A Haunting

I was rummaging through my closet, looking for an old floral skirt, when the first apparition manifested. A single gray, cotton sock nestled among my clothes. Even without turning it over, I knew that I’d find his initials stitched on the other side. With trembling hands, I slammed the doors shut before running out of the room. It was hours before I dared return. When I opened the closet, the sock was no longer there. 

I tried to put the incident out of my mind by throwing myself into work. I spent nearly all of my waking hours analyzing bacteria samples at the lab, and while my superiors at GW Pharmaceuticals were impressed by my performance, they felt compelled to ask if everything was all right. I said it was. In reality, however, I was constantly on edge, and I had begun having trouble sleeping. But they didn’t need to know that. These days, it wasn’t easy to tell who was a believer and who wasn’t.

Weeks went by with no further incident, and I nearly convinced myself that I had merely imagined it. One evening, however, as I entered my front door, I was greeted by a navy blue jacket draped across the back of my couch. At first, I thought that it was one of mine, but when I turned the lights on, there was no mistaking the white trim that ran alongside the zipper. I stood there frozen for God knew how long, and by the time I recovered, the jacket had disappeared. In its place was a chill in my bones. 

The first time I had ever heard about these hauntings was back at St. Mary’s. According to one of the older girls, a double-breasted, camel-colored coat had been spotted in the last stall of the west corridor bathroom. The idea both terrified and excited us, and we took turns daring each other to enter it. Over the years, I would hear reports of similar sightings in other parts of the school. A scarf hanging on the Lovers’ Tree. A newsboy cap in an unused classroom. A patchwork sweater at the school cafeteria in the dead of the afternoon. All of them just stories told and retold in the dorms late at night.

But then there was Mr. Russo. 

Not everyone knew his story, but you were a St. Mary’s girl through and through if you did. For as long as I could remember, Mr. Russo had been the assistant principal at St. Mary’s. He was a quiet and gentle man, much like your favorite grandfather. His mouth was permanently set in a droop, pulling the skin around his eyes down, like cake batter that had been folded over and over. Although Mr. Russo had a kind disposition, he rarely smiled, and when he did, you were always left feeling like crying for a little bit, like you had just witnessed something incredibly sad.

But that hadn’t always been the case. At least we didn't think so. There was an old faculty photograph that showed Mr. Russo as a young History teacher on his first day at St. Mary’s. According to the stories, he had been newly married then and had been working tirelessly, so that he could afford to buy a house closer to the boarding school. Six months into his employment, however, Mr. Russo reportedly received a letter from home. The contents of the letter had never been confirmed, but it was said that he had taken an emergency leave for a week, and when he returned, he looked like he had aged 10 years. Some said that his wife had run away with another man and that the letter he had received was her saying goodbye. Others said that the letter was a coroner’s report, that his wife had drowned herself in the sea and that by the time she was rescued, both she and her unborn child were dead. Whatever the truth was, it must have been damning for Mr. Russo had apparently never been the same since. 

I remembered hearing the story for the first time and wondering if Mr. Russo knew what people saw when they looked at him. Did he know that students and faculty alike viewed him with such pity? Or that they saw him as a broken man? Sometimes, we would catch him just staring at nothing in particular. One classmate who claimed to have inherited her grandmother’s sixth sense had once said that he was probably looking at the rose-pattered shawl that sometimes materialized in front of him. 

The whole idea of a haunting, of being haunted, was equal parts scary and absurd. Most importantly, it had always seemed like the kind of thing that only happened to other people. I hadn’t thought that it would actually happen to me. 

+++

Martin and I had first met at a hospital on a warm, spring evening, which Gale, my roommate, had declared to be a rare opportunity to wear a mini skirt. I had been shaving my legs, having listened to sage advice, dancing to a British pop song on the radio, when I slipped on the bathroom floor. He’d been the doctor in attendance. 

Looking back, I couldn’t imagine how he could have ever been interested in me. Still dressed in my Hello Kitty pajamas, I had stood before him bare-faced, eyes red and puffy from crying, and right leg still unshaved. He, on the other hand, had been devastatingly handsome in his white coat, even with the horrible lighting. After putting my arm in a splint, he gave me his number in case I had any questions. Gale, who was standing behind him, wagged her eyebrows suggestively.

Over the next few weeks, I agonized over what to do with his number. I considered complaining about the itch, but it didn’t seem like a good enough reason, and the idea of fabricating a more serious concern left a bad taste in my mouth. Ultimately, I decided not to message him at all. Gale told me that I was overthinking it, that he had given me his number, his personal number, for a reason, but I couldn’t bring myself to be so forward. 

When I returned to the hospital to get my arm looked at, I hadn’t expected to run into him again. There were many other doctors that could have been on duty, but it was his face that greeted me as I entered the tiny office. We made small talk as he looked my injury over. He squeezed in a joke or two. I covered my mouth and laughed. But I was still too chicken to make the first move. When I stood to leave, he asked me if he could see me again. In a less professional capacity, he added, scratching his nose self-consciously. I was a little too stunned to answer right away, so he’d been about to apologize when I blustered out a yes. 

