Holy Ghost Coming to Look For Me

Marian couldn’t get the peanut bag open. She sighed and put it down on her tray. She looked outside, pitch black. Taking this overnight trip wasn’t the greatest idea, but she didn’t have much of a chance to think trip arrangements out.

She turned her attention to the movie that was playing. People were laughing quietly as Jim Carrey was trying to ruin Christmas for the citizens of Whoville. Why did they choose this movie to show in the middle of summer? Marian thought. She closed her eyes.

The phone call came that morning. She was dozing, listening to Emmett Powell’s gospel show on KPFA. Eva Cassidy was singing “Wade in the Water” in her blues soaked voice. The phone rang. Marian sat up, then grabbed the phone, praying nothing happened to her mother. All her friends and family knew that if they wanted to stay family and friends, they shouldn’t call her before ten on a Saturday morning. It could be David, her latest loser ex-boyfriend who stole money from her purse. With her luck, he had gotten arrested and was calling for bail money. “Hullo?” she whispered.

“Ms. Marian Stearn?”
“Uh-huh,” Thank God, it wasn’t David. Were telemarketers starting to call earlier and earlier? She was in no mood to hear how she should get a subscription to the Chronicle, how she needed her chimney (If she had one) cleaned.
“Ms. Stearn, your stepfather Brian McGovern, has expired.”
She blinked several times. Expired? Like milk? Or like a library due date? “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Your stepfather died.”
For a moment Marian could not speak. The man kept on talking. A heart attack. Happened late Thursday night. He died very quickly. He didn’t feel any pain. Marian listened to what he was saying, but he kept on thinking, he’s dead. He’s dead.
“We need someone to claim him and see to his…”
“His disposal?”
“Yes.”
“Call his family.”
“Ms. Stearn, you are listed as his family.”
“There must be a mistake. I haven’t seen this man since I was fifteen years old!”
“Ms. Stearn, I don’t know why. You are the person he left responsible for his remains. He has already been cremated due to his wishes. But he left you responsible for his ashes.”

She almost said: “Oh, dump him in the garbage disposal!” but of course she didn’t. She copied down the address to go to and pick up the personal effects, and make arrangements for the disposal of his remains. He was in St. Louis.

Remains. He was remains now. She couldn’t stop thinking about it as she dressed. It must be the poet in me, she thought. Thank God she had won that poetry contest recently; it was going to be used for airfare. The odd thing was it was a poem about Brian, how he got drunk and how Marian and her mother had to drag him in inside the house. She won a thousand dollars for that poem. Now she was spending that money to take care of Brian’s remains.

Marian was teaching a creative writing class at the local junior college. She called the American Literature teacher David to cover for her while she was gone. “Oh, Marian, I’m so sorry,” he said when she told him the news.
“Yeah, well, life happens,” Marian said. What else could she say? She felt guilty about doing this to David; he had a crush on her for weeks, always asking him for coffee, or maybe a movie at the Elmwood. She always told him no, she had errands and papers to grade. She hoped he would stop asking soon, why would he be interested in her? She only attracted losers.
“I’ll take care of everything,” David said. “You just take care of himself.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to figure out what I’ll do with the remains.” Remains, remains, she repeated the word over and over, like she did when she learned new words in the dictionary when she was a kid.

When Marian thought of remains, she thought of left over scraps of paper that ended up on the floor when you were sewing something, or when you had some food left over on your plate and your mother gave you a hard time about it, because didn’t you know there were starving children in Africa?

So it was hard to believe that Brian was remains. She tried to picture him as leftover food, as orphan cloth. But she kept on remembering the things that she didn’t want to remember about him.

She kept on remembering the times that when her mother worked late, she would go get him at his bar. She hated doing it, but she would do it because her mother would be so tired after work and the last thing she would need would be to take care of a drunk Brian. Sometimes he was in a grand mood, wanting to dance, talk with his friends about politics, baseball. But there were those times when he would be slumped over on the bar, his hand still on the glass. She would look at him shyly from the doorframe, not sure what to do. Sometimes he would get up, and she would help him walk home, making sure no cars hit him as they walked. Sometimes she left him there. Sometimes there would be a woman there. Her name was Peggy. She would look at her and say: “Go home, Marian. You shouldn’t be here where everyone is drunk. I’ll take him home.”

There were the nights when her mother wasn’t working late, and that’s when they fought. She remembered it still, lying in her bed, trying not to think of what was going on outside of her room. She would concentrate on the blue walls of her bedroom, of how when they bought the house Brian had told her that she could paint her walls any color she wanted. Because they always rented, they could never paint their walls. She had always longed to paint her bedroom blue, to match the color of the sky.

