Eddie’s eyes tracked across the piles of things in the room. His treasures. He hadn’t meant to turn away, it just happened. When his gaze returned to Amanda’s, she was no longer looking at him. She’d turned halfway back toward the kitchen.

  “Two hundred dollars,” she muttered. “Pick me, Eddie. Why can’t you pick me over this stuff?”

  “Amanda, I‍—‍”

  She turned the rest of the way toward the kitchen and stepped through the doorway. As she did so, her shoulders hitched in a sob.

  “Honey! I’m sorry!” called Eddie, but his eyes had already returned to the Tiffany lamp, to the melodic colors dancing on the wall. In the kitchen, Amanda made a noise that reminded Eddie of a rabbit clutched in the paws of the cat. “I’m sorry, Amanda! I won’t do it again. You mean more to me than anything!” His eyes traced the shape of the lampshade, lingering on the bright nuggets of shimmering electric blue glass that defined the fishes swimming in a field of midnight-blue and dark-purple chunks. He marveled that such dark blue and purple pieces of glass could make such beautiful shades of blue and purple with the lamp turned on.

  In the kitchen, Amanda began unpacking the bag of groceries she brought home. Next, she will start dinner. Maybe she’ll want to do chili, and we can cook together, though it will be filled with uncomfortable silences. She will go to bed early—she always does when she’s put out with me—but tomorrow, things will start to get back to normal. That had always been the pattern of these kinds of fights before, and Eddie didn’t see how this latest fight would differ.

  His eyes caressed the colors, joining in their majestic waltz on the surface of the wall. It was almost as if someone had snatched pieces of the night sky and put them in his lampshade. His treasure. Eddie grinned as the colors moved on the wall—as though the lamp shade itself were moving.

  He almost missed it.

  He almost missed the sound of the door to the garage closing. “Amanda?” he called. He shot to his feet, but his eyes remained on the kaleidoscopic colors on the wall. Wait a minute… Wasn’t the lamp a different color when I bought it? Aquamarine and turquoise? He shook his head. Impossible. Stained glass can’t change colors. The last thought rang with déjà vu, but Eddie dismissed it.

  The garage door rumbled up, and Amanda’s little car started in the garage. Panic seeped through his mindless infatuation with the light on the wall. He turned and ran to the garage door, heart in his throat. I should have gotten up, should have hugged her.

  Eddie dashed into the garage in time to glimpse Amanda’s tear-streaked face as she backed out. He waved at her, but she just shook her head and continued down the driveway. “Amanda!” he shouted. “Forgive me! I’ll make it up to you!” Panic throttled his heart. I should have offered to clean up! That’s what she wanted, right?

  At the end of the driveway, Amanda shook her head and dashed away her tears with the heel of her hand. She turned her head toward the street and drove away.

  Eddie stood in the garage, not quite believing it. Not quite believing what had just happened but pushing his emotions into that pit of despair he curated within. I’ll just clean up. She’ll be back, and when she comes back, she’ll understand how sorry I am. She’ll see that she means more to me than my collections. Even as he thought it, he recalled the haunting, yet beautiful melody that the lampshade made as its colors danced on the walls. But then the memory of Amanda’s tear-streaked face replayed. I can be better than this.

  Even so, it seemed his life was spiraling out of control.

  Again.

  I’ve got to get it together. He turned and trudged back inside and got to work on the dishes piled in the sink.

  By the time Amanda came back home, the kitchen was spotless, and there was a bouquet of wildflowers in a vase on the table. Eddie stood in the door to the dining room, eyes down. “I’m so sorry, Amanda,” he said. “Please forgive me. We can clean it all up. I’ll do the work; you just tell me which collections you want me to pack away. To… To get…rid of.”

  “Oh, Eddie. You schmoopy dork,” she murmured. The phrase caught in her throat. “Perhaps I overreacted, as you said.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m an ass, and I’m sorry.”

  Her gaze darted over his shoulder. “Is it…” She heaved a sigh and walked over to hug him. “Is it the same lamp?”

