Spectator of my life
A Short story BY RANDY MCINTOSH
(Inspired by Laura Bundesen)
I always get nervous when new people move in. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been on my own so long or my tendency to suspect anyone I don’t know.
My husband, Edward, liked to poke fun at me when we’d see a new person in the neighbourhood, “Don’t worry, Anna, they don’t look like axe murders.”
I always found his teasing amusing but sometimes harsh. He was right. I do have that suspicious tendency.
The new couple was eyeing the front of the house as the moving van rolled up the driveway. I’m sure they were concerned that they would not get their belongings through the front door.
“Maybe we can set up that winch system,” I heard the man say, “these old houses still have some of the scaffolding for that.” he pointed to the wood beam sticking out the third story.
“Marcus, can you direct the moving van into the driveway? I don’t want to run over the flower bed,” a woman, whom I assumed it was his wife, called out. Donna, I found out her name later, had a new teaching job, and she and her husband saw this as an opportunity to get a bigger home to start a family. I appreciated her attention to the flower beds. The flowers had been there for decades and would not tolerate tire tracks.
I felt unsteady watching the moving company men setting up the winch system. Sometimes my energy gets quite low, where I almost feel like I disappear. I looked across the street to see George Kenebowe standing with his hands on his hips, watching the activity. George struck this pose often, I think to make it look like he was in charge of things.
Our house was one of the first in the new area. We were married for about five years when we moved to New England. Both of us got good jobs that gave us flexibility to work on the new home. Edward coordinated the local builders, and I helped guide the construction. Edward and I often talked about the design, making sure there was enough space for a family but not too big so that it was unmanageable. I also planned the landscaping so we could have a lovely flower garden in the front, and a vegetable garden in the back, with a large enough lawn for children to play and for us to host outdoor parties. When finished, it was indeed our home. Every time I looked at the front porch, I could see Edward and me as the young couple toasting our new home.
The neighbourhood grew rapidly after that. None of the houses that went up had the same charm. I may be biased, but I think my aesthetic judgements are pretty accurate.
I watched Marcus and Donna for a few more moments but felt my energy continuing to drain, so I rested for a bit and check their progress later.
When I returned, I wandered to the front porch, where I spied a lovely cat exploring the furniture. The cat seemed to notice me but was unconcerned by my presence. I’ve always adored cats. They are such content creatures. Please don’t misunderstand me; I know they can be temperamental, but there is something about their ability to convey complete and utter bliss while sleeping on a windowsill in the sun that I always envied. I could never find that kind of peace. I always needed to be watching something. When Edward died, and after I got over my illness, I made sure I could keep my watchful eyes sharp.
Edward died just outside our home. He went out one morning to get our morning paper. The delivery boy had a habit of throwing our paper into the street rather than the driveway. Edward walked into the street to fetch it. I don’t think he heard the car coming because his hearing was poor. The car’s driver had been drinking all night and got lost in our neighbourhood. I didn’t see the vehicle hit Edward because I wasn’t watching.
I started coughing about a week after Edward died. At first, it was just annoying, but it grew more painful and then I started coughing little bits of blood. Edward and I never had children, so there wasn’t anyone around to take care of me with Edward gone. I was lucky that our next door neighbours, the Robertsons, heard me coughing and called my sister, who immediately came over. My sister, Catherine, was a medical doctor, which was very lucky for me because I didn’t make enough money as a teacher to get decent medical insurance. Catherine confined me to bed and had one of her daughters stay with me. Her sons helped take care of the rest of the house while I was in bed, which seemed like an eternity, to be completely honest with you.
One day, the coughing stopped. I felt weaker than before I got sick, but at least I could breathe without coughing. There were still a few moments when I’d get a tickle in my throat and cough, but not nearly as bad as it was before. My nephews continued to do maintenance around the house, for which I was eternally grateful.
The boys often joked when they saw a curtain moving or dust blowing around, “Oh, hello there, Auntie Anna!”
