Astroland had closed the month before. There had been a lot of concern, that it would be for good this time, though the owners were now promising it would be open again for the 2008 season.

 

    "That's the way of things," Jackie thought, "You threaten to take something away, and suddenly people who have never bought a ticket, or ridden on the Cyclone are suddenly up in arms."

 

    She dug her hands deeper into her pockets. The night had turned cold, and her old jean jacket wasn't as warm as she'd remembered it. She hadn't really given thought to how cold it would be in Brooklyn this time of year. She's grown used to the desert climate, and she didn't have all that much time to think about packing. Well, she'd thought, but only so far as ensuring that there was something in black. If it had been anybody else's funeral, that would have been enough. Show up, cry a little, and fly back home. But there was more that had to be taken care of. She'd had to make arrangements for the event itself, and now, she had to deal with the property. The house she'd grown up in, needed to be emptied, clean and sold. She'd spent most of her childhood trying to escape that house. Now, she was nearing the point when she'd never have to see it again.

 

    She passed an older couple on the boardwalk. They clutched each others arms, making it unclear who was supporting who as they hobbled along. Jackie turned her head to watch them, but they seemed utterly unaware of her scrutiny. Was it early stages of senility or love that caused them to exist so utterly in their own world? Jackie tried to imagine two people being in love for so long. Her parents had split up when she was four. Her mom got custody of Jackie, and the house in the divorce. That was all she asked for, and her dad was probably just as glad to be rid of both. Her mother, however, loved the house. She wore it the way Miss Havisham wore her wedding dress. It was an emblem of the man who left her, the only man she ever loved. In the years that followed, Jackie never knew her to date. Instead, the woman made her only priorities the raising of her daughter, and the care of the house.  

 

    She was still in the midst of cleaning, but each night, she had to escape the house for a few hours. The same claustrophobia that had filled her youth would sneak in on her, and she'd have to get out. Some nights, she'd hit a local bar where she'd try not to cringe at the accents, others, she'd come down here to stare at the water. It was the one thing she missed. There was no ocean in Phoenix.  There was a man-made lake, and swimming pools, but nothing was quite like the sound of the waves, and even when she'd made trips to California, the Pacific wasn't the same. The beaches were too clean, the people too friendly. Not that she'd admit it out loud. In fact, she didn't even realize it until she was back. Some things you don't even realize you miss.

 

    At first glance, the house had been the same. Not a picture had been changed. The furniture had been unmoved. Everything from couch to toaster oven was the same. But on closer look, everything was different. A veneer of neglect had settled over the house. Her mother, a meticulous housekeeper had apparently let things slide little by little. The upstairs was worse than the first floor. Apparently, her mom had trouble with the stairs, as most of her clothes seemed to have been piled neatly on the dining room table, and she'd taken to sleeping on the couch. That's where she was found. After her mother failed to answer the phone for their weekly call, and then the following day as well, Jackie had called the police. Exact time of death was unsure, but it had already been a few days. At no point had her mom made any allusion to the illness that had been increasingly affecting her.

 

    She stepped off the boardwalk, and headed back towards the house. Even at this hour, Brooklyn was different from Phoenix. Downtown after six o'clock felt like a ghost town there. It wasn't a walking city. People preferred the air conditioned splendor of their cars. The bus system had it's own social stigma, unlike the MTA in New York which was an accepted way of getting around. In Jackie's neighborhood, there weren't even sidewalks. There was a neighborhood association, but it only really served to show that there was no actual neighborhood. Not like here, where women stood on their stoops, coats around nightgowns while they took their evening cigarettes and gossiped, or where she had to keep an eye out for stray footballs tossed by teenagers playing pickup games in the middle of the street. It made you feel like this was a place where people cared about one another. Not the usual image that people had of the five boroughs.

 

Of course, Jackie knew it was a myth. She knew that nobody had even wondered what had happened to her mom. No neighbor had come calling to ask there the woman was. People who had lived next to her for years. Nobody had commented on the newspapers piling up on the porch. They hadn't come to offer their condolences since Jackie was back. The city, after all, was the city. Sooner or later, it would eat its own.

 

She arrived home, and collapsed into the recliner, pointedly not sitting on the couch. Tomorrow, men were coming to take out the furniture, most of it to be put up for sale, but the couch was to simply be carted to the dump. She felt that the smell of death lingered on it, despite her spraying various de-odorizers on it. Of course, the recliner had its own share of memories. This was her mom's more traditional place. How many nights had she sat here alone watching television? She'd been mad about mysteries, though her favorite thing in the whole world seemed to be watching the movie "Witness." It seemed like every other week, when Jackie called, the woman would opt out of the conversation by saying, "I'm watching 'Witness,' we can talk next week." Jackie, on the other hand, had been bored by the movie the one time she'd tried watching it.  She turned on the television halfway expecting the movie to be on. It wasn't. She let some sit-com chatter on. She let herself drift off to sleep to the sound of canned laughter.

 

 

She awoke to see Harrison Ford staring at her in his Amish hat. There was a clanking sound in the kitchen,  and then her mother emerged in an old nightgown, and ratty slippers. She had a plate of chicken, and broccoli that had been boiled until it was nothing more than gray mush on her plate. The woman shuffled forward, and Jackie was just able to hop out of the recliner before the woman sat down on it.

 

"Mom?"

 

The old woman hushed her, and Jackie fell silent. She watched the woman watching the television. Finally, there was a commercial break, and Jackie tried again. But the woman ignored her, taking this time to eat her dinner, unconcerned that it had gotten cold.

 

    "Mom, it's me, Jackie, can't we talk?"

 

    The woman glanced at her, snorted, and with the remote control turned the volume up. Jackie sat down on the couch, and unsure what else to do, watched the rest of the movie. When it was done, her mom returned her dish to the kitchen, washing it right away, and placing it in the rack. Jackie followed her, trying to engage the woman. Her mother shook her head indifferently.

 

    "Don't you ever wish for somebody to talk to?" Jackie asked, "Aren't you the least bit lonely?"

 

    "Can't I just watch my stories?" the old woman responded.

 

    Jackie relented, and the rest of the night, her mother watched reruns of cop dramas and crime shows. Jackie didn't talk to her, or complain about the shows, she just tried to follow the stories parsing out the relationships between characters she didn't know. Eventually, the dawn came and she found herself alone again.

 

    She flew home that afternoon. The ghost wasn't lonely, and that thought made Jackie long for her own bed, and the man she shared it with more than she ever had before.