Shoo Ghost, Shoo by Tyrel Kessinger

 

 

            I have never believed in ghosts until I saw one. Until I heard his voice; until I  watched him walk away. Until I trembled in his passing.

Alva’s is besieged by sweet-toothed, white-collar workers. Secretaries, accountants and directors scrambling for something saccharine and sticky before their lunch break is over. I hide in the kitchen, feigning preparation and because I am the boss, because I do not enjoy interacting with the flock of businessmen dressed in ill-fitting suits; the women in ridiculous pumps, towering over the crowd like gangly human giraffes. I watch from the sanctuary of my baking lair as Leslie takes orders and stabs the keys of the register, while Melissa’s hand snakes and snatches through a garden of baked desirables in order to fulfill a customer’s wishes. Through my little window in the back I can see this mongrel crowd, pointing there, wanting that. Their mouths flap and slaver in greedy tones. They feel no remorse in their indulgence, they order with confidence: vanilla biscotti, raspberry cookies, buttercream cake, and tortes swathed in incalculable varieties of chocolate. It is all stale hellos and insignificant banter with these people, they clamor only for the pleasure of their guilt, embracing it. It is hard for me to stomach their empty palaver or this wholesale acceptance of their extravagance, their shame.

            When the crowd dwindles, the threes and fours becoming erratic ones and twos, I emerge to re-stock the display that contain my wares, a translucent glass casket with sliding doors on the side. Melissa stands awkwardly by and smiles because she is new and is not sure what else to do. Leslie takes the last order of the rush, a corpulent man who could benefit much more from adding fruit to his diet than the gushing slab of sprinkled cicudati he has purchased. Many people have asked why I choose not to keep tables in my store, a place for customers to sit and more immediately enjoy my fare. My answer is this fat man waltzing out the door. I imagine him devouring the cicudati like a graceless beast that has stumbled upon a helpless fawn, consuming the prey with perfunctory aggression, without any consideration for its crafted beauty.

            Leslie gives an exaggerated ‘whew.’ “Glad that’s over,” she says.

            Melissa retains her smile, that grin of buoyancy. “It wasn’t that bad.”

            “You’re the new girl. What do you know,” Leslie retorts. She throws a rag the color of brown eggshells at Melissa. “There you go newbie. Since you’re still so full of energy, you get to wipe down the counters.”

            Without another word she gets right to it. Leslie leans against the back counter with her arms folded, perched like a smirking imp and watching Melissa work. She is a fine employee but her demeanor toward Melissa aggravates me.

            “Don’t mind her,” I tell Melissa jokingly. “The bakery business has jaded her.” She is a good girl, as far as I can tell, and pretty, with a shiny river of black hair and a tight body the young are often renowned for. I think that Leslie is jealous of her.

            Leslie scoffs at my remark. “It’s a baker’s life for me boss. For life.”

            I laugh mildly to let her know I am only teasing her and then find myself back in the kitchen. My hands are at work, mixing, and kneading, and folding; preparing for future business and wondering why I have not felt happiness in years.

 

          At 4:30, a half hour before Alva’s closes, I send the girls home early. Leslie is a veteran employee and wastes no time. She hangs her apron on the hooks behind the counter, says she will see me tomorrow, and zips down Muhammad, melting into the flow of street walkers. Melissa is over eager and wary of my early dismissal, as if her work ethic is being tested.

            “You sure?” she asks.

            “Don’t get used to it,” I say.

             My lips are creased in wan imitation of a smile, but it is enough to assuage Melissa’s concern. Her reply is the same pearly beam I have seen on her all day: straight, glistening, perfect. I am glad that she is leaving, to be honest, and taking her youthful exuberance with her. She becomes another face on the sidewalk, and I am left alone. The only sounds I hear are the ambient whirr of the refrigeration unit near the display and the broom in my hands as it whisks through neglected corners of the store. We have not seen a customer in nearly twenty minutes and I decide to close a little early. There are people bustling by the window, caravans of humans in a wild rush to get home but they have no interest in turtle brownies or lemon coconut petits fours.        

            It is October now. The sun is already setting. Downtown is awash in pink fire, the streets are drenched with persimmon blood.

 

Alva’s is as tidy as I care for it to be. I replace the broom to storage, set the thermometer and place the register till in my cramped office nook, locking it behind me. Tomorrow I will show Melissa how to count down the drawer because I am far too tired to do it tonight. I call Rob on the store phone to let him know I will be home soon. He tells me he and the kids have ordered pizza for dinner and though I am in no mood for pizza I acquiesce. Ordering pizza is just one of the many things that Rob does without any appeal to my own desires. I hang up the phone and wish I had not called.

            The swinging kitchen doors flap behind me and it’s on my way out that I see Duke’s ghost in front of Alva’s.