Sometimes they would say it when I was there and coughed, and sometimes they would say it when I wasn’t there.
That’s when I realized I had died. They thought the movements around the house were from the ghost of their aunt — me.
Of course, the boys couldn’t be around the house all the time, so I had to stay around and keep watch. So that’s why I am here.
I walked over to the cat, who had curled up on the loveseat. The tag around her collar said, “Mitzy” I gently scratched Mitzy on the head. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Mitzy,” Donna called from inside my house. The cat leapt off the loveseat and ran to her owner’s voice, anticipating food, most likely.
When I died, Catherine and her husband, Jack, maintained the house. Edward and I didn’t make a will, but I would have left the house to her, anyway. It was in an excellent location on the edge of town and close to the ski hills. I know my nephews appreciated that because they could use the house as a place to stay when they came up for a ski weekend.
Between their visits, I tried to keep myself busy. I started testing what I could do in the house. When I felt energetic, I could move some objects around, like books and dishes, and open and close doors. I had some success with plants, which made me thrilled because I could continue to tend to my gardens. Animals were more diffcult. There was a deer once in my garden eating some flowers. I tried to shoo it away from a distance, but it just stared at me. I raised my arms to make myself look bigger but drifted off the ground and into a tree, which surprised the Momma bird sitting next to her nest.
I don’t really understand physics beyond what I used to teach in high school, but I’d heard about that quantum stuff and thought maybe I was in a quantum state or something. It all seemed far too uncertain. I surmised that something about how my atoms were re-organized made it hard for me to interact with the physical world unless I had the right energy.
I left a note for my nephews to put a fence around the flower bed to keep the deer out. They liked to see the notes I left over the place. It never seemed to bother them. Sometimes the messages were about fixing a creaky door, and other times I complimented them on how handsome they had become. I wrote one saying that I thought the youngest was getting a little fat, but decided that wasn’t my place to comment.
Writing messages took a lot of energy. I could only manage one or two notes before I felt myself fade. It was quite something to hold the pen.
Time was something else that changed. When my energy was low, I would rest and come back to see that it seemed like several months had passed, almost like Rip Van Winkle. Once, I was sure it was summer and then when I returned to freshly fallen snow. Then other times, I would fade and feel like I was asleep for eons, only to find I was returning to almost the same spot.
Edward never liked me to wear a watch because he knew my clock-watching habits. “If I get you a watch, you’re going to spend all your telling me we’re going to be late.”
I laughed because he was right.
But time passed. After a while, Catherine and Jack started coming alone for the winter ski retreats. I figured the boys had found new things to occupy their time.
One time, Catherine brought an odd TV set to the house. I was used to the nice big wood TV box we had. It looked lovely in the living room next to the fireplace.
She put one of the new ones in the study on a desk. It had a little coloured apple on it and an odd looking thing attached to it by a cable that looked like a handset for an intercom. There was also a tiny keyboard that was the same colour as the box, which made me think the TV was some new teletype machine.
When she left the room, I touched the TV and felt a little shock. When I looked closer at it, I could see electricity moving along little wires.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that size also seemed to be something that changed for me. I could make myself as small as a pea or even smaller! I could get into places the no one had any business going—such fun!
Which included this new TV. I had seen inside a TV when I tried to fix the one in the wooden box for Edward, who was a wonderful man, but not very handy. Anyway, the insides of this TV looked quite different. Instead of getting them over the airwaves, it already had all the messages inside. Imagine that! Everything was already inside!
I found out I could play with these messages. I didn’t understand the language. It seemed terse, but I could make it say ‘Hello’ easily. I was in there once when Catherine was typing something, and I played a bit and kept making the TV say ‘Hello’. She knew it was me playing around because she shook her head and sighed, “Anna”.
A few weeks later, Catherine installed a telephone connector to the TV. This made it possible to connect to something she called the ‘Internet’.
