Varvana

Fiction, Noelle Shoemate

I started dating Mark M in the fall—he is protective of his privacy, so I guess I must respect his wishes. I knew he came with a ghost; it was a quality I was willing to overlook since I was left at the altar on my wedding day. The candles were lit, hundreds of roses were bombing us with their scent, and organ music was piped through the church. “Pretty like a creampuff,” my daddy said. I did resemble a creampuff, squeezed between unforgiving layers of tulle and sateen. After forty-five minutes, my daddy clapped his palms together and said, “Show’s over, folks.”

I told myself that going on dates and allowing myself to be vulnerable again were things I no longer prioritized. But a little while later, going to movies alone or cooking for one began to feel like a meme, a joke. 

Listen, this is how it was: my fingers made the decision for me one day when I was enjoying a generous pour of red wine at a local bar. I created an account on a dating site called How Picky Are You?™ The concept was simple: we all have our pros and cons, and we make statistical calculations about what we will and won’t accept from a prospective partner. 

With my two Siamese cats propped on my lap, I scrolled through the major dealbreakers: ex-cons, occasional liars, missing fingers (back scratches are my thing!), poor listeners. After making hundreds of decisions, I finally stumbled upon the group called Esoterics. Admittedly, some of the folks on the site were odd. One guy posed with a falcon on his back while pretending to catch something from the heavens; another had custom grill teeth that said Kinda Badass, which bothered me because either one is a badass or isn’t. I scrolled and scrolled until I came to someone who seemingly was perfect: nice real smile, a full-time job, believed in radical honesty. I scrolled to find his admitted problem: LWAG.  

After a successful Google search, I learned that LWAG stood for living with a ghost. One blog showed a human couple seated at a dinner table set for three. The empty seat showed a highball glass with lipstick marks around the rim. Maybe it was a joke. Could ghosts drink spirits?

I clicked on the dating site’s asterisk to learn more. The ghost was his ex-wife; her name was Varvana, which sounded appropriately terrifying. While there wasn’t exactly a picture of her, there were the faintest lines—a facsimile of her shadow, as if she were blown into place. In the photo, the viewer could see him looking at the sun, with ghostly outlines of her hands around his waist. She seemed a little possessive, for a ghost. In movies, ghosts always appear to have important jobs to do: occasional hauntings, warning someone that their life is in danger. I poured myself another glass of wine, wondering how I would explain the complexities of being in a ghostly throuple. If we all took a trip, say to Florida, would the airlines require three seats? What would a plus-one invitation indicate if he already had his ex-wife? Before I could change my mind, I clicked on a button for Interested. The cursor spun around in a kaleidoscopic fashion. It stopped. The word Matched came across the screen. His name was Mark.

We agreed to meet the following Thursday at a Chinese restaurant in the East Village. All week he sent messages asking if I was sure I was OK with the ghost situation. He warned that sometimes Varvana could be “a lot.” I liked him already—there was a twinning quality to our silly jokes and references. I decided on a chaste white blouse with fitted jeans and sensible heels. Little makeup. I had never dressed for a ghost before. Maybe she would think I was a temptress if I wore my usual red lipstick? 

  During my walk, I calmed my nerves by playing a little game: naming all the friendly ghosts I was acquainted with in books versus their unfriendly counterparts. Very easily, three evil ghosts in movies rattled off my tongue: Kayako from The Grudge, the librarian in Ghostbusters, and the twin girls in The Shining. The odds were not in my favor for coming up with a list of friendly ghosts—I only thought of Casper. The door to the restaurant had intricately carved dragon heads. One of them, I was sure, winked at me. 

The hostess brought me to a booth. Even ghosts want privacy and a comfortable place to rest, I surmised. I dabbed my brow with the red cloth napkin, wanting to make the best sort of impression. 

“Hey,” said the guy who presumably was Mark. He looked different from his online pictures: he had a little mustache, a small Satan-like beard, and a loud Hawaiian shirt. Give him a chance, repeated in my mind. My grandmother had always counseled me that romantic partners were a rough idea, like blueprints. A lot could be done to change someone’s style. He leaned in to kiss my cheek; he smelled pleasantly like vanilla. His hands, I noticed, were beautiful—I was overcome with the strange urge to kiss each hairy knuckle until I saw the gold ring on his fourth finger.

