A Spring Break Carol: A Short Ghost Story

  * * * *

  By Wednesday afternoon, a hot vein throbbed under my forehead while I chatted to our distinguished, expensive guest lecturer – a poet, of all things. I wanted to grit my teeth, but a dean can never appear less than genial.

  At three o’clock I gulped Tylenol with metallic-tasting water, and the fountain’s hum drove the pain deeper.

  Maynard appeared at five. I didn’t see his arrival. A student’s shout from the quadrangle below distracted me just as the bell reverberated.

  By now the headache pulsed red behind my eyeballs. “You’re here because I told your wife I saw you.”

  Maynard cocked his head. “I’m not certain why I’m here, as of yet.”

  “I am. But there is a flaw in all this.”

  “Is there, Jason? I’d be most pleased to hear what it is.”

  I tapped my desk with my forefinger. “I told Kate I saw you at five in the morning in my home. It is currently five in the afternoon. And this is my office.”

  “So it is, Jason. So it is.”

  His smugness was infuriating. “And how do you explain the discrepancy?’

  Maynard interlaced his fingers behind his silver head. “I can only offer a supposition, of course, but I’m sure it would be unfitting for me to see your wife in her night things. Even dead, I hope I’d never be so rude as to visit uninvited at such an improper time and place.”

  I slammed my hand down. “I am in no mood for your Southern gentleman act. This makes no sense.”

  “I’m inclined to agree, but what do you suggest I do?”

  “You could haunt your wife.”

  Maynard unlaced his fingers and shifted uneasily. “No.” He closed his eyes. “No.”

  “Hah!” Finally the imperfection in this so-called paragon! “You didn’t love her!”

  His eyes popped open. “Of course I loved her. There’s not one other woman in the world who would have endured me the way she did – how could I not love her?”

  I didn’t believe him for a moment. I waited.

  But his voice, though rough, was calm. “She already sees me everywhere. In my chair, over the breakfast table, in the bed. She speaks to me before she remembers I’m not there and that I’ll never be there again. I would make it worse by popping in randomly, without warning. Then the constant leaving, making her go through it all again. It would be cruel.”

  He thought he was fooling me. “If you haven’t visited her, how do you know what she‘s doing?”

  My logic left him speechless, but Maynard was never speechless for long. “I lived with Kate Ann for thirty-one years. I know her. You’re married. I’d think you’d understand.”

  Yes, his type always has an answer. Whether it’s a sufficient answer or not doesn’t matter, so long as they can hear themselves talk. The pressure behind my eyes crawled over my face.

  “What is that smell?” I demanded.

  “Changing the subject, Jason? You ought to.”

  “I simply want to know what that smell is, so I can alert Housekeeping.”

  Maynard inhaled, an action which – I’ll admit it – threw me back into my chair. The sudden expansion of his barrel chest emphasized that his lungs did not ordinarily move.

  “Leaves, I think,” he said. “Fallen leaves in the spring, getting ready to turn to meal. Earth filled with decay, waiting for rain.”

  “It’s revolting. Someone tracked in mud. Probably Hank Hillard from Forestry.”

  “I always liked the smell myself. In any case, I doubt it‘s something Tamika can remedy.”

  “Oh, so you know everything now, do you? You always thought you did, and being dead must make you certain of it.”

  Maynard’s mouth broadened. “I know a bit. But no, Jason, I don’t know everything. None of us do, not even when we’re dead. Especially when we’re dead, come to think of it.”

  I dug my fingers into my inflamed forehead and shuddered.

  “But don’t worry. When you’re dead, you don’t mind not knowing like you used to.”

  I jerked my head up. “I do not waste my time worrying. I know everything I need to know.”

  “Well, good for you, Jason. Good for you.”

  I screwed my eyes shut, wishing the light didn’t stab them, thankful Maynard’s honeyed drone had ceased.

  “You do appear to be in some distress, however,” he observed.

  “I have a headache, if you must know.”

  “They happen to the best of us,” Maynard said. “I’ll be leaving then.”

  I did not budge until the quarter-hour bell. When I cracked my eye lids cautiously, the office was empty, except for myself.