Lidy's Poem

When I walked into the coffee shop, sunlight was pouring in through the windows like steamed milk into a cup. Tables glistened, computers and phones and silver pens reflected the glaring brightness and a girl was laughing while trying to blind her older brother with a shiny coin. The building was filled with soft noises: gentle chatter, the burble of the coffee machine, a bit of jazz playing quietly from the speakers. I breathed it in and went to the counter. “A cup of your Ethiopian roast,” I said, “and how about one of those orange scones, too?”

“We’ll bring it to your table,” the barista said after I paid. I turned and looked around the shop. This was one I had been to a few times over the years, and I appreciated how it never changed. Same tables in the same places, same regulars at those same tables. Always the same drinks and the same scones and the same people making them. I spotted an empty spot in a shady corner of the room and went to it, maneuvering my way through the maze of chairs. I remembered this table from the last time I was here, a few months ago. A man had been sitting there, leaning forward, apparently talking to himself. I had smiled but made a point of avoiding that area; I came to coffee shops because they were one of the few places on earth that I knew of to be completely devoid of surprising, dramatic, or upsetting events. I preferred for them to stay that way.

Now, however, the table was empty, so I sat down at it to wait for my order. I stared out the window, happy for once to do absolutely nothing, not even thinking. At least, not very hard. No talking, no working, no worrying about what I would do this day, or the next, when eventually my friend kicked me off the couch and told me to man up and go home. My gaze eventually wandered away from the window, which was when I realized with an abrupt shock that there was someone sitting across from me.

It was a young woman, maybe fifteen years younger than myself. She had thick, dark hair that barely brushed her shoulders and pale blue eyes that stared fixedly at something in her lap. When had she gotten there? And why had she sat here if I already had? “Um,” I said. “Hello.”

“Oh, here’s another one. Hello.” She didn’t look up from her lap. We sat in silence for a while, me staring at her, her staring at whatever about her knees so interested her. Certainly, I wanted to be alone, and the fact that she had simply come and sat here was obviously rude, but asking her to leave seemed even more so. I frowned and finally went back to staring out the window. Eventually my scone and drink were brought over, but the barista didn’t seem to even notice the young woman, just smiled at me and walked away.

The girl looked up at the sound of the retreating footsteps and said, “oh. You’re still here.”

I felt the back of my neck prickling in annoyance. “Well, yes, I did sit here first.” I said.

“No, you didn’t, actually.” she replied, with the air of a teacher gently but tiredly correcting her student for the tenth time. She went back to staring at her lap and her hand popped up, twirling a pencil between her fingers. I decided to ignore this comment and got up to leave. No drama, I reminded myself.

“Hold on,” the girl said, and I stopped. “Are you a writer?”

No work! An even more insistent voice in my head said. But I stayed frozen and said, “Well, yes.”

“Oh, good,” she said, glancing up at me again, “I could use one of those right now. lend me a hand?”

Sighing, I took my seat again. “Sure.” Curse this idiotic urge in me to ‘lend a hand.’ “What are you writing?”

“A poem.”

Part of me felt relieved, part disappointed. “Sorry, I’m a journalist.” I said. “Not a poet.”

“Nevermind that. I just need someone who’s good with words in general. Because I certainly am not.” She reached down and pulled out a heavily worn notebook. The page was totally blank. “As you can see.” The rest of the book seemed to be filled, though, from what I could see of the various ink stains and dribbles on the edges of the pages.

“What do you want to write a poem for, anyway?” I said, right as it occurred to me to try to sound less disdainful. “I mean –”

“Yeah, I know, seems like a huge waste of time, huh?” She said, nodding with her eyes fixed on that empty page again. “Unfortunately, I have all the time in the world. Or –” her gaze twisted up to the ceiling. “After-world? No time in the world?”

Again, I ignored this strange comment. “Well, what’s it about?”

“I’m trying to write a poem for Lidy.”

“Who?” I asked.

“An old friend of mine. I think she’s holding me back,” she said, then grumbled, “as usual.” Then she smacked her forehead. “Ugh! I did it again!”

I cleared my throat, wishing I had sat somewhere else. “Holding you back?” I said, because it seemed like the safest question to ask.