  He thought about how he’d imagined the lampshade had been aquamarine and turquoise with dragonflies around the bottom edge when he bought it, and how it had “changed” to dark colors and bright-blue fish that seemed to swim around the shade. “Yes, it is. I…” He didn’t want to tell her about seeing his mother’s ghost in the store. How she’d told him he had to buy the lamp and keep it so she could be near him. That’s… That just sounds crazy.

  “What? You what, Eddie?”

  “Oh, nothing. I remember the shade is all.”

  “How did they get the fish to seem so alive? And is the shade black? The background, I mean.”

  “No, it’s midnight blue and dark purple. It’s easier to tell when it’s turned on.”

  She pulled back and looked up into his face. “Eddie, you scared me earlier. You asked me if I could hear the song the lamp was playing.”

  “I…” Eddie shook his head as if to shake out the cobwebs. “I think I’d fallen asleep before you came home. Maybe I had a dream about the lamp, that it was a different color—that the lampshade had changed. In the…dream, there was this song going, like a Middle Eastern sort of thing that reminded me of the desert. It…” He chuckled. “I’ve always dreamed the weirdest shit.”

  “That’s because you are a weirdo,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at the flowers. “Whose yard did you pillage to make my bouquet?”

  Eddie flashed her a sheepish smile. “Do you like them? I made them myself out of moonbeams and cinnamon toast.”

  She turned her face back to him. “You are so weird, Eddie.”

  “Good thing,” he said. “Because you love weird.”

  Just like that, everything was okay again.

  10

  1992

  Eddie lay in bed, enjoying the crisp air and the sound of birds outside the bedroom window. He hadn’t checked the time, but the quality of light peeking around the blinds pointed at a little before six. Predawn light washed the bedroom with gray light. Like most times when the silence was oppressive, Eddie imagined he heard a mournful dirge on the wind.

  Amanda lay next to him, snuggled under the blankets with only her face showing, and he smiled. Things had gone well since the day he brought home the lamp. He had tried very hard to make things easy, to make the most of what they had. The only thing that bothered him—besides the restricted budget for buying treasures—was that she didn’t seem very enthusiastic about antiquing anymore.

  Eddie had kept things together, kept most of the rooms in the house clean—cluttered, but clean. He’d even curtailed his buying—a little anyway—but it didn’t seem to matter. It was as if he had crossed an invisible line, and Amanda couldn’t get past it. She was different, less…open to silliness.

  He still asked her to go with him every weekend, but it was a rare Saturday when she got in the car with him. And even when she rode along, she held herself stiff, not as willing to play around as they had before the lamp incident.

  That was still how he thought of it: “the lamp incident.” If he were honest, he’d have to admit that he was still a little irritated at how far out of proportion Amanda had blown things, how long she’d carried the grudge. Then again, he figured that was what marriage was about: letting go of the little irritations in favor of the good times.

  He lay there wondering if Amanda would go with him that morning, letting his gaze drift around the room lazily. His attention meandered from the things scattered on the top of the dresser, to the old photograph in an antique frame hanging on the wall between the closet and the bathroom doors, then to the chair they sometimes sat in to put on their shoes to the old cherry wardrobe. The corner between the wardrobe and the dresser was particularly dark that morning. The shadows were dense, almost solid.

  The tenth time his eyes flitted past the corner, his heart lurched in his chest. Is there someone standing there? Watching me? He strained his eyes, trying to penetrate the thick gloom. There’s something there, he thought. But is it a person? Or just something Amanda moved into the corner to get it out of the way. A stepladder? A coat rack? The volume of the song on the wind increased.

  Stop being an idiot, Eds. Get back into that lazy Saturday morning state of mind. He had such good memories of Saturday mornings—at least during the early part of his life. And in fairness, since he’d known Amanda, Saturday mornings had been delightful in their marriage. She was just that kind of woman, everything they did together was fun.

  Or it had been before the lamp incident. The mental voice that uttered the sentence in his mind didn’t sound like his own.

  He shoved that idea aside, replaying the memory of their first antiquing trip, how they’d both been so excited they’d gotten up early, and then had to sit in Denny’s forever waiting for the antique mall to open. That had been the first time she’d called him a schmoopy dork. Her schmoopy dork.

