Ghosts of Bergen County Read online

  CHAPTER NINE

  They spent hours on her couch. Ferko had his cushion, and Jen had hers. They slept and woke. They didn’t eat, and they barely talked. After a time, Jen got up and went to the kitchen and splashed water on her face. “It’s night,” she said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine fifteen.”

  “I forgot I wear a watch,” Ferko said.

  “Let’s go to a party.”

  “No way.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  He used the bathroom. When he came out, he said, “We look high, don’t we?”

  “People will know. Your pupils are pins.” She curled her finger to make a tiny hole and peered through it.

  “Where’s this party?” he asked.

  “On the way to the PATH. I’ll get you there by midnight. You’ll be home by one.”

  But it took time to get out of Jen’s apartment. They ate falafel sandwiches on the way to the party. They arrived at ten forty-five and stayed until one thirty. Then they went to a club nearby, where bands played, one after another, hour after hour, until there were no more bands, and a DJ played MP3s until dawn. Ferko paced himself, beer and water—lots of water—while Jen switched to Diet Coke and hits off joints. She had friends, so many of them. There were musicians and artists and carpenters and writers. There were actors and computer geeks and ne’er-do-wells. There were kids in their twenties and old punks in their fifties, multipierced, with hair that fell in their eyes. Irony and cool were the same. The women wore black, except those who wore metallic dresses. The men wore black, except Ferko, whose khakis and blue button-down were the uniform of business casual. He didn’t feel conspicuous, though. Might he not have been ironic?

  He sent a text to Mary Beth at two thirty: mb—late. home tmw xo g

  They arrived at the PATH station in the morning, just as the sun was coming up. Jen bought a ticket, too. “Since I’m here,” she said, “at the gateway to New Jersey. Let’s go shopping. You owe me.”

  “I thought you owed me.”

  “I did. But now you owe me.”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Take me to Paramus first.”

  She was relentless. But he wasn’t tired.

  “Or don’t,” she said. “Take me to my dad’s. I’ll get his car.”

  “Paramus. For an hour.”

  “Yippee.” She put her palms together and tapped her fingers, mock applause.

  They were in the mall by ten, the only customers, it seemed, in one of the anchors. Music played from the speakers in the high ceiling. He followed her to formal wear. She sized up a mannequin in a black dress, hemmed at the knees. She found the dress on the rack and took it and a blue scarf to the dressing room.

  Ferko waited in the center, near the escalator, wondering if there was something he should buy for Mary Beth. A wallet. A belt. It was all stuff. Random junk.

  Jen emerged in the dress, barefoot, with the scarf draped to cover the bandage on her arm. He went to her. She found a pair of black shoes on a sale rack. They were high-heeled, open-toed, and she slipped them on her feet. They were a little big; her toes got lost in the thin straps. Still, she looked hot, despite having partied all night, despite having been hit by a car the prior afternoon.

  She handed him her bag, which had grown thick with, he guessed, her jeans and shirt and sandals. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, but she was straightening her shoulders and fixing her hair.

  “I’m going out there,” she said.

  “Out where?”

  She pointed her chin toward the front of formal wear. “Keep an eye on me. I want reviews and reactions.”

  “A mannequin?”

  She walked ahead, turned her ankle on a heel.

  “This is stupid,” he said.

  “You owe me.” She righted herself.

  “What for?”

  She didn’t have an answer. She walked ahead, more carefully now, and, truth be told, Ferko didn’t mind. He steered away from her, past the dressing rooms and up the next aisle. He checked his phone. No reply from Mary Beth. It infuriated him. When he saw her, he’d tell her about his night. All of it except the heroin. And the mannequin part, which was a little weird and hard to explain. But he’d tell her about Jen Yoder and Greg Fletcher, about the lunch and about the parties. He actually had a lot to tell her. And if she didn’t care, if she was indifferent, that would be one more disappointment in a series of disappointments.

  He was back in the center again, near the down escalator, waiting and watching as Jen stepped up on the pedestal with the mannequin, which was wearing the same black dress and posed with legs apart, right hand on right hip, chin down, white lips curled in a pouty expression, evoking an attitude that said, The night is mine. Jen struck the same pose, though opposite (left hand on left hip), so that the two looked like bookends. She was shorter than the mannequin, didn’t have the same Barbie features in neck length and leg height. Jen had freckles, too, on her arms and nose. But she kept as still as the mannequin. Amazingly so. From Ferko’s vantage point thirty feet away, she wasn’t breathing.

  He glanced around the store. No shoppers in sight. Two salesladies were talking behind the counter in handbags. Another was walking the floor. Ferko pointed his phone and took a surreptitious picture. Then he walked by Jen and took another. She didn’t blink. He went to the opposite side of the escalator and touched the silk scarves, while watching the pedestal. Then he moved on to the leather belts. He went through them—black, brown, blue, red, yellow. The world was filled with crap. You could clothe an entire town with the inventory of this store alone, one of four anchors in one mall, not counting the dozens of boutiques in the hallways. He thought about Grove Department Stores. Would an acquisition and investment improve demand and profits? Wasn’t there a fundamental problem with the whole retail model in this country? Didn’t it start with too much supply?

