What She Meant to Tell His Ghost

[bruorton]

For a reason she could never afterward explain,
she turned around while crossing the living room
and there he was, sitting in his favorite chair,
though of course he had died three weeks before.

He grinned at her, not a morbid grin, but his old,
lop-sided, jokey grin.
                                   "Hi," he said. She just stared,
part dumbstruck, partly just trying to work out if etiquette
changed for conversations with your dead husband.

In the end, old patterns re-asserted themselves.
Her bluntness won out.
                                       "Why are you here?" she
asked.
             He shrugged. "I was concerned about you.
I hope you don't feel guilty," he said.
                                                           "Of course I do,"

she said, "all those years, and I still ask myself whether
I really loved you, or just did everything I ought to have if I did.
Whether it was all an act to convince you---to convince
myself, really."
                         He was shaking his head. "It's not like that,"

he said.  He looked at her, lovingly. She had forgotten,
by now, that he wasn't real.
                                             "You were the best wife
I could have hoped for," he said.
                                                      She bit her lip. "Thank you,"
she said.  She was blinking back tears, and between one blink

and another, he was gone.
                                             "Thank you, thank you,"
she kept saying, though, several times even after
she knew he was gone.
                                        She didn't say, "I love you,"
but it was what she meant.