Catherine would type in a message, and a few moments later, a reply would come back. I learned she was sending messages to her oldest boy, Trevor, who was somewhere in Europe in school.
How wonderful! I thought maybe I could do the same thing, but whenever I went inside to try, I didn’t know where the message was supposed to go. I tried to push it to the telephone line, but the connection was dark.
I left a message on the TV screen for Catherine. ‘Tell Trevor his Auntie Anna is very proud.’
Oh, I am so sorry. I’m getting into too much detail, and I can see you’re getting bored. Let me jump ahead.
Snows came and went. Trevor started coming back to the house in the winter, bringing his new wife he met during his studies. Her name was Irene. They brought a new TV to the house. I learned these TVs were really mechanical computers, although as they became more sophisticated, you could watch television shows on them. I know I said ‘mechanical computers’ because back in my day, the women who did all the calculations during the War were the real computers.
These new computers were much easier for me to use. I could go inside and look at the content and even learn what was happening everywhere through this connection called the world-wide web. You could even do shopping on the web, though I wasn’t sure how to pay for anything.
Catherine and Jack stopped coming to the house. I found out in a message on the computer from Jack that Catherine had gotten very sick and needed to be under constant monitoring by a doctor. I frantically tried to find a way to contact my sister, feeling my energy waning at the news, but could only manage a cryptic note.
“Please be okay.”
Catherine died two weeks later. I hoped she would join me, but she found another path, I suppose.
Trevor and Irene still came during ski season. Once, he brought new friends with him. He showed them around the house, and then I heard him say, “I think you’ll like that it’s so close to the ski hill, and with all the new restaurants down the road, it is perfect for your vacation.”
I didn’t completely understand what was happening until Trevor left, and these new people started hauling in luggage.
They brought in a dog, who tracked mud all over my floor. They dropped their ski gear on my sofa! What atrocious manners! I couldn’t believe Trevor would invite such people into my home!
Over the years, I had to learn to control my temper. Being angry takes up a lot of energy, and I found out that I would start fading if I didn’t focus my anger.
“Why don’t you check out the kitchen while I jump in the shower,” the man started walking up the stairs, “I’ll get myself all clean so we can have a little fun before dinner,” his smile was disturbing.
The man jumped out of his clothes and into the shower. I waited a few minutes before I cut off the hot water flow. He let out a roar, frantically turning the faucet. I let the hot water come back, and he screamed again as the scalding water came through.
Focusing your anger is important. No use keeping it all inside.
His wife ran into the bathroom. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, the water is a bit messed up. Too cold and then too hot. I thought they modernized this house?”
The heat from the shower fogged the mirror, so I used the opportunity to write on the mirror,
“THE HOUSE IS JUST FINE, THANK YOU.
“BUT YOU ARE NOT.
“LEAVE MY HOME NOW.”
They stared at the mirror for several moments. His wife turned to him and whispered, “You know, that little inn we saw driving here may still have vacancies.”
I did a little more poking on the internet and found out that my house was listed by some sort of vacation rental company that had something to do with air and bees. This was very disturbing because now there would be processions of strangers coming to my home. I couldn’t imagine the energy I would need to watch over all of them.
Fortunately, I still had access to Trevor’s messages and changed the listing for my home. By changing the decimal point a few places, I dramatically cut down the number of prospective renters. I think only one actually sent a message asking whether the one hundred and fifty thousand dollar a day rental fee included laundry service.
It wasn’t long after this that I found out Trevor decided to sell my home. I could stop most of the would-be buyers. I used the internet to send messages to them that their offers were rejected or that someone else beat them to it.
Donna and Marcus were more of a challenge. They dealt only in paper. I found this charming but also frustrating.
When they moved in, they started talking about fixing things. Sure, the place needed some cleaning, but I was certain that fixing wasn’t needed.
Marcus started by saying the bathroom needed to have the plumbing updated. I thought this might be a perfect chance to do the same water trick, but I couldn’t understand the new plumbing they installed with the soft yellow tubes and little heaters.