He noticed me looking at the wedding band and said, “It’s been stuck for a while I’m afraid,” with a jovial laugh. 

For the first twenty minutes, everything was great. I told him about my librarian job, and he said that he wasn’t much of a reader, but the smell of books, especially the ones at the library with the laminate dustcovers, was one of his favorite scents in the world. Shocked, I told him that I felt the same way. I imagined us two weirdos after a future brunch, going into the library and smelling the books. The waitress interrupted us as we said our hellos, and Mark asked if I liked wine. I told him yes, and he ordered an impressive-sounding bottle of Italian red without looking. 

“Are you psychic?” I asked, wondering if he had taken all his first dates here and requested the booth. 

He rubbed his face and said, “Varana. It was her favorite place. Or is.”

  “Here?” I asked, pointing to the chipped tabletop, noticing the smell of old grease in the air. “Well, yeah—” 

A vaporous presence curled itself around my waist. Long damp fingertips made their way through the various layers of my abdomen, pulling apart the tissues, and settling over my ovaries. “Ow!” I said, spilling wine all over my blouse.

“Varvana, behave!” he bellowed. 

I could feel the tissues reassembling. The tugging on my organs stopped.

“Morgan, I’m so sorry. I thought she would be in a better mood, but death …. You know. Also, she’s very jealous about the chance I will get to be a parent since she never got to be a mom. We were on the path towards our IVF journey,” he said.

“How did she die?”

He slammed the menu shut, alerting me that I had overstepped my boundaries. 

I wiped away the wine stains, best as I could, and I prepared to leave. 

He begged me not to go and beamed a toothpaste-white smile in my direction. “She’s touchy about this dating thing, even though she’s dead.”

I felt ghostly fingers over my lips, pinching them shut. 

“Varvana!” he yelled. “If you don’t get your act together, there will be no piano singalong later!” He turned to me. “She’s sorry,” he pleaded. “Can we start over?” 

He admitted that Varvana was still very new to the dynamics of dating with a living woman. I played around, popping all the edamame out of their shells. After Mark paid the check, I heard her voice in my head. Slight accent, maybe French. 

Would I want to see what she looked like? I answered yes, since surprisingly I’d had a better time than I imagined. That morning I nervously checked out online forums for advice about how to get along with your boyfriend’s ghostly ex-wife. Gift-giving was listed as the most important thing because after all, the ghost was there first. Perfume was ranked as one of the most desirable of presents because each time the ghost sprayed themself, they materialized back into their body for a few moments. The scent of lilac was encouraged for all genders. 

I looked under our table for my purse. “For Varvana,” I said as I removed the lilac perfume from my bag. I wasn’t sure of the next steps. Was I supposed to call her name? Conjure her up? Simply spray the perfume in the direction she might be? As far as I knew, she could be sitting in my lap, pretending we were conjoined twins. And what if she was prettier than me? Being left at the altar had made me even more self-conscious. 

Greedily, I felt a loose tugging of my hands, someone slowly prying off each finger on the package. The ghost must have doused herself with a lot of perfume because sitting in Mark’s lap was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. If it weren’t for her vaporous, blue-tinged locks and see-through skin, she could have been on the cover of every magazine. I stared at her until she stuck her tongue out at me. 

Perfect ghost lips whispered into Mark’s ear. He looked delighted. “She thanks you from the bottom of her heart.” Sure she does, I thought.

For date number two, I decided to invite Mark over for dinner at my apartment. Varvana wouldn’t join us unless she was invited, I reasoned. All Sunday I spent chopping, sautéing, and braising large amounts of meat, trying to show the distinction between my corporeal body and hers. 

The buzzer on my door rang, and I saw Mark’s face lit up like a Christmas tree in my Ring camera. He was alone, holding a bouquet of flowers that looked white and funereal. Before I closed the door, I felt something stick in the door jam. I tried slamming the door and something bit my shoulder. Hard. I stumbled over my grandmother’s needlepointed Welcome rug—the trite greeting wasn’t meant for ghosts. 

