Page 32 of The Ghostwriter

“I have a job to do—” I start, but she interrupts me.

“So do I,” she says, her voice rising. “You need to understand what is happening to him. Lewy bodies are growing on his brain, which is manifesting in a number of ways. Right now, he mostly understands that his hallucinations aren’t real. We’ve been controlling them with meds, but as you can see, that’s not going to work indefinitely.” She looks toward the stairs, and I imagine my father up there, waiting out the confusion. Waiting for his brain to start working properly again. Alma continues. “If you push him too hard, if you press him about things that he can’t remember, he could grow violent and hurt himself. Or you. And if that happens, there won’t be a book at all.”

“Are you afraid of him?” I ask.

She brushes off my words. “Not like that. But I need you to listen to me. When I sayno, that needs to be respected, for your own safety as well as his.”

She holds my gaze, challenging me to argue. But I don’t. Because even though my father thinks he’s the one in control, he isn’t. Alma runs this show.

***

Dismissed, I return to the guesthouse, at loose ends until tomorrow. If I’m not writing, I need to be moving. I look toward the door when it occurs to me—the boxes my father wants me to sort through and the possibility there might be something useful in one of them.

I flip the lid of the one closest to me, peering in to find it jumbled with old take-out menus and several packages of plastic straws. I set it aside as trash and keep looking.

I plow through ten boxes, each one filled by a man with hoarding tendencies, before finding something different in a box near the bottom of a stack next to the bathroom. Old Pee-chee folders from the ’70s. An old ERA button, the back side pocked with rust. I open one of the foldersand find a typewritten report on Shirley Chisholm, Poppy’s name in the top right corner, dated 1974. It’s riddled with typos, and as I skim it, it becomes clear Poppy was never going to be a secretary. I tuck the report back into the folder and hold it, wondering about the girl who wrote it. Who’d likely gone to the library to research it, reading newspaper articles about the first Black woman to run for president in 1972. I feel a smile creeping across my face, admiring my aunt’s passion. Wondering what her teacher thought about her choice of subject.

I look at the exterior of the box, searching for a label, but it’s blank. Whoever packed it hadn’t given much thought to making sure it could be found again. As I lift it, something slides along the bottom, and I remove the rest of the Pee-chee folders to find a round film canister. The metal is rusty around the seams, and a pulse of adrenaline passes through me as I imagine my aunt and uncle appearing on screen. Hearing their voices for the first time.

I try to pry it open with my nails, but it’s rusted closed, so I grab an old butter knife from the kitchenette and set to work, chipping the rust away and wiggling the rim until it loosens and finally scrapes off.

But inside isn’t a reel of film. It’s a diary. The old kind with a tiny lock, the key likely long gone. I trace the edges of the cover with my finger, a mottled pink with red hearts running around the border. My pulse accelerates as I realize what I’m holding. This is exactly what I need—Poppy’s own words. Poppy’s secrets. I use a paper clip to pry it open.

The first page has been cut out, the rough edges poking out of the spine. After that is a blank page, but when I turn to the next one, my throat clenches.

May 6, 1975

I heard a rumor today. That Lydia was pregnant and now…she’s not.

Poppy

May 6, 1975

I dig through my closet, tossing out shoes and dirty laundry, looking for that diary my mother bought me a couple years ago for my birthday. The one she thought I’d record all my secrets in, so that while I was at school, she could read them. As if I’d ever be that stupid.

Instead, I’d written a fake entry.Today, Margot and I bought some pot from Tommy Snyder and went into the oak grove to get high. It’s really growing on me, how happy and silly I feel. It makes it much easier to eat my mom’s terrible cooking.

Two days later, my mother had confronted me, her face blotchy from crying. “Are you gettinghigh?”

“Where’d you get an idea like that?” I’d asked. “From my diary? The one that’s supposed to be private?” I’d waited for understanding to dawn on her. To realize her mistake, that I’d tricked her into admitting that she snooped through my things. Then I said, “Stop trying to pry into my life, Mom.” And I’d walked away.

I figure now that a couple years have passed, my mother has forgotten about that diary.

I finally find it—wedged next to an old Malibu Barbie my mother bought me for Christmas several years ago—and open to that first entry. Taking my scissors, I roughly cut out that page. Then I write a new entry, thinking back on the conversation Margot and I just had.

***

“I heard Lydia had an abortion.”

Margot had whispered the word and I hopped off my bed, peeking out to make sure my mother hadn’t heard it. She blew her top whenever someone mentioned the wordabortion, swearing up and down she would disown any child of hers who got one. Which meant me.

I closed the door and hurried back to the bed. “What?” I asked. “Where did you hear that?”

“A couple of girls were talking about it in the bathroom at school. They didn’t know I was in there.”

“That’s impossible,” I said, though the truth was, I wasn’t exactly sure how it all worked. My mother had dropped a box of sanitary napkins onto my bed when I got my period and said,Don’t get pregnant. It’ll ruin your life. Which wasn’t exactly informative.

“My mother says it only takes one time,” Margot said, shooting me a warning look, as if I ought to take heed of her mother’s wisdom. As if I were the one who needed to be careful. “What do we really know about Lydia?” she continued, picking at a chipped piece of pink nail polish. She peeled the rest of it off and dropped it in the tiny white trash can next to my desk, the appliqué daisies on the outside bright and childish compared to what we were discussing.

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