My wife thinks our new house is haunted. The baby, six months old, screams all night in his nursery. Nothing soothes him. She wants to move, she just won’t say it—so, one night, at dinner, I drop my fork, ask her straight out: Do you have a problem with our new house?
What? No, she says. I was talking about the baby. I said maybe it was the air ducts. Or mold.
So what do we do? Move?
Of course not, she says.
But then, randomly, the lights flicker, dim, go back up. She’s looking at her plate, but I can tell she feels her point has been made.
I roll my eyes, ask her to pass the salt.
Another week goes by, a month. We’re tired all the time. We drift from room to room, mornings, evenings, fading in and out. One of us comes around a corner too quick – the other is startled. Still, we pretend everything is normal.
Then, I come home from work one day, and she’s burning sage. At dinner, she says she was trying to get the stale air out of the house.
It sat empty a long time, she says.
I say nothing, salt my food.
Another day, I come home, there’s a man in the hall next to our bedroom, tinkering with the open electrical panel. He says nothing, doesn’t even look up. When I pass by him into our room, it’s like we don’t even occupy the same plane of existence. I lie down for a while. When I pass back by, he’s gone.
That same night, her mother brings us dinner.
My mother-in-law raised three girls, lost her first baby, a boy, to a rare genetic disease. I try to imagine how you come to terms with something like that. There’s enough to worry about with the things you can see. But all the things you can’t?
At the table, she tells us about each of the girls as babies, though we’re only half-listening. You think your baby’s fussy? You should’ve seen your little sister.
I told you I was hiring an electrician, my wife tells me, spooning polenta. I thought getting the panel balanced would help the bill.
I didn’t say anything about it, I tell her.
You made a comment. Earlier.
I don’t want to talk about this right now.
I wouldn’t worry about it, her mother says, and I drop my fork.
The baby, I mean, she continues. Crying is how they communicate. The first year, it’s all anyone’s asking: What’s wrong with the baby? What’s wrong with the baby? What’s wrong with the baby? He’s a baby. She shrugs, laughs.
But it’s so blood-curdling, my wife says.
I know. But trust me—I’ve had four.
I pick up my fork, ask my mother-in-law to pass the salt.
Here’s what my wife thinks happened. She won’t say it, but I know her mind better than I know my own. When we moved in, the house was filthy. We spent two entire weekends scrubbing counters, scraping the window sills, trying to clean the caked crud and grime, so the painters could come in. The house had been a foreclosure, standing empty for nearly nine months, but it was more than just dust and dirt—it was filth. We wondered what kind of people lived like that. All we knew about the couple who lived there before was what our real estate agent told us–they were both attorneys.
How do people let it get this far? my wife had asked, scrubbing the crust around the kitchen faucet. And professional people too.
Being lawyers you’d think they would have been able to afford a maid, I agreed. Much less their mortgage.
The little room that became our nursery had been their little boy’s room. We knew because it had been painted bright blue and there was a curtain rod with ceramic soccer balls that screwed on either end. We had the painters go over it with a deeper blue, scrubbed the curtain rod with scalding hot water and dish soap, bought a crib.
The baby was born shortly after.
My wife thinks something happened to their little boy. That’s the only reason they would let things go the way they did. Their child died—they let the cleaning go. Work too, most likely. Finally, the house got foreclosed on. Now, the ghost of their little boy haunts ours, keeping him up all night, crying.
Maybe it’s an ear infection, she says from the bathroom, brushing her teeth before bed.
That would be a reasonable explanation, I say. But for six months?
Maybe it’s the formula we’re using, she says, climbing in bed. I’ll call the pediatrician in the morning. Listen, are you sure you’re okay? You’ve seemed… unsettled, lately.
Unsettled? Me?
She turns out the lamp.
The crying from the other room finally stops, but we lie awake in the dark. She rolls over—I startle from the tug of the sheet. There’s always a logical explanation, I think. Even if their baby died, there’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s absurd. My wife gets up again, goes into the bathroom. There’s a tingling in my arm where it touches the empty space she left in bed, and it occurs to me: I’ve never been this happy in my entire life. And I can’t help it—tears well, there’s a sharp pain in my chest. I’m unable to hold it back.
The toilet flushes.
The bathroom door opens, and I’m glad it’s dark.
Babe, she says, pausing over the bed. Do you need a tissue?
I’m fine, I tell her, but she won’t let it go.
It’s the ducts in this house, she says. Clogs me up too. We should get them cleaned.
She gets back in bed. I roll over, try to sleep. But she puts her hand on my side.
Hear that? she says.
What? What is it? I sit up in bed.
Shh, she says, then: Never mind… I thought the baby was crying again.
