Aerogrammes and Other Stories

Girl Marries Ghost




• • •




That year, thousands entered the lottery for only a handful of husbands. Of that handful, very few could remember what had happened after they had departed. One husband could recall only a smell: the stogie-scented leather of his father’s Lincoln. Another had been stranded in an endless bed of his ex-wife’s daffodils, and whenever he yanked a flower, two more plants unfurled in its place. Was it heaven through which they had passed, or some flavorless form of limbo? There was no one to ask, and gradually the question lost its novelty, eclipsed by the more pressing question of who among the living would land a ghost husband.

After Gina was notified over the phone that she had made it to Round Two, she filled out an online application whose seven personal essays and thirty short answers seemed a test of resolve more than anything else. She also taped the requisite Bio Video, doing the sorts of things that would set her apart from other grieving widows, like somersaulting on her backyard trampoline and baking a Kahlúa Bundt cake dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

In a more serious segment, Gina placed the camera on the kitchen counter and laid out the basics of her life. Her husband had died in a bicycling accident last year. She was a stylist at Swift Clips, but without Jeremy’s salary, she was having trouble meeting her mortgage payments. The bank guy had pitied her for a limited time and cut down her payments, but now, with the imminent rockslide of back taxes and late fees, her house, their house, would soon slip through her fingers.

Gina had to rewind and re-record the segment several times because she couldn’t leak a single tear. Never when she needed it. At one point she got up, diced an onion, and when her eyes were properly bleary, she taped the winning take.

Three months later, the matchmaker came to Gina’s house for what was termed the Final Round. Gina had expected a sage old woman with bad teeth and a soothing smile. The matchmaker’s name was Barb Spindel. She wore her hair in a tight black bob and hugged her clipboard to her chest, as if to prevent anything from mussing her pin-striped blazer. She inspected a cracked photo frame, toed the rough shag carpet. She tilted her head at the coffee table, which was just a door resting on cinder blocks.

“Jeremy found it on the side of a street,” Gina said with too much enthusiasm, tugging on the hem of her skirt. “Just laying on the grass. It was a real bitch, lugging it home.”

Gina stopped. Barb was staring at her, eyebrows raised in anticipation of a point.

“I’m sorry,” Gina said. “I’m nervous. I’ve read about ghost husbands, but I’ve never actually met one in person.”

“That’s what you think,” Barb said. She lowered herself into a papasan chair, which creaked from her weight. With a blackberry fingernail, she tapped the bamboo frame.

“Can I ask a weird question?” Gina said.

“Please.”

“Am I correct in assuming that none of these guys was ever a murderer? Because I don’t think I’d connect very well with a murderer.” From her pocket, Gina removed a folded piece of paper from which she read out other unsavories: suicides, addicts, wackjobs, felons. “Basically, I’m looking for someone without a whole lot of baggage.”

“Gina, they all come with baggage. Lucky for you, this guy also comes with a very attractive dowry.”

Barb told her about Hank Tolliver, born in 1935, expired in 1990. In life, Hank had been an orthopedic surgeon who died from a pulmonary embolism at age fifty-five. He had no children and one ex-wife: Helen.

Gina recognized his name from the Tolliver House, a country mansion of alabaster brick and gray shingle, with a tower that shot straight into the sky. As a little girl, when Gina’s school bus passed the Tolliver House, she would press her nose against the window and imagine herself trapped in its fairy-tale tower, tall enough to skewer a cloud. “Hank has no heirs,” Barb said in cajoling tones. “And he was smart enough to hire people to manage the house for ten years, in case he was to return. So if you two hit it off, the Tolliver House goes to you. If not …” Barb shrugged. “It goes to his second cousin Gardner, at the end of that ten-year period.”

Gina stared at Hank’s photo for a long time, trying to imagine herself beside such a beautiful man, in such a beautiful house. His hair was lush and combed back, his forehead broad, a faint raking of wrinkles at the corner of each eye. (“He looks sad,” said Gina. “Oh, that’s just his face,” said Barb.) Gina sensed a kinship in his handsome, wounded gloom.

According to the terms of the contract, Hank would come home most evenings, like a normal husband, but the days would be hers alone. He would never expect her to have dinner waiting; ghosts did not eat. He would never want her to plump up with his child and set her life aside; ghosts did not engage in intercourse. Theirs would be an open marriage. “So you can tend to your carnal needs whenever necessary,” Barb assured her. Gina gave a nervous laugh; Barb did not.