  Then a shopper appeared—two, actually—a mother and daughter in almost-matching shorts and T-shirts. They meandered by the escalator, looking lost, and their meandering took them directly by Jen. She didn’t blink. Nor did they. The mother and daughter wandered past as though nothing in the world were out of the ordinary. Maybe the mother had noticed something awry and had cautioned the daughter, It’s impolite to stare, but Ferko didn’t think so. Jen really wasn’t moving. But they didn’t stop and look at the black dresses on the rack, either. Wasn’t that part of Jen’s hypothesis? That live mannequins would boost sales?

  More shoppers happened by, and these, too, didn’t pay any mind to Jen or her pose or her black dress. She became part of the store’s wallpaper. She was a pillar, a mirror, merchandise on the racks, one more ingredient in American retail’s assault on the senses.

  She’d been up there for twelve minutes. (Ferko was timing her.) He’d seen her twitch a couple of times—nearly a hiccup—but recover to hold her pose. But now the two salesladies from the handbag counter were on their way, squinting, it appeared, at Jen. They were in their fifties, dressed to the nines in blue and gray pantsuits. Ferko imagined that they spent their entire paychecks buying merchandise with their employee discount.

  He circled toward them, to a sale rack within earshot, where random items had been placed according to size and marked at forty percent off.

  The women stopped five feet from Jen and studied her.

  “Is she real?” the one in the blue suit asked.

  “I don’t remember her.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  But the other woman didn’t answer, and there was a pause when no one said a thing. For her part, Jen stepped it up a notch, if such a thing were possible. She looked like the real deal—as in fake.

  Then the woman in the blue suit stepped forward and touched Jen’s wrist and recoiled. “She is real.”

  Jen didn’t move.

  “She’s got hair on her arm,” the woman said. “See?”

  The woman in the gray suit stepped fo
rward with one foot, but kept the other back.

  “Right here.” The woman in the blue suit pointed.

  “Do you mind?” Jen turned her head to face the women, who jumped back. She held the rest of her pose.

  “What are you doing?” the woman in the blue suit asked.

  “I’m working,” Jen said. “What are you doing?”

  Ferko kept his head down and examined an orange blouse with an ugly green swirl.

  “You’re working? Does Mr. Davies know about this?”

  “Mr. Davies hired me.”

  “Hmmm,” the woman in the blue suit said. “He should have warned us.”

  “We should tell the other girls,” the woman in the gray suit said. They stared at Jen, who looked off again, toward the far wall, to resume her pose. After a minute the women wandered off to, Ferko assumed, find someone.

  When they were gone, Jen frowned and kicked off the heels. She put them back where she’d found them. “That sucks.”

  “You did well.”

  “I need my sandals.” Ferko handed her the bag.

  “Let’s go,” she said as she slipped them on. He followed her around the perimeter of the store, to the other side, toward the door where they’d entered.

  “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I need a nap.”

  “What about the dress?”

  “Look at me.” She stopped. “I’m sweating.”

  Her forehead glistened. Perspiration collected in the cleft where her throat met her collarbone.

  Ferko scanned for store security.

  “Be cool,” she said. They were nearing the glass doors, the white cement, and the sea of asphalt. “I’ll meet you at the car.” She veered off, through racks of jackets and swimsuits. He watched her for a moment, sighed, and continued on.

  At the door a hand grabbed his elbow. “Excuse me, sir.” The hand belonged to a man in his sixties. He wore a white beard and round glasses with metal frames, a brown suit with a name badge: Reynolds.

  He gave Ferko the once-over. Ferko thought he must look awful—messy hair and stubble peeking through his chin, a wrinkled shirt and khakis he’d been wearing for twenty-six hours straight—not quite homeless but possibly criminal. Reynolds checked the polished floor by Ferko’s feet.

  “Where’s the bag?” he asked.

  “What bag?”

  “You had a bag, a black leather bag.”

  Ferko played dumb, eyes big.

  “No bag,” Reynolds said, though it could have been a question. His eyes scanned the immediate area. “Where’s the woman with the dark hair?”

  “Sir, I’m just a customer with a wallet, keys, and phone.” Ferko showed Reynolds these things, then remembered, too late, the photos of Jen he’d shot on his phone. But Reynolds was looking past Ferko now, out the glass doors, into the bleak landscape of the parking lot.

  Reynolds sighed. “Sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”

  It was quarter to eleven when Ferko returned to the car. Jen wasn’t around. He unlocked the door, and his phone rang.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I got stopped.” He got in and closed the door.

  “I saw that. You didn’t have anything.”

  “Well, that’s what happened.” He started the car. “Where are you?”

  “In the trees beyond the parking lot. I’m watching you now. They may be watching you, too.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I owe you,” she said.

  “Damn right.”

  “There’s a driveway at two o’clock, do you see it?”

  “Two o’clock? Are we in a spy movie?”

  “Ferko, do you see the driveway?”

  “I see it.”

