Amy Holwerda is the co-founder and nonfic-

tion editor of shady side review. Her work has

appeared in Flash, Dash, Crash, and various

other journals whose names don‟t rhyme.

When she isn‟t reading or writing, she‟s

probably working in her family‟s greenhouse,

dirt caked into the cracks of her knees and

elbows. When people want to know more

about her, she points to a cascade of petunias,

or the spines of a freshly birthed fern, as if that

is the answer to everything.

“Amy Holwerda‟s The Grayest Ghost is an evocative and hypnotic col-lection of tiny stories, which explores grief, love, desire, and long-ing in their wildest frenzies.” - Sherrie Flick, author of I Call This Flirting and Reconsidering Happiness

“The Grayest Ghost is a prime example of an emerging Pittsburgh phenomenon: savvy, intelligent writing that doesn't eschew its own heart in pursuit of hipness. No time is wasted here on the mere idea of a person—Holwerda's going for the real thing.” - Adam Atkinson, Literary Editor of Open Thread

© Amy Holwerda 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or manual, without permission from the publisher.

Sleeping Lion Press

www.sleepinglionpress.com

5780 5th Avenue, Apt. 2A

Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Cover Art : Ivan Lopez. All rights reserved.

Author Photograph : Gareth Hinsley. All rights reserved.

Sleeping Lion Press Logo : FCIT. All rights reserved.

The Grayest Ghost is set in Perpetua, designed by Eric Gill in the

20th century. The title is set in Caligula Dodgy.

Front and back cover designed by Sarah Grubb.

Original cover art by Ivan Lopez.

Author photo courtesy of Gareth Hinsley.

The Grayest Ghost is printed on acid free paper.

A light breeze managed to cut its way through the thick dusty air

of their fishing cottage. Irene was in the kitchen, frying this morn-

ing‟s trout in butter and garlic, scraping her metal spatula under

the sizzling fish, waiting for the sides to brown.

In the bedroom, Earl gathered his anglers into a rucksack and

headed out the door. He knew no amount of fried home cooking

would satiate the hunger that gnawed inside him, quelled only by

the pull of the river and the tug of something living, fighting at

the end of his line.

“I want to paint you,” Earl said. Irene continued to stare blankly at

the television, then reached for a bottle of pills. “I‟m tired,” she

said, but Earl ignored her and set up his canvas. He sliced through

the white with slashes of slate gray, oyster blue, smoky silver. “I‟m

so tired,” Irene said, rising from the couch. Earl stared hard at the

shape of her neck, the way it curved to meet her shoulders. He

wanted to reach out and stroke it.

When she passed him, Earl shifted, fearing she might reach out

and tear the canvas with her hands. But she simply laid down on

the bed without bothering to close the door, without bothering to

note the shape of her body on the white canvas, crumpled like a

streak of ash, like a candle snuffed by a sudden, cold wind.

Earl watched the butcher wrap two filet mignons. He hoped he

could convince Irene to enjoy a dinner with him again. Start over,

try to make things right. Earl reached for his wallet while the

butcher wrapped the meat, and as he dropped a twenty on the

counter, blood dripped from the paper and splattered his white

shirt.

Back home, Earl heard the bathtub running. He called inside and

jiggled the doorknob. Finally, he slammed the door with his shoul-

der, freeing it from the lock. Irene sat naked in the bathtub, with-

out water. “I know,” she said, then reached for the tap. Earl

watched as his wife‟s body was overtaken by the rising water, the

meat heavy as corpses in his hands.

“Wash your hands,” Irene said. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she

held the baby on her hip, pacing. The baby was wrapped in blan-

kets, like a mummy, moaning. Irene wracked her free hand

through her sweaty hair. Earl reached for the baby.

“Wash your hands!” Irene shouted. “Wash „em good. Get under

the nails where the bacteria hides.” Earl bit his lip and turned the

faucet back on. He reached again for the baby. Irene backed

against the wall clutching the baby against her, wild as a cornered

animal. “Not with those hands, Earl,” she whispered. “Not with

those hands.”

