The Tower 2020

Page 49

NONFICTION

A GHOST STORY

Lauren Foley

I had this dream once that felt like it had been stripped from an indie Halloween movie: exposed brick walls, threadbare fear scattered across the floor like breadcrumbs, a ghostly presence unfolding in rattling noises and too-cold indoor breezes. I often vividly remember dreams, but most of this one fell away when I woke up. Most of the dream, that is, aside from my mother taking me by the upper arms, gazing lovingly but sternly into my eyes, and declaring, “They’ll be nice to you if you’re nice to them.” She was, naturally, talking about the ghosts. I am not afraid of ghosts. Or, more accurately, I don’t believe in them. This belief and I . . . we have a complicated relationship. I deliberately don’t answer its texts. It never returns my calls. Yet, all too often, we find ourselves lying side-by-side in my room at night, talking until our voices scratch into silence. My grandfather died in August during a two-year period of my life that swarms behind my vision now—a period filled with births and deaths and shuffled homes, but still out of sight, as they say. In hindsight, his passing was probably the beginning of that period: a reckoning spelled out in church bells ringing in the distance and yellow butterflies landing on the hood of my mother’s gold 4Runner and a swath of that famous big, blue sky. By the time my mother found out about his death, it was too late to try to peel back the years and amend the cracks we pretended weren’t in the woodwork. She told us instead to remember what we could of the good—the soft sweetness of the buttermints he always kept in a crystal dish by his chair, the smoked syrup warmth in his laugh, the wayward questions that only he knew how to piece together and offer the world.

47


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Contributors

8min
pages 153-158

Acknowledgments

4min
pages 159-164

Real Colorful Creatures, Samantha Sanvik

2min
pages 148-152

Around Here, Joey Gotchnik

1min
pages 146-147

Situated Between a Hamlet and a Village, Macie Rasmussen

1min
page 142

How My Husband Makes a Jackson Pollock, Catherine Retica

1min
pages 143-145

Rites of Passage, Emma Heckel

5min
pages 134-141

The Letter, Karla Gabriela Abreu

1min
pages 129-130

A Portrait of Shinjuku, Keng Xiong

18min
pages 119-128

The Left Breast, Demitria Sabanty

2min
pages 109-110

Curse Word, Lark Lasky

4min
pages 114-116

Return to Form, Abe Diaz

15min
pages 92-100

Joan’s Mind, Isabella DiCicco

0
page 111

We were walking the dog, Demitria Sabanty

1min
pages 86-90

The Day, Emily Rascher

1min
pages 106-107

A Prayer, Evan Tungate

0
page 82

The Part in the Movie when the Volume gets very Loud, Megan Lange

6min
pages 66-69

The Spurs on the Legs of Pheasants, Lark Lasky

2min
pages 74-76

Lo-Fi/Hip-Hop Office, Geoffrey Ayers

0
page 72

Crying in public, Ciara Cagemoe

0
page 78

sciamachy, Alexis Ma

1min
pages 56-58

A Ghost Story, Lauren Foley

7min
pages 49-54

A Long Day at the Theater, Megan Lange

6min
pages 60-63

Vandals, Emily Heilman

9min
pages 42-46

Our Body in Segments, Lauren Foley

1min
pages 34-35

Asking for a Friend, Abby Person

3min
pages 30-31

Picking Thistles, Paxton Schmitz

2min
pages 20-22

Hanging, Caitlin McBride

1min
pages 37-38

lost in the duty-free shop at terminal 5, Alexis Ma

0
page 39

A Boat Against the Shoreline (Oil on Canvas), J.T. Cunningham

8min
pages 24-28

Navy hued nether planet, Ciara Cagemoe

1min
pages 15-16

Kitchen, Scene I, Lauren Foley

1min
page 13
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