  “Exit the parking lot there. I’ll meet you. My dad’s expecting us.”

  “Us?”

  “I told him you were giving me a ride home. He’s thrilled.”

  “Thrilled?” Ferko asked, but she’d ended the call. He couldn’t imagine that Dr. Yoder would even know who he was, let alone be thrilled to see him. He waited. The engine idled. Then he called home, but Mary Beth didn’t answer. The trees beyond the parking lot were evergreens. He backed out of his space and wended his way toward the driveway at two o’clock.

  CHAPTER TEN

  That morning she’d dreamed about a forest. She’d left something there, among the trees, though she didn’t remember what, and when she went, in her dream, she couldn’t find the place, the right trees, to search. There were lots of trees in the woods, but none were the right trees. And so she searched, got lost in the woods, which were expansive in her dream—not the narrow stand of trees that buffered one development from the next—and she kept circling back to a footbridge over a stream and a waterfall. And each time she circled back, she became more anxious, because time was short and you couldn’t stop time, just as you couldn’t stop the stream from running over the rocks in the fall below the footbridge.

  Gil wasn’t home, hadn’t been home, and she was relieved. She’d read his message in the middle of the night. He was chasing a deal.

  She rose, drew the sheets and blankets up, and stood in the quiet house. She couldn’t shake the pull of her dream. She made coffee and ate cereal. The woods were shaded and cool, a secret, covered place. She wondered what was there, what she was looking for. She couldn’t shake it, and so she dressed, this time appropriately, in long pants and closed shoes, and she set out on Woodberry Road. There were children about, chasing one another through front lawns with squirt guns. An older gentleman walked his three dogs. Somewhere behind her, a gas lawn mower ran. It was ten minutes to ten when she turned up Amos Avenue.

  There was a clamor at the School on the Ridge, a baseball game on the ball field. Dads shouted positions from the bench. The teams wore red and blue uniforms, each with pinstripes. Kids played catch behind the backstop. Others swung bats. Parents fanned the foul lines, on blankets and folding chairs.

  But the woods beyond the ball field were empty. She sat on the fallen tree, where the girl with the pigtails had stood. It was a warm day, though cool in the woods. Occasional cheers rose from the baseball game. But mostly the leaves rustled and the insects whirred. She loved the security offered by the cloak of the trees. She was invisible, a piece of the landscape. If anyone wandered down the path they wouldn’t notice her, sitting on the tree, if she kept very still. It wasn’t the place from her dream. Maybe there was no such place. Mary Beth sat for some time wondering what sort of place this was. She decided she would stay until it revealed itself.

  When she was a girl, Mary Beth’s house had backed to woods. She was a middle child, a cautious girl, but she valued time alone and she could find it in abundance in the woods behind her house. The ground sloped away from the kitchen to the edge of the woods and kept sloping, and she could go into the woods in summer, when the leaves were green and thick, thirty or forty feet, no more, close enough to be within shouting distance if her mom or her sisters called for her, but far enough to lose sight of the house completely and pretend she was alone in the middle of an ancient forest. The slope ended. Pools of water and animals—insects, birds, and frogs—gathered. Mary Beth loved the dragonflies best. They were proxies for fairies, and fairies were her friends. They lived in the earth and came out only at night. But these fairies made an exception for their one human friend, and Mary Beth was grateful. She watched them flit about in the dappled sunlight. They entertained her. When the frogs sang, the water shimmered with bubbles blown from beneath the surface.

  Now her phone rang, and she was no longer invisible. She was a woman sitting on a fallen tree in the woods near the school field. “Gil,” she said.

  “Hi, where are you?”

  “Where are you, Mr. Stay-Out-All-Night?”

  “On my way home.”

  She waited for him to tell her more, but he didn’t. “I’m just out,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Wal
king.”

  She braced herself for the question, in one of its two principal forms: Are you okay? or Is everything all right? She never felt she had his permission to not be okay. She was fragile, she knew, like a young tree growing from the floor of the forest. But she could get better. If she sat on this tree long enough, perhaps she would.

  But he didn’t ask the question. Instead, he said, “That’s great. I have a lot to tell you. I met up with these folks from high school. It was kind of crazy.”

  She waited for him to tell her how crazy.

  “When will you be home?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A couple hours?”

  “That’s a long walk.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m glad you’re getting out. I’ll see you then.”

  “Bye.”

  He could be sweet. And he definitely was patient. She turned off her phone. The woods were silent. She waited on the log for something or someone. She wasn’t sure which.

  Ferko drove them to Edgefield, to her dad’s house, a ranch with white siding and black shutters. Jen, still wearing the dress from the mall, let them in with a key on her ring. “Hello,” she called when the door gave way.

  “Hello.” Dr. Yoder emerged in a pair of green shorts, a white shirt buttoned to the collar and black socks pulled to his shins. His head was bald, smooth, and freckled. His beard was white. He wore glasses that made his eyes look small and set way back in his head. He stood there for a moment, it seemed, sizing Ferko up—friend or foe.

  Jen kissed his temple. “Dad, this is Ferko.”