  With a silly grin on his face, he set his gaze adrift. He put his arms behind his head and sighed with contentment. He loved Saturday morning.

  When he caught the movement in the corner of his eye, Eddie almost leaped out of his skin. He came up on his elbows and stared at the murky soup of shadows in the corner. Something moved, he thought. I didn’t imagine that.

  Don’t be frightened, tiger. The words seemed to ride the wind to his ears, lilting with the same rhythm as the creepy little ditty. Eddie recognized that voice. Kathy. The woman who told him to buy the lamp. Or the ghost, whatever. He darted a quick glance at Amanda, but she hadn’t stirred. He’d last seen the woman almost a year before—she had made no other appearances since he’d purchased the lamp.

  “Kathy?” he whispered. “Muh-Mother?”

  “Who’re you talking to?” asked Amanda, sounding a lot like a drunk Chinese woman.

  Kathy stepped forward, but she no longer had the appearance of a woman ripped straight out of the eighties. She wore a dark dress—black or dark blue, he couldn’t tell in the early morning light. Her hair was dark, as well, and seemed to blend into the shadows. Her eyes locked on his face, and she held a finger to her lips and shook her head.

  “Go back to sleep, honey.”

  “Mmmph.” Amanda snuggled deeper into the blankets and sighed.

  Eddie folded back the bed clothes and swung his feet onto the cold wooden floor, his gaze riveted to the woman standing in the corner of his bedroom. He beckoned her to follow him, but she made no move to do so. Is she even real? He shook his head and pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of wool socks. The apparition in the corner hadn’t moved. She just stood there, staring at him—he wasn’t even sure if she had blinked. Armored against the early morning chill, Eddie pointed at the door to the hall and beckoned again. Again, she made no move to follow him, and with a shrug, Eddie turned and left the bedroom.

  He pulled the door closed behind him, making as little noise as possible. Maybe Erickson was right… Maybe all these female apparitions are just hallucinations. Bogeywomen. He shook his head. It just didn’t seem plausible that he would hallucinate such intricate images, hear what the hallucination said, the funny little song—all of it—and not have any other symptoms. It didn’t fit with what he understood about mental illness.

  He padded into the kitchen, glancing out the window over the sink. The backyard had a spectral quality, cast in grays and blacks by the predawn light. He turned to the cabinet and got out thick ceramic coffee mugs and set them on the counter. He looked out the window again, as he turned toward the coffee machine.

  The black-clad woman stood under the old maple tree in the corner of the yard. It had just suffered the explosive greening of early spring, and it cast deep shadows across her features.

  Eddie paused a moment, staring out the window, and then he shook his head and turned back to the coffee machine. He added a coffee filter and coffee, then grabbed the coffee pot and turned toward the sink to fill it with water.

  He’d already grown tired of the game the woman—or hallucination or whatever—was playing, and he didn’t want to contribute, but he peered out the window, nonetheless. She still stood under the boughs of the tree but had moved forward out of the deep shadows. She grinned and tossed a little wave at Eddie as if they were lifelong friends.

  Eddie shook his head and looked down to watch the water tumble into the coffee pot. Let her appear inside this coffee pot if she wants me to look at her.

  Oh, come on, tiger. Her voice seemed to whisper with the susurrations of the wind across the eaves of the house. The creepy song grew louder, more insistent.

  Eddie sighed and poured water into the coffee machine, then replaced the pot. He flicked the switch to brew the coffee. Next, breakfast. He turned and took a step toward the refrigerator.

  The window over the sink rattled, and Eddie looked up and started. The woman stood right outside the window with her nose pressed against the glass and a goofy smile stretching across her lips. The rattling sound came from her fingernails drumming against the upper pane of glass.

  He dropped his gaze. I don’t want to see you anymore. Perhaps I should go see Erickson again…

  “No need to resort to savagery, tiger. Anyway, you spend enough time in that idiot’s office.” She spoke aloud that time, her voice muffled by the glass.

