Page 38 of The Ghostwriter
“Do you remember the very last treasure hunt I ever made for you?”
My father and I are walking side by side through the orchard, and his question takes me by surprise because the particular hunt my father is referencing is one I remember well. I can’t imagine him wanting to remind me of it now.
“How could I forget,” I say.
“Tell me what you remember about it,” he commands.
I look over at him, to see if he’s confused, but his gaze looks sharp. Aware. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“Just tell the story, Olivia. From the beginning.”
“I remember it started on a Monday over dinner,” I say, pushing my mind back to the summer I was thirteen. “A meal Melinda no doubt ordered over the phone and picked up, leaving the take-out bags on the counter when she left for the day.” I glance over at him, to see if he’s defensive at the mention of Melinda and how he used to delegate my care to her, but he’s watching the ground in front of us as we walk. “You asked if you’d ever told me the story about how you once trapped a raccoon in an outhouse.”
I wait for him to say he’s never used an outhouse in his life, but he just nods for me to continue. “I was surprised you were bothering to eat with me at all. Most of the time I ate alone in front of the TV. Whatever Melinda decided to pick up for me, while you did god-knows-what upstairs in your office. Drank your dinner, no doubt.” We navigate past a tricky knot of roots in silence, and I continue. “But that whole week, you came downstairs to tell me these random stories.”
I remember that first night so clearly: the carbonara on my plate, the living room cast in shadows, the overhead dining room light the only one on downstairs, save for the light over the stove. At thirteen, I’d started counting the years until I could go away to college. Jack and I talked all the time about UCLA or Berkeley. Somewhere still in California, but far away from the place that made us feel like outsiders.
My father sat across from me, his chicken piccata looking congealed around the edges, lowering his voice in the way he did when he was at the beginning of a story. Did I ever tell you about the time I trapped a raccoon in an outhouse? I was twelve, and we were staying in a cabin in the woods. It had no indoor plumbing; only an outdoor shower and an outhouse about twenty yards away from the back door.
“The broad strokes were something about a fancy makeup case your mother used for the trip, while you were relegated to using a paper bag to carry your shampoo and soap in.” I glance at him to see if he’s remembering it the way I do. The way he dropped the clues of what I was to look for into the conversation. The story within a story.
“Keep going,” he says.
“You told me your mother used to keep her toiletry case in the closet under the stairs,” I tell him. “Then you picked up your fork and took another bite of chicken, watching me. It took a few seconds for me to get it. To remember that the house you grew up in didn’t have a closet under the stairs. Or a second story at all.”
Slowly, I pushed my chair away from the table. My father continued to eat, not even bothering to watch me. I moved out of the circle of light and into the dark living room, making my way toward the stairs and the short hallway next to them that led to Melinda’s office. On my right was the closet and I opened it. On the floor, directly in the center, was a toiletry bag—a soft-sided one with colorful splashes of teal and orange, arranged to look like abstract fish.
“I carried it back to the table and sat again, setting it next to me, certain you’d probably picked it up on your latest trip, a quick dash through the hotel gift shop on your way out, or more likely at the airport. Then I asked about the raccoon.”
“And what did I tell you?”
“You said that was part of the hunt, a story that contained falsehoods I’d recognize.”
I guide him to a bench in the middle of the grove, the lemon trees just starting to produce small, yellow-green fruit not yet ready to pick. “The next night it was a story about Chinese food you ate in England on a backpacking trip you took after college.”
“I never went to college,” he says.
“Exactly. That was my clue to listen closely.”
I remember how annoyed I was that he couldn’t just give me something. That there always had to be an ordeal. I always had to earn whatever it was he wanted me to have.
From the branches above us, a bird startles and flies away, dropping a feather as it leaves. We watch it float to the ground. “What did I hide for you that time?” he asks.
“A backpack. One of those hiking ones with buckles and zippered pockets cluttering the outside. School doesn’t start for another two months, I’d told you. You gulped down the rest of your wine and filled your glass again. You never know, you’d said.”
My father crosses his arms over his chest, and I say, “Are you cold? Do you want to go back?”
“I want to hear the rest of this story.”
“The last one was about a safari your publicist took. In fact, it had so much detail I was pretty sure it was true. On and on you went, describing the airport, her difficulty fitting her large suitcase onto the small plane. The way everyone—even the pilots—gathered to help her. Soft-sided suitcases are so much better, you told me.”
That night it was submarine sandwiches from our favorite place in town, the soft bread dripping with vinegar, mayonnaise, and mustard. All I wanted to do was finish my sandwich and clear out. Jack and I liked to watch Thursday night TV together while we were on the phone. Me in my room with the small set on my dresser and Jack in their basement with the big TV his dad used to watch football. We would watch Mad About You. Then Wings and Seinfeld .
“That time it was a new suitcase that you hid in the trunk of your car. I heaved it out and rolled it up the driveway, up the stairs, and back into the living room. A toiletry bag. A fancy backpack, and then a suitcase. When I rolled that suitcase in, you said, Did you find it? I was confused. The suitcase was sitting right there. But then you said, No, not the suitcase, what’s in the suitcase. ”
I’d gotten up from the table again and tipped the suitcase on its side, unzipping it slowly, flipping it open to find a glossy brochure. Images of kids, a little older than I was—a handsome boy with brown hair in a science lab, protective goggles over his eyes and a toothpaste-white smile. A blond girl running down a pristine soccer field. Images of brick buildings, clusters of kids walking and laughing. The brochure was in French, so I didn’t understand what it was at first.
