E-zine 1
May 2005

Soul Foraging:
Searching for self

T
heologically speaking, Mrs. Claire Williams knew there were no such things as ghosts, only hauntings. In the morning frost that crystallized across the ancient window, a face had formed, painted in the faintest shades of blues and grays—hues faint enough to be mistaken for white had they not been juxtaposed. She saw the tender curve of the flesh as the visage, half-turned, seemed to occupy space beyond its plane, like a holograph painted in ice. Its familiar eyes looked right at her. The curve of the mouth twisted in puckish humor, and the hair swept back in neat lines, held in place by unseen pins. Claire watched the apparition in wonder. She knew the face and knew it was a lie.

The face occupied the window to her bedroom at the lake house, and that old house now sat on rich property. The dirt road had been paved, and sailboats now crisscrossed the lake that in her parents’ time had been the home of eight-foot outboards with barely enough room for two fishermen and a cooler. Her father’s boat had been green with two wooden planks for seats, and Claire remembered fishing mornings when the mist would rise up off the water and linger, giving the shoreline an eerie cast. They would ride into shallow bays with her at the bow watching for rocks. With the water so still and clear, the surface magnified the bottom until she thought she could stick in a finger to the depth of one nail and feel the pebbles beneath slide by.

She had forced herself to outsmart the illusion, to correctly judge the depth and watch for danger. It had been hard. She had wanted to squeal and refuse the task, for it looked as if they would hit bottom if they dared moved at all. Her father’s calm presence behind her dissuaded her. She wanted these trips with him and would give him no reason to leave her behind.

She remembered how handsome he was then. His face full and clean-shaven, he would hide beneath the drooping, beige fisherman’ cap that had belonged to his father and she dreamed would one day belong to her. Nothing came of the cap. It simply disappeared with the flow of time, most likely discarded when it had gone raw with wear. His thin, green coat smelt of the lake, as often did he. A spare lure often hung ready at his coat pocket, dangling like some monster fly, some ornament for a Christmas gone wrong. His hands were large, hard, and swift, and when she felt guilty, it was the sight of his hands that scared her most.

She saw again the boat and the narrow inlet. She had never navigated that area before, but, by then, she had become confident in her abilities. The mirage of the lake bottom shimmering just below the surface no longer frightened but intrigued her, and she would often dangle a hand in the water to see the illusion crumble at her touch.

Her hand had been in the water then, at the moment she misjudged the rock. The impact jerked the boat away and flipped her overboard. She surfaced sputtering and crying, and, by the time she calmed enough to see and understand her surroundings, his hands were reaching out to rescue her. At the sight of them she screamed again and kicked wildly. She scrambled away in blind panic until she lay on the shoreline, sucking in shuddering breaths, and he sat in the boat, bewildered and ashamed. She saw his face and found in it no anger or incrimination, and now, now that she had fled from him—and he had seen himself reflected in her terror—he sat still and huddled on his plank, drawn up within himself, his face darkened beneath the brim of his cap. No longer afraid, she began to cry, ashamed for what she had done.

#

Through the window, and the frost-formed face, she focused on the land beyond, the gentle slope of the pine-wooded hill that led to the newly paved road, the old mailbox her father built, and the For Sale sign with the little red rider that said Sold. She noticed now that the illusion of the face had turned concave, as if she were looking inside a transparent mask from behind. Instead of looking into the house, the face now looked out, and through its eyes she saw the sign. The mouth that had once been puckish, now looked cold and solemn as it often had, whenever she did something that displeased her mother.

The room was her own, still furnished with the relics of her youth. The yellow walls had faded with the need of paint, and the carpet had twice been replaced. The same quilt still covered the bed in yellow and white squares. Her old nightstand, though, had escaped in a yard sale, to be replaced by a glass-topped pedestal draped in the same purple cloth her mother used to make the curtains—the curtains between which her mother’s face was now etched in frost.

The old nightstand had been box-like and wooden, painted yellow with blue highlights that matched the blue curtains that hung then, framing a window that frosted on winter mornings, carving intricate designs but never a face. She had not seen many winter mornings here. This was their lake retreat, used on lazy, summer weekends and holidays, rarely during the winter, especially the three coldest months when the snow fell and the roads iced over. On occasion, though, it happened, for reasons Claire never thought to understand, and she would wake, shivering, feeling the cool air billowing off the glass. With the quilted spread wrapped around her, she braved the chilled air and approached the intricate designs in wonder.

