Homing by Stephanie Domet Page A

to forget what she was convinced she had to forget.
    And then, his presence was upsetting in other ways. She could feel him tensing up every time she drank a cup of coffee even though she’d switched to decaf after her visit from Psychic Sue. She bought sweet potatoes and left them under the counter till they smelled like vodka. Then she’d put them in the compost, go to the grocery store and buy more. She wore black turtlenecks in spite of him, but every time she did, she felt cross and out of sorts for no good reason.
    She’d start to masturbate, then imagine him on the chair beside her bed and stop short, too ashamed to carry on.
    â€œAnd god forbid I should bring anyone home,” she bitched to Charlotte on the phone one day. “I mean, how can I? How can I have sex in my room while my dead brother watches?”
    â€œHmmm, that’s a toughie,” Charlotte said. “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you about that one, except that, oh, he’s a ghost, and you’re alive, and sweetheart, a woman has needs, you know what I’m saying?”
    â€œYeah, I know what you’re saying,” Leah said, twisting the cordaround her finger till the flesh at the fingertip went white. “I’m too guilty to masturbate, remember?”
    â€œIt’s not perfect,” Charlotte admitted. “But what are you going to do?”
    â€œExcellent question,” Leah said. “I wish I knew.”
    The next day, at the library, Leah put aside her research on Indian cookery. She leaned back in her chair and sighed. The library was usually a refuge for her. She easily lost herself there in the lemony smell of well-thumbed paper and the murmuring of street kids warming up in the magazine room. But she couldn’t concentrate. She had Nathan on her mind.
    She got up from her chair, leaving her stack of books, her fine tipped sharpie, her notebook. The various tools of her trade. Her scarf hung on the back of her chair, a deflated, forgotten streamer. At the computer terminal she hesitated for just a minute, her fingers itching over the keyboard. It wasn’t logical, what she was about to do. And yet, what choice did she have? She looked furtively over each shoulder. And then she typed “ghosts.”
    The screen filled with titles. Kids’ books, volumes of maritime ghost stories, something called “Ghost of a Chance,” which seemed to be a romance novel with a paranormal twist. Leah refined her search.
Ghosts, nonfiction
, she typed.
Dealing with them
.
    This time, there were fewer titles. She scratched down the call numbers of a few on a scrap of paper, cleared the computer screen and went into the stacks to take a look.
    The first one she put her hands on was a fat hardcover with no dustjacket. The spine was green, with black letters. “How To Deal With Ghosts.”
    â€œThat’s to the point.” Leah muttered as she drew it from the shelf. The pages inside were buttery soft, polished by hands and time.
    How To Deal With Ghosts,
the title page read,
by Peter Pietropaulo.
The chapters were equally straightforward.
What are ghosts; Why do they stay on earth; How do I know if I have a ghost; How can I get rid of my ghost; What if I decide I want my ghost back?
    Energy can be neither created nor destroyed,
she read.
And so it stands to reason that when we die, our energy remains. And sometimes, that energy
takes a ghostly human form. Sometimes we actually see spirits; they appear as flickering, thinner versions of themselves. Other times, we may simply feel their presence — a cold or hot spot in a room. We may hear spirits knocking or wailing. Some spirits manifest as an odour. Roses, sulphur, chicken soup, coffee. Lights may flicker. Appliances may turn on or turn off, on their own. We will discuss these symptoms of a haunting in depth in the chapter entitled “How do I know if I have a ghost?”
    â€œNo mystery there,” she said.