Phantoms by Marie O'Regan

Author:Marie O'Regan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

FRANK, HIDE

Josh Malerman

(This is for James Henry Hall. Thanks, man)

Oh, to see Lauren again.

Once more. In any way.

Oh, to take care this time, to really see her exactly as she was, so that her true features might finally replace the memory he’d held onto, a memory that had blurred in the six years since her death, as though the tears he’d shed stood like a pane of glass between himself and her.

Frank walked. Out the front door. Out onto the street.

When he experienced guilt of any sort, when he detected it coming, he walked. Out the front door. Out onto the street.

Toward the meadow.

He walked.

Oh, to see Lauren again. To hold up both hands, palms out, to say hang on, wait, wait a second while I study your face so that when it goes away again I will remember it exactly as it was. No more of this blurred vision, shaken by guilt, this interior room of darkness. He’d spelled her name wrong in a letter thanking her folks for their help with the funeral. He’d forgotten her name entirely one night, very drunk, while speaking of her. Guilt, yes, for not being able to recall the exact distance from the end of her nose to the curve of her chin. From the sides of her eyes to her ears. Shouldn’t Frank be able to recite those numbers to a man much more artistic than himself? And shouldn’t that artist then be capable of rendering Lauren exactly as she was?

Guilt. Ugly, indeed.

Frank walked.

Down the street.

Toward the woods. Toward the meadow.

He’d been walking a lot lately. Long walks that required stretching beforehand, a bottle of water during and, often, breaks. He always took the same route; out the front door of the home that had plenty of photos of him and Lauren on the walls, all the way to where Bolton Street ended (of which Lauren had joked, God didn’t like our street, put an end to it), then over the guardrail and into the woods. To the meadow Frank would go. It burned him up inside, lit up that dark interior room, to recall how bothered he’d been by Lauren’s constant prattling about exercise and good food, laughter and sleep. By God, sometimes it sounded like she’d emerged from the nineteenth century, when doctors decided fresh air and water cured all bad things. It was easy to bring back to life the terrible uneasiness he felt every time Lauren saw him on the couch, every time her eyes traversed the length of the living room and settled on him just sitting there, watching a movie, a television show, relaxing. Oh, how she’d look out the window, silently saying, You’re hiding, Frank. From the real world. Frank often wondered: how might you rename “relaxing” if someone was constantly there to rile it? Lauren was certainly stuck on the healthy stuff. Oh, was she. Jogging. Vitamins. Vegetarian. She felt bad after every time she drank, and made sure to remind a hungover Frank of the many other ways they might’ve had fun the night before.

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