“Good. Great. Only …” Gina hesitated. “What if it doesn’t work out?”

Barb paused to administer a disapproving look. “Financially, divorce is an unwise decision. Both parties lose everything.” She explained how Gina would forfeit all the assets she had gained through the marriage, how Gina’s ex would have to depart the world all over again. “Thus far, I’ve had an excellent track record, so I prefer to work with people who share my outlook on the bonds of marriage.”

Gina nodded in solemn agreement.

Prior to their first date, Gina found on her doorstep a bowl of blushing peonies, with a note that said: Looking forward! HT. Somehow he had learned of her affection for peonies. As the days went by, her living room brimmed with a lush, leafy smell.

On a cloudless Saturday, she met Hank at the Tolliver House. When he opened the door, she stuttered her hello; he was so handsome. “Gina,” he said, stepping aside to let her in, smiling as if he’d known her forever.

Hank toured her through every room. She opened the mottled burl doors of an antique Austrian armoire and leaned into the sweet stale smell. She cooled her palms against the marbled Jacuzzi across from a dressing table, where fruit-scented bath balls sat in a basket like a clutch of colored eggs.

“You don’t have to show me everything,” she said. “If it bores you.”

“Bored?” He stroked the faded brass hinges on the bedroom door, each hinge engraved with a delicate fleur-de-lis. “I don’t think I can get bored, not this time around. Everything feels new.”

Gina found it hard not to stare at him. In a matter of minutes, he had capsized all her movie-fed notions of ghosts—the tattered clothes, the corroding flesh, the tortured soul. He looked polished, debonair, in loose slacks belted high around the waist, a polo shirt, and wingtip shoes that made no sound.

Finally he took her up the winding staircase of the alabaster tower. One great round window opened onto a park, where golf carts went whizzing across the green dips and swells, around the weeping willows, shivering their tresses. Hank had put on a Patsy Cline record, and Patsy’s longing voice seemed to push faintly through the floor: Oh, the wayward wind is a restless wind / A restless wind that yearns to wander …

“Barb said you were married once,” he said.

“I was. His name was Jeremy.” She rushed through the rest. “He was riding his bicycle. There was a car. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.”

Grimacing, Hank removed a handkerchief from his pocket. For an alarming moment, Gina thought he was going to weep. Instead, he sneezed.

“Sorry,” he said, after honking into his handkerchief. “About your husband.”

She appreciated his insensitivity, how he didn’t follow up with an oozy apology. Death was just another detail.

“Jeremy used handkerchiefs, too,” she said, so quietly that Hank seemed not to have heard. He was looking down at the sidewalk, where a woman was tugging at her Labrador’s leash. The dog was whimpering and wagging its tail. The woman flung a suspicious look up at Hank before scooping the dog into her arms and hurrying away.

Hank emptied a sigh at the glass. “People,” he muttered.

“Do you know Jeremy? That was my husband’s name. Jeremy.”

Gina was about to add that Jeremy’s eyes were blue at certain times and gray at others, but Hank said gently, “It doesn’t work that way.”

Gina nodded at her shoes, feeling stupid.

Gina’s parents refused to travel up from Florida for the wedding. “You want to marry a ghost, then marry a ghost,” her mother said over the phone. “Call me when you find your head.”

“Mom, did you even read the article I sent you?”

Her mother gave an unconvincing grunt.

It was the same article that had first piqued Gina’s interest in ghost marriage, and she’d even highlighted certain lines for her mother’s edification: “In nineteenth-century China, it was perfectly acceptable for a young woman to marry a dead man, an arrangement called a ‘ghost marriage,’ which enabled families to consolidate their wealth and power and allowed enterprising young women to pursue their ambitions without the interference of a living husband or children.” According to the article, the practice of ghost marriage was being revived in several parts of the United States. The statistics for the success of ghost marriages were quite high, and most women polled described themselves as “very satisfied” with their unions.

She sent the same article to her sister, Ami, who had manufactured an excuse so as not to attend the wedding. Apparently, she had volunteered long ago to chaperone her daughter’s third-grade field trip to Shakertown, and she just couldn’t leave the teachers hanging.

Gina supposed that Ami had a right to be annoyed. Ami’s wedding had been carefully designed by their mother, and not one decision—from the choice of groom to the choice of boutonniere—had been settled without the opinions of Gina and her mother, followed by a nod from her father.