Once, her older brother, home from college for Christmas break, had joined the family for a chilly weekend at the lake house. He told her the designs were drawn by frost faeries in the night. He imagined for her winged women with blue skin, ice skating on the window, leaving frozen patterns in their wake. He tattered the image some, comparing the designs to the slime trails left by slugs and snails, but she ignored that and focused on the beauty.

He was the one who bought their mother the little worry dolls that ended up with Claire, often the only toys she had at the lake. Her father saw the lake house as a chance to make things simple again, to leave everything behind. An armload of toys defeated the purpose. The worry dolls, though, were always there, inch-high crude semblances of people who populated the world of her nightstand: its high towers, elegant ballrooms, and stifling dungeons.

The worry dolls, too, were long gone. She drowned them to death on the day she wrecked the boat. She dug graves for them on the lake bottom and covered them in pebbles, and, though they had only been bits of cloth, it felt like murder. These were the tiny people to whom she had often apologized for being gone so long and whom she had comforted with the assurance that she loved each just the same. She killed them to prove her mother wrong. She would not remain a child, forever.

#

For a moment, Claire let herself forget the lie, and she spoke to the thing in the glass.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said and heard the old childish whine return to her voice. “Selling the house was in the will, your will. You wanted this.”

With her focus returned to the glass, the face looked into the room, the mouth turned again from disapproval to puckish humor. Despite herself, Claire felt relieved. Still, the change in the face bothered her, and she let her focus return to the space beyond the glass, to the pine-covered hill, and as she did, the face turned out, and the mouth soured.

If this were an illusion, it was more than a trick of light upon the eyes. She could feel the displeasure, like a weight on her bones. She stared out the window at the trees and their icy shadows, the blanket of leaves half-rotted and half-frozen, and the brown patches of grass awaiting a new life come spring. When the image faced out, she felt the displeasure, but there was nothing out there that mattered. Their lives here took place between the walls and on the lake. The woods hid no secrets.

She returned her focus to the glass, and the face gazed inward again. The mouth turned and the feeling passed. Claire took a deep breath and rubbed her face.The visage in the glass looked so much like her mother had, once upon a time. Even the mouth, for all its mystery, was perfect.

Her mouth had twisted that same way, with that same puckish humor, when she looked at Claire, soaked head to toe, and asked, “Aren’t you ever going to grow up?”

Claire again felt the loss of breath and the helplessness. She wanted desperately to explain, to understand and be understood, but she found instead this mockery and rebuke. Her father, by this time, had tied the boat at the dock, and she could hear his heavy footsteps. Her mother turned to look at him, and as she did, Claire ran.

She locked herself in her room and, half blind with tears, tore posters from the wall and ran wild through her closet, looking for any artifact of her childhood. At last, she seized upon the worry dolls, and when she realized that they must die, the tears ran hot and fresh.

The face on the window continued to mock her, and then she looked beyond it, saw it again from the inside, and the mockery vanished. It looked so serious, so sad, so overwhelmed with disapproval, but that disapproval was directed out there, into the woods, not in here, not at Claire. She saw again her mother smiling down at her and then turning to look at her father as he trudged up from the lake. In the instant before she ran, she saw her mother’s face darken.

#

The slope ran gently toward the lake, and as her tires lost traction on the ice, Claire imagined her car sliding gently into its depths. Instead, the car fishtailed and with the loud snap of wood, she knew she had crushed her father’s mailbox. She cleared the drive, parked in the street, and climbed out to inspect the damage.

The bumper suffered a few scuffmarks, but nothing serious. She turned to the mailbox, which lay splintered on the ground. She felt a twinge of guilt, though it no longer mattered. The people who would tear down her home and put up the condominiums had no use for an old mailbox. Her mother should have replaced it years ago.

She looked back at the house. She would take nothing from it, had sold the house with everything in it. All she wanted was to walk away.

She looked at the mailbox, with its splintered pole and the green box laying slightly open like a salmon’s mouth. She thought of glistening, flopping bodies pulled aboard the boat. She saw their gills strain for breath that would not come. She remembered her father’s quick hands removing the hook and tossing the fish in the water-filled cooler.

She remembered him huddled on the plank of the boat, hurt by her terror. She had wanted to explain, but her own fear confused her. There had been nothing to say, her only excuse being that she was still just a child.

She looked back at the house full of artifacts she could not take with her, at the lake, which held the rotten remains of worry dolls, and at the very earth beneath her feet. In two adjacent graves, back in town, that earth held tight to her parents, locking them behind doors she could not open. She looked once more to the house, before she left. Through the trees she saw the window to her room and the frost upon the glass, and that was all she saw, the frost and nothing more, no face, no humor, and no displeasure.