“You are so mistrusting,” her therapist Jodie told Marian at one session.
“Thanks for sharing.”
“Marian, would you hear me out?”
Marian sighed. Jodie was a licensed social worker who was always calm and
told Marian every session that Marian needed to take better care of herself. Sometimes Marian just wanted to stand up and yell: “Oh for crying out loud! It’s called new problems! I have them!” But Jodie stayed fixed on her past.
“If you don’t come to terms with what happened to your past,” Jodie said, patting Marian’s knee, “then you will always create new problems in your life now. You know I'm right, Marian. You must become responsible for your life in order to have good things happen to you.”

After dozing for a while, Marian woke up. The movie was over. The seat belt sign was lit, and she buckled herself up. Her knee couldn’t stop shaking. She put her hand on her knee to calm it down, but it still shook. She did the breathing exercises that Jodie had taught her to do when she felt nervous, breathe in, and breathe out. Close your eyes. Don’t think. Concentrate on your breathing. Just breathe.

She was fifteen when Brian was fired. It wasn’t a real surprise; he had shown up to work drunk way too many times.“I’ve always been loyal to the company,” he growled, “only took one vacation the whole fifteen years I was there. Sometimes I would come over there, sick as a dog. But did I complain? No, I didn’t. This is how they pay me back!”

He kept on pacing around the living room. Marian and her mother were sitting at the table, keeping their heads down, trying not to make eye contact with him at all. Marian studied the lace patterns in the tablecloth, how finely interwoven it was. How clean it looked. She looked at the dictionary to concentrate on new words. She always tried to learn one word a day, because she was a writer and wanted to expand her vocabulary. She tried to concentrate on the dictionary pages. Azure .Balderdash. Ballyhoo..

“Those fucking idiots, how could they do that to me?” Brian yelled. “How?”
“Stop it, Brian!” Marian’s mother finally stood up. “People get fired everyday! I hate to tell you this, but you aren’t unique!” Why did her mother say that? It was only going to make things worse.
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
“I will not shut up! Don’t tell me to shut up!”
Marian kept on staring at the tablecloth, thinking if I get up now, if I get up now and just sneak in my room, they won’t notice me. I’ll be really quiet and I’ll just go in my room. She stood up. She started to walk towards her room as she heard them yell at each other. She heard Brian hitting her mother. Marian turned around and looked at him. “Don’t you hurt my mother!”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
“I will not shut up! You’re a vile disgusting person!”
That was when he threw the beer bottle. It sailed through the room with incredible ease. It knocked off one of her mother’s vases. It hit the wall. Fragments of crystalline glass flew everywhere.

She knelt down, thinking she had to pick up the glass, trying to be careful so she wouldn’t get glass on her feet. As she picked up the glass, she ignored the irritation in her eye. Then she blinked. The pain was so bad she cried out in pain.
Her mother ran over to her, saying: “Marian, baby, I am so sorry.” Her mother took her to the bathroom. She gently washed her eye with warm water. “It still hurts,” Marian cried.

“We’ll go to the emergency room.” Her mother put her arm around Marian’s waist. “Just keep the washcloth on your eye, honey.” Marian’s mother looked at Brian who was putting on his jacket. “I’ll drive you two to the ER.”
“No, you won’t,” Marian’s mother snapped. “Don’t you come near us. I want all of your shit gone by the time we get back. Do you understand?”
“Where am I going to go?”
“I don’t care. Just get out of my house.”
Her mother opened the car door for her, and she remembered how her mother drove through the night. Marian was trying not to open her eye because it hurt too much. Lionel Ritchie was on the radio, singing “Ballerina Girl.” She tried to sing along with him, even though she hated this song. But it kept her mind off her eye. “I’m going to take care of everything, Marian. I promise you, I’ll take care of everything,” her mother said.

The bored ER doc took out the small shard of glass, and another shard that had gotten in her eyelid. “How did you get beer bottle glass in your eye?” he asked. Marian didn’t say anything. He looked at her. “It’s all right. You can tell me.”
“Ask my mother,” she snapped.
“I’ll do that,” he said, making a note in his chart.

He did ask, and her mother told the truth. An eggplant colored bruise was forming on her face. “I didn’t know it would get that bad,” her mother said, looking at the floor.
The police came right away to their house, but by then Brian was gone. The broken glass was still on the carpet. Marian had a bandage across her eye. “Go to bed,” her mother told her. “Just go to bed.”