“Yeah, I read the article,” said Ami, when Gina called. “But it’s not like all these ghost marriages work out. What about that crazy woman with the diaries?”

“Mary,” Gina said quietly. “Mary” was the sole counterexample, a woman who had fallen in love with her ghost husband “Mike.” If only I could get closer to him, she had confided in her diary. She became obsessed with the idea of touching him, and it seemed to her that if humans could touch humans, then surely ghosts could touch ghosts. She shot herself in a Kroger parking lot.

“See?” Ami said. “They don’t all have happy endings.”

“But there’s never a happy ending,” Gina said.

Ami ignored the remark. “I don’t know, Gina. I still think you could’ve held out a little longer. You never even tried Soulmates.com. Even I did Soulmates.com.”

And on and on they went in circles of accusation and defense, like strands of hair swirling a drain, like sisters.

Hank and Gina married at the courthouse with Barb as their witness, as well as Lucille, Hank’s former cleaning lady. Throughout the ceremony, Lucille stared at Hank in a dreamy daze, as if witness to a miracle. Afterward, they all stood outside the courthouse, glowing, and even Barb produced a close-lipped smile. “Thank you,” Lucille whispered in Gina’s ear, with a clenching hug. “Thank you for bringing him back to us. Call me when you need a cleaning.”

Lucille then made the mistake of trying to hug Hank. No one had told her that Hank couldn’t be hugged; one could just as easily plant a kiss on a breeze. In her attempt, Lucille lost her balance and fell forward onto the sidewalk. Hank and Gina helped her to her feet, while a shaken Lucille brushed the gravel from her knees. “He can touch,” Barb lectured, arms folded, “but he can’t be touched.”

After the wedding, Gina and Hank entered a period of sweet, cyclical domesticity. Sundays were Gina’s favorite day, when she would bake muffins or biscuits while Hank sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Though he couldn’t eat, he loved the smell of baked goods. (“The Bundt cake was my favorite part of your Bio Video,” he told her.) Whether or not her cakes and muffins turned out, Hank was happy so long as the air was laced with butter and burnt sugar.

While the batter rose in the oven, Gina listened to Hank tell of the city as he had once known it. In high school, he lived around the corner from the Hilltop Theater, in the East End of town. The Hilltop was where he took his girlfriend on dates. He also liked hanging around Benny’s Billiards, where he’d shoot pool or play cards or work the pinball machines until his mother called and had Benny send him home for dinner. There was no point in lying to Mrs. Tolliver about where he’d been; she knew by the traces of oil on his shoe soles, the same oil that Benny used to wax his floors.

Here, he laughed just like Jeremy—Hah!—a single huff that punctured her heart.

To Hank, Gina confessed her hope to someday open a sophisticated beauty parlor that would double as a bar. She had heard of such a place in New York, where a woman could sip from a martini in one hand and receive a manicure on the other. Why not in Louisville? She was sick of salons with names like Swift Clips and Mane Attraction. She envisioned a black-and-white tiled floor, counters edged in chrome. Hank loved the idea. He suggested a jukebox and maybe, on some nights, a live band. “I’ll keep an eye out for spaces to rent,” he said.

They talked all morning, until 11:00, at which point Hank gave her a brisk kiss on the cheek, put on his hat, and headed out the door.

After he left, Gina would garden, or watch TV, or try a cardio hip-hop DVD, hoping he wouldn’t come home early and catch her in action. She had quit her job at Swift Clips, but she still made occasional house calls to her oldest clients, the ones for whom driving had become a hazard. Several of the women remembered Hank Tolliver. When Gina told Mrs. Fenton about Hank and his girlfriend going to the Hilltop Theater, Mrs. Fenton laughed. “Girlfriend or girlfriends?” she said. “I don’t think he could keep track of them all, that old sly boots.”

Whatever she did during the day, Gina always made sure to be home by 8:00 sharp. At that hour, a humid coolness would sweep through the house and a vapor would creep up the mirrors. She would hurry down the stairs, tracking the scent of smoked dirt as it grew more potent, until she found Hank hanging his trench coat in the closet. He always greeted her the same way: “Hey, kid, where ya been?”

But Hank seemed preoccupied in the evenings. Sometimes they played a board game or watched a movie, but most of the time he was in bed by nine. “All that walking,” he’d say, though he never explained where he went, never asked her to join him. He simply wished her good night and retired to the guest room. In the contract, he had ceded the master bedroom to her, an arrangement she now regretted. She had never lain in a bed so big it made her lonely.

