I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Author:Rebecca Makkai [Makkai, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

40

What if I said that when I took the kids to Gage House, Thalia’s ghost told us all about you? What if she spelled your name on the Ouija board?

Don’t worry, she didn’t. She made herself scarce.

The living room of Gage House is still set up that way, as a parlor for schmoozing donors and alumni. Photos of historic Granby on the walls. Starting at 10:30, we perched on uncomfortable chairs and settees angled toward the empty stone fireplace, the room lit with dim lamps. Alder had lugged an urn of coffee from the dining hall and appointed himself “séance barista,” with the unfortunate side effect that the kids were wired. Britt seemed quiet and moody, but her silence was overridden by the other four, giddy as middle schoolers.

Being here was good for me, a reason to stay away from alcohol tonight, a reason to stay offline. And their teenage ebullience was a salve for my angry heart.

The feeling had returned to my fingers and toes.

The kids’ energy, their improbably fresh faces glowing in the low-watt bulbs, reminded me again that they were kids. Yahav was right. We get so used to twenty-four-year-old actors playing high school students, and we seem so mature in our own memories, that we forget actual teenagers have limited vocabularies, have bad posture and questionable hygiene, laugh too loud, don’t know how to dress for their body types, want chicken nuggets and macaroni for lunch. It’s easier to see the twelve-year-olds they just were than the twenty-year-olds they’ll soon be.

The cheerleader trope in most grown men’s heads is about adults (God, let’s hope they’re adults) putting on pigtails and squeaky voices for porn. It’s about what we think we remember. It’s not about actual adolescents unless there’s something wrong.

Which is all to say: I imagine you told yourself you loved Thalia. I imagine you promised her the same. And you might still believe it. But I’m telling you, from a furious place in the bottom of my gut: It might have been about power, it might have been about sex, it might have been about control, it might even—in some broken part of you—have been something warped but paternal, something tender and blind. But it was not about love.

After the first few Ouija attempts (our ghost was named XGHERERE, and YES, it was at peace, and NO, it didn’t know anything about the ghost of Arsareth Gage Granby), Alder asked if we could try to summon Thalia’s ghost, or if that would be too weird for me. I said they were welcome to try. Britt didn’t make a move toward her phone to capture it for her podcast, so Alder recorded with his.

This time the kids were smarter. They didn’t ask the ghost’s name, just asked if it was Thalia and, consciously or subconsciously, nudged the pointer to YES.

“How can we prove it’s her?” Jamila asked me, and I said, “Ask if Khristina stole her running shoes.”

The pointer went to YES, and I shook my head.

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