Marian remembers how she made her way to her bed, how clothes and books were all over the floor. She heard her mother talking to the cops, promising them that if Brian came back, she would call the police. They were advising her on restraining orders, social workers. Marian fell asleep, listening to her mother say: “We’re going to be okay, we’re going to be fine.”

Marian couldn’t figure out how Brian had her address and phone number. She hadn’t seen him since that night. She figured that maybe he had tracked her down through the Internet, or just looked her up in the phone book. Either way, it was up to her to deal with his remains. Her mother was on a tour of Ireland. She had been saving up for years for this trip, and Marian got postcards of Irish castles, green countrysides. They had now a good relationship, talked at least once a week. As long as they didn’t talk about Brian or how her mother acted during those years, they got along fine.

She knew Brian’s parents were dead; and his only brother had died in a bar fight years before. It was up to Marian to take care of things, to clean up after Brian one last time. The only good thing about it, she reasoned, was that she wouldn’t almost lose an eye this time. She would throw his remains out and she wouldn’t think twice about it, she had decided.

She had to do eye exercises for her damaged eye. Apparently there had been ocular damage because there had been glass in her eyelid. She would focus on her ceiling, and make her eye go left right, up and down. The eye eventually healed, but left a little half moon of a scar under her eye. When she started school that September, she told her friends she fell down at the park pool. They murmured sympathies of how slippery the wet concrete would be, and they told her about their trips to Disneyland, Florida, LA. Marian listened to their stories with the most interest she could muster. When they asked about Brian, she shrugged and said: “He left. Just as well.”

The plane landed. Marian waited until she got the go-ahead to leave. She smiled at the stewardess who thanked her for flying their airline; hope she would come back real soon! Marian wanted to say: “Trust me, it won’t be soon enough.”

The hotel shuttle bus was waiting for her. He was a tow-headed teenager who called her ma’am and drove her to the hotel, which was right next to the highway. “Don’t worry about the noise!” he chirped. “The walls are sound-proof!”

Thanks for telling me,” Marian said, looking outside. She wished she hadn’t stopped smoking.. She wanted to do something with her hands, she was so nervous. She lay down on the bed, breathing. Don’t let me have an anxiety attack oh please don’t let me have an anxiety attack. She put her thumb on her scar right below her eye. She did her breathing exercises.

She remembered the time she came home after a date and she found Brian in the living room, hitting her mother’s old monster of a stereo with a hammer, pounding the hell out of it. On the floor she saw her mother’s albums on the floor, all broken. Judy Collins’ dust jacket was ripped apart. At her feet, she saw the remains of an old Leonard Cohen album. Brian hadn’t seen Marian, so she ran to the kitchen, then opened the door. She could see her mother in the car, hiding. She went to the car, and then knocked on the window. She could see the whites of her mother’s eyes. Then Marian heard the unlocking of the door. “Get in quick!” Her mother said. Marian did.

Her mother locked the door right after Marian was in the car. The two of them huddled for warmth; like they were two silent stranded people in a snowstorm.. Eventually her mother fell asleep, snoring lightly. Marian just looked through the window, wishing it could be day, wishing he could just pass out so she could sleep in her own bed.

She went to the crematorium the next day to collect his ashes. The funeral director was thin and had red hair. She saw that he had pictures of his daughters at home, running through the sprinkler. “If you like, you can have your stepfather interred here for a special discount,” he offered. “$4000 for a brass urn.”

Marian thought for a moment he was joking. No way she was spending money like that. “I just would like to have his ashes, please.”
“That’s fine. Oh, before I forget, a friend of your stepfather wanted you to call him,” he said, holding out a yellow piece of paper. Marian studied it for a moment. The man’s name was Steven Near, and it had his phone number scrawled underneath his name. “Do you mind if I use my cell phone?” Marian asked. The funeral director shrugged.
Steven Near’s voice sounded warm, friendly. “I was hoping I would hear from you. Can we meet for coffee?”
“Um, sure.” He gave her an address for a coffeehouse a couple of blocks away. Before she left, she signed some papers. The director gave Marian Brian’s ashes in a Zip-Loc bag. She studied them for a moment. She stuffed them in her purse and she walked over to the coffeehouse.