And they continued to confuse me. One day, I woke up to find my basement completely renovated, with all sorts of odd technology that would take me some time to learn. I was furious because this was where I stored my root vegetables and canned goods for the winter. Not that I needed them anymore, but still.
And then they fixed the old appliances in the kitchen to make them work again. My old green refrigerator actually looked, well, happy! The cast-iron stove looked stronger after they attached a different kind of fuel line. On the one hand, they seemed like they tried to keep the feel of the old place, but on the other, they added new gadgets that I found a bit frightening. One was called a “carbon monoxide detector” that scared the bejesus out of me and Mitzy. I avoided that room for a least a week after I accidentally triggered it.
I was getting anxious that they would stay forever, so tried a new tactic. I would show that this was my home, and put a lovely old photo of Edward and I on the porch on the fireplace mantel. Donna saw it and asked Marcus where he bought it.
“I got it when I bought the flowers,” he thought she was referring to the new vase that was on the mantle.
“It’s nice! I think it adds great character to the house,” Donna moved the photo closer to the vase.
The picture certainly added character! My character, to be exact.
Marcus, of course, didn’t notice the photo next to the vase. Men can be quite oblivious sometimes.
My last idea was to try something outrageous. I put a photo inside a closet door where Donna kept her clothes. It was a photo of me. It was black and white. Edward said I looked sad in it, but I always felt I looked like I was thinking about something important. At any rate, my expression was certainly stern, which I thought was perfect.
Donna opened the door and saw the photo. I also posted my obituary below it.
“Anna Warta was the wife of Edward Warta, who passed two months earlier. Anna had no children, but is survived by her sister…”
I wrote: “THIS IS MY HOME,” with a piece of chalk above the photo.
Donna’s reaction wasn’t quite what I expected. She glanced at the photo and read the obituary, and touched the chalk words. She looked around the room, then back at the photo.
She spoke steadily, “Marcus, can you come up here, please?”.
“What’s up?” he appeared in the doorway.
Donna pointed at my photo. Marcus looked closely at it and turned to back to Donna with a big smile on his face.
“I guess she’s really here?” he said.
“Hello, Anna,” Donna looked around the room.
I didn’t know what to do.
Then, I grabbed the chalk and wrote: ‘Hello’ on the door.
Their eyes marvelled at the dancing chalk in the air. Their smiles grew brighter.
“I’m sorry if we’ve made you angry, Anna,” Donna looked directly at my photo, which felt odd because I was standing behind her.
“We love your home and want to make sure we keep it in the same shape as it was when we would come over and play in your yard with the other children.”
I looked more closely at Donna and realized that I knew her.
Edward and I set up a summer daycare program to help parents who needed to work while their children were out of school.
Donna was one of the children in the program! Her family was in the town centre, but her parents liked to bring her to us so she could be closer to nature.
“I don’t know if you remember us,” Donna looked around the room. It was a bit unsettling to see her speaking to the ceiling and lamps, “Marcus and I actually met at your summer camp, and we’ve been together ever since.”
For the next several months, I tried to stay out of their way as they continued to work on my house. I got to know Mitzy very well, and we would watch Marcus working in the basement, which he turned into a den of sorts. Donna set up a workshop at the back of the basement, next to the exit to the yard. Seems that Donna and Marcus were a good team; they took turns cutting wood and together built fencing around the garden to keep the animals away.
When they would go to work during the week, I would take the time to learn the new technology they installed. One of the most puzzling things was an appliance they called ‘Alexa’. I know that for certain because when they spoke its name, it responded! I thought at first it was just another fancy communications device, and Alexa was a person with an odd vocal inflection on the other end. Then, after spending a few hours inside the appliance, I realized the appliance was Alexa. You can’t imagine how embarrassed I felt, poking around inside her. I’m glad no one saw me apologizing to Alexa for roaming around her insides.