“Last warning or it’s the car for you,” said Mark. I saw him cock his ear towards the smoky slant of her and laugh. When I prompted him to tell me what was so funny, he just said, “Women.” 

Apparently, Varvana assumed I knew she was coming to my house for dinner. On her way from the cemetery, she’d stolen someone’s grave marker flowers. “My apologies—you’re most welcome to join us,” I said, wanting to ensure the evening went as well as it could.

The ghost was the least of my problems—Mark poured himself so many glasses of red wine that his teeth were purple. He did pull the chair out for me and served us the dinner I’d made—coq au vin in my red Le Creuset Dutch oven. For dessert, he surprised me with ingredients for a soufflé. 

I had only kissed three men in my life before my ex-fiancé, and one of them didn’t really count because it was during a game of Spin the Bottle. The stakes here were high! Were my lips chapped? Would I want his Kool-Aid-colored wine teeth near mine? I looked up at Mark, panicked, but he tilted my chin towards his and gave me the sweetest kiss. The tip of my tongue touched Mark’s and a searing burn radiated through my mouth. Spitting blood, I screamed—there were blood droplets on my new blouse. Furiously, I tried slamming the door on my guest, but not before Mark asked me “to slow down.” One of Varvana’s issues was a woman kissing her husband’s tongue.  “This is still new to her. To us,” he whined.

The next morning, while I was brushing my teeth, there was a message for me scrolled in my red lipstick, in the mirror’s fog. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry… My reflection at the bottom of the mirror was prettier than I remembered. Cheeks like crushed flowers and a little smile playing across my lips, concealing my swollen goldfish tongue. When an hour later I got a text from Mark asking for another date, I considered it. The following text said, without Varvana. 

I would be going on a real date and wouldn’t have to consider the possibility of being one-upped, embarrassed, or bitten—her signature moves. 

Mark picked me up that evening after work from my house. He had mentioned that he hoped I liked convertibles. I wrapped a blue jacquard scarf around my head, my curls spilling out, old Hollywood style, and pressed my nose against the glass. I’m sure I looked like a golden retriever, too eager, too much hair, but the prospect of not seeing her made me feel like this could work. Rather than coming to the door, he laid on the horn, which caused old Mrs. Wilkin, who was walking by my apartment, to look up and shake her fist. 

Laughing, I ran out to the car where he gave me the PG kiss Varvana demanded.

“You could do anything to me now that she isn’t here,” I teased. It was the wrong thing to say because he started muttering about how if this was going to work, we had to respect Varvana’s wishes. I rolled my eyes. How was she already ruining our date? 

After twenty minutes of exclusively taking the backroads, he pulled up in front of a gorgeous Tudor house. 224 Montclair Sage Road. I memorized the address in case I needed it later. It looked abandoned and had a Secret Garden quality; the flowers and vines were suffocating the little wooden gate and the grass needed a good mow. The leaded glass windows looked lonely; I shuddered, picturing Varvana’s face watching us. 

“Breaking and entering for date number three,” I joked. 

“I need to explain things,” he said, taking a checkered picnic basket out of the trunk. Too startled to ask questions, I let him take my hand and lead me down a path to the back of the house. Orange cones and police tape spanned a space behind the back door. A staircase leading down towards a gardening shed was missing the second stair. 

“Are you some sort of weird true crime chaser?” I asked, angling my body away from his and silently calculating the shouting distance between this house and the closest neighbor’s.

Mark brought me to a chipped green bench with curlicue legs. 

“This was my house. Before,” he said. 

I looked around, noting the absolute wealth, surprised by how he was a chameleon, wearing tasteless shirts and taking me to inferior restaurants.

“Don’t be so surprised. This was Varvana’s. Family money. Real estate,” he said, sliding his thumb and pointer figure together, the universal signal for costly things. 

Unsure if he was testing me, I bit into one of the goat cheese and chive sandwiches that he had packed and asked why she would ever have wanted to step foot into that Chinese restaurant. He paused a beat and laughed, saying Varvana tried to weed out gold diggers. 

