The Haunted

“Come on!” Diane smacked her palm down on the table, and Claire had to smile. Her sister had lost none of her political fervor over the years. “No one’s worried about white people sneaking into the country, or talking about putting up a fence between us and Canada. This is racism, pure and simple.”

“Not exactly—” Janet started to say.

“Are you kidding? They’re talking about making it illegal for day laborers to stand in front of the hardware store. They hate Mexicans so much that in order to get rid of them they want to ban work!”

“It’s to keep immigrants from taking American jobs.”

“That’s not even a concept you believe in. Do you mean to tell me that if you got offered a job with a company in Italy or Canada or France, you don’t think you’d have the right to take it? Can you honestly say that you would become an Italian or Canadian or French citizen, and then you’d take the job? Bullshit! You’d sign up immediately, because you think you have the right to work anywhere at any time. As you should. As everyone should.”

Janet clearly disagreed, but she didn’t want to risk Diane’s wrath, so she said nothing. Claire changed the subject. “Anybody hear from Sherry lately?” Sherry was one of their friends who had relocated to Tucson in order to move in with a man she’d met online.

“No,” Diane said.

Janet shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

The food arrived, and the conversation drifted to safer topics. Claire learned that Janet’s mother was finally going in for hip replacement surgery, and that Diane’s supervisor at the electric company was being transferred to Bernalillo, which meant that if Diane played her cards right, she could be next in line for the position.

“Congratulations!” Claire told her sister. She held up her iced tea, and the other two followed suit, clinking their glasses together.

After lunch, both Diane and Janet offered her a ride, but Claire declined, saying she could use the exercise. She waved good-bye to her sister and their friend as the two women drove off, then decided to go home for a couple of minutes and pick up a few bottles of cold water before heading back to her office. Clients always liked bottled water. It gave the appearance of success, which instilled confidence—half the battle in the initial stages of the attorney-client relationship.

Claire cut through the park again, but the rally was basically over, and only a few stragglers stood around, reinforcing one another’s opinions through heated, one-sided exchanges with imaginary adversaries. She skirted their area, going around a sandy playground where young mothers pushed small children on swings or down slides, and, once out of the park, she walked the three blocks to their house.

The kids were gone for the afternoon, Megan to her friend Zoe’s, James to the community pool with Robbie’s family. Julian was always home, of course, and Claire shouted a greeting up to him as she walked inside, closing the front door behind her. She had to pee and went down the hall to use the bathroom before heading into the kitchen to grab some cold bottles of Arrowhead to take back with her.

The laundry basket was sitting on the floor in front of the refrigerator.

Claire frowned. Hadn’t she put that away this morning? She certainly hadn’t left it in the middle of the kitchen. She glanced toward the laundry room, but neither the washer nor dryer was on, and there was no indication that Julian had done another batch of clothes. She shook her head. Maybe it had been her. Come to think of it, the same thing had happened the other day. She’d swept and mopped the kitchen floor and thought she’d put both the broom and mop away in the closet where they belonged—yet, an hour later, she’d found the broom leaning against a wall in the master bathroom. Obviously she’d intended to clean the bathroom and had just spaced out, but she was pretty sure she’d put both cleaning implements away. She smiled to herself. Maybe she needed to start taking ginkgo biloba. Or eating more blueberries. Weren’t blueberries supposed to be good for the memory?

There was the sound of music from Julian’s office upstairs. Loud music. One of those obscure old rock records that Julian, in his geeky way, prided himself on owning. She wasn’t sure why he couldn’t use earphones like everyone else and keep his music to himself, leaving the rest of them in peace, but he insisted on blasting his ancient stereo and subjecting the entire household to whatever he felt like hearing.

“Turn it down!” she shouted up at the ceiling.

He obviously didn’t hear her, so she moved to the bottom of the stairs. She recognized the music now. The Men They Couldn’t Hang, a group whose music he’d played incessantly when they’d first started dating.

“Julian!” she shouted as loud as she could. “Turn it down!”

The music switched off. Or was turned so low that she could no longer hear it.

“Thank you!” she called out.