•

Over the next few days, Gina began to wake up earlier, thumping down the hall in the hopes that she would wake Hank. He seemed surprised to see her out of sweatpants, her hair up and fussy, pearl studs in her ears. Some nights she slept in rollers.

One morning, as Hank was folding up the newspaper, she asked if he might stay home tomorrow, since Ami was stopping by for lunch. Hank paused, smoothing his hand over the crease of the paper. “The sister who didn’t come to the courthouse?”

“There was that field trip,” Gina said quickly. “It might be nice for you both to get to know each other.”

“She didn’t want to know me before. Why now?”

“People change,” she said. “I’ve changed.”

“Yeah …,” he said, and looked away.

Gina stared at him, suddenly afraid of what he might say next. “Never mind. Forget it.”

She got up from the table but was stayed by a subtle sensation across her palm. This was what it felt like when Hank took her hand, not the blunt force of human touch but something delicate, like a soft cloth wrapped around her skin.

“The contract said mornings and evenings, Gina. I can’t be here whenever you want me to be.”

She shook his hand off. “Where do you go all day?”

Abruptly, he rose from the table and said he had to get going. She felt a kiss glance off her cheek.

Watching him head for the door, she blurted, “I looked in the guest room last night. You weren’t there.”

Hank stopped. He turned halfway, his brow creased. “That’s allowed. Check the contract.”

He continued out the door, his peaty fragrance dissolving from the room.

•

Later that night, unable to sleep, Gina crept up the stairs to the guest room. The door was closed, a faint slip of light beneath it. She tapped her fingernail against the door. “Come in,” he said.

Hank was sitting up in a bed so high, it required a wooden step stool to climb aboard. He wore red plaid pajamas. The bedside lamp brightened the side of his face and the cover of the book he was reading: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Hank lowered his glasses. “Hello, warden.”

He watched her walk to the other side of the bed and climb on top of the covers.

“Gina—”

“I tried Ambien, I tried counting sheep. Nothing works.” She peeled back the comforter and wiggled her way in until she was laying on her back, the sheets pulled up to her chin. She closed her eyes. When Hank began to protest, she whispered, “Just five minutes.”

She kept her eyes closed. After a moment’s pause, she heard the book thump shut and the click of the lamplight. She felt him settle noiselessly into bed. He didn’t move.

“Why did you and Helen divorce?” she asked.

Hank gave a long, bored sigh. “I fooled around on her. More than once.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Nope.”

“And you don’t want to know?”

Hank rubbed his eyes. “Come on, Gina. We shouldn’t talk about that stuff. You read the Primer.”

Gina had skimmed it. A Primer to Interlife Relationships. She had found its tone condescendingly bright. Too much looking back will lead to a nasty case of whiplash. Leave past relationships in the past.

In a small voice, Gina asked if he ever missed Helen.

Hank flung off the covers and hopped out of bed. “It might be the mattress that’s keeping you up,” he said. “Sleep here tonight. See if you like this one better.”

Tucking his book under his arm, he left.

The next day, Ami came over for brunch. Gina toured her around the garden and pointed out the tomatoes that had just begun to plump. She liked them green and taut, lightly fuzzed in down, like newborns. Ami kept wrapping her sweater tighter and asking, “Is he here? Can he see us?”

Gina pinched a tomato from the vine and moved on, pretending not to hear. Ami and her family lived in a grand colonial house with a hot tub whose novelty had worn off among the kids, leaving her to dutifully boil alone once a week. Gina suspected that Ami was jealous, now that hers was no longer the larger house.

“All right, fine, I’m sorry,” Ami said. “It’s not that I’m against you marrying a ghost, in theory. I just don’t know anybody who’s done that. It’s a generational thing. Maybe in fifty years our kids will look back and think we were just a bunch of uptight a*sholes.”

“If we make it that far.”

“Just tell me you have a plan. If something goes wrong.”

It wasn’t the first time Ami had raised that concern. Normally Gina would have dismissed her sister, assured her that everything would be fine. But the night before had left Gina with questions that took root in the fertile dark, and by morning had flourished into the inevitable: Hank was having an affair with Helen. Two weeks ago, this would have meant much less to Gina. But lately she’d found herself dwelling on him when he wasn’t around, thinking ahead to what they might discuss the next day. She was frustrated by his reticence in the evenings, when he returned to her slightly sad, and yet somehow fortified.