“See, she’s pretty pissed with me,” he said. “Follow me,” he said, guiding me back to the police tape. “See that step?” he said. Nervously, I looked away, afraid of what he was going to tell me, settling my gaze on a working fountain with different Greek goddesses spitting water from between their green lips. “Have you ever just procrastinated for so long that you forgot to do something?”

It was such an obvious question that I chose not to respond; he took my silence as a willingness to allow the conversation to continue. 

“Every day for months she asked me to fix the second stair, the one that’s missing. It wasn’t gone before, but it was warped. I kept yessing her, hoping she would drop it. I suggested we hire someone; God knows she—we—had money. Plenty. But it was a point of pride for her that we not become useless people.” 

I put my hand on his shoulder so that he would think it a safe space to continue. 

“Well, after two months, I had enough of it and told her that she was wrong, it was fine. To prove me wrong, she ran down the stairs, and to my horror, the stair itself collapsed, and she fell down the rest and broke her neck. I hear that sound of the bone breaking all the time.”

Mark wrapped up the rest of our picnic and I followed him to the car. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many questions I wanted to ask. But I was unable to coherently form any words. We drove back silently to my house, listening to the sound of his engine. I wondered if he interpreted my silence as disapproval. 

“Where does Varvana go when she’s not with you?” I asked. 

“The cemetery. Believe it or not, she has friends there. But lately, some of the other ghosts feel like she thinks she’s too good for them.”

The next day I had twelve new texts. The first text made me mad: Alfie, my ex-fiancé had been sending me texts, ever since I heard that he was getting married. Sometimes he signed off the text with the word shivers—what he said I did to him when I scratched his back. This one asked what the scent of my body lotion was because he was having dinner and someone smelled like me.

Next, rambling messages from Mark tried to explain yesterday, and then the texts tried to explain all the texts. Embarrassed by his clumsiness, I suggested we get together. He said to meet him where he was living now in Bernardsville, New Jersey; he would send an Uber. After an hour's drive, the car pulled up to his place. New construction. Countless shimmering windows. It wasn’t lost on me that perhaps this house was communicating his level of comfort with himself and his ghost. Crunching gravel underfoot, I walked to the front door, steadying my nerves; it was unclear if Varvana was joining. I pressed the doorbell, but it opened before I heard the chime. Damnit, I thought. Varvana was there. For the next several hours there were no more interactions or sightings. I kept waiting to see if I would say the wrong thing or if I would be accused of being too forward. 

“I have a surprise for you,” Mark said, putting a blindfold over my eyes. It smelled like lilac. I knew then that Varvana had been with us all along, waiting until the moment felt appropriate for her to materialize. Being overly trusting had gotten me into rotten situations before—not protesting when my ex-fiancé accidentally showed me his secret phone; believing him when he said the bank he worked for required all the wealth managers to have private phones for their exclusive clients. Mark guided me around so many corners that I would never find my way out.

“We’re here,” he said and asked me to tell him where I thought we were by smell alone. I took apart each molecule like a wild thing stalking someone at night. Notes of paper came through, with something else. Ink? Plastic?

“A library?” I asked, pulling off the blindfold. I clapped my hands together, delighted at the thousands of books. “I thought you didn’t read?” 

“I like to smell, remember?”

 My dream of us smelling books together was right before me.

  “Explain,” I said to him, “since you aren’t really a reader.”

“Varvana and I always thought it would be fun to run an erudite bookstore.”

Varvana, of course.

When I didn’t respond he said, “She was a poet, you know.”

He brought over a book that was yellowed around the edges, but essentially perfect. A first edition of Jane Eyre. I held the book at arm’s length, terrified that my breath could change the conditions, but he told me it was only money.

“If it works out between you and me, it could be yours. Ours.”

He leaned me against one of the glass bookshelves and started nibbling on my ear. His breath was in my hair, one of his hands pulling off my skirt.