She saw him right away. He had curly gray hair, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. He stood up when he saw her. “Marian?” She nodded. “Hi, I’m Steven.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, sitting across from him. He motioned to the waitress. “A decaf for me. Would you like anything?”
“Steamed milk.” The waitress wrote it down and walked back to the coffee bar.
“Brian was right. He would go on and on how pretty you were, and he was right.”
“I’m sorry, but you knew Brian?”
“I forgot, you don’t know. I was his AA sponsor.”
She raised her eyebrows. “He was in AA?”
He nodded. “He had been sober for five years.”
“Oh.” What else could she say?
“He talked you in the meetings. And your mother. He always regretted what happened.”
“I just bet he did,” she said, her throat closing up.
“I was with him when he died.” He waited for a response from her, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to say oh, so fucking what? Why do you have to tell me? I don’t care.
The waitress comes with the decaf and the steaming milk. She sipped her while he talked: “He worked for a trucking company. He was unloading a shipment off his truck, when he collapsed. I had been there because we were going to go to a meeting.”
Marian sipped her steamed milk again, wondering why he invited her here.
“Before I knew it, he was on the ground. I had my cell phone with me so I called 911. He was trying to talk. I told him no, save your strength. Finally he just said: ‘Tell Marian I’m sorry about her eye,’ then he closed his eyes. He never regained consciousness.”
Marian could feel her breathing slow down. He apologized. He said he was sorry. “He said that?” she said.
“He talked about it in meetings. He was going to call you and make amends.”
“Oh,” is all she could say.
“That’s why he had your address. But he was scared about what your reaction would be, so that’s why he never contacted you.”
Marian studied this man, this kind man who has yellow fingernails, who drinks his coffee and puts sugar in it. She studied him to make sure that what he said was true. Brian apologized for what he did, for that night. More than likely, all those other crazy nights as well. “I don’t know if I can forgive him,” she said.
“Listen, you don’t have to forgive him. But you can let him go.”
“I don’t know what to do with his ashes.”
“It will come to you. Give it time.”
She went back to the hotel. Took the ashes and put them on the bedside table. She watched Sally Jessy, Jennie Jones, and Rosie. She cried all through an Oprah episode, which was about families who survive murders. She avoided looking at the bag.

She fell asleep around six that night and didn’t wake until 5 the following morning. She stood up and looked through the window, at the cars on the freeway. She went back to the bedside table and studied the Zip-loc bag.

Before she left for home, she bought a brown box at the hotel gift shop. She put the bag in the box. “You’re not going to get in any trouble here,” she said to the box.

She had held the brown box in her lap as she flew home, then put the box on the kitchen table, trying to figure out where to scatter them. She thought about putting them in the dumpster. She even walked down there, ready to scatter them. But she couldn’t do it.
Friday night, she still didn’t know what to do. She started to look at old pictures, of her with Brian, of Brian and her mother on their wedding day. She looked at her and Brian together, in her pink bride maid’s dress.
She took the bag of ashes and laid it down on her lap. “I don’t want to be angry with you anymore,” she said, feeling a little silly talking to the ashes, but she didn’t care. “I just don’t.”
Then she knew what to do with them.

The next day Marian scattered the ashes at a lonely stretch of a beach that was right near Fisherman’s Wharf. When Brian was first dating her mother, he would take them there on Saturdays. He would take her into the water and twirl her around, so high she would scream with delight. “Don’t do that, Brian!” her mother would say.

“Oh, Marian loves it! Don’t you?”

She had loved it. She loved it because she felt safe with him. This man would never hurt her. He was smart and funny, tall and kind. He even smelled good, like Old Spice. She loved him. Loved him with her whole heart. Which made what happened later so hard to bear.

She was the only person on the beach when she scattered the ashes. It was windy so as she scattered the ashes were flying everywhere, on her mouth, her eyes, but she got rid of them all. She set the box on the shore so somebody could find it, and then stuffed the plastic bag in her jeans pocket. She knew that the bad times would always stay with her, like her scar. But maybe now she could also remember more good times. Because there were good times, times on the beach, when he gave her a new dictionary for her birthday. When he tucked her in when she was little nights when he was sober. How one night they danced in the kitchen, her small feet on his big feet.

For the first time in days, she felt hungry. She started to walk across the beach, towards Fisherman’s Wharf. She made a mental note to call that man David who had been flirting with her for months, ask him out for a movie. From far away she could hear the same song that was playing when she found out Brian had died-“Wade in the Water,” with the words “Holy Ghost coming to look for me.” She hummed along to the end of the song as she walked, as the wind blew across the Bay, she could still taste his ashes on her lips, and how they tasted salty, like the sea.

Contributor: Jennifer Gibbons