Free The Ghost at the Table: A Novel by Suzanne Berne Page A

open, a man of barely contained internal combustion. My mother, on the other hand, had had poor circulation and was often cold. She aged very quickly, as chronically ill people do, while he continued to transmit itchy vigor and a youthful sure-footedness, springing up on the balls of his feet as he walked, climbing stairs two at a time. Now he was bloated and shriveled, with a fat abdomen and spindly arms. A straggle of thin gray whiskers hung from his cheeks.
    Heidi’s goat,
I thought, before I could stop myself.
    Litter surrounded his wheelchair: Styrofoam cups and paper plates, dirty napkins, piles of old newspapers, some gone yellow. The rest of the cottage was, at least as far as I could tell, as neat as it had been the last time I saw it, except for this one corner of the living room, which Ilse had ceded to my father. Wisps of steam trailed over his head, issuing from a round plastic vaporizer that whispered behind him. The bad smell I’d noticed earlier was stronger here. For a moment I was afraid I might be sick.
    “Well, we made it,” Frances announced at my elbow. “Just like the postman. Through snow and sleet.” Gratefully, I realized she was trying to sound unflappable, which must have cost her something after that ugly skirmish with Ilse. She stepped over an open box of doughnuts. “Hi, Dad.”
    He snarled something that sounded like “Get out.”
    Frances blinked. “I’m sorry, Dad? What was that?” She turned to me with an apprehensive look. “What did he say?”
    Ilse had come up behind us, carrying what looked like a black leather bowling bag. MEDICATIONS was written on a strip of masking tape on one side. She smiled curtly. “You will understand himbetter when you spend more time with him.” Then she busied herself with rotating his wheelchair so that it faced the foyer. With an effort she managed to roll the wheelchair right over a drift of newspapers.
    Stepping back, she gestured for me to take the handles as if she were a pilot handing over the controls. “It is not going to snow here,” she said, as I began pushing the wheelchair toward the door. “It has not snowed once all fall. We do not usually get snow until Christmas.”
    With Ilse’s help, I navigated my father’s wheelchair out of the cottage and down the walkway, where I parked him next to the minivan. He sat barking out furious vocables. “Ha!” he cried, his face turning blotchy and purplish. “Hey!”
    “Don’t worry, Dad,” said Frances firmly, but looking scared. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
    Then he stopped saying anything, his hands lying open on his knees like an empty pair of gloves. Frances went back into the cottage with Ilse to get his suitcases and boxes, leaving me to keep watch on him. I turned my face toward the bay, inhaling the fresh briny air.
    “Well, Dad,” I began. I was waiting for him to shout at me, as he had done so often when I was younger, pointing and snapping his fingers, growling at me to be quiet so he could hear the weather report on the radio, or the baseball score, or a commercial for razor blades. I even expected him to hit me with one of those limp-looking hands, and half hoped he would, so that I could feel justified for not caring what happened to him. But he never looked in my direction.
    Together Frances and Ilse made several trips from the house to the car, loading suitcases and boxes in the back of the van. “I guess that’s it,” said Frances. We helped my father into the backseatand belted him in. Again I expected him to protest and thrash around, but he was compliant enough, motionless once we’d got him settled in his seat. Ilse handed in his overcoat and an old dented gray fedora. Then she demonstrated how to fold and unfold the wheelchair, which was stowed last. Frances climbed into the passenger seat once more and sat looking down at her lap. Ilse had gone to stand near the Japanese maple, one hand shading her eyes, though the day was still overcast.