Emboldened, I sat on top of him, until I smelled the scent of lilac and heard someone clapping, short staccato sounds. I looked behind me and saw that Varvana had materialized. Her smoky shape held up a sign that said, 2 out of 10. Mark’s eyes were closed; he didn’t notice. Having someone watch you, even if it is a ghost, ruins any technique. I continued fucking him until she yelled, “Boring!”

“Varvana go away now,” pleaded Mark. But she didn’t. She sat in front of me yawning, lustily touching herself, until Mark was no longer able to continue. Mark left to get us a glass of water and mouthed the word sorry over his shoulder. 

“You’re too inhibited and your hips are too little for your size. How will you ever get pregnant?” she said, squeezing my flesh between her hands.

“Pregnant?” I asked.

“I can show you pointers if you want?” she said, kissing me on the lips. It felt like everything and nothing all at once, the ocean’s saltiness and the slick dirt feel of maybe her plot.  “God knows you need them. Mark might be into it. Who knows? Every guy’s fantasy is to have a threesome.” She laughed, the sound of seashells breaking against the floor. 

Humiliated, I closed my eyes, but there she was again making me doubt myself, my sexuality. Apologetic for having a body. 

For the next week, I pretended that I had a headache. I said my daddy was in town. The last excuse prompted Mark to say that we should all go out to dinner. I refused. If my sweet father knew about my dabbling, as he would say, “in the dark arts,” I would be symbolically disinherited from the family.

Flowers arrived on the eighth day of no communication with a note that said, Are you ashamed of us? The next bouquet of tropical flowers said, Varvana says she is sorry. The problem had less to do with Varvana and more with how she made me feel. Compared to her, I felt less than; embarrassingly, I felt frumpy. Her blue-tinged lips, her cream complexion, the see-through hair. I was envious! I both wanted her to disassemble into permanent dust that I could sweep away with my broom, and I wanted to be her. Not dead, that was clear, but to look like her. My blood boiled with the understanding that maybe Mark’s keeping her around had less to do with Varvana’s wishes, and more to do with his obsessional fixation on her. I had played the storybook fool, again!

I decided to accept the adage: if you can’t beat them then join them. Frantically, I combed through all my old cosmetics. I painted my skin rabbit white, death white, and shimmered blue shadow across my lips, accentuating the cupid’s bow. Looking in the mirror, if I wasn’t her ghostly twin exactly, then I at least looked the type.

I agreed for him to come over that night for a glass of wine. The whole day, I pictured how he would react when he opened the door and saw me. Would he forget Varvana? The doorbell rang. Excitedly, I opened the door and said hello. Before he could respond he dropped the wine, spilling it all over my Welcome carpet.

“Are you ill?” he asked, touching my cheek. He let out an audible gasp when he saw that my sick pallor was nothing more than pancake makeup.

“Is this a joke?” he kept saying. “Are you making fun of us?” 

Varvana appeared by his side, snuggling in his arms, getting ghost snot (if that is a thing!) on his lapel. 

“I thought you wanted someone like her?” I said, flicking Varvana on the nose. She bit my finger. 

“What I wanted was someone alive,” he said, shaking his head at me.

“You need help,” said Varvana, winking at me as they turned away. 

The next morning, I could not get out of bed. My behavior had been appalling; I could see how I made a mockery of their situation, trying to be amenable to the whims of his ghost. She was insatiable with her desire to denigrate me at every turn. 

The echoes of my boots in the apartment reminded me of my aloneness. My abandonment. As a treat, I decided to spend practically nine dollars on an ethically sourced oat milk latte down the road at Perky. The sky looked bruised, leaking rain. I turned around to go back inside and grab my umbrella when I felt the presence of someone behind me. I quickened my steps. I had seen no one else on the street, not even the garbage man yet.

“I have mace,” I yelled, but then I heard laughing. It was Varvana. 

“We’re sorry,” said Mark, already holding my latte, now sodden from rain. I tried not to stare at her blue death lips. 

“We’re willing to try again,” said Mark. “We decided it’s best to try counseling. If you’re willing.” 

I tried to stifle my laughter but shook from imagining the intake with the nice but clueless therapist, trying to describe how I felt left out. Or how my boyfriend’s ghost was picking on me. Varvana misted herself with the lilac again, appearing livid, her blue lips practically glowing. “I knew she wasn’t the one,” she whined. 

