Excerpt from: “Ghost Story”

When I’m in the tunnels beneath Times Square, coming up from the 7 train into the congested passageway that houses the blue-painted mime, I see her turn and pose, stiff as a blue statue, to look at me. She’s not actually looking at me but at the space beside me—as if a person had been there, a person just a head shorter than I am, who had just slipped away.

The mime has seen my mother just as I have seen her. It seems we are the only two to have seen her all these years. When I have my doubts, after talking to my father, or my brothers, or any one of my friends, I think of ghosts. Not everyone can see them. Sometimes they’re only a dark, moving flash caught out the corner of your eye.

I’ve come to think that ghosts don’t always have to come from the dead. They can be the people you pass on the street, who bump into you on trains or poke you with their umbrellas. You know a ghost from the temperature of their skin—they’re not cold, but warm, like they’ve been standing over a stove. It’s not cool patches of air that let you know they’re around, but the smell of smoke. They cough. Their eyes water when they look at you. They sing songs to you, songs they know you can’t understand. They evade you, wearing dark colors you can’t spot in a crowd. When they beckon for you to follow, pulling you along with their warm hands, it’s only when they know you trust them and want them to stay that they let go.

(2003, New York Stories)