“I could divorce him,” Gina said. An image came to her, of Hank tracing his finger over the fleur-de-lis hinge. “But no, I couldn’t do that to him.”

“Why?” Ami’s eyes widened with more wonder than worry. “What would happen to Hank?”

“He’d go back there. Wherever he came from.” Gina wrenched a handful of sinewy weeds from the earth, wrung the dirt from their roots. “And I’d lose everything—the money, the house, the cars.”

“You could move in with me. Till you get your sea legs.”

“My legs are fine right here, Ami. This is my home.”

Ami bit her lip without reply. She drew a hand through Gina’s hair and twisted a lock around her finger like a vine. “Is that why you did this, Gina? For the house?”

“And someone to play Scrabble with.”

Ami released a curl, rested her hand on Gina’s shoulder. “No one could beat Jeremy at Scrabble.”

“No one but me.”

After Ami left, Gina went snooping around the house. Not snooping, she told herself, just a form of spousal tourism, harmless to the delicate ecosystem of their marriage.

But Hank wasn’t making it easy. He had eradicated the house of nearly every portrait and photo frame, an absence she had never noticed before. The Primer had talked a lot about making new memories, but completely razing the old seemed extreme.

She turned to her laptop and Googled “Helen Tolliver.” There was only one Helen Tolliver (now Helen Tolliver Dade) who was originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She was featured in The Springfield Gazette for earning blue ribbons at the Third Annual Pie Festival, where her mocha pecan won the Nut category and Amateur Best in Show. Her new husband, George, remarked: “I’d eat that pie off the floor, it’s so good.” But the article showed only pictures of pies, not people.

Gina climbed the spiral staircase up to the tower, where Hank had brought her on their first date. Back then she had noticed the cardboard boxes and crates stacked up against one wall, but only now did she choose to open them one by one. She rooted through the trophies, diplomas, Boy Scout badges, a plastic rhinoceros, a framed certificate from the Rotary Club of Louisville, and a 1963 Playboy sheathed in plastic featuring “The Nudest Jayne Mansfield.” At last she came across a leather photo album with Our Wedding embossed in gold on the cover. She opened it.

Helen. Helen was beautiful. She wore a boat-neck dress with elbow-length gloves and lofty hair that lengthened her neck. In nearly every picture Hank was glancing her way and laughing, as if he had just discovered a woman whose sense of humor outdid his own. The reception looked like a Derby party—bourbon in Mason jars and mint juleps in silver cups; lavish sun hats, pale pink neckties, careless charm.

As she flipped the pages, Gina felt shame and envy sinking in her stomach like stones, as if her snooping had taken her too far, as if Helen were looking right back at her, transmitting some silent message through her innocent smile. You weren’t invited, Helen said. You want memories? Find your own.

What came to Gina was a day like any other, when she and Jeremy were in the park, lying on their backs over soft spring grass. He was reading a magazine while Gina watched the blue-brown currents of the Ohio River and its sprawling clots of driftwood, dislodged by yesterday’s rain, gliding downstream like the backs of ancient sea creatures.

She was beginning to doze off when Jeremy made a noise. “Hm,” he said, as if he were having a conversation with the magazine. With her ear on his shoulder, Gina felt his voice ripple through her, like a seismic wave. “Mm.”

She raised her head. “I can’t sleep when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“When you go, Mm, Mmmm.”

He laughed. “I didn’t even notice I was doing it. Okay, I’ll be quiet.”

She nestled herself against his chest, and he went back to reading. But now the silence felt strange. Gina raised her head again. “What are you reading?”

“Your diary,” Jeremy said, without removing his eyes from the magazine. “ ‘Dear Diary, I am the luckiest woman in the world to be married to a guy who puts up with my shushing. He’s a patient man. And he looks like a male model.’ ”

She smiled. “A male model?”

“ ‘I heart him so much.’ ”

“I have never ‘hearted’ anything.”

“ ‘I just wish I could lay around with him forever.’ ”

The grass stirred. They went back to being quiet. Gina put her ear to the cavern of Jeremy’s chest, felt the twitching of his heart beneath his secondhand soccer jersey. All those organs carrying on their precious work until one day, like that, they wouldn’t.

Out of the blue, Jeremy kissed her hair and said, “Oh, all right, I heart you, too.”

•

In the late afternoon, Gina sat in the gazebo and watched shadows lean across the grass. She swirled the melted shards of ice in her vodka tonic. Drinking alone, in the daytime, wasn’t part of her usual routine, but in an hour or so, she would confront Hank, and a glass of watered-down courage might help.