Mark hushed her and turned to me. “Please,” he said, handing me the latte.

After work, I agreed to meet them at Dr. Jollkos’s office in Chelsea. She specialized in unconventional couplings, including throuples. Her website advertised that she had recently expanded her practice to accommodate people in relationships with the partner’s ghost. I had no idea what to expect.

Before I walked into the office, I fished my phone out of my purse so I could place it on silent. A new message was waiting from Alfie. 

Remember when we went to Nantucket and we saw the pod of dolphins? Below he added a selfie of him posing like a little kid in front of the water with his new wife, Rellata. The narcissist was clearly in the Caribbean. Where we had planned to honeymoon. She was not what I expected—her face a little prematurely jowly, overly made-up eyes. I wasn’t the problem, I realized. He had a 1980s inferiority complex. 

 The office looked like a spaceship. Like Mark’ house, everything was constructed from glass. No potted plants. No soft cushions. Around the perimeter of the room, there were upright chairs that reminded me of a Meeting House of the Quakers. Would I be expected to enumerate my sins and then prostrate myself on the floor?

My name was called, and the receptionist brought me to the office. Smug that I was there first, I almost tripped over Varvana.

“Watch it,” she said. I could detect a tone.

The doctor brought me over to a couch with space enough for three. Around her office, there were tubular glass structures that appeared to house pulsating jellyfish. Wacky would be the best way to describe the therapist’s style: she had oversized red glasses, an intentionally dyed silver bob and spiky heels.

Gently, she told me that she had already chatted with Mark and Varvana and wanted to hear my thoughts.  I just stared at her.

“Allow me then. Jealously can eat up a relationship,” she said. “It nibbles until there are only borders, rather than real people.” 

“It’s not really like that,” I said.

“Well, tell everyone what it is like then,” said the doctor.

“They are conspiring against me, making it impossible for me to be happy.”

I felt all six pairs of eyes on me. I wanted to scream. “I just like can’t do this with Varvana,” I said, pointing my finger at her. 

Varvana mimed pointing a gun at me.

“Do you see that behavior?” I asked. “Everything from interfering when we’re having sex, with Mark, with dinner, she’s there.”

Mark shook his head.

“What did you expect? You signed up for all three of you. You knew the risks and now you are changing the narrative.” Some impartial therapy, I thought. 

“Can I say something?” said Varvana, sweetly smiling with her cerulean lips. I wanted to scratch the blue out of them. Would there be any epidermal cells under my fingernails, any proof of her there?

Everyone waited and I exhaled. 

“I mean I’m tolerant, considering….” said Varvana.

“Considering?” I asked. 

Mark tried to speak but Varvana cut him off, crossing her arms in front of her like a little girl. I was so sick of her petulant behavior, but he ruffled the airiness of her hair, gifting her with permission to continue.

She narrowed her eyes and said, “She’s jealous because I was giving her pointers while they had sex.”

“That’s pretty bold,” said the doctor. “How did you feel?” she said, turning her laser focus on me.

“How would you feel?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me but got up and poured us some water.  

“Varvana—I think she’s jealous because she can’t have sex anymore, so she’s trying to control me the best way she can.”

I felt my hair being pulled and my head hit the back of the Quaker-style chair. Luckily, the doctor saw that and reprimanded her with “No violence here.”

Laughter filled the room. It was in my head, in the room. On the ceiling.

“Darling, we have sex all the time.” 

I put on a sad smile, knowing that was something she couldn’t do. “Impossible,” I said, looking at Mark, waiting for him to chastise her, but his face reddened.

“Interesting,” said the doctor. She leaned forward like she was watching a movie.

“I …” Mark cut her off, shame radiating across his face.

“For research purposes, I would be so interested to know how this works,” said the doctor, practically falling out of her chair from excitement. 

“Not that it’s any of your business, but we spray a lot of lilac so that I appear more in my body than spirit form. And personal ointment doesn’t hurt either. Your skin, when you’re dead, needs just a touch more hydration.” She threw her head back showing all her teeth—I noticed why her bites hurt; the teeth all looked vampiric.