She looked at me, frowning as though in thought, and said absently, “from the afterlife, you know.” After a moment, when I said nothing, she noticed and added, “I’m dead,” with that same tired-teacher voice. Like it was obvious.

I cleared my throat again, and it turned into a spluttering cough. “Right. Naturally.” Anxiously I glanced around the room, looking for an excuse to escape.

“A ghost, specifically,” she said. “Specter, spirit, whatever you want to call it.” When I stared at her, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly ajar, she sat back, saying, “Yup. Never fails to be the most awkward part.”

I had learned long ago that the easiest way to manage someone who had clearly gone mad, or at the very least was trying to pull a very bad prank, was to go along with it. “Right. Ghost. And, um,” I blinked and shook my head. “Your friend is holding you back.”

“Huh. That was faster than the last guy. Into the paranormal, are we?” She said, in a manner I could only assume was joking. She confirmed this when I again was without response, saying, “Only kidding. I’m sure you’re only going along with the crazy girl’s crazy conversation.” Again my mouth fell open in surprise. “But it’s nice to have even pity-help. So yeah, I think my friend is holding me back. She’s the only regret I can think of from my life.” She said, adding thoughtfully, “besides dying, I suppose.”

“Right,” I managed to choke out.

“Yeah, my life was pretty good, you know. Happily single, good group of friends. I was going to a good grad school.” She twirled the pen and pretended to scribble on the page with the cap still on. “Had a good relationship with my parents, my brothers. So the only thing I can think of is Lidy.”

“How’d you die?” I couldn’t help but ask. How elaborate was her story?

“I was murdered.” She said, deadpan. We stared at each other for a few long seconds, before she cracked a grin. “Just kidding. Got into a car crash.”

“Oh” I scratched my head uncomfortably. “You sure that’s not the regret holding you back?”

“The dying bit?” She laughed bitterly. “I mean, sure, I regret it, but it can’t be the thing holding me back because it’s supposed to be something I got to fix, and clearly I can’t fix that.”

“Oh. Right. So…” I tried to change the subject. “You’re writing poetry instead?”

“Yup. I’ve tried prose, too, but obviously that didn’t work,” she said. “And I’ve done non-writing things too. Like actually finding Lidy.” Her hand twitched across the paper, like she was doodling without ink. “But I haven’t talked to her since eighth grade.”

“What happened?”

She laughed without humor. “Who knows? I think now that we were both just stubborn, hurting idiots who lashed out at each other for no real reason or a hundred tiny ones.” She looked at me, and I realized with a start how piercing her eyes were, like glass that had been shattered and put back together. “You know, all of our annoyances at everything build up, and then it just –” she mimed an explosion with her hands, eyes going wide, “-- blows up in the face of whoever is closest. I don’t know who lost it first, but they just triggered the other person, and then it was just bomb after bomb.”

I lowered my gaze to my hands. I knew exactly what she was talking about. The image of my wife’s face, full of rage, flashed through my head. How long had it been since we talked? A week? Two? “But it was just one person. Why would it hold you back?” It felt like the first genuine question I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. She opened her mouth, closed it, then said again, “I don’t know.”

“But now you think you have to fix it?”

“If I want to get on with my – well, afterlife.” There was a long pause where she stared at the ceiling. “Here’s the funny part, though. When we split, my mom said that she knew I was going to regret it, even if I didn’t when I was fourteen. And you know, I didn’t, cause I just kept managing to stay angry at her. So I thought I won.”

“Do you regret it now?” I asked, and realized I had gone into reporter mode. “I mean, you regret being a ghost, but do you really regret your fight?”

“That’s the other funny thing,” she said. “Dying sort of strips away all of your superficial feelings and leaves the raw, real ones bare. And so the anger’s gone.”

“And what’s left?” Or was I turning into a therapist? I shook myself. What was I doing?

“A lot of sadness. And another thing that my mother said. She said ‘I know you both still love each other. You’ve just forgotten it for some reason.’ So now I’m remembering it, finally.”

I took a sip of coffee. It was cold. It had been sitting on the table, forgotten, for a bit too long. I stared at it for some time.

“James?”