What would she say to him? That she loved him, against all the odds? Play that Patsy Cline record in the background, that tune about railroad tracks and broken hearts? Some sentiments were better left in song. She poured herself another drink.

For hours, Gina waited, glancing at the mirrors for the first breath of vapor. Hank never came. She baked a tray of fudge brownies from the box, filling the air with warmth and chocolate, while her stomach remained uneasy.

Around eight, the phone rang. She snatched it up.

It was a man whose voice was higher than Hank’s, but heavy with authority. “Yeah, hi, is this Gina Tolliver?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly clogged with fear. “Yes, I’m her.”

“Are you related to Hank Tolliver?”

“He’s my husband. What is it?”

“Can you come get him, please?” He stressed the word please, as if it were the last scrap of courtesy he had left. “He’s in my son’s tree house, and he won’t come out. He scared the crap outta my kid, I don’t know how long he’s been in there. He even pulled up the rope ladder.”

“Why?”

“Heck if I know. He keeps asking if he can stay up there for a while. He’s not hurting anybody, but he won’t come down. He said his name was Hank Tolliver, and I looked him up in the white pages. The only Tolliver is you.”

“I’m his wife,” Gina said, and then repeated herself, this time, more firmly. “I’m his wife. I’m coming.”

•

The tree house was quaint, wedged between the branches of a knobby oak. Gina stood beneath it and called up to Hank. “I just want to talk,” she said.

A dejected voice emerged from within. “Is Cro Magnon Man with you?”

“His name is Mr. Adler.” She couldn’t remember his first name though Cro Magnon seemed apt, in light of his sloping forehead and the ledgelike brow over his eyes. “This is his house.”

“It used to be Helen’s house.”

“Either way, we’re trespassing. The only reason Mr. Adler hasn’t called the cops yet is because his wife feels sorry for us.”

“I feel sorry for her, too.”

“Can you at least drop the ladder? It’s just me.”

After a few moments of silence, a rope ladder wobbled down.

Gina removed her flip-flops and clambered up the rungs. She hoisted herself belly first into the tree house, only to find Hank hunched in the corner, sitting cross-legged, his elbows on his knees. He was wearing navy socks. Exposed, they made him look like a giant, graceless boy.

Gina sat in the opposite corner and waited for Hank to speak. She noticed a stack of newspapers beside him, all comics and crosswords beneath his gray felt fedora.

“This was Helen’s house,” Hank said finally, as if they’d been arguing through the silence. “Five fifteen Burnham Heights. She moved in after we separated.” He peered through the cut-out window. Mr. Adler stood at the back door, his arms crossed in a territorial fashion.

Hank sighed, then spoke in a softer voice. “She said she didn’t want anything to do with me or my money. She wanted to start over completely. So she bought this place, got a job at the library. I used to take the long way home sometimes, just to drive past her house. To see her without her seeing me.”

Gina tore a dry leaf to pieces. “So this is where you’ve been every day? Peeping from some kid’s tree house?”

Hank lowered his gaze. Maybe it was the dimming light, but his eyes had never looked more swollen. “Here or the library.”

“Did you find her there?”

“Oh no. She probably retired a long time ago.”

“Well, she also remarried, if you want to know the truth.”

Hank bowed his head. Gina almost wished she could take back the news, but she continued, quickly, hoping to minimize the pain. “I looked her up on the Web.”

“What web?”

“I think she lives in Illinois, but who knows, she could’ve moved again. She could have grandkids. She could be dead. You have no idea!”

Hank blinked, quietly processing the news. He returned his gaze to the window, calm as the day Gina first met him. “Sometimes I think I see her in the kitchen, like before. I know it’s probably not her, but it’s a possibility. It’s better than nothing at all.” Hank looked at Gina. “I think you know the feeling.”

Gina leaned back against the wall, averting her gaze so he wouldn’t see her tearing up. She concentrated on the potpourri of dried leaf in her palm. Yes, that was a feeling she knew very well.

While Hank waited in the passenger seat of the car, Gina apologized to Mr. Adler, promising that Hank wouldn’t frequent the tree house anymore. As she drove Hank home, he stared straight ahead with the unseeing eyes of a statue, the brim of his fedora pulled down.

Gina gripped the wheel with both hands as she tunneled through the fog. The car bobbed up and down hills, swung around sickled trees, not a single taillight or streetlamp to guide the way. Here she was, crawling along with Hank beside her, and never more frightened, more alone.