The first sign of problems with my new guests came when Donna ran into the house in tears.
Marcus wasn’t with her. She darted into the kitchen, stopping out the window, trying to steady her breathing. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The window was fogging up in front of her face.
I wrote, “Donna?” on the glass.
Donna lifted her head back and took a deep breath. “Anna? Oh, Anna, I got some horrible news today.”
I wanted to touch her so she could feel that I was real. I know I was a ghost, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel.
She stepped back from the window and went to the kitchen table, “This is great! Here I am, talking to a ghost about my problems. No wonder everything is so messed up!”
I reached across the table and touched her hand.
I felt her.
Donna pulled her hand back. “Anna? Was that you?”
I gently took her hand and cupped it with my other.
“I can’t have children, Anna,” Donna sobbed, “I had another test, and the doctor said it was impossible.”
I wanted to hug her, knowing that she felt the same pain that I did when I realized I, too could not be a mother.
Maybe that’s why I could touch her at that moment — because of shared pain.
I heard Marcus come in the front door, “Donna? Donna? What happened at the doctor’s? Why did you leave before I got there?”
He walked into the kitchen, seeing his wife at the table, knew the answer to his question,and did the only thing he could do. He walked to her and held her closely. I stood back, letting them have their time.
The house was quiet for the next several weeks. Donna spoke little, and Marcus tried his best to be supportive, giving her the space she needed.
One morning, I took the chalk and wrote inside her closet door, “No children for me too”
Donna gasped when she read it. “Anna! That’s why you were so good at the summer camp. All the love that you couldn’t share with your own child, you gave to us!”
That somehow seemed to help.
“Maybe I can do the same!” she spoke, running out of the bedroom to the main floor.
“Marcus! I have an idea!” she ran into the kitchen, but he wasn’t there.
She ran to the basement to find Marcus staring at the TV screen of his mechanical computer.
“Marcus, what is it?”
He turned to her. His eyes were red. “My contract. They cancelled my contract. The government stopped the program, Donna. I am out of work!”
Energy is an odd creature. As a ghost, energy was vital for me to exist, and I needed to replenish it when I could. But energy also has moods, and as a ghost, I could apparently see these moods. When Donna got her news, the energy mood was gray. Like the relentless gray fog that comes in the Fall before the snow.
The news that Marcus received changed this mood to black. A hollow, enveloping black. I watched them, surrounded by the blackness, and felt helpless.
If they were going to survive, they probably needed to leave. The fear they would leave me made the black more formidable.
They confirmed my fear when I saw the message on Marcus’s telephone from “Peter Tanti, Real Estate”.
Mr. Tanti came into the house, and this was someone I had to watch carefully. I’ve known a lot of salespeople in my time, and there are some that you know can’t be trusted. I suppose this isn’t unique to real estate sales.
“Marcus, let me tell you,” Mr. Tanti put his hand on Marcus’s shoulder, “this old house of yours will pull in a pretty penny on the market.
“With the expanding ski hills and the new wave of investors coming in, I am confident I can sell this place instantly. The market for vacation homes is hot!”
How awful! I thought of the horrible people Trevor brought in who wore shoes in my house, threw their dirty gear on my sofa, and even walked through my flower bed! This would simply not do.
Mr. Tanti said he would send his team to stage the home the next day. I vowed I would try my best to prevent that.
Marcus had installed an alarm system, which was quite useful when the staging team tried to come in, and I triggered the alarm. The only people in the house were the team and Mr. Tanti when the police arrived. It took some time for Mr. Tanti to convince the police that there were not there to steal the furniture.
Despite my tenacity, the staging team got some things set up. They put in modern appliances and absolutely garish dining room furniture that looked like it was from a spaceship. I thought this staging business was supposed to make the house more attractive!
The first prospective buyer Mr. Tanti brought was an older woman who was probably close to my age when I got sick. However, she had very odd taste in clothing and spoke far too quickly.
