Madeleine's Ghost by Robert Girardi

consult you on another matter?”
    We go upstairs to his bright and cheery office on the third floor of the rectory and, surrounded by golf trophies, I tell him about the ghost. I am nervous talking about it and suppress an urge to kneel and say the act of contrition, like a ten-year-old at his first confession, as if the ghost has been brought on by my own unforgiven sins. He leans back in his chair and presses his fingertips together.
    â€œDo you think this is a malicious presence?” he says at last.
    â€œHard to say, Father. First the stones, now the furniture. And I always feel there’s someone looking over my shoulder. It’s really very oppressive.”
    â€œWhy do you tell me all this, Mr. Conti?”
    â€œI thought you might have a suggestion as to how to get rid of it,” I say. “A relocation, so to speak.”
    â€œYou mean bell, book, and candle. Obscure Latin incantations.”
    I shift uncomfortably in my chair.
    â€œGhosts are no longer the province of the church, I’m afraid. Only spirits.”
    â€œThere’s a difference?”
    â€œOf course. You’ve heard of Vatican Two?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œVatican Two cleaned house on many archaic practices. Exorcism was one of them. I’m not saying they are no longer performed, ever. Just extremely rarely. And there is an unofficial policy disapproving of such activities. Currently it’s up to the individual bishops whether or not to allow exorcisms to take place in their diocese. Bishop Allen frowns on them most definitely. These days the church believes in psychology and repressed memory. Our interests lie with Freud and therapy. Not ghosts and demons.”
    â€œWhat about saints?”
    He ignores this. “If I were to authorize an exorcism in my parish, and word reached the bishop,” he says, “I would be sent to a dude ranch in Arizona to recuperate with all those other wacko priests who can’t keep their hands off the altar boys. And that’s not the sort of company I care to be locked up with for ten or twelve months.”
    Sculptural light gleams off the polished trophies in their cases. Arnold Palmer smiles down benevolently. Here it is hard to believe in the haunted stillness of the apartment at 3 A.M ., ghost frittering like a moth against the screen in the darkness.
    Father Rose rises and takes his putter from the plaid golf bag in the corner.
    â€œAnything else?”
    I hesitate. “Advice? Helpful hints?”
    He leans over and makes a pass at one of the practice balls strewn across the carpet. Then he straightens and fixes his sad brown eyes upon me.
    â€œYes. You live in a terrible neighborhood, in an apartment subject to unusual disturbances. My advice is very simple. Move.”

11
    O N THURSDAY Rust and I take the train uptown to see a restored print of Nicholas Ray’s
55 Days at Peking
on the big screen at the Gotham on Third Avenue.
    The film is terrible, a misbegotten epic about the siege of the European community at Peking during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven. It is full of fifties-era hysteria, cardboard Chinamen, bad acting, and misapprehended historical facts, but I hardly notice.
    I can’t concentrate on the plot because I am still brooding over the priest’s advice. I have been brooding over the priest’s advice for two days now. I have checked and rechecked the classifieds in the
Voice.
The conclusionis inescapable. This is New York. They rent hallway space for five hundred dollars a month. And until I can save first and last and security deposit—about two thousand dollars—I cannot afford to move.
    After the movie we wait on the empty station platform for the Brooklyn-bound F at Fifty-third Street, two levels down. We wait for a long time, but there is no sign of the F, not even the barest glimmer along the tracks. The stink down here is awful and the heat is