At last Gina pulled into the half-circle driveway, but she didn’t turn off the car. They sat without speaking. She looked out the window at her pale, glowing house.

She remembered moving into Jeremy’s house and how it shocked her, all the noises he made. Horking into the sink, or retorting at talk radio, or belting out the chorus of a song. It drove her crazy. Once, she heard a violently loud slapping sound coming from the bathroom. She knocked. He stood there, bare-chested, baffled, lotion on his hands. “What?” he said. “I’m just lotioning.” That was the story she had wanted to tell at his funeral, but she didn’t know if anyone would find comfort in it, or how to explain why she did.

And now dread filled her chest at the thought of this silent house looming before her, and all the silent afternoons to come.

Gina told Hank of her promise to Mr. Adler, that he wouldn’t return to the tree house anymore.

“I can’t promise that,” Hank said finally.

Gina nodded. For a moment, they said nothing.

Hank placed his hand on the door handle. “Coming?”

“You go ahead,” she said.

“Scrabble?”

“Not tonight. I need some rest.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

Gina shook her head.

Hank lightly knocked his knuckles against the door. “I think I’ll put on a record.”

Their eyes met, and Gina’s stomach clenched. “I’m sorry, Hank.”

He gave a small shrug, and then: “We tried.”

She watched him enter the house.

After he closed the door, Gina continued around the driveway and idled at the curb. She looked up at the tower’s round, lit window like a second yellow moon. For an instant, she felt herself again on the front step of the Tolliver House, giddy and hopeful, about to meet Hank for the very first time. It wasn’t simply the house that had wooed her, or the cars, or the money, or even his cinematic smile. In marrying Hank, she thought she could marry herself to a realm where Jeremy still existed, even if only as the faintest echo between her ears.

Gina turned onto the street, in the direction of her sister’s house. She took a narrow, empty road. Halfway there, she was stopped at a red light when she began to weep. Move on! Ami whispered in one ear. Wait, come back, Jeremy said in the other. And though no one was around, Gina pressed both hands to her car horn for three whole seconds. She then sat, breath held, in the silence.





Acknowledgments




• • •




My heartfelt thanks to Nicole Aragi and Jordan Pavlin for their friendship and guidance. Thank you also to Christie Hauser, Leslie Levine, and the wonderful Knopf team. My friends and teachers from Columbia University put their effort and wisdom into these stories, with excellent last-minute assists by Jenny Assef, Alena Graedon, Nellie Hermann, and Karen Thompson. I am grateful to the Maru family for their open arms. Hannah Tinti, Maribeth Batcha, and Dave Daley—thank you.

I am indebted to John Macarthy, lead paralegal of Timap for Justice and section chief of Bo Town, who provided much useful expertise for “What to Do with Henry,” as did Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics.

Gama the Great and his brother Imam are historical persons, and in imagining a slice of their lives, I drew from the following sources: The Wrestler’s Body by Joseph S. Alter; Strong Men over the Years by S. Muzumdar; and “The Lion of the Punjab” by Graham Noble, from InYo: Journal of Alternative Perspectives on the Martial Arts and Sciences (May 2002).

The magazine quote in “Girl Marries Ghost” is from “Hitched” by Ariel Levy, a book review that appeared in the January 11, 2010, issue of The New Yorker.

And finally, my love and gratitude to my parents, for endless gifts; to Neena, Raj, and Christy, close readers and closest friends; and to Vivek, for entertaining this hermit with fruit, good humor, and good care.





A Note About the Author




• • •




Tania James is the author of the novel Atlas of Unknowns. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and now lives in Washington, D.C.





Aerogrammes

by Tania James

Reading Group Guide


ABOUT THIS GUIDE:

The questions below are intended for use in facilitating discussions of the stories and themes in Tania James’s marvelous story collection Aerogrammes. Set in locales as varied as London, Sierra Leone, and the American Midwest, James’s short fictions capture the yearning and dislocation of young men and women around the world. In the title story, two aging residents of a nursing home build a sustaining bond through problematic relationships with absent sons. In the heartbreaking “What to Do with Henry,” a young African orphan forges a critical relationship with a chimpanzee, who is consigned to life in captivity. In “Light & Luminous,” a gifted dance instructor succumbs to the desire to change the color of her skin. With wit, compassion, and an unerring sense of the absurd, James introduces us to a host of delicate, complicated characters who find themselves separated from their families and communities by race, pride, and grief.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Why is the book called Aerogrammes? What is the thematic implication of this title, and how does it transcend the title story? Discuss the symbolic meaning, to James, of the aerogramme.