“Are you sure this house is in good shape?” she spit the words out, “The last place you sold me needed to be gutted.”
“I can assure you, Glenda, your clients can move in as soon as they sign the papers. The place is immaculate,” Mr. Tanti put on a Cheshire Cat smile.
I learned a neat trick with the refrigerator, that if I touched the wires in the door just right, it would spit out ice in vast quantities. I did this trick for Glenda, who stumbled, trying to avoid the avalanche of ice cubes.
Mr. Tanti grimaced, “Well, some appliances may need to be replaced.”
I then set off the carbon monoxide alarm. I hated the noise, but it got her attention. I also turned off all the electricity for a few moments and then turned it back on, adding a bit of drama.
“Peter, what is this?” Glenda turned, “this place is a disaster.”
Glenda left my home with the same pageantry that she entered with.
Mr. Tanti brought two more clients to see the place. The first was easy to dissuade because he hated the smell of the house. I may have had something to do with that.
The second was a family with four vulgar children who insisted on running throughout the house without their parents. They ran through Marcus’s workspace in the basement, through Donna’s workshop into the backyard. I figured they needed to cool down, so I locked the door to the basement and turned on the outside sprinklers and set off the home alarm. The police showed up to find the children’s parents arguing with Mr. Tanti.
“This is getting to be a habit, Mr. Tanti,” one officer said.
That evening, my energy felt remarkably high. Mitzy watched me move into the kitchen from her window perch.
Donna and Marcus were at the kitchen table.
“Peter said he can’t sell the place,” she sighed. “every time he brings someone here, something in this house goes on the fritz.
“I mean, all the work we did in this place, how is it possible we missed so much?”
Marcus touched her shoulder, “Maybe Anna doesn’t want us to sell the place.”
Sometimes men are helpful.
Donna looked astonished.
“Anna?” she looked around the kitchen, “Are you here?
“Is that true? What are you doing?
“I thought you wanted us to leave?”
There was nothing close that I could write on, so I tried to use Alexa as a medium for me. I still hadn’t quite mastered it yet; the translations of my phrases didn’t always come out correctly.
I tried anyway.
“I slay with you,” came out of Alexa.
Oops, that wasn’t helpful.
“I play you”
Maybe a little better, but not quite.
“I stay you”
“I want you stay”
“I want you to stay”
Donna looked at Alexa, the appliance, and at Marcus, “Anna, we can’t afford to stay. I don’t make enough as a part-time teacher, and Marcus has no contract.”
“I help”
“I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Anna,” Marcus spoke up, “but you’re a ghost. How can you help?”
“Make the memories…”
I was getting tired.
“Make the memories that brought you…
Back here”
It took Donna a few moments to understand what I meant.
“That’s a fantastic idea, Anna!”
“I don’t get it,” Marcus scratched his head.
Donna turned to him, “Where did we meet, you silly man?”
Donna and Marcus did a fabulous job turning my home into a daycare. Donna’s education skills helped to form a superb curriculum, merging the modern wizardry of technology for teaching with unstructured play that is so important for growth. The parents in town felt comfortable having their children go through kindergarten with her. Marcus proved to be amazingly adept as the entertainer for the children and was equally skilled at managing the business. Within a few months, they were projecting more than enough funds to cover the house payments, their living costs, and have enough left over to hire extra staff.
I sat next to Mitzy on her sunbathed windowsill. We watched the children playing in my backyard, chasing one another and then chasing Marcus, who wore an odd-looking dog suit. Donna was absolutely luminous, spinning with children on the tire swing hanging from my old tree.
The joy in my house was back, radiant with its energy.
I scratched Mitzy’s head, and we looked into the distance, seeing my Edward walking up the lawn.
“You don’t have to watch anymore, Anna,” he reached for me.
I finally know the bliss a cat feels in the sun.
“If there’s no one to guide you when your soul embarks, I’ll follow you into the dark.”