“You’ve been sleeping with us both?” I asked. 

“This must be a lot, Morgan,” the doctor said, handing me a tissue.

Varvana had a stupid smile on her face and said, “Once you go ghost…” 

“What did you need me for if you are all cozy with your dead wife and you’re having sex?”

“A baby!” said Varvana proudly. 

This moment would be when the cameras would zoom into my face on some afternoon talk show. “Mark?” I asked. 

“Time’s up,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry, but if I don’t take my car to the mechanic, it won’t fix itself. Am I right?” she said. In single file, we all left the room. I was fully out of the office, the doctor tapped me on the shoulder. “This might help,” she said, handing me a red journal. “To process! And you can share your thoughts next week.” 

The following week, I refused all of Mark’s eighty-seven texts and twelve bouquets of flowers. To shut him up I texted, See you in group. The one bright spot in fact was the journal. By the time group began, I filled up the entirety of it with my notes and rages.

Clutching the notebook to my chest, I walked into group, eyes focused on my feet. 

When the doctor asked who wanted to start the discussion off, I insisted I go first.

“I need answers. What did you mean about the baby thing?”

Varvana and Mark both looked at each other. Finally, Mark spoke. 

“Remember how I mentioned IVF? My wife dreamed of having a baby. I promised her that she could help raise my future baby for one year and then she had to leave us, respect our family.”

“Never,” I said.

A sob came out of Varvana’s mouth. “You promised this would work,” she said, pinching Mark on his ear. “It could work, you know,” she said to me. “My other ghost friend, Annika, got the chance to be a temporary ghost mom and said it made dying worthwhile.”

“So, you used me for my womb?” I said.

Disgusted, I stood up and looked at Mark, avoiding Varvana, because this wasn’t about Varvana, it never was. “You’re basically the same guy as my ex-fiancé. You just wrapped yourself up differently and had me feel sorry for you.” 

Varvana’s ghostly arms and Mark’s arms tried to prevent me from leaving the room. Both had a recitation of sorries and promises that there would be no more lies.

I elbowed them out of my way, scratching at my turtleneck for air. I couldn’t breathe.  

“Morgan, don’t leave like this, you need to process your emotions,” said the doctor. I double-checked that I had the journal in my bag. It was how I planned to understand why I kept choosing the same type of man. Let her haunt someone else.

***

I close the red book in my hands. After an hour of reading from Varvana, my memoir, I dare to squint at the crowd and count how many people have stayed for the entirety of my reading. There are more faces than I expected in the sleepy town of Kinnelon, New Jersey. My purple heels pinch my toes; sweat builds up under my arms from standing up so long—it feels like all the grief has been discharged through my pores. I take a sip of my lukewarm water.

A few people ask questions about what is next for me. A girl inquires if I have met anyone new. 

“No,” I say. “Single on purpose.” She looks at me, scrunching her face up as if she thinks I am pathetic. A guy in a red baseball cap rudely asks me what it was like to kiss a ghost and if I wish we went any further. After polite clapping, I walk toward the stack of books, readying myself to sign copies. Before I can pick up a book, a puff of air redistributes around my person. My body stops; I feel immobile, as if Varvana’s hands are responsible for the freezing sensation numbing my feet, roots curling around my thighs. A slight tugging of my hair and a cold breeze shoots through my ear canal. Cute, I think. 

“Did you miss me?” she asks. 

I push her away from me, feeling her fleeting energy running through my fingers. I open the door, enjoying the sound of the tinkling bell, relishing the wind on my face. I could enact little cruelties on her, out her to everyone who would love to see a ghost. Maybe it will improve my book sales, but I decide: I am the one who is free. It is my story, after all.

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Noelle Shoemate has taken writing classes at NYU, Gotham, Catapult and the New School. She holds a master’s degree in clinical counseling; her therapeutic background informs her writing. Her work is published in Bellingham Review, The Courtship of Winds, ellipsis… literature and art, Five on the Fifth, Night Picnic, Packingtown Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, The Thieving Magpie, and Umbrella Factory.