The sound of my name jolted me out of my reverie. “How do you know my

name?”

The girl lifted her eyebrows mysteriously. “Ghost stuff,” she whispered

conspiratorially. Then she pointed at my paper cup. “It’s written on your cup, bud.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, embarrassed that I had believed her for a split second. “Oh. Right.” Then it occurred to me how rude I had been. “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “but I never caught your name.”

“Beth,” she said.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Beth,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

“Hmm,” she joked, “we’ve practically had a whole interview, so it’s nice that we’ve actually met now.” Her eyes softened, and she said, “you’ll have to come back to my table sometime.”

“Are you always here?”

Beth shrugged. “This has been my spot for the past few months. I’ve moved around. But most places people can’t see me. There was a lamppost where they could once, but not many people stop for a chat at a lamppost.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“Couldn’t say. I guess people just aren’t comfortable around lampposts.”

“I meant, why can people only see you at certain places?”

“Who knows?” She said, shrugging. “When you die, it’s not like in the movies. There aren’t real rules to it. And even if there were, death doesn’t explain them to you with a lecture and a powerpoint presentation.” She sighed. “But I have to keep trying to figure it out, you know? Or else I’m stuck like this forever. Invisible verging on non-existent, totally alone.” She seemed to realize that the conversation had dipped into seriousness, and added quickly, “not to mention criminally bored.”

“So one of the things you’ve tried in the process of figuring ghost-dom out is… poetry?” I asked, my gaze drifting to her notebook.

“Well, poets seem to write an awful lot about death,” she said. “So I figured that it and the poetry must have something to do with each other. Emily Dickinson certainly seemed to think so.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” I fingered my scone but found I didn’t feel hungry anymore. “Do you want this?” I asked, noticing Beth staring longingly at it.

“I’m a ghost. I can’t eat,” she said flatly. “That’s one of the few things I realized pretty quickly after I died.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” If this was an elaborate prank, Beth was clearly invested. The look of hunger in her eyes seemed concerningly real. I shoved the plate aside, looking over her face, trying to understand what was going on inside this girl’s mind. Something complex, obviously, but not necessarily insane. She picked up the pen, wrote something, and crossed it, then sat back with a long, almost angry sigh.

“So, what kind of journalism do you do, anyway?” She asked.

“Investigative.” And what kind of mad person carried a conversation so well? None that I had ever met.

The pen spun again as Beth’s other hand tapped the table. “Could you –” she paused, obviously considering something. “I mean–”

“Could I find Lidy for you?” I had received requests to find people before. It almost seemed to come with the job. Most of the time I refused, but if I was entertaining her – “Sure. I can try.”

Beth’s face lit up. “Could you really?” She laughed. “Oh, that would make all of this much easier. You know what I would do to be able to just give up on all this attempting and reattempting? I can write poetry, but there’s no promise that it’s going to work. But if I could just talk to her…” She trailed off, her face showing that she thought she had said more than she meant to. “Or… if somehow she could forgive me,” she finished in a whisper.

“I’ll do my best.” I wasn’t sure I really meant it. Beth smiled at me, and something about those bright blue eyes made me almost wish I did. I realized that I hadn’t had such a genuine conversation with someone in a long time. Probably since the fight. “Thank you for this,” I said.

Perhaps other people would look confused, or ask what I meant, but Beth simply said, “you’re welcome.”

I glanced down at my phone. I probably needed to go. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around some lamppost.”

“Hopefully not,” she said. And I again chose not to ask what she meant.

I got up and returned my plate and coffee cup to the counter, neither empty. The sky had darkened and the windows were soon being streaked with water. I went to the door and turned around to look at that corner table again. But Beth was gone. I shook my head and went out into the rain.

Wiping the droplets from my phone, I found the number I was looking for and dialed it. “Hey, boss, I got a new story I’m hoping to do…”

When the call ended, I began to pocket my cell, but something stopped me. I pulled up my contacts again. My finger hovered over her name for a few seconds. Then I summoned all my courage and pressed it. It rang and rang, eventually going to voicemail. She was probably still angry with me.

But forgiveness never really came without a fight.

The beep went off. “Hey, hon. I’m sorry. Please call me back.”