From our very first date, Martin and I hit it off. We were on the same wavelength on pretty much everything. We loved the same movies, had the same sense of humor, and enjoyed trying new things together. As a medical professional, his schedule was more unpredictable than mine, but I didn’t really mind. In fact, between the two of us, he seemed more bothered that we couldn’t see each other more often. After six months, he found a viable solution. 

“Move in with me,” he said.

I was swept off my feet. This time, I didn’t hesitate. 

Gale lamented my departure, but I could tell that she was happy for me. “At least one of us is moving on in life,” she said as she helped me pack my things. 

His place was so much bigger than my previous apartment. It was an actual house with a backyard and everything, and although we didn’t always eat or go to bed at the same time, it never felt lonely. We left imprints of ourselves and our relationship everywhere. A note right next to the coffee machine. A box of pastries brought home from a company party. To make up for the lack of weekends and the abundance of emergency calls, we diligently saved up our leaves, so we could take time off work to travel. Our fridge was filled with photos from Santorini, Bali, and Hawaii. 

We were in the Maldives celebrating our third anniversary when he asked me to marry him. I was so taken aback that I asked him if I could think about it. From the way he reacted, I could tell that he hadn’t been expecting my response. It wasn’t a no, I told him. It didn’t mean that I didn’t love him, I repeated. I said a lot of other things that all sounded the same. Unsteadily, he got up from bended knee, cleared his throat, and put the ring back in the box, all the while laughing self-deprecatingly. He said he understood where I was coming from, and we enjoyed the rest of our remaining vacation with not an ounce of awkwardness. 

Back home, things continued as they did. Or at least, that was how it had seemed to me. The first month passed like any other. So did the second. It was on the third month that we started unraveling. We fought over the smallest things. The milk that had been forgotten from the shopping list. The dishes that someone had neglected to put away. It was like all the fights we had never had decided to rear their ugly heads all at the same time. The next few weeks were fraught with tension even when we rarely saw each other, and when the inevitable came, we didn’t even have a single word of comfort to offer one another. 

The apartment I had moved into afterwards, the apartment I lived in now, was small, smaller than his house, smaller even than the apartment I had once shared with Gale, but I had thought it for the best. The fewer rooms I had, the less space I needed to fill up, I kept saying to anyone who would listen. By the one-year mark, I had even myself convinced that I was handling the breakup well. I hadn't even cried. Perhaps that alone should tell me how much or how little that relationship had really meant to me.

But one day, I made the mistake of looking him up online, of looking at the beach proposal photos. The engagement ring wasn’t the same; I had zoomed in to check. Then I looked at the wedding photos, and zoomed in on his face. His smile looked different. He looked happier, softer. I hadn’t known what to feel about that, but the sock had appeared a week after. 

+++

After the jacket appeared, several more followed, and to my surprise, I had become almost inured to it, or as best as anyone could be when they were being haunted. I still couldn’t sleep very well, but I didn’t jump as much as I used to whenever his old white coat materialized in the bathroom. Sure, there were days when getting out of bed was a struggle, and some nights, I could hardly breathe, although how much of that was due to anxiety and how much could be attributed to the weighted blanket that sometimes appeared on top of me, I didn’t know. But I was making it work. I was. Even if I was going at it alone. Gale and her new man were getting serious. He might be proposing to her soon.

One weekend, on my way home from the therapist, I spotted an unexpected but familiar face on the street. It was Mr. Russo, the assistant principal at St. Mary’s. The years had only made his face droopier, although looking at him didn't really make me want to reach for a tissue anymore.

I didn’t know what possessed me, but I found myself tailing him for what must have been at least 10 minutes until he entered a small deli. I stood outside, just by the glass window, and watched as he walked over to a table where a lovely lady with snow white hair was already seated. Was she his wife? His lover? She gave his sweater vest a playful tug. He leaned down to give her a peck on the cheek. 

Suddenly, it was all too much. It felt like I was intruding in a private moment. I turned my face away and in doing so locked eyes with a strange-looking woman staring directly at me from behind the glass. She looked like someone who could be featured on Extreme Cheapskates, like those stingy travelers who would sooner wear every excess clothing they had than pay extra for additional baggage. Surprised, I stumbled back and nearly lost my balance, after which I scampered away like a mouse, embarrassed at having been caught watching. I went home immediately.

Later on, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, it occurred to me that the woman behind the glass hadn’t been a stranger at all and that I knew her quite well. She was, in fact, me. It might sound absurd (but honestly, I had heard worse), but I hadn’t recognized myself under all the layers, under all the sadness. It was, I realized, worse than having the clothes materialize out of nowhere. Worse than the looks of pity from those around me. Worse than Mr. Russo's heartbreaking face. And so, in the harsh lighting of the bathroom, with only the apparition of a white coat for company, I finally broke down into sobs. Perhaps by the time I finished, I would have shed more than just tears.