When the baby died, Irene couldn‟t bring herself to attend the

funeral. She rocked in the nursery, wrapping the baby‟s ruffled

bloomers around her fists. She stared into the crib and swore she

saw the blankets breathing. Somewhere buried beneath the wrin-

kled sheets, she heard her daughter coughing, moaning. In a

frenzy, she tore the blankets from the bed, threw the pillows

against the wall, and flipped the mattress, searching.

She clawed her way along the walls to the kitchen, tearing open

cupboards, throwing open the refrigerator door, mindless of the

eggs that smacked against the linoleum floor. She crawled to the

bathroom and steadied herself against the mirror, not recognizing

the old woman staring back at her, gray as a ghost.

When he was young, Earl saw the world in painted colors. Morn-

ings, the sun rose like a canary taking flight. At night, moon

poured into the sky like a bowl of fresh cream. When he met

Irene for the first time, Earl‟s heart sirened like a fire engine in his

neck and spilled from his mouth in ruby-encrusted words.

Although he had been painting the girl for six months now, Earl

thought he could still travel the emotions of the paint, still trace

the path of colors with his hands. His heart surged as he picked up

the splattered brush for the last time but found that inspiration

had tangled his veins like a ball of forgotten fishing twine. When

he stared at the girl‟s body on the floor he saw nothing, just the

dull gray of granite stacked against his chest.

On the day of the wedding, two boys escaped the ceremony and

found the church bell‟s rope. Earl‟s promise to love Irene “for

richer and poorer, in sickness and in health,” was interrupted by a

rowdy clanging. The preacher joked that now, when bells rang it

would be a reminder of the couple‟s marriage vows. Irene blushed

and clenched Earl‟s newly ringed hand with her own.

Years later, Irene trolled the grounds like a spirit with a scythe

threatening to slice all music from the sky. In a fit, she took off her

ring and hurled it at the church‟s brick walls. She plugged her ears

and screamed so as not to hear the clink of metal touching

ground, choosing instead to imagine that promise circling the

chiming of the bells for all eternity, never finding rest, vaporous

as smoke.

On the day he buried his daughter, Earl wore a new black suit that

felt too tight to sit down in. He was distracted by the way the

sleeves pinched at his elbows and the creases puckered at his

knees.

When they wheeled in the tiny wooden casket, Earl felt the black

hole inside him spreading, threatening to eviscerate him right

there in the chair. If it weren‟t for the strain of fabric at his shoul-

ders holding him in place, Earl thought he might just disappear.

Even though he wasn‟t hungry, Earl‟s stomach gnawed where it

had been hollowed out. He wondered if he would ever feel full

again.

Germs live in the shadows, behind the curtains, underneath the

window sills. They stowaway in the plastic nipple of the aban-

doned baby bottle and the grit of Earl‟s boots. They‟re crawling

through the electric sockets and sneaking back up the drains

where she tried to bleach them away.

Earl looks at her with tired eyes and says, “Irene, far as I can see

we ain‟t got no infestation.” But he can‟t see the germs slithering

on his own skin, dripping down the walls, spreading like endless

rows of tiny ants marching toward her. Steady from the nest.

The woman behind the counter took a drag from her cigarette

and said, “The jacket‟s ready now, but we need more time on that

white sweater.”

Irene fumbled for the cash in her wallet. “White sweater?”

The woman halfheartedly stubbed the butt in the ashtray and said,

“Even though the paint was just watercolor, we don‟t want to ruin

the fur collar.”

Irene swallowed hard. “That‟ll be fine,” she said, and dropped a

twenty on the counter. In her car, Irene buried her face in the fab-

ric of the freshly cleaned jacket and found the smell of smoke lin-

gering there like the warning of fire.

On frosty mornings, Irene woke as if from a deep sleep, sur-

rounded by tombstones. She clutched a bottle of bleach and a rag,

as if planning to scrub the names from the granite markers. As the

breath pooled like smoke from her lips, Irene wondered if she had

driven herself to this place. Forgotten putting the key in the igni-

tion, or revving the engine.

She wondered if she might have walked instead of drove, some-

how managing to tread through knee-deep snow while keeping

her stocking feet dry. And then as she gazed at the army of gray

stones around her, she wondered if it was possible she floated

here, hovering above the ground, already haunting what felt like

someone else‟s memories.