“Your new school,” my father had announced, picking up his sandwich again, a large chunk of salami sliding out the back end of it as he took a bite. He chewed, then said, “You leave in four weeks.”
I try now to fight down the tears creeping into my voice, not wanting him to see how much that still hurts. How betrayed I felt. How abandoned. “You just…yanked me out of my life without any discussion,” I tell him. “Just a series of clues leading me toward the things I’d need to take with me when I left for good.” We sit, shoulder to shoulder, the sun no longer high enough to cast shadows, the ground and trees a muted shade of gray.
“I was only trying to make things fun for you,” he explains to me now. “The treasure hunts, the clues… Poppy used to love them.”
“Or perhaps she played them because she didn’t want to upset you,” I suggest.
“That’s not how I remember it.” His tone is petulant.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in thought. Again, Jack’s words from yesterday come back to me. You need to ask yourself why this is the story he wants to tell. With other projects, the narrative has always belonged to someone else. My only job was to shape it into something that will resonate with readers. But this book—about my family, my past—belongs to me as well. Maybe it’s my turn to tell a story.
“Do you remember that trip we took to Miami?” I ask.
He thinks for a moment. “I don’t remember ever being in Miami with you.”
“Technically, you weren’t,” I tell him. “You spent all of your time either in the hotel bar drinking or trying to score drugs from one of the waiters.”
He gives me a quick look. “When was this?”
“My junior year of high school, so 1996? Winter break. I wanted to come home to Ojai and see Jack, but you said you needed a change of scenery.” I pause for a moment. “When it was time to go home, you told me to meet you in the lobby and we’d take a cab to the airport. You had to run a quick errand .”
“Do I want to hear the rest of this?”
“Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I waited for you for nearly an hour before asking the front desk if they’d seen you. They said you’d already checked out and left.”
He doesn’t look at me. “I left you there?”
“I was terrified. I managed to track down that waiter and beg him to drive me to the airport.” I take a moment, remembering my panic, hot and slick in the back of my throat. The sympathetic, knowing look the front desk clerk gave me. The quiet way she suggested I hunt down my father’s friend , folding napkins on the outdoor patio. “When I got to the gate, I found you sitting there waiting for the flight, as if nothing was wrong. You were staring straight ahead, sunglasses still on your face. Likely high as a kite. I sat down and really laid into you. Told you what a shitty person you were, what a shitty father. Said I never wanted to take another vacation with you ever again. Not even to come home to Ojai. I informed you that I’d be spending all my breaks either at school or with friends, then I demanded to know what kind of a man did that to their only child. I unraveled years of pain and anger and laid it at your feet. I’m sure the people around us were getting an earful.”
“What did I say?” His voice is cautious, as if he doesn’t really want to know.
“At first, I thought you were livid. Keep our business behind closed doors, Olivia , you’d always said to me. But by then I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to call you out.” I give a shallow laugh. “To answer your question, you didn’t say anything. Just that stony silence you’d always have whenever you were too angry to speak. But then I realized you hadn’t heard any of it, because behind your sunglasses, you were asleep.”
He lets out a sharp snap of breath. “It’s a miracle you said yes to this job.”
“If I’d had any other options, I wouldn’t have.”
I wait for him to apologize, to say, I’m sorry I did that to you. I’m sorry for the incompetence and neglect . But I soon realize he isn’t going to. My father never apologizes. Not in the traditional sense. He’ll make a gesture—a grand one or a small one, depending on his transgression—but I’ve never once heard him say he was sorry.
And I realize how many years I’ve been waiting for that. A small nod of ownership. Of regret. I don’t know what I was hoping to get from retelling this story. Perhaps confirmation that it had happened. Acknowledgment from him that he remembered it too, that I haven’t been the only one carrying around these moments, heavy weights still wrapped around my heart.
But my father can’t even give me that anymore.
***
We make our way back to the house, the sky darkening from purple to black, the orchard lights dotting the path. When we get to the courtyard, I’m about to head upstairs to my room when he turns to look at me. “Every chapter has to have a point. Even if the reader can’t yet see it. Every story told must serve two purposes—to allow your reader to know your characters better, and to push the narrative toward the conclusion.”
It’s early evening, the time of day my father typically starts losing the thread of conversations, when he starts slipping into the past, thinking I’m my mother. Or perhaps this time, a protégé he helped somewhere along the way.
He stares at me a moment, as if waiting for me to confirm that I know what he’s talking about. When I don’t say anything, he takes a step closer. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Suddenly, I’m back to Jack’s questions from yesterday. About why the stories he’s been telling me—about a scary older brother and two younger siblings who were growing frightened of him—are the ones my father wants me to write about. His references to the treasure hunts he used to design. The unusual way he’d leave clues for me. A manuscript filled with stories that all point to him.
“I’m not sure,” I finally say.
He scrutinizes me, and in his expression, I see disappointment. Frustration. As if I’m missing the point altogether. “Then maybe you’re not the right person for this job after all.”