. There is stillness, darkness. I won’t be able to look in mirrors for fear I’ll see my father’s ghost standing behind me. I am me, and not me at the same time. Anxiety and depression. This is my diagnosis.

Many people with depression, with anxiety, medicate with alcohol.

Perhaps Marge did.

Perhaps my father did.

Perhaps I would have eventually if I hadn’t stopped drinking once put on medication. I had no problem leaving alcohol behind.

Sylvia said, “you’re just like me.” Perhaps through her witch powers she saw the panic attacks waiting for me in the future. Maybe she saw we would both struggle with our brains.

Sylvia didn’t want to be the only one. She wanted company, comfort.

Marge wanted company, comfort.

I wanted company, comfort.

My father wanted comfort.

I’m back in Target with Marge. For a second, I wonder if she’s really there. A hallucination. A memory. A ghost. A warning.

Bruce Owens Grimm’s haunted queer essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Kenyon Review online, Ninth Letter, AWP's Writer's Notebook, Iron Horse Literary Review, Older Queer Voices, and elsewhere. He is co-editing Fat & Queer: An Anthology of Queer & Trans Bodies & Lives, which is under contract with Jessica Kingsley Publishers. More can be found at www.bruceowensgrimm.com.