  “Who are you?” He kept his gaze down, but half-turned toward the window. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “You already know who I am, and I can’t leave you alone—you own the lamp.”

  “What are you? A jinn? Trapped in a lamp?”

  She laughed, and the sound of it made Eddie shiver.

  “Tell me the truth. Are you the woman that used to scare me when I was a kid?”

  “You know who I am. You’ve always known who I am.”

  Eddie shook his head and glanced at the kitchen window, but she’d disappeared. He heard her voice as plain as day, and if he heard her even when she wasn’t close… A hallucination, then. Again, her nails-on-a-chalkboard laugh ground against his eardrums, but this time he suppressed a shudder.

  “I’m no hallucination, Eddie Mitchell. I never have been.”

  Her voice sounded close as if she was speaking into his ear. He could almost feel her breath in his ear. “No? Then what are you?”

  “As I said back in the junk store, Eddie: I’m just a woman in a different state of being from you. I’m no ghost. I’m no jinn. Just a woman.”

  Eddie scoffed and shook his head. “Somehow, you don’t fit the definition of ‘woman.’”

  “No?” This time, she seemed to speak into his other ear.

  “No. Women can’t appear wherever they want, turn invisible, or appear to me and not to anybody else.”

  “Then what am I, Eddie?” She sounded amused, but a hint of iron rang beneath it.

  “If I knew that…” He opened the refrigerator door and took out the eggs and bacon. I’d know how to get rid of you.

  “Now, that’s not very nice.” Her voice took on a pouting quality. “Besides, you don’t want to get rid of me. You bought the lamp just to make sure I’d stay close.”

  “So, all I have to do to get rid of you then, is to get rid of the lamp?”

  She didn’t answer, not with words, but as he took an egg out of the carton to crack it into the frying pan, the egg shot away, exploding all over the front of the cabinet next to the stove.

  “Great. Just great. Not only do I have to put up with an invisible woman, but one who enjoys playing adolescent pranks.”

  “And why not? You're a young putz.”

  Eddie held his tongue. He grabbed a fistful of paper towels and cleaned up the mess. “Can I go on with fixing breakfast? Or should I wait down here to clean up the rest of the eggs?”

  There was no answer for the space of five breaths, but Eddie remained where he was. After a moment, an egg rose out of the carton and floated toward the frying pan. It cracked itself on the edge and dropped the shell’s contents into the pan. Then the empty shell floated toward the garbage can, the lid came up, and the shell sank inside.

  “Let’s change the subject, shall we?” she said.

  Eddie stood and threw away the wad of paper towels he’d cleaned up the raw egg with. “You might as well become visible.”

  A knock came from the door that led to the garage, and Eddie opened it. She stood outside as if she had to go through the doors to enter the house. She wore a black leather dress, and her luxurious, sable hair hung to her shoulders. Her olive skin almost glowed under the kitchen light. Strangely, she was barefoot.

  “May I come in?”

  “So a vampire instead of a jinn? You’ve never needed my permission to come in before.”

  She laughed, setting Eddie’s nerves on edge. “I’m nothing so mundane as a vampire, Eddie. It’s just polite to ask, once we’ve become friends.” She tilted her head to the side. “My mother taught me that.”

  “So did mine.” He stepped back from the door and motioned her inside. She lifted her perfect, bare foot to step up into the house from the garage, and for the first time, he noticed her toenails glistened like chrome. His eyes tracked up to her hands, and her fingernails were the same, and they drew to sharp, vicious points. “How in the world do you scratch an itch with those nails?”

  She laughed once more, and it was harsh, grating—the sound of a garbage disposal chewing up a fork. She turned and closed the garage door.

  “Do you even need to use a door?”

  She shrugged with one shoulder. “No. I can go where I please.”

  “As I thought.” He went back to fixing breakfast, stirring the scrambled eggs and turning the bacon. “Do you eat?”

  “Of course. All living things consume things that sustain them, don’t they?”

  “Then you’re a living thing?”

  She drew her lips into a pout. “You’ve got a nasty streak, this morning.”

 

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