Untitled — Chapter Two

Harry Davidson and I have an abiding marriage. We’ve raised one kid and seen her through college and beyond, and— my apologies to any young readers for the picture I’m about to plant in your minds — we have steamier sex than those shaved children who star in the pornographic flicks they make today. Plus, we’re friends. Best friends. And we trust each other.

Still, I knew it wouldn’t be easy for him to believe my story. It was barely possible for me to believe it, and I’d been there.

Harry heard me through without interruption, and when I finished, remained silent.

By this time, we were approaching a white marble child-angel that marked the grave of a four-year old girl. Someone had placed a bouquet of balloons beside the angel. As we drew nearer, I read the dates on the headstone: Her name was Brittany and today was her birthday. Had she lived, she’d be twelve.
And there she was: blonde hair with a blue barrette, a plaid dress, her face smiling as we approached.

“Happy birthday,” I mumured.

“Thank you!”

She skipped off along another path and I turned to watch her go.

“What’s that?” Harry asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

It didn’t seem fair to burden him with too much all at once. One ghost at a time.

“Mm.”

The little girl, Brittany, began to sing a childish song. It was faintly familiar to me, possibly something from Sesame Street. She had apparently stayed four years old.

“Kurt Vonnegut,” Harry said.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Absolutely. I know that face. There’s only one of that face.”

Harry put his hands on my shoulders, turning me away from the vanishing little girl to face him.

“Debra, Kurt Vonnegut died last night.”

I blinked.

Harry blinked.

“Ah,” I said. “Okay. Now it makes more sense.”

“Okay,” Harry murmured. And then again, “Okay.”

Harry knows I sometimes sense the presence of dead people, and that on rare occasions I have even seen someone who has, as Mr. Vonnegut liked to say, already passed through the peristaltic blue tunnel that leads to the afterlife; what he doesn’t know is just how often it happens because I try not to concern him by telling him about every little instance. What would be the point in that?

But this hearing a dead person, this was something new.

And carrying on a conversation with one? Entirely out of the ordinary.

Yet here it was, not quite noon, and I’d already seen and spoken with two of them. One of whom was Kurt Vonnegut.

I couldn’t begin to fathom what that might mean. It was all a bit much to take in.

Unsurprisingly, Harry seemed every bit as stumped as I was.

We agreed to pocket further discussion until that evening. 

I walked Harry to his pickup (a silver one with a vinyl sign on the side that read Harry’s Heating and Air Conditioning, which made it much easier for me to identify in a parking lot. I still blush at the memory of that pre-sign episode when I hopped into the wrong silver pickup in the grocery store parking lot and said to the startled driver, “Okay, honey, let’s go!”). There, I gave him a quick but heart-felt peck on the lips, then hurried back to The Dungeon.

I still had that proof to deal with.

I imagine it’s needless to add that an inordinate number of typos, widows and orphans appeared in the next issue of our magazine.

I won’t bore you with a description of the conversation Harry and I had that night, or how I stayed glued to the news reports for any scrap of information about how and where Mr. Vonnegut had died. I’ll only say: no, it wasn’t on a bridge on a country road in Berrien County.

Which raised the question: Why me?

Neither I nor Harry could begin to fathom a reason, although over the course of two Coronas (for him) and two chardonnays (for me), we gave it our best effort.

And for heavens sake, what was all that about good eggs in the Orkneys?

“He did have a sense of humor,” Harry mused.

“Mmmm,” I agreed.

Although I found it a bit odd that Mr. Vonnegut would mention the one place in the world where I still had one living relative.

In the end, Harry admitted he was glad “Kurt” was dead.

“At least I don’t have to be jealous,” he said. “But if the old fart comes around again, you tell him you’re my girl.”

“I wonder if a ghost can get it up,” I teased.

“I’ll show you get it up!”

He grabbed for me, landing a firm swat on my backside.

I’ll say this for Harry: He’s got good arms. Veined, muscled, ruffed with curly hair that used to be dark but now is fading just as surely as is the hair on our heads.

We went to bed early.

To avoid haunting the young with images of lumpy, middle-aged people engaged in sexual cavortis, I’ll close the bedroom door. Suffice to say we didn’t go to sleep early.


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On Saturday morning, I had another visit, as I like to call my encounters with the dead. This one more in line with the kind I’d come to expect over the years.

I was doing laundry and had just pulled my nightgown over my head to add to the load in washer, when it happened.

The entire house shifted like it does when a big gust of wind roars in from Lake Michigan. Walls, ceilings and floors all creaked and cracked alarmingly at the same time that the overhead light bulb flickered, while the television and stereo, both of which were turned off, emitted loud, electric POPs! My first thoughts were “Storm!” and “Lightning!”

But through the laundry room window I could see the sugar maple in the yard, and not a leaf on its branches stirred. The morning was still and sunny. No cloud darkened the sky.

As that thought was registering, I felt somebody watching me. Yet the window, the yard, and the soybean field beyond it were all empty. Harry was at Home Depot, picking up a gallon of the paint I’d selected for the guest room. I was alone in the house. Yet the sense of being observed was overwhelming. Creepy too, as I began to realize that I was being strongly disapproved of for standing naked in the laundry room.

I quickly pulled the nightgown back over my head and made a quick circuit of the house just to be sure, peeking behind doors and around corners. The house, as I’d known it would be, was empty. And by the time I reached the dining room, the feeling was gone. Whomever, whatever, had been observing me, had moved on and taken their disapproval with them.

“Somebody died,” I murmured, suddenly absolutely certain that this passing spirit was what I had felt.

I wondered who it might be.

But I didn’t have to wonder for long.