            Because the store is empty and some of the lights are off he is standing on the sidewalk, examining the placard that lists my hours, wondering if he’s too late. The clock on the wall says that it is only 4:48 so the phantom is not wrong when he enters the store. He is no ordinary apparition though, Duke’s ghost. He wears a grey suit with a wide, mauve tie and he is wrapped in blanched human flesh. A tall and comely doppelganger with malachite marbles for eyes. Duke’s eyes. He finds me in the process of putting on my jacket and smiles warmly, as if in preemptive apology for the intrusion. And while I am tired of smiles today, I find myself holding my breath at the sight of his. It is familiar, memory piercing.

            “You are open, right?” he asks while he fiddles with his tie.

            I am grateful that he does not seem to recognize me, yet a far, distant part of me is disappointed as well. I have always believed myself easy to forget, and this is further proof.

            “Technically,” I manage to say. “But I was closing up.”

            “Oh,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry then.”

            He makes to leave, a hand on the door, when he turns back, his brow a knitted puzzle. It means he has identified me and I feel the loose leg tremble of anxiety, the uninvited paralysis of warm and flooding nervousness.

            “Diana Banana?”

            He has found me out and calls me by an ancient name, an appellation that I have not heard in nineteen years. Duke and his little brother Jacob were the only ones to ever call me that, and Duke is dead. When I look at Jacob now, it as if Duke has come back to me, a coffin-framed body springing from his grave in Cave Hill Cemetery, defying all natural order to come find his Diana Banana. But I know this cannot be. Not just because I wish it so. He is a time and a life I have left behind, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Because otherwise I would have been swallowed up by the depths of Duke and his interred memories. I am aware that this is merely trickery, a deception of my brain in response to Jacob’s ungodly resemblance to his brother. Duke is stardust. I know this.

            “Excuse me?” I say, praying that my quivering response is enough to fool this man, this brother of Duke.

            He is embarrassed, the shake of his head and his small laugh tells me so. He wants to look at me again, to reassess my image, to make certain he has the right person. But those malachite eyes will not obey his curiosity.

            “Sorry,” he says again. “You look like someone I used to know.”

            Then, just as if he was any normal patron, the ghost is out the door. I watch him through the window until his he blends with the scene of the city, his ethereal form evaporates and is lost in the sun’s fading vapors.

            I slump down on the floor, my purse and keys slapping the room with minute echoes in the silence. There are thoughts running through me at speeds I cannot control, vast sentiments I have stowed in water-tight trunks on the ocean floor of my being with the belief that they could never resurface. On the floor I paw at my face with shaking hands and feel my heart’s palpitations like a deep drum in my chest, pumping rapid and fierce.

            I wonder where he came from, Duke’s ghost, Duke’s brother Jacob. I wonder if he works downtown now because I have never seen him here before. I wonder if he had come before when I did not work. I wonder what it would be like to be his sister-in-law.

            I wonder about Duke. What it would be like to still have him swaddle me in his long arms and ask me what movie I wanted to see, what kind of food I wanted to eat. I wonder if Duke would still push my hair behind my ears and demand that I never cut it. I wonder if he would give me those lopsided grins canvassed in slightly crooked teeth, looks that meant he was happy with his Diana Banana. I wonder why Rob is not more like Duke, considerate and passionate and brave and loyal. I wonder if Duke would ever betray me as Rob had. I wonder what it would be like if Duke had never overdosed, that I had never introduced him to the bliss and sublimity of bad things, of painkillers. 

            I wonder why Jacob has to look so much like Duke. I wonder if he feels like his brother, or kisses like his brother, or smells like his brother. I wonder if he will ever come back to Alva’s so that I may know the answer to these questions. If he does I will find out. I would take Duke, in any form, even in the spectral clone of his brother. But then I realize I am only a meek being, that I am not so courageous as that. I would hide in my kitchen if I saw Duke’s ghost and wait for him to leave. I would whisper shoo ghost, shoo, and pray that he does.

          Duke would have more trouble recognizing me than Jacob did. He is still nineteen, has not seen this world turn in as many years, and I am not the girl that he knew. There are wrinkles now, traceable timelines. My hair is shorter and does not so easily embrace the curves of my ears. I am a tired woman, not Diana Banana, who was effervescent and beautiful and knew joy. A woman as lifeless as Duke, only I am zipped skin-tight into the wretched dress of a functioning body, only functioning.  

            There are people still wafting by who look at me through the clear glass, shaking their heads in bewilderment at why this woman is on the ground crying, her shoulders heaving in epileptic undulations. To them, I am simply an oddity of downtown city life. Possibly, I am a sight they will mention to their husbands or wives, over dinner or before falling asleep. “Dear,” they will say, “on my way home today I saw a mad woman wailing on the floor of this little bakery near the office. It’s called Alva’s and they have the most remarkable orange marmalade-ricotta cupcakes you’ll ever eat.” Then they pass completely out of sight, and but for this, I am forgotten.

Tyrel Kessiger lives in Louisville, Kentucky where he toils away the barbarous hours of the day as a Braille Transcriber. There’s the soon-to-be wife, the two dogs, the cat and all the other ingredients of a fairly normal life. He is the recipient of the 2011 Literary LEO Short Fiction award and his work has been published in LEO Magazine. Several of his poems are forthcoming in Grey Sparrow, MILK SUGAR and Flywheel Magazine.