Ghost of a Forgotten Life

Robert sat on the edge of his bed. The room was dark, almost entirely, except for a sliver of warm amber light coming from the old green banker’s lamp on his desk. His hands were folded together in his lap. His head hung forward and his shoulders drooped down. He breathed slow and shallow. Robert had given up.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, his voice cracking and barely audible over the ever present hum of the furnace in his apartment.

“Why?” asked a voice behind him.

He turned suddenly to see a small boy, maybe ten years old, perched on the pillows at the head of the bed. “Why are you sorry?”

“Who are you?” Robert stood up in a hurry, looking around frantically to see where this kid might have come from. There was only one door, and it was in front of him. The window was locked. “Where did you come from?”

The boy chuckled. “I’ve always been here,” he said. “Call me Bobby.”

“Bobby?” Robert asked, “wait, you’re not.” He trailed off, unable to wrap his head around what he was about to say.

“Yep,” said Bobby, shrugging.

“You’re a ghost.”

“I can’t be a ghost,” replied Bobby, “not really. You’re not dead yet. But I guess if you want to call me a ghost, you can.”

Robert slumped down hard onto the bed. “I’ve gone crazy,” he said, “I’m hallucinating. This probably isn’t good.”

Bobby stared at him without blinking. “So why are you sorry?”

Robert sighed. “Because I’m a failure.”

“Why?” Bobby asked.

“I lost my job, and I’m going to be out on the street.”

“Why?”

“Why do you keep asking why?” Robert rose again, facing the ghost of his old self angrily. “Can’t you see I’m in enough pain without your stupid, asinine questions?”

“Why’d you lose your job?” Bobby was unperturbed, like Robert wasn’t yelling, like they were having a calm conversation.

“I messed up,” Robert said, deflating again. “I cost the company a lot of money so they let me go. I’m a failure so they showed me the door.”

“Did you like your job?”

“It paid well,” he replied.

“But did you like it?”

“It’s a job. You don’t have to like your job. A job is just something you’re supposed to do every day until you don’t have to work anymore. You don’t have to like it, you just have to get paid.”

“That sounds awful. I’m going to be a park ranger when I grow up,” Bobby declares. “I’ll just hike around all day making sure no one burns down the forest or gets eaten by bears.”

Robert barks out a hollow laugh. “You’re not going to be a park ranger, kid. You’re going to be an insurance claim adjuster.”

“Why?”

Robert shrugs. “The money’s better,” he says.

“But you got fired,” Bobby points out. “Is the money still going to be better?”

“Well, no. I guess not anymore.”

“So why didn’t you become a park ranger?”

Robert sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair. “Do you, I don’t know, want some milk and cookies?”

Robert and Bobby sat across from each other at Robert’s kitchen table. They each had a glass of milk in front of them. Robert had ripped open a package of Oreos for them to share. He had already eaten a handful of the cookies, but Bobby merely went through the motions. He pretended to pick up an Oreo and pretended to hold it under the milk until the bubbles stopped coming up. Then he pretended to shove it into his mouth and lick the pretend milk off his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Robert said.

“Why?” asked Bobby. “It’s not your fault I can’t actually eat anything.”

Robert retrieved his cookie from the milk after waiting for that last air bubble to burst out. He popped it into his mouth and licked his fingers. “I’m sorry I didn’t become a park ranger. Or a music teacher,” he said through his full mouth.

“Or a treasure hunter,” Bobby added.

“I don’t think that’s a real job.”

“It is too! I saw a show about it once. They have these cool old boats and they go diving at old pirate shipwrecks and find doubloons and stuff!”

“Ok, fine. I’m sorry I didn’t become a treasure hunter either.” He looked around at his apartment, all the nice things he owned and neglected. Not even a single potted plant — he couldn’t keep them alive. “You must not like what you see here. You’re probably not looking forward to your next twenty-seven years, are you?” Robert pulled another cookie out of the package.

“I don’t dislike everything I see,” Bobby said. “You still eat Oreos the right way.”

Robert nodded, “people always say it’s ‘too soggy’ but they’re wrong,” he said. “You have to let the bubbles stop.”

“Or else it might come back to life when you bite into it,” Bobby finished. “So you’re not all bad. I like the painting in your living room too.”

Robert had a framed canvas painting of a watermelon hanging on the wall above his beige sectional couch. “I bought it from my friend. She only paints fruit for some reason.”

“Well I like it.”

“Me too.” Robert stared across the room at the watermelon painting. “Maybe I could learn how to paint.”

“What would you paint?”

Robert thought carefully. “Celery. I’d get a great big, giant canvas. Paint it, like, a pastel yellow and then paint a big stalk of celery on it. Then I’d hang it up over the TV so that the celery and the watermelon can look at each other all the time.”

Bobby nodded. “I like that too,” he said. “You’re still kind to people aren’t you? Do you still share and help people when they’re feeling sad?”

Robert frowned. “Not as much as I used to. Not as much as I want to. I wish I could do more. I thought I could.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“That’s why I decided to get a job in insurance. Well, it paid well too,” he admitted. “When you’re an adult and something bad happens, you call up your insurance company and they help you.”

“But you messed up and didn’t help someone?”

He shook his head slowly, “no,” he said. “Turns out the insurance company doesn’t want to help people. It just wants money.”

“Kind of like you?”

Robert looked down, his head hanging dejectedly. “Yeah, kind of like me. Turns out helping people costs money, and if you use the money to help them then there’s less for you.”

“But you got fired. So you can help people now, right?”

“Right. But I don’t know what to do now.” Robert dunked a cookie into his glass of milk while he thought. He sat at a table across from this... ghost? Maybe not a ghost, but a vision, of himself as an idealistic, impressionable ten year old boy. He could not make sense of it, nor could he make sense of how much different they were. “Where did I go wrong?” he asked quietly, to himself and not to Bobby.

“You grew up in the wrong ways,” Bobby answered anyway. “You’re supposed to get big and strong and do all the things you wanted to do when your parents wouldn’t let you. Like climb a mountain. Or save people.”

“Yeah,” Robert said, “yeah you’re right. Can I fix it?”

“Sure,” Bobby replied. He pretended to dunk another cookie down into his milk. “Just start being better.”

“How?”

Bobby shrugged. “Just be nicer. And do things that are good. And fun. Like you used to.”

“Ok,” Robert said. He decided not to have another cookie. He decided to do something better with his life. He grabbed an envelope from the pile of junk mail on the table and scribbled down three lines to remember: “Be nicer. Do good. Have Fun.” He folded up the envelope so that all he could see was the name of the scam credit card company in the return address spot and tucked it into his pocket for safe keeping. “Ok,” he said, “I will.”

When he looked up, Bobby was gone. He was alone in his apartment with half a package of Oreos in front of him. The empty chair across from him startled him, but then he felt safer. More whole. He repeated to himself the things that Bobby taught him and began to feel hope.

Be nicer.

Do good.

Have fun.