“Earl,” the doctor scolded. “You shouldn‟t bring her here so of-

ten.”

Earl listened as the doctor scratched a note in Irene‟s file. “We‟ll

admit her overnight,” he continued, “but I can‟t keep her any

longer.” He rested one hand half-heartedly on Earl‟s shoulder. “We

all have to pull our weight here, Earl,” he said.

When the doctor was gone, Earl listened for his wife struggling

against the admittance, but he heard nothing, just the monotonous

rhythm of his heart thrumming in the sterile silence of the exami-

nation room.

On the way home from the hospital, Irene chatted idly about her

new medications, the times she should take them, their side ef-

fects. She had written everything down in a little notebook and

leaned over to show Earl. “See,” she said. “No more episodes.”

Hearing this, Earl pulled the car over to the shoulder. Unable to

meet Irene‟s puzzled gaze, he stared out the window.

“I forgot how gorgeous a sunset can be,” Irene said, reaching to

rest a hand on Earl‟s rigid arm. Outside, the warm yellow of the

sun was beginning to fade. Earl watched as daylight slipped away,

and he couldn‟t help but feel overwhelmed by the sight of the

pooling red that spread like blood from a wound in the sky.

When the trout were spawning, Earl could buy himself a whole

weekend away. He always came home with a rainbow‟s worth of

fish in the cooler and Irene fried a few for dinner. This year, she

stared cold, stoic into the frying pan. “These fish don‟t look like

the ones from the river,” she said. Earl looked away from her, fo-

cusing his gaze on the garlic and butter that hissed and spat in the

pan.

That night, while Irene slept, Earl crept back to the cooler. With

steady hands, he ground the bodies one by one in the kitchen dis-

posal. When he was finished, he scrubbed his hands with soap and

ground the peels of lemon against his skin, but even then, he

couldn‟t wash the smell of death from his hands.

Some days Earl met the girl in her tiny, cluttered apartment.

Other days he paid her extra to meet him at the fishing cottage,

where he captured her naked body in a sketch pad, flushing her

skin with the watercolor dripping from his brush.

Earl knew he was escaping something in the body of this young

girl, and at every meeting, he said it was the last time. But while

the girl was lying there, exposed on the hardwood floor, Earl felt

his heart snare, and he foolishly thought he saw something more

in the canvas splattered red, streaked with the dirt from his hands.

In the mornings, Earl rose and lined Irene‟s pills like punctuation

on the countertop. He set out a glass of water, brewed a mug of

coffee. He drove to the baker and bought fresh doughnuts, re-

questing extra apple fritters, Irene‟s favorite. He hoped that

somehow this sweetness would make up for the way his skin

crawled when she reached for him in the night.

When she was sure Earl had left for work, Irene dragged her

heavy legs out of bed, ignoring the fritter laid out on a napkin.

Bracing herself against the countertop, she grabbed a handful of

pills and swallowed them without water, but they stuck to the

sides of her throat, battling her.

Irene chose the milk-fed veal for its creamy, pink texture. She

prepared a glaze with lemon juice and thyme, wanting to prove

that she could prepare a decent meal, that the medicine was

working. As she peeled the meat from the butcher paper, the loin

felt impossibly heavy in her hands. She glanced down at the label.

Nine pounds, it read. $56.00.

When Earl found her two hours later, smoke poured from the

open oven set to self-clean. Irene raised a hand to silence him.

“Shh,” she whispered, rocking the lamb in her arms. “No one can

sleep if you shout.” Irene smiled at her husband. “We‟ve all been

tired for so long,” she said.

“My god,” Earl breathed. “You‟re just a baby.”

“I‟m twenty-three,” the girl said. “That‟s very grown up.” Earl

forced a smile. “What‟s the big deal,” the girl said. “We‟re both

consenting adults.” Earl hadn‟t been intimate in over a year, not

since before the baby‟s funeral. “Hey mister,” the girl said. “Is eve-

rything okay?”

Earl stared at the girl lying naked on the bed and doubled over

laughing. She stared back in confused silence as Earl laughed until

the breath left him. He laughed until it sounded like tears, or the

sobbing of a lost child.