2. On the surface, “Lion and Panther in London” tells the story of two wrestling heroes, “Gama the Great” and Imam, the “Panther of the Punjab,” who come to London to claim the world title. But on a deeper level it is also a story about the tensions between East and West, and in particular the relationship between India and Britain. Can you discuss how these themes infuse the story with tension and meaning? And how they relate to the story’s title? Look in particular at the propaganda about Gama and Imam with which James has elected to begin the story.

3. “Lion and Panther in London” ends with a paragraph that begins: “He says this so softly he could be talking to himself, if not for that one tender word, which Imam has not heard from him in years. It is as if they are eight and twelve again, and Gama has set him apart from everyone else—chotu. Imam feels himself rising to the word. Inglorious as it is, this is something for once only he can be.” How does the intimacy and emotion of this final paragraph reframe the story for the reader? How do these closing lines recast your perception of the nature of the brothers’ journey?

4. In the story “What to Do with Henry,” how can Henry’s struggle to fit in and find a sense of belonging at the zoo be read as an allegory of our human strivings?

5. What do you think of Pearl’s decision, in “What to Do with Henry,” to travel to Sierra Leone and to take responsibility for Neneh? What would you have done in this situation? Why do you suppose Pearl was prepared to adopt her husband’s illegitimate child?

6. Discuss Pearl’s thoughts when she first sees Henry. Look in particular at the paragraph on this page that begins, “As Pearl reached for the chimp, she felt a rejuvenating sense of certainty, a rectitude with no moral or rational ground.” What is the nature of her epiphany here, and why is Henry the catalyst for it?

7. What kind of analogy can be drawn between Neneh’s experiences in school and Henry’s experiences at the zoo?

8. On this page, Neneh reflects that “by rescuing [Henry], they had ruined him.” She also wonders “if Pearl had felt similarly about rescuing her.” Discuss the parallels between Neneh and Henry’s journeys. Look in particular at the passage, on this page, where Pearl tells Neneh that Henry “can’t be two things at once.”

9. How do you feel about the story’s conclusion, and the final confrontation between Henry and Neneh at the zoo? When James writes, “And though he could not talk, they were communicating in a wordless language all their own, and he was thanking her, he was telling her that he loved her, he was promising her that she was not alone,” do you believe her? Is this intended to be taken at face value, or ironically?

10. What is The Scriptological Review, and what purpose does it serve? How and why is Vijay using it to mourn his dead father?

11. Discuss the relationship, in the title story, between Hari Panicker and May Daly. Is it harmful or sustaining? How does James use their struggles with their sons—Mr. Panicker’s actual son, Sunit, and May’s fictive son, Satyanand Satyanarayana—to illuminate their personal struggles?

12. Is Mr. Panicker in denial? Is May? How did you feel about the story’s conclusion? May has misplaced her precious aerogrammes and insists that Mr. Panicker’s photograph of Sunit is a picture of her beloved Satyanand. Will May ever know the truth about her correspondence? Should she?

13. What is the significance of Minal Auntie’s trip to the beauty salon in “Light & Luminous”? Do you think James intends the name of the facial Minal Auntie receives (the “Fairness Facial”) as a pun, and, if so, what does the pun imply about skin color? Look also at Aartie’s description of Minal Auntie’s advice to her on this page—“She said your color is your color, and there’s nothing you can do about it”—and Minal Auntie’s recollection of her own intentions at the time: “It seemed, at the time, like honesty, meant to equip the girl with a tougher skin” (this page). James uses the word “skin” both literally and figuratively here. Why, and to what end?

14. How did you feel about the premise of “Girl Marries Ghost”? Did you find this story essentially comic or essentially tragic? What are the benefits of marrying a ghost?

15. Discuss James’s use of humor in the collection. Many of the book’s most heartbreaking stories are also motored by absurdity and humor. Where did you find this to be the case, and to what effect?

16. Themes of displacement and exile, of physical or emotional alienation and dislocation, reverberate throughout many of Tania James’s stories. Where do you think these predicaments are most powerfully and tellingly expressed? What do you think James is trying to tell us about the nature of the immigrant experience in America and abroad?


SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